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New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 775, 28 May 1954, Page 5

Sir-In his talk from 2YC on May 3 the Rev. James Torrence rightly suggested that the scientific outlook and the religious outlook are complementary; but surely the point at which they meet ig where the scientific attitude questions why the religious outlook commits itself to belief without analysis. Clearly, religious faith is not accepted by conscious process of reasoning. What then, we may ask, are the emotive urges which here override the critical faculty? In the Communist movement, for example, the bargain of self-commitment seems to work as follows> On the one hand you accept uncritically the basic idea that the workers are the only people who really matter. You stifle, more or less, without thinking, any "ifs" and "buts" that might otherwise, arise, because it is made quite clear to you that class-consciousness is a condition of full acceptance as a comrade; and acceptance brings with it some deep emotional satisfactions. In return for the above commitment you receive, in "the capitalists" and "the system," a convenient butt for hatreds, frustrations and inadequacies in your own system and a sanctioned method of working them off in action. You receive a sense of high purpose and the certainty of being-ultimately-on the winning side. And you gain also the warm comradeship of all other members. The contradictions and limitations in the creed of a Communist are shut off from his conscious attention by his developed appetite for these emotional satisfactions; but if they do ~ break through to his notice and he speaks out about them he threatens the balance in other members; so that if he persists, the "friendship" quickly sours into ostracism, and he finds himself outside, alone and ineffective. In this way Communists are tied by forces which they cannot see to beliefs which they cannot criticise. Now I certainly don’t want to suggest that religious experience is nothing more than a handful of personal mechanisms. But the reality of the spiritual experience common to all faiths is a very different thing from the act of commitment to this or that creed which divides them. And if it should be found that the basic dogmas of other faiths besides that of Communism are perpetuated by a similar balance of subconscious forces, wouldn’t that be a matter not for distress but for great rejoicing? Is there not here ‘the beginning of a solid foundation for a peaceful and lasting in-

tegration of the East and the West on a new level of self-understanding? I believe there is. By what detailed practical steps we shall go forward from here to there we shall probably have to find out as we go along. An explorer, even a team of explorers, cannot hope to ‘travel on tarsealed roads. What does matter is that there should come into being as quickly as possible a team of men and women prepared to explore.

DICK SOUTHON

(Auckland).