The Relations of Science and Religion: The Morse Lecture, 1880Calderwood, Henry
Religion
The Relations of Science and Religion: The Morse Lecture, 1880
Calderwood, Henry
Religion and science
recognized laws of mind; but it belongs equally to all men to estimate
the general sweep and range of acquired knowledge as to the structure
and order of the universe, as bearing upon the more general conceptions
to be rationally entertained regarding its government. With this branch
of the subject, ordinary thought may readily deal without entanglement
in technicalities.
There is as we have seen a _duality_ of existence in the inorganic
structure of the world, and a continual succession of changes, on
account of the interaction of these two. Different forms of matter stand
in different relations; and these relations are being constantly
interchanged by the transmutation of energy. Thus taking the world as
presented to us, it has a constitution which requires for its
explanation that we go beyond every thing to be found within itself. The
matter in the universe can not account for the energy; nor can the
energy account for the matter; and the relations between the two must
find explanation in something higher than both. What their source may
be, science is incapable of telling; it can not contribute towards
satisfying the requirements of the law of causality in view of the
mutual relations of matter and energy which it has itself revealed. But
equally by what it has revealed, and by acknowledgment of its inability
to transcend the limits of its own discoveries, does it present harmony
with religious thought in the form and measure in which it is possible
that such harmony could be manifested. Discovering the objective
existence of matter and energy, and the laws in accordance with which
the latter acts upon the former, it presents an unsolved problem
affording the most direct and positive testimony possible to science in
support of the existence of a First Cause, transcending the universe
itself. How matter and energy came into being, it can not tell; but it
most explicitly declares that by no power existing and operating within
range of observation is it possible either to add to the sum of
existence, or in the least degree to diminish it. Religious thought
could expect nothing more direct and explicit in the form of scientific
testimony as confirmation of its fundamental position. Scientific
thought while dealing with inorganic existence could not, even by a
single line of approach, be brought nearer to the actual support of
religious belief.
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