The dictionary is wrong – science can be a religion too

[LeftishBrit]

91. Almost anything CAN be treated as a religion

However, in nine cases out of ten, when people are accused of 'treating science as a religion', it is simply because they prefer scientific evidence to relying on faith in matters that involve the origins of the world and humanity. This rarely means that they are 'treating science as a religion'; it usually just means that they cannot muster faith in God/creation/etc. They cannot, to put it crudely, believe something that they don't believe. Few people think that science can explain everything; few people think that science can determine what our goals and ethics ought to be, though it might sometimes give us guidance on how to achieve our goals.

Those who treat science, or usually a particular scientific theory, as akin to a religion are generally non-scientists or bad scientists. An example that occurs to me is the sort of evolutionary psychologist who considers that social conventions are set in stone because they are allegedly products of evolution. For example, Kanazawa, who has described feminism as 'evil', because it supposedly contradicts the way that sex roles have evolved, just as a creationist fundie might consider feminism as 'evil' because it contradicts supposedly God-given sex roles. But people like Kanazawa are not respected by most of the scientific community.

Most serious scientists are very aware that there is much in the world that is unknown and un-explained. The fact that some (not all) of them think that these things cannot be explained by God, does not mean that they regard science as a religion.

There are far more people who treat their favourite spectator sport, in the UK most often football, as a sort of religion, than who treat science as a religion.