The problem with science is that when I say, for instance, 'I know there is no life after death because I saw brain pathways during a dissection and so I have proof that my consciousness is a machine', I am really saying:
'I know a past experiment involving a machine-brain-causing-consciousness to be true because a thought and image popped up in my awareness telling me it was a memory, and I remember that there is a past which one can rely upon for information about the future. I know the future to exist because I remember it doing so before, right after the past - oh look, here it is, just like all the other bits and pieces of what-I-think-truth-to-be-ness all of which occur, conveniently, right at this moment. Yet I rely on the utterly unsupported underlying assumptions without question, and call people mad if they attempt to undermine them. '
And another thing with reason/materialism/fetters of views in general; does one really understand one's own thoughts, language, therefore views in general? Consciousness is not elastic through time, it only exists right now, so one couldn't possibly understand durational objects like thoughts, sentences, conversation, meaning in general. You aren't there to. So you don't understand what you're reading and I don't understand what I'm writing. (insert witty comment here). How can a person have an ego about being clever or having the right opinions when he never understood anything in his life?
The aggregates just give you these little eureka-I-understand/grrr-that-makes-me-angry/sigh-this-is-boring moments that keep us in the loop of believing we're believing we believe in the illusion which isn't one. In truth, they don't even do this much, even that's just another story. (Yes, I know Buddha said that the aggregates create a sense of self etc etc and that this was really definitely true and true even if you write it in frivolous fonts or translate it to german and back using Babelfish. What I'm saying doesn't contradict him on the level he spoke, it's just my dance, what I have to offer, for us now, pile of rafts by the river).
One of Ajahn Chahs monks told me that Luang Por had said to him " your practice doesnt really begin until you have been taken to despair three times " He didnt suggest that at that point all traces are kicked over and tradition abandoned, rather that tradition sparks into life, renews itself, the baton passes.
You just keep peeling, I guess. And it's completely unfair and intolerable and then it begins, and there's no more despair then.
So Buddhism is not science or scientific and so on. It's not about what you read and cross-referenced or reason or scholarship or memory of any other of these empty vessels, floating on no shore. It's got nothing to do with Dawkins and his whole metaphysical world of spacial/mental-beams and foundations and so on. Buddhism, or rather Dharma, can only be experienced; it's not a metaphysical thing, it's your life, now, as it unfolds and surpasses all expectations.