Religion and science as allies; or, Similarities of physical and religious knowledge

Front matter

©jfjtp ©Winjjt ^0

Shelf -.uB-S-"

UNITEB STATES OF AMERICA.

Introduction

PAGE

The Present Antagonism of Science and ReHgion. — Hurtfulness of it. — Need of a Reconciliation between them. — Proposed Method of effecting this, which constitutes the Object of this Book 7

Chapter I

What is Science ? — What is Religion ? — No Necessary and Rightful Antagonism between them, when fully understood . 16

Chapter II

Causes of the Actual Antagonism of the Scientific and the Religious Worlds. — Ignorance of themselves. — Ignorance of each other. — Science confounded with Metaphysics and Various Speculations. — Religion confounded with Ecclesiastical Organizations and Theological Systems . . .25

Chapter III

The Claim of Religion to possess Exclusive Information, and, consequently, a Rightful Sovereignty of Knowledge. — Human Conditions and Fallible Character of Religion. — Divine Origin of Science. — Help and Correction received by Re-

from Science 44

Q CONTENTS.

Chapter IV. Pag*

The Claims of Science to possess Exclusive Information and Rightful Sovereignty of the Realm of Knowledge. — The Faiths of Science. — Grounds and Methods.— Scientific Employment of Intuition, Testimony, Authority, Analogy, and Hypothesis, and Frequent Lack of Verification . . .66

CHAPTER VIII. Conclusion. — Science and Religion as FellowvLaborers in the

Divine Service 220

PHYSICAL Al^D RELIGIOUS KNOWLEDGE.

INTKODUCTION.

The conflict now going on between the physical discoveries and theories of these latter days, and the forms of faith which have hitherto ruled the mind of Christendom, is one of the most noticeable phenomena of the intellectual movement of the times. The constant discussions from pulpit and platform, the numerous essays, pamphlets, and books, in which these two opponents are arrayed one against the other, and attack, defense, or effort at reconciliation made, allow no intelligent man or woman to remain unaware of the controversy.

It is a fact, so notorious that we need specify no particular instances uor details, that, by a large part of the Church, modern science is looked upon as a godless and blind teacher, a sacrilegious intruder upon the domain of revealed truth, and that, among almost all denominations and phases of religious thought, there has been more or less suspicion, jealousy, and abuse of physical investigation. It is a fact almost equally patent that, on the part of science likewise, among many, at least, of its representatives, there is a similar hostility entertained toward religion, and that not only all ecclesiastical organizations, but all spiritual faith and principles, are looked upon as their natural foes.

Now, this present antagonism of religion and science is a matter which may justly give concern, I believe, to all who have at heart the welfare of either. It is becoming quite plain to all clear-sighted observers that religion certainly cannot afford the continuance of any such quarrel.

" The problem of our age," said Archdeacon Hare, in his life of Sterling, " is to reconcile faith with knowledge, philosophy with religion. The men of our age will not believe unless you prove to them that what they are called upon to believe does not contradict the laws of their minds, and that it rests upon a solid and unshaken foundation."

In former conflicts, the struggle had been to preserve the Church from division, or the orthodox doctrine from aberrations or perversions.

In the present controversy, the debate concerns the fundamental ideas of religion. Twenty-five years ago Dr. Newman said to a sectarian controversialist, "Let us discuss the prospects of Christianity itself, instead of the differences between Anglican and Catholic." To-day such a change of front is still more necessary. More than ever be-

INTRODUCTION. 9

fore it is the citadel of Christianity, rather than her outposts, that needs to be defended. The wise Christian will turn his arms from these petty skirmishes about tapers and genuflexions, millinery of priests and wording of creeds, the sense of Hebrew numerals and the supernatural efficacy of drops of water, to ward off the blows of a nearer enemy — an invader who is pushing his way already with uplifted battle-axe into the Holy of Holies.

