I think it is quite different. Splinter groups aren't really the same as alternative theories, as they aren't born from "examination and rejection" as you suggest, but usually from some new revelation or rejection of an aspect of the current faith people don't like.
I must clarify here, I am not a devoutly religious person. In fact, I swing from a believer to an atheist, depending on how bad my day was. However, I have been doing some reading for some time now and I want to put the beliefs of an atheist to test. Like an experiment, if you like.
Now to your statement, what you state is largely true, but not completely so. It is true for the Abrahamic tradition, but not true for religions that brink on philosophy.
For example, the oath of a Yogi (a person on a path of self discovery) encourages him or her to examine and then literally reject all he or she knows. Evidently, there is no truth other than self discovered truth.
The oath is:
"Bhu sannyastha maya" (The physical world which includes the body and all objects of the world is renounced)
"Bhuva sannyastha maya" (The astral world which includes the emotions and all ancestors is renounced)
"Sva sannyastha maya" (The celestial world which includes higher thoughts and all gods is renounced)
So you see, there is a tradition of examination, even if not popular or well known. After reading this, I couldn't help but keep thinking about the last oath. Gods are renounced??
They are put up to be proven wrong, that's what science is all about, coming up with a hypothesis and then conducting experiments to see if the observations can disprove the hypothesis.
Also, people are aware that science is constantly discovering new things, they don't need a warning label.
Are people really aware? I think that is a presumption. If people were really aware they would not place implicit faith in doctors (remember thalidomide). Till five hundred years back, people believed that the world was flat because the scientist told them so. And till very recently, in fact even now in some places, we believe that fossil fuels are good for us because they are good for the economy and for a long time the scientists told us so.
The problem with most religion vs science debates is that the loony bins of the religious world are pitted against the brilliance of science. Why not also look at the profound discoveries of science and sometimes at the failure of science.
Also, most of the younger people I speak with here are either unaware or refuse to accept the fact that in almost all traditions till very recently the priests were the scientists.
Monsignor Georges Lemaître, the man who propounded the Big Bang theory was a priest. The tradition of religion and science going their separate ways if fairly recent. And we all know how bitter separations can be
There is a little quote button at the bottom right of my post, if you click it it'll open up a reply with my post quoted inside. If you want to have lots of little quotes like mine, you'll need to separate out the paragraphs and copy-paste the beginning and end of the
tags around each block of text. At least that's how I do it.
Have implemented what you hypothesized. Now, we will examine results to ascertain the validity of your claim. Unfortunately, that is only possible once I post and once I do that I can't thank you.
So thank you in advance.