Science and religion

“ As for science and religion, the known and admitted facts are plain enough. All that the parsons say is unproved. All that the doctors say is disproved. That’s the only difference between science and religion there’s ever been, or will be. ”

“ But how may man hope to succeed in his efforts to arrive at a scientific understanding of his religious beliefs, feelings, and practices? How may he educe and elaborate from the phenomena of religion a system of theology entitled to be called science? Only, it is obvious, by following a truly scientific method. What then is a truly scientific method in theology? ”

“ No matter whether Science shall complete her demonstration that man has been on the earth not merely six thousand years, or six millions of years; no matter whether she reveals new ideas of the Creator or startling relations between his creatures; no matter how many more gyves and clamps upon the spirit of Christianity she destroys, the result, when fully thought out, will serve and strengthen religion not less than science. ”

“ More special reference will be made here to the proclivity of the present epoch among philosophers and theologians to be parading science and religion side by side, talking of reconciling science and religion, as if they have ever been unreconciled. Scientists and theologians may have quarrelled, but never science and religion. ”

“ The domain which theology of old allotted to the devil, science has rescued to the service of religion by the revelation of its marvelous powers and capacities; why, then, condemn the scientist if, pushing on his investigation yet further, he claims to discern yet higher potencies and possibilities in this divine material of which the universe is constituted? ”

“ This doctrine harmonizes science and religion, revealing the new species of control which marks the highest stage of evolution; shows that the religion of the N. T. is essentially scientific and its truths capable of practical verification; that Christianity is not any particular church, but the teachings of the Bible; that Christianity is the true system of ethics, and should be taught in public institutions; that cosmic evolution comes at last to depend on the wisdom and will of man, the immanent God working in finite and redeemed humanity. ”

“ But I must first make you understand that even this apparent contradiction between science and philosophy and religion had its justification, and was a necessary stage in the history of human development.
Even to-day, science, philosophy and religion are not reconciled to one another. ”

“ The period of highest achievement in modern natural science bears the stamp of religion; indeed, to a great extent it bears the halo of devotion and fervour. An incompatibility of research and faith, a solidarity of science and anti-Christian tendency, was never known to the mind of these great masters. ”

“ That it exists now, however, cannot be denied, and its adherents constitute a very large and influential body. Yet it must be said that science and religion, for a time widely separated, are growing together, and that in all probability the final outcome of modern thought and research will be an alliance between these two great forces, a religion which science can accept and a science in full accord with religious views and principles. ”

“ In every case too, you have seen that while this ecclesiastical war, during its continuance, has tended to drive multitudes of thoughtful men away from religion, the triumph of science has been a blessing to religion—ennobling its conceptions and bettering its methods. ”

“ On this side also, as on the scientific side, the teaching of the spiritual faculty and the teaching of Revelation indicate that the physical and the spiritual worlds are one whole, and that neither is complete without the other. Science enters into Religion, and is its counterpart, and has its share to take in the conduct of life and in the formation of opinion. ”

“ Here, however, it will be said, the agreement between religion and science ends, and even this agreement is only apparent. Science protests against the idols or delusions of the human intellect, in order that it may substitute for them the reality of Nature; religion sacrifices all those idols to the greatest of them all, which is God. For what is God—so the argument runs—but an hypothesis, which religious men have mistaken for a demonstrated reality? ”

“ Science, on the other hand, has ended by utterly repudiating the personal point of view. She catalogues her elements and records her laws indifferent as to what purpose may be shown forth by them, and constructs her theories quite careless of their bearing on human anxieties and fates. Though the scientist may individually nourish a religion, and be a theist in his irresponsible hours, the days are over when it could be said that for Science herself the heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament showeth his handiwork. ”

“ The gradual, successive, and now all but total abolition of final causes from the thoughts of scientific men, to which allusion has already been made, is merely an expression of the fact that scientific men as a body have come fully to recognize the fundamental distinction between Science and Religion which I have stated. ”

“ What has been said of Science may be said also of Religion. Religion also has had its development, and in some respects a development parallel to that of Science.
It is possible to trace the steps by which men have obtained an ever larger and fuller knowledge of the Supreme Law of Right, a clearer perception of its application, of its logical results, of its relation to life, to conduct, to belief. ”

“ And here, in advance of the tests which I shall endeavor to apply to the existence of God and the existence of man as a special creation, I desire to say something respecting the question of a logical antagonism between science and religion. I have often been a good deal puzzled to make out what those well-meaning persons suppose, who unwarily admit that there is no necessary antagonism between what modern science teaches and what religion teaches. ”

“ Echoes of that controversy still linger in theology.
So far, my point has been this: that religion is the expression of one type of fundamental experiences of mankind: that religious thought develops into an increasing accuracy of expression, disengaged from adventitious imagery: that the interaction between religion and science is one great factor in promoting this development. ”

“ Science gives to all of us telegraphy, electric lighting, and diagnosis, and succeeds in preventing and curing a certain amount of disease. Religion in the shape of mind-cure gives to some of us serenity, moral poise, and happiness, and prevents certain forms of disease as well as science does, or even better in a certain class of persons. Evidently, then, the science and the religion are both of them genuine keys for unlocking the world's treasure-house to him who can use either of them practically. ”

“ If my purpose here was merely to show that science necessarily engenders piety, I should appeal to the great truth everywhere recognized, that the essence of all {17} religion consists in love toward God. The conclusion would then be easy, that love of Him from whom all truth proceeds must create the desire to acknowledge truth in all her paths; but as we desire here to recognize science herself as a religious duty, it will be requisite for us to penetrate deeper into its nature. ”

“ I agree with you that certain theories put forward in the name of Science may be opposed to certain theological dogmas; but men are certainly coming to see that between the facts of Science and the essential teachings of the Christian religion there is never any real opposition; and by the 'Christian Religion' I mean the religion of Christ, not what some people have wished to read into it; and by 'science' I mean a search for truth and knowledge, and by 'men of science' I mean men engaged in that search. ”

“ For here there will, as yet, be no possibility of so shunting the scientific activity on to one side, or of limiting it to a carefully pegged-out region, as to let Religion and Science energize as forces of the same kind and same level, the same clearness and same finality; but the Science will here have to be passed through, as the surface-level, on the way to Religion as underlying all. ”

“ True religion, which consists in practical love to God and to our fellow-men, can have no conflict with science. True science is its fast ally. The Bible, considered as a revelation of spiritual truth to man for his salvation and enlightenment, can have no conflict with science. ”

“ My conviction is that Science, though it has evidently conquered Dogmatic Theology based on biblical texts and ancient modes of thought, will go hand in hand with Religion; and that, although theological control will continue to diminish, Religion, as seen in the recognition of "a Power in the universe, not ourselves, which makes for righteousness," and in the love of God and of our neighbor, will steadily grow stronger and stronger, not only in the American institutions of learning but in the world at large. ”

“ The business of pure science is to discover facts; that of the applied science is to use them. The business of the science of religion is to discover all the facts necessary if we are to understand the growth and history of religion. The business of the applied science is, in our case, to use the discovered facts as a means of showing that Christianity is the highest manifestation of the religious spirit.
In dealing with the applied science, then, we recover a liberty which the pure science does not enjoy. The science of religion is a historic science. ”

“ There is truth of science and truth of religion; truth of science does not become truth of religion till it is made religious. And I will add: Let us have all the science there is from the men of science; from the men of religion let us have religion. [Arnold.] ”

“ If religion be at once a science, and the most true of all sciences, its truths must be as indisputable as those in any branch of the mathematics—as apparent to all the senses as those revealed by the chemist or observed by the naturalist, and as easily referred to the test of our approving or disapproving sensations, as those involved in the science of morals.... Is religion a science? ”

“ In attempting to find the beginnings of religion in human relations which are in themselves non-religious, we merely follow a well-known method. It has long been admitted that science is merely a heightening, a refinement, a completion, of those means of knowledge which, in lower and dimmer degree, assist us in forming our judgments and experiences in daily, practical life. ”

“ In those various churches without a God which to-day are spreading through the world under the name of ethical societies, we have a similar worship of the abstract divine, the moral law believed in as an ultimate object. “Science” in many minds is genuinely taking the place of a religion. Where this is so, the scientist treats the “Laws of Nature” as objective facts to be revered. ”

“ Why not eliminate the same element in our religion, retaining all its sound ethical tenets, and administer it upon the human teachings of Christ and the natural laws that science has revealed in the progress of civilization? The time is rapidly approaching when the Bible will be expurgated, and all that science proves false expunged ”

“ It is a method only, which, like a search-light, reveals all religions in all their essentials, and places them in their true light.
Religion per se is an essential element in the nature and life of man and of the human race.
Science is a method, a way of procedure in the intelligent mind of man in its search for truth. ”

“ If it be indeed true that scientific truth, rightly applied, is religious truth, then may the religious man be sure that every scientific discovery will ultimately contribute to the illustration of the character or government of the Deity; and therefore should he encourage and rejoice in all such investigations, and bid God speed to the votaries of science. ”

“ He prizes science chiefly for its religious uses, or as an interpretation of the divine order of the world. Maintaining the fundamental harmony of all truth, and that religion represents a verity of the universe as much as astronomy, he has taken it as his task to elucidate the harmonies that must prevail among the different aspects of truth in order that religious faith may be grounded in scientific principles. ”

“ But there is one most important particular in which the development of Religion entirely differs from the development of Science. The leaders of scientific thought, from the time that Science has been conscious of itself, have never claimed direct divine instruction. For a long time, indeed, scientific thought rested largely on tradition, and that tradition was handed on from generation to generation without any examination into its foundations. ”

“ Science with its microscope has finally taught what religion with its manifold precepts of humility and humanity has failed for centuries to accomplish, thus evidencing that true science and true religion reach one and the same end. ”