RATIONALIST DEBATES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20563, 14 May 1930, Page 14

RATIONALIST DEBATES.

Sir, —The futility of it all! Td any thinking man or woman who attended the debate, I feel sure the obtained, spiritually or mentally, were nil, except in so far as it provided the Rationalist Association with an audience among which, willy nilly, there would undoubtedly bo a few receptive minds.The. Church, therefore, in its mistaken idea of defence, becomes an assistant in the opposite camp. Simple.

Sir, —The wisdom of those who refusS to debate with Rationalists, or to attend such debates, was demonstrated by tlie disgraceful doings at the debate last Sunday. And now " A.E.C." makes an attack on the chairman. . The ruling of the chairman was right, and " A.E.C." only shows his own ignorance by questioning it, and his unfairness by opposing it. " Moderato" is quite wrong in saying those speakers who debated with Mr.Langley and who raised after his lectures cut a very poor figure indeed. In truth, Sir. Langley was unquestionably defeated in debate. The question was: "Did Jesus Ever Live?" Mr. Langley " submitted that true analysis of tho Gospels left nothing of the human Jesus, but a Jewish carpenter of that name, whose activities led to his execution." That was an admission of tho real question at issue; unless Mr.Langley disapproves this view which he cited with approval. 0.1.C.

Sir, —I join with "Moderato" in his admiration of Mr. Langley as a ratiocinative thinker, but I disagree with the statement in his closing sentenco, .j* those speakers, reverend and otherwise, who debated with Sir. Langley . • / cut a very poor figure indeed." This was not at all the kind of liguro that Mr. Marsh cut on Sunday afternoon. He defended his position ably and well, and tho thanks of all creeds soon, maybe, to become one—are duo to him for many splendid enunciations, and not least for the declaration of his own standing. As I watched the vast audience disperse, after it had listened to tho chairman's dictum that such debates were inconclusive atd leu nowhere, it was borne in upon nie that, after all, it must be that- the apparently perfect human reasoning of the or.B contestant was set against the transcendental experience of the other, united m the case of the latter with the knowledge that Jesus lived and died and lives again. Edwin Gbeensmith, Morrinsville.