"The radical novelty of modern science lies precisely in the rejection of the belief, which is at the heart of all popular religion, that the forces which move the stars and atoms are contingent upon the preferences of the human heart"
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Modern science doesn’t just dethrone God; it dethrones us. Richard Adams frames its “radical novelty” as a moral and psychological break: the universe stops being responsive to our wishes. What’s doing the work here is the quiet insult embedded in “preferences of the human heart.” It’s not merely that religion is wrong about mechanics; it’s that popular religion, in his telling, flatters human centrality by imagining a cosmos that can be persuaded, bribed, or moved by our inner weather.
As a clergyman, Adams isn’t simply lobbing a secular jab. He’s drawing a line between two kinds of faith: one that treats the divine as an instrument panel for human desire, and one that can survive a colder, more indifferent picture of reality. The subtext is pastoral and corrective: if your religion depends on the stars caring what you want, it’s built on sentimentality, not reverence. In that sense, he’s trying to rescue “religion” from its popular, transactional form.
The rhetoric is strategic: “stars and atoms” collapses the sublime and the microscopic into a single domain of law, implying that any exception carved out for human longing is special pleading. “Contingent upon” adds legalistic precision, as if he’s cross-examining a cozy superstition. The context is modernity’s long hangover from Copernicus to Darwin to physics: each step makes the human story feel less like the plot and more like a subplot. Adams’ point isn’t to make science feel triumphant; it’s to make consolation feel earned.
As a clergyman, Adams isn’t simply lobbing a secular jab. He’s drawing a line between two kinds of faith: one that treats the divine as an instrument panel for human desire, and one that can survive a colder, more indifferent picture of reality. The subtext is pastoral and corrective: if your religion depends on the stars caring what you want, it’s built on sentimentality, not reverence. In that sense, he’s trying to rescue “religion” from its popular, transactional form.
The rhetoric is strategic: “stars and atoms” collapses the sublime and the microscopic into a single domain of law, implying that any exception carved out for human longing is special pleading. “Contingent upon” adds legalistic precision, as if he’s cross-examining a cozy superstition. The context is modernity’s long hangover from Copernicus to Darwin to physics: each step makes the human story feel less like the plot and more like a subplot. Adams’ point isn’t to make science feel triumphant; it’s to make consolation feel earned.
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| Topic | Science |
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