ANGEL OR APE ?

Greymouth Evening Star, 28 October 1932, Page 4

ANGEL OR APE ?

CONFLICT ON MAN’S ORIGIN

YORK, September 4. Scientists, educationists, and men of letters, who are here for the meetings of the British Association, attended with the Lord Mayor and Sheriff a special service in York Minster this morning. They listened with interest to a sermon preached by the Dean oi: Exeter (Dr. W. R. Matthews), in which he pleaded for a better understanding and a spirit of closer co-operation between scientists and theologians. The universe as disclosed by science showed mankind as a negligible fraction of the whole total of existence, and as children not of rhe creative mind, but of the unguided processes of the known world. Even more startling had been the conclusion which science forced upon us concerning the origin of man.

“I will not join in the chorus that seeks to condemn and deride the theology of the Victorian age for resisting Darwin’s theory of evolution,” continued the Dean. ' ‘‘Thw theologians did not oppose Darwin on the ground of imperfections in the theory. Their real reason was that they felt that a revolutionary change was being threatened in the status of man. THE CRUDE ANTITHESIS “Fallen angel or risen ape?’ was the crude but not wholly false way of stating the antithesis between the traditional religious view of man and the new scientific conception. No change in scientific ideas, I suppose, will ever make it possible to return to the opinions of pre-scientilic religion of the origin of man. Whatever be the details of the process, we must think of him as the product, of an evolutionary process.

“What is man? we are asked, and the scientists’ reply is that he is a species of ape. until at last we reach the statement that he is perhaps a rather complex knot in space-time.” j Continuing. Dr. Matthews said Hint science. like all other spiritual quests, had had its heroes and martyrs for the faith. The Church should recognise more frankly and completely that scientific research might be a spiritual and religious activity. “Permit me to say on the other side."said the Dean. “that science needs to become more fully conscious of its vocation and to realise th© implications of its spiritual nature. We are thankful for the writings of such men as Jeans, Eddington. Whitehead, and many others who have advanced our knowledge of the central problems ot existence and have given us the results of their reflections on the spiritual ideals, hopes, and beliefs of men. We cannot have too much of this kind of co-operation. “Bui I must be allowed Io say that (Imre are oilier scientific num whose essays on theology jusily cause indignation in die minds of religious peoplel, (here are some who make slapdash pronouncements on the great problems of religion with, it would seem, little reflection.

“We shall gain no light from those who dogmatise about religion, never having read a, book of modern theology, and who attempt to determine grave issues of spiritual philosophy equipped only with an experl knowledge of imifhomatof p.ny

eiioiogy ami Hie memory of that version of religion which they learned from their grandmothers.”