RELIGION AND SCIENCE

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 184, 2 May 1929, Page 12

RELIGION AND SCIENCE

NO NEED FOR CONFLICT. “Religion is essentially an experience. an attitude of thought, feeling, and will toward the greatest Reality believed to be in and behind the Universe. Theology defines that Reality and that attitude, and is mainly concerned with those supersensuous aspects of experience which are beyond the province of science,” says Mr. John Naylor,, in tlie ‘'United Methodist” “Like philosophy, theology seeks to interpret the meaning of the Universe. There need not be any conflict between them and science so long as they keep to their respective tasks. Conflict arises when they overstep each other’s landmarks and science assumes the role of philosophy and theology pronounces upon matters which can only be properly determined by scientific method. It is because theology has hitherto presunied to say so much about questions of astronomy and geoigy and biology, and has made so much of traditional beliefs concerning the processes of Nature, that she has so often been defeated in these conflicts. Religion and theology ought to nourish themselves on all truth, however discovered, and neither philosophy nor theology can afford to neglect any discovery of science. The grander the revelations of science, the more sublime will be the theology that comprehends them and the more robust will be the religion that looks up into the face of an infinite and eternal God of all truth. Science really is the handmaid of religion and should be honoured as such.”