I am disturbed by having this be an either/or kind of situation – there is no reason to align science with the status of religion because it would lead to a different kind of fundamentalism and as you and I have discussed previously, science needs to be questioned as much as religion. Perhaps, other people require rituals but I don’t believe it’s an inherent human urge to form rituals around a particular institution. Nor do I think everyone must find one specific institution on which they need to rely for the so-called truth. I further disagree that at the heart of scientific inquiry is a deep spiritual quest – that is adding value where none exists. When I did scientific research for years, it was not for any spiritual reason that I knew of, that’s for sure so even if some people view it in this way, it doesn’t have that kind of meaning for all. As to your latter points, science becoming emotional sounds like a really bad idea to me because we have enough of people taking stupid action based on emotion – something must remain rational and science is an option (though science is rarely objective, these days). I also find that my views on religion (and this new proposal of yours) are explained nicely here. That being said, there is nothing wrong with considering that more people need community outside religion so that they have choices but we don’t have to screw around with the institution of science in order to encourage that.