The confusion about all this may lie in the fact that "Science" and "Religion" are social organizations, while being "scientific" or having "faith" are characteristics of human beings.

So murky are these traits we are often unaware of where we personally fall on this spectrum, let alone having the ability to understand them in others.

For some scientists, faith is no doubt the primary basis for their understanding of science, but not all. A scientific person can also have religion (such as, I would like to think, myself).

Science is not religion, and never has been. What is going on between these two factions? I believe some in religion fear science will lead us away from "God." (Which do...

The confusion about all this may lie in the fact that "Science" and "Religion" are social organizations, while being "scientific" or having "faith" are characteristics of human beings.

So murky are these traits we are often unaware of where we personally fall on this spectrum, let alone having the ability to understand them in others.

For some scientists, faith is no doubt the primary basis for their understanding of science, but not all. A scientific person can also have religion (such as, I would like to think, myself).

Science is not religion, and never has been. What is going on between these two factions? I believe some in religion fear science will lead us away from "God." (Which doesn't suggest they have a lot of confidence to begin with!)

Some in science, who also happen to belong to the social institution of Religion, try to appease religion by making arguments like Paul Davies, or Stephen Hawking have made. But this is just like a child begging its parents to stop fighting. It's reflective of a desire to make sense of our own lives, not of any inherent characteristics in either science or religion.

If you take a very sharp focus on, say, Augustine and Aquinas, it would illuminate the similarity of uses of human reason to science (knowledge) and theology. Of course, it would be a further step to claim, as can be claimed, that science (as we usually mean it) is a branch of a larger knowledge (and a mischievous further step would make that second science a substrate or attribute of omnisience) - a process somewhat analogous to claims that logic rather than being a branch of philosophy, philosophy is a branch of logic. And remember that the sense of 'revelation' implicit in the Graeco-Hebrew tradition involves mightily the sense that pure intellectual contemplation is itself not a way to b...

If you take a very sharp focus on, say, Augustine and Aquinas, it would illuminate the similarity of uses of human reason to science (knowledge) and theology. Of course, it would be a further step to claim, as can be claimed, that science (as we usually mean it) is a branch of a larger knowledge (and a mischievous further step would make that second science a substrate or attribute of omnisience) - a process somewhat analogous to claims that logic rather than being a branch of philosophy, philosophy is a branch of logic. And remember that the sense of 'revelation' implicit in the Graeco-Hebrew tradition involves mightily the sense that pure intellectual contemplation is itself not a way to but the arrival at 'God).
More mundanely, Kuhn's demonstration that much scientific enterprise is determined by a human agreement between enterprisers on a relatively stable paradigm may be relevant. Especially in relation to paradigm shifts, one such having occurred already to my way of seeing among those putting science and faith in the same box. (austin will get back to you on eco! Serendipties, though, is slightly germane to this particular comment).

Sam Harris wrote a great piece in response to Davies.
:

I have long thought that someone should perpetrate a Sokal-style hoax
on the New York Times opinion page—a page which has become, under the
careful stewardship of David Shipley, a stronghold of pseudoscience,
preening relativism, and religious apology. Paul C. Davies’ recent op-ed,
“Taking Science on Faith,” would have been a magnificent hoax text, and
I am genuinely ashamed that I wasn’t clever enough to write it myself.
By equivocating on the meaning of the term “faith,” Davies manages to
obliterate every useful distinction between scientific empiricism and
intellectual honesty on the one hand and religious superstition and
se...

Sam Harris wrote a great piece in response to Davies.
:

I have long thought that someone should perpetrate a Sokal-style hoax
on the New York Times opinion page—a page which has become, under the
careful stewardship of David Shipley, a stronghold of pseudoscience,
preening relativism, and religious apology. Paul C. Davies’ recent op-ed,
“Taking Science on Faith,” would have been a magnificent hoax text, and
I am genuinely ashamed that I wasn’t clever enough to write it myself.
By equivocating on the meaning of the term “faith,” Davies manages to
obliterate every useful distinction between scientific empiricism and
intellectual honesty on the one hand and religious superstition and
self-deception on the other. Regrettably, I do not think Davies
intended his essay to be a hoax, and the New York Times seems unlikely
to learn that is has pandered, yet again, to the least discerning of
its readers with another piece of rank obscurantism