It has saints such as Aristotle, Galileo, Newton, and Einstein. It has a priesthood, the senior scientists. It has doctrinal authorities, the Nobel laureates. It has prophets like Leonardo da Vinci and Thomas Edison. It has heretics, the person who transplanted monkey heads.
Science has sacred texts.
It has its PR types such as Carl Sagan. Both have fundamentalists, literalist, evangelicals, and mainstreams. A fundamental tenet of science is that acceptance of some claim must be properly tied to the evidence. If accepting the truth of the evidence is distinct from his actual truth, then science is a belief system, and an imperfect one at that. What I am suggesting is that controversies between religion and science are so intense because they are family squabbles.