SCIENTIFIC HUMANISM

Wairarapa Times-Age, 30 June 1941, Page 7

SCIENTIFIC HUMANISM

TRADITIONAL CHRISTIAN lIOGMA. ‘■As I look to the future, I am certain that morality with the associations that make up scientific humanism will never permanently displace essential Christianity,” said the Bishop of Birmingham, I)f. Barnes, in addressing the Youth Forum. “But the disparagement of scientific humanism, fashionable in some religious groups, is' an unfortunate kind of reactionary arrogance. Christ's teaching as to God naturally issues in the finest moral ideals of humanism, and gives a. muchneeded strength to those ideals Moreover, in scientific humanism such morality is conjoined to the view of the universe which modern science sets before us. This view must ultimately enter into and transform traditional Christian dogma. The understanding of the world created by modern science has come to stay. Science may be barbarised in years to come, but its conclusions will not be utterly destroyed. Christian teachers must accept its methods and results or they will be ignored. The uniformity of nature which is the postulate of scientific investigation must equally be a postulate of Christian theology. Thus any doctrine of a ‘fall’ must yield to the knowledge that man. in his evolutionary rise, finds it hard to overcome instincts which served his animal ancestors well.”