Science and Religion cannot overlap.

[Mudhammam]

In response to OP- I think the only thing that I can say with regards to his post is that I slightly disagree with his statement that all philosophical speculation is useless. Yes, philosophers haven't come up with the cure for cancer or anything like that, but I think that philosophy (in mainly its original, Ancient Greek derived form) is useful as a way of thinking about how to think about the world. It doesn't come up with the answers, but we are a species full of questions- many of which we won't resolve, but philosophy at its best drives the engine of questioning and rationality. It's no coincidence that many of the Ancient Greek philosophers were also scientists.

I'm willing to concede that point to you. In just having recently read Lucretius, much of his philosophical speculation is dead wrong, but it does serve an important function as an attempt at science i.e. explaining natural phenomena in terms that are in theory testable (given the proper instruments, obviously unavailable in Lucretius' time). I might classify his writing as rudimentary scientific speculation, or I should amend that point to instead state that philosophical speculation, while not totally useless by any means, is utterly unreliable, albeit we are unable to vivisect nature to ensure that our philosophical definitions cohere with the real world.

---

Before the scientific method was distilled, thinking about the natural world was on the level of thinking about how to think about the natural world, and so, as you say, the domain of philosophy. Philosophy is the distilling ground of new areas of inquiry. The sciences, hard and soft, are areas of philosophy which have matriculated out into the wider world.

I think the sciences have taught us, correctly, to mistrust philosophy so far as it intends to either obscure rather than enlighten, and cannot be shown in any way to correspond with actual experience in/of nature.