Consider someone finding a diary that purports to be a record of the movements of the Continental Army by a soldier in it during the Revolution. Would you consider using it to interpret archaeological field data to be a "religious" exercise? Of course not. But that is what you are doing when you assume there is something "religious" about using historical documentation like Genesis to interpret field data. The fact that it has religous implications does not mean it is a "religious" exercise.
But if said diary described marching from Baltimore to Boston in 2 days and described camping on the Potomac along the way, I might reconsider its value as a geography book. And if I insisted that it must be correct so therefore the Potomac must have been north of Baltimore at the time, it wouldn't exactly be a scientific approach.