I am trying to replace writing new scriptures (which are fixed and static texts) with writing open source software that promotes particular activity. (Whether it is advertising your local events, or sharing resources), yet it has more to do with software engineering and scientific method, as you explained it, than with religion as I know it.
I don't have a problem with religion in this respect. The problem I have is the group think. People are free to speculate on that which we cannot explain other ways. The problem is that people often will then push their speculation as fact. In the scientific method this would be observing something, coming up with a hypothesis to POSSIBLY explain what was observed and stopping there and telling everyone it was the truth. Then pushing that hypothesis and promoting it and getting other people to join in on promoting it. All without ever actually proving it. Some guy/gal's guess to explain something they experienced becomes treated as the truth.
I don't have problems with speculation, hypothesis, etc. It is all we can do when we encounter things we don't understand, cannot repeat, cannot measure, etc. That doesn't mean that thing didn't happen. It also doesn't mean the speculation is wrong. It doesn't mean the speculation is right either. The problem comes when speculation is pushed as fact.
To me that is the root of most religions that I have studied. So much speculation pushed as fact, often with threats if anyone questions it.
No I have not. Been saying it from the very beginning in my post. You simply have failed to understand.
Speculation is thinking up possible answers to questions you are asking when you observe something you don't understand and are trying to make sense of it. That is the hypothesis stage of the scientific method.
In religion it stops there as eventually someone decides their answers to their own questions are fact and the answer without doing any testing, repeating it, sharing the method to prove it and having others confirm, etc. They just decide the thing they imagined to explain the thing is true.
A simple example would be lightning being Thor angry in the sky, Volcanoes being caused by Vulcan, etc.
I have. It actually used to be a game. Come up with some new idea to explain reality that would be difficult to disprove because you couldn't measure anything or actually prove it. I did that decades ago in my late teens and early 20s.
Yet I have ZERO interest in seeing the creation of new religions. I believe I stated my stance on group think. At this point I don't recall if that was to you or to someone else.
Group think leads to an us vs them mentality. I certainly ponder the universe, reality, and the unseen things. I speculate on them endlessly. Yet long ago I realized that me telling people my speculations as though they were facts would be doing someone a disservice. I'd be foisting on them an imagined possibility as though it were the truth without having to prove anything. What's worse is sometimes I think of multiple speculations that could explain something but they are mutually exclusive so they can't both be true. What if I share only one of them with someone and they for whatever reason think "Wow he is smart" and then they go off an live as though my idea was the answer. That may seem like a joke, but I've seen it happen. I have no interest in that.
I share possibilities, not certainties. Individuals is what we need it doesn't have that us vs them intrinsic quality.
Basically what I am saying is I don't see any need for organized religion. Any of the positives that come from them can be accomplished without organizing and pushing dogma.
EDIT: I did consider making a religion for a while with the purpose of bringing peace between all religions. Acting as a bridge of sorts. The name I used for it when I thought of it and wrote about it was Symbiosis.
Yet that can still lead to group think. Eventually down the line some people practicing symbiosis might view those that were not as idiots and thus act towards them with bigotry, might even escalate to physical attacks, etc. Stuff like this has happened with buddhists vs taoism, etc which are both peaceful religions. Yet human nature and that dreaded us vs them group think can take the most peaceful of ideas and turn it into a bad thing. The individual embracing what works for them and respecting other individuals and seeing each of us as walking our own path. That is truly the only thing I will recommend at this point. I will not share my other speculations as certainties, only might mention them as possibilities, or partial possibilities, with the knowledge they could be completely or partially wrong.