THE AIMS OF RATIONALISM.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 305, 26 December 1930, Page 12

THE AIMS OF RATIONALISM.

1 I can scarce be expected to waste more time on the evasive Hugh McHalgh unless he elects to face the question at issue. Let me recapitulate briefly. He commenced the discussion with the dogmatic assertion that Rationalism had no positive aim. I replied by quoting a dozen such. He then demanded to know what bodies espoused those aims and declared that all but two were "pinched" from the Catholic Church. I followed by giving the desired names of the organisations from whose objects I had culled my examples, and asked Mr. McHaigh. to admit that his original charge was made in ignorance, and further to prove his allegation of s "pinching" by following my example and showing where in the official records of the Catholic Church these aims were to be found. I had proved by claim, and nothing could be fairer than to request him to do likewise. But has he taken this, the only course open to an honest controversialist? No! Instead, he complains that I did not give the dates on which the various Rationalist bodies were founded. Does he imagine (by some peculiar mental process), that those dates (extending over the past 60 years) would prove the aims in question belonged to the Catholic Church? On grounds unstated I am accused of bluff, yet, immediately thereafter he declines to meet my challenge to produce the alleged false historical statements of Draper regarding the Catholic Church except on one' condition. And that condition is that I should commit logical suicide by abandoning my whole caseby denying the aims quoted and proved by me to be those of duly constituted Rationalist bodies, are such. Could bluff and effrontery go further than that? The "devastating criticism" already said to have been supplied consisted of the unsupported opinions of two Catholic priests and one Catholic layman. Readers may judge how impartail such writers would be towards one who laid' bare the historic attitude of their Church to science. To brag of the length of his list of Draper's false statements is not argument. Let him produce some items for inspection. Nor is the monotonous repetition of his bare-faced claims regarding those aims to be mistaken for proof. I must remind him that the question is not one of* my proving that the positive aims of •present-day Rationalism did not exist in some form before its organisation. I have nowhere claimed that. Some such aims have existed among individual freethinkers for centuries, but organisation could not be effected until the intolerance and "persecuting powers of the Christian Churches had been sufficiently broken down. The question is for Mr. McHaigh to prove from the official literature of his Church that she espouses the aims he asserts were stolen from her by Rationalists. Let him face that issue and make good his claim or by remaining silent admit his defeat. - . A.E.C [This correspondence is closed. —Ed.]