A Point of View: Can religion tell us more than science?

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When he recounts the story of his conversion to Catholicism in his autobiography A Sort of Life, Graham Greene writes that he went for instruction to Father Trollope, a very tall and very fat man who had once been an actor in the West End.

Trollope was a convert who became a priest and led a highly ascetic life, and Greene didn't warm to him very much, at least to begin with.

Yet the writer came to feel that in dealing with his instructor he was faced with "the challenge of an inexplicable goodness". It was this impression - rather than any of the arguments the devout Father presented to the writer for the existence of God - that eventually led to Greene's conversion.

The arguments that were patiently rehearsed by Father Trollope faded from his memory, and Greene had no interest in retrieving them. "I cannot be bothered to remember," he writes. "I accept."

It's clear that what Greene accepted wasn't what he called "those unconvincing philosophical arguments". But what was it that he had accepted?

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John Gray






Scientist Science helps us understand how the world works - but to what extent?



This is where Frazer and the new atheists today come in. When they attack religion they are assuming that religion is what this Western tradition says it is - a body of beliefs that needs to be given a rational justification.

Obviously, there are areas of life where having good reasons for what we believe is very important. Courts of law and medicine are evidence-based practices, which need rigorous procedures to establish the facts. The decisions of governments rest on claims about how their policies will work, and it would be useful if these claims were regularly scrutinised - though you'd be well advised not to hold your breath.

But many areas of life aren't like this. Art and poetry aren't about establishing facts. Even science isn't the attempt to frame true beliefs that it's commonly supposed to be. Scientific inquiry is the best method we have for finding out how the world works, and we know a lot more today than we did in the past. That doesn't mean we have to believe the latest scientific consensus. If we know anything, it's that our current theories will turn out to be riddled with errors. Yet we go on using them until we can come up with something better.

Science isn't actually about belief - any more than religion is about belief. If science produces theories that we can use without believing them, religion is a repository of myth.

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However rapidly our knowledge increases, we'll always be surrounded by the unknowable”

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Myths aren't relics of childish thinking that humanity leaves behind as it marches towards a more grown-up view of things. They're stories that tell us something about ourselves that can't be captured in scientific theories.

Just as you don't have to believe that a scientific theory is true in order to use it, you don't have to believe a story for it to give meaning to your life.

Myths can't be verified or falsified in the way theories can be. But they can be more or less truthful to human experience, and I've no doubt that some of the ancient myths we inherit from religion are far more truthful than the stories the modern world tells about itself.

The idea that science can enable us to live without myths is one of these silly modern stories. There's nothing in science that says the world can be finally understood by the human mind.

If Darwin's theory of evolution is even roughly right, humans aren't built to understand how the universe works. The human brain evolved under the pressures of the struggle for life.

Through science humans can lift themselves beyond the view of things that's forced on them by day-to-day existence. They can't overcome the fact that they remain animals, with minds that aren't equipped to see into the nature of things.

Darwin's theory is unlikely to be the final truth. It may be just a rough account of how life has developed in our part of the cosmos. Even so, the clear implication of the theory of evolution is that human knowledge is by its nature limited.

It's been said that the universe is a queerer place than we can possibly imagine, and I'm sure that's right. However rapidly our knowledge increases, we'll always be surrounded by the unknowable.

Graham Greene Rational argument did not lead Graham Greene to Catholicism

Science hasn't enabled us to dispense with myths. Instead it has become a vehicle for myths - chief among them, the myth of salvation through science. Many of the people who scoff at religion are sublimely confident that, by using science, humanity can march onwards to a better world.

But "humanity" isn't marching anywhere. Humanity doesn't exist, there are only human beings, each of them ruled by passions and illusions that conflict with one another and within themselves.

Science has given us many vital benefits, so many that they would be hard to sum up. But it can't save the human species from itself.

Because it's a human invention, science - just like religion - will always be used for all kinds of purposes, good and bad. Unbelievers in religion who think science can save the world are possessed by a fantasy that's far more childish than any myth. The idea that humans will rise from the dead may be incredible, but no more so than the notion that "humanity" can use science to remake the world.

No doubt there will be some who are deeply shocked by Graham Greene's nonchalance about the arguments that led him to convert to Catholicism. How could he go on practising a religion when he couldn't even remember his reasons for joining it?

The answer is that he did remember - but his reasons had nothing to do with arguments.

Human beings don't live by argumentation, and it's only religious fundamentalists and ignorant rationalists who think the myths we live by are literal truths.





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  • rate this

    Comment number 409.

    Some people need a priest figure to tell them what to think.

    Not me!

  • rate this

    Comment number 408.

    Well done BBC! After publishing the raft of "trolling" stories this past week you seem to be proving yourself quite apt at the art.

    The obvious answer is no. seen as one is, in it's deffinition, facilitating the documenting and understanding of the unknown. Which is theroectically unlimitless.

    The other is the study of a collection of books.

  • rate this

    Comment number 407.

