Religion and Science
7. The ‘Religion’ of the Modern Age
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In short, the slow progress of the knowledge
of the human being, as compared with the
splendid ascension of physics, astronomy,
chemistry, and mechanics, is due to our
ancestors’ lack of leisure, to the complexity of
the subject, and to the structure of our mind.
Those obstacles are fundamental. There is no
hope of eliminating them. They will always
have to be overcome at the cost of strenuous
effort. The knowledge of ourselves will never
attain the elegant simplicity, the abstractness,
and the beauty of physics. The factors that
have retarded its development are not likely
to vanish. We must realize clearly that the
science of man is the most difficult of all
sciences (pp. 22-23).
All thinkers admit this fact regarding the human
sciences. Julian Huxley writes:
However — and this is vital — the fading of
God does not mean the end of religion. God’s
disappearance is in the strictest sense of the
word a theological process: and while
theologies change, the religious impulses
