SCIENCE AND FAITH.

Taranaki Daily News, 23 August 1930, Page 17 (Supplement)

SCIENCE AND FAITH.

COMING TO TERMS.

(Rev. B. Dudley, F.R.A.S.)

Cabled news reports that the Lambeth Conference, attended by 309 bis-

hops from all parts of the world, passed no less than 75 resolutions “dealing with matters of doctrine and church organisation in relation to current social and scientific questions.” The prominence thus given to such subjects hints at the extreme importance which that august assembly attaches to them, and its wish to bring about as soon as possible a. genuine alignment between modern scientific inquiry and religious ‘thought. . On the part of the general public, in so far as it thinks at all about these matters, there exists a feeling that the time is more than ripe for this approach. On the one side, scientists have had to change, their opinions about

many things by reason, of a more candid examination of the facte of the. natural world. Nor han the change disturbed our -belief in science or the leaders of scientific thought. All are dis- 1 coverers and searchers. And the number of theologians who regard themselves as searchers and inquirers, rather than oracle-makers who can speak with finality on religious questions, is rapidly increasing. It is most unfortunate that the church has in the past too often stood in the way of progress in knowledge, exhibiting a spirit of bitter hostility toward scientific inquiry. Equally unhappy is- it to reflect upon that science has sometimes forgotten its role, and taken too keen a delight in deriding the deep convictions of religious people. It has Deen pointed out that the antipathy of the church in earlier centuries to science was due in part to the then prevailing belief in the imminent end of the age. A study of the world 'that was about to pass away, with the fashion thereof, was thought to be foolish, or, at all events, not worth while; it was a waste of precious time.

There .was another cause of this indifference to what nve should call scientific inquiry. This was the antagonism of the church to “ancient learning”.in general. Some. of. that ancient learning was doubtless nothing but the profane, jargon? of falsely knowledge that one of the New Testament writers described it to be. There was good reason why it should be looked upon with suspicion and hatred. It' is not to be wondered at if this feeling was carried to an extreme. As Professor Cadoux says, “Many . Christians, in their eager desire to keep their minds untainted by the corruptions of heathenism, shut their eyes deliberately and avowedly to all considerations of knowledge or reason and entrenched themselves in a pious obscurantism/' Far wiser is it to try and explain this opposition of the church to the pursuit of nature than to blame its leaders. They were convinced they were right. And it is for us in these more enlightened days, vzith our greater facilities and opportunities, to be generous in judging them. That they were sometimes to blame, even, is admitted, but this was not always the case bj r any means.

Take, for example, the “’new cosmogony,” as it had once jto be called. 'lt is not to be wondered .at that the Copernican astronomy fell on men like .a bolt from the blue. From the very earliest times men had believed that the Earth was the centre of the Universe, fixed and .unmovable, and that in the interests of man, the sun, the moon, the stars, and all the mighty host of heaven were set' to give light to the Earth. The. early Church simply adopted this’ view and worked it into the whole : theological scheme. How could it do otherwise? Quite, naturally when Copernicus put forth his doctrine that the Earth was movable and actually voyaged round the sun, he disturbed well-established convictions, and his teachings were denounced as subversive of religion. In this denunciation the leaders of religion, though misguided, were - not rogues.

I In due time, or rather in a somewhat belated time, there was a change of outlook on the part of the Church. The time-spirit had wrought many changes. The creeds were drawn up in the sixteenth century, but were by this time beginning to undergo "a new interpretation in the minds of thinking men. It was not to be expected that the older views would give place to the new at a leap, which they certainly did not do. Scientists were often slow. Theologians were often more tardy still in adopting the new in place of the old. But eventually a more inquiring attitude took possession of the leaders in both departments. To-day, fortunately, a more scientific attitude is taken up by the leaders of theological thought everywhere. Only a comparatively email, though often very, emphatic, minority are malingerers in this .respect. " These, largely for sentimental reasons, cannot be persuaded to look favourably upon anything that makes for modification of opinion. Wrong views of the' meaning and functions of the Bible, deeply engrained teaching, personal preference, misunderstanding, and agitation on the part of the diehards account for their anti-modernist attitude. As Dean Inge said in his presidential address to the Conference of Modern Churchmen on the “Scientific Approach to Religion,” held in 1924, “the new desire for mutual understanding between science and religion, the weakening of the old dogmatism on both sides is a most happy feature of our generation.” “Think,” he added, “how impossible such a meeting as this would have been a hundred or even fifty years ago.” There has been a weakening of dogmatism on both sides. In the latter half of the 19th century science and religion were, generally speaking, mutually hostile. Many of the greatest j men of science were profoundly religious, and many leading churchmen I wore broad and tolerant in their at- , titude to science, and deeply sym- , pathetic to scientific progress. Yet it j is to be confessed that the common . feeling between science and religion was that of opposition. Now, however, there is a happier state of thinga to contemplate. jf - ■ ■<"' . .