CHAPTER TWO THE PROBLEM OF RELIGION
The religion we propose to understand as a response, on the part of the human individual, of personal confidence in the real universe. We have now to consider the problem which this response and the faith behind it create for modern thought.
Why, we may wonder, does any problem arise at all? Confidence in the Supreme Cosmic Power has been produced in the minds of a large proportion of mankind by their experience of life and the world; and they have expressed the confidence they have felt by appropriate words and acts. Why need any intellectual or theoretical difficulty intrude itself? Nevertheless, a problem does arise and its source is to be found in an assumption as
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to the nature of the world which underlies the religious response. Indeed it is not too much to say that a definite view of the world is implied in religious faith. Man can in reason trust a Universe only if he believes it trustworthy. And he can regard it as trustworthy only if he attributes to it an appreciation of the values he holds highest, those of personal character and personal association, and a purpose and a power to realize these values. This assumption concerning the nature of the world it is which creates the theoretical or philosophical problem of religion. Human thought is bound to inquire: Is the religious view of the world as truly worthy of man's trust and confidence rationally justifiable in view of the facts of human experience and the attested conclusions of human science?
To this statement that religion involves a view of the world which requires rational scrutiny, serious exception may be taken. Is
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not religious faith, it will be asked, essentially a venture? Hence, is it not quite wrong to insist upon examining beforehand the rational grounds for its confidence in the universe? To expect in this case anything like rational proof or demonstration is to expect that faith converts itself into knowledge. If confidence in the Universe, honestly and resolutely acted upon, produces satisfying results, if it gives human beings increased power to realize their ideals, if it gives added scope and meaning to their social contacts, if it makes their achievements more enduring and their friendships more fruitful, this is all the justification that it needs before the bar of reason, and all it can have. Religious faith is essentially experimental; in its own field it must precede, not follow, knowledge.
There is a large measure of truth in these contentions. But such truth as there is, is quite consistent with the statements just made
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as to the problem of religion. Religion we must acknowledge to be an independent source of authentic experience as to the world in which we live. The facts which its practice brings to light are distinctive facts which must be taken account of in any comprehensive view of man and his cosmic relations. The procedure of religion (as I shall have occasion later to emphasize) is necessarily experimental. And in an important sense the rational justification for the assumption on which the religious response proceeds is to be sought in the results it produces rather than in its own logical cogency and rational grounds. Certainly it would be a mistake to hold that the truth of all religious beliefs should be rationally demonstrated before they are accepted and acted upon.
But there is more to be said. Human intelligence is not a house divided against itself. Is it therefore conceivable that a view of the
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world contrary to, or inconsistent with, scientifically ascertained and verified fact would have practical results permanently good? A Universe in which such a state of affairs could obtain would Prove itself to be the reverse of trustworthy. A religious faith which, in the supposed interests of the higher hopes and values of human life, proceeded upon a view of the world unscientific and anti-scientific at could receive the proof it seeks Of the essential orderliness and rectitude of the universe only through its own failure and frustration. Religious faith, while it may properly transcend or exceed scientific fact, should not Contravene or contradict it. ]Briefly stated, the view of the world on which religion bases its response must be consistent with itself, and not inconsistent With the accepted and growing body of human knowledgedge.
Hence a rational scrutiny of religious belief is called for. This is the task of the philosophy
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of religion: to examine the beliefs of religion and particularly the religious view of the world in the light of existing knowledge. And the purpose of such an examination is not to find out whether the beliefs of religion are demonstrably true, but whether they are tenable, are rationally possible, when we take into consideration all the facts of everyday human experience and scientific discovery.
Now it is an indubitable fact that the conviction is growing among thinking people today that the scientific world-view is inconsistent with that view of the world which is implied in the religious response. The steady advance of scientific explanation in modern times, “the extension of matter and causation and the concomitant banishment of spirit and spontaneity,” as Huxley described it a half-century ago, has been a growing source of difficulty to religion. It is easy to see why this
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is so. As physical science understands it, the existing world is a succession or system of events and every event is reducible to a mode of motion of material particles, or mass-points, or energy-units. And every movement of every material particle or energy-unit is determined by the movements of other mass-points or energy-units and ultimately by the whole mechanical system. In such a world., in which every event is mechanically determined, there is obviously no place for vital synthesis and spontaneity, for individual initiative and personal freedom, for communal intelligence and organizing ideals. If this is the last and only word which human intelligence finds it possible to say about the existing universe, it is absurd to expect from it any solicitude for the values, personal and social, which we human beings cherish and seek to realize. Personal confidence in it, in the sense religion intends, would be misplaced and mistaken. The
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religious response would be rendered impossible.
Just this conclusion has been reached by many minds alive to the trend and import of modern scientific progress. How does it stand with the so-called intellectual classes today, with the working scientists and the writers who are seeking to assimilate and impart ideas and not merely to please and entertain, with the artists who regard their art as a vehicle for the expression of vital experience, with university teachers and those engaged in social research and relief? A few generations ago it could probably have been said--and the statement would have sounded startling enough at the time--that only a minority of this class were “orthodox” in religious belief. Today it is doubtful if more than a minority retain any belief in a personal God or in the enduring reality of the human soul.
Nor are matters greatly helped by the
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pubfication of carefully prepared statements by leading scientists to the effect that they as individuals have no difficulty in reconciling a firm religious conviction with their scientific knowledge. For a closer examination generally shows that the adjustment is accomplished by excluding religion from the intellectual field altogether and finding a home for it in the sphere of feeling and social relations. What is meant by religion is, accordingly, a profound and earnest admiration for an ideal of life and character like the Christian and a sincere acceptance of the duty of social service with resulting obligation to self-denial and personal sacrifice.
Such statements on the part of leading scientists, which purport to deny any real conflict between the scientific view of the world and religious faith, bring forcibly home to us the philosophical problem of religion. “Our knowledge of the existing world,” they
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seem to say, “we shall obtain altogether from natural science but at the same time we confess our need for the inspiring, strengthening, and consoling influence of religion in our personal conduct and our social relations.” But we cannot thus escape the question of the religious view of the world. Does not religion presuppose a conception of the actual world which is radically different from, if not diametrically opposed to, the scientific? Different it certainly is, and also diametrically, opposed if the scientific view of the world is understood as complete and exclusive of all other interpretations. But is the scientific world-view, does it pretend to be, complete and exclusive of all others?
The thoughtful student of religion today has therefore to face the problem of the validity, or at least the tenability, of the religious view of the world. Is it necessarily inconsistent with the conclusions of natural science?
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Does it gain any support from the facts of everyday experience? These are questions which cannot be evaded, because religion cannot be limited to the subjective sphere of individual hope and aspiration, cannot be regarded, that is to say, as a projection and hypostasis of human ideals, or a compensatory mirage, and survive. Religious faith has an inherent and necessary objective reference; it ventures a judgment, it makes an affirmation, about the real world. Of course if this judgment proves untenable in the light of human experience it must be given up. We do not wish to delude ourselves. But if this is the case and the belief in question turns out to be unwarranted and indefensible, religion itself must be dismissed as a delusion.
It is no mere symptom of intellectual immaturity, therefore, that religious thought in past ages should have affirmed belief in a “spiritual” world. This of course it has done; consciousness in all times. And indeed it seems that if it cannot be shown to be in some sense reasonable, religion must perish. The idea that we can receive from natural science all our rational ideas and explanations of ourselves and the world in which we live, and still retain religion as a source of emotional uplift and practical direction, is merely to trifle and to temporize. The fate of religion is bound up with the fate of belief in a higher spiritual world or order; if one is doomed to rejection, the other is doomed to extinction.
