Life & Wisdom Quote by Samuel Butler

Butler’s barb works because he picks a deliberately lopsided matchup: the Athanasian Creed, a famously dense Christian statement of trinitarian doctrine, versus “much that now passes for science.” He isn’t praising theology so much as humiliating bad science by comparing it to one of the West’s most labyrinthine creeds and finding the creed clearer.

The intent is double-edged. On the surface it’s a complaint about readability, but the real target is authority dressed up as difficulty. Butler lived in the Victorian moment when science was becoming a public religion: laboratories replacing pulpits, “expertise” acquiring moral force, Darwinian ideas sparking both enlightenment and ideological overreach. By calling contemporary work “what now passes for science,” he implies a counterfeit currency in circulation - jargon, speculative systems, and fashionable certainty mistaken for rigor.

The subtext is classic Butler: skepticism toward institutions that demand assent while withholding comprehension. If the Creed feels “light and intelligible” by comparison, then the scientific prose he’s encountering isn’t merely complex; it’s evasive, protecting weak arguments behind technical fog. He’s also tweaking a cultural reflex: people will mock theology as obscure metaphysics while reverently nodding at scientific writing they can’t parse. Butler flips that reflex and dares the reader to admit they may be performing deference, not understanding.

Contextually, this lands amid debates about evolution, professionalization, and the rise of specialist language. Butler isn’t anti-science; he’s anti-mystification. The line is a warning that modernity can manufacture its own creeds - and call them progress.