The real difference is that when you cite science, you explicitly ACCEPT that the statement is current-best-understanding and subject to refinement over time – and that it is theoretically possible to demonstrate that the statement is in error. If it isn’t testable (at least indirectly), it isn’t science.
If you cite religion – at least as it’s usually cited – you’re asserting that the statement should be taken as absolute and irrefutable, and you aren’t providing any direct mechanism for testing it. If it’s properly testable, maybe it isn’t religion.
Two very different sets of boundaries around the belief.
Yes, many people accept scientific statements unquestioningly, trusting others to do the checking. But that’s not a failure of science, it’s a decision on whether to trust that others HAVE subjected it to that scrutiny and that, since it’s continuing to be tested on a regular basis, we’ll find out about any breakage soon enough. Cold fusion was analyzed reasonably quickly; the “faster than light” particles error was resolved even more quickly. Science is self-correcting.
Religion used to be self-correcting, to some degree. Judaism has a long history of deep analysis of the writings, taking nothing purely at face value and being very aware of when a base concept is being extended – and being willing to reconsider those extensions, and expecting that people can legitimately disagree but that you’re expected to be able to defend your disagreement. Christianity actually started with some of that same tradition – it was, after all, essentially a messianic Jewish cult spawned by a religious reformer – but some (not all) branches thereof have gotten very defensive about insisting that all received wisdom, not just the core, must be equally true and must be protected from evidence to the contrary. American fundamentalism, as I’ve said before, seems to have some specific historical reasons for why it went quite so far off the rails, and the problem is that having gone there it burned all the bridges that might let it correct those institutionalized problems.
I can’t speak to how well Islam, or Buddhism, or any of the other religious systems deal with discovering that the primary books are not necessarily absolutely literally true. My impression is that they don’t have much trouble with that aspect; it’s just that some of their believers don’t want to accept social changes. That’s a matter of practice, and isn’t accessible to science-based arguments unless you can convince them that the costs of retaining it are higher than the costs of letting it go.
