Has Religion Answers To Questions That Have “Stumped” Scientists?

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 11, Issue 98, 14 November 1947, Page 3

Has Religion Answers To Questions That Have “Stumped” Scientists?

(Contributed by the Ministers’ Association) Interestingly, Earl Bertrand Russell says in “A History of Western Philosophy” that “Almost all the questions of most interest to speculative minds are such that science cannot answer”; which is a' most refreshing confession to come from one who believes in the all-suffi-ciency of reason. Among the many questions science cannot answer are: Is the world divided into mind and matter? Has the universe any unity or purpose? Is man a tiny lump of impure carbon crawling on a small and unimportant planet? Is there a way of living that is noble and another that is base, or are all ways of living merely futile? Must the good be eternal in order to be valued? Is there such a thing as wisdom? Certainly, these are fundamental questions, beyond the scope of science. But if science cannot answer them, are there no answers? The Sacred Writings of Jews and Christians begin with a sublime affirmation, none more sublime, “In the beginning, GOD!” God, if God there be, was in the beginning, and if in the beginning, at the beginning, and if at the beginning, before the beginning of all things. Such is the affirmation of faith, but not of faith alone. Albert Einstein, brilliant scientist, gives assurance that the material world had a definite beginning. There was a time, whether a moment or an aeon, when what is called Matter came into being; ‘so that, there is room in human thought for the idea of creation. But what is matter? Once it was thought of as solid substance, made up. of tiny

little billiard balls called atoms, hard and indestructible. There was nothing beyond atoms, the very word meaning the uncuttable. But in this atomic age, matter had disappeared. The infinitesimal atoms have been broken up, and have been revealed to be “whirlpools of electricity”; so that, all- the supposedly solid substances, mountains and men, are just electricity in tremendous agitation. And if , a picture of creation is desired, here it is, says Sir James Jeans, the astronomer, “the finger of God agitating the ether.” The whole universe, he declares is “a world of light,” and adds that the whole story of creation might be told with perfect accuracy and com--pleteness in six words, “God said, Let there be light!’ ” Thus, in a way the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews never understood, “the visible was made out of the invis'ible.”

The late Lord Balfour speaking as a philosopher, said that we now know so much about matter that we no longer believe in it. That is, the old idea of matter as a solid substance has gone for ever; the idea of mind stuff has taken its place. And we men? Was Shakespeare, speaking as a poet, so very far out, when he made, one of his characters say, “We are such stuff as dreams are made of?” Man may have a “material” body, but he is essentially spirit, and his body is an expression of spirit.