This is a great read and I agree wholeheartedly. I think the great popularizers of science starting with Sagan and moving on to Hawking and Neil deGrasse Tyson are the key to bridging the gap from religion to secular humanism. J.B.S Haldane says it best:

Now my own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.

We somehow need to shed this poisonous idea that all science exists only in this false dichotomy of the "intellectual elite" vs the "Common Man."