    @rideforevcer (395) actually, the role of the observer is considered in many of the early experiments to do with quantum physics, that's exactly why they were so troubling to do. Read up on it, it's an interesting topic.

  • rate this

    Comment number 406.

    361.Mr Max
    Didn't say that in the least. Typical strawman argument...
    Yes you did, and you're trying as usual to cover your retreat by gratuitous insult.

  • rate this

    Comment number 405.

    'If human beings require a threat of eternal punishment or a promise of eternal reward in order to do good, we are a sorry lot indeed.' Albert Einstein.

    Who is the more moral: the man who does good because God *orders* him to, or the man who does good because he *wants* to? And please bear in mind this is a god who ordered the genocide of the Canaanites, which Moses gleefully carried out.

  • rate this

    Comment number 404.

    The "attacks" on religion by atheists were provoked by attacks on science by religious people. In particular the strenuous efforts to get creationism into school science lessons in the USA. John Gray does not understand science. I look forward to the BBC giving equal time to a scientist to refute his views. Perhaps on "Thought for the Day". Some hope!

  • rate this

    Comment number 403.

    Quote from article: "...it's only religious fundamentalists and ignorant rationalists who think the myths we live by are literal truths."

    By this reckoning 90% of all Americans are religious fundamentalists

  • rate this

    Comment number 402.

    A confused and poorly argued article. Of course religion gives people's lives meaning in a way science cannot, but as a PhD science student all I know is that science is built on evidence-based inquiry and intellectual rigor - so sometimes it's very hard, both to understand and advance. Surely religion is based on belief because it's asking you to believe in things for which there is no evidence

  • rate this

    Comment number 401.

    As for daily behaviour, feel free to pray regularly or have a coffee if it makes you feel better. But our behavious often affects others. If people act according to their religion, they may do something very wrong - because they are guided by considerations which cannot be justified outside of their religion. Some people feel that a version of Islam where women are stoned for adultery is "right".

  • rate this

    Comment number 400.

    The bible teaches us nothing. The bible is an edited and moderated book written hundreds of years after the supposed death of Jesus. Of course there are positive moral tales in the book. However, you can't pick and chose. The bible also tells us to stone naughty children. Shall we do that? Of course not. Science solves problems. Just because it hasn't solved everything DOES NOT mean God exists.

  • rate this

    Comment number 399.

    Which holy book contains the principles on which this website and it's method of transmission are based?

  • rate this

    Comment number 398.

    The author seems to argue that religion is mindless ritual, that "belief" doesn't play into it. I would argue that belief is the heart of religion, intended to influence action. Why should people adhere to the actions of a religion if they see no meaning in it? It is belief about the actions will make you a better person -- that is the heart of religion.

  • rate this

    Comment number 397.

    ...why didn't God stop the holocaust, 9/11, 7/7, or the illegal invasion of Iraq based on lies????

  • rate this

    Comment number 396.

    We need belief to accept what either religion or scientists tell us about the creation of time as we cannot get further than the big bang and gasses or what was before God as everything we know and understand has a beginning and nothing is incomprehensible

  • rate this

    Comment number 395.

    Scientists, bless them, aren't very scientific. Your consciousness is the observer in every experiment - but I bet it's never written up under "Apparatus".

    Why not ?

    Well, because it would make you look foolish to do so many 'experiments' when you have no understanding of your main apparatus.

    If you had courage you would admit that.

    But ... like the religious, courage is far away.

  • rate this

    Comment number 394.

    Sunday saints, Monday through Saturday devils.

    How many times do we see people who claim to be better than thou simply because they go to a church on Sunday, yet on every other day of the week they are only out for themselves no matter what harm it indirectly does to others.

    who would you god want more someone who sits in a church on sunday or a fire fighter too busy saving lives to pretend

  • rate this

    Comment number 393.

    An interesting read.
    The last sentence is not something I would agree with.

    What I would say is that what we believe in is of the utmost importance. It is based on this that we choose how we live and what we do in our lives.

    Isn't it?

    Also, I feel science is incredibly great, but only as long as we don't go too far in unethical practices.


  • rate this

    Comment number 392.

    Peter Hodge, #377

    That was the most dangerous piece of twaddle I've ever read in my life. Religion and its idiocy (the Greeks believing in celestial "perfect circles" and how Kepler and his observation of Mars' orbit demolished them) has always had to concede to science. Fact. Unless of course you truly believe that Eve was made from Adam's rib...oh wait, you think that's a 'metaphor'.

  • rate this

    Comment number 391.

    This piece is full of assumptions, misconceptions about modern Atheism,
    You amaze me! What's different about modern atheism (No belief in God) from older atheism (no belief in God)? Or is even atheism now going soft and cuddly round the edges?

  • rate this

    Comment number 390.

    "What we believe doesn't in the end matter very much. What matters is how we live." Science has nothing to do with how we live. The author of this article, who claims atheists have missed the point of religion, has missed the point of science.


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