There has been an increasing tendency shown by physicists to consider
that matter and energy are interchangeable, and that the one ultimate
reality is energy. If this be so, we are still dealing with an ultimate
that is a material reality. The Nobel prize in medicine for the year
1932 was awarded to two British investigators, Sir Charles Scott
Sherrington, professor of physiology at Oxford University, and Dr. Edgar
Douglas Adrian, professor of physiology at Cambridge University. Their
researches seem to have settled definitely a problem that has long been
a bone for contention. Nerve energy has been shown conclusively to be of
an electric type of energy. The old question of whether mind was part of
the material world has been shown by these experiments to be answered in
the affirmative. There is no duality, mind and matter are one, and mind
is but a special property of highly specialized matter.
It is with a great deal of regret that the freethinker contemplates the
attitude of such scientists as Jeans, Eddington, Millikan, and the
philosopher Professor Whitehead. Their hesitation to divorce themselves
completely from all conceptions of a supernatural force leads to a great
deal of confusion. An acquaintance with the writings of Einstein brings
one the certainty that he is as much in accordance with the attitude of
freethought as is the most militant atheist. The "cosmic sense" and
"totality of existence" of Einstein is as far removed from the
conception of a Yahveh as is the mentality of an Australian black man
from that of Einstein's mental grasp. Similarly with the cosmic
consciousness expressed in the writings of Jeans, Eddington, and
Whitehead. With characteristic disregard for the truth certain modern
theologians have grasped this cringing attitude of the above-mentioned
men and have stressed their viewpoints by a dishonest interpretation
that these men actually give a scientific certitude to their own
theologic creeds and dogmas. Nothing can be further from the truth. The
freethinker would have each theologian who tells his adherents that
these men lend credence to their beliefs to consider the following: if
the above-named men would be asked if they believed in a deity who
actively interposed his will and influence in the lives of men, as is
commonly expressed in the term "Providence," if they ascribed to the
belief in personal immorality, if they themselves believed in the
existence of a "soul," if they ascribed to the statement that "prayer"
influenced the opinion of an all-powerful being to intercede for them in
their problems and grief, if they believed that the Bible was a book
dictated by God, or that a god caused to be written for him his
"revelations"; that heaven and hell exist in the meaning that
theologians assure their adherents that they do; that sin and morality
is what theologians still hold it to be; that there has been a "fall"
and therefore the necessity for a "redemption" of man; and that creed
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