Those who have latched onto post-modernism to justify their belief in ideas that can only be supported based on blind faith have on occasion made the charge against science that it is really just a folk religion! However, even in science's worst moments -- when the growth and development of some area of knowledge has been slowed because an individual or individuals in power resisted or censored new ideas -- there is a giant chasm that separates science and folk religions. Folk religions require blind faith and obedience. Resistence to new ideas is the defining characteristic of folk religions. Science requires skepticism and the ability to change ideas as knowledge accumulates. Science would no longer be science if its ideas were not allowed to change while any folk religion would be destroyed if its basic dogma were forced to change.

However, as pointed out in the material on post-modernism there has appeared to be some justification for this "science as a folk religion" charge because of two bad assumptions of early science. And as indicated elsewhere one of the key contributions of science of ethics is to replace with more useful ones those bad assumptions that lie at the base of science.

No. In fact they are exact opposites. Religion of Science would imply turning science into a folk religion in which science's ideas of the day are taken as Truth and then could not be changed. These Truths would then be seen as invariant words that could be repeated in unision at public meetings, and followed blindly regardless of conflicting evidence.

Religion of Science would imply that one was worshipping science, seeing its teachers as the master source of all knowledge, committed to it blindly, and working to help it control the world. Devoting one's life singlemindedly to finding only the evidence to support current scientific Truths is Religion of Science. A science of ethics is focused in just the opposite direction. A science of ethics is focused on clarifying through empirical study human goals and then using all available knowledge to achieve those goals. Science is the tool to achieve this end, not the end for which one labors.

Of course individuals who have been indoctrinated into an authoritarian religion (particularly if it included physical punishment and abuse) have difficulty imagining that an ethical system could be anything else but what they have been raised with. And helping such persons to achieve a broader vision will be a challenge of gigantic proportions.

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