I have great faith in the scientific method, which after all is our formal instantiation of our own conditioning principles as organisms, but I don't have too much faith in many scientists. Last century alone , scientists from a variety of cultures were complicit in an enormous number of human rights abuses. Warfare technology itself is a branch of science of course. I have plenty of respect for science, but there are a lot of scientists who would, with a slight change of outfit, make equally great tyrants. I am thinking maybe the problem is one of authoritarianism, and the concomitant use of belief as a control mechanism. Perhaps we should be talking about 'believers' rather than 'religious people'. I fear all true believers, and see them as a potential threat to the survival of the species.