Science And Religion In Cat's Cradle Essay

“All of the true things I am about to tell you are shameless lies.” That is how Bokonon, the founder of Bokononism, says his religion is in Cat’s Cradle. For the people of San Lorenzo, this Bokononism a way for them to save them from the cruel science of the world. For others, this religion is nothing but lies and illusion. Yet, throughout Vonnegut's book, Cat’s Cradle, seemingly asks the question of whether or not science and religion are really separated or rather similar pieces to a puzzle.

The prevalent religion in Cat’s Cradle, Bokononism, seems to state how the reader is supposed to define religion. Bokonon himself seems to differentiate how Bokononism is different from other religions, stating that the things he “tells you are shameless lies” (4); bokononists know their religion is fundamentally based on lies. Readers, thus, naturally assume that religion does not need to have a basis of truth, but rather this idea of faith—a belief in something. However,

Breed’s idea of science and religion, from Bokononism and Cat’s Cradle, both have a view of the world that is far from the truth. Nothing is more evident in this than Bokononism. The religion itself is full of lies, as Bokonon state. These lies replace truth, as with what happened to San Lorenzo’s citizens. Instead of showing us an unbiased view, Bokononism—and in extension, religion—show the world through different lens. When Mrs. Faust and Jonah talks to Lyman Ender Knowles in the elevator, Knowles talks about how research is simply how scientists look “for something they found once and it got away somehow, and now they got to re-search for it” (28). Similarly to how people look through the lens of a camera, science uses research to refit the objective “truth” into a much more acceptable version, one that confines into their views; while both science and religion try to search for this objective truth, both of them will always lead to an incomplete truth, making their different