THE CONFLICT BETWEEN SCIENCE AND THEOLOGY
The conviction that there is a deep-seated conflict between the
religious view the world, characteristic of the past, and the outlook
which has been shaping under the guiding hands of science and
philosophy is held by an ever increasing number. Those who deny this
conflict are judged to be either willing self-deceivers or postponers
of the evil day of confession. Many books have been written to detail
the warfare between the champions of orthodoxy and the leaders of the
advance guard of science. The persecution of Galileo, the burning of
Bruno, the bitter attacks upon the founders of the theory of organic
evolution are cited as examples of the unavoidable warfare. For the
nonce, there is a lull in the battle which was waged so fiercely by
Tyndall and Huxley; but this lull does not signify that a treaty of
peace has been signed, but only that the combatants have shifted their
ground. The forces of orthodoxy have sullenly retreated to another
line of entrenchments. The objective observer can entertain little
doubt that the intellectual forces of orthodoxy have been worsted in
the open field and have become disheartened by the growing revelation
of the number and strength and persistence of the workers in the
service of science. The prestige of science bids fair to equal, if not
to surpass, {99} that of the church. Hence, the desire of the
theologian is to avoid a renewal of the conflict, or else to change the
mode of the warfare.
And here I shall venture a prophecy. The new battle will be waged
around psychology and philosophy. Already the lines are being drawn
between the defenders of an extra-organic soul and the experimental
sappers in the laboratories of biology and psychology who are seeking
to show that mind and body are inseparable, that, indeed, mind is just
a term for certain capacities of control exercised by the brain. The
crucial character of this growing conflict, which is yet not much
beyond the status of a skirmish, leaps to the eyes, as the French say.
Is not even the soul to be spared the siege before which the human body
fell? Is it to be placed on the dissection-table and teased apart into
its component strands? Even so. The process has already begun, and
far more has been accomplished than is generally known. The solution
of the mind-body problem is already in the air. And, with it, will
come theoretical consequences by no means secondary to those associated
with the theory of evolution. With some of these consequences we shall
be concerned in a later chapter.
Christianity has been bound up with the letter and even with the spirit
of a sacred book. Naturally, this book reflects the view of the world
held by people about two thousand years ago. It contains primitive
notions of the origin of things, a naive conception of the relation of
the sun to the earth, a belief that demons are the cause of sickness, a
conviction that souls merely inhabit bodies temporarily, and an
apocalyptic idea of the end of the world in a last judgment. As we
have seen, no part of this outlook was particularly unique, but it was
{100} accepted by the Christian Church as inspired because it was found
in the canonical writings accredited to prophets and apostles. During
the Middle Ages, this biblical view of the world was united with the
astronomical and physical teaching of Aristotle and hardened into a
system. So intimate was this union between these cosmological elements
and Christianity felt to be that an attack upon one was taken as an
attack upon the whole. To doubt the primitive notions of the world and
man's place therein, was to doubt the bible; and to doubt the bible as
an inspired compendium of information was to doubt Christianity.
For the sake of perspective, it will repay us to note the order in
which these primitive ideas were attacked and replaced by more adequate
ones. It will be noticed that the general cosmological setting was
first reconstructed and that the growing point passed thence to the
center, the nature and destiny of man. As we indicated above, the
replacement of older by newer and better-founded views is proceeding
most rapidly at this crucial point. Having obtained a different and
vaster heaven and earth, man has turned the microscope upon himself.
The suspicion is growing ever more insistent that he, also, is a
natural part of this procession of things.
