The Relations Between Religion and Science: Eight Lectures Preached Before the University of Oxford in the Year 1884Temple, Frederick
Religion
The Relations Between Religion and Science: Eight Lectures Preached Before the University of Oxford in the Year 1884
Temple, Frederick
Religion and science
The moral and spiritual evidence is His own character which
intentionally overshadows all the rest, and it is inconceivable that He
should have made a false claim. And the material evidence is the
testimony of men who freely gave their lives in proof of what they said.
Nor has anything yet been said or written to shake Paley's argument on
this point.
But, if we pass on to the other objection, that no evidence can ever be
sufficient to prove a miracle because the evidence for the uniformity of
nature is so overwhelming, we can only see in such an assertion an
instance of that inability to get out of an accustomed groove against
which Science has perpetually to guard. In Science the uniformity of
nature is so indispensable a postulate, that without it we cannot stir a
step. And if the student of Science is to admit a breach, it can only be
by stepping outside of his science for the time and conceiving the
possibility that there is some other truth beside scientific truth, and
some other kind of evidence beside scientific evidence. We have all
heard of the need of guarding against the bondage in which custom binds
the mind. We have heard of the student who when first he saw a
locomotive looked perseveringly for the horses that impelled it, because
he had never known, and consequently could not imagine any other mode of
producing such motion. But this danger attends not only the separate
investigations which Science makes into phenomena; it attends Science as
a whole. And it is necessary repeatedly to insist on the fact that
Science has not proved and cannot prove that the scientific domain is
co-extensive with nature itself.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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