SCIENCE AND FAITH

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 275, 13 August 1908, Page 11

SCIENCE AND FAITH

• SPEECH BY MR. BALFOUR. THE TENDENCY OF MODERN THOUGHT. Mr. .A. J., Balfour, M.P., was ,the principal' speaker: at a mass, meeting held' in the. Albert ■ Mall, London, 011.June 22, following; tlio" sectional gatherings of the PanAhglican Congress. The subject was "Christidli; .Truth' and Other Intellectual Forces," and tho hall was filled to its utmost capacity, many hundreds of people being turned away from . the doors. The"'Bishop of Calcutta piesided. •

Mh;. Balfour, who was heartily chcered, said that he had been asked to speak, a few words to them 011 a subject which had been the causd, of much deep anxiety to many men of religious temperament' in the last two generations—he. meant the subject of tho conflict, or supposed conflict, between religirin;,and science'.' Ho remembered when it was;;' universally thought 'by a large school that there was a fundamental conflict, between the religious and scientific subjects of the' world—that naturalism was, on one side, 'to?be taken or rejected,"and that.any ■ comparison'between naturalism and tho scientific view of .the world and tbe religious side was impossible.' •*' Jlany "persons to ."wh'oiri"' be" spoke'-: ihiagmed tiiat" science"Was founded upon} experience and : induction, and'that religiori.'represehted the last dying phase of a history ivhich went back arid was lost among the. -'early. and" savage, conceptions of mankind. , .' J

Tkoro was a'further supposition of a conditioii of things arid- persons, having no creator,,'ho faith; .and leading.to. no end. For his own part, he believed that that view, however' wisely it might bo held, was a view that : .was . not gaining ground;- For many philosophers and many men of science it was already,: antiquated', ;and, it belonged to tho past; .alid was not destined to, bp among the pfpblems that wore to play on tho Christian conscience. •He did not mean, of course, that the growth of', scientific knowledge and the vast, .accumulation ,of learning, which ; tho last .two'generations.had given-to, the. world,', had had no effect • upon, the mode in which religious men and,. Christians held their,beOn. the contrary. If they supposed the -theologian, of the present century /was discussing th'e same question with the theologian of. the sixteenth century, though, they migHt-i.bpth share.-the' same faith .and;, hold tho same hopes and aspirations, did,they not. all]know.-that the language in .which they would "speak to'each other on some, aspects of; religion would be widely., divergent? That was hot the question he was ; dealing with. He desired to touch upon some larger issues. THE .GREAT ISSUE! ...The .issue which he Wished to;put before thetaiwas: Did'tlie groivth of science make it' 'eaSjSi-or. not to believo that the world had a rational airid'benevolent creator, or had it retldered that bfllicf entirely;superfluous and' wholly'iirifbunded upon any rational or philo-sophic-ground?''-Let them I 'consider the" old : .arg,um<!lU"froni., design. -'That was based mainly on : the 'fact that'material nature was orderly 1 , arid uniform arid-showed tho mark of . havirig"oolhe rfut '.of -the"-'mould -after having beOiiimado from 'one "design: The religious philosopher : Said i Gould >tney suppose that aniMls'-woiild : bo created,-so happily adapted to vtheir-surroundings, unless they had been created by an intelligent creator? And tho argument seemed extremely strong. He'.then-'came to.the argument of natural selection. 'Jpto -Darwinian doctrine indicated all' these wonderful adaptations, and' showed how. they were explainable by tho relations of the;, living and its environment. That adaptation was supposed to be duo to d4sigh,' andvit had nothing,to do with final catiscs. . .- ' . It gave, great pain and caused frequent perturbation in the'minds of vast numbers' of pfirSoris to:;be. told ,that-,the, il djsopv i eijfisj. of science;ivero inconsistent with the. fundamen-tal-truths of religion. He was not surprised, becaiiso'-heithought that tho whole argument of designiwas-not-wortlilessi-He-thought that. it-''had_ lost much of its efficacy owing to re- - cent biological discoveries,'but there was one fact WhicE-wholly escaped his criticism, and that fact'was the existence of reason. If wo Were' to>'look on the universe'simply from a • nattiirali'stic point of view, what was reason? Reason; was nothing" more; than one among the' many expedients .by which ' Nature had blindly made a very small'and numerically insignificant ■ number of living organisms to adapt--themselves--to the- surroundings in •which- they-were born. That was all that naturalism'-could say to human reason. It was,the only account that at could give of tho existence on_this planet of homo sapiens. It was a truly inadequate reason and its inadequacy: would. be' most evident to.' men .of science .on .this ground : that, if reason bo only tho procluct of irrational arid -mechanical causes, going ;back to somo illimitable past, al w; r -??£!j!™S 7°. rwa , r d to"some illimitable futiire',:;'aii'd accidentally 'in tho course of that endless chain producing for a brief moment in th6j history of the universo a few individuals capable of understanding the world in which tney Jived, what confidence could be placed in reason? What confidence could they placei; :in it "' if it was not for an y.-. : purpose : beyond merely its life preserving, or race preserving, qualities from which alone those theories had been brought into existence? Yet every day new scientific discoveries carried -us further and further ■ from.'this petty world in which we lived, and taught' us to reinterpret tho littlo surfoundings :in which we found ourselves; •

: "THE TRUST IN REASON. Was the reason which'had reached us, and was reaching us more and.'jnore, to be trustIf we took the other alternative, and said that we wero indeed' tho ■ possessors of a. power far in excess of that which was used for .purposes outside those for .which reason had been called into existence; if we were to call;.ourselves rational beings; understanding a,-rational world,-lie asked; could they.beliove ; that that reason-was ' njerely a product nf mccliaiiical forces, of gases'coalescing, ft . -world formed of unknown combinations of organic'particles, of the 1 creation of some process-'of hitherto undreamed of life? That was; the. conclusion'which lie-;thought was wholly; impossible, arid the contrary inference to which ho asked tl\eir assent was the inference to which more arid moro science and philosophy were driving people, and wero making,an apology for the theistic view of the world undreamea of in the time when tho human' outlook was narrowed by materialistic ignorance of the universe..: Mr. Balfour concluded as follows:— ■ and most imperfectly,. I have attempted-, to lay before you one argument, not;'perhaps, very easy of comprehension, but leading tip,', as I think, to a conclusion absolutely necessary if wo are to be:saved from a hopeless pessimism. .For my own part I cannot! conceive human society permanently deprived of the religious element—(cheers) — and, on the other hand, I'look to science far more thai? to the work of. statesmen, or to. tho creation of cpnstitutions, or to tho elaborations of social systems, or-to the study of sociology," I'look to science more' than anything else as tho great ameliorator of the .human lot in the future. (Cheers.) " If I had to believe that these two great powers were, indeed, in -immutable and perpetual antagonism, it would be impossible for mo to avoid that hopeloss despair which makes offort impossible, which deprives labour of all its fruit- for the future,, whether we live to seo it or not, which makes tho travail and struggle of mankind for. tho happy and better conditions of society utterly ucyond any reasonable expectations that we could form, and I at least should hardly think it Worth whilo to spend effort^to'wasto time in doing that which I know Would bo a fruitless task—namely, to make' a race such' as we" are, men such as ourselves, the forefathdrs' of futuro who arc to attempt the impossible task ;of either abandoning all religious outlook,iipon tho world or of rejecting all ministrations ■ of that science which more and moro I am driven to believe is the greatest mundano agent fer good," (Loud cneers.) , ' !