No, science will never be religion, and the simplest explanation to it is: science is too realistic for that.
See, due to science being very hard, it is true that the most uneducated brand of society accept the saying of the people versed in it as they accept the saying of religious authorities
as the given knowledge of a superior source. Simply put, many of the population of the world lacks the intelligence necessary to understand it, the education necessary to comprehend it, or they lack both. Those who arent among the few privileged enough to have both brains and schooling take it as gospel, not because science itself present itself that way, but because they cannot deny science power (as most people is benefited by some aspect of modern science in one or other direct way), and they receive over-simplified (and rather incomplete) versions of science findings as explanations they can reach for such achievements.
After all, a plane flying does sound like a miracle to those who do not have the faintest idea about what are combustion, engines and aerodynamics.
However, the hardness of science is not an invincible obstacle. Except those who are obtuse by birth and there are those any man can, given the opportunity, choose to study it, and studying it will actually teach the mechanisms behind it. In science, there are no mysteries that have to be accepted as so, and here, in this principle of understanding, lies the first and most fundamental difference from science and religion.
The second difference is being very underestimated in this very thread. Its the fact that, unlike some people mentioned, science is not dogmatic. Quite the contrary, the very essence of science is the opening it has to new ideas, the fluent nature of knowledge, and the encouragement for revisionism of older ideas. It is the very anti-thesis of dogmatism, and people tend to brand science as so due to the fact that it stands by solid ideas even when they are unpopular to some part of society, namely the creation X evolution debates.
Sorry, science differs from religion entirely in this aspect, Im sorry to say that to those who like to brand science as that. Great man of science are not entitled to state things arbitrarily, they have to be backed by testable and reproducible evidence unlike great man of religion, that decides what is right or wrong out of their own heads, than after rely on you cant prove me wrong (as if anyone could ever prove a negative).
The third aspect of difference, and this one also fundamental, is that science does not provide generic comfort. Unlike religion, that is all about loving deities, eternal lives and reward for the good versus punishment for the wicked, science deals only with material and measurable information, and it prescribes reality exactly in the best way our resources allow, whether we enjoy what we find or not. So yeah, to science, you will live this short life and that is it, no everlasting prorogation in a heavenly paradise. And yeah, if a bad man dies unpunished, sorry to say but he got away, no little devils with forks expecting him in a fiery hell.
Life is not intrinsically good, not intrinsically fair, and that is a harsh reality that science never runs away from. Whatever good we want, we have to build, we cant count on celestial daddies to give it to us. And by lacking this tendency to give a (unrealistic) comfort, it will never replace the emotional place of religion in the heart of many man. A price it pays for its intellectual honesty.
Last but not least, science is universal, unrelated to people by their ethnical background, or by their acceptance of the scientific world. Science, defined as a description of the reality, does not need approval, and a surgery will save the life of even those who dont believe in medicine. Opening your heart to it is insignificant, unlike religion, that only have appeal to those emotionally vulnerable to it.
Plain and simple, what happens is the fact that we are lucky enough to live in an era where science is in its prime, getting better and stronger by the minute, explaining the world more and more, and giving solutions to an enormous amount of problems that once were untouchable. And its outstanding efficiency grants science and the scientific method a growing trust with the population, a popularity that is the inevitable consequence of anything that is able to so positively change the life of people.
However, as science explains the world to us, and once it was (and in many aspects it still is) the role of religion, they tend to conflict. As the religious explanations are systematically and categorically been swallowed down by the far more reasonable, and extremely better substantiated scientific approaches to the same problems, science tends to gain more space, and religion tends to loose appeal.
Religion reacts to that in several manners, all of them counting with the deep roots it have in society. The first is to state that science is limited, hence not comparable with the absolutism of the believe what is a complete inversion of reality, as its exactly because science accepts that it is not perfect what allows it to perfect itself into an unparalleled benchmark of efficiency; Second, by distorting science claims to make them sound ridicule (failing to see that saying that it is absurd that a gorilla gives birth to a man is only to equate science to its own level, that states that man is a walking mud statue*)
* - note: I used the creation X evolution example, but this is only allegoric, I dont want to turn this into a creation X evolution thread.
Finally, when they realize that science will start appealing the population (in a distorted way, as I previously explained, but in a way that represents the basics of scientific thinking anyway), religious tries another shot by claiming that it is a new form of religion itself. This is basically an approach that tries to equate the two visions (to make it sound as if going for one instead of the other was just an aspect of taste, having nothing to do with the proficiency of the two paradigms), and a way to ignore that the reason for the growth of the ruthless, uncomforting claims of science before the fluffy its gonna be alright of religion is the fact that science is actually doing things to make life better, and its so undeniable that people cannot ignore it forever. So, science really does not promises, but it delivers anyway, and this will make people sensible to the fact that you can be good without being demagogic, and that in fact its easier to be good that way.
If one day the respect for science and its axiom replaces entirely religion what a doubt will ever happen we wont have a new great religion on the world, what we will have is a principle of understanding and a solid grasp on reality as a humane trait, things that are quite lacking in the world presently.
But dont worry, as long as there are people that wishes absolute answers and words of relief and of comfort (even if unrealistic), nothing ever will erase religion from the face of earth.
I could have sworn you referring to me in BJ's discussion thread...
