Editing Peter Medawar (section)

=== Views on religion ===
Medawar declared:

{{blockquote|... I believe that a reasonable case can be made for saying, not that we believe in God because He exists but rather that He exists because we believe in Him... Considered as an element of the world, God has the same degree and kind of objective reality as do other products of mind... I regret my disbelief in God and religious answers generally, for I believe it would give satisfaction and comfort to many in need of it if it were possible to discover and propound good scientific and philosophic reasons to believe in God... To abdicate from the rule of reason and substitute for it an authentication of belief by the intentness and degree of conviction with which we hold it can be perilous and destructive... I am a rationalist—something of a period piece nowadays, I admit...<ref>{{cite book|author=Medawar, Medawar| year=1988|chapter='The question of the existence of God|title='The Limits of Science|publisher= Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0-19-505212-1|pages=94–98|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=o8iSP7DmHT8C}}</ref>}}

Although he normally sympathised with Christianity especially on moral teachings, he found the Biblical stories unethical and was "shocked by the way in which [Biblical] characters deceived and defrauded each other." He even asked his wife "to make sure that such a book did not fall into the hands of [their] children."<ref>{{Cite book|last=Medawar|first=Peter|title=Memoir of a Thinking Radish: An Autobiography. Op cit.|year=1986|pages=18}}</ref>

Nonetheless, he also said the following, which suggests that although religion has good value for humans in aggregate, it does not help them all equally:

{{blockquote|Religion has not sustained me on any of the occasions when the comfort it professes would have been most welcome.<ref name=paida/>}}