RELIGION AND SCIENCE
The difficulty in approaching the question of the relations between
Religion and Science is, that its elucidation requires that we have in
our minds some clear idea of what we mean by either of the terms,
‘religion’ and ‘science.’ Also I wish to speak in the most general way
possible, and to keep in the background any comparison of particular
creeds, scientific or religious. We have got to understand the type of
connection which exists between the two spheres, and then to draw some
definite conclusions respecting the existing situation which at present
confronts the world.
The _conflict_ between religion and science is what naturally occurs to
our minds when we think of this subject. It seems as though, during the
last half-century, the results of science and the beliefs of religion
had come into a position of frank disagreement, from which there can be
no escape, except by abandoning either the clear teaching of science, or
the clear teaching of religion. This conclusion has been urged by
controversialists on either side. Not by all controversialists, of
course, but by those trenchant intellects which every controversy calls
out into the open.
The distress of sensitive minds, and the zeal for truth, and the sense
of the importance of the issues, must command our sincerest sympathy.
When we consider what religion is for mankind, and what science is, it
is no exaggeration to say that the future course of history depends upon
the decision of this generation as to the relations between them. We
have here the two strongest general forces (apart from the mere impulse
of the various senses) which influence men, and they seem to be set one
against the other—the force of our religious intuitions, and the force
of our impulse to accurate observation and logical deduction.
A great English statesman once advised his countrymen to use large-scale
maps, as a preservative against alarms, panics, and general
misunderstanding of the true relations between nations. In the same way
in dealing with the clash between permanent elements of human nature, it
is well to map our history on a large scale, and to disengage ourselves
from our immediate absorption in the present conflicts. When we do this,
we immediately discover two great facts. In the first place, there has
always been a conflict between religion and science; and in the second
place, both religion and science have always been in a state of
continual development. In the early days of Christianity, there was a
general belief among Christians that the world was coming to an end in
the lifetime of people then living. We can make only indirect inferences
as to how far this belief was authoritatively proclaimed; but it is
certain that it was widely held, and that it formed an impressive part
of the popular religious doctrine. The belief proved itself to be
mistaken, and Christian doctrine adjusted itself to the change. Again in
the early Church individual theologians very confidently deduced from
the Bible opinions concerning the nature of the physical universe. In
the year A. D. 535, a monk named Cosmas[17] wrote a book which he
entitled, _Christian Topography_. He was a travelled man who had visited
India and Ethiopia; and finally he lived in a monastery at Alexandria,
which was then a great centre of culture. In this book, basing himself
upon the direct meaning of Biblical texts as construed by him in a
literal fashion, he denied the existence of the antipodes, and asserted
that the world is a flat parallelogram whose length is double its
breadth.
Footnote 17:
_Cf._ Lecky’s _The Rise and Influence of Rationalism in Europe_, Ch.
III.
In the seventeenth century the doctrine of the motion of the earth was
condemned by a Catholic tribunal. A hundred years ago the extension of
time demanded by geological science distressed religious people,
Protestant and Catholic. And to-day the doctrine of evolution is an
equal stumbling-block. These are only a few instances illustrating a
general fact.
But all our ideas will be in a wrong perspective if we think that this
recurring perplexity was confined to contradictions between religion and
science; and that in these controversies religion was always wrong, and
that science was always right. The true facts of the case are very much
more complex, and refuse to be summarised in these simple terms.
Theology itself exhibits exactly the same character of gradual
development, arising from an aspect of conflict between its own proper
ideas. This fact is a commonplace to theologians, but is often obscured
in the stress of controversy. I do not wish to overstate my case; so I
will confine myself to Roman Catholic writers. In the seventeenth
century a learned Jesuit, Father Petavius, showed that the theologians
of the first three centuries of Christianity made use of phrases and
statements which since the fifth century would be condemned as
heretical. Also Cardinal Newman devoted a treatise to the discussion of
the development of doctrine. He wrote it before he became a great Roman
Catholic ecclesiastic; but throughout his life, it was never retracted
and continually reissued.
Science is even more changeable than theology. No man of science could
subscribe without qualification to Galileo’s beliefs, or to Newton’s
beliefs, or to all his own scientific beliefs of ten years ago.
