BRITISH ASSOCIATION

Waimate Daily Advertiser, Volume XXIII, 19 November 1923, Page 5

BRITISH ASSOCIATION

RELIGION AND SCIENCE. LONDON, Nov. 3. The British Association, while not meeting formally during the week-end, was nevertheless in evidence in many pulpits yesterday in Liverpool. Canon Barnes, Dr Jacks (editor of

■ Hibbert’s”) and Sir Oliver Lodge all dealt at length with the new cosmic theory. These three agreed in the view that we are at a moment in our development as critical as that when the great fight raged over Darwin’s research and they were equally agreed that there is no real antipathy between science and religion, and that we are—or should be — united in a faith based on the science presentation of truth. Canon Barnes, who is regarded as the foremost scientific thinker in the Church of England, emphasised the fact that this union is bound to proceed steadily as scientific method —its patent induction and readiness to admit divergent conceptional representation of observed facts, its absence of exaggeration, hostility to evasive language and abhorrence of argument—exerts greater and greater influence upon religious orthodoxy. Canon Barnes demands that religion shall be taught at the Universities with the same frankness, the same absence of unnecessary complication as students are accustomed to when they are being taught science. Especially, in his opinion, do undergraduates resent the use of archaic language which they suspect of being used in order to cloak dilemmas and awkward reservations. He was on debatable ground when he foretold the triumph of evangelicism, and said that we shall regain the evangelicalism of men like Wesley and Simeon, but it will be combined with that outlook on the world which modern science has constructed. Men of science can do much to help the community, he said, through the period of transition. They should show how in their minds Christianity and science interact, but it is unreasonable to demand that their language should be orthodox. Dr Jack’s dictum was: “A great deal of what is now offered us as religion consists not of what is believed, but of something that somebody wants us to belive.” He holds that both science and religion must give up defining their boundaries, because neither has a boundary, but that religion will have to take a leaf out of the book of science by abolishing, or at any rate curbing, oratory—“a malign influence.” Sir Oliver Lodge linked all up with the new conception of the atom. Religion, mances of the peerage than this one, view of the universe than any which religion gave the world in the past. Our Stellar System is the Milky Way consisting of millions of worlds, but beyond and away in the depths of space are other systems perhaps as large as this, perhaps larger, and so on without end.

This is a revelation of the infinitely big. Then there is the revelation of the infi nitely small—the atom and its structure. The atom Jias pow delivered tip it§ secret, and the discovery is quite recent that the same system of law and order reigning through the heavens holds equally in the interior of the atom, so that there is an atomic astronomy growing Up be fore our eyes leading us to wonder if there is any limit to smallness any more than there is any limit to bigness. Among all the immensities of his own antiquity and of the preparation which this planet has gone through to be his dwelling-place, man (observed Sir Oliver Lodge) may appear insignificant. He is hampered by his animal ancestry. He has much to contend against and overcome. Sometimes he seems evil and ugly. But he is immature, and unfinished things are often ugly. ‘‘Man,” he proceeded, “is a comparatively recent comer to the conflict, and is far from perfect, but he has in him the seeds of majesty. “He is a being endowed with free will, not a machine constrained to go right. If he had not the power to do wrong he would have no kinship with divinity. “He has infinite possibilities of development. and when the work is complete through the slow process of the ages, we shall see that the product is worth all the labour and sacrifice and pain which have been necessary to bring it about.” And his faith in life after death appears in his conclusion:— “As we are immortal beings we shall see this development and rejoice in it in the fullness of time.”