When, at the time of the Renaissance, modern science was born, the
first field invaded with success was that of astronomy. Copernicus
became convinced that the current theory, called the Ptolemaic, was
untenable because it led to insuperable complexities in the
interpretation of the observed paths of the heavenly bodies. He was
led to suggest that the sun was the actual center of the system and
that the earth revolved around it in the {101} course of a year. One
can easily imagine the furore such a daring hypothesis aroused. The
Copernican theory was scoffed at by learned and ignorant alike, for it
upset the whole picture of the world which had been tranquilly accepted
from early times, except by such a radical non-conformist as
Aristarchus of Samos. To appreciate the intellectual revolution
threatened, one has only to read Dante's "Divine Comedy," for Dante
journeys from planet to planet and thinks of them as arranged within
crystalline spheres revolving slowly about the earth. In the second
canto of Paradise, he speaks of the blessed motors who make the holy
spheres revolve. These motors are angels of various orders resident in
the spheres and transmitting to them the efficacy of the Divine
Intelligence. Thus infant science had to challenge the appearance of
things to the eye, and a system bound up with the religious view of the
world.
It is obvious that the old geocentric view of the world, which thought
of the earth as the center of the universe, was nothing more than a
statement of the apparent relations of the visible heavens to the broad
earth which stretches out on either hand as far as eye can see. That
this natural view of things was taken up into the religious picture of
the universe was the occurrence to be expected. Had it not been and
had the priests and prophets enunciated the Copernican theory, there
would be reason to suspect a hidden source of revelation. Needless to
say such a reversal of the natural sequence never occurs.
It is only when we grasp the naive outlook of early days that we can
realize the full significance of many Christian doctrines. Let us take
the articles of the {102} creed. We are taught to believe that Jesus
descended into Hell and then ascended into Heaven and sitteth on the
right hand of God. What is this Hell into which Jesus is supposed to
have descended? It is the Sheol of the old Hebrews, a misty region
below the surface of the earth; it is the Hades of the Greeks, the
place of the departed shades; it is the Avernus of the Romans, the
lower regions where ghosts flit and gibber. This place of the dead is
at first the grave and sinks deeper into the earth as time passes and
the myth-making fancy has been directed upon it. But it is thought of
literally as in the bowels of the earth. All through the Middle ages
this naive view was held. There was an absolute down and a
subterranean Hell, and every country told of some cavern which was one
of its many mouths. With the advent of the Copernican view what
becomes of these age-old ideas? To save them they must be transformed
and given another location or a merely symbolic meaning. But why save
them? They are as pure myths as any others to be found in olden days.
They are brother to Tartarus and the Battle of the Titans and the
Slaying of Rahab. The early Christians believed in a literal Hell
beneath the surface of the earth. Their belief was wrong beyond the
shadow of a doubt. We cannot make it true by modifying it out of all
recognition.
The ascent into Heaven was thought of as a literal ascension of the
resurrected body by the majority of early Christians. We have seen,
however, that Paul did not teach any such doctrine. But even for Paul,
Jesus, as the Messiah, was literally in the heavens directly above the
earth. Into this region Paul is caught up in ecstasy--even to the
third heaven. It is from {103} this region, not very far above us,
that the last trump will sound and the day of judgment dawn. The
account, given by the so-called "Revelation of St. John the Divine,"
which has led to so much foolish controversy among certain protestant
sects, is typical of the apocalyptic literature of the time. No
scholar to-day believes that it was written by an apostle or by any one
in direct relation to an apostle. It is simply an example of the
current religious phantasies of the age just before and after the Fall
of Jerusalem. What factual basis could there be for such myths of the
end of the world? To take this old picture of the days to come as
having anything but historical interest is to live in a mist. Only the
scholar can understand the allusions made and connect the ideas with
the beliefs of this vanished world. It is poetry, a creation of
generations of dreamers steeped in the tremendous idea of a coming
destruction preceded by portents and disasters. We can understand how
it arose in the motley and chaotic press of the Roman Empire in the
East with its memories of oppressions and conquests and changing
kingdoms; but to regard it gravely as a revelation, to be taken
seriously, of the destruction of the world is impossible. The universe
was a small affair for the men of that time and the little planet we
call the earth and live upon was the center of all things. We who
think in terms of light-years, and nebulae in which our solar system
could be lost, and huge constellations far off in the pathless void,
realize that we have outgrown even the imagery of this apocalyptic poem.
