Some fair points there but I think a lot of religions, perhaps most of them, are not about trying to understand "mysterious forces" at all - at least, from the POV of the laity. You know, all that stuff about God being "ineffable" and moving in "mysterious ways", which in my experience is usually a complete cop-out answer to a question about why shitty things happen to good people or why the Lord in all his wisdom made dinosaur fossils just to confuse us.
Some scientists might occasionally cultivate a deliberate air of mystique around their subject but in my experience most are only too happy to try and explain what they do to non-specialists.
Interesting that you use the word 'elite' - sure, there's an academic elite, but the amount of power they actually exert is pretty tiny compared to the sway church leaders used to have hundreds of years ago (in the UK, I mean), or the sway religious authorities still exert in many parts of the world. Even in Britain today, how many scientists are given the sort of public platform that the media affords the Archbishop of Canterbury? Probably quite telling that Dicky Dawkins in the only one I can think of...
when I say mysterious forces I don't necessarily mean they are mysterious, I mean they are perceived as mysterious by the lay people, who need further context/explanation to get some sense of the phenomena (be it 'scientific'/natural or religious). so yh I wasn't really suggesting they cultivate an air of mystique, it's seemingly a by product of their position.
individually I agree, they have little political power. just as individual members of the clergy rarely had much power purely at their disposal, even in the medieval period. as a group/or elite, however, they serve a very useful function for politicians. stuff no longer needs to be discussed, decisions can be moved into the realm of 'expert opinion', there is one path that is 'right' and must be taken - technocracy. (might even work if 'experts' weren't easily controlled through funding, publication and public image). moreover I was using the term elite in that post to primarily indicate their intellectual superiority, which can be attained by a member of the lay people if he or she has the opportunity to pursue education; just as previously the means to become educated was usually to join the clergy, they ran the universities.
But that is a far weaker and less eyecatching claim. Not one that I really have a problem with - there is a huge difference between saying some aspects of something are like some aspects of something else and saying the former is basically a version of the latter. The sleight of hand which moves without rigour from one claim to the other is what annoys.
On top of that I think that there is a difference in that scientific knowledge or whatever you want to call it can be challenged and changed and replaced by a new orthodoxy. In fact, this is a fundamental idea of science and it's diametrically opposed to the way that relgious teachings are supposed to be unchanging (although in fact they tend not to be). I don't think that's a cosmetic difference, it's absolutely a difference in kind, not a difference of degree.
I disagree, I think it's only one element of any religious movement that demands dogma. the majority usually favour some level of debate (through interpretation), at the very least over the church's stance on social issues. this mirrors the way data is often reinterpreted (or new data sets created) when a particular scientific finding has huge social ramifications (MMR/Autism 'link', bird flu, MRSA...). Both institutions are/were subject to a dialectic of competing narratives based on interpretation of available data. and both have strict rules concerning the methodology of interpreting that data.
n.b. I only took sciences to gcse so this is all based on my limited understanding of them.
