Science and religion

Patricia Gosling considers a faith for our time

Al Wadj Bank, Saudi Arabia (NASA, International Space Station Science, 12/30/07). | Photo: NASA / flickr CC.

I recall a time in my youth when science was the intellectual fashion. It promised us a clear-cut, hard-edged world, which made sense and relieved our existential anxiety. If there were still things to be discovered, things we could not yet understand, that would be remedied by time. We could maintain the belief that we, the human race, could ultimately know everything worth knowing and would one day be in control.

Religion was for wimps – for the superstitious and ill educated. Religion was full of impossible happenings, tiresome people and tedious injunctions. We no longer had need of it. Science had made it irrelevant. This is a view still shared by Richard Dawkins and others.

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