OTHER PEOPLE’S IDEAS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 25 June 1940, Page 8

OTHER PEOPLE’S IDEAS

RELIGIOUS BELIEF (To the Editor.) Sir, —There were some sharply-etch-ed reactions to my dissertation of June 20. "Logic's” was pleasantly worded and free from spleen. though dogma-ridden arguments, woolly and muddled thinking and the avoidance of danger-spots detracted somewhat from it's value. Nevertheless, it was the letter of a man who is commencing to think. The raucous bawl of, “His beliefs differ from mine! Blasphemy! Silence him!” raised by another correspondent demonstrates a mind-type disappearing with the spread of knowledge. for bigotry and intolerance are the handmaidens of ignorance. It provides the psycho-analytical student with an excellent subject for research, but apart from this is mere sound and fury, meaningless and unimportant. The principle of causation appears negative and comfortless to “Logic.” It is neither negative nor positive, and appears negative only because it disposes of the man-made theory that a select few will live for ever. Comfortless, certainly. All religions, all moralities. when investigated, are a directproduct of death. Like toadstools on buried logs, these fantasies take their nourishment from buried bones. Lacking them, man's egoism is endangered, and he must be cosseted and comforted. They assure him of a life after death, and thereby is his ego soothed. He is once more the lord of creation, with a ready-made Heavenly Father. But contemplate this existence with an emancipated mind, and then try to believe that man, and still less the sparrows in the spouting, live under the benevolent care of a human-mind-* ed God. We touch here what good churchmen call, "One of the mysteries.” They use the words advisedly. Cold, dispassionate causations eternally transforming and re-transforming all matter, works like a relentless underground law of gravitation, and all the incense clouds, white magic and voodoo have at no time altered its direction. All things follow a natural sequence, which may or may not work to our advantage. This sequence is as innocent of malice as it is of compassion. It is deaf to our prayers and posturings. Causation goes on, without end or beginning, morality or immorality. The hundred legs of a centipede quiver with it. and at its purposeless behest the constellations wheel in majesty across the midnight sky. It experiments unceasingly, and as carelessly creates a moron as a Lord Rutherford. It is a direct answer to futile superstitions. Some day—perhaps in a few generations, perhaps in fifty—the concepts of Christianity will be freed from the clogging, cloying dogmas that stifle it. today, and the beauty at the core will be absorbed into the culture of the race, divested of silly superstitions. But so long as man relies on supernatural interference and guidance, so long will the race be hampered and fettered. It was blind worshippers who condemned Galileo, blackguarded Darwin, derided Freud, scoffed at Einstein. But education, accompanying scepticism, has begat tolerance. The crackpate dream is ending. The wakening is slow. Even now. in hours of deep emotion and especially when danger threatens those we love, we chatter out uneasily the names of one or another of our invented gods, be it Allah, Buddha, Jehovah, or even M'Shimba M'Shamba. whose voice is the thunder to the native of the African jungles. If we are to make our fullest powers effective in our struggle for life, we had best cease our childish squalling to a legendary Heaven for assistance, and marshal our forces. If we sit down and bleat for help in the present struggle instead of directing our every ounce of energy in the direction of victory, it does not require a prophet or saint to foretell what the end will be. —I am, etc, MORE LOGIC.