In former assaults upon religion, it was cynics, and worldlings, and doubters of every thing, who led the attack. Jest and jibe, scoif and sneer, were the favorite weapons of attack. Believers had only to stand firm in courage and patience on the unassailed foundations of their faith, and the strong currents of man's instinctive yearnings would before long turn the tide of popular opinion the other way, and bring the Church safely through its peril. To-day, however, the objections presented against religion are brought forward in no frivolous spirit, from no mere feverish mental excitability or love of innovation, but in the sincerity of an earnest loyalty to truth, out of a serious desire to get at the reality of things, through all illusions and at all risks. It is not ridicule, but reason, that leads the assault. The weapons are not the clown's bells and grinning mask, but the astionomer's spectroscope, the biologist's flask. The scales in which Christianity would now be tested are not those of universal skepticism, but of cautious, critical weighing of historic evidence and scientific proof. This method, of course, is a slower one than that of the French encyclopedists. Religion has not to fear that any such rapid and radical revolution can now occur in the belief of Christendom as was wrought in France in the last quarter of the eighteenth century. But it is a much more dangerous course to its adversary. The ground it gains it keeps. Like an Alpine glacier, its slow, gigantic plane grinds to powder the most flinty obstructions, and never loses a foot of ground that it has once taken. For four hundred years Science has driven the Church from post to post. The sphericity or the flatness of the earth, the mobility or stationariness of the globe, the six days' creation, the six thousand years' age of the world and of man, the universal deluge — these all have been battle-fields where the scientist and the ecclesiastic have met in conflict, and in every engagement it has been the ecclesiastic that has been worsted, and the scientist that has been victorious. The result is, that science to-day holds such a position that the belief of the next century may be said to lie in its hands. The facts that its distinguished savans establish to-day, in six months will be read in every newspaper and magazine in the civilized world ; in ten years will be incorporated in our school-books, and planted in the forming minds of our children ; in thirty years will be the creed of every educated man; and, before a century has passed, will be the universal belief of all classes. If Christianity cannot harmonize

INTB OB UCTION. 1 1

nerself with science, it is much to be feared that the fate of the Ptolemaic system of the universe will, at no very distant period, be hers ; at least, no one can doubt that the future of Religion would be vastly more sure and prosperous if she could make science an ally instead of a rival.

Nor for science, either, is it a matter of indifference what its relation toward religion is. While science stands, or is believed to stand, in an attitude of hostility to religion, it carries an unnecessary burden, which impedes no little its progress. The antagonism, whether it be real or only supposed, weakens its power and circumscribes its sphere of influence. It diverts its attention from its proper work to uncalled-for polemics. It vitiates the impartiality of judgment and equanimity of temperament which are required of it. Moreover, it is only, I venture to say, when science can gain the inspiration of the religious spirit, and be led forward and upward by such a conviction as animated Kepler, that, in tracing out the laws of Nature, he was thinking God's thoughts after him — it is only when pursued in this mood, I believe, that science can do its best work.

To bring, then, these two poles of modern thought into harmonious relations with each other, is a work of prime importance. On it depend the integrity and coordination of those two factors of man's higher existence — the aspirations of his soul and the perceptions of his intellect — for whose development all other things are but instrumentalities. It is one of those questions that cannot be discussed too much. It may be worn threadbare, but it cannot be shoved out of sight. The multitude of writings and publications concerning it but show how profound and universal is the interest in it. It is because of this interest that I venture to contribute a few thoughts, designed, if possible, to clear up some of the complications and remove some of the oppositions of the controversy. My purpose is not, I wish it to be understood, to smooth over any real difficulties, to bridge any natural hiatuses, or to accommodate or compromise any inherent antagonisms. Such work is always, I believe, useless, if not mischievous. Nor is it to do, what so many have essayed, to show detailed coincidences or particular correspondences between the present results of science and the testimony of the Scriptures ; to demonstrate how the six days of creation answer to the epochs of modern geology ; to exhibit the agreement of ethnography with mankind's descent from a single couple; to illustrate by modern hygiene the wisdom of the Levitical regulations ; or to disclose, in expressions of Job, or David, or Isaiah, anticipations of modern discoveries. A flexile and ingenious interpreter, not over-scrupulous about twisting words and forcing facts, can always do this. As Prof. Huxley has said, " One never knows what exegetic ingenuity may make of the original Hebrew." In that grand storehouse of thought and imagination, that vener-

INTRODUCTION. 13

able encyclopaedia of all the poetry, science, history, and philosophy, in which the Jewish mind flowered under the inspiration of the Spirit of God, in that Bible whose original and proper name, we should always remember, is, the Books (ra fitflXia), not the Book — in that grand storehouse it is always possible to find plenty of parallels, more or less strong, for almost every conceivable notion. Each past generation has found there its favorite theories : in Tertullian's age, the materiality of the soul ; in Augustine's, the flatness of the earth ; in the time of the schoolmen, the Aristotelian philosophy : fifty years ago, the cataclysmal systems of geology, the Cuvierian distinction of species, the creation from the dust and primitive enlightenment of man by direct exertion of supernatural power ; to-day, it is but little more difficult to find in the same pages authority or allowance for the nebular hypothesis, the evolution theory, and the savage if not animal origin of civilized man ; 1 to-morrow, again, the same method of interpretation may show the coincidence of the Scriptures with whatever newer discovery Science may have made, or imagined that she has made. The

1 The Rev. Mr. Mahin, for instance, in a communication to The Popular Science Monthly, p. 48*7, August, lS^S, says : " Even the modern doctrine of evolution — Darwinism, if you please — is as nearly taught in the first chapter of Genesis as in the revelations of modern science ; and spontaneous generation seems to appear on the very face of the statements of Moses as therein recorded. Read verses 20 and 24 : ' And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly, 1 etc. 'And God said, Let the earth bring forth,' etc."

hunting up of such correspondences is of very little value for any permanent reconciliation between science and religion. As the Dean of Canterbury, Dr. Payne Smith, has well said, 1 " If the wisest geologist of our days could show that there was an exact agreement between geology and the Bible, it would rather disprove than prove its truth. For, as geology is a growing science, it would prove the agreement of the Bible with that which is receiving daily additions, and is constantly undergoing modification, and ten years hence the two would be at hopeless variance." The closer the coincidence happens to be shown in this present hour, the sooner it is likely disagreement will be revealed by the advancement of science, and the present interpretation of the sacred text become obsolete and require revision. The continual varying of her interpretation, and shifting of her ground, to which Keligion is necessitated, when by this method it seeks reconciliation with physical knowledge, inevitably throws discredit upon her. It makes Faith appear as a defendant, continually obliged to Science for permission to live ; as a satellite reflecting the varying phases of the scientific primary, rather than as an independent power — the central, self-subsistent Sun of Righteousness.

My aim, then, contemplates none of these objects or methods. It is, instead, looking at religion and science in their broadest and most essential features,

1 P. 175, " Modern Skepticism," Lectures of the Christian Evidence Society.

INTR OB UCTION. \ 5

to set forth the underlying unities of physical and religious knowledge ; the common foundations on which they really rest ; the similarities of methods, objects, and general results, which exist between them, and the actual identity of interests which binds them together, and which should be acknowledged in word, thought, and action.

Chapter I. No Necessary Antagonism Between Science And Religion

Is there any necessary antagonism between Science and Religion ?

This is the first and main question in determining their relations. This is the question which all well-wishers of either ought carefully to examine. For myself, I find the most thorough search showing an entire absence of any essential incompatibility. An apparent and de facto conflict exists, and has existed for centuries. But there is no required and rightful opposition. For if we look straight at them, endeavoring to distinguish them from the many other things that have borne their names and claimed their dignities, what are they ? What, in strictness, is science ? What, exactly, is religion ? There are no authoritative definitions of either. There is, probably, no unanimous agreement in either the scientific world or the religious world as to the signification of either term. Many and various definitions have been proposed. There are few that are not imperfect. After a careful considera-

NO NECESSARY ANTAGONISM. 17

tion, I think I may say, however, that the following ought to he accepted, as at least dealing fairly with both sides in the present question :

For science, there are, in the present day, two chief significations, differing, however, only in extent. In its broader sense it signifies all systematized and trustworthy knowledge. It takes, as its held, all that can be known with reasonable certainty, and affiliated with previous knowledge into a consistent whole. In its narrower and more -special sense, science, in modern times, has come to be restricted to that portion of systematized and certain knowledge which can be gained by a study of the physical universe.

