Should Skeptical Inquiry Be Applied to Religion?

I truly enjoyed Paul Kurtz´ open minded article and his desire to seek out to know more in every field of interest. I agree totally that skeptical inquiry should be applied to religion, and in so we might even begin to understand a little more about the religions, there roots, there socio-psychological links, etc. If we simply throw religion out the door and say it is nothing because we know nothing empirically true to about it does not give an adequate answer to the billions who follow. I think that if the field is broadened in the scientific studies to include the metaphysical, the claims of miracles, etc, that we can truly come to know and maybe understand what it is that is occurring.

A friend of mine was going to have a life threatening organ transplant done because the doctors only gave him a year or two more to live. He was hospitalized for a few weeks and said that he just started praying and coincidently at his church the pastor who was going to preach scrapped the prepared sermon because he said he felt that the church should pray for this man. The hospitalized man said that he felt something happen that he cannot explain to well, but that the next morning the doctors said that he was okay and that he wasn´t going to need the transplant and he could go home later that week after some follow up observation. These doctors have the X-Rays showing the literal overnight change and have no scientific explanation. Nor do I. This man claims to have been healed by a miracle and I have no scientific proof to say otherwise. These things must be investigated and we must learn if there is an explanation or not. Because these are some serious claims that go against all of what science has taught us. According to science there is no way this man would have been able to have been healed over night. It would have been an irrational, unreasonable claim made in the "stupidity" and illogical name of faith. But this did happen. I know the man. I cannot deny that something happened that goes totally against what science says.

These are the things that cause the religious to feel that it is a battle between religion and science. But should it be? Shouldn´t science research these claims that are happening today in the present scientific age? I argue that we must and that it is our responsibility to do so for the billions who believe. And not simply tell them all to "f#_k off" as Dawkins enjoyed quoting to avoid a response. (Such a smart man, such a feeble response...but very funny!)