In both regions of thought, additions, distinctions, and modifications
have been introduced. So that now, even when the same assertion is made
to-day as was made a thousand, or fifteen hundred years ago, it is made
subject to limitations or expansions of meaning, which were not
contemplated at the earlier epoch. We are told by logicians that a
proposition must be either true or false, and that there is no middle
term. But in practice, we may know that a proposition expresses an
important truth, but that it is subject to limitations and
qualifications which at present remain undiscovered. It is a general
feature of our knowledge, that we are insistently aware of important
truths; and yet that the only formulations of these truths which we are
able to make presuppose a general standpoint of conceptions which may
have to be modified. I will give you two illustrations, both from
science: Galileo said that the earth moves and that the sun is fixed;
the Inquisition said that the earth is fixed and the sun moves; and
Newtonian astronomers, adopting an absolute theory of space, said that
both the sun and the earth move. But now we say that any one of these
three statements is equally true, provided that you have fixed your
sense of ‘rest’ and ‘motion’ in the way required by the statement
adopted. At the date of Galileo’s controversy with the Inquisition,
Galileo’s way of stating the facts was, beyond question, the fruitful
procedure for the sake of scientific research. But in itself it was not
more true than the formulation of the Inquisition. But at that time the
modern concepts of relative motion were in nobody’s mind; so that the
statements were made in ignorance of the qualifications required for
their more perfect truth. Yet this question of the motions of the earth
and the sun expresses a real fact in the universe; and all sides had got
hold of important truths concerning it. But with the knowledge of those
times, the truths appeared to be inconsistent.
Again I will give you another example taken from the state of modern
physical science. Since the time of Newton and Huyghens in the
seventeenth century there have been two theories as to the physical
nature of light. Newton’s theory was that a beam of light consists of a
stream of very minute particles, or corpuscles, and that we have the
sensation of light when these corpuscles strike the retinas of our eyes.
Huyghens’ theory was that light consists of very minute waves of
trembling in an all-pervading ether, and that these waves are travelling
along a beam of light. The two theories are contradictory. In the
eighteenth century Newton’s theory was believed, in the nineteenth
century Huyghens’ theory was believed. To-day there is one large group
of phenomena which can be explained only on the wave theory, and another
large group which can be explained only on the corpuscular theory.
Scientists have to leave it at that, and wait for the future, in the
hope of attaining some wider vision which reconciles both.
We should apply these same principles to the questions in which there is
a variance between science and religion. We would believe nothing in
either sphere of thought which does not appear to us to be certified by
solid reasons based upon the critical research either of ourselves or of
competent authorities. But granting that we have honestly taken this
precaution, a clash between the two on points of detail where they
overlap should not lead us hastily to abandon doctrines for which we
have solid evidence. It may be that we are more interested in one set of
doctrines than in the other. But, if we have any sense of perspective
and of the history of thought, we shall wait and refrain from mutual
anathemas.
We should wait: but we should not wait passively, or in despair. The
clash is a sign that there are wider truths and finer perspectives
within which a reconciliation of a deeper religion and a more subtle
science will be found.
In one sense, therefore, the conflict between science and religion is a
slight matter which has been unduly emphasised. A mere logical
contradiction cannot in itself point to more than the necessity of some
readjustments, possibly of a very minor character on both sides.
Remember the widely different aspects of events which are dealt with in
science and in religion respectively. Science is concerned with the
general conditions which are observed to regulate physical phenomena;
whereas religion is wholly wrapped up in the contemplation of moral and
aesthetic values. On the one side there is the law of gravitation, and
on the other the contemplation of the beauty of holiness. What one side
sees, the other misses; and vice versa.
Consider, for example, the lives of John Wesley and of Saint Francis of
Assisi. For physical science you have in these lives merely ordinary
examples of the operation of the principles of physiological chemistry,
and of the dynamics of nervous reactions: for religion you have lives of
the most profound significance in the history of the world. Can you be
surprised that, in the absence of a perfect and complete phrasing of the
principles of science and of the principles of religion which apply to
these specific cases, the accounts of these lives from these divergent
standpoints should involve discrepancies? It would be a miracle if it
were not so.
It would, however, be missing the point to think that we need not
trouble ourselves about the conflict between science and religion. In an
intellectual age there can be no active interest which puts aside all
hope of a vision of the harmony of truth. To acquiesce in discrepancy is
destructive of candour, and of moral cleanliness. It belongs to the
self-respect of intellect to pursue every tangle of thought to its final
unravelment. If you check that impulse, you will get no religion and no
science from an awakened thoughtfulness. The important question is, In
what spirit are we going to face the issue? There we come to something
absolutely vital.
