Bernard Shaw's Remarkable Religion: A Faith That Fits the Facts

The Marriage of Science and Religion 187
but they actually are incapable of saying “I don’t know” (“Science and
Common Sense” 197). Specifically, science denies the existence of anything
it does not understand; it does not understand the mind, so mind
must be banished from the universe (Everybody’s Political What’s What?
203). While it is natural to assume that the scientists know better than
Shaw what science is all about, there is actually much to be said for Shaw’s
critique of science. More important, his insistence that science and religion
are compatible is based on an understanding of a fundamental weakness in
scientific thinking that Shaw actually understood more clearly than the
scientists.
First Mistake: The Nature of Science
Shaw’s idea of what science ought to be about was overly simplistic but had
the virtue of clarity and logic. He essentially accepted the “mythical” view
of science, the view scientists like to take of themselves, and faulted the
scientists for not living up to it. Science should have perfect respect for the
facts and be ready to scrap any theory, no matter how lovingly constructed
or how deeply invested with time and energy if, in Andrew Undershaft’s
words, it “turns out just a hairsbreadth wrong after all” (Major Barbara
3:170). Shaw thought that the mind and its will were obvious, undeniable
facts; science saw that they did not fit the theory and so insisted (indeed
still insists) that they do not exist. For Shaw, that meant science was behaving
unscientifically.
Shaw’s point of view is so heterodox that many find it impossible to
conceive that it is even remotely rational. They are not even capable of
hearing arguments in its favor, for they “know” in advance that it must be
wrong. Indeed, a careful examination of the literature regarding the debate
between the materialists and antimaterialists is enough to convince any
skeptic of the truth of Shaw’s observation in the letter to Chapman quoted
earlier: “Every man sees what he looks for, and hears what he listens for,
and nothing else” (Collected Letters 1:301). Attentive reading of the various
disputes makes it clear that the proponents of different views do not
really hear each other. It is as if they lived in different worlds and saw
different things, so that the disciples of each view become perfectly convinced
that their opponents are talking—not merely nonsense—but obvious
nonsense. Indeed, there are those who become huffily indignant that
such questions are asked at all, because the answers are, to them, transparently
obvious. Unfortunately, different people propose totally different