You’ve taken the discussion into a discussion about religion and not just about “natural philosophy”, which is fine, but not what anyone is talking about with “

You’ve taken the discussion into a discussion about religion and not just about “natural philosophy”, which is fine, but not what anyone is talking about with “believe in science”. If we want to talk about religion and taking no one’s word for it you’ve already started us in this direction by pointing out his rejection of church orthodoxy, which is basically the extreme end of Protestant practice. If you believe that God wrote the Bible and that the church is made up of corrupt men and that only your personal understanding of the word of God is the path towards the True, well, you’re completely at odds with the epistemology of the Catholic Church with regards to religion and very much primed to take the same approach of a personal relationship with God and his word to a personal relationship with natural philosophy.