Thus, the doctrine goes, though we do not know all the fundamental laws now, and what we do know may change (as Einstein’s law of gravity replaced Newton’s), they exist and are in principle discoverable by humans. But of course, as Lightman admits, this cannot be proved. It is, as I said, a leap of faith.

Now, more committed atheists may resent that terminology, but that doesn’t alter its truth. And Dennett upbraids Lightman for letting religion off the hook too easily, but he doesn’t tackle this point. (He spends most time defending fellow horseman Richard Dawkins from claims that I don’t think Lightman makes, e.g. that Dawkins and other atheists are too philistine to appreciate the art and music religion has engendered. I suspect that Dennett is so used to a vigorously adversarial stance he finds it hard to adopt any other posture.)

In his opening paragraphs Lightman talks about a group of scientists, actors and playwrights who meet monthly at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to talk about science and art. “What continues to astonish me is the frequency with which religion slips into the room, unbidden but persistent. One member of our group, playwright and director Alan Brody, offers this explanation: ‘Theatre has always been about religion. I am talking about the beliefs that we live by. And science is the religion of the 21st century’."

Naturally I like Lightman because he endorses the claim I have made very often on this blog: that though science is a brilliantly successful and vital method of gaining knowledge and helping us shape and live in our world, it is still one discourse among many and there are questions beyond its ken.

He agrees with scientists such as Francis Collins and Ian Hutchinson, who are Christians, that science is not the only avenue to knowledge, there are interesting questions beyond the reach of test tubes and equations. “Obviously vast territories of the arts concern inner experiences that cannot be analysed by science. The humanities, such as history and philosophy, raise questions that do not have definite or unanimously accepted answers.

“I believe there are things we take on faith, without physical proof and even sometimes without any methodology for proof … We cannot prove the meaning of our life, or whether life has any meaning at all.” We can gather evidence and arguments but no system of analysis remotely similar to the way a physicist decides how many seconds it will take a foot-long pendulum to make a complete swing.

He also acknowledges that the role of science, as another philosopher of science put it, is to measure the marks that matter makes on matter. Science is always focused, where philosophy or religion may not be. Lightman says: “At any moment in time, every scientist is working on, or attempting to work on, a well-posed problem, a question with a definite answer. We scientists are taught from an early stage of our apprenticeship not to waste time on questions that do not have clear and definite answers. But artists and humanists often don’t care what the answer is because definite answers don’t exist to all interesting and important questions.”

He also acknowledges that science, like religion, has been used for good and ill. “It is how they are used by human beings, by us, that matters.”

Lightman eventually offers a theory of reconciliation whereby religion and science can co-exist if the religion involves a non-interventionist deity who does not enter the natural realms that are the subject of science. I haven't room to explore that now.

As I have argued before, humans have to see their lives in some sort of narrative, and it is this that provides shape and meaning, whether acknowledged or not. In the absence of a theistic narrative, science has filled the hole for many people.

Obviously I am using religion – which is notoriously difficult to define – in its broadest sense. Scholar Jonathan Z. Smith observes: “The moral … is not that religion cannot be defined, but that it can be defined, with greater or lesser success, more than 50 ways.”

So another scholar, Bruce Lincoln, says that, rather than a singular thing or essence, religion is better understood as a form of discourse that makes a claim to a particular kind of authority. What makes a discourse religious is when it claims an authority that is believed “to transcend the human, temporary and contingent, and claims for itself a similarly transcendent status”. Without anyone necessarily intending that to happen, I suggest that for many a belief in science has slipped into that category.

Over to you.