ManMachine,
You begin by saying you want to define science, but I think before deciding if science is a religion, you need to define religion.
Science is nothing more than a loosely related group of methods combining empirical evidence and rational analysis for the purpose determining what the physical world is, how it works, and how it came to be. What it doesn't do is tell you how to be a good person, what to value, how to live a good life, or whether there's a god(s), or an afterlife. But it might tell you why people value certain things, or why they might believe in a god or an afterlife.
You might possibly define religion in such a way as to encompass religion, but I suspect any such definition would include political ideology and philosophy too---at which point you've expanded the definition of religion to the point of uselessness.
You begin by saying you want to define science, but I think before deciding if science is a religion, you need to define religion.
Science is nothing more than a loosely related group of methods combining empirical evidence and rational analysis for the purpose determining what the physical world is, how it works, and how it came to be. What it doesn't do is tell you how to be a good person, what to value, how to live a good life, or whether there's a god(s), or an afterlife. But it might tell you why people value certain things, or why they might believe in a god or an afterlife.
You might possibly define religion in such a way as to encompass religion, but I suspect any such definition would include political ideology and philosophy too---at which point you've expanded the definition of religion to the point of uselessness.
If there is a god, I want to believe that there is a god. If there is not a god, I want to believe that there is no god.