A clash of doctrines is not a disaster—it is an opportunity. I will
explain my meaning by some illustrations from science. The weight of an
atom of nitrogen was well known. Also it was an established scientific
doctrine that the average weight of such atoms in any considerable mass
will be always the same. Two experimenters, the late Lord Rayleigh and
the late Sir William Ramsay, found that if they obtained nitrogen by two
different methods, each equally effective for that purpose, they always
observed a persistent slight difference between the average weights of
the atoms in the two cases. Now I ask you, would it have been rational
of these men to have despaired because of this conflict between chemical
theory and scientific observation? Suppose that for some reason the
chemical doctrine had been highly prized throughout some district as the
foundation of its social order:—would it have been wise, would it have
been candid, would it have been moral, to forbid the disclosure of the
fact that the experiments produced discordant results? Or, on the other
hand, should Sir William Ramsay and Lord Rayleigh have proclaimed that
chemical theory was now a detected delusion? We see at once that either
of these ways would have been a method of facing the issue in an
entirely wrong spirit. What Rayleigh and Ramsay did do was this: They at
once perceived that they had hit upon a line of investigation which
would disclose some subtlety of chemical theory that had hitherto eluded
observation. The discrepancy was not a disaster: it was an opportunity
to increase the sweep of chemical knowledge. You all know the end of the
story: finally argon was discovered, a new chemical element which had
lurked undetected, mixed with the nitrogen. But the story has a sequel
which forms my second illustration. This discovery drew attention to the
importance of observing accurately minute differences in chemical
substances as obtained by different methods. Further researches of the
most careful accuracy were undertaken. Finally another physicist, F. W.
Aston, working in the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge in England,
discovered that even the same element might assume two or more distinct
forms, termed _isotopes_, and that the law of the constancy of average
atomic weight holds for each of these forms, but as between the
different isotopes differs slightly. The research has effected a great
stride in the power of chemical theory, far transcending in importance
the discovery of argon from which it originated. The moral of these
stories lies on the surface, and I will leave to you their application
to the case of religion and science.
In formal logic, a contradiction is the signal of a defeat: but in the
evolution of real knowledge it marks the first step in progress towards
a victory. This is one great reason for the utmost toleration of variety
of opinion. Once and forever, this duty of toleration has been summed up
in the words, ‘Let both grow together until the harvest.’ The failure of
Christians to act up to this precept, of the highest authority, is one
of the curiosities of religious history. But we have not yet exhausted
the discussion of the moral temper required for the pursuit of truth.
There are short cuts leading merely to an illusory success. It is easy
enough to find a theory, logically harmonious and with important
applications in the region of fact, provided that you are content to
disregard half your evidence. Every age produces people with clear
logical intellects, and with the most praiseworthy grasp of the
importance of some sphere of human experience, who have elaborated, or
inherited, a scheme of thought which exactly fits those experiences
which claim their interest. Such people are apt resolutely to ignore, or
to explain away, all evidence which confuses their scheme with
contradictory instances. What they cannot fit in is for them nonsense.
An unflinching determination to take the whole evidence into account is
the only method of preservation against the fluctuating extremes of
fashionable opinion. This advice seems so easy, and is in fact so
difficult to follow.
One reason for this difficulty is that we cannot think first and act
afterwards. From the moment of birth we are immersed in action, and can
only fitfully guide it by taking thought. We have, therefore, in various
spheres of experience to adopt those ideas which seem to work within
those spheres. It is absolutely necessary to trust to ideas which are
generally adequate, even though we know that there are subtleties and
distinctions beyond our ken. Also apart from the necessities of action,
we cannot even keep before our minds the whole evidence except under the
guise of doctrines which are incompletely harmonised. We cannot think in
terms of an indefinite multiplicity of detail; our evidence can acquire
its proper importance only if it comes before us marshalled by general
ideas. These ideas we inherit—they form the tradition of our
civilisation. Such traditional ideas are never static. They are either
fading into meaningless formulae, or are gaining power by the new lights
thrown by a more delicate apprehension. They are transformed by the urge
of critical reason, by the vivid evidence of emotional experience, and
by the cold certainties of scientific perception. One fact is certain,
you cannot keep them still. No generation can merely reproduce its
ancestors. You may preserve the life in a flux of form, or preserve the
form amid an ebb of life. But you cannot permanently enclose the same
life in the same mould.
