Introduction To the Philosophy Of Religion

Peter Anthony Bertocci PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY

•

BOSTON UNIVERSITY

INTRODUCTION to the THILOSOPHY

of 'RELIGION

Prentice-Hall, Inc. Englewood Cliffs, N. J.

PRENTICE-HALL PHILOSOPHY

SERIES

^Arthur E. ^Murphy, Ph.D., Editor

First Printing Second Printing Third Printing_ Fourth Printing Fifth Printing

October, 1951 . April, 1952 March, 19S3 March, JQ55 June, 1956

COPYRIGHT, I 9 5 I , BY PRENTICE-HALL, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. NO PART OF THIS BOOK MAY BE REPRODUCED IN ANY FORM, BY MIMEOGRAPH OR ANY OTHER MEANS, WITHOUT PERMISSION IN WRITING FROM THE PUBLISHER. PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

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PREFACE

FOR some years I have been teaching the philosophy of religion to students interested in the foundations of religious belief but with no preparation in philosophy. Coming from courses in literature and in the physical and social sciences, these students brought with them many questions involving values, the nature of truth, the compatibility of religious faith with the findings of science, and the nature of man and his destiny. As discussion proceeded it became increasingly clear that I could not assume that they had even an elementary knowledge of the physical world as a whole, let alone any appreciation of the basic problems involved in the interpretation of scientific discoveries. They tended to take for granted that what had been taught in biology, psychology, and sociology was all that was to be known about man's nature—the more since they had little knowledge of their own religious tradition at its best. Moreover, they were relatively unaware of the problems involved in interpreting "facts," having had little practice in considering man's world as a whole. Yet these students were particularly anxious to know whether one could find any basis for religious belief in a world whose energies might any day blow up in their faces. To help meet this situation, what seemed to be required was a book bringing together the fundamental facts and problems relevant to the thinking through of basic religious issues. The point of departure for such a book should be sections, like Chapter i and 2, which articulated the student's problems in the religious area. It then might proceed to supply basic information and exposition of philosophical problems with regard to the nature of truth, the nature and validity of religious experience, the basis for the convii

viii • 'Preface flict between science and religion, the constitution of the physical world and man, and the nature of value-experience. The treatment of these subjects and an exposition of the best reasoning for God put forth in the Western tradition should serve as a broad basis for the student's conclusions. Since the needs of beginners and not of seasoned philosophers had to determine the nature of the exposition, I had to decide upon the method of introducing philosophical issues. Experience indicated that students go further when the problems of philosophy are expounded, not by recalling Plato's, Kant's, or Alexander's treatment of the problem, but by a direct exposition of the problem as it comes up in the context of the issue confronting the class. To be sure, the strain removed from the students' comprehension had to be absorbed by my own philosophical conscience. How frequently I wished I could fill out the bare skeleton of a discussion with the rich insights of Spinoza or Aquinas or Royce! But the task was to bring to bear upon the beginner's problem the essentials of philosophy within his reach and relevant to the problem. I could simply accept that task and hope that any omissions, however grievous, might seldom be at the expense of fair dealing within the scope set for the argument. In this book every attempt has been made to render the text self-explanatory to the person with no prior philosophical training. However, if one is to pursue his interest in religion intelligently, there is no escaping difficult problems. Accordingly, the beginner has been confronted with an analysis of those problems that are germane, not only to his felt interest but also to an adequate understanding of the central issues involved in the philosophy of religion. My gratitude goes out to the many students who have helped me to become aware of cloudy exposition. I should expect the average beginner to find Chapters 4, 11, and 17 especially difficult, for here more philosophical preparation is needed for the clearest understanding. But even here, it is hoped, the main structure of the argument will be clear. Everywhere there is as much concern for the understanding of what is involved in the problem at issue as

'Preface • ix for the conclusions reached. Thus, while I myself cannot accept some of the traditional views of God, I have attempted to expound sympathetically the reasoning behind these views before suggesting another possible way out of difficulties they involve. I feel keenly certain limitations in this book—the student also needs the kind of orientation in the problems of religion which comes through study of the great historical religions and a comparison of their basic tenets; in my own teaching I provide for this by assigning additional reading in the excellent treatments that, fortunately, are now easily available. Nor am I happy about omitting definite exposition and treatment of the recent neo-orthodox and existentialist movements in religious thinking, though the informed reader will know that I have had them in mind in my exposition of basic problems. Finally, I have felt obliged, in the interests of the basic task of this book, to leave out related problems in epistemology and metaphysics; here, too, I hope that I will not seem to ignore what I have been forced to exclude. If ever a book was the work of a community of friendly scholars, this one is. Any manuscript which goes through the hands of Edgar S. Brightman and Gordon W. Allport has had the benefit of frank, firm, and friendly criticism of the highest order. They and my brother, Angelo P. Bertocci, have left the imprint of their patient labors on the author and the manuscript. Dr. Richard M. Millard added the benefit of his acute observations as the manuscript approached final form. Nor can I overlook the aid of Dean Emeritus Albert C. Knudson, and of Professors Robert E. Ulich, John Wild, and Richard N. Bender, who criticized some of the chapters. Professors Leland C. Wyman, Norman S. Bailey, Arthur G. Humes, and Donald I. Patt, of the Boston University Department of Biology, and Professor Royal M. Frye, of the Department of Physics, succeeded, I hope, in keeping me from gross errors. Professor Arthur E. Murphy, editor of this Series, has been more than helpful from the beginning. I am also indebted to the generosity of assistants in the Department of Philosophy who have worked beyond the requirements

x * "Preface of duty in helping to prepare the manuscript: Mr. and Mrs. T. Downing Bowler, Mr. and Mrs. Peter V. Corea, Mr. and Mrs. Bruce Herrick, Mr. and Mrs. Paul W. Pixler, Mr. Edward T. Dell, Jr., and Mr. Hugo A. Bedau, Jr. If I cannot set down the long list of students who have helped in many ways to improve this book, I can at least offer public thanks. The constant help and selfsacrificing cooperation of my wife have made the writing of this book another common enterprise. PETER ANTHONY BERTOCCI Arlington Heights Massachusetts

TABLE OF CONTENTS

What It Means to be Religious § 1 . THE BASIS FOR RELIGIOUS MATURITY. }2. THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION. § 3 . IS HUMANISM A RELIGION? (4. UNIQUE BY-PRODUCTS OF RELIGIOUS LIVING. QUESTIONS. SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING.

2 Why Human Beings Develop Religious Belief and Disbelief § 1 . THE MEANING OF BELIEF AND DISBELIEF. §2. THE DESIRE FOR HELP IN THE BUSINESS OF LIVING. § 3 . THE NEED FOR COMMUNION IN GOODNESS. § 4 . THE STRUGGLE WITH EVIL. § 5 . THE WORKS OF RELIGIOUS PERSONS AND INSTITUTIONS AS SOURCES OF DISBELIEF. §6. WEAKNESS IN THE INDICTMENT OF RELIGIOUS PERSONS AND ORGANIZATIONS. § 7 . THE EXPERIENCE OF GOD, OR ITS ABSENCE, AS ROOTS OF BELIEF OR DISBELIEF. § 8 . IS MAN INNATELY RELIGIOUS? §9. DOES RELIGION HAVE RATIONAL MOTIVES? QUESTIONS. SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING.

The Meaning and Function of Reason in Experience § 1 . REASONING AS LOGICAL CONSISTENCY. § 2 . REASON AS EMPIRICAL COHERENCE. § 3 . CAN WE BE LOGICALLY CERTAIN ABOUT ANYTHING? § 4 . PSYCHOLOGICAL CERTAINTY, REALITY, AND TRUTH. § 5 . REASONABLENESS AND FAITH. § 6 . REASONABLE FAITH AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD. §7. TRUTH AS GROWING, EMPIRICAL COHERENCE. QUESTIONS. SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING.

2

3

xii • Contents 4

Do We Know God Directly in Religious Experience?

82

§ 1 . THE CLAIM OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE. §2. TWO DOGMATIC CLAIMS ABOUT RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE. § 3 . IS RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE COGNITIVE? § 4 . IS THERE A COMMON CORE IN RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE? § 5 . THE COGNITIVE VALUE OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE. §6. RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE AS A SOURCE OF GROWTH. § 7 . THE BASIC IMPORT OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE. § 8 . PRESENT STATUS OF THE ARGUMENT. QUESTIONS. SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING.

5

The Conflict of Religious and Scientific Perspectives

121

§ 1 . THE RELIGIOUS PERSPECTIVE. § 2 . BASES OF CONFLICT AND RECONCILIATION. § 3 . THE SCIENTIFIC PERSPECTIVE. § 4 . THE ISSUE: MECHANICAL EXPLANATION VS. TELEOLOGICAL. QUESTIONS. SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING.

6

The Nature of the Physical World and Life

141

§ 1 . THE SHIFT FROM A PICTURABLE TO A THINKABLE WORLD. § 2 . OUR CELESTIAL NEIGHBORHOOD. § 3 . OUR SUN-SYSTEM AND ITS FUTURE. § 4 . THE SYSTEM IN THE ATOM. § 5 . DIVINE CREATION OR EVOLUTION? § 6 . THE NATURE OF EVOLUTION. § 7 . EVIDENCES OF EVOLUTION. § 8 . FACTORS INFLUENCING EVOLUTION. § 9 . THE PLACE OF MAN IN THE EVOLUTIONARY PATTERN. § 1 0 . THE TOTAL OUTLOOK IN EVOLUTION. QUESTIONS. SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING.

7 The Meaning of Evolution § 1 . PROBLEMS OF INTERPRETATION. § 2 . CONDITIONS FAVORING THE APPEARANCE OF LIFE. § 3 . PROFESSOR HENDERSON'S INTERPRETATION. § 4 . SCHRODINGER's VIEW OF LIFE. § 5 . SHERRINGTON'S CONCEPTION OF MATTER, LIFE, AND MIND. § 6 . J. S. HALDANE'S INTERPRETATION OF LIFE. § 7 . THREE BASIC APPROACHES TO THE FACTS. QUESTIONS. SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING.

167

Contents • xiii 8 How Shall We Think of Man?

191

§ 1 . IS MAN A COMPLICATED PHYSICAL MACHINE? § 2 . DOES MAN HAVE A NONSPATIAL MIND? § 3 . WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A PERSONAL MIND. § 4 . ARE ALL THE MOTIVES OF MEN PHYSIOLOGICAL? § 5 . SOME PSYCHIC NEEDS AND THEIR IMPLICATIONS. § 6 . ARE MEN INTRINSICALLY SELFISH? § 7 . SUMMARY. QUESTIONS. SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING.

9 Personality, Free Will, and Moral Obligation

223

§ 1 . WHAT IS A PERSONALITY? § 2 . FREE WILL AS EXPERIENCED. §3- WILL-AGENCY AND WILL-POWER. § 4 . IS FREE WILL INCONSISTENT WITH THE FINDINGS OF SCIENCE? § 5 . DOES FREE WILL RENDER MORAL TRAINING USELESS? § 6 . THEORETICAL CONSEQUENCES OF DENYING FREE WILL. § 7 . THE NATURE OF MORAL OBLIGATION. § 8 . THE EXPERIENCE OF OBLIGATION. § 9 . DOES MORAL OBLIGATION REVEAL GOD'S PRESENCE? § 1 0 . IS MORAL OBLIGATION THE VOICE OF SOCIETY? § 1 1 . OBLIGATION: NEITHER DIVINE NOR SOCIAL? § 1 2 . SUMMARY. QUESTIONS. SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING.

10 Are there Values Valid for All Human Beings? 249 § 1 . THE ARGUMENTS FOR VALUES INDEPENDENT OF MAN. § 2 . THE ARGUMENT FOR VALUES AS UNIVERSAL BUT NOT INDEPENDENT OF MAN. § 3 . THE THEORETICAL IMPORT OF MORAL OBLIGATION AND TRUE VALUES. QUESTIONS. SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING.

11 Patterns of Reasoning About God

271

§ 1 . THE ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT FOR GOD. § 2 . THE COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT. § 3 . THE CLASSICAL TELEOGICAL ARGUMENT. § 4 . THE MORAL ARGUMENT FOR GOD. QUESTIONS. SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING.

12 The Conception of God in the Western Tradition 305 § 1 . GOD § 3 . GOD § 5 . GOD CIENT.

AS A PERSON. § 2 . GOD AS IMMUTABLE AND ETERNAL. AS TRANSCENDENT AND IMMANENT. § 4 . GOD AS CREATOR. AS OMNIPOTENT. § 6 . GOD'S GOODNESS. § 7 . GOD AS OMNISQUESTIONS. SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING.

xiv • Contents 13 The Wider Teleological Argument for a Personal God—The Interrelation of Matter, Life, and Thought 329 § 1 . THE GENERAL NATURE OF THE WIDER TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT. § 2 . EXPOSITION OF THE WIDER TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT: Lin\ One: THE PURPOSIVE INTERRELATION OF MATTER AND LIFE. Lin\ Two: THE RELEVANCE OF THOUGHT TO REALITY, QUESTIONS.

