The Importance Of Science And Religion In Cat's Cradle

Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle is a novel showing the effortless dissolve of the world if we live by science or religion alone. Albert Einstein said, “All religions, arts, and sciences are branches of the same tree.” From the beginning of the novel the author is saying that religion is all made of lies, but lies are the tree from which religion, as well as science, stem from. This novel plays with the idea of creating and inventing. Through innovation, mishap, and ultimately failure science and religion become one in Cat’s Cradle. Within the novel, both science and religion are created in an attempt to discover some type of truth about the world by the inventions made within them. The main character takes us through his research, in order for

Cat’s Cradle consists of mishaps that contain an outcome of an increase in popularization of a religion or creating something quite deadly. In Vonnegut’s novel he relates science and religion more than is seen just at the surface. Dr. Felix Hoenikker invented the atomic bomb, an invention meant to destroy, but his process of inventing is one to wonder about. This novel displays the inventions as a mishap. Ice- nine was deadly, but an accident because Hoenikker was toying around with different chemicals. He did the same with games in his office while constructing the atomic bomb (e.g., cat’s cradle). Dr. Hoenikker played around with toys and wouldn’t build the atomic bomb. Newt says in his letter, “Father got so interested in turtles that he stopped working on the atom bomb…So one night they [People from the Manhattan Project] went into his laboratory and stole the turtles and the aquarium” (16). His distraction was taken away and made him focus on the only thing that was left, the atomic bomb. The destructive bomb was created by and magic is used to describe the science behind it and any other invention by Dr. Hoenikker. Magic is a word most scientists would not use because it implies illusion. Illusion may be the word Vonnegut is describing is science; “They looked upon him as a sort of magician who could make America invincible with a wave of

Ice-nine, although fully created and complete in its specified function, creates a problem that turns the world into chaos. The difficulty with ice-nine is once Papa Monzano takes the ice-nine another person (The Doctor) ends up dead within no time. That would be fine if it only affected two people, but Monzano’s body falls into the ocean freezing water everywhere. After everything is frozen religion comes in. The residue left behind by ice-nine can kill any living organism. In the middle of the, what looks to be arranged, bodies is a note signed by Bokonon himself. The note