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 evidence for the uniformity of nature consists in the fact that from
the beginning of Science the known reign of physical law has been
steadily extending without a check; that instance after instance of
apparent exception has been brought by further examination within its
province; that the hypothesis of uniformity has now been long on trial
and has never yet been found to fail; that no one who has so tried it
has the slightest hesitation in trusting it for the future, as he has
proved it in the past. But clearly as this evidence proves a general, it
never gets beyond a general, uniformity. It has not succeeded in showing
that the human will comes under the same rule. It has not succeeded in
silencing the voice within us, which claims superiority for the moral
over the physical. And when the utmost extent of human knowledge is
compared with the vastness of nature, the claim to extend the induction
from generality to universality is seen to be utterly untenable. So
much as this, indeed, Science has rendered highly probable, that the
uniformity of nature is never broken except for a moral purpose. It is
only for such a purpose that the will is ever free. It is only for such
a purpose that Revelation has ever claimed to be superior to nature. But
beyond this Science cannot go. Let it be granted that the claim for
freedom of the will has been often unduly pushed far beyond this limit,
and let it be granted that religions professing to be revelations have
included records of miracles which had no moral purpose. This does not
affect the general conclusion that the evidence for uniformity has never
succeeded, and can never succeed in showing, that the God who made and
rules the universe never sets aside a physical law for a moral purpose,
either by working through the human will or by direct action on external
nature.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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