14 The Wider Teleological Argument for a Personal God—The Interrelation of the Good Life and Nature 347 L,in\ Three: THE INTERRELATION OF MORAL EFFORT AND THE ORDER OF NATURE. Lin\ FoUV. THE INTERRELATION BETWEEN VALUE AND NATURE. Lin\ Fife: THIS WORLD AS GOOD FOR MAN. QUESTIONS.

15 The Wider Teleological Argument for a Personal God—Objective Roots of Aesthetic and Religious Experience 374 Lin\ Six: THE SIGNIFICANCE OF AESTHETIC EXPERIENCE. Lin\ Seven: RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE AS CONFIRMATORY. § I . SUMMARY OF THE WIDER TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT. QUESTIONS. SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING.

16 Is This the Best of All Possible Worlds?

389

§ 1 . WHAT IS HAPPINESS? § 2 . THE NATURE OF EVIL. § 3 . THE TRADITIONAL EXPLANATION OF EVIL. § 4 . WEAKNESSES IN THE TRADITIONAL EXPLANATION OF EVIL. § 5 . SUMMARY OF GROUNDS FOR FINITENESS IN GOD. QUESTIONS. SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING.

17 The Explanation of Excess Evil § 1 . IS SUPERFLUOUS EVIL DUE TO GOD'S ILL-WILL OR NEGLECT? § 2 . WHAT IS THE NATURE OF THE IMPEDIMENT? § 3 . ARE OBJECTIONS TO A FINITE-INFINITE GOD VALID? QUESTIONS. SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING.

420

Contents • xv 18 How, Then, Shall We Think of God?

442

§ 1 . GOD AS A PERSON. § 2 . GOD AS ETERNAL. § 3 . GOD AS KNOWER. § 4 . GOD AS CREATOR. § 5 . GOD AS LOVE. QUESTIONS.

19 Is It Reasonable to Pray?

469

§ 1 . THE TRANSITION FROM REASONABLE CONCLUSIONS TO REASONABLE LIVING. § 2 . WHAT OUGHT RELIGION TO BE? § 3 . GOD'S PROVIDENCE: IMPERSONAL AND PERSONAL. §4. CONDITIONS OF FELLOWSHIP BETWEEN MAN AND GOD. § 5 . PRAYER AS FELLOWSHIP WITH GOD. §6. IS PRAYER JUST A MATTER OF PSYCHOLOGY? §7. THE GOAL OF PRAYER. §8. IS INTERCESSORY PRAYER REASONABLE? QUESTIONS. SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING.

20 The Religious Life and the Community

497

§ 1 . THE RELIGIOUS CHALLENGE TO SOCIAL LOYALTIES. § 2 . THE RELIGIOUS ROOTS OF COMMUNITY. § 3 . THE THEORETICAL ROOT OF RELIGIOUS TENSION. §4. BASES FOR DEVELOPING RELIGIOUS COMMUNITY. QUESTIONS. SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING.

21 The Good Life and Immortality

519

§ 1 . DEATH AS A MORAL ISSUE. § 2 . THE JUSTIFICATION FOR PERSONAL IMMORTALITY. § 3 . CAN A FINITE GOD GRANT PERSONAL IMMORTALITY? §4. CAN THE MIND EXIST WITHOUT THE BODY? § 5 . IS THE NEXT LIFE A REWARD FOR ACCOMPLISHMENT? § 6 . THE RELIGIOUS IMPERATIVE. QUESTIONS. SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING.

Index

555

I

WHAT IT MEANS TO BE RELIGIOUS

§ I. THE BASIS FOR RELIGIOUS MATURITY

MOST persons are at a disadvantage when they begin to think about religion. They cannot come to religion in a spirit of relative detachment, as they would approach the study of the stars, for example. Since early childhood they acquired their religious images and ideas in an atmosphere emotionally charged with the approval or disapproval of their parents. When such persons became communicants in a specific religious denomination their early religious attitudes were further confirmed or transformed. But from the beginning, be it at home, at school, or in the community, the emphasis was on some sort of emotional attachment to certain religious ideas and actions in preference to others. It is to be expected, therefore, that whatever the specific content of a person's religion is, he will not regard it as a detached observer. His own hopes and inspirations are involved; he is a partisan, not an outsider looking in. He grows up convinced that his own familiar perspective has some special virtue; at any rate, it probably draws the approval of the people who mean most to his sense of security. As a consequence, the word religion immediately suggests his religion; it exerts a particular pull upon his emotions and attitudes. The word is immediately clothed with his specific convictions and, perhaps, is limited to a specific mode of worship or to a specific denominational creed. Mr. Thwackum, the provincial parson, in Fielding's Tom Jones, declares: "When I mention religion I mean the Christian religion; and not only the Christian

2 • What It eMeans To Be %eligtous religion, but the Protestant religion; and not only the Protestant religion, but the Church of England." Accordingly, the person who begins to think about religion may find himself identifying his particular beliefs with the essence of all religion. His own religious beliefs are vivid and vital to him, especially if his religious training has been consistent and regular,and if his religion is emotionally allied with valued experiences at home, at school, and with friends. Again, if his specific beliefs have become connected with satisfying moments of high inspiration and if he has found these beliefs helpful in time of need, his religion will have so permeated the nooks and crannies of his life that any other "religion" is a relatively dead thing—something foreign and alien—and, indeed, not really religion! There is only one religion for him. As he tries to evaluate his religion, it will be difficult for him to examine his beliefs impartially and to give adequate weight to those factors in the experience of others which have little meaning to him in terms of his own emotional background. We might say that he suffers from emotional rigidity in religion. It is not only persons who favor their particular religious belief that suffer from emotional rigidity in religious matters. Persons brought up in an atmosphere of indifference or hostility to religion develop a perspective toward life which has little place in it for "religious" ideas, rituals, and emotions. Habituated to their particular pattern of disbelief, such persons also find it difficult to be detached about points of view different from their own. Such men may be emotionally inert as well as intellectually biased. A third group of persons—and we are not trying to classify all variations of religious attitude—have become negative in their approach to religion as a result of disappointment with the religion of their less critical years. An interview with a college junior will serve to illustrate religious rigidity (or frigidity) after disappointment. A young lady came to my office one day after attending a lecture on the meaning of religion. "Oh, if only I could have the religion of my girlhood!"

What It Cleans To Be Religious •

3

she exclaimed. "What you say about religion is so attractive, but I'm not going to be burned again!" Here is her story, somewhat simplified. When she was in the early grades, she was the family's problemchild at school. Inferior to an older sister in deportment and application, she was admittedly bright and very likable. She had a deep affection for her parents, and for her mother in particular. It was during these early days of her inner conflict that America was shocked by the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby. Who could predict that this event was to initiate a lasting change in this girl's attitude toward life ? By what psychological link did the death of a baby become connected in this nine-year-old's mind with fear for her own mother's safety? In any case, the newspaper stories filled her mind with horror and uncertainty. Her parents were what she termed "average Catholics," and her religious training had been regular but not especially meaningful. During this period of turmoil, she prayed to God one night and promised that she would be a good girl at school and more obedient generally, if He would only protect her mother. For four or five years her life was transformed, and she felt confident and secure in her world. Then one day, when she was about thirteen, she was told to stay with her aunt while her mother went to the hospital for a brief spell. She went without fuss, sure in her mind that all would be well. Two weeks later she had to be told that her mother had died. "For over a month I couldn't believe it." And then she remarked, "I couldn't believe God had let me down." Since that time this girl went to church to please her father, but faith in God had gone—that is, faith in a God who was never supposed to disappoint her, a God who alone was blamed for her mother's death. At college this junior had, that very semester, studied other religious perspectives and different views of God; but to her, as she said, they were not "God." A moment's reflection will reveal why any other God, or any other set of beliefs, could not satisfy this student. She had lived intimately with her God, with her conception of herself in relation

4 * What It ^Means To Be %eligious to Him. Surely no other God discussed by philosophers could take the place of this God with whom she had lived, and who existed to help her have her own way. For her, every other God was a cosmic stepfather; he might be "all right," but he could not take the place of "God"! At 20, living in the new impersonal world her sciences had described for her, she had found an interest in the psychology and sociology of people; she had hardened herself in a new outlook, one that was fairly "safe"—though there were moments when she wished Many persons have gone through an experience of religion similar to that of this college student. One cannot love any thing, any person, or any ideal and not face the possibility of keen disappointment. Let one believe in an infallible Bible or Church in such a way that he governs his life by it and accepts its promise and discipline. Then let that Bible turn out to be fallible and the Church venal and hypocritical. Something is likely to die in him which will not easily be resurrected. Better be rid of the whole thing! The more central to one's own life is the object of one's faith, the more keen is the shock when that object of faith "lets one down." But we must be careful not to impose any one pattern of religious development or religious disillusionment on all persons. What happens to religious belief depends on innumerable factors in the life-experience of the believer. What the individual calls his religion is interwoven with experiences which are religiously significant for him. The kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby was felt in the life of a thirteen-year-old girl through her concern for Mother; this reaction was peculiar to her life and was far different from the effect that the tragedy had on many others. Similarly, the boy who would not call God "Father" because his own father was a vicious drunkard provides one of myriad illustrations of this basic fact: what happens in a person's religious development must be understood in the light of those factors in his life which he ties in with "God" as he conceives Him. This point receives interesting support in a study of 414 Harvard

What It -means To Be %eligiom • 5men and 86 Radcliffe women right after World War II.1 The general effect of the war on this generation of students, as brought out in this study, was consistent with similar studies on students after World War I. In this study 82 per cent of the women and y6 per cent of the men reported the need for religious orientation in their lives, but only 64 per cent of the veterans were numbered among this group. Certainly the war had no uniform effect upon persons. Of the students who felt the need for religious orientation, 60 per cent found the religion in which they were nurtured still satisfying, but the other 40 per cent were looking for a better substitute. Do these data reflect the particular kind of religious training the subjects had had ? It would be hazardous to explain the effect in terms of this factor alone. But that early training is important is clear from the facts. Fully 40 per cent of the youth who were brought up in some form of Judaism and in less God-centered forms of Protestantism (such as Unitarianism and Universalism) did not believe that religion was important to the growth of mature personality. On the other hand, of the 200 students brought up in more orthodox Protestant denominations, 25 per cent denied that they needed religion for maturity of personality, and 14 per cent were convinced that a new type of religion altogether is needed. Only 18 per cent of the total student sample were confident that a mature personality requires no religion, and only 12 per cent considered themselves outright atheists. While it is interesting to point out that in the main these postwar college students were seeking an adequate religious orientation, and although it is important to note that the drift from religion tends to come to rest on ethical rather than theological formulations of religion, the underlying fact must not be overlooked. What happens to each attitude toward religion must be seen in the light of the believer's total experience and of the part 1 G. W. AUport, J. M. Gillespie, J. Young, "The Religion of the Post-War College Student," Journal of Psychology, 1948, 25, 3-33 See also G. W. Allport, The Individual and His Religion. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1950. Chapter II

6

•

"What It Jbleans To Be Religions

he believes religion has played in it. Persons will hold on to what has been valuable to them in their attempt to understand life and to find fulfillment in life. They may pay lip-service to certain beliefs for the sake of convenience, but such expressions make little difference to them and will be shed when the proper occasion arises. Two things are required if a person's religion is to keep in touch with the rest of his thinking, feeling, and acting. First, he must keep criticizing and enlarging his ideas of what is important for self-fulfillment. Second, he must keep reviewing and revising his emotional attachments. He must expect change and growth as his experience brings disappointment along with the opportunity for deeper appreciations. The adult who still has the same quality of emotion, the same ideas, and the same habits which he had as a child is an immature "adult." On the other hand, maturity does not necessarily mean that all the emotions, ideas, and habits of childhood must be supplanted; it rather calls for willingness to change and grow when there seems to be good reason for it, no matter what the immediate consequences to one's emotional peace of mind may be. It has been well said that "Maturity in any sentiment comes about only when a growing intelligence is animated by the desire that this sentiment shall not suffer arrested development, but shall keep pace with the intake of relevant experience." 2 We might stop here to question the kind of religious training which emphasizes dogma and "faith" at the expense of understanding. To be sure, beliefs which are not understood—beliefs which are not seen by the individual as vital to growth—are likely to be thrown out "baby with bath." But the sources of this wholesale rejection of faith lie deeper than faulty methods of religious teaching. Given the best pedagogy, the fact remains that we all 2

G. W. Allport, The Individual and His Religion, New York: The Macmillan Co., 1950, p. 52. The student who is anxious to achieve more insight into his religious sentiment is advised not only to read Chapter III, "The Religion of Maturity," but the rest of this objective and sensitive psychological study of different facets of the religious life.

What It Means To Be Religious

•

7

grow up with beliefs, sentiments, prejudices and philosophies that reflect the various stages of our own intellectual maturity as well as our social environment. The narrower and shallower our own experience is, the more likely we are to accept what we are taught without making allowances for emphasis and exaggeration. As we move into the days of adolescence our experience becomes broader and our intellectual ability matures. Under the stress of vocational, social, emotional, and theoretical problems, we see inconsistencies and inadequacies. Sometimes the best way to clean house is to move all the furniture out and then see what can be done with a new plan of organization. This is more easily said than done when it comes to one's mental furniture, however. Any person who has moved from one physical house to another knows how difficult it is to decide what to leave behind. As a person seeks to order his mental house, he becomes aware of many beliefs which are discordant, some which seem to have no apparent use. It takes patience, wisdom, and courage to re-think, re-sort, and reorganize one's convictions, especially since some of the new convictions challenge deep emotional ties with parents, friends, and revered authorities. But there simply cannot be religious maturity, even if there could be emotional and intellectual maturity, unless we face the problems of integrating our beliefs with our new intellectual and emotional adjustments. In all this we need to remember that what we have believed may not be the final answer to the problem confronting us, and that our own solution to date may be immature and uncritical. Besides, the underlying concern is not with the words "religion" or "God" but with the nature of the world in which we live. If one does not believe in God, he must, as a rational person, still face the question: What is the purpose and meaning of human existence in this world ? Mental maturity does not come from accepting or changing religious beliefs. It comes from facing honestly the problems which religious beliefs were intended to solve. But still more is involved if an individual is to become mature

8

• What It Cleans To Be Religious

or make valid changes in his religious orientation. To the willingness to take reasonable though emotionally unsatisfactory new directions a second requirement must be added: the individual must be able to distinguish between the essence of religion and its expression in a particular set of beliefs, or a given church, or a way of life. Is the sum and substance of religious practice available only in one's own denomination? Does one's own experience of God— vivid and intimate as it may be—exhaust all that God may be in human life ? Do the beliefs in which one has been nurtured constitute what has been the core of religion through the ages? The more mature we become intellectually, the less likely are we to confuse some particular phase or attribute of a thing with the thing itself. Not that the particular property or manifestation is unimportant. But can one justify giving up the whole out of dissatisfaction with the part—at least without further analysis ? The purpose of this study in the philosophy of religion is to help at this point. A philosophy of religion is not a theology. It is not a careful analysis and synthesis of the basic doctrines of any one religious faith or denomination. It is the attempt to understand the fundamental issues with which any religious belief is involved. The Christian, Mohammedan, Jewish or any other theology may be very important additions to the fundamental core of religion. But in the philosophy of religion we confine our study to systematic criticism of the essential claims of all religions. Theologies—specific religious tenets within definite religious traditions—come first in the history of thought. For human beings find themselves believing this and that before they systematically analyze and justify their beliefs. But when persons realize that other equally sincere human beings hold to dogmas perhaps different from and contradictory to their own, they are forced to examine the validity of religious thought to come to a clearer understanding of the basic issues involved in any religious belief. When they do this, they become philosophers of religion. Now

What It ^Means To Be %eligious • 9 they have to see their own and other religious traditions in the light of all relevant human experience. This enterprise is hardly a modest one, but we simply cannot solve our problems unless we see what makes them problems. We must try to understand the critical issues many wise persons have found to be involved in religious belief or unbelief. And the first task is to understand what we have an intellectual right to mean when we say that a person is religious. § 2. THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION

It is no easy matter to isolate the essence of religion. Even the most sympathetic and critical scholars identify some important accompaniment of religion with its essence. It is especially tempting to confuse what religion is with what religion ought to be, to identify a persistent attitude that all religious people seem to have toward life with the attitude one believes they ought to have. In this chapter we must be satisfied to clarify a minimum definition of what religion is, reserving the question what religion ought to be until the end of our study. What, then, distinguishes the religious man from other human beings ? The religious man lives by his conviction that what he conceives to be the highest values3 of life are consistent with, or demanded by, the nature of things. The essence or core of religion is the personal belief that one's most important values are sponsored by, or in harmony with, the enduring structure of the universe, whether they are sponsored by society or not!' Several points in this definition need further elaboration. 3 By a value we mean any experience or object the individual wants and critically approves. The highest or most worthwhile values are those for which he cares most. But this definition should not prejudice the discussion of value to come later (Chapter 10). 4 The reader may compare two other minimum definitions to the one suggested here. W. K. Wright defines religion as "the endeavor to secure the conservation of socially recognized values through specific actions that are believed to evoke some agency different from the ordinary ego of the individual, or from other merely human beings, and that imply a feeling of dependence upon this agency." See A Student's Philosophy of Religion (New York: The Macrmllan Co., 1922, p. 47). E. S. Brightman finds that "all kinds of

io

• What It not represent a cognitive situation. Confidence and assurance represent a total psychological state regarding what can be expected but is not yet proved. Such words would not have been coined if we were certain of everything. To say that one is confident that the snow will melt, that the operation will be successful, that the peace will be maintained, is to assert that although one cannot be sure that this will happen, he is willing to act on the assumption that these events will occur. Again, the reader may wrinkle his brow at the suggestion that he cannot be sure that snow will melt, though he would probably admit some uncertainty about the operation and the peace. But is his state of mind not dependent on the fact that he has never known an instance of snow that did not melt, whereas he has known of unsuccessful operations and of peace that has been broken? Let the reader try to prove beyond a legitimate doubt that snow must melt. He will soon see why his "absolute assurance" even here is confidence based on past experience sufficient to encourage him to act as if there were no legitimate doubt. Here we are, then, life-enjoying, struggling creatures with

^Meaning and Function of %eason • 65 varied needs that call incessantly for satisfaction, surrounded by a world that makes all kinds of demands upon us. Calls from within, invitations and demands from without, an indeterminate future ahead—in all this, final knowledge is never vouchsafed us, and yet, act we must! Is empirical coherence, this tentative, probable thing, is it the only life-line we have ? If this be reason, surely reason cannot be our only help in time of trouble! If, the reader may well say, we cannot be sure about the world, neither can we await assurance, especially when the call is vital and the course uncharted. To wait, to delay is to invite a fate which perhaps could have been avoided if we had "taken a chance." What does reason do for us in situations of this sort? The answer, suggested by reasoning itself, is: Take the chance, for some chance, indeed, you must take! A reasoning person sees that once we are beyond the functioning of reflex and mechanical automatic reactions, every choice-action means a step into comparative darkness. Let us consider a concrete situation. We have done all we can for a patient at death's door. One more step may be taken, but this step, an operation especially dangerous for a weakened patient, may cause death. The patient may live without it; it seems more likely that he may die without it. What shall we do now that our reasonable knowledge has reached its limit? What shall we do when we have come to full awareness of critical alternatives? If we "just go on thinking" during the crucial moments, we act by default; just thinking will no longer help, and we are therefore acting unreasonably. Thinking should lead to some decision, despite the realization that no decision as such is certain. If we decide to wait, we have made a conscious choice; we trust that the person's poor health will improve. If we decide to operate, we chance the operation with confidence in the doctor and in the patient's strength despite the further shock of operation. In each instance there is no certainty; there is no assurance. Some "chance" has to be taken, and it is unreasonable not to take some action when every moment counts, even though the

66 ' ^Meaning and Function of %eason action may prove fatal to the patient. A reasonable person does not simply go on thinking, sustaining "suspended judgment," when that thinking does not actually guide him into the uncertain future. To be reasonable is to allow one's reason to guide action, not to paralyze it. The situation here depicted is indeed extreme, but the human predicament is not falsified. Some ground of uncertainty there is with regard to every choice, though we are more aware of the uncertainty when great odds are at stake, as in our example. The function of reason in human experience is not to kill hope or despair; it is to eliminate thoughtless hope and groundless despair. To be reasonable is not to destroy venturesomeness but to ennoble it by sobering reflection which makes one aware of the possible consequences. We live ultimately by faith and not by reason. For there is always the necessity of a bold thrust into the realm just beyond our best knowledge. Are not those who live by "faith," without the aid of whatever guidance reason can give, irresponsible human beings? They seem to have neither the wisdom nor the courage to live with their whole beings, which include both faith and reason. It should be emphasized here that the word faith is not being used in a specific religious sense. (We shall consider religious faith in the next chapter.) The word here refers to that imperative venturesomeness which is the stuff of life. Faith refers to the conscious willingness to move along and develop one stream of activity on the basis of incomplete evidence because it is, nevertheless, the most reasonable course possible in that situation. Faith is an attitude of will; it is the commitment of the whole individual to action. Faith and reason are distinct moments in the life of a person, not two "parts" of him. He can live with a minimum use of reason, but such living is blind and meaningless; he can live with a minimum use of faith, but few new treasures are unearthed by such "prudence." Our normal living, whether we are driving a car or bringing up children, calls for decision in the absence of some facts. Yet

^Meaning and Function of Reason •

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it calls for decision based on as much evidence as can be gleaned up to the time when, whether we like it or not, some action must ensue. Our reasonable faith moves out of the area of borderline blindness into the area of confidence. Sometimes reasonable faith is vivified by psychological certitude, but never does it take us into the area of logical certainty. The barometer of faith goes up as the grounds for any particular venture of faith become more coherent, more reasonable. But empirical coherence itself demands that despite the dimmest light, especially where profound values are at stake, we commit our lives to the best we know. Indeed, as William James put it, we should "will to believe" especially in circumstances where our own decision and activity will help create the situation hoped for. Frequently our own attitude toward life will help determine the reality of the ideal. Whenever we confront such options we have a reasonable right to believe what would be best for all concerned, provided there is no well-established evidence contrary to our hope. Faith and reason combine to insure the wisest action possible when action alone remains for verification. Reason does not put the brakes on life; it does not destroy life. It rather follows life as a father may follow his child down the street to curb costly and unnecessary, though easily understandable, recklessness.3

§ 6. REASONABLE FAITH AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD

The conception of reason being suggested will now be related to the nature of scientific method. Many thinkers have opposed reason not only to faith but also to the scientific attitude. Reason, we have been told on the one hand, is inadequate to deal with the "profoundest problems of life." Reason, we have been told on the other, lies outside the domain of scientific method, and is a weak (if not false) guide to an understanding of the world 3 The essay by William James called "The Will to Believe" is highly recommended at this point. See The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy. New

York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1931.

