BROADCASTING AND DEMOCRACY

New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 531, 26 August 1949, Page 5

BROADCASTING AND DEMOCRACY

Sir -As "C.V.B." rightly says, "there are growing numbers of civilised people who are not Christians." Has it ever occurred to him that this fact, for which secular education is largely responsible, may have something to do with the present state of western civilisation? That civilisation, by the way, is the product of Christianity, not of the thousand other philosophies which -"C.V.B." regards as equally good. "C." would have me discuss spiritual problems in terms of persons and things, without mentioning abstract theories. Unfortunately it cannot be done, for the issues are abstract, and so are the competing theories. He asks what I mean by God. I use the word in its traditional Christian sense of a supreme intelligent Being upon whom the universe depends for ‘the totality of its being. As for the creation of spiritual values, we men of the west can do it, pace Dr. Munz, only on the basis of*Christian principles. I must thank Mr. ‘Sinclair for his helpful advice about brushing up my logic, but I renew my acquaintance with the subject more tpauently than he realises, ba Since the subject silat discussion is Christianity, not Calvin or Franco, I am not obliged to defend either of these gentlemen. I do hold that the ideas of the great secular thinkers since the Renaissance lead logically: to Marxism, if that is what Mr. Sinclair means by

"groping towards Marx." If he cares to read Gilson, The Unity of Philosophical Experience, he will be able to follow the sequence of ideas without having to use his "seven-league intellectual boots." Here in brief is the argument to prove that secularist liberalism is transitory and leads to Communism. Secularist liberalism holds that the individual is himself the ultimate end of human life and it thereby splits human society into a myriad of egocentric units. If every man is an end unto himself, other persons must logically be subordinated to that end as means. This repulsive egoism is destructive of human society and ultimately suicidal for the individual, who can live a fully human life only in society. Thus secularist liberalism leads to Communism-the view that the ultimate end of the individual is to promote the welfare of society-by reason of its own inherent contradiction. Mr. Sinclair says this deduction has nothing to do with ‘either logic or experience. If he is not able to follow the logic, he may yet have the deduction confirmed for him by experience. There is a grim irony in the present situation. When the Church was strong, the State could be kept more or less in its place. Secularism raised the battlecry "Ecrasez l’infame," and now it finds itself face to face with Leviathan.

G.H.

D.

(Greenmeadows).

Sir,-Although I heard only one instalment of the How Things Began series, I gathered that it was based substantially on the Darwinian theory of evolution. Your correspondent "Omicron" states that "a substantial body of opinion among research workers in the fields of science had moved irrevocably away from the positions which the series took for granted." Could he oblige by quoting the names of some of his authorities, the scope of their work and any of their books thak are procurable in New Zealand?

INTERESTED

(Invercargill),