SUPREMACY OF REASON

Evening Post, Volume CXXVIII, Issue 23, 27 July 1939, Page 6

SUPREMACY OF REASON

ADDRESS BY SIR T. HUNTER

"As far as we can see," said Sir Thomas Hunter, M.A., speaking under the auspices of the Rationalist Association at the Swords Club Hall, Waring Taylor Street, on Sunday evening, "man is the only animal that has powers to deal with universal ideas. Man is essentially a rational animal, but that does not mean that he does not make mistakes.

"If one looks back one finds a series of problems which have been solved by the method of trial and error. Rationalism is not a creed, neither is science; they are attitudes of mind. We have the long struggle between supernatural explanations -and natural explanations; it is possible to use the word 'GoeF in a purely philosophical meaning. Wherever we have the scientific method applied to any field, there we find progress and development."

According to Professor Moore, said Sir Thomas, they were at the mercy of their own intelligence, and it was necessary to make a distinction between knowledge and belief. "You must not confuse your belief with knowledge," Sir Thomas continued. "To be knowledgeable, of course, implies belief, but belief is by no means knowledge, and it is fear that keeps men back. We speak of the wisdom of our fathers, of the ancients, but looked at from the human point of view, this is ridiculous. The foolishness of the ages, not the wisdom, has come down to us. Man is having a very hard struggle to be rational; his ideas have to pass through three stages, firstly, trying to explain, he depended on the supernatural explanation; secondly, he abstracted ideas and gave them metaphysical explanations; and thirdly, he comes down to facts and tries to explain them naturally."

Sir Thomas said that the great work of Darwin was to open the human mind to inquiry. They wanted more of the inquii"ing spirit of Bruno, and less of the intolerance that sent him to,the stake. Man made his gods in his own image. The problem became one of education, and they ought not to teach things to children that the great m.ass of the human race knew to be false.