Hi Bhante,
Thank you for the careful and interesting topic-starter.
I’m sorry if I implied that they were non-overlapping. I am merely cautioning that there are different knowledge systems, and trying to reduce them all to science can risk trivialising some aspects of them.
I share @Feynman’s caution that science, by definition, is, on the boundaries, tentative. It progresses by disproving theories, and, tentatively, proposing new ones. Newton’s laws we can be rather certain of (at speeds much smaller than the speed of light), and we can feel confident about taking trips on airplanes. I’d be willing to bet that aspects of modern theories of the universe, such as dark energy and dark matter will be abandoned, or significantly modified in the next decade. Furthermore, it’s difficult to imagine how to even begin to frame the most interesting aspects of Dhamma in terms of science. What would a scientific investigation of nibbana look like? As far as I can tell, science has mostly investigated mundane side-effects of Dhamma practice, such as physiological benefits of meditation. That’s not worthless, of course, but not of particular interest to seekers of Nibbana.
Of course, I’m going a little off topic here, since I’m not specifically addressing rebirth. To bring it back a little, I’d like to mention Bhikku @Cintita’s essay that encourages us to examine the EBTs from a practice perspective: Take Seriously but Hold Loosely, which has been discussed in some other threads: