DAY BY DAY.

Waikato Times, Volume 103, Issue 17411, 25 May 1928, Page 6

DAY BY DAY.

The assertion that science finds no evidence to support the

Science and Religion.

theory of the survival of the spirit after the death of the brain was hound

to bring a storm of controversy about the head of the president of the Royal Society. The bounds of man’s knowledge of material things arc ever widening, and discovery after discovery of science tells us more and more of the structure of the universe, the processes of life, the laws that govern every natural phenomenon. The limits of the universe have'been defined, hut only that we might find more universes beyond. The smallest conceivable particle of matter has been divided up, only to reveal a new ultimate of minuteness beyond. And while the horizons have been receding man has accumulated an incessantly increasing knowledge of matter in all its and all its manifestations. He discovers origins, hut remains uncontcnt, there must still be origins, and his inquiring mind bids him apply himself to the search for them. For the scientist there* can be no rest, because there is no end to his labours. For him there is no true ultimate. If his soul would find peace lie must turn from science to pure philosophy or to religion—to philosophy because the philosopher may frame lor himself a complete theory of life and live within if, to religion because there the end is attained by faith and not by endeavour. There is no conflict in fact between science and religion, nor can there ever be, and since there can be no conflict there can be no reconciliation of science and religion. When human knowledge of material things is complete, science and religion will be one. It is because human knowledge is not complete that the scientists and the professors of religion differ so often and so widely, and as a rule the controversies end in the confession of the disputants that they have been arguing about different things. Sir Arthur Keith offered the obvious reply to the attacks that were made upon him when he said that he was engaged in the investigation of purely material things, and that his statements of the scientific view of the brain did not tend to destroy belief in immortality. A scientist would bo the last to assert that the absence of evidence of a fact or an idea is proof of the nonexistence of Hie fact or of the falseness of the idea. The physicist deals with force and matter, both of which he believes or knows to be indesstructible. But he does not and could not logically declare that these and these alone arc immortal. Matter itself is a manifestation of force, and force itself may be a manifestation of some force-origin still to be discovered by man. Religion, by faith, and philosophy, by contemplation, arrive at the ultimate to which science is for ever striving to attain; and because science, though it flies on the wings of thought can never hope to reach infinity*, it is well for men that philosophy and religion are at hand to afford rest and peace to the weary.—Lyttelton Times.