Is Science a Religion?

It is fashionable to wax apocalyptic about the threat to humanity
posed by the AIDS virus, "mad cow" disease, and many others, but I
think a case can be made that faith is one of the world's great evils,
comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to eradicate.

Faith, being belief that isn't based on evidence, is the principal
vice of any religion. And who, looking at Northern Ireland or the
Middle East, can be confident that the brain virus of faith is not
exceedingly dangerous? One of the stories told to the young Muslim
suicide bombers is that martyrdom is the quickest way to heaven -- and
not just heaven but a special part of heaven where they will receive
their special reward of 72 virgin brides. It occurs to me that our
best hope may be to provide a kind of "spiritual arms control": send
in specially trained theologians to deescalate the going rate in
virgins.

Given the dangers of faith -- and considering the accomplishments of
reason and observation in the activity called science -- I find it
ironic that, whenever I lecture publicly, there always seems to be
someone who comes forward and says, "Of course, your science is just a
religion like ours. Fundamentally, science just comes down to faith,
doesn't it?"

Well, science is not religion and it doesn't just come down to
faith. Although it has many of religion's virtues, it has none of its
vices. Science is based upon verifiable evidence. Religious faith not
only lacks evidence, its independence from evidence is its pride and
joy, shouted from the rooftops. Why else would Christians wax critical
of doubting Thomas? The other apostles are held up to us as exemplars
of virtue because faith was enough for them. Doubting Thomas, on the
other hand, required evidence. Perhaps he should be the patron saint
of scientists.

One reason I receive the comment about science being a religion is
because I believe in the fact of evolution. I even believe in it with
passionate conviction. To some, this may superficially look like
faith. But the evidence that makes me believe in evolution is not only
overwhelmingly strong; it is freely available to anyone who takes the
trouble to read up on it. Anyone can study the same evidence that I
have and presumably come to the same conclusion. But if you have a
belief that is based solely on faith, I can't examine your
reasons. You can retreat behind the private wall of faith where I
can't reach you.

Now in practice, of course, individual scientists do sometimes slip
back into the vice of faith, and a few may believe so single-mindedly
in a favorite theory that they occasionally falsify evidence. However,
the fact that this sometimes happens doesn't alter the principle that,
when they do so, they do it with shame and not with pride. The method
of science is so designed that it usually finds them out in the end.

Science is actually one of the most moral, one of the most honest
disciplines around -- because science would completely collapse if it
weren't for a scrupulous adherence to honesty in the reporting of
evidence. (As James Randi has pointed out, this is one reason why
scientists are so often fooled by paranormal tricksters and why the
debunking role is better played by professional conjurors; scientists
just don't anticipate deliberate dishonesty as well.) There are other
professions (no need to mention lawyers specifically) in which
falsifying evidence or at least twisting it is precisely what people
are paid for and get brownie points for doing.

Science, then, is free of the main vice of religion, which is
faith. But, as I pointed out, science does have some of religion's
virtues. Religion may aspire to provide its followers with various
benefits -- among them explanation, consolation, and uplift. Science,
too, has something to offer in these areas.

Humans have a great hunger for explanation. It may be one of the main
reasons why humanity so universally has religion, since religions do
aspire to provide explanations. We come to our individual
consciousness in a mysterious universe and long to understand it. Most
religions offer a cosmology and a biology, a theory of life, a theory
of origins, and reasons for existence. In doing so, they demonstrate
that religion is, in a sense, science; it's just bad science. Don't
fall for the argument that religion and science operate on separate
dimensions and are concerned with quite separate sorts of
questions. Religions have historically always attempted to answer the
questions that properly belong to science. Thus religions should not
be allowed now to retreat away from the ground upon which they have
traditionally attempted to fight. They do offer both a cosmology and a
biology; however, in both cases it is false.

Consolation is harder for science to provide. Unlike religion, science
cannot offer the bereaved a glorious reunion with their loved ones in
the hereafter. Those wronged on this earth cannot, on a scientific
view, anticipate a sweet comeuppance for their tormentors in a life to
come. It could be argued that, if the idea of an afterlife is an
illusion (as I believe it is), the consolation it offers is
hollow. But that's not necessarily so; a false belief can be just as
comforting as a true one, provided the believer never discovers its
falsity. But if consolation comes that cheap, science can weigh in
with other cheap palliatives, such as pain-killing drugs, whose
comfort may or may not be illusory, but they do work.

Uplift, however, is where science really comes into its own. All the
great religions have a place for awe, for ecstatic transport at the
wonder and beauty of creation. And it's exactly this feeling of
spine-shivering, breath-catching awe -- almost worship -- this
flooding of the chest with ecstatic wonder, that modern science can
provide. And it does so beyond the wildest dreams of saints and
mystics. The fact that the supernatural has no place in our
explanations, in our understanding of so much about the universe and
life, doesn't diminish the awe. Quite the contrary. The merest glance
through a microscope at the brain of an ant or through a telescope at
a long-ago galaxy of a billion worlds is enough to render poky and
parochial the very psalms of praise.

