Excellent contributions, if I may say so, 'plnelson'!

I think that I may have put it a bit more crudely further up the thread:

"A religious person tends to believe that all of the 'answers' are contained within an ancient, sacred text whereas a scientist can only attach probability statements to the outcomes of even the most well-designed and careful of experiments.

To sum up: religious people are certain, scientists are uncertain.

And to be really contentious: religious people are often full of pride in their certainty whereas scientists tend to be humble in their uncertainty."