68 • ^Meaning and function of %eason as it really is. Conclusions reached either by reason or by faith are not trustworthy until they have been stamped with the approval of scientific investigation. We have tried to show that far from there being a clash between reason and faith, reasonable living calls for faith. The reason which is inconsistent with scientific method is the abstract, logical reason which deduces the relations between meanings, regardless of their relation to experience and observation. We shall now similarly indicate in an introductory way (for we shall have to return to the problem again) that scientific method does not stand opposed to reason, as here depicted, but is itself an eminently reasonable way of dealing with human problems. It is all too easy to suppose that the steps a scientist takes as he approaches a problem are something entirely separate from the manner in which intelligent human beings solve their problems. But scientific method did not spring fullborn from the head of Zeus. The steps of scientific method are: (a) awareness of a problem needing solution; (b) preliminary observation of the situation; (c) the development of an hypothesis based on reflection about all the facts at one's disposal; (d) the collection of additional data relevant to the problem; (e) the carrying out of experiments to discover whether the hypothesis is adequate; and (f) the correlation of the hypothesis, if adequate, with other data and facts. Each step was a step taken with the approval of reason as it became clear that by taking these steps the mind could have greater confidence in its conclusions and actions. "The scientific method as a way of discovering truth is itself the most coherent hypothesis as to the best way of finding truth, especially in certain areas. Let us see why this is so. The first four steps—problem, preliminary observation, hypothesis, assembling of relevant data—are experienced every day by all of us in the face of difficulties. To be sure, it is not our everyday habit to formulate a difficulty or problem carefully, or to think out and clearly define our hypothesis, or to be very thorough about collecting all the relevant data. We usually do

^Meaning and Function of %eason • 69 not, like Charles Darwin, mark down in a special notebook all the evidence which seems to contradict our favorite hypothesis. Yet what creature who obeys more than impulse does not consider opposing evidence even when he tries to decide, for example, whether or not he ought to buy a car, or build a house, or get married? Most of us are likely to overestimate or underestimate the value of some of the data we collect, and we are less than assiduous as we collect data contrary to our hoped-for conclusion. But in our calmer moments, and too frequently as a result of sad experience, we realize that we could have been more successful had we conducted our inquiry as if we did not care what the outcome would be, or if we had temporarily at least forgotten that our interests and hopes were involved. That is, we should have been disinterested—to use the prevailing word for this attitude—in our search. Were we not aware of the difficulty we have in noting and facing all the facts, or even of properly stating the problem, would we ask others to listen to our problems, as we frequently do, and then to comment on our solution from their more impersonal vantage point? Our reason tells us that more impartial people can agree with one solution of a problem—in other words, the more public our conclusions can be—the more confident we can be that we are taking the right step. Shall we send our son to college or to the shop? Shall we join the church? Shall we vote for certain political candidates? Shall we take the new position ? Shall we compromise our integrity in a given situation? In all of these and a myriad other problems, the decision will never guarantee the correct solution, and we shall act in faith. Yet we feel more confident if we know that other competent and disinterested 4 persons see the problem as we do, suggest the same hypothesis and, after having considered the available evidence, agree that we should proceed along certain 4 To be ^interested is not to be uninterested; it means to be interested in the truth, let the chips fall where they may.

jo • ^Meaning and Function of %eason lines and not others. This procedure surely is as old as mankind, and not some special prerogative of "science." The same reason, working from experience, leads us to demand publicity or common agreement in discussion whenever possible, and this suggests the fifth step in the analysis of problems we confront, namely, experiment. We all have to try things out; we all have to experiment. How else shall we know what things can do for us or to us ? But when a scientist experiments, he subjects his trying to certain conditions which his reason, once more, indicates for him. If he wants to be sure that a certain amount of penicillin is producing a certain organic effect, he makes sure that he knows what the patient's total condition is when he is given the penicillin; and the scientist compares the results in such cases with the effects experienced by other persons in the same predicament who did not take penicillin. That is, if he is to be sure what causes what, he must control all the factors: he must, as far as possible, know what factors are producing particular results. Otherwise he cannot reasonably connect the dosage of penicillin with the observed effect. Obviously, a repetition of similar instances, in which all the ingredients remain relatively constant, makes his conclusions more reliable because he has more opportunity for observation and for noting what happens when he changes the dosage. There are many refinements which the experienced scientist must make in his methods, many different checks which he must use as his experience and reason lead him to realize the possible loopholes in any particular method of reaching conclusions. Here we are concerned with the main motive for experimentation. Any careful human being who wants to avoid unnecessary hazards in living accepts every opportunity to think and observe, to observe and think, under conditions in which the manipulation and isolation of materials is possible. The experienced scientist also knows, however, that this ideal of experimental knowledge is one which he can only approximate in different degrees, depending on the area in which the

(tMeaning and Function of Treason • ji problem occurs. As he leaves the physical sciences and enters the domains of psychology, sociology, economics, and history, he knows that his results are decreasingly dependable. For in these fields the opportunities for observation and control are far from ideal since the phenomena are much more intertwined and adequate repetition is impossible. If a psychologist wants to know the effect of a certain experience upon a child, he can have only one look, for the child will be different after the experience. No other child he may observe will have the degree of similarity to the first which physical substances of the same class share. The truth seems to be that the ideal of experimental observation in all sciences has to give way very frequently to the most cautious and circumspect observations under the best conditions possible for observation. The way to experimental control is often barred by the nature of the material the scientist is dealing with. Let us briefly examine an illustration from astronomy. When a recent astronomer set up the hypothesis that the unexpected perturbations of the planet Neptune could be best explained by assuming another hitherto unobserved celestial body, of a certain size at a certain place in the heavens, he had no experimental opportunity (in the strict sense of controlled repetition) to confirm his hypothesis. He certainly could not manipulate the movement of the heavens. He did not even have a telescope with a lens strong enough to allow observation of the area in which his computations led him to posit the undiscovered planet. His hypothesis was consistent with the facts already known. It did explain the irregularities in the movement of Neptune on its orbit, irregularities which could not be explained by the gravitational pull of Uranus, and other known factors. He was no doubt psychologically certain that once adequate lenses were developed, human eyes would see the planet. But until the planet could be actually observed, he and his scientific comrades could simply speculate whether or not this was the best explanation of the problematic perturbations. However, when a telescope

72 ' (-Meaning and Function of %eason with sufficiently powerful lenses was developed and then focused on the specified area of the heavens, the human eye did see a planet, which we now call Pluto, answering to the hypothetical description. In sum, the hypothesis, as a hypothesis, had suggested a reasonable relation between an hypothetical entity and a visible disturbance. The expert use of the telescope indicated that the explanatory hypothesis was even more coherent than its originator thought it was. It related other facts (the observations of the heavens by the larger telescope) in a way impossible under any other competing hypothesis. This astronomer could not, however, take another step which must be taken in ideally controlled experiment—namely, compare an instance in which Pluto was not present with one in which Pluto was. In the whole field of astronomy there is no opportunity to control experimentally the phenomena to be observed. All the astronomer can do is to observe with the best instruments at his disposal, under optimum conditions. Experimentation involving controlled repetition is out of the question, and the certainty of the astronomer's conclusions is to that extent attenuated. He is forced to be satisfied with observations which are coherent with the other observations. Even these brief suggestions may serve to show that the method of science is a product of human reason concretely at work as different areas of the world are explored. The scientific method, including experimental control, has more than proved its value to human beings who have been trying to chart reasonable courses of action. But its possibilities and limitations are seen by the reasonable mind whose reasoning activities are broader than the method itself. We would, indeed, be veritable fools if we did not use one of the mind's best tools for whatever it is worth in every area of human experience. Our task, then, is not to follow scientists around suspiciously lest they invade some cherished sanctuary which we for some obscure reason prefer to leave "unmolested." Good judgment bids us welcome our most accurate tools, logic, and scientific method into any

^Meaning and function of %eason

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field for whatever value they may have in that field. But good judgment also requires that we see to it that we do not allow our love of the tools and the accuracy they promise to dictate ahead of time either the value of the problems or the nature of the solutions. In other words, we must test scientific method itself by experience as a whole and in its variety. Here comes a serious rub, especially with those thinkers who regard knowledge acquired by scientific method as the only knowledge worth having. These philosophers would use scientific method as the standard by which all other so-called knowledge is to be judged. For them reasonableness is not the criterion of truth; their criterion is only reason as confined in strict scientific method. Such thinkers seem to forget that this method of science is itself a reasonable formulation based on human experience with the problems of inquiry. Scientific method is one of the means a reasonable human being uses in dealing with his world. For all we know, it may not be of much use in other areas; it may not even be as helpful as the reasonableness which led to its own formulation. Human reason learns from its examinations the different kinds of entities and processes which compose the physical, the biological, and the human realm. Reason realizes that the greenest pastures for scientific method are those areas in which the problem can be formulated and investigated in a way which will bring sensory confirmation. Reason learns that we arrive at the most probable conclusions when the problem can be studied with repetitive experimental control. Then other persons can perform the same experiment and check the conclusions; public observation is possible. But what shall we do when we have to deal with all of the problems indicated in the last chapter—problems which have to do not only with the values of experience but with the meaning of life and the universe as a whole? Here neither sensory confirmation nor experimental control can yield results; neither test-tube, telescope, nor microscope will confirm hypotheses, for

74 * ^Meaning and function of %eason life as a whole is involved. Shall we follow those thinkers who regard these problems as futile because the questions do not lend themselves to scientific procedure? Surely our reason tells us to go on thinking as coherently as we can, aware that our solutions, especially when they are least amenable to treatment by experimental control, will not have the degree of accuracy and publicity which might well be desired. Shall we take the idolatrous position of the man who sits at the altar of science and says: "I will have no other type of knowledge before me! I will follow no other gods, for they will lead me into error!" Or shall we follow our reason in the realization that even if we wait until science can catch up with these difficult problems, questions pertaining to the conduct of life and to the meaning of life itself will be solved uncritically or by default ? We cannot afford the luxury of waiting for science's final word; we must steer our actions by the discipline of a reasonable process which discovers the direction in which the balance of evidence seems to point and acts upon it. Reason, then, tells us that both faith and science should serve the interests of life as a whole: the one, faith, serves to warn us that some leap is necessary; the other, science, serves to warn us that our most coherent hypothesis on matters of high moment may never grant the degree of confidence which publicity, as acquired in scientific experiment, can provide. § 7. TRUTH AS GROWING, EMPIRICAL COHERENCE

The conception of the work of reason here considered is so important for the argument of this book that it may be well to bring together the suggestions made above in a more direct way. Reason and life. Reasoning is the activity of human mentality which undertakes to relate experiences and ideas to each other. It finds itself enmeshed in a total mental life of the individual— a life feeling, wanting, sensing, imagining, willing, and oughting. Human life is a constant choice of a future on the basis of

^Meaning and Function of %eason • 75 remembered and present actualities. There are always more problems to be met and more opportunities to tempt our enjoyment than our selective attention can deal with. Despite all that we consciously do, the course of our lives keeps moving on, building up, as it were, to some new point of emphasis, some new enjoyment or development. In constant interaction with agencies in the environment which make their impact upon us willy-nilly, we find ourselves conscious of desires, feelings, questions—a crowd of experiences dominated by some feelingtone or some idea—all calling for further clarification. Whatever clarity or order we achieve is always challenged by relative unknowns which hover over our reasoning or bar further progress. And this we have discovered through the narrowing of the scope or even through the frustration of many a plan of action. There is always more depth and breadth in our lives, and hardly suspected possibilities hanging over us. This is what we mean when we say that life is deeper than reason. Experience is broader than any one rational plan or system which we manage to evolve as we think out what is present in our consciousness. To be "experienced" is to know that there is always more in the content of our desire, feelings, and ideas (let alone the demands to be made upon them from without) than we can ever fully realize. To know this is to realize that real uncertainty is our human lot, that life, including the life of reason, is always on-the-go-and-on-the-make. But it is also to know that what we put into experience will, to some extent, determine the experience with which we shall have to deal. Reason and faith. This human predicament does not, however, justify the conclusion that present unknowns are unknowable (skepticism or relativism). It simply means that there will always be, at least if the past is to be our guide in judging, some unknown, some uncertainty. Uncertainty from the point of view of physical and spiritual survival and uncertainty from the point of view of accurate and complete knowledge will always be our lot. We are wanting, willing, oughting, knowing creatures

j6 • •^Meaning and Function of %eason coming into a world and yet not knowing the ultimate nature of our own roots or of the world beyond our consciousness. Yet, to be human is to live to understand, and we find life profoundly satisfying as our understanding increases. Both intellectual and vital venturesomeness are constituents of our very being, as our yearnings, hopes, and desires remind us. The ultimate alternatives we face are seldom the ones we would have selected. On basic issues we choose, if we are wise, as reasonably as possible. Otherwise the movement of life and of the world carries us with it only to set us down again with another (perhaps less desirable) choice to make. If we decide to live with some plan in mind, with a better conception of our own real nature and of the world which encompasses us, we soon become very conscious of the fact that what happens to what we sow does not depend entirely upon us. Uncertainty we cannot vanquish, but we can decrease it so far as it depends on our thought and action. Invest our lives we must; committing them to some set of values, to some conceived order of things, cannot be avoided. No choice is open between faith and no faith. The alternatives are faith with reasonable guidance, or faith without reasonable balancing of alternatives in the light of relevant evidence. Here a basic decision is to be made, a decision dictated by the nature of our existence. It should be clear that if we start out with faith in thinking as the guide for human ventures, we are not necessarily committing ourselves once and for all to rational guidance. During the voyage thinking may decide that it cannot do the job and thus nominate some other guide. It may decide, that once certain boundaries are passed, there are other cognitive factors in the human situation, such as indubitable religious revelations, which will serve as better guides. This question is very important and we shall devote the next chapter to it. But one thing may be said even here. Reasoning cannot be abandoned unless the experiences that seem indubitable are consistent with other "revelations" that seem indubitable. The moment contradiction among

y physics and chemistry may well be explained in the future; we may then possess information enabling us to predict the 21 22

Ibid., p. 134, 135. Ibid., p. 135, (italics mine). See also G. Simpson, op. at., Chapter XVII.

The P- 454 Ibid , p. 23. 6 Ibid., p. 19.

