CHAPTER V RELIGION AND THE LIMITS OF SCIENCE Religious Philosophy and the Limits of Science § 1. NATURALISM, or the claim that physical science is unqualifiedly and exclusively true, is equivalent to the denial of optimistic religion. If all being is bodily, and all causality mechanical, then there can be no support for the belief that the cosmos at large is dominated by goodness. Life is impotent; and the aspirations and hopes to which it gives rise are vain. Enlightenment destroys what the heart so fondly builds. Man is engaged in a losing fight. He may "develop a worthy civilization, capable of maintaining and constantly improving itself," but only "until the evolution of our globe shall have entered so far upon its downward course that the cosmic process resumes its sway; and, once more, the State of Nature prevails over the surface from our planet." 1 When in the course of the last century science became so militant as to pretend to the empire of human knowledge, religion was compelled in self-defence to challenge its title. And once roused to arms, religion not unnaturally sought to carry the war into the enemy's territory. The result was to establish a habit of suspicion and hostility between the party of science and the party of religion. They became hereditary enemies. There are already signs of the dawn of a new era; perhaps the time is not distant when the lion and the lamb shall lie down together. But at present it is still generally assumed that the success of religion is conditioned by the failure of science. The major part of contemporary religious philosophy is devoted to a disproof of science. If there is to be "room 1 Huxley: Evolution and Ethics, p. 45. 2 See above, pp. 34-38. for faith," that room must be gained at the expense of science. When a scientist confesses failure, as when Du Bois-Reymond pronounces his "ignorabimus" concerning the relation between matter and consciousness, he is charged with treason by the partisans of science, but is eagerly quoted and followed by those of religion.1 Now it must be admitted that religion's instinctive distrust of science has a basis in reason. It is true, as we shall presently see, that nothing could be more fatuous than the hostility of religion to science. For both are human institutions; and whether a man be a scientist or a theologian, he needs both. Nevertheless, religion of the optimistic type, the belief that civilization dominates and eventually possesses the cosmic process, cannot survive, if the scientific version of things be accepted without reservations. Faith can be justified only provided limits be assigned to science. And religion will be wise to avoid any reconciliation in which it is made dependent on the indulgence of science. There is some disposition at present to invest religious capital in scientific novelties. Science now employs concepts that seem less forbidding than its classic atomism. May not energy, or the electrically charged ether, or radioactivity, turn out to be the essence of God, or of man's immortal soul? There are two reasons for distrusting such suggestions. In the first place, they derive whatever religious meaning they possess from a loose and anthropomorphic version of science, and not from its rigorous formulation. In order that these scientific concepts shall serve as hints of a 'spirit' in nature, they must be construed as substances and invested with characters drawn from the confused feeling of effort. Religion will indeed 1 E. Du Bois-Reymond: Uber die Grenzen des Naturerkennens, an address at the Scientific Congress at Leipzig, 1872; cf. ninth edition, p. 51. For the sequel, cf. Haeckel: Riddle of the Universe, p. 180 sq.; Fr. Paulsen: Introduction to Philosophy, trans. by F. Thilly, p. 77; James: Human Immortality, p. 21; etc. See above, pp. 71–72. be reduced to extremities when it is dependent on the vagaries of the scientific imagination. In the second place, even though such scientific concepts were converted into spiritual substances, they would still yield no profit to religion. Hylozoism, or even panpsychism, as a theory of the ultimate matter, is for religious purposes no better than atomism, and no worse. Religion is indifferent to the question of substance. For religion is made of hope and fear; it is a solicitude for certain values. Its justification requires that the cosmos, whatever it be made of, shall in the end yield to desires and ideals - shall in short, be good. And this requirement the new science satisfies no better than the old. For science does not deal with value, but with the quantitative constancies exhibited in natural processes. Whether these processes take place for better or for worse, it does not inquire.1 The explanation by ends, the reference of events to purposes, it seeks to dispense with altogether. A philosophy of religion must itself add the judgment of value. If faith is to be justified, it must be shown that the good determines events and is not a mere phosphorescent glimmer on their