"Science is a belief system, just like Christianity. Science assumes dogmatically that there is no supernatural world despite all of the evidence to the contrary."

This is one of those "jaw dropper" arguments: an argument which is so utterly absurd on its face that your jaw simply drops out of disbelief. Are there really people out there who think that science is just another superstition? How do they explain the success of science in creating our modern technological existence? And what is this "evidence" of the supernatural they speak of, when no such "evidence" has ever materialized under controlled conditions?

Unfortunately, there really are people out there who believe this. Therefore, let us list some of the ways in which science differs from the Christian religion:

• Science accepts as data only that which is either directly or indirectly observable. Christianity, on the other hand, is based upon the belief in phenomena which, by its own admission and assertion, are irretrievably beyond human observation and comprehension.
  
  
• Science is a method for analyzing data and arriving at conclusions, while Christianity is a set of conclusions carved in stone and dictated to you by ancient "prophets". In short, science tells you how to logically use data to come up with answers (you can even go to school for several years to get a degree and learn how this is done), while Christianity says "here are the answers; don't ask how we know them to be true, they just are".
  
  
• Christian fundamentalism's answers are not subject to revision based on new data. Scientific theories, on the other hand, are not dogmatic; they can be revised and improved in light of new information.
  
  
• Christian fundamentalism vilifies heretics, and in the past, it persecuted and murdered them. In science, on the other hand, the surest way to fame and fortune is to successfully overturn longstanding doctrines (Shoemaker destroyed gradualism as an explanation for terrestrial crater formations, Einstein showed that space and time are not absolute, Feynman showed that particles can take multiple simultaneous paths from point A to point B, and Hawking showed that energy can theoretically escape from a black hole).
  
  
• Christians ask that we accept the authority of its "holy men". Science, on the other hand, has no holy men, and the validity of any given theory is based not on the authority of its author but on the fact that it has been independently verified to produce empirically accurate predictions.
  
  
• Christian fundamentalists do not distinguish between direct observations and the Bible; as far as they are concerned, the Bible is a direct observation. Science, on the other hand, makes a clear distinction; no science textbook is considered direct observation.

If one takes the time to examine the methods employed by real scientists (rather than looking at the way news reporters or laypeople describe them), one will quickly see that the "science is a religion" argument is pure nonsense. Science has no "holy men", and appeals to no authority. The difference between theory and fact is clearly defined, so it is mere sophistry to demand that scientists waste time restating and clarifying that distinction every single time they make reference to any theory, law or observation in a research paper or published article. The jargon of science is only incomprehensible if you don't take the time to learn it, and its proper definitions are freely available for anyone to examine. And finally, its approach to "heretics" is most noteworthy: heretics who can successfully support and defend a "heretical" argument will gain world renown and perhaps even the Nobel Prize. Quite a far cry from religious fundamentalism, which treats heretics as enemies.

Creationists complain that scientists reflexively attack anything which upsets their expectations not because it's true, but because their own so-called "theories" are so easily refuted by the scientific community, and they refuse to admit that it's a problem with their theories (or at least, the easy answers they supply, which they laughably refer to as "scientific theories").

Fallacy watch:

• Tu Quoque fallacy (aka "you do it too!"; attempts to refute evidence of wrongdoing by accusing someone else of doing it as well).
  
• Golden Mean fallacy (assumes that the middle point between two extremes must be the most reasonable and therefore most correct position).