Science Quote by Jean Rostand

Rostand’s line lands like a slap because it reframes “God” not as an origin point but as a landfill: the place we toss what we can’t explain, bear, or responsibly admit we want. “Dumping ground” is deliberately ugly. It drags theology out of stained-glass reverence and into municipal reality, where waste is managed, hidden, and made someone else’s problem. The sting is that he’s not only critiquing belief; he’s diagnosing a habit of mind.

As a scientist, Rostand is speaking from inside a culture where explanation competes with consolation. The quote’s specific intent is to expose how metaphysical language can function as a psychological convenience: a container for hopes, fears, and moral wishes that don’t survive contact with evidence. “Our dreams” matters as much as “dumping ground.” He isn’t talking about doctrine; he’s talking about desire. God becomes the repository for fantasies of justice without politics, meaning without mess, immortality without cost.

The subtext is less “religion is stupid” than “we are evasive.” People offload uncertainty onto divinity the way institutions offload responsibility onto bureaucracy. That “our” implicates everyone, including the rationalist: even skeptics have narrative needs. In the 20th-century European backdrop Rostand inhabited - post-Darwin, post-Freud, shadowed by mechanized war - the appetite for transcendence didn’t vanish; it mutated. The line works because it treats God as a cultural technology: a high-capacity storage device for what reality refuses to guarantee.