Now, as I say, when it is put to me that science or some particular
part of science, like evolutionary theory, is just a religion like any
other, I usually deny it with indignation. But I've begun to wonder
whether perhaps that's the wrong tactic. Perhaps the right tactic is
to accept the charge gratefully and demand equal time for science in
religious education classes. And the more I think about it, the more I
realize that an excellent case could be made for this. So I want to
talk a little bit about religious education and the place that science
might play in it.

I do feel very strongly about the way children are brought up. I'm not
entirely familiar with the way things are in the United States, and
what I say may have more relevance to the United Kingdom, where there
is state-obliged, legally-enforced religious instruction for all
children. That's unconstitutional in the United States, but I presume
that children are nevertheless given religious instruction in whatever
particular religion their parents deem suitable.

Which brings me to my point about mental child abuse. In a 1995 issue
of the Independent, one of London's leading newspapers, there was a
photograph of a rather sweet and touching scene. It was Christmas
time, and the picture showed three children dressed up as the three
wise men for a nativity play. The accompanying story described one
child as a Muslim, one as a Hindu, and one as a Christian. The
supposedly sweet and touching point of the story was that they were
all taking part in this Nativity play.

What is not sweet and touching is that these children were all four
years old. How can you possibly describe a child of four as a Muslim
or a Christian or a Hindu or a Jew? Would you talk about a
four-year-old economic monetarist? Would you talk about a
four-year-old neo-isolationist or a four-year-old liberal Republican?
There are opinions about the cosmos and the world that children, once
grown, will presumably be in a position to evaluate for
themselves. Religion is the one field in our culture about which it is
absolutely accepted, without question -- without even noticing how
bizarre it is -- that parents have a total and absolute say in what
their children are going to be, how their children are going to be
raised, what opinions their children are going to have about the
cosmos, about life, about existence. Do you see what I mean about
mental child abuse?

Looking now at the various things that religious education might be
expected to accomplish, one of its aims could be to encourage children
to reflect upon the deep questions of existence, to invite them to
rise above the humdrum preoccupations of ordinary life and think sub
specie aeternitatis.

Science can offer a vision of life and the universe which, as I've
already remarked, for humbling poetic inspiration far outclasses any
of the mutually contradictory faiths and disappointingly recent
traditions of the world's religions.

For example, how could children in religious education classes fail to
be inspired if we could get across to them some inkling of the age of
the universe? Suppose that, at the moment of Christ's death, the news
of it had started traveling at the maximum possible speed around the
universe outwards from the earth. How far would the terrible tidings
have traveled by now? Following the theory of special relativity, the
answer is that the news could not, under any circumstances whatever,
have reached more that one-fiftieth of the way across one galaxy --
not one- thousandth of the way to our nearest neighboring galaxy in
the 100-million-galaxy-strong universe. The universe at large couldn't
possibly be anything other than indifferent to Christ, his birth, his
passion, and his death. Even such momentous news as the origin of life
on Earth could have traveled only across our little local cluster of
galaxies. Yet so ancient was that event on our earthly time-scale
that, if you span its age with your open arms, the whole of human
history, the whole of human culture, would fall in the dust from your
fingertip at a single stroke of a nail file.

The argument from design, an important part of the history of
religion, wouldn't be ignored in my religious education classes,
needless to say. The children would look at the spellbinding wonders
of the living kingdoms and would consider Darwinism alongside the
creationist alternatives and make up their own minds. I think the
children would have no difficulty in making up their minds the right
way if presented with the evidence. What worries me is not the
question of equal time but that, as far as I can see, children in the
United Kingdom and the United States are essentially given no time
with evolution yet are taught creationism (whether at school, in
church, or at home).

It would also be interesting to teach more than one theory of
creation. The dominant one in this culture happens to be the Jewish
creation myth, which is taken over from the Babylonian creation
myth. There are, of course, lots and lots of others, and perhaps they
should all be given equal time (except that wouldn't leave much time
for studying anything else). I understand that there are Hindus who
believe that the world was created in a cosmic butter churn and
Nigerian peoples who believe that the world was created by God from
the excrement of ants. Surely these stories have as much right to
equal time as the Judeo-Christian myth of Adam and Eve.

So much for Genesis; now let's move on to the prophets. Halley's Comet
will return without fail in the year 2062. Biblical or Delphic
prophecies don't begin to aspire to such accuracy; astrologers and
Nostradamians dare not commit themselves to factual prognostications
but, rather, disguise their charlatanry in a smokescreen of
vagueness. When comets have appeared in the past, they've often been
taken as portents of disaster. Astrology has played an important part
in various religious traditions, including Hinduism. The three wise
men I mentioned earlier were said to have been led to the cradle of
Jesus by a star. We might ask the children by what physical route do
they imagine the alleged stellar influence on human affairs could
travel.

