✝ Catholic Treasury Network
Home ›Apologetics›Religion and Morality›Hasn't the Modern World Outgrown Religion?
Apologetics · Religion and Morality

Hasn't the Modern World Outgrown Religion?

The Short Answer

The modern world has outgrown many things, but not the questions religion exists to answer: why there is anything at all, what a human life is for, how we should live, and what happens when we die. Science has transformed how we live, but it was never designed to answer those questions. The Catholic Church holds that human beings are made for God, so that the longing for meaning is not a leftover of ignorance but part of who we are. As St Augustine prayed: “thou hast made us for thyself and restless is our heart until it comes to rest in thee” (Confessions I.1).

The objection is familiar and sincere. Religion, it says, was useful when people did not understand lightning or disease, and when communities needed myths to hold together. Now we have science to explain the world, democracy to organise society and human rights to protect individuals. Religion may be comforting, but it is no longer needed.

What the Church Does and Does Not Claim

The Church does not claim:

The Church does claim that “the desire for God is written in the human heart, because man is created by God and for God; and God never ceases to draw man to himself” (CCC 27).

Why Catholics Believe It

The questions have not changed

Every generation, however advanced, faces the same questions. Why am I here? What is a good life? What should I do with my freedom? What will become of me and of those I love when we die? A person can know everything about the chemistry of the brain and still not know whether their life has meaning. These are not scientific questions; they are human ones, and every person answers them somehow, even by ignoring them.

Religion, at its best, is not a primitive science. It is the human response to these questions, and the Christian claim is that God Himself has answered them: in Jesus Christ, who said, “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly” (John 10:10).

The longing does not go away

Human beings want more than this world gives. We reach our goals and feel strangely empty; we find love and beauty and still sense that something is missing. The Catechism says this restlessness is itself a sign: we are made for God, and nothing less will satisfy us (CCC 27). That is why religion has appeared in virtually every human culture, and why it persists in the most modern societies.

What the evidence shows

Some religious writers claim that secular societies are clearly less happy than religious ones. The evidence does not support anything so simple: some of the least religious countries in the world regularly rank among the happiest in international surveys. But the evidence does suggest that religious practice matters to people’s lives. A 2019 Pew Research Center study of more than two dozen countries found that people who are actively involved in a religious congregation were more likely than the unaffiliated to describe themselves as “very happy” in almost half of the countries studied, and in many countries more likely to vote and to join community groups. It found no clear link with better health outside a few countries. Religion is not a magic formula for happiness, but it is not a relic either.

What the Church offers

A coherent account of reality. The universe is not an accident, human life has a purpose, suffering can have meaning, and death is not the end.

A moral vision. The Church’s teaching, grounded in natural law and revelation, tells the truth about the human person, even when it is uncomfortable, and offers grace to live it. (See What Is Morality, and Why Is Being Good Worth It?)

A community across every boundary. The Church is present in almost every country, culture and language, and includes the living, the dead and the saints, a family stretching across time.

The sacraments. No philosophy or self-help programme offers what Catholics believe the sacraments give: a real encounter with God, in the Eucharist, in Confession, in Baptism.

Common Objections

”Religion was just pre-scientific explanation.”

Some religious stories were used to explain nature, but that was never the heart of religion. The great religious questions, why there is anything at all, what we live for, how to face death, are not questions science has answered or could answer. They remain as urgent in a laboratory as in a temple.

”We have human rights now. We don’t need religion for morality.”

The modern idea of universal human rights grew out of a culture shaped by the Christian belief that every person is made in God’s image. Whether those rights can be fully grounded without God is a serious question. (See Can Morality Exist Without God?)

”Religion causes conflict.”

Religion has been used to justify violence, and the Church has repented of the times Christians did so. But the twentieth century’s worst atrocities were committed by explicitly atheist regimes as well as others. Violence is a human problem, not a religious one, and the Gospel’s command to love one’s enemies is one of the strongest answers to it.

In Summary

The modern world has changed almost everything about how we live, but not the questions of why we live and how we should live. Religion is not a failed science but the human search for meaning, and Christianity claims that God has answered that search in Jesus Christ. The question is not whether a modern person can live without religion, since many do, but whether they can live as fully as they were made to. The Church invites everyone to consider that the restlessness of the human heart is a clue, and that it points to God.

See also Why Does Religion Matter?, What Is Man? and Does God Exist?

This article follows the method St Robert Bellarmine used in his Controversies*: state the question fairly, clear away misunderstandings, make the case, then answer each objection. See How We Answer Objections.*

Sources