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If there were as many PhDs working on stuff like twistors, loop quantum gravity, MOND, gravitational wave function collapse, etc as there are working on string theory and dark matter/energy I'd agree the argument was made up.

But they're vastly outweighed by the PhDs working in String Theory which is going on 50 years now with nothing really to show for it experimentally. And they do claim that they know the truth, and they defend their PhDs, and their grants and grad students, with rationalizations that aren't testable and don't admit any evidence. It very much seems like a religion.

Nobody has patched the holes in the theories that I mentioned, but almost nobody works on them, so the problems become self-fulfilling. And it just isn't that easy these days to have a single Einstein come along and upend the apple cart with a handful of rapid fire papers.

>That is all to say: frontier physics is utterly unlike religion, where so may claim to KNOW the truth, where the most tenuous claims are literally gospel, where there is little desire admit counter-evidence

There's frontier theologists too that are very open to evidence from all sorts of angles. Yes, most religious people aren't trying to hit new ground, but most scientists (and physics loving laymen) aren't either. Most physicists work within established models, just like most religious people

Every once in a while a brilliant scientist comes up with a new model while theologians will always adhere to an old book.

Theology is never more than rearranging the deck chairs.

New cults pop up every once a while, claiming to have found a new Holy Book that renders existing Holy Books obsolete.

You might not approve of them since there's no objective way to measure the validity of religions/religious doctrines, but they're there.

Some of the more successful ones in relatively recent times are for example Martin Luther, Joseph Smith, etc.

> but eventually when enough evidence is marshaled by someone to overturn the old model, they are heralded and given honors

You mean when the old guard retires and dies, like Planck said.

"nearly all scientists working at the edge of astrophysics and quantum theory know what they have is a model"

That is a good distinction to make, singling out the people who are truly at the frontier of understanding. As you say, they are far less likely to be certain of their findings.

However, I would say it makes sense to draw a similar distinction in terms of religious thinkers, because they're certainly not all the same. If one were to ask those at the religious frontier of understanding, one might well find an analogous lack of certainty as to what is going on.