As a human institution, science won't ever be perfect. The fundamental notions of science (reduction, documentation, reproducibility, etc) are drastically different from the fundamental notions of religion.

I think the word "science" is too general for this discussion. You're talking about the scientific method, which is a rigorous process for building consistent models of our shared experience. Godel's theorem suggests that we might never be able to complete any of these models, but the method has still lead to amazing new ways of understanding the universe.

If we're talking about the hand-wavey mysticism of Michio Kaku or Deepak Chopra, or researchers who have decided to believe a particular unfalsifiable interpretation of QM, and will not be convinced otherwise, that stuff is closer to what I would call religion.

In that reduced way science becomes a study of theory within theory, derived logical connections. Once you assume a logical framework you're out of the hypothesis/test routine completely. I don't think that's a fair thing to do in comparison. Where things start out matters.

I might not understand your point, but are you basically saying that not all science requires math? To be fair, I've been thinking of physics in particular here.

Science isn't a religion but scientists can be zealots. The scientific principle is the antithesis of religion but scientists can be irrational like any other human.

The good thing about the modern era is that even when institutional biases may momentarily prevent a theory from gaining mainstream recognition at least it will be preserved as part of the body of scientific knowledge so future generations can rediscover it.

> Science isn't a religion

Science might not be, but there are plenty of Scientismists out there.

Scientism is just a catchy phrase for blind faith.

Most "scientism" I see in the wild is just people who were already indoctrinated into magical thinking treating "science" the same way they previously treated religious dogma.

It's irrelevant to science the same way astrology is irrelevant to astronomy. It's cargo cult "science"-iness.