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The Wider Teleological Argument—III

living itself and the heightening of the self which goes with this, the aesthetic experience, with its concern for intrinsic fulness of objective experience is plainly a part of the spiritual life6 Because the aesthetic experience does develop and sharpen the feelings and imagination, and thereby a person's interests and values, because it sensitizes his vision of what is good in human conduct and in the world about him, it necessarily leaves its stamp upon the moral aspirations and social outlook of a human being. Were not the aesthetic experience such a tonic, were not its effects upon the emotions, feelings, and outlook of human beings so profound, masterminds like Plato would have been less concerned about the problems of censoring the artist. We are not dealing here with a luxury, though the majority of human beings act as if the beautiful is an unnecessary addition. However we ultimately define it and its status, there is no doubt that the depth, the variety, and the very zest of human life is affected by aesthetic experience. Even the pessimistic Schopenhauer, who saw all events ultimately in the grip of a blind insatiable Will, could find in the experience of beauty, and in music particularly, joy and goodness. Therefore, so long as our consciousness is filled by our will, so long as we are given up to the throng of desires with their constant hopes and fears, so long as we are the subject of willing, we can never have lasting happiness nor peace. . . . But when some external cause or inward disposition lifts us suddenly [as does the aesthetic object] out of the endless stream of willing . . . the attention is no longer directed to the motives of willing, but comprehends things free from their relations to the will. . . . Then all at once the peace which we were always seeking, but which always fled from us on the former path of the desires, comes to us of its own accord, and it is well with us.T 6

Ibid., p. 26. E. F. Carritt, Philosophies of Beauty, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1931, p. 141. (Quotation from A. Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea (1818), ui, 38.) 7

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George Santayana is another witness to the value of aesthetic experience in life. No one is more eloquent than Santayana in disavowing the reality of God or in radically disagreeing with any Platonic view of beauty as presiding over nature. Beauty for him represents no Power working in the universe making for goodness and peace and joy. It is a man-made affair. But, for all that, it is not to be spurned if man is to realize his natural potentialities and his yearning for perfection. In every other area of life, as Santayana sees it, even in the high pursuits of love and of knowledge, we never quite experience the harmony in living that we so much crave. For one reason or another "The reason and the heart remain deeply unsatisfied. But the eye finds in nature, and in some supreme achievements of art, constant and fuller satisfaction." 8 Beauty for Santayana, therefore, becomes the "clearest manifestation of perfection." It is not, to be sure, the manifestation of a perfect being, but an awareness of the "possible conformity of the soul and nature"—in other words of the completest life man can live in a nature.9 Were it not for this sense of beauty, our lives as a whole would be impoverished. Thus: This incapacity of the imagination to reconstruct the conditions of life and build the frame of things nearer to the heart's desire is dangerous to a steady loyalty to what is noble and fine . . . we need to clarify our ideals, and enliven our vision of perfection.... That man is unhappy indeed, who in all his life has had no glimpse of perfection, who in the ecstasy of love, or in the delight of contemplation, has never been able to say: It is attained. Such moments of inspiration are the source of the arts, which have no higher function than to renew them.10 Again, owing to the experience of beauty: The tone of the mind is permanently raised; and we live with 8 George Santayana, The Sense of Beauty. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1896, p. 202. 9 Ibid , p. 203. 10 Ibid., p. 197.

380 • The Wider Teleological ^Argument—717 that general sense of steadfastness and resource which is perhaps the kernel of happiness "" Aesthetic experience as another creative relation between man and the world. We must—if only out of a sense of inadequacy— resist the temptation to become involved in the discussion of whether beauty is real independent of man's experience, or whether it is simply one of the ways a man can feel when he experiences certain perceptual objects; or we may have to accept another position. Philosophers, it is true, have frequently used the beauties of nature as direct argument for God. Much there is in nature, in its microscopic patterns as well as in the beauty which the naked eye can see, which suggests the reality of a Being who is interested in quality and form as well as content. There is much to suggest the Artist as well as the Mathematician, the Artist whose powers, expressed in myriad forms, seem to give birth in beauty as well as mere order. There are those who would argue that all order is ultimately the order of Beauty. Suggestive as this line of reasoning may be, we should prefer to say that the world we live in is not so much beautiful as it is the sponsor of the many potentialities for beauty awaiting sensitive appreciation and disciplined skill. Nature's children seem not only to find her own forms worth imitating, or at least suggestive, but they then go on to build (using their own inherited abilities) cathedrals and symphonies, epic poems, sonnets, and lyrics, sculptures and paintings. And these abilities, we must remember, bear witness to a life within them nurtured and inspired by the very processes which constitute their being. The beauty men experience is their beauty created with the help and suggestion of nature. Whatever the structure of the world to which man sensitively responds, this much must be said. Nature, including here all the experiences man can have in the world, does mean more to man and can mean more to him in his capacity as artist than ^lbid., p. 198.

The 'Wider Teleological ^Argument—77/ • 381 she could mean otherwise. But the artistry in man is evoked, nurtured, and developed in interaction with the universe that brought him into being. If nature is with man in his scientific enterprises, she is with him in his aesthetic experience and creation. Is nature, then, as might appear in a purely scientific perspective, a skeleton of orderly patterns without beauty ? This view is possible only after we have already decided to think of beauty as a garment spun by human imagination in order to clothe the dry bones of what is assumed to be "the real world." Leave out any reference to the enjoyment of the patterns in nature as humanly experienced, see the world through the nonevaluative eye of science or the purely practical concern for prediction, and the beauty as such may indeed seem a meaningless addition to nature. But the fact seems to be that nature does her work in forms and patterns which find a sensitive response and make the difference between light and darkness in man's life, whether he encounters them in flower and field, in physical and animal structure, or in crystal and rainbow. It may be that the beauty of nature and the art of man do not represent a purpose of a cosmic Mind who takes delight in them, but this answer certainly leaves a vast amount of data unexplained. On the other hand, as Tennant says: If we do apply this category of design to the whole timeprocess, the beauty of Nature may not only be assigned a cause but also a meaning, or a revelational function.... If Nature's beauty embody a purpose of God, it would seem to be a purpose for man, and to bespeak that God is "mindful of him." Theistically regarded, Nature's beauty is of a piece with the world's intelligibility and with its being a theatre for moral life; and thus far the case for theism is strengthened by aesthetic considerations.12 12

Philosophical Theology, II, p. 93.

382 •

The Wider Teleological ^Argument—III LINK SEVEN

Religious Experience as Confirmatory The human significance of religious experience. In Chapter 4 we concluded that the experience of God in itself did not provide adequate independent justification for the belief in any specific view of God. Sincere religious persons, we saw, speak in many tongues when it comes to describing in any detail the God they experience. Moreover, when they do interpret their experience, they are forced to speak in words that are coined to express other ranges of experience and tradition and which actually convey no significant meaning to those who do not have the experience or live in the tradition. However we did not deny the existence of an experience which was a vital, creative, and transforming factor in the life of the experient. Religious experience is not to be dealt with highhandedly and reduced to emotional tonics peculiar to homo sapiens. Yet we felt the need of evidence in other areas to help us choose among the interpretations of God, and even more, to furnish grounds other than that provided by the testimony of the experients themselves. The common core of all religious experience, among laymen or among mystics, is that there is a Being, independent of the human mind, an objective Presence, or "More," as James called it, that is not only as real as any other existence but more significant than any other existent being. Added to this core is the conviction that man never finds his greatest good, his "home," apart from the God thus immediately enjoyed. For in religious experience one stands in the very grip of the Greatest Good, the Ultimately Real, and he knows that (in basic terms) his Redeemer liveth. The moment we leave this common core to assert that God is a Person, a Redeemer (in a narrower Christian sense), a Father, or an Impersonal One, the Absolute, the Life of Nature, or any

The Wider Teleological ^Argument—17/ • 383 other specific view of God, we feel the need of other cons:derations to guide our belief. Yet we cannot deny that the religious experience points beyond itself to a Being which inspires it. Even though it yields no clear outline of God and his relation to the universe and man, its creative power and suggestiveness would stand as a tremendous fraud in a universe which has no real place for God. Religious experience as confirmation for our hypothesis. There are no experiences which men have that are as influential as religious experience at its best in every religious tradition. The reader is referred back to our discussion in Chapter 4 and forward to the discussion in Chapter 19 for more adequate elaboration of the status of religious experience. This link in the argument is written with that discussion in mind. Here we wish to emphasize the consonance of the basic religious conviction that there is a God with the evidence garnered from other realms of experience as discussed throughout this book. Indeed, as part of a wider teleological argument, the evidential value of religious experience increases, and the experience of God serves to confirm the basic contention in the argument as a whole. If there is ground for believing in a Person whose purpose is the creative growth and development of all values and of human values in particular, then there is every reason to suppose that this God would make himself felt in the lives of men, indirectly through natural processes, but directly (given certain conditions) in religious experience. The fact of religious experience, then, is consistent with what we would have expected from our hypothesis. The more exact meaning of the experience, on the other hand, may be further developed in the light of the hypothesis developed on other grounds without excluding religious experience. Although there are important differences, to be sure, an interesting similarity may be pointed out between the confirmation offered of our philosophical hypothesis by religious experience and that offered of a scientific hypothesis by sense-perception. An hypothesis about the existence of the planet Pluto is confirmed,

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and illuminated, when a telescope is finally turned to the designated area of the heavens. An hypothesis about evolution is strengthened and illuminated by the inspection of the evolution which can be directly observed in the embryonic development of a chick. While no such conclusive confirmation can be discovered in the complex realm of religious experience, our hypothesis of a Personal Source of Value is indeed strengthened and illuminated by the very suggestiveness and inspiration possible through religious experience. The religious experience, then, in its essential contribution, is added confirmation of a reasonable hypothesis. Our reasoned interpretation of the world, on the other hand, provides an intellectual and moral framework for the further exploration of the meaning of religious experience. There can now be a constant interplay of reasonable interpretation and scientific, logical, moral, aesthetic, and religious experience. § I. SUMMARY OF THE WIDER TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT

In this chapter we have presented a chain of considerations in the wider teleological argument for God. The emphasis has been not on specific harmonies found in the world, but on the interrelations of basic dimensions and types of being, on the "ultimate collocation" of things. Thus we began by suggesting (Link One) that the interrelation between the order of physical things and the living order is best explained if a cosmic, creative Intelligence is postulated. The attempt to reduce life to matter, or to explain developments in evolution by the accumulation of accidental variations, or by emergent mutations, leaves us with explanations which simply do not account for the underlying cooperation permitting us to call our world a universe. The faith in such interpretations is less reasonable than the faith in a cosmic creative Intelligence, even if there were no other evidence to be considered. But we moved on (Link Two) to show that although human

The Wider Teleological ^Argument—77/ • 385 thought may not correspond point for point to reality, the very survival of man depends on the fact that his knowledge is a jointproduct of his human faculties in commerce with the world. If the order of mind and the order of living and physical things did collide with each other, not only would the achievements of men be impossible to explain, but the enjoyment of the experience of reflection would become an incongruous fact about the universe. The universe is to be seen with man the thinker in it—with the kind of being who enjoys mathematics, logic, science, and philosophy, poetry, music. We did not pass on, however, without noticing the limitations in man's cognitive experience owing both to his own immorality and to conditions not in his control. In our next step (Link Three) we realized that if moral freedom were unlimited, and if the moral agent could not count on the regularity of consequences, there would be no way of profiting from experience and guiding human choice. Thus the physical, biological, and psychological orders of the world support the human struggle for values by the very intelligibility of their order. In willing the best he knows, man uses the value-potentials in his environment and brings into being the values which depend upon his effort for their actuality. And here we noted three facts (Link Four and Five). First, the consistent effort to realize the good to the best of one's ability creates a person's character, an achievement open to every man within the limits of his fundamental nature. Without the selfdiscipline which character involves, there can be no stable realization of any of the other values of life, be they the values of knowledge, of art, or of religion. But, second, the crucial fact is not simply that man can develop a character, but that man has the kind of nature, and lives in a world that, in the main, supports his efforts to realize values giving fulfillment and quality to his life. Man made neither his own value-potentialities nor those in the world, and yet he is able, when he disciplines the abilities he has, to actualize the economic, biological, social, aesthetic, moral, and spiritual values that make his life worth living. Man does not

