it is wrong to think that religion makes claims about material reality. The world of science is a smaller world, more limited in scope.The normal religions are more like "our team", or "our town", what we do and think here. Highschool football. Ours. Scientists too often take the claims of such local assertions as statements about physical reality. They are more a code by which people recognize who is ours.
The deeper question is, can humans survive without such local codes?
Remember, I have also said that science is a religion in that it purports to tie things together with meaning.
And that the west, split religiously between idea(l) and mater, spirit and body, software and hardware, may have put itself in a position of becoming ignorant of nature, the body,the gristles that holds life together.