The present state of religion among the European races illustrates the
statements which I have been making. The phenomena are mixed. There have
been reactions and revivals. But on the whole, during many generations,
there has been a gradual decay of religious influence in European
civilisation. Each revival touches a lower peak than its predecessor,
and each period of slackness a lower depth. The average curve marks a
steady fall in religious tone. In some countries the interest in
religion is higher than in others. But in those countries where the
interest is relatively high, it still falls as the generations pass.
Religion is tending to degenerate into a decent formula wherewith to
embellish a comfortable life. A great historical movement on this scale
results from the convergence of many causes. I wish to suggest two of
them which lie within the scope of this chapter for consideration.
In the first place for over two centuries religion has been on the
defensive, and on a weak defensive. The period has been one of
unprecedented intellectual progress. In this way a series of novel
situations have been produced for thought. Each such occasion has found
the religious thinkers unprepared. Something, which has been proclaimed
to be vital, has finally, after struggle, distress, and anathema, been
modified and otherwise interpreted. The next generation of religious
apologists then congratulates the religious world on the deeper insight
which has been gained. The result of the continued repetition of this
undignified retreat, during many generations, has at last almost
entirely destroyed the intellectual authority of religious thinkers.
Consider this contrast: when Darwin or Einstein proclaim theories which
modify our ideas, it is a triumph for science. We do not go about saying
that there is another defeat for science, because its old ideas have
been abandoned. We know that another step of scientific insight has been
gained.
Religion will not regain its old power until it can face change in the
same spirit as does science. Its principles may be eternal, but the
expression of those principles requires continual development. This
evolution of religion is in the main a disengagement of its own proper
ideas from the adventitious notions which have crept into it by reason
of the expression of its own ideas in terms of the imaginative picture
of the world entertained in previous ages. Such a release of religion
from the bonds of imperfect science is all to the good. It stresses its
own genuine message. The great point to be kept in mind is that normally
an advance in science will show that statements of various religious
beliefs require some sort of modification. It may be that they have to
be expanded or explained, or indeed entirely restated. If the religion
is a sound expression of truth, this modification will only exhibit more
adequately the exact point which is of importance. This process is a
gain. In so far, therefore, as any religion has any contact with
physical facts, it is to be expected that the point of view of those
facts must be continually modified as scientific knowledge advances. In
this way, the exact relevance of these facts for religious thought will
grow more and more clear. The progress of science must result in the
unceasing modification of religious thought, to the great advantage of
religion.
The religious controversies of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
put theologians into a most unfortunate state of mind. They were always
attacking and defending. They pictured themselves as the garrison of a
fort surrounded by hostile forces. All such pictures express
half-truths. That is why they are so popular. But they are dangerous.
This particular picture fostered a pugnacious party spirit which really
expresses an ultimate lack of faith. They dared not modify, because they
shirked the task of disengaging their spiritual message from the
associations of a particular imagery.
Let me explain myself by an example. In the early medieval times, Heaven
was in the sky, and Hell was underground; volcanoes were the jaws of
Hell. I do not assert that these beliefs entered into the official
formulations: but they did enter into the popular understanding of the
general doctrines of Heaven and Hell. These notions were what everyone
thought to be implied by the doctrine of the future state. They entered
into the explanations of the most influential exponents of Christian
belief. For example, they occur in the _Dialogues_ of Pope Gregory,[18]
the Great, a man whose high official position is surpassed only by the
magnitude of his services to humanity. I am not saying what we ought to
believe about the future state. But whatever be the right doctrine, in
this instance the clash between religion and science, which has
relegated the earth to the position of a second-rate planet attached to
a second-rate sun, has been greatly to the benefit of the spirituality
of religion by dispersing these medieval fancies.
Footnote 18:
_Cf._ Gregorovius’ _History of Rome in the Middle Ages_, Book III, Ch.
III, Vol. II, English Trans.
Another way of looking at this question of the evolution of religious
thought is to note that any verbal form of statement which has been
before the world for some time discloses ambiguities; and that often
such ambiguities strike at the very heart of the meaning. The effective
sense in which a doctrine has been held in the past cannot be determined
by the mere logical analysis of verbal statements, made in ignorance of
the logical trap. You have to take into account the whole reaction of
human nature to the scheme of thought. This reaction is of a mixed
character, including elements of emotion derived from our lower natures.