Religion has also two main significations : 1. In its most general significance it is the expression of mail's spiritual nature awakening to spiritual tilings. As the spiritual nature manifests itself in the \ arious channels of the human organism, this expression takes on various forms. Manifested through the intellect, it gives us religious knowledge or belief ; through the heart, religious sentiments and attractions ; through the executive organs, religious worship and action. This expression of the spiritual nature varies, of course, in strength, clearness, and elevation. In some, especially in savage races and early times, it is gross and feeble ; in others it is intense, pure, and lofty. Primitively, it gave very likely only a sense of occult intelligent energies, animating the man, the cloud, the wind, the sky, looked upon with fear, placated, shunned, or defied ; ultimately, it rises to a recognition of a moral and spiritual being in man capable of eternal existence, and attains also a sense of an Infinite and Creative Spirit, on whom man is dependent, and to whom he owes gratitude, obedience, and reverence.

This is the broader signification of religion.

2. In a more special sense it is restricted to the particular beliefs or knowledges attained to in this unfolding of the spiritual nature. As these beliefs or knowledges form the justification for the sentiments and action which constitute the rest of religion, the first come to be spoken of as the whole of religion. Of these beliefs, some are inessential, some essential. Where the line should be drawn has been hotly disputed, and every one, almost, makes a different enumeration. It seems to me that only three can be properly regarded as necessary to the very existence of religion :

1. Belief in a soul within man.

2. Belief in a sovereign Over-soul without.

3. Belief in actual or possible relations between them.

Now, if the significations of science and religion may be taken to be substantially such as they have just been given, there is certainly no rightful antagonism between them.

Looking at the relations of the two from the

NO NECESSAR Y ANT A G ONISM 1<J

point of view of the first definition of science, i. e., systematized knowledge in general, then religion in its first signification, as the expression of man's spiritual nature, would be just a part of the facts which science is to study and systematize. The sentiments of gratitude and aspiration, the peculiarities of worship, the forms of belief which religious history exhibits, are just as much phenomena of the world, just as much facts of the Kosmos, as the markings of a flower or the transformation of a butterfly. Nay, they are the noblest and the most significant of phenomena, and Science could never claim to be complete if it did not receive them as a subject of inquiry and systeinatization. The result of such an inquiry and systeinatization of spiritual facts would constitute religious science. Religion, in the more special sense, "the particular knowledges or beliefs attained to by the awakening of man's spiritual nature," more or less coincides with this, and forms a subdivision of science, just in the degree that its doctrines are valid and systematically coordinated with each other and the facts which were their data. Normally, then, science is not complete till religion, in its general signification, becomes one of its objects of investigation, and, in its special signification, becomes a part of science itself. Science can no more have grounds for a quarrel with religion than she can have grounds for a quarrel with the phenomena of atomic affinity, molecular vibration and molar attraction and repulsion, or be at odds with the systematization of these phenomena into laws of chemistry and electricity, and with the inferring from them of chemical and electrical forces as causes. If the phenomena of religion appear incongruous with other phenomena, they are not therefore to be denied, or ignored, or ridiculed, but studied with the more care, as likely to reveal new laws and causes. If the laws and causes at present assigned to them seem erroneously inferred, it is the business of Science to assist Religion in making a better systematization of her facts.

