First of all, religion is based in pure believes, in fact, the main pillar of any religion in this world is called faith. Faith is nothing else than believing in something without the need of any proof, if you request proves of any kind, you are not having faith anymore.
Science on the other hand, is based on testable evidence that can be falsified. For any phenomena to become scientific, it must be tested first. But testing any hypothesis must be done correctly, the whole process should be available to everyone to avoid it being an anecdotal "testing". It's important here to emphasize the word hypothesis instead of theory as many people misunderstand and often confuse the both as being the same thing when they are actually not, but I will talk in a bit more detail about it later in this post.
Ok so first of all, when making a study to test a hypothesis, there must exist a random distribution of subjects divided into similarly sized groups. This process must be done responsibly and attention must be put to every detail in order to avoid any kind of bias from the administrators as well as from the subjects. As easy at it may seem, this step requires a high degree of attention to detail and a good deal of expertise so that the study doesn't become an invalid one, it's a very tricky step in deed, we practice this in school and it was a real pain in the ass not to fall into those biased procedures, so before you read an "study" that claims to be a valid one, you have to understand what makes a study a good one and then dig deep into it to corroborate it yourself.
And then is the blinding test, single, double, triple..I'm not gonna go into it as that is not the subject of this post and most of you are probably about to fall sleep by now if you are still reading that is. But anyway, after all the testing comes the publication, the study won't be published unless it has been peer-reviewed, and of course these people have to be experts on the subject with good credentials within the scientific community.
When you go back to religion, it has absolutely none of these studies, even though they sometimes make use of fancy scientific-sounding words like "intelligent creator" to make it sound more valid. Moreover, religious books such as the Bible have already been written, they cannot be put upon scrutiny, the story has been told and you are supposed to accept it, not to question it, then again, that's what we call faith. But don't get me wrong here, I have nothing against people having faith, my only point here is to make a clear difference between the both, what people believe is up to each one.
So religion then is not looking for answers, it has already "found" them, if science comes up with a new discovery that contradicts religion, the next step for religion is to find a way to deny it, to make it look unreliable and threatening towards that faith. Since religions have already written their fairy tails which explain us that a single creator has made everything out of magic, they don't need to look for anything new anymore.
Religion adapts whatever comes up to those stories, in other words, it goes from the result back to the evidence. Science on the other hand, makes the stories as the evidence comes along the way, in other words, it goes from finding the evidence, to testing it, to testing it, to testing it, to peer-reviewing it, to finally get to a conclusion. I know I am sounding once again as if I would be attacking people who believe but I am really not. It doesn't really bother me, I'm too busy and have enough of my own to deal with other person's ideals or believes, I would go crazy if I would really care, but I support science and skepticism (also not the same) and I feel compelled to present these two as they are, what you think about what I wrote here is a different story and feel free to comment and to disagree.
If anybody presents me a valid argument (careful with what makes a good argument) I have no troubles to change my ideas, I have done it before, I was raised in a catholic country, I was a strong believer but there was a point where it stopped making any sense to me as it has to many people that rely in evidence. Some religious people if not all will still try to present "evidence" to support their believes.
Many creationists or religious people that are against science based their arguments in the fact that the latter changes its theories all the time. Well, yes they do most of the time, but that's exactly the point of science. It updates itself as evidence comes along, a theory can become one only if it can be modified at any given point, once again, if it can be tested and falsified, if a theory has sufficient testable evidence and leaves no doubt or room for update, then is not a theory anymore, it becomes a fact. If it hasn't been tested yet, then it's a hypothesis.
And yes, science is full of unanswered questions, unsolved theories, being the biggest of all the origin of the Universe, and it is probably beyond our understanding, like trying to teach algebra to a dog as exposed in the elegant universe documentary (you can find a reference in my web page) meaning we will probably never know, and that is why people need religion, we as humans need to understand origins, it's just the way our brains are wired. From my point of view, science is for the adventurous, for the ones that at least try to find logic in what they perceive, while religion is for the lazy ones, at least in the times we are living in now.
Religion brings comfort, a feeling of safety, a lazy answer to what our brains cannot grasp...yet...it's the shortcut, the no-need-for-thinking approach. Basing your life upon a scientific and critical thinking is not an easy process, it requires you to let all those beautiful stories go, many believes that build up who you are now die with it, and probably the hardest part of it is that you have to recognize you were wrong, and the human ego is very hard to swallow. In addition to take that comfort cover away from protecting you, and you get to a point of thinking "and now what?" Well, probably no one will ever know, but who cares, using the brain in a logical way is in my opinion how we should really pay tribute to the extremely high improbability of being born!!
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