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live in a desert, so far as values are concerned; he can create valuetowers if he will, with the support of nature. (We agreed to postpone until later chapters the problem of evil.) But, third, realizing that a whole system of ethics is involved at this point, we suggested that in the course of his search for values, man, living with other men in this environment, has discovered that there are moral laws. These laws cannot be broken without jeopardizing the values which make possible continued human growth and the increase of value-realization. When men are undisciplined, unreasonable, self-centered, and willing to use other human beings merely as tools for their own ends, they not only disintegrate internally but they also destroy the possibilities of common growth and common values. The moral laws of the universe may seem escapable, but they are not. On such grounds we came to the conclusion that the moral struggle of man—impossible without the cooperation of the physical, biological, and psychological orders—gave us our most comprehensive clue to the purpose of the universe and the universeMaker. God is not only a creative Intelligence. At work in the intelligible order of nature, life, and mind, he is a creative Intelligence that is good. He has made possible the kind of human being and the kind of values which come to their fulfillment when man becomes a disciplined co-creator in the realization of values. The kingdom of heaven is the communion of co-creators, finite and Infinite, who live in trust and loving mutality. Such an aim is good, and the world we live in is good (assuming that we can deal adequately with the problem of evil). Among the values which testify both to the creativity of the universe and of man stand the experiences of beauty (Link Six). Here is a kind of value which cannot be explained by any advantage it gives in the struggle for survival as such—though beauty is important in some degree for that purpose. To the extent that beauty permeates every aspect of life, existence becomes more significant and more complete. In the creation of works of art which express meaningfully the qualities of reality-in-and-for-man, the

The Wider Teleological ^Argument—177 • 387 whole of reality takes on added quality. Human beings who are gracefully and graciously good are so much finer as persons than those who are simply good—and there is point in the contention that there can be no real goodness where there is no beauty in feeling and expression. Indeed, that tradition which identified Truth, Beauty, and Goodness did well to underscore the intimate relation in human life and in reality between these aspects of existence. The world which our intellects understand and enjoy, the world which supports our moral strivings for completeness, and which participates in our creative appreciations of beauty— that world is a universe, and to herald this fact we use the word God. "There are many acts of productivity in human life, but the only real act of creating man performs in contact with something greater than himself, for man alone never creates." " In the seventh and final Link of the argument we found that religious experience, in its essential affirmation of a More than the natural world, could be seen as a confirmation of the good, creative Person to which the earlier pathways led us. Once there is the reasonable presumption that there is a Mind behind and within the universe, the religious experience, at once creative, inspiring, and transforming becomes part of the evidence for God, though its "revelation" must stand in reasonable relation to all that we know about the physical world and the moral and aesthetic life, and their intimations of the structure of reality. QUESTIONS

1. If beauty were simply a figment of the human imagination, would it be a legitimate part of an argument for God ? 2. Why consider the aesthetic experience an addition to the universe ? 3. Why is it generally accepted by aestheticians that a life without beauty is an impoverished life ? 4. What view of the relation between nature and the aesthetic experience does your author suggest ? 13 Robert Ulich, Man and Reality. The Hazcn Pamphlets. Number 21, 7948, p. 26. (New Haven: The Edward W. Hazen Foundation.)

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5. Why, then, include the aesthetic life in the argument for God? 6. a. What is the common core of religious experience ? b. Why must we go beyond it to understand the relation of God to man? 7. a. Why is religious experience regarded as the copestone of the wider teleological argument for God ? b. Why is it considered confirmatory ? 8. Does the fact that religious experience is the last link in the argument for a personal God mean that it is psychologically the least important? Explain. 9. Does the wider teleological argument leave any significant area of human experience out of account? 10. Have any problems been overlooked by this argument? 11. Summarize the main steps in the total wider teleological argument for God. SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING

Calhoun, Robert L. God and the Common Life. Charles Scribner's Sons, 1935, Chapter IV. Dewey, John. A Common Faith. New Haven: Yale University Press, IQ 34Dixon, W. Macneile. The Human Situation. New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1937. Ferre, Nels F. S. Faith and Reason. New York: Harper & Bros., 1946, Chapter III. Lyman, Eugene W. The Meaning and Truth of Religion. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1933, Part III. Matthews, W. R. The Purpose of God. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1936, Chapters II-III. More, Paul E. The Sceptical Approach to Religion. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1934. Patrick, George T. W. Introduction to Philosophy, (rev.). New York: Houghtcn Mifflin Co., 1935, Chapters XII, XXVI, XXVII. Santayana, George. Reason in Religion. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, (1905) 1930. Trueblood, D. Elton. The Logic of Belief. New York: Harper & Bros., 1942.

i6 IS THIS THE BEST OF ALL POSSIBLE WORLDS?

IT is now time for us to face the problem of evil. Evil is a part of the universe we have been trying to understand, and no interpretation of the universe is adequate if it does not provide the most coherent hypothesis about the nature and purpose of evil. This is not the place to hedge; nor is it the place to be overcome by emotional resentment against evil. Our stand, if we are to be objective and reasonable, must be determined by the hypothesis most consistent with the known facts. § I. WHAT IS HAPPINESS?

At the very outset we encounter what in some respects is the most difficult question: What is to be considered evil? And immediately we find ourselves reaching for an answer to the question: What is the good? Now the good must not be confused with moral goodness. To be morally good, as we have seen (Chapters 9, 10), is to will consistently what one believes to be the best. But a person might consistently will the best he knows and be a Judas. A conception of the good life is needed to guide us in our willing. What is the ideal goal of life? Any word we use for it will have some drawback. The word happiness, which we shall use as a synonym for the good, suggests to many a kind of pleasure-seeking which we would immediately repudiate. In what direction shall we look for the definition of the good or happiness ?

39© •

The Best of ," Poems. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1935, p. 118.

Is It Reasonable to Tray? • 489 takes up God's cross in his own life and in that of others, that person knows the joy of having his very life transformed. Could it be otherwise if one, for example, could daily pray with St. Francis: Lord make me a channel of Thy peace. That where there is hatred I may bring love, That where there is wrong, I may bring the spirit of forgiveness, That where there is discord I may bring harmony, That where there is doubt I may bring faith, That where there is despair I may bring hope, That where there are shadows, I may bring Thy light, That where there is sadness I may bring joy. Lord, grant that I may seek rather To comfort than to be comforted; To understand, than to be understood; To love than to be loved. Again, does God through such prayer add power to human life as one adds blood to the veins? Does this mean that there is a psychic transfusion of energy from God to man, as it were? Many descriptions of the experience of renewal are couched in terms suggesting physical interaction rather than mental interaction. We should be careful about accepting such analogies uncritically, whether we are talking about human relations or human-divine relations. We ta\e food into our bodies, but we thtn\ about, appreciate, and comprehend persons, and we then act upon what persons say to us. In the very process of thinking, appreciating, and acting we find that our lives are better if we pursue some meanings and not others. If this is so, what light have we thrown on the divine-human relationship? We have agreed that God works with every individual life in terms of the possibilities in that life. We have insisted that God is a creative being, consistently seeking increase in value everywhere possible to him. And we have urged that God

490 • Is It Treasonable to Tray? would not make certain value-possibilities available to those who failed to meet the requirements for them. May we not now suggest that God continues his creative process in every individual life once the individual has prepared himself through prayer (and worship) for such blessings ? It is fallacious, we insist, to think of God as having created man once and for all and having left the rest to man himself and the "impersonal" processes which govern human nature. It is also fallacious to suppose that he would continue the creative process in each life without reference to the past and present of that life. In other words, God does not disregard or suspend natural or psychological laws already ordained. But it is equally fallacious to suppose that God has finished the creation of any given person, and that he cannot make available to him resources of power and insight which are consistent with his effort. At this point every individual is forced to reach for what he cannot be assured of, but he can reach fortified by his right to believe, on the basis of theory and the past experience of the race, that God will do everything morally possible to encourage and increase creativity. To summarize, in and through the life of prayer, through adoration, adherence, and cooperation (to use Cardinal de Berulle's summary of the divine-human relation), God is able to do with a life what he otherwise could not do. Conversely, human life can never realize its full meaning and inheritance apart from the discipline of prayer. How this happens we do not know any more than we know the how of creation in the first place. Yet that there are requirements to be met before it can happen is consistent with all we know about creation and with the testimony of practicing believers the world over. But we have been so absorbed by the moral aspects of prayer that we have neglected the broader experience of worship of which, strictly speaking, prayer is a part. Worship usually includes, in addition to prayer, appropriate movements of the body (as in dance or ritual), music, meditation, and the common consideration and interpretation of the religious experience of others, as

Is It Reasonable to Tray? * 491 15

in religious literature. Indeed, without the worshipful attitude, without the adoration of God, without gratitude for the actual Being of God and all he stands for, prayer might be the cry of need, but it would hardly be a renewing fellowship. Unless one can feel that he stands in a hallowed Universe, that God is entitled to his absolute allegiance and respect, the vitality of prayer, let alone a certain ineffable quality in experience, is impossible. We are indebted once more to Evelyn Underhill for the following suggestion. People who are apt to say that adoration is difficult, and it is so much easier to pray for practical things, might remember that in making this great act of adoration they are praying for extremely practical things: among others, that their own. characters, homes, social contacts, work, conversation, amusements and politics, may be cleansed from imperfection, sanctified. For all these are part of God's Universe;... What really seems to you to matter most? The perfection of His mighty symphony, or your own remarkably clever performance of that difficult passage for the tenth violin? And again, if the music unexpectedly requires your entire silence, which takes priority in your feelings? The mystery and beauty of God's orchestration? Or the snub administered to you? Adoration, widening our horizons, drowning our limited interests in the total interests of Reality, redeems the spiritual life from all religious pettiness, and gives it a wonderful richness, meaning and span.16 § 8. IS INTERCESSORY PRAYER REASONABLE?

It is with this emphasis on the widening horizons made possible by fellowship with God through the never-really-mundane and the never-really-ordinary events of life that we would approach the problem of intercessory prayer. This is one kind of prayer which creates special doubt in the minds of many, and with 15 16

E. S. Brightman, Religious Values. New York: Abingdon Press, 1925. Underhill, The Spiritual Life, pp. 69, 70, 71.

492 • Is It Reasonable to Tray? good reason. What is the use of praying for others ? Does a good God wait upon the prayers of human beings before bestowing his blessings on persons who need his aid? In any case, can a good God who respects the freedom of all persons grant blessings for which the person or persons for whom they are requested are neither desirous nor prepared ? These questions do serve to emphasize, and quite properly, the conditions which, as we have insisted, must be met by all valid prayer. They also effectively stress the all-important fact that a good God does not, without good reason, refrain from ministering to the needy until their fellowmen pray for them. God is indeed eternally vigilant and anxious, beyond our knowledge, to increase the good in the lives of his creatures. "Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?" " We can rest assured that God is constantly at work seeing to it that every access to true value-experience is kept open, so far as this depends upon him and is within his ethical aim. Yet these questions do seem to overlook certain other facts about persons and their relation to the world and God. Presumably if God had desired to accept direct and full responsibility for seeing that all desirable values were realized by persons, he would not have left to finite persons a considerable share of the responsibility for physical, mental, moral, and spiritual health of their fellowmen. It is reasonable to assume that he could have done more to feed, clothe, educate, and generally improve the lot of persons. But he has left an important responsibility to his human partners. He sustains value-possibilities and value-making processes and awaits our intelligent and painstaking care to make them generally available for human beings. Only the disciplined intelligence 17

Matthew 7:28-30, King James Version.

Is It Treasonable to 'Pray? • 493 and social concern of scientists, of doctors, and of merchants have led to the discovery and distribution of medicines and drugs to needy human beings. Until some teacher sees the possibilities in a given student's mind and bends every effort to help that student educate himself, he goes on relatively undeveloped. The simple fact is that God does not do all that is worth while for every person without the cooperative interest of other human beings. In a very real sense, when we proceed to realize the value-possibilities in things, for ourselves and for others, God is answering prayer. At any rate, we would not be able to realize these values without God's making them possible. On the other hand, without human concern and dedication to the growth of value everywhere, God could not have the satisfaction of knowing that his children were cooperating in the fulfillment of his purposes for all. Are these remarks relevant to intercessory prayer ? The analogy will not guide us at the critical point—especially when we are asking God to perform services which we ourselves, at our disciplined best, simply cannot see our way to perform. What sincere parent will not pray for the child in agony! And would a good God wait for the parent to pray before doing all in his power to assuage that pain? What sensitive religious persons, concerned about the destinies of others to whom they have ministered morally and spiritually, will not pray for them? Yet, does God, who is also concerned about them, wait for the intercessory prayer to do all in his power to aid them ? Hardly! In other words, when human beings have done all they possibly can for other persons in need, prayer to God does not immediately effect what the human beings themselves could not do. But does this render intercessory prayer invalid? Or does it serve to guide us in the discipline of intercessory prayer? There is probably no prayer which is more natural than the plea that God watch over, preserve, and bless those about whom we are legitimately concerned. To be sure, in intercessory prayer, we are not telling God anything he does not know. But the very act of praying for others, in special ways, is an expression of our concern

494 * Is It Treasonable to Tray? —assuming that the prayer is not the insincere babble of a frivolous mind. It may indeed be true that in given situations, God does not need our requests in order to do the best he can for those we care about; but is there a better way of infusing our concern for others with deeper meaning than to hold them up humbly before God and further express the concern which has been guiding our action ? Let us remember that the real purpose of intercessory prayer is the establishing of a community-in-love. Much that is said, as in so much normal social intercourse, is meant to keep the current of enjoyed mutuality flowing. The essence of prayer also is the extending of mutuality and community-in-concern. Much that is spoken or thought really "goes without saying," and yet is it not the grossest kind of bad taste to measure and calculate the community of feeling by what is actually said? Let one come with real concern to plead for the welfare of God's children and he will come to know what Douglas Steere has so well expressed: And, finally, how good to remember how in prayer one day, my stiff, tight, detailed petitions were all blown aside as though they were dandelion fluff, how I stopped praying and began to be prayed in, how I died and was literally melted down by the love of a Power that coursed through my heart, sweeping away the hard claimful core, and poured through me a torrent of infinite tenderness and caring. Blind with tears, I suddenly knew and felt the very being of suffering people, whom I had recently visited, gathered and loved in the very heart of God who drew me to care for them as I had never done in my days among them.18 Accordingly, the important thing to remember is that the relation of God and man is at its highest only when there is a fellowship of minds, a mutual sharing in every way possible of the concern for the growth in value-creation. The religious person 18 Douglas Steere, "Death's Illumination of Life," Ingersoll Lecture, 1941-42. Haivard Divinity School Bulletin, 1943, pp. 18, 19.

