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This is an interesting book. Drummond was an interesting fellow.
Basically, it was the late 1800s, Darwin had published On the Origin of Species about 20 years earlier, and everybody was freaking out.
“RELIGION!” VERSUS “SCIENCE!” in the showdown of thought, rationality, faith, and so on and so forth.
Drummond was both a biologist and evangelist, and found all the either/or a bit simplistic. So he wrote a book to explain that, 1) Religious people don’t need to be scared of Science and 2) Science is good and 3) Evolution isn’t bad and 4) Truth is truth and you can find it in Science and Religion.
I’m oversimplifying. I’m still reading the book, too. Maybe there’s a surprise ending!
It’s dated, of course, both in language and phrasing and in various assumptions and oversimplifications and such. Still, it’s full of bits and pieces that are timeless.
“His writings were too nicely adapted to the needs of his own day to justify the expectation that they would long survive it, but few men exercised more religious influence in their own generation, especially on young men.” [Source]
I’m always interested in the folks who, in the midst of yet another dramatic, dichotomized, and altogether unnecessary conflict, stand and wave as if to say, “Hey, guys, I think we need to all calm down and talk about this like adults.”
But gradually the wall of partition showed symptoms of giving way. The two fountains of knowledge also slowly began to overflow, and finally their waters met and mingled. The great change was in the compartment which held the Religion. It was not that the well there was dried; still less that the fermenting waters were washed away by the flood of Science. The actual contents remained the same. But the crystals of former doctrine were dissolved; and as they precipitated themselves once more in definite forms, I observed that the Crystalline System was changed. New channels also for outward expression opened, and some of the old closed up; and I found the truth running out to my audience on the Sundays by the week-day outlets. In other words, the subject-matter Religion had taken on the method of expression of Science, and I discovered myself enunciating Spiritual Law in the exact terms of Biology and Physics.
The Spiritual World as it stands is full of perplexity. One can escape doubt only by escaping thought. With regard to many important articles of religion perhaps the best and the worst course at present open to a doubter is simple credulity. Who is to answer for this state of things? It comes as a necessary tax for improvement on the age in which we live. The old ground of faith, Authority, is given up; the new, Science, has not yet taken its place. Men did not require to see truth before; they only needed to believe it. Truth, therefore, had not been put by Theology in a seeing form—which, however, was its original form. But now they ask to see it. And when it is shown them they start back in despair.
If the Natural Laws were run through the Spiritual World, they might see the great lines of religious truth as clearly and simply as the broad lines of science.
…the authority of Authority is waning. This is a plain fact. And it was inevitable. Authority—man’s Authority, that is—is for children. And there necessarily comes a time when they add to the question, What shall I do? or, What shall I believe? the adult’s interrogation—Why? Now this question is sacred, and must be answered.
Rel: Is Religion Inherently Authoritarian?
Rel: The Emotional and Psychological Consequences of Authoritarian Religion
Rel: The Dangerous Rise of American Authoritarianism
Rel: The Hidden History of Authoritarianism
Rel: Timeline of Knowledge: Authoritarianism
“How truly its central position is impregnable,” Herbert Spencer has well discerned, “religion has never adequately realized. In the devoutest faith, as we habitually see it, there lies hidden an innermost core of scepticism; and it is this scepticism which causes that dread of inquiry displayed by religion when face to face with science.”
Whence this dread when brought face to face with Science? It cannot be dread of scientific fact. No single fact in Science has ever discredited a fact in Religion. The theologian knows that, and admits that he has no fear of facts. What then has Science done to make Theology tremble? It is its method. It is its system. It is its Reign of Law. It is its harmony and continuity. The attack is not specific. No one point is assailed. It is the whole system which when compared with the other and weighed in its balance is found wanting. An eye which has looked at the first cannot look upon this. To do that, and rest in the contemplation, it has first to uncentury itself.
Revelation never volunteers anything that man could discover for himself—on the principle, probably, that it is only when he is capable of discovering it that he is capable of appreciating it. Besides, children do not need Laws, except Laws in the sense of commandments. They repose with simplicity on authority, and ask no questions. But there comes a time, as the world reaches its manhood, when they will ask questions, and stake, moreover, everything on the answers. That time is now. Hence we must exhibit our doctrines, not lying athwart the lines of the world’s thinking, in a place reserved, and therefore shunned, for the Great Exception; but in their kinship to all truth and in their Law-relation to the whole of Nature.
Rel: God of the gaps
The breaking up of the phenomena of the universe into carefully guarded groups, and the allocation of certain prominent Laws to each, it must never be forgotten, and however much Nature lends herself to it, are artificial.
Rel: Finland Scraps Subjects in School
Rel: The Social History of School Subjects
Rel: Educational Philosophies Definitions and Comparisons Chart
Evolution being found in so many different sciences, the likelihood is that it is a universal principle. And there is no presumption whatever against this Law and many others being excluded from the domain of the spiritual life. On the other hand, there are very convincing reasons why the Natural Laws should be continuous through the Spiritual Sphere—not changed in any way to meet the new circumstances, but continuous as they stand.