Religiously scientific

I'm not enough of a busy bee to be a registered participant in this Easter weekend's blogswarm Blog Against Theocracy 2007, but some aspects of this interest me. For example, The Barefoot Bum asks Is science a religion?. I tend to think this swarm would would say the answer is 'no', but I'm not so sure this is the right answer. So I will proceed with the alternative answer that 'yes', science is a religion.¹

A problem to answering 'no' to the previous question is that then there is distinction between non-religion (which supposedly includes science) and religion, or that there are two 'spheres' that should remain separate. Call the two spheres N and R. The problem with this is that now the R-sphere can claim immunity from criticism from the N-sphere. The R-sphere can continue to perpetrate all sorts of anti-humanistic dogma. (There are countless examples of that, of course.) When R-sphere people enter the N-sphere, you are not allowed to question them. Could N-sphere people, by excluding R-sphere subjects, actually be unwittingly perpetuating R-sphere influence?

Say, on the other hand, that science is a religion. (It just happens to be the God-less religion of naturalism. So what?) So when R-sphere subjects are now included in classrooms, they would not have any protection from critical analysis. (Everything would be a religious subject: Bible, physics, poetry, math, government, woodshop, Buddha, economics, Shakespeare, sex education, ... .) Wouldn't, in effect, the R-sphere disintegrate, no longer being a protected domain?

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1. In my attempts to 'deconstruct' the distinction, you can decide which 'side' I am helping. (Although of course I am very sympathetic to Richard Dawkins viewpoint, but don't tell anyone that.)