THE FAITH OF SCIENCE AS THE NEW IDOLATRY

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 65, 3 April 1937, Page 12

THE FAITH OF SCIENCE AS THE NEW IDOLATRY

' ' This enthusiasm for the scientific attitude to life is regarded as the mark of enlightened minds, happily emancipated from the ' super stition ' of religious faith, yet its most significant feature is the intens© quality of faith it evokes in us. It is., indeed, neither more nor less than a pseudo-religion, thb local consequence of an inversion of spiritual values." — Mr Peter Fletcher • There is mU'Ch talk iu these .days about science and religion, but Mr Peter Fletcher, in his new book, ' ' Some Thread of Life" has no time for thoso who assert that science has put religion out of aetion. He Bays: — '"The scientific discoveriea of the l&St half-century have given us a civilisation iucreasingly rich in material blessings, and inlinitely vafied in the opportunities it aifords us for happinCss aud self-fulfilment in creative capacity. Yet it is apparent that, because we porsistently confuce the temporal wiih the oternal, we are rapidly reducing life to a tragic absurdity. We have so.ight many inventions without troubling to inquire to what euds the spiriitual temper of the age will direet the work of our hands, untii we are already in danger of destruetion by the scientiixO toyS we have made. "We have tried to reverse the otdof of cosmic progress. For us, the things that are seen are eternal, and the things that are unseen are illusion. We exalf. a visible and external accuracy to the spiritual stature of truth. Sold Our Souls for Facts. "Falling in love with science, we have banished from our midst the love of man that alone can make scientiilc knowledge tolerable and creative iit a world of spiritual beings. We have laughed to scorn that faith iu God Which alone breeds reverence for human personality, substitutifig for it a ihith in our own ignorance that degrades even knowledge ittto super* stition. We have sold our souls for facts and bartered our spiritual birthright for an unholy mess of scieutifie pottage. "In saying this, I imply no disparageinent .of science or the scientific method. On the contrary I wish with all my heart that our religion were always marked by a respect for facts half as iusistent as that of the scientist. "My complaint is agaiust the 6isposition which acCepts a definition as Un adequate explanation, supposing that its knowledge is a substitute for faith, When indeed it is no more than a suhstitution of one faith for anothe* "By all means let us respect ovfr facts j but by no means let us worship thernj for behind them all a mystery remains, a mystery that eludes all balances and measuring rods, from Which wo deriVe both the material fo»' Uur deductions aud • the power to make them. "Behind the lesser fact of the visible itnd. tangible there remains' the greate? Fact of the iu visible and eternal; and perhaps the best evidence we have of its supreme lteality is the witness ol: oxperience that when we turn from worshipping it we love whatever power we may have had to turn our wealth of - knowledge to constructive and beneficent ends. Our Present Trouble. . "Our present trouble is that we have failed to acknowledge the imperative of the Fact behind the fact, and we suppose that by ignoriag it We have destroyed it. "By paying homage to our facts we think we have traded the insecurities of a religious illusion for the certainties of scientific demonstration, but we have dorie nothing of the sort. What we have done we have done 'by faith, » That is my point. "Science has dominion over us because we have faith in it. Tho world of temporary and material securities holds us in bondage because we have faith in it. We are enthralled, not by a new discovery, but by a new idolatry. We have lost our way because we have displaced our trust. We have been betrayed by our own credulity. "The truth is that whether he will or no, man must live by faith. He is so made that he cannot help it, and when he thinks he most succeeds in exorcising faith he most sigpally fails, for then he turua from worshipping God to worshipping himself and the idols fio fashions in his own image. His religion Decomos superstition, and it is neither Jess superstititions nor less dark in its power to breed disillusionment and despair because it calls its idoi 'Science' instead of 'Moloch.' " Mr Peter Fletcher deals with what he terms the "humanistic type of rcligiosity usually called the Soeial Gospel." His book, issued under the auspices of Group Publications, will be u-elcomed by those desirous of discovering the attitude of those sympatlietic with the group movement to the' soeial order.