SCIENCE AND RELIGION

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 76, Issue 122, 26 May 1933, Page 11

SCIENCE AND RELIGION

CHANGES IN OUTLOOK ELIMINATING DIFFERENCES RIGHTFUL PLACE OF FAITH “Idle public mind is still largely dominated by an amalgam of emotion and Victorian science, and most people aro ignorant of the vast changes in scientific outlook now occurring, changes which are making it much easier to be both scientific and religious,” said the Rev. H. K. Archdall, headmaster of King’s College, at the Auckland Town Hall concert chamber, when he gave the third of the series of addresses arranged by the Auckland Council of Christian Congregations. Sir George Richardson presided over a large attendance. Tho speaker referred to the marvellous advance in scientific knowledge as the outstanding fact about our age. Yet we were suffering from cultural disorders, which threatened the very existence of our civilisation. This was due largely to over-confident specialisms and to the fact that the natural sciences had received more attention than the social sciences. But we were now entering on an age of reconstruction in science, as in many other aspects of life. Meaning of Evolution It was desirable first to realise that a classification of the sciences was necessary so that people could understand the relative validity of the ideas employed in the different sciences. Otherwise the splendid tools which the sciences gave us might, like machinery, crush us rather than emancipate us. 1 The lecturer dealt with the meaning of evolution and contended that it was foolish of some religrous people to fancy that the idea of evolution was necessarily against religion. The trouble was not with the scientists, but with half-baked philosophy, which fancied that out of primordial protoplasm with a fixed and changeless environment all the splendour of the world could be accounted for. The search for the ultimate principle of co-relation in the universe was not finished by any or the sciences, continued the speaker. The human mind would sink back, overshadowed by the vastness of nature, unless it found itself in the world of spirit, to which we found ourselves inevitably introduced in our experience of the absolute values of trutn, beauty and goodness. The step into a belief in this world of spirit was a matter of faith, but so was every stop in the series of the sciences by which the mind of man rose from an abstraction to a point of view more concrete, to an explanation which took account of more of our experiences. Rational Nature of Faith If there was a science of faith, there was also a faith of science. All the fundamental ideas used in science, such as continuity and unity, were examples of such faith. It was the creative effect of belief in God as the source and origin of the worlds of fact and of value that made religious

faith the most rational act a man could perform. In conclusion, Mr. Archdall pointed out the many services to religion which science had renaered, and did render, and said that civilisation only be healthy when we made our own of something which the saint, the scientist and the artist found in experience. He quoted extensively from works of men of,science and ended by quoting Whitehead’s statement from his book, “Science in the Modern World,” to the effect that the fact of religious vision and Its history of persistent expansion was our one ground of optimism.