Science and Religion Again. Sorry.

Ever since my Imperial Darwin post, I have been building up my strength with beef tea and arrowroot biscuits in order to return to this damned science-religion thing. Robert Winston now forces my hand, so here goes. Certain high profile scientists - Dawkins, Weinberg, Atkins, Wolpert - and philosophers - Dennett, Grayling - have chosen to criticise, abuse or undermine religion. They do this out of a sense of mission. 'Anything scientists can do to weaken the hold of religion,' says Weinberg, 'should be done and may in the end be our greatest contribution to civilisation.' What normally happens in response to this is that everybody starts shouting and then goes home happy that they were right about everything all along. Nobody stands back and sees the big picture.
I shall attempt, once more, to do so. The core issue is not the science of Dawkins and friends, nor is it their opinions, nor is it even their visceral dislike of faith; it is, rather, their decision to go on the offensive. This places science in the opinion marketplace, one view among many others. But science is a process embodied in institutions. It is not a posture, position or party-line; it is, so to speak, a background phenomenon, a canvas on which we paint our pictures, not the pictures themselves. Using science as a public posture threatens either to compromise science itself by forcing it to adapt to the rhetoric of opinion or to turn it, once again, into a tool of tyranny. It also demeans science.
Furthermore, statements like that of Weinberg encourage the delusion that science possesses some higher wisdom about human affairs. The truth is that science has nothing practical to say about the conduct of human affairs. Maybe one day it will have something to say. But, until then, we must rely on the complexities of the world as it is and that includes relying on religion, philosophy, art, custom and and all the other non-scientific forms of wisdom through which we attempt to give meaning and order to our lives. Making political, economic, social or personal decisions on the basis of current science would be more risky than tossing dice.
In this context, the idea that destroying one particular body of wisdom and custom will make the world a better place can be seen as profoundly irrational if not downright deranged. All the justifications for the current anti-science offensive pale into insignificance next to these considerations. The threat of fundamentalism - Christian or Islamic - is misunderstood; it is, apart from anything else, a reaction to triumphalist scientism and, therefore, a clear indication of the dangers of thrusting science into the foreground.
There are many ways in which what I am trying in vain to say may be tried in vain to be said. There's another. Go ahead. Misunderstand.