CHAPTER VI
RELIGION AND SCIENCE
Science, then, commands our respect, not on the basis that its present assumptions and deductions are absolutely and for all time true, but on the ground that its method is for all time true—the method of discovery, the method of observation, research, experimentation, comparison, examination, testing, analysis and synthesis.
Maynard Shipley, "The War on Modern Science."
In the bare three and one-half centuries since modern science began, the churches had conducted an unremitting crusade against it. That much of this crusade had turned into a rear-guard action was due less to the weakness of the defenders of the faith than to the invulnerability of their non-resistant victim.
Horace M. Kallen, "Why Religion?"
Some sixty years ago in the "Dogmatic Constitution of the Catholic Faith," the Church stated, "But never can reason be rendered capable of thoroughly understanding mysteries as it does those truths which form its proper subject. We, therefore, pronounce false every assertion which is contrary to the enlightened truth of faith.... Hence, all the Christian faithful are not only forbidden to defend as legitimate conclusions of science those opinions which are known to be contrary to the doctrine of faith, especially when condemned by the Church, but are rather absolutely bound to hold them for errors wearing the deceitful appearance of truth. Let him be anathema....
"Who shall say that human sciences ought to be pursued in such a spirit of freedom that one may be allowed to hold true their assertions even when opposed to revealed doctrine."
Can anything stronger be said to discourage research, investigation, experiment, and retard progress? And only sixty years ago! It is but the restatement of what the Church has uttered so many times and for so long—that all knowledge, material as well as spiritual, is to be found in the Bible as interpreted by the Church. It was this myth which had stultified the mind of man for 1500 years (during the period in which the Church was dominant); it was this that had killed the urge to search and seek for the truth, which is the goal of all science, the means by which humanity is set on the road to progress. This was the damnable precept foisted on the minds of men which enslaved them throughout the ages, and from which we are just emerging. This was the precept that plunged the world into the Dark Ages, and retarded the advance of mankind for centuries.
This is the reason that it is utterly impossible for the intellectually honest scientist, and for that matter any individual, to reconcile science with religion. On the one hand, that of religion, we have the forces of intolerance, superstition, and the endeavor to besmirch, repress, and ridicule every advance favorable to mankind; to cloak with meaningless words obsolete rites, to stand in the way of human progress, because it does not permit men to think boldly and logically. Science, on the other hand, does not hesitate to tear down old conceptions, and has only one motive, the ultimate truth. Religion has the purpose of keeping the masses in the narrow and false path of only accepted doctrines. The true scientist is the man with the open mind, one who will discard the worthless and accept only the proven good. The religionist closes his mind to all facts which he is unwilling to believe, everything which will endanger his creed. Religion teaches the individual to place all hope, all desire, in a problematical hereafter. The stay on earth is so short compared to the everlasting life to come, that of what interest is this life; all things are vain. The misery, the suffering, of his fellow men leave him cold; he can only think of living in the light of his narrow creed so that he may gain his future reward. How well this philosophy has fitted in with the schemes of the select few for the control of the many!