Using science to study religion is like using religion to study science. It doesn't really work, because they're not meant to understand each other. Religion is about the human experience at a spiritual and cosmological level. Science is about the human experience at a material and universal level.
I really don't believe in the "scientific study of religion," because science in and of itself is a philosophy. You don't use one particular philosophy to study a different philosophy - it doesn't make sense.