Free thought; Modernism (Christian theology) -- Catholic Church; Religion and science; Teaching, Freedom of
And to this thought it remains faithful, if not in all its
representatives, then at any rate in a good many of them. With unremitting
persistency it enforces in all its domains the demand: _Science must not
reckon with supernatural factors_. Ignoramus is its watchword, “we do not
know it” in the sense of its usual agnosticism, but “we ignore it” in the
spirit of the impulse which dreads the loss of its freedom through higher
powers. Creation and miracles, divine revelation and the God-imposed duty
of belief, it does not know. A moral law, as given by God, does not exist
for this science. It wants nothing to do with a religion that worships a
personal God, much less with a supernatural religion, with mysteries,
miracles, and grace. It praises all the higher that modern religion of
sentiment, without dogmas and religious duties, which sovereign man
creates for himself, a poetical adornment of his individuality, a religion
he need not ask what he owes it, but rather what it offers him. All
connection with the world beyond is cut off. Man is now free in his own
house. We shall show this in detail, by the testimony chiefly of men
generally accepted as foremost representatives of modern science. We do
not assert, however, that all representatives of modern science belong
here. Far be it from us to sit in judgment as to the good intentions of
the champions of liberal science. We know very well that an education
indifferent to religion, early habitual association with the ideas of a
sceptical, naturalistic philosophy, the acquisition of prejudices and
unsolved difficulties, a continuous stay in an intellectual atmosphere
foreign and inimical to religious belief—all this, we well understand,
will gradually rob the mind of all inclination and unbiassed judgment for
religious truth, and thus make for apostasy from religion. Nor do we
assert that the idea of God and Christianity are extinct in the hearts of
the representatives of liberal science, but we do assert that their
_science_ no longer wants to know God and His true religion, that only too
often it is in the grip of a Theophobia, which slinks past God and His
works, with its eyes designedly averted.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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