surface.2 Science does not deny any such conclusions; but neither will science be led to any such conclusions - for the reason that its subject-matter and its methods do not permit. The intensive cultivation of science has led, and will always lead, to the rejection of religious hypotheses as irrelevant. In terms of its 'facts,' and its experimental technique, such hypotheses are unwarranted and unverifiable. The philosophical justification of optimistic religion involves, then, a critique of science; not a refutation of science, but a delimitation of science-a proof that science, strictly construed, is not all. The critique of science thus constitutes the religious sequel to science; and we shall pass in review the several contentions upon which such a critique is at present based. § 2. Before dealing with the criticisms of science that are 1 Cf. above, pp. 25-28. * Cf. below, pp. 341-342. peculiarly characteristic of contemporary philosophy, I desire briefly to allude to a method of criticism that was once Naturalism and common, but is now obsolescent. I refer to the Supernaturalism argument for miracles. A miracle is a breach of scientific law; that is, the failure of a scientific law to obtain within its proper field. Thus a motion that did not obey the laws of motion would be a miracle; as would a Euclidean triangle that did not conform to the theorems of Euclidean geometry. But the notion of a miracle in this sense reflects an antiquated conception of natural law. When laws were thought of as divorced from their subject-matter, and imposed upon it from without, it was possible to think of their being obeyed or disobeyed without ceasing to 'hold.' But scientific laws are now understood to be descriptions of their subjectmatter. And there can be no such thing as a breach of the law, in this sense. For if things do not behave as the law stipulates, it follows that the law is incorrect. Were a Euclidean triangle found whose interior angles were not equal to 180°, it would be necessary to retract the corresponding theorem; and were there empirical evidence of a word's converting water into wine, it would be necessary to amend the laws of chemistry to meet the case. For when an event falls under the terms of the law, it constitutes one of the data which the law purports to describe, and which it must describe if it is to be a law at all. The disputes between science and religion in the age that has just passed have turned largely upon this issue. The successive defeats of religion have been due to the fact that its defenders have put it in a false position. The validity of religion has been made to turn upon the failure of science within its own field. And naturally enough, the apologists of religion have, within that field, been no match for their scientific opponents. The Copernican hypothesis of the motion of the earth, the nebular hypothesis of its origin, and the geological hypothesis of its age and history, 1 Cf. K. Pearson's Grammar of Science, Ch. III, passim. were arrived at by regarding the earth as a natural body like other natural bodies. Religion, starting from the unique place of the earth in the historical drama of salvation, was led to assert its uniqueness in other respects also. There resulted the ambiguous and untenable position of acknowledging the earth's bodily character, and at the same time declining to apply to it the conclusions of those who, without ulterior motive, and with the maximum of skill and information, devoted themselves to the study of bodies. The same thing happened in the case of man. His bodily functions come within the range of statics, hydrodynamics, aerodynamics, and chemistry; while as an animal organism, he belongs to the subject-matter of biology and physiological psychology. And similarly the Scriptures, as historical documents, must necessarily be submitted to the methods of historical, archæological, and philological research. The apologists of religion made the mistake of disputing the findings of these several sciences, and undertook an unequal contest with experts in their own fields of study. The result was inevitable. Science, because free from ulterior motives, and superior in technique, prevailed; and religion, regarded as an ineffectual protest against advancing enlightenment, lost prestige.1 The General Criticism of §3. It is characteristic of the contemporary critique of science to accept science as a whole. The philosophy of religion no longer attempts to meet science on its own grounds, and to dispute questions Contemporary of detail that lie within its province. It is admitted that, relatively to its method and subject-matter, the verdict of science is final and unimpeachable. Science must be dealt with as a system which is complete in its own terms. The difference between science and religion no longer turns upon questions of fact, but upon a fundamental question of point of view or method. 1 Cf. Andrew D. White's A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom, passim. |