Has science done more
good in the world
than religion?

According to Christopher Hitchins, “Religion has run out of justifications. Thanks to the telescope and the microscope, it no longer offers an explanation of anything important. Where once it used to be able, by its total command of a worldview, to prevent the emergence of rivals, it can now only impede and retard - or try to turn back - the measurable advances that we have made.”

Is this true? Does faith hold people back, while science drives human progress?

Unfortunately for Hitchins, the facts of history tell a different story. 

It’s true that science has transformed human life. Vaccinations have eradicated deadly illnesses, modern agriculture has increased food production, and space exploration has expanded the boundaries of human knowledge. But science has also been a tool of destruction. The same developments that allow us to understand the atomic structure of matter have also led to nuclear weapons. Industrialization, propelled by scientific discovery, has fueled environmental degradation. 

Religion, too, has played a dual role. On the one hand, religious institutions have justified slavery and colonial rule as well as racism, misogyny and homophobia. The Crusades, the Inquisition, and countless sectarian conflicts stand as reminders of religion’s capacity for intolerance and violence. At the same time, though, religious movements have been at the forefront of justice and social change. Abolitionism, civil rights movements, and humanitarian aid initiatives have all been deeply rooted in religious convictions. Figures such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi drew upon religious teachings to advocate for human dignity and equality.

At a cursory glance, then, religion and science can both be blamed for human misery and praised for alleviating it. But there are also instances in which the two are deeply intertwined, making the story of ‘progress’ even more complicated. 

Consider European imperialism and its associated colonial activities in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. These weren’t just political or economic enterprises, but depended for their success on engagement with both scientific and religious activities. The entwinement of science and Christianity in empire is demonstrated  in the dual roles that missionaries played. 

Nineteenth century missionaries had a vital part  both in conducting scientific research and in communicating scientific, technological, and medical knowledge. The career of the most famous of all British missionaries, David Livingstone, is an excellent example.

In 1838, while training as a doctor, Livingstone joined the London Missionary Society (LMS), who helped pay for both his medical education and his missionary training. He went to Southern Africa in 1840 with two aims: to preach the Gospel and, by helping to establish alternative trade routes for European goods, to discourage the slave trade. 

Livingstone was able to achieve his economic and moral aims through his engagement with science. Travelling with galvanic batteries and a magic lantern, he showed slides of Bible stories alongside his preaching, engaging the imagination and the senses of his audiences. Travelling across the continent to set up mission stations, he mapped the areas he visited, taking astronomical readings and making close observations of natural history. Science and religion weren’t separate: they represented beliefs and practices simultaneously expressed in Livingstone’s life.

The South American Mission Society promoted its work as a ‘civilising mission’, the idea that through European contact, indigenous societies would become better educated and more enlightened. Its missionaries judged that the distressing spiritual and moral condition of Patagonian peoples was paralleled by their scientific ignorance. They took it as their mission to fix both.

Natural history was essential to this task: it helped missionaries identify local opportunities and threats and formed the subject-matter for the education of locals. It also represented a source of potential economic profit: missionaries sent samples, seeds and plants home for investigation, propagation and potential monetisation. 

Livingstone’s mission, and many like it, were a complex mixture of good and ill, in intention and outcome. A passion to share the gospel coexisted, in many cases, with a condescension towards the knowledge and talents of ‘natives’. A desire to improve people’s health and introduce new technologies coexisted with a national project to exploit and profit from the resources of their land.

If science and religion, taken separately, have produced a mixture of good and ill, then it is no surprise that their combined efforts should have done the same. What may be a surprise, to many, is how extensive those combined efforts were.