Five hundred years ago all learned men knew that the earth was the centre of the universe, that both the earth and the heavens had been created by God and that humankind had been placed on the earth by God.

Today there is a new orthodoxy: human beings are a temporary phenomenon, the product entirely of a series of chance events, inhabiting a tiny planet orbiting a bog-standard star on the edge of one of millions of galaxies in a universe that had started with a big bang.

Presenters of science documentaries on television today are the evangelists of this new orthodoxy, which is a popular, condensed version of current scientific theory arrived at by observation and deduction and verified by reason.

In his new book theologian Prof Keith Ward makes this observation. ‘What many people in our culture seem to have lost is any sense that there is more to reality than collections of physical particles accidentally arranged in complicated patterns.’

That there might be limitations to reason as a tool of discovery, is not counternanced by the new orthodoxy. It is more acceptable to many scientists to consider that there may be, or have been, an infinite number of parallel universes than that there might be a creator.

Reason is the modern scientists' home. But it also serves as their prison. As humans our minds have many limitations and we are too limited in our imagination to have any idea just how limited our minds really are. We use such concepts, as eternity and infinity, without having any mental ability to comprehend them. Reason can only work as a method of deduction when the factors involved are limited and measureable. When too many variables present themselves, reason fails us – as any meteorologist will confirm.

To think that we can deduce any reliable, let alone complete, understanding of this universe of vast chaotic potential from a limited set of observations made from a single planet – is science’s grand self delusion.

I am not suggesting we should stop asking questions about the awesomeness of creation and simply attribute everything to an all-knowing and all-powerful God. If religious leaders claim they have an understanding of what God might be and what he expects of us, they are as deluded as the scientists.

The questions about the reality of the universe and of life and of existence and of purpose won’t go away. We cannot help but look around in awe, wonder and mystification. It is what it is to be self-aware human beings.

Maybe we will only truly understand anything once we have shaken off our physical attachment to the material world either through mindfulness (a route open to a very few) or death (the destiny of us all).

So while we inhabit this life perhaps we should be cautious of any grand explanation of what it’s all about.  Perhaps both Brian Cox and the Pope will be in for a big surprise one day.