Religion was loth to give up the simpler and more child-like ideas of
the universe and to displace the earth from its proud preeminence as
the one foot-stool of {104} deity. Man feels lonelier in the
tremendous spaces and stellar systems which astronomy has revealed to
his eye and mind. But the facts piled up by science in its patient
work of investigation were too strong to be ignored, and religion had
to modify its teaching by at least a passive acceptance of the new
world outlook which would have been so strange to Jesus and Paul. It
is evident that this involves the quiet giving up of the truth of the
story of creation, as well as the doctrine of a day of judgment. When
we once realize that the earth is a pin-point in the physical universe,
these stories, woven in days when it was regarded as the stable center
of things, are seen to be outgrown myths.
But astronomy was followed by biology with its hypothesis of evolution.
No sooner had religion resigned itself to a larger world than its peace
was again broken by the teaching that man was the end-term of an
evolution of animal life going far back into the dim past. Instead of
the neat little tale which Hebrew literature had passed on to the
Church, men were asked to believe that ages of slow change had elapsed
while one form of life changed to a more complex form adapted to new
conditions. Soon facts rained in from all sides to make this new
position impregnable. Geology studied the various strata of rock and
found fossil remains which could only be dated back millions of years.
Strange creatures unlike those to be found now upon the earth were
brought to light. Reptiles of monstrous size, fishes of strange
shapes, huge trees resembling our ferns, botanically weeds, yet
towering into the heavens, were unearthed until the imagination caught
glimpses of past ages teeming with life. The teaching of geology was
reenforced by comparative anatomy, which showed {105} the similarity of
different animals which had been thought of as quite distinct. Man,
himself, was examined and was found to contain traces of an older mode
of life. Only in this way could certain atrophied organs, like the
appendix, be understood. Before long, comparative embryology arose and
it was seen that the embryo passes through certain stages of
development which roughly indicate the past life of the organism. On
all lines, investigation taught the same conclusion. That there was
evolution in nature, so that new forms of life developed while old
forms passed away, no one who knew the facts doubted. What factors
were at work to produce these changes was not entirely known. The new
outlook was set in the place of the old myths; but the details of the
evolutionary process required careful working out by patient
experiments and observations.
The mythical background of Christianity was thus again attacked. The
struggle was violent and bitter. Christians were so accustomed to the
primitive myth of man's creation in a Garden of Eden, as narrated in
the Old Testament, that they refused for a long time to consider any
other view. Bishops and laymen denounced Huxley and Darwin and their
supporters, and often resorted to parodies of their position in order
to awaken the prejudices of the mass of the people. It was affirmed
that they believed that man was descended from an ape or monkey. But
the clergy were waging a losing fight, as is always the case when the
facts are overwhelmingly against an old dogma. The educated people of
to-day accept some form of the theory of evolution as naturally as they
accept the automobile and electric street-car. They see no reason to
believe that {106} primitive people who made no study of animal life
knew more about its origin than those who have devoted their time to
careful and earnest investigation. Facts speak for themselves and
conquer what opposes them no matter what traditions bolster it up.
The refuge which Christianity has taken is the usual one resorted to by
religions which find themselves in conflict with views more adequate
than those they hold. The myths are either allegorized or thrust into
the background. Allegorization of myth is only a work of fancy, but it
always implies a tendency to self-deception. So long as we see tales
like the stories of creation in a sanely historical way, we realize
that these men of the past were stating their own naive beliefs and
were not teaching our own views in the guise of a poetic version. The
only way to be true to ourselves is to give up any attempt at
compromise and acknowledge that the account of man's creation given in
"_Genesis_" has simply been outgrown.
Thus, step by step, the framework of nature and man's place in it as
taught by Christianity has come in conflict with more thoroughly
founded views and has had to give way. Before science arose, man
guessed at things and appealed to the gods at every step. The gods, as
superhuman powers capable of doing anything, were naturally introduced
to account for origins and mysterious events. Such an agent seemed a
sufficient answer to any problem. How did man arise? God created him.
