In one of his poems, John Keats described “unweav[ing] a rainbow”: breaking down all mysterious phenomena into rational explanations, and in doing so dispelling their magic. During the Enlightenment, this took the form of the historical-critical method, which exploited contemporary archeological and textual evidence to discredit Biblical narratives as they had been accepted in the Christian tradition. Biology and physics later became methods to cast doubt on the existence of God altogether. The conviction that all religious belief would be eliminated by scientific discovery reached its peak in the New Atheism of the 2000s, with Richard Dawkins using the phrase “unweaving the rainbow” to describe his confidence in the profaning power of science.

This narrative has not gone unchallenged. For years the evolutionary biologist and philosopher Rupert Sheldrake has argued that scientific experimentation may reveal the universe to be far more mysterious than we once thought. It is the materialist dogma of modern scientific institutions, he says, which insists on explaining all of existence in the terms of chemistry and physics.

In The Science Delusion, Sheldrake explored a range of unexplainable phenomena including inedia (extreme fasting) among saints and holy men in India and Europe. For them to survive months on end without food and water should have been impossible. Yet overwhelming evidence found that they had lived in near-perfect health, revealing the existence of some other sustenance or energy at work. The deeper we delve into scientific experimentation, Sheldrake suggests, the more plausible supernatural occurrences become.

As technology develops and comes to realise its own limits, it could be that we are increasingly forced to challenge the materialist dogma of which Sheldrake has been so critical. If the Shroud of Turin discovery is anything to go by — which it may not be, scientists having wrangled over the question of its authenticity for decades now — scientific developments may force us to confront the insoluble mysteries of faith. Similarly, academic historians are now moving beyond the cynical approach of the historical-critical method. The Yale professor Carlos Eire’s recent book They Flew, for example, surveys previously overlooked evidence of levitating saints and other unexplainable phenomena which were long dismissed as superstition.

Could it be, then, that technological progress is not the disenchanting force that we always thought it would be? Pope Francis certainly seems to think so. Earlier this year, he warned of the need to regulate the “discernment of alleged supernatural phenomena” following a surge of new reports of science-defying relics and apparitions spreading online. The advent of technology in the Catholic Church has led to more, not fewer, reports of supernatural encounters.

While the Pope is right to raise concerns that this might lead to a rise of spiritual misinformation, our encounters with an ever-broadening sphere of human knowledge may erode the certainties of materialism. The Turin discovery, though not the final word, is an indication that we are as uncertain about where scientific discovery leads as in any other endeavour. Where new technologies seem to surpass our understanding, the rainbow may not be unweaved so easily.