75 It Reasonable to Tray? • 495 intercedes for those persons and causes he cares about, not so much because he wants God to do more than he believes God is doing, but because in and through the sKaring of his concern his total sensitivity to the problems facing God and man is increased; he achieves a new sense of God's concern (and his own responsibility) for the need of others. Intercessory prayer is a means of insuring spiritual solidarity with God's yearning that personal values be protected and increased. QUESTIONS

1. What, according to the author, is the concrete meaning of "God is love" ? 2. a. Why is the distinction between psychological conviction and reasoned conclusion important for self-understanding? b. What is their proper relation in terms of reasonable living? 3. a. What ought religion to be ? b. Compare the definition given in this chapter to the definition in Chapter 1. 4. What in the suggested definition of God encourages fellowship between God and man ? 5. a. Discuss the religious significance of impersonal laws such as those of physics. b. Relate the life of prayer to impersonal and personal law. 6. Is it important for religion that we know precisely how God answers prayers ? 7. What moral conditions must prayer meet in the author's view ? 8. a. What is the underlying purpose and function of prayer ? b. What human needs does prayer meet ? 9. a. Even though we find God in prayer, does this mean that he necessarily approves of the content of our prayers ? b. Does God help us if he disapproves ? Explain. 10. Why could indifference on God's part be worse than hostility ? 11. How would you reply to the person who suggested that prayer is useless except insofar as one thinks it is helpful ? 12. a. What are the requirements of mature prayer ? b. Where does the focus of attention fall in such prayer ?

496 * Is It Treasonable to Tray? 13. a. In what sense does prayer regenerate ? b. How can we relate this to the suggestion that God continues to support our existence once he has created us ? 14. a. What is intercessory prayer and is it reasonable ? b. What is the relation between such prayer and God's actions? 15. What is the personal and social value of intercessory prayer ? SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING

Buttrick, George A. Prayer. New York: Abingdon-Cokesbury Press, 1943Fosdick, Harry E. The Meaning of Prayer. New York: Abingdon Press, W5Harkness, Georgia. Prayer and the Common Life. New York: Abingdon-Cokesbury Press, 1948. . The Resources of Religion. New York: Abingdon-Cokesbury Press, 1936, Chapters VI and VIII. Pratt, James B. Eternal Values in Religion. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1950. Underhill, Evelyn. The Spiritual Life. New York: Harper & Bros., 1937. Wieman, Henry N. Methods of Private Religious Living. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1929. • , and Regina Westcott-Wieman, Normative Psychology of Religion. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Co., 1935, Chapter VII.

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THE RELIGIOUS LIFE AND THE COMMUNITY

§ I. THE RELIGIOUS CHALLENGE TO SOCIAL LOYALTIES

IN vital prayer, be it in praise, petition, or intercession, each man communes with God. And this fact has serious consequences for the whole conception of man's relation to his social and physical environment. For prayer indicates that religious persons do not feel dependent upon the physical world alone. It testifies that human beings are neither solely dependent on nor solely obligated to their fellowmen. If superficial believers ever forget this fact, the opponents of religion seldom do. A persistent objection to religion has been that the loyalty of religious persons to a Power other than man takes their attention away from the concrete problems facing human beings, and thus impedes or delays the intelligent solution of these problems. This objection to religion must not be lightly pushed aside. In the first place, it is true that many forms of religious belief, Christian and non-Christian, have so emphasized the importance of right relations to God that believers have concluded (all too conveniently sometimes) that the salvation of their souls was independent of what happened in their communities. They contented themselves, therefore, with prayer for the souls of the unsaved! Their citizenship, they claimed, was not in this world, but in heaven. If the argument of this book is at all valid, any religious tradition or denomination which encourages such belief 497

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has not begun to penetrate the moral core of religious devotion. "Thy kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven!" (Italics mine.) On the other hand, if the day comes when religion is never criticized for being concerned with a deeper loyalty than a man feels for his family, his school, his community, his society, and even humanity, religion will have lost its distinctive meaning. The church can never be simply another social organization—not at any rate if it is inspired by prayer and sustained in the spirit and purpose of prayer and worship. Prayer is not communion of man with man; nor is it proclaiming one's faith in the future of Man. Prayer involves loyalty to and confidence in God's purpose for man. It implies loyalty to God's will even when God's will is not the will of mother, father, school, community, and nation. God's will includes the growth of moral character and happiness for all human beings. Accordingly, supreme loyalty to God must always involve sacrificial concern for the plight of his children everywhere, regardless of nation, creed, and color. Because religious persons will believe that their loyalty to God must come first, those who insist on loyalty to any particular social status quo, whether it be "the American way" or "the Russian way," might well view religious people with concern. Such people are open to influence from a realm other than the human, and one can never be sure of their loyalty to any particular society or social system. Have not the religious prophets, acknowledging their own complicity in the sins of their society, criticized and urged the overthrow of established practices in the name of God ? For them the fact that vices were fashionable and the fact that the power of kings and ruling classes favored certain modes of living were not the ultimate. For them God sat in judgment upon all men, and loyalty to God meant the condemning of evil, repentance from sin, and vital commitment—even death if necessary—to the will of God. One simply cannot believe in God and God's purposes for all men and conclude that his own behavior and that of his society, including his church, are necessarily congruent with God's will.

The %eligious £ife and the Community •

499

To put it bluntly, then, religious people are (or should be) a problem to humanists. For humanists maintain, on the one hand, that the good of man should be paramount, and on the other, that belief in a God and a life "beyond" this world inevitably delays, when it does not obstruct, the coming of a worldly Utopia. Humanists are vividly aware of the waste of money, of economic resources, and of human time and effort involved in the undertakings and establishments of organized religion. The wealth tied up in buildings and grounds of religious institutions the world over constitutes economic and political power, directly and indirectly. How much better for society, a good humanist might urge, if all churches were schools or social centers dedicated exclusively to humanity, if the intelligence and dedication of all the clergy and church leaders could be focussed intently on the improvement of man in society! But for the religious man God is beginning and end, and even the sacrificial concern for society springs (though not exclusively) from the love of God, and it flowers in a fuller love of God. The historical struggle between church and state is a form of this conflict of loyalties. Any government which is concerned with perpetuating its own ideals and purposes might well on occasion resent persons who judge earth by a heavenly ideal and temper loyalty to state by supreme loyalty to God. In our own day we see these issues take very serious political form. For now a nation, vast in natural resources and manpower and depending on scientific intelligence, has built its whole political and social theory on the essential humanistic conviction. Prayer and worship to a God beyond the state must be considered, according to this view, not only a shameful waste of time and energy but also a positive obstacle to a unified social program. The logic of the Communists is quite correct, given their initial conviction that belief in God is delusive and the worship of God destructive of realistic moral fiber. But their very condemnation is a witness to the effectiveness of religious conviction. It, therefore, becomes our responsibility to

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The %eligious £ife and the Community

gain some insight, in the remainder of this chapter, into the forces, for good and for evil, which affect the social order through the activities and purposes of religious persons. § 2. THE RELIGIOUS ROOTS OF COMMUNITY

The fellowship of prayer and worship, we have seen, is a ferment. In this crucible the demands of a given man, of his society, and of God are poured, and the forms of living which issue from it can make drastic differences in the present and future of man. As we studied the meaning and nature of prayer, it may have seemed that religion was essentially a private affair between each man and God. It is. But this does not keep religion from inspiring some of the most satisfying social experiences human beings can have. We have already noted that one of the most natural forms of prayer is intercessory. What we must now emphasize is that persons who have found God cannot keep him to themselves. They want others to share in the joys and responsibilities of the discovery. Indeed, let us warn that our overindividualistic account of the finding of God belies the actual fact that human beings find God as part of the life of their community. Our ancestors did not turn to God as mere individuals; they reached to him as part of their whole community's concern for help and guidance. So identified were they with their immediate communal group that the relation was more one of "we—thou" than "I—thou." And that, after all, is the way in which most of us are introduced into the fellowship of God—as members of a family and church. At the same time, however, God works through individual dedication, and not through a social structure in any sense over and above the individuals who compose it. What, then, is a church? Any particular church is a congregation of persons who believe that they have an approach to God which is valuable, and, in some respects at least, better than other

The %eligious Jjje and the Community *

joi

ways of finding God.1 A church is a group of religious persons who are willing to take the thought, the time, and the energy to share with each other the search for God and his meaning for their lives. Such persons are aware of this need and of their responsibility; they feel the need of God and the need of each other. They draw together in common fellowship and in mutual support. They recognize common ideals and ask to be judged by them; indeed, they support a ministry of dedicated persons who will bring these ideals before them regularly and guide them in realizing a deeper fellowship with each other and the Source of their values. Did nothing else serve to bring religious persons together, their concern for the spiritual welfare of their children would suffice. The nurture of the thought, feeling, and action of a growing family calls for regular cultivation and discipline. Accordingly, it becomes important to find a sanctuary in which families can meet together and profit from common worship and the moral and religious guidance afforded by the more sensitive and gifted among them. To this sanctuary they withdraw on religious holidays also in order to celebrate the events which they consider vital to their religious perspective. The persons and events in the life of the church are remembered as are the historic events and persons in the common life of a community and nation. Thus far we have talked of the physical building as though it were merely a place to house bodies. The church-edifice is, in fact, itself a symbol: a monument to the conviction that community life is not enough. It witnesses to the belief that the field, the factory, the school, the home, the park, and the stadium are not adequate for the fulfillment of man's nature. There must be a place where all such enterprises may be left behind temporarily as man seeks to worship God and find insight and strength to deal with the 1 It should be clear to the reader that our account is neglecting the wealth of significant human factors and motives which led to the establishment of church institutions. Our emphasis here is oversimplified in order that the essential religious dynamic may be evident.

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The %eligious £ife and the Community

inner problems he confronts in every aspect of life. "The soul, like Jacob of old, must build an altar, it must fix the precious gift by some creative art of its own to insure its possession. Emotion must become character to establish the title of ownership." 2 This edifice-symbol for common emotion, for common discipline, purpose, and inspiration must be conducive to communion with God. And it will reflect the abilities, purposes, and convictions about religion which influence each congregation. Some have felt that the structure in which they met to worship God should be worthy of his Presence, and to such conviction we are indebted for the Parthenon, Santa Sophia, and the great Christian cathedrals. Such churches became symbols of the majesty of God and tributes to the moral, aesthetic, and technical powers of those who would celebrate his Presence in their midst. Religious music and religious art generally flourish in the attempt of religious persons to express and stabilize certain religious emotions and convictions and to inspire and educate those who come later. But whatever the particular form of worship, whatever the molds into which thought and emotion have been forced, every church remains, in every community, a witness to the fact that human beings do feel and honor the conviction that man must relate himself to a Person not himself who inspires righteousness. § 3. THE THEORETICAL ROOT OF RELIGIOUS TENSION

But in the very vitality and fertility of the religious impulse there are seeds of disunity and violence as well as brotherhood. The sense that their lives are incomplete without proper relations to the Source of all Values unifies religious minds around convictions resisted by the rest of the community. At this point especially, we must not forget that the God who is "found" by human beings is discovered in the midst of their own struggle and perplexity. Their interpretations of God's nature and demands, like 2

John E. Boodin, Religion for Tomorrow. New York: Philosophical Library, 1943, p. 97.

