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
It is not here suggested that all scientific men would employ such
language as that now quoted, or even readily acquiesce in its use. I
have been careful to indicate, that a passionately excited antagonism to
any recognition of the supernatural is avowed by some scientific men.
Accordingly, it must be granted that the conclusion here stated is not
so manifest a deduction as to preclude denial. The testimony of the
senses commonly terminates dispute, but such testimony is not available
as to the reality of the supernatural. The only testimony that can be
given here must be of a different kind; and if there be some who refuse
to credit anything save what comes within range of the senses, or is
deducible directly and simply from what the senses make known, there is
no help for them. Neither science, nor philosophy, nor religion can
deliver them from the narrow round of materialism. But neither science,
nor philosophy, nor religion, can restrict itself to the testimony of
the senses. A deeper, and wider range of inquiry is demanded of the man
who would walk at large in the vast field spread out in nature. All
human life is subjected to the test of accepting evidence other than
that the senses supply. If some refuse to submit to this deeper and
wider test, narrowing their convictions accordingly, others are not to
be restricted in this way, nor are they to be influenced by such
determination even on the part of highly distinguished scientific men.
For, it can not be overlooked that this is not a question of science,
nor does it imply any thing but an ordinary exercise of intelligence.
The one test for the public mind is this,--Is it or is it not true that
not an atom of matter can be originated or destroyed? Is the doctrine
of the conservation of energy to be taken as scientifically
demonstrated? These things science must decide, and beyond these, all is
clear for ordinary intelligence. Of the testimony of science on these
two questions there is no doubt whatever. Religion, therefore, has no
conflict with science here; it simply accepts the teaching of science,
finding in it ample support for its fundamental position. What creation
really means, or how we can fittingly represent it to our minds, does
not in the least affect the question here under discussion, for these
are not points on which science can offer any testimony. Nor have the
defenders of religion any complaint to urge against the claims which
science makes to explain all that belongs to nature. But when those who
make the largest claims for science, acknowledge that science is baffled
here, their testimony gains in value by reason of the strength of their
antipathy to the acknowledgment of the miraculous. When from an
accredited scientific witness we have these words:--"The investigation
of nature does not shrink from enrolling life and the processes of life
in the world of the comprehensible," followed up by this explicit
statement, "We are foiled only at the conception of matter and
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