“Discuss the role of religion in the world today. Has the supergrowth of science any de-mystifying effect on religion?” (1986)
The nineteenth-century founders expected religion to fade as science grew. Religion today is still a mass force, but its roles have shifted. Science has certainly demystified nature, yet it has not demystified the human need for meaning. In places it has even produced re-enchantment.
Role of religion in the world today
- Meaning and theodicy: Max Weber saw religion answering why suffering and injustice exist. Peter L. Berger (The Sacred Canopy, 1967) calls it a “sacred canopy” that shields people from chaos.
- Integration and identity: for Émile Durkheim, shared rites renew the collective conscience. The Pew Research Center’s India survey (2019–20) found 84% saying religion is very important in their lives.
- Legitimation and conflict: Karl Marx saw religion masking domination. Religion today also fuels identity politics and fundamentalism, from Christian nationalism in the USA to communal mobilisation in South Asia.
- Civil religion: Robert N. Bellah (1967) showed American public life sacralising the nation through its own rituals and symbols.
- Welfare and civil society: temples, gurdwaras, churches and waqf bodies run schools, hospitals and community kitchens.
- Ethical voice on technology: Pope Francis’s Laudato Si’ (2015) drew on climate science; the Vatican’s Antiqua et Nova (2025) sets moral limits for artificial intelligence.
- Global weight: Pew’s 2025 study found only 24.2% of the world’s population religiously unaffiliated in 2020.
Has science demystified religion?
Yes, in important ways
- Weber (“Science as a Vocation”, 1919) spoke of the “disenchantment of the world”: in principle nothing is mysterious or beyond calculation.
- Bryan Wilson (1966) and Steve Bruce (2002) show technical control over illness, weather and harvests reducing recourse to prayer, magic and priests.
- Scripture is read historically, and miracles lose credibility. In England and Wales, the no-religion share rose from 25.2% to 37.2% between the 2011 and 2021 Censuses.
- In India, rationalist movements and Maharashtra’s anti-superstition law (2013) target “miracle” cures and black magic.
No, or only partly
- Different questions: science explains how, not why. Weber conceded that science cannot tell us how to live. Durkheim likewise held that science can replace religion’s explanations but not its rites, which bind people together.
- Scientists themselves: Elaine Howard Ecklund‘s 2016 survey of scientists in eight regions found more than half of those in India religious.
- Science breeds its own mysteries: Ulrich Beck (Risk Society, 1986) and Anthony Giddens (The Consequences of Modernity, 1990) show lay people trusting expert systems they cannot understand. Faith shifts rather than vanishes.
- Re-enchantment: New Age spirituality, Pentecostal healing and guru movements flourish in technologically advanced societies. Berger (1999) admitted the world is “as furiously religious as ever”.
- Science serving religion: an ISRO team prayed at Tirupati with a Chandrayaan-3 model before the 2023 launch, and the Maha Kumbh 2025 used AI-enabled cameras to manage pilgrim crowds.
Conclusion
Science has demystified religion’s cosmology but not its core. It has pushed religion out of explaining nature and into meaning, identity, ethics and community, where science has little to say. The result is transformation, not disappearance.