An epistemological question

On this site, and in the larger context of westerners noticing that western culture has many pathologies and then trying to identify which component of the culture is responsible, there appears to be a strong tendency to confuse the technique of science with the set of beliefs that have been validated by the technique (which I'll call the tenet, but which probably has a better name). In many respects it is not inaccurate to state that the scientific tenet resembles religion: most of the scientific facts that most scientists know/understand were discovered by preceding scientists, and the methods for communicating thoughts from one generation to the next are universal. For example, most scientists (and a great many non-scientists) accept as fact that atoms have nuclei because they are willing to believe (hopefully after a little reflection) that this is a reasonable interpretation of the alpha particle / gold foil experiments. Similarly, most christians (and I use them as an example because I used to be one and honestly have very little knowledge of other religions) learn from preceding christians that Jesus was once a living person with supernatural powers who floated up to the sky after being dead for three days and will eventually come back leading some kind of very angry army. With some reflection, christians find that it is reasonable to believe that Jesus, having such incredible abilities, is a likely candidate for the job of rescuing an apparently benighted people from the clutches of what seems to be a basically evil state of being (for the sake of this argument, I'll ignore any paradoxical consequences of combining this idea with the idea of a benevolent creator (which is certainly not universal even among christians (or so I gather))).

From a strictly pedagogical perspective, science does not differ in any respect from religion (or at least from christianity): scientists learn most scientific facts by listening to other scientists' explanations of these facts, and christians learn christian doctrine by listening to other christians explain it. But the two approaches diverge radically in the way in which original knowledge is acquired, so it is quite problematic to call them congruent when you actually mean only that the transmission of tenet is equivalent. Returning to the examples in the previous paragraph, if a scientist were sufficiently skeptical and decided that the existence of atomic nuclei is an unreasonable interpretation of the alpha particle / gold foil experiments, and moreover that the original experimenters may have been lying about their results, then this scientist could take some gold foil, brew up some alpha particles, and try the entire experiment again. We are only four or five generations away from the original experiments, but nonetheless we cannot ask the original experimenters, so this is really the only way that we can assure ourselves that the result is real. In contrast, a skeptical christian has no such recourse. We are hundreds of generations away from the supposed life of Jesus, but even if the events on which christianity is based had occurred in the same time as Rutherford's experiment, we could not recreate them. The fact that there are many intervening centuries, with plenty of time for fantastic twists and additions to enter the christian tenet, causes a fundamentally different situation than the scientific tenet.

Surely some (perhaps most, or even a large majority) of the scientific tenet is inaccurate or completely wrong--we see theories overturned or substantially amended all the time. But this fallibility is exactly the difference between science and religion, and the reason why science is not 'just another religion.' Religion is tenet only, without any technique (please do not pick up a zen book and hit me with it--I realize that some religions do in fact have technique and rather little in the way of tenet, but I have been discussing christianity, and extend my critique only to other religions in which the original knowledge cannot be accessed and must be acquired solely through teaching). Science is fundamentally technique, with a resulting tenet that is (ideally) open to amendment. Obviously the scientific tenet ossifies with its practitioners, but even in periods of rigid scientific orthodoxy there still exists the objective world in which anyone can test theories if they so desire. And of course scientists often do '"research" for the most part to prove their o[w]n theories'--what other research could they possibly do? Research to prove theories that they don't yet have? Perhaps you were criticizing the tendency of most scientists to search for evidence to prove existing theories rather than generate new theories. If this is the case, then you are right--the vast majority of scientists labor to contribute a few data points to support theories that already exist. But this does not make scientists like theologians. It is possible for scientists to arrive at original knowledge via the technique (even if this is accidental, even if it only happens rarely, and even if it overturns extant theories). Theologians will never arrive at original knowledge because they can only reassemble or reinterpret information from within their tenet that has been codified absolutely. Certainly the tenet evolves, but it cannot evolve outside the boundary of the original events without becoming heresy, or maybe unitarianism.

At risk of being trite, I would contend that the utility of science has rather far exceeded that of any religion. What are some consequences of religion? Catholic priests, illegality of bras in Somalia, Pat Robertson, most people from Iowa...largely a useless assemblage, when not actively detrimental. In contrast, consequences of science are often extremely useful: microbiology and modern theories of infectious disease, materials science, the neurological basis for Reuniting. Certainly there are many useful consequences of science that have been highly destructive (petroleum chemistry, nuclear physics, materials science again), but I'm trying to demonstrate the science has been astonishingly useful, while religion (pick any) has never furnished us with anything of utility that could not have been gotten from atheism or from some other religion.

Finally, I would like to point out that, despite the insistence of some scientists to the contrary, science does not claim monopoly on absolute truth. Science as a technique has nothing whatsoever to say about absolute truth. Science as tenet (distinct from the immutable canon of whatever stubborn group may be dominating it), being the consequence of technique, therefore also has nothing to say about absolute truth. It is a collection of repeatable observations--nothing more. Surely some scientists mistakenly conclude that this is absolute truth, but that is their fault, not the fault of science (either technique or tenet). In much the same way, when a religion that is supposedly about being good to people actually turns out to be a refuge for certain men who like to stick it to the new generation, this doesn't necessarily mean that the religion itself is at fault for all the sticking. Whereas science has no claim to absolute truth, religion is in fact uniquely distinguished by its claim to that very sort of truth. Could it be that science annoys you just as much as religion because you are annoyed by human behavior? After all, most of the annoying shit perpetrated in the name of religion (thought control, domination) is essentially the same as the annoying shit brought to us by science (thought control on steroids, more domination than religion was ever able to muster (likely due to the inherent utility of science...)). Since (I hope I have expressed that) the basic source of scientific knowledge is fundamentally different than the basic source of religious belief, then content cannot be responsible for similarity of outcome. If both religion and science consist of content and practitioners, and the content is fundamentally different, then the only culprit for the shared annoying outcomes must be the practitioners...