It is here that the impersonal criticism of science and of philosophy
comes to the aid of religious evolution. Example after example can be
given of this motive force in development. For example, the logical
difficulties inherent in the doctrine of the moral cleansing of human
nature by the power of religion rent Christianity in the days of
Pelagius and Augustine—that is to say, at the beginning of the fifth
century. Echoes of that controversy still linger in theology.
So far, my point has been this: that religion is the expression of one
type of fundamental experiences of mankind: that religious thought
develops into an increasing accuracy of expression, disengaged from
adventitious imagery: that the interaction between religion and science
is one great factor in promoting this development.
I now come to my second reason for the modern fading of interest in
religion. This involves the ultimate question which I stated in my
opening sentences. We have to know what we mean by religion. The
churches, in their presentation of their answers to this query, have put
forward aspects of religion which are expressed in terms either suited
to the emotional reactions of bygone times or directed to excite modern
emotional interests of a nonreligious character. What I mean under the
first heading is that religious appeal is directed partly to excite that
instinctive fear of the wrath of a tyrant which was inbred in the
unhappy populations of the arbitrary empires of the ancient world, and
in particular to excite that fear of an all-powerful arbitrary tyrant
behind the unknown forces of nature. This appeal to the ready instinct
of brute fear is losing its force. It lacks any directness of response,
because modern science and modern conditions of life have taught us to
meet occasions of apprehension by a critical analysis of their causes
and conditions. Religion is the reaction of human nature to its search
for God. The presentation of God under the aspect of power awakens every
modern instinct of critical reaction. This is fatal; for religion
collapses unless its main positions command immediacy of assent. In this
respect the old phraseology is at variance with the psychology of modern
civilisations. This change in psychology is largely due to science, and
is one of the chief ways in which the advance of science has weakened
the hold of the old religious forms of expression. The nonreligious
motive which has entered into modern religious thought is the desire for
a comfortable organisation of modern society. Religion has been
presented as valuable for the ordering of life. Its claims have been
rested upon its function as a sanction to right conduct. Also the
purpose of right conduct quickly degenerates into the formation of
pleasing social relations. We have here a subtle degradation of
religious ideas, following upon their gradual purification under the
influence of keener ethical intuitions. Conduct is a by-product of
religion—an inevitable by-product, but not the main point. Every great
religious teacher has revolted against the presentation of religion as a
mere sanction of rules of conduct. Saint Paul denounced the Law, and
Puritan divines spoke of the filthy rags of righteousness. The
insistence upon rules of conduct marks the ebb of religious fervour.
Above and beyond all things, the religious life is not a research after
comfort. I must now state, in all diffidence, what I conceive to be the
essential character of the religious spirit.
Religion is the vision of something which stands beyond, behind, and
within, the passing flux of immediate things; something which is real,
and yet waiting to be realised; something which is a remote possibility,
and yet the greatest of present facts; something that gives meaning to
all that passes, and yet eludes apprehension; something whose possession
is the final good, and yet is beyond all reach; something which is the
ultimate ideal, and the hopeless quest.
The immediate reaction of human nature to the religious vision is
worship. Religion has emerged into human experience mixed with the
crudest fancies of barbaric imagination. Gradually, slowly, steadily the
vision recurs in history under nobler form and with clearer expression.
It is the one element in human experience which persistently shows an
upward trend. It fades and then recurs. But when it renews its force, it
recurs with an added richness and purity of content. The fact of the
religious vision, and its history of persistent expansion, is our one
ground for optimism. Apart from it, human life is a flash of occasional
enjoyments lighting up a mass of pain and misery, a bagatelle of
transient experience.
The vision claims nothing but worship; and worship is a surrender to the
claim for assimilation, urged with the motive force of mutual love. The
vision never overrules. It is always there, and it has the power of love
presenting the one purpose whose fulfilment is eternal harmony. Such
order as we find in nature is never force—it presents itself as the one
harmonious adjustment of complex detail. Evil is the brute motive force
of fragmentary purpose, disregarding the eternal vision. Evil is
overruling, retarding, hurting. The power of God is the worship He
inspires. That religion is strong which in its ritual and its modes of
thought evokes an apprehension of the commanding vision. The worship of
God is not a rule of safety—it is an adventure of the spirit, a flight
after the unattainable. The death of religion comes with the repression
of the high hope of adventure.