The Present Reslations Of Science And Religion

26 Pages 6532 Words

nd to ask what bearing, if any, recent scientific developments have on the validity of religious
beliefs.

In considering such beliefs I shall devote my attention mainly to Christianity, since this is the religion in which most of us
were brought up, and is the only one with which most of us have any first-hand acquaintance. I fear that there may be some
degree of unfairness in this. For there are certain peculiarities about Christianity which make it vulnerable to attacks that
might be harmless to some of the other great religions, such as Buddhism, or to religion in general. I will therefore begin by
mentioning the most striking of these peculiarities.

(1) The first and most important peculiarity of Christianity is that it is, to an unique degree, a doctrine about its own
Founder. Some religions, e.g. Brahminism, do not claim to have any definite historical founder. Others, such as Buddhism in
its original form and Confucianism, which trace their origin to a certain ostensibly historical person, claim no more for their
founder than that he was an exceptionally wise and good man who first discovered and promulgated certain important moral
and philosophical truths, and illustrated his doctrine by the special sanctity of his life. Others, again, such as Judaism and
Mahometanism, would claim more than this for their founders. Moses and Mahomet are supposed to have been the
recipients of special revelations from God. This, it is alleged, enabled them to know facts about God's nature and His
commands to humanity which no amount of reflexion on the data of ordinary experience would have disclosed to even the
wisest and the best of men. But Judaism and Mahometanism would claim no more than this for Moses and for Mahomet
respectively. These prophets are regarded as ordinary men who wer...