Looking at the question next from the stand-point of the more special sense of science, the systematized knowledge derived from the study of the physical universe, then religion, both in its general and special sense, would, to a certain extent, stand outside of science. Science and religion would each have in a certain sense separate fields, or rather separate beginnings and points of view. They would not then be antagonistic, but supplementary. If, now, looking at different realms of the Kosmos, they should both come to the same result on any point, such as the existence of God or the soul, the agreement of such independent investigations would have especial weight. But, if they should fail to see exactly the same thing, this would not put them into antagonism, but rather would be what we should expect. Diverse posts of observation naturally give diverse views, especially when the subject of study, as in this case, is immense and complex. Positive

NO NECESSAR Y ANTA G ONISM. 21

testimony, of course, would have to be received from both, and united as well as might .be. But negative testimony from one side would be of no avail to contradict the positive testimony from the other. Because the touch feels none of the soundvibrations of the air, this throws no discredit on the testimony of the ear that it hears sounds. The fact that the eye sees no odor come from the flower establishes no antagonism between it and the olfactory organ that smells it. If physical science -reports that, neither by the balance, the dissecting-knife, nor the lens, it has found trace of any spiritual Being, this no more disproves the direct testimony of the religious faculties, that by their methods and organs they do find it, than the inability of the spiritual faculties to discover the laws of motion and matter disproves the testimony of science to them. If the investigation of Nature should not disclose anywhere (though I believe it does everywhere) evidence of a First Cause, this would no more contradict religion than the failure of religion to disclose the secondary causes of phenomena contradicts science. The word of each is good for its own account, and in its own sphere. Contradiction, and necessary antagonism, would arise only by one establishing the non-existence of the other's domain, and the entire fictitiousness of the sources of knowledge it claims, a thing which either of the two would have to step squarely outside of its own proper field even to begin to attempt.

Modern physical science, especially, could not rightfully essay this, for one of its cardinal principles is the unity of the whole universe, the latent truth and reality of all persistent forces. In point of fact, the extreme outcome of modern scientific researches essays no disproof of the religious theories of the woi Id, nor any demonstration that there is no Grod in the world, nor soul in man, but simply presents a confession of the insufficiency of physical inquiry to attain, as yet, by inductive methods, a similar result. Nay, it does not seek to deny, but it openly avows, that there is an infinite mystery behind and beneath all the phenomena which it studies, all the laws it has formulated, all the secondary causes it has reached. Some men of science, it is true, from this inability of their own processes, as yet, to fathom the mystery, deny that any method or faculty can fathom it. But this is no correct inference. It is, instead, a groundless, a thoroughly unscientific assumption. It is the faith of science that progress in knowledge is unending. The man of science must be always seeking. To identify the limit where progress is at present arrested with the absolute limit of possible knowledge is opposed to the whole spirit of modern inquiry. Nor, if Science concludes that its own methods and instruments are unavailing to reach religious truth, is that a reason for rejecting also the testimony which the spiritual faculties have from of old given to spiritual things? Eather, it is an admonition to the earnest seeker to turn in preference to this other oracle as the proper interpreter

NO NECESSAR Y ANT A ONISM. 9 3

of the divine mysteries, and the better guide to its treasures.

From the scientific stand-point, then, there is no rightful quarrel between Science and Religion.

Is there any from the religious stand-point? What is there in this expression of man's spiritual nature, in any of its legitimate manifestations, that demands of it to draw a sword against knowledge of any kind ? Which one of these expressions of the spiritual nature is it that needs to fight physical science ? Is it love, aspiration, reverence, self-sacrifice, or any other of the religious sentiments ? Is it philanthropy, purity, justice, consecration, or any other element of the religious life? Surely, none of these may properly eonabjat science. Nor has the intellectual expression of the spiritual nature, the fundamental beliefs which, in a special sense, are called religion, any better reason for opposition to science. For the religious believer, just in proportion to the strength of his belief in the Creative Power, the Divine Omnipotence and Omnipresence, must believe that Nature is no independent power, man's perceptive and reasoning faculties no unmeaning or deceptive instruments, but that both physical and human nature are works of God, existing as he wishes them to exist, reflecting his mind and purposes, and therefore trustworthy witnesses of him. ISTo opening of men's eyes to the facts of the world, no disclosing of the actual methods and laws of the Creation, can do any thing else (so the truly religious should believe) than reveal the more clearly the existence and character of their Maker. It may reveal him as acting in ways that we had not supposed. It may compel Theology to revise its schemes. But this revision Religion must look upon as received from God's own hand, and simply bringing us nearer the divine reality and truth. He who confounds the march of intellect with the operations of the devil, evidently inclines to trace his own origin to Satan rather than to believe the word of Scripture, that man was made in the image of God, and that God saw all the works that he had made, and behold they were good. To the intelligent Theist, the record which the geologist deciphers in the rocks is a revelation written by the same divine finger as that other revelation which the theologian reads in the Psalms of David or the letters of Paul. To the enlightened Christian there is truth to be learned about God everywhere in the material and moral universe ; and no religious studies can be regarded as complete or satisfactory that neglect or ignore that grand source of divine instruction which God's handiwork presents to us.

