DR. BARNES ON ATHEISM

Greymouth Evening Star, 29 July 1932, Page 8

DR. BARNES ON ATHEISM

PURPOSIVE MIND BEHIND LIFE. . LEEDS, June 13. A remarkable refutation of the theory that the universe is governed solely by mechanical laws was made to-day by Dr. Barnes, Bishop of Birmingham, when preaching to the students of Leeds University. Though ho believed in the_ pnn■ciples of evolution, the Bishop insisted that the mind of man was not the product of chemical or physiological laws. Unless all human . endeavour was to be dismissed as fruitless, there must be behind it some Conti oiling Mind from whom such purpose proceeds. “What reasons have we for believing,” asked Dr. Barnes, “that the Universe is not a blind mechanism but that, on the contrary, it has evolved under the influence of purposive mind? Why, in brief, should we be tlieists rather than atheists?”

The question had peculiar interest at the present time inasmuch as the Soviet Government included atheism among the set of ideas which is sought to spread through the world. We must allow that a religious orthodoxy was integral to the Czarist regime, and that it did little or nothing for social righteousness. Soviet atheism was partly a recoil from the beliefs of the Czarist system, and partly duo to a conviction that the discoveries of modern science proved the Universe was a blind mechanism. This point of view became widespread shortly after Darwin’s theory of evolution was propounded. Huxley championed his teaching and maintained that mind was but a by-product of material changes. FURTHER THAN DARWIN. “Most men of science to-day would go further than Darwin,” ’ said Dr. Barnes. “They would allow that the primitive forms of life, from which we are descended, themselves arose from non-living matter, under conditions favourable to the production of complex chemical molecules, at a relatively early, stage of the earth’s history. “As the beginning of this history, we

can, with reasonable confidence, assert that the earth was torn from the sun between two and foui- thousand -million years ago. It gradually cooled, and possibly 2000 million years ago primitive living organisms emerged. From them through the apes, we have been, evolved.”

At first sight this scheme seemed capable of a purely mechanical exilanation. It might be argued that the nature of living organisms was determined by the materials composing them and that our mental processes were due to physico-chemical changes in oui' bodies, and that oui- thoughts and aspirations owed their origin to these changes just as certain bright colours were derived from coal tar. But the secret of living tissue still evaded those who would find it. To watch the process of cell division under a microscope was to see what was to be likened rather to a miracle than to an element of a mechanistic scheme. And passing from life- to mind, to assert that mind had emerged as a by-pro-duct of material change was to pass f far beyond all evidence.

Dr. Barnes continued: “The strongest, and, to my thinking, the complete and final answer to the view' that mind is a mere epiphenomenon of material Change lies in the fact that, if this view be correct, all human purpose must be dismissed as vain. Our endeavour to find truth and our aspirations after righteousness become mere illusions.

“Surely one has only to state such nonsense to reject it as valueless. But, if we once allow r that mind in man can manifest purposive activity, the whole mechanistic scheme of the universe collapses.

There must lie behind the evolutionary process some controlling mind trom Whom such purpose proceeded. 2_key were thus led to the idea of God. Tho Creative Mind, far surpassing, but not wholly unlike the mind of man, in the beginning made the matter of which (lie universe was built.”