I feel this is distinction without a difference. All belief systems are approaches to knowledge and information at the end of the day.
The institutional science belief system really has a lot in common with religion. In fact the instutions we now trust to train scientists and dispense scientific information largely grew out of instutions with a major focus to train clergy and dispense religious information.
Empiricism is not really in that same subcategory, but it also rests on some set of ultimately unverifiable assumptions. In fact, I'd argue that one of the central assumptions of classical empiricism, that all systems are locally deterministic, is demonstrably false. The early quantum pioneers had a hard time coming to grips with this and there are still several competing interpretations of QM. This huge shift still hasn't fully percolated to many other fields of science, which often still assume local determinism and pretend QM doesn't exist.
The institutional science belief system really has a lot in common with religion. In fact the instutions we now trust to train scientists and dispense scientific information largely grew out of instutions with a major focus to train clergy and dispense religious information.
Empiricism is not really in that same subcategory, but it also rests on some set of ultimately unverifiable assumptions. In fact, I'd argue that one of the central assumptions of classical empiricism, that all systems are locally deterministic, is demonstrably false. The early quantum pioneers had a hard time coming to grips with this and there are still several competing interpretations of QM. This huge shift still hasn't fully percolated to many other fields of science, which often still assume local determinism and pretend QM doesn't exist.