The Interpreters of Genesis and the Interpreters of Nature: Essay #4 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" — John Shaqi
The Interpreters of Genesis and the Interpreters of Nature: Essay #4 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition"Huxley, Thomas Henry
Religion
The Interpreters of Genesis and the Interpreters of Nature: Essay #4 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition"
Huxley, Thomas Henry
Bible and science; Evolution; Paleontology; Science
Trusting that I have now said enough to secure the author of a wise and
moderate disquisition upon a topic which seems fated to stir unwisdom
and fanaticism to their depths, a fuller measure of justice than
has hitherto been accorded to him, I retire from my self-appointed
championship, with the hope that I shall not hereafter be called upon by
M. Reville to apologise for damage done to his strong case by imperfect
or impulsive advocacy. But, perhaps, I may be permitted to add a word
or two, on my own account, in reference to the great question of the
relations between science and religion; since it is one about which I
have thought a good deal ever since I have been able to think at all;
and about which I have ventured to express my views publicly, more than
once, in the course of the last thirty years.
The antagonism between science and religion, about which we hear so
much, appears to me to be purely factitious--fabricated, on the one
hand, by short-sighted religious people who confound a certain branch
of science, theology, with religion; and, on the other, by equally
short-sighted scientific people who forget that science takes for
its province only that which is susceptible of clear intellectual
comprehension; and that, outside the boundaries of that province, they
must be content with imagination, with hope, and with ignorance.
It seems to me that the moral and intellectual life of the civilised
nations of Europe is the product of that interaction, sometimes in the
way of antagonism, sometimes in that of profitable interchange, of the
Semitic and the Aryan races, which commenced with the dawn of history,
when Greek and Phoenician came in contact, and has been continued by
Carthaginian and Roman, by Jew and Gentile, down to the present day. Our
art (except, perhaps, music) and our science are the contributions of
the Aryan; but the essence of our religion is derived from the Semite.
In the eighth century B.C., in the heart of a world of idolatrous
polytheists, the Hebrew prophets put forth a conception of religion
which appears to me to be as wonderful an inspiration of genius as the
art of Pheidias or the science of Aristotle.
"And what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love
mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?"
If any so-called religion takes away from this great saying of Micah,
I think it wantonly mutilates, while, if it adds thereto, I think it
obscures, the perfect ideal of religion.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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