Hi, Winston —

You said:
My uncle is a academic who keeps saying religion is fetishistic and not scientific.

It is very sad that many academics similar to your uncle, make such statements. My guess is he knows nothing at all about either Christianity or Catholic Christianity.

The Church does believe in science. It has its own department dedicated to the Sciences.
It also has an astronomy observatory.

Catholics believe Science and Faith compliment each other; they are not opposed to each other.

Tell him to read this document from the Church:

Fides et Ratio (Faith and Reason) by Pope St. John Paul II

Just print it out for him.

You said:
He tried to convince me that ignorance fosters religion.

No, poor people of the world, who have nothing to hold on to, hold on to the one thing that matters in life, their faith.

What fosters ignorance is uncatechized Christians who were never, or were poorly, catechized at the CCD level along with a lack of love for the Church which should have been fostered at the parental level into the children. The end result of this can be Atheism which is truly scandalous because Atheists aren't using their God-given mind!! For short:

ignorance fosters Atheism; a Knowledge of Ones Religion fosters faith!

(Religion just identifies a body of various faiths which different people subscribe to.)

It's not a bad word as many millennials would probably want you to believe maybe because they want to just believe in what makes them feel good.

The salvation of any millennial was not won by what made Jesus feel good but by His Passion, Death, and glorious Resurrection from the Dead!

An undeveloped, unformed mind that never studies religious faiths and issues, never think to ask questions like:

• How was the design and complexity of the human eye brought into existence?
• How was the design and complexity of the human digestive system brought into existence?
• Who created and designed:
  • the seasons of the year?
  • the sky and earth?
  • the land and oceans? and
  • who designed how they all work?
    

Atheists take these facts of life for granted and never think about asking or answering these questions.

The Church does think via Philosophy and Theology and answers questions via Apologetics.

You said:

• On a different issue, what is the difference between superstition and religion?

From the Catechism:

As far as religion goes, there are two senses of this word:

• Organized religions. (What your uncle probably meant) These are religions who, because of the massive number of members they have, have to organize the faithful, who live in various parts of the world, in an orderly manner, so they can ensure:
  
  
  • a shared, common faith and
  • a shared, common worship.
  
  If they aren't sharing a common faith and a common worship, they really aren't an organized religion, but more of a dis-organized religion.
  
  
• the second sense of the word religion is as a virtue as defined in the Catechism:

I recommend praying for your uncle. He needs it.

Hope this helps,

Mike