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Religion is dogmatic, science is not
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I think all human institutions have a tendency to conservatism and routine. Religion isn't necessarily any more prone to dogmatism than any other approach to living. Max Weber saw religions as going through a prophetic phase, when a charismatic leader would introduce new ways of seeing and new ways of being, and then settling into a more staid routine, with a priesthood whose task it usually was, he said, to 'routinize the charisma.' Kuhn said something like the same thing for the sciences, with one settled scientific paradigm being replaced by another in a 'scientific revolution'.
But that may all be rather too programmatic. In fact, there are many religions that never achieve routinization. Robert C. Scott, in his books on the hill peoples of Zomia, argues that these groups deliberately keep their religions open, and are ready to change them very quickly when conditions change. And in the US, I believe it's well established that people are quite ready to change their religion very rapidly indeed. I remember meeting a guy who had been a Mormon, a Baptist, and an Episcopalian all in the space of about five years - and his family along with him.