Chapter II

CAUSES OF THE ACTUAL ANTAGONISM OF THE SCIEN- TIFIC AND THE RELIGIOUS WORLD.

Religion and Science, then, have no good cause for antagonism, but rather for amity and sympathy. Why, then, should they have had so many apparent conflicts ; why should there be so much jealousy, suspicion, and ill-feeling, between scientific and religious bodies ?

There are many causes. But the main ones are these three : First and chief, ignorance. Few of the religious have understood religion. They have been familiar, of course, with its practical applications; the forms of worship ; the moral and philanthropical duties which it has demanded. They have studied carefully Scripture texts, and writings of the fathers, and the creeds of the councils ; but about the fundamental principles of religion, its real grounds, limits, and proper domain, there has been a great lack of knowledge.

Similarly, few scientific men have really comprehended science. Facts of chemistry, of astronomy, of geology, they have learned with wonderful 2 thoroughness ; but the principles of scientific investigation, its capabilities and limits, they have known little of. Physicists speak familiarly of scientific method, but " they could not," says Prof. Jevons, 1 "readily describe what they mean by that expression. Profoundly engaged in the study of particular classes of natural phenomena, they are usually too much engrossed in the immense and ever-accumulating details of their special sciences, to generalize upon the methods of reasoning which they unconsciously employ." Prof. Jevons's words find a noticeable illustration in the fact that the only considerable treatises upon scientific method, or the principles of physical inquiry which have been written in the present century, Mill's " Logic of the Inductive Sciences," Whewell's " Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences" and "History of Scientific Ideas," and Jevons's own " Principles of Science," are all the works of metaphysicians rather than of physicists, of mental philosophers rather than natural philosophers. And if few, either of the religious or the scientific world, have really understood the principles and proper limits of their own studies, still fewer have understood the principles and proper sphere of the other. Prof. Trowbridge, in a recent number of The Popular Science Monthly, called attention to the insufficient acquaintance of

1 Preface to "The Principles of Science," )>y W. Stanley Jevons, Professor of Logic and Political Economy in Owens College, Manchester, England.

ministers of religion with science. He quoted the courses of study presented in our principal theological schools, and showed how very small a measure of attention was given to physical studies, and how absurdly some preachers deliver their ignorant ipse dixits upon scientific topics. Although theologians are continually declaring, that the most dangerous enemy of religion to-day is science, they seem to have gained no realizing sense of the fact, and what it demands of them. They still imagine that the battle of the Evidences is to be fought on the field of ecclesiastical history, scriptural exegesis, and metaphysical postulates. They still practise with dictionary and concordance, as if the age of crucible and spectroscope had not come in. The great need of our theologians to-day is, to recognize the mighty turn which modern thought has taken, the new base of operations which it demands, and the new weapons it requires. As Hugh Miller said years ago, " Before the churches can be prepared, competently, to deal with the infidelity of an age so largely engaged as the present in physical pursuits, they must greatly extend their walks into the field of physical science." A hasty reconnaissance now and then to gather information to justify an attack is not what is wanted, but a careful and impartial examination of the scientific domain, and its relations with the religious realm. Even " from men who admire the progress of science," says Prof. Trowbridge, "I often hear sermons " which " do incalculable damage, by drawing wide and unwarrantable inferences and conclusions from scientific facts."