How did the earth come to be? God created it. But science has come to
see that an agent which answers every question in this easy-going
fashion does not really answer any of them. It is a verbal answer and
does not give us any specific information. {107} Investigation is
gradually showing just _how_ men did arise and _how_ the earth once
formed part of a larger whole from which it was whirled off.
The only valid position to take in the light of this retreat of the
biblical view of the world is to accept the evident conclusion that
those who wrote the various books of the bible told the beliefs of
their time. Some half-hearted converts to this conclusion try to take
the edge off the admission by saying that the bible does not teach
science. Let us put it frankly and say that the bible taught the
knowledge of the olden days, their science, but that this does not at
all agree with what we have come to know by real investigation.
While the primitive view of the world had the strength which came to it
from the sincere belief of Christians, it struggled valiantly against
the new knowledge. Unfortunately, Christians were, by their training,
dogmatists and sought to silence the rising whispers of doubt by
persecution, rather than by frank appeal to fact and reason. Because
of this attitude, there developed the tradition of antagonism between
science and religion which is so often referred to. The primitive view
of the world, woven into historical Christianity, because shot through
the bible, was helpless in the face of this vigorous enemy which was
nourished by the intellectual adulthood of man. Its partisans were
shocked by the denial of beliefs that seemed to them bound up with the
most sacred and important facts. What could be more natural than an
appeal to force to put down such impious suggestions! The story is not
a pleasant one but it should not be looked upon as unexpected.
Christianity used its power but was defeated. The fight is to all
intents and purposes over; the primitive view of the {108} world has
gone forever and Christianity is in the throes of the effort to loosen
itself from it, as a swimmer tries to free himself from the embrace of
a corpse which would drag him down.
But this is not the first time that Christianity has been forced to
give up a belief that would not fit in with the facts of a wider
experience. We saw that the early Christians believed in the coming of
the kingdom of God upon earth in their own day and generation. This
hope was relinquished by the Church as time passed and it was not
fulfilled. The date of the great change was simply postponed
indefinitely. But the problem which the growth of modern science
caused could not be met so easily. The conflict was stern, and it was
only after defeat stared her in the face that Christianity tried to
adapt herself to the new view of the world.
Were this adaptation possible simply by giving up the mythical elements
in the bible and in the traditional theology, there can be no doubt
that it would be accomplished. Many protestant denominations have
practically gone thus far. There is reason to believe that, sooner or
later, the doctrine of the virgin-birth, with its only too evident
dependence upon classic mythology and its obvious violation of
biological facts, will be resigned and Jesus acknowledged to have been
born as all men are. We moderns see no shame in such biological facts.
Since historical criticism and biology point in the same direction,
there can hardly be a doubt as to the outcome. However reluctantly,
Christianity must yield to knowledge.
Even after Christianity has surrendered her mythical envelope and
resigned herself to the less dramatic and pictorial account of the
beginning and end of things, {109} taught by modern science, she is not
secure. The struggle has only passed from the outer works of religion
to its very citadel. To yield the nonessentials, which were the
wrappings of its early manhood, to this stern seeker after knowledge,
in the hope of a treaty of peace, will only lead to disappointment.
Because of her worship of the book, Christianity has set too high a
value upon beliefs which were simply doomed to destruction. Hence she
has no right to look upon her surrender of these beliefs as an act of
great merit. It is simply a preliminary step to the basic conflict
between science and religion. The question which confronts the human
mind at the present time concerns the problem of the harmony or
disharmony of the views of the world essentially connected with
religion and science respectively. Before this fundamental problem,
these minor conflicts which have occupied so much attention shrink into
insignificance. This problem involves the character of the agencies at
work in the universe. Can science admit the reality of a special
providence at work in the world? Let us see to what issues this
problem leads.
{110}