got things a bit wrong:for example, how old the earth was it claimed 4,000 years old,

or how many suns there were in the universe, it claimed (one).

But in reality, religion was never really interested in doing the sort of things science

does. It might have thrown off the odd theory but at heart it cared about a mission altogether

different: it wanted to tell us stories to make life feel more bearable. It was interested

in giving us something to hold on to that could help us to make it through to the next

day.

At the same time, science - properly viewed - has never been the enemy of spiritual enrichment.

It can yield ideas every bit as consoling and inspiring, as those found in religion.

*bubble transfers between pastor and scientist*. We can usefully look to science for the sort

of ideas we used to seek in religion. Here are four big consoling ideas that can be found

in science:

I: Perspective - The Scale of the Universe

We are at permanent risk - in the conditions of modern life - of losing perspective, that

is of making more of our troubles and fears than is good for us. One of the great benefits

of science is that it helps us to feel small! Science teaches us that our galaxy, the Milky

Way, has approximately 100 billion stars in it, that there are 10 billion galaxies in

the observable universe, each of which contains an average of 100 billion stars, which means

that there are around 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (a billion trillion) stars out there. *do

math 10 billion + 10 billion* When we lose perspective, as we invariably

do in the course of pretty much every day in the frenetic city, we should spend a few

moments with a photograph from the Hubble telescope and remember that we are - in a

glorious and redemptive way - what we always feared: nothing.

II: All is Vanity - The Second Law of Thermodynamics

Many of our efforts are designed to perpetuate ourselves in time. We strive to live on through

our work - and to make something more enduring than our biological selves. To release us

from this exhausting and vainglorious folly, religions used to kindly remind us, in the

words of Ecclesiastes, that all is vanity. Science offers us a yet more powerful expression

of this Biblical concept: the Second Law of Thermodynamics. This states that the tendency

of all systems - of which the universe is one - is to dissipate energy over time until

it reaches a state of complete rest. Given a sufficient span, our universe and its superclusters

of galaxies will all collapse and we will enter what scientists call a Dark Era, in

which - after so much excitement, individual and cosmic - nothing will remain except for

a dilute quite gas of photons and leptons. The situation is no better closer to home.

In about 4 billion years, when the sun runs out of hydrogen, it will become a 'red giant'

star, possibly expanding as far as Mars, at which point it will absorb and destroy Earth.

To repeat the point with NASA's help: "all truly is vanity."

III. Forgiveness - Evolution

It's often deeply tempting to lose our temper with ourselves and our fellow humans: why

can't we be more reasonable? Why are we so prejudiced? Why are we so prone to anxiety?

Why do we eat so much? Why are we so interested in pornography?

It's equally tempting to search for explanations that emphasise our villainous natures and

then to harshly condemn our lack of self-command. We end up disgusted with ourselves and judgemental

towards others. But science - arguably more effectively than

religion - can teach us the art of forgiveness, and liberate us from our urge to criticise.

Of course, we are less than ideally adapted to the civilised and complex lives we aspire

to lead. We have had very little time to do anything else.

Science tells us that we appeared in more or less our current form in Africa 200,000

years ago. For most of this time, we lived in small groups, we foraged, we grunted, we

didn't wait for others to stop talking, we fought constantly, and we were terrified

of everything. The time since the birth of Jesus comprises

1% of our history; the last 250 years, the period since we became urbanised and began

living with technology, encompasses a mere 0.1%. Naturally, therefore, most of our impulses

are going to be better suited to more basic conditions. It's a miracle we ever manage

to be polite, to explain our feelings, or to see it from another's point of view.

We are - from the vantage point of science - doing extremely well indeed. Evolutionary

history teaches us that humans should be a lot worse than they are. The wonder isn't

in the end that we're so uncivilised but that we ever even manage, now and then, to

have a few moments of civilisation.

IV: Our Existence - Cosmic Gratitude

Science is supremely capable of nurturing feelings of gratitude because of a basic truth

about the way gratitude works: it stems from an awareness of how much more awful things

might have been. And here, when it comes to our life on the

planet, science tells us that we have so much to be grateful for. For example, we can be

grateful: - that 13.8 billion years ago, something smaller

than an electron chose to swell within a fraction of a second like an expanding balloon into

a zone permeated with energy 93 billion light years in size that we now clumsily call the

universe - That some of the energy from this swift

expansion was able to coagulate into particles, which grouped together to form the light atoms

of hydrogen, lithium and helium - which then assembled into galaxies, which gave birth

to stars, inside whose molten burning cores all the elements necessary for the nucleic

acids essential to life were forged. - That gravity drew the stars together to

create galaxies (a hundred billion of them), including - fortuitously - the Milky Way,

a small corner of the universe containing just 400 billion stars, in which our sun was

born out of a giant, spinning cloud of dust and gas 4.5 billion years ago.

- That around the same time, swarms of debris collided to form our Earth - a lava-washed,

uninhabitable rock, that gravity happened to throw into orbit as the third planet from

the Sun - the exact right distance for life to develop.

- That another planet, Theia, collided with Earth, gifting us our Moon, which slowed the

Earth's rotation, stabilised atmospheric conditions and created the 24-hour day and

caused the Earth to tilt, forming the seasons. - That ice particles left over from the collisions

of hundreds of comets melted, water vapour condensed and oceans were formed.

- That comet collisions delivered anot her chance cosmic gift, the essential components

of life and DNA like ribose, carbon dioxide, ethanol, amino acids and phosphorus.

- That underwater hot springs released the right amount of energy and the right mix of

chemicals to allow the first single-cell organisms to form four billion years ago.

- That Earth's toxic atmosphere of methane and carbon dioxide slowly became sweetened

by the release of oxygen from cyanobacteria- the first creatures to photosynthesise - and

gradually oxygenated 85% of the atmosphere. - That an asteroid 15 kilometres wide happened

to hit Earth 65.5 million years ago and destroyed most terrestrial organisms including all non-avian

dinosaurs, but created ideal conditions in which some small, furry mammals, our close

ancestors, were able to thrive with less competition. - That your genes managed to pass safely through

an unbroken 10,000 generation chain, despite the best efforts of cyclones, predators and

a constant barrage of viruses. - That an average, fertile woman will have

100,000 eggs, and a man will produce a trillion sperm, each of these very different, but that

- nevertheless - you have managed to emerge from the options as you are.

And to all this, as they used to say in the churches, one might cry (or whisper): Hallelujah!

There is enough in science to give birth to twenty religions - so much to worship, to

be awed by and to be consoled through, things like dark matter, string theory or quantum

wavefunctions. The curse of the modern world is not to have invented science; it's not

yet to have understood all the amazing things one might still do with it.

At the School of Life we run regular virtual classes for adults. These mini life courses cover such topics as: making relationships work,

overcoming anger and anxiety, career guidance, finding meaning and purpose in life and using culture as a therapeutic tool. Click the link on screen now to learn more.