His new book, The Immortality Commission: Science and the Strange Quest to Cheat Death, has been rapturously received by critics, and in the run-up to his eagerly anticipated appearance in conversation with Adam Phillips on February 21st, this interview with Tony Curzon Price sees author John Gray discussing the ways in which science has taken religion’s clothes, in the human quest to solve the “riddle of death.”

Gray positions the book as a reaction against the scientific materialism in 19th Century, especially in a world devoid of human purpose as posited by the Darwinian doctrine. The characters in his book turn not to religion, but to science for solace, infusing it with their human impulse for meaning and seeking to falsify the scientific vision of oblivion with science itself. As an example of this, Gray discusses the popularity of eugenics in the late Victorian era, as personified by the eminent members of the Society for Psychical Research; figures such as Arthur Balfour and the physicists Lord Rayleigh who channelled their ideas of progress with Messianic conviction, hoping for the birth of an extraordinary human being with extraordinary abilities that to lead humanity to a better condition.

He demonstrates how this notion of progress endures even in modern-day conceptions and narratives of death, namely through singularity theory. In its perception of the ‘self’ as a consciousness for which death can be circumnavigated, by divorcing the human mind from the body and uploading into a virtual world and becoming a boundless reservoir of possibilities, Gray traces the same “fantasy” that sustained the God-building Bolsheviks. From climate change to creationism, Gray demonstrates how our attitude to science is cast from the model of Western monotheistic religion. What science does is reveal the limits of human power, but – in a paradox that Gray says forms the crux of his book – in its function as a modern myth it perpetuates the idea that human power has no limits.

Humans often mingle magic with science, says Gray. The hope is that if we learn everything there is to know about science, we might, just might, be able to free ourselves from the rigid laws of science itself. Gray thinks that science will not be as empowering as all that. Take, for example, our response to climate change. Science has shown us that we started this process, so we imagine it can show us how to end it. Gray thinks that the best it can do is help us adapt to climate change more intelligently, and that the debate has mainly highlighted that we are still wrapped up in the myth of humankind's ability to change our world. This myth has nothing to do with science; it is the legacy of Western religion.