Incidentally, there was a shocking program on the BBC radio around
Christmas 1995 featuring an astronomer, a bishop, and a journalist who
were sent off on an assignment to retrace the steps of the three wise
men. Well, you could understand the participation of the bishop and
the journalist (who happened to be a religious writer), but the
astronomer was a supposedly respectable astronomy writer, and yet she
went along with this! All along the route, she talked about the
portents of when Saturn and Jupiter were in the ascendant up Uranus or
whatever it was. She doesn't actually believe in astrology, but one of
the problems is that our culture has been taught to become tolerant of
it, vaguely amused by it -- so much so that even scientific people who
don't believe in astrology sort of think it's a bit of harmless fun. I
take astrology very seriously indeed: I think it's deeply pernicious
because it undermines rationality, and I should like to see campaigns
against it.

When the religious education class turns to ethics, I don't think
science actually has a lot to say, and I would replace it with
rational moral philosophy. Do the children think there are absolute
standards of right and wrong? And if so, where do they come from? Can
you make up good working principles of right and wrong, like "do as
you would be done by" and "the greatest good for the greatest number"
(whatever that is supposed to mean)? It's a rewarding question,
whatever your personal morality, to ask as an evolutionist where
morals come from; by what route has the human brain gained its
tendency to have ethics and morals, a feeling of right and wrong?

Should we value human life above all other life? Is there a rigid wall
to be built around the species Homo sapiens, or should we talk about
whether there are other species which are entitled to our humanistic
sympathies? Should we, for example, follow the right-to-life lobby,
which is wholly preoccupied with human life, and value the life of a
human fetus with the faculties of a worm over the life of a thinking
and feeling chimpanzee? What is the basis of this fence that we erect
around Homo sapiens -- even around a small piece of fetal tissue? (Not
a very sound evolutionary idea when you think about it.) When, in our
evolutionary descent from our common ancestor with chimpanzees, did
the fence suddenly rear itself up?

Well, moving on, then, from morals to last things, to eschatology, we
know from the second law of thermodynamics that all complexity, all
life, all laughter, all sorrow, is hell bent on leveling itself out
into cold nothingness in the end. They -- and we -- can never be more
then temporary, local buckings of the great universal slide into the
abyss of uniformity.

We know that the universe is expanding and will probably expand
forever, although it's possible it may contract again. We know that,
whatever happens to the universe, the sun will engulf the earth in
about 60 million centuries from now.

Time itself began at a certain moment, and time may end at a certain
moment -- or it may not. Time may come locally to an end in miniature
crunches called black holes. The laws of the universe seem to be true
all over the universe. Why is this? Might the laws change in these
crunches? To be really speculative, time could begin again with new
laws of physics, new physical constants. And it has even been
suggested that there could be many universes, each one isolated so
completely that, for it, the others don't exist. Then again, there
might be a Darwinian selection among universes.

So science could give a good account of itself in religious
education. But it wouldn't be enough. I believe that some familiarity
with the King James version of the Bible is important for anyone
wanting to understand the allusions that appear in English
literature. Together with the Book of Common Prayer, the Bible gets 58
pages in the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations. Only Shakespeare has
more. I do think that not having any kind of biblical education is
unfortunate if children want to read English literature and understand
the provenance of phrases like "through a glass darkly," "all flesh is
as grass," "the race is not to the swift," "crying in the wilderness,"
"reaping the whirlwind," "amid the alien corn," "Eyeless in Gaza,"
"Job's comforters," and "the widow's mite."

I want to return now to the charge that science is just a faith. The
more extreme version of that charge -- and one that I often encounter
as both a scientist and a rationalist -- is an accusation of zealotry
and bigotry in scientists themselves as great as that found in
religious people. Sometimes there may be a little bit of justice in
this accusation; but as zealous bigots, we scientists are mere
amateurs at the game. We're content to argue with those who disagree
with us. We don't kill them.

But I would want to deny even the lesser charge of purely verbal
zealotry. There is a very, very important difference between feeling
strongly, even passionately, about something because we have thought
about and examined the evidence for it on the one hand, and feeling
strongly about something because it has been internally revealed to
us, or internally revealed to somebody else in history and
subsequently hallowed by tradition. There's all the difference in the
world between a belief that one is prepared to defend by quoting
evidence and logic and a belief that is supported by nothing more than
tradition, authority, or revelation.


Richard Dawkins is Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University. His books include The Selfish Gene, The Blind Watchmaker, River Out of Eden, and, most recently, Climbing Mount Improbable. This article is adapted from his speech in acceptance of the 1996 Humanist of the Year Award from the American Humanist Association.