--continued--
-believe that the aspects of reality dealt with can actually be analysed through logic computation
-agree that the logic/deductive system used was an appropiate choice and that the semanics it uses can express the meaning that people are claming it does
-accept that the argument is "valid and sound" and that some property (usually "truth) was perserved during argument.

So, if asking "Do religious scholars make rational arguments that are valid and sound about their belief systems?". They certain do try and many times they do succeed. However, when you propose the above questions for a given argument to people you can get many different answers: which means that many times, even when someone agrees that argument is "valid and sound" it still does not convince them.

Here is an example- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJv7s0eytMM (start 10:00): this guy is a Muslim blindly reciting a Christian’s modern version of an old Islamic scholar's take on an ancient Greek argument for the proof of the existence of god. This argument appears to be using the old Aristotelian classical logic and uses the law of excluded middle, eg. he uses the law when he says that there can only be either nothing or something. So even if the argument is was valid and sound, if you believe that a logic which doesn't have excluded middle rule was appropriate to use (such as intuitionistic logic ), then you would not be convinced of this argument. (Personally, I don't think it's sound anyway due to the semantics involved- an example of this is that he is makes a rather grand assumptions that the receiver of the argument has a similar notion of causation as him. His reality is different from mine)

Dear Thinkabit,

You mentioned 4 properties of science which are to be similar to religion, briefly: "faith", "dogma", "organisational" and "instructive".

I agree that science has the first three, but not the fourth (science does not dictate any ethics because no "good" or "bad" are found in nature).
I agree that religion incorporates the first and fourth, but not the second and third (which just often happen to attach themselves around religion and even tend to stifle it).

What is left in my view is therefore just one out of these 4 properties in common (faith), which is incidental and insufficient for calling science a religion.

What I consider an even more important difference, is that science misses what religion is all about - it doesn't bring us closer to God. In fact, it tends to increase our interest in the world and by that it even tends to distract us away from God. There are exceptions of course, such as Einstein seeing God in the workings of the world (but by that he didn't believe in some long-bearded old man on the clouds).

Thank you for the explanations about logic: I have learned it in university many years ago.

Not only are you not obliged to be convinced by deductive rational arguments, but I even think that it would be detrimental from a religious point of view:

When one is compelled to believe because it appears to be logically correct, this kills faith! In fact, we could then say that they have faith in logic and the set of assumptions, rather than in the conclusion itself, which they reluctantly accept.

Religion comprises of a full transformation of character - it's not an intellectual quiz, such as "if you can recite the 100 billionth digit of Pi (or spell God's name correctly), then you go to heaven"...