The %eligious J^ije and the Community • 503 all interpretations, reveal their own abilities, needs, and experiences, as well as God's. As Hocking says, "Whatever religion adds to human wealth is not poured in, as an intravenous gift: it comes in continuity with what the individual has known before. No man by means of his religious insights can be transformed from ignorance to learnedness." 3 The immediate certainty felt by the believer that he has found God must not blind him or us to the fact that the individual cannot avoid interpreting his experience, and that any human interpretation is subject to error. This, at any rate, is the conception of religious inspiration and "revelation" defended in this book. But it, after all, is one interpretation among others. Many acute and sensitive minds would insist that our interpretation does not adequately recognize the actual invasion of God into human life and the human theatre of action. God, according to these critics, selects his own times and his own messengers; specific events in history are his doing. God does not wait to be found out by his human instruments; he announces himself, or he ordains ambassadors whose utterances are not their own but revelatory of God's will. The wise will see these beacon lights and guide their course thereby. Indeed, as millions of Christians would say, God, when he saw fit, became flesh and blood and walked among us, revealing by word and action "very God of very God." We cannot begin to do justice to the many varieties of this fundamental conviction in the Orient as well as in the Occident. Everywhere those who believed God had revealed himself uniquely to them also felt the responsibility of perpetuating that revelation for themselves and of persuading other persons that they, too, must find the true meaning of life by accepting the revelation and committing their lives to it. To be sure, the desire to save other men's souls has, historically, often been mixed with an aim at 3 William E. Hocking, The Meaning of God in Human Experience. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1912, p. 478. The reader is urged to read at least Parts V and VI of this work for a sympathetic and challenging treatment of worship, mysticism, and concrete religion.

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The %eligious £ife and the Community

self-aggrandizement. But, without minimizing this constant temptation, let none misconstrue the heart of the missionary impulse. Religious people have properly felt themselves under obligation to God to spread their "good news." One may doubt that any person is truly religious who feels no obligation to "spread the gospel," whatever the connotations of that commandment may be. Normal religious persons must "hold fast to that which is good"; they must not allow themselves to be influenced by false prophets and "lesser faiths"; they must make opportunities for bringing others to their God. To behave otherwise is to neglect the moral implications of their belief. For a religion which is "good for me and mine alone" is not a religion but a form of self-idolatry. Did not the Jews discover that the God' who had made a covenant with them had indeed chosen them to serve? In and through their experience the world should know the justice and mercy of God.4 The history of the great world religions proves that to love God and keep his light under a bushel is a contradiction in terms. Such is the force creating even the denominational divisions within the great religious perspectives. Religion without the missionary impetus is a spent impulse, a creative force bent to the ever-narrowing uses of mere culture. However, the inevitable result of deep religious loyalty within any tradition is to bring it into conflict with the similar religious loyalty of members of other faiths. But conflict between religious groups is better understood when we realize that the religious sentiment is not an isolated segment of a personality, unaffected by the other mundane desires of men. Accordingly, any religious organization brings together men whose religious ideals are daily at war with desires for security, personal prestige, and power. Furthermore, when the religious sentiment is an active part of one's life, the conviction that God's will must be done can become 4 For a very readable, interesting, brief, and critical sketch o£ the development of Judaism, Roman Catholicism, and Protestantism, see Sterling P. Lamprecht, Our Religious Tradition. Cambridge Harvard University Press, 1949.

The %eligious 549 his explanation of evil, 425 f. Pleasure, 358-363, 390 quality of, 358 f. (see also Happiness) Pope, A., 32 Pope, L., 517 Possibility, and compossibility, 447-449 Power of God, vs. love, 460 f. Pragmatism, and coherence, 78, 79 Pratt, J. B., 120, 328, 496, 518 Prayer, 469-496 conditions of, 477-480 as fellowship with God, 477-480 goal of, 486-491 and humanism, 498-500 intercessory, 492-495, 500 objection to, 497 power of, 478-495 as purely psychological, 483 f. unanswered, 481 what happens in, 477-486 Principle of indeterminacy, 231 Pringle-Pattison, A. S., 342 n. Probability, 61 Protestantism, and religious tension, 504516 Providence, of God, 473-478 Psychical phenomena, and immortality, 542-545 Punishment, and immortality, 544-547 Purpose of God, 323-325 unconscious, 355-356 Ramakrishna, 85, 507 Ramsdell, E. T., 140 Randall, J. H., Jr., 276 n., 304 Rashdall, H., 315 Rationality, of God, 322 Reality, and thought, 339-345 Reality, and values (see Values) Reason and belief in God, 47, 48 as coherence, 189 defined, 47 as empirical coherence, 56-80 and experience, 51-81 and faith, 66, 67, 68, 69, 75, 470-473

Index ' Reason—Continued and logical consistency, 51-56 and scientific method, 68-75 and venturesomeness, 66 Reasonableness, defined, 131 f. (see also Empirical coherence and Truth) Reductionism, 187-188, 194 n., 334-339 Relativism, 75 {see also Moral relativism) Religion and beauty, 29, 30 of college students, 2, 9 and community, 497-500 definition of, 8-16 and dogma, 10 and emotional rigidity, 2-4 essence of, 9 and evil, 31 Freudian explanation of, 44-45 and Humanism, 12-15 as immaturity, 26, 27 importance of growth in, 3, 4, 6, 7 as instinctive, 43 institutional, 34-40 maturity in, 6, 8 meaning of, 1 moral implications of, 497-518 and morality, 30 nature of, 469 f. norm of, 456 f., 473 roots of belief and disbelief in, 23-50 and social issues, 34-40 and suffering, 23, 28, 29 supernaturalistic characteristics of, 1520

and values, 20 {see also Values) as a venture, 48 and the world situation, 515 f. Religious art, 502 Religious belief by-products of, 15-20 roots of, 23-50 Religious community challenge to, 498-506 roots of, 498-516 Religious experience, 82-120, 331, 372 n cognitive value of, 105-119 as confirmatory, 114, 117, 383, 384 as creative, 382-387 evidential value of, 46 and finite God, 438 f. human significance of, 382-383

563

Religious experience—Continued as individual, 111-119 inspirational value of, 105, 119 naturalistic view of, 118 Hot aesthetic, 114 objectivity of, 484-486 and psychology, 85-90 and religious tension, 505-507 true nature of, 550 Religious imperative, 548-555 Religious instinct, 46, 47 Religious life, and Church, 497-518 Religious loyalty, and religious conflict, 502-506 and the community, 497-518 Religious maturity, 470 f. Religious temptations and qualities, 15-20 Religious tension, theoretical roots of, 505507 Religious tolerance, problems of, 497-518 Religious tradition, as basis of truth, 502506 Religious vs. scientific perspective, 121-140 Revelation, 90, 127, 128, 503 .Reverence, 17, 18 Rhine, J. B., 543 n., 544 Right {see Moral Obligation and Value) Robbins, A. M., 543 n. Roberts, W. H., 15, 270 Rogers, Carl, 215 n. Roman Catholicism, 516 and religious tension, 504-516 Royce, J., 171, I72n., 479 n., 480 Russell, B., 26, 26 n., 27, 33

Salvation, 324 Santayana, G., 30, 30 n., 33, 379, 380, 388 Schopenhauer, A., 378 Schleiermacher, F. E. D-, 99 Schrodenjer, E., 172-174, 179, 186 Science and aesthetic experience, 381 assumptions of, 128 f. and explanation, 280 and faith, 74 and free will, 230 and God, 334 limitations of, 130 f. nature of, 127 f. and philosophy, 72

j 64 * Index Science—Continued and truth, 292-294 validity of, 292-294 and value, 298, 368, 369 Scientific explanation o£ physical universe, 145, 178-180 Scientific ideal of knowledge, 186-189 Scientific knowledge, and knowledge of value, 291-295 Scientific method and coherence, 78-79 and experience, 73 and truth, 68-75 Scientific perspective, 280 Scientific predicament, 131, 132 Scientific quest, 137 Scientific vs. religious perspective, 121-140 Self (see also Man and Mind) as necessarily existent, 59 Selfishness, 364-367 defined, 216 and other motives, 216-220 vs. altruism, 218-220 vs. self-centeredness, 218 Sellars, R. W., 142 n., 143 n., 187 n., 194 n. Serenity, religious, 18 Shakespeare, W., 239 Sheen, F. J., 304, 328 Sheldon, W. H., 194 n. Sherrington, C. S., 168, 174-190 Simpson, G., 158, 159 n., 160 n., 174 n., 176, 182, 189 Sin, God's knowledge of, 462-467 original, and God, 19, 412, 413 Skepticism, 63, 75, 292 Society and motives, 214 and religion, 497-500 Socrates, 49, 115, 519-528 Sorley, W. R., 279 n., 286 n., 295, 296, 300 Spinoza, B., 306, 317, 449 Stace, W. T., 26 n., 29 n., 248 Steere, D., 494, 524, 525 n. Streeter, B. H., 551 Succor-sympathy, as motive, 211 Suffering, animal, 338 God's knowledge of, 450-467 Sun-system, future of, 144 Survival (see Immortality) Suspended judgment, 66 Swedenborg, E., 307

Taylor, A. E., 286 n., 304 Teleological argument, classical, 284-286 (see also Wider teleological argument) vs. mechanical explanation, i34f. Teleology, cosmic, 122, 298-299 Temple, W., 346, 372 n., 419, 481 n. Temporality of God, 310-320 Tenderness, 206 (see also Motives) Tennant, F. R., 95 n., 133, 325, 331, 353, 380, 414, 427 n. Tennyson, A. L., 31 Teresa, Saint, 84, 112 Thales, 314 Theism, 276, 313 and evil, 399, 418 and materialism, 188 and naturalism, 188 Theology, as independent science, 92 Thomas, G. F., 105 n. Thomson, J. A., 154 n., 155 n., 156 n. Thought, and reality, 339-345 Time, and eternity, 549 f. and God, 309-320, 445 f., 462 f. Tolerance authoritarian view of, 511-516 bases of, 505-516 liberal view of, 509-512 wisdom of, 510 Tradition, and truth, 509 £. Trueblood, D. E., 50, 126 n., 372 a., 388 Truth, 62, 63, 135, 339, 387 criterion of, 185-189, 292 and disinterestedness, 69 factual, 55 and free will, 233 judgment of, and goodness, 294-296 and logic, 340 logical, 54 (see also Knowledge) and scientific method, 68-75 and tradition, 509 f. and values, 259, 292-295 Tsanoff, R. A., 22, 248, 346, 419, 438 n., 551 Ulich, R., 344, 387 Uncertainty principle of, 130 n., 134 and truth, 75, 76 Underhill, E., 419 n., 486, 487, 496

Index • 565 Universality, of values, 255-267 Urban, W. M., 248 Validity of belief, and psychological origins, 88, 89 Value, 9 n., 220 Value-datum, 250 Values and balance, 369 and coherence, 259 and cosmos, 268 as creative, 357-362 criterion, 259 and evolution, 288, 355 and experience, 262-267 and facts, 293 and God, 249, 258, 298, 301, 403 and immortality, 533-535 independence of, 255-267 as independent of man, 261-267, 350 as interaction of man and world, 262 intuition of, 249, 250 as joint-product, 350 love as a, 265 mechanistic view of, 353-357 and mind, 256 Montague's view of, 428 f. and moral conflict, 267 and nature, 296-299, 348-357 nature and organization of, 385-387 not man-made, 350 as objective, 261-269, 290-292 order of, 296-298 and persons, 455 persons as, 263-270 Platonic view of, 351 and reality, 353 f. as relative, 263 relativity of, 295 and religion, 10 and science, 292-295, 298 and society, 249 system of, 263-267 as true-value, 257, 267, 352 as universal, 255-267 validity of, 249-270 as value-claims, 255, 267, 352 and value-possibility, 256

Values—Continued as virtues, 266-268 and wants, 261 and world-order, 402 Value-possibilities, vs. values, 453 i-, 527 fVaughan, W. F., 222 Virtues (see Values) Visser't Hooft, W. A., 518 Voltaire, 407

256-269,

Ward, J., 298 n., 427 Weissman, A., 160 Weld, H. P., 191 Wheeler, W. M., 165 Whitehead, A. N., 314, 315, 427 n. Wheelright, P., 270 Whittier, J. G., 548 Wider teleological argument for God, 329388 cumulative, 329 differentiated from classical, 330 summary of, 384 Wieman, H. N., 140, 496 Wiener, N., 194 Wild, J., 279 n., 304 Will-agency, and will-power, 228 (see also Free Will) Will, and The Given, 433-436 (see also Finite God) Will of God, 258 n. obstacles to, 420-441 (see also Free Will) Wisdom of God, and evil, 405 Wonder-curiosity, as motive, 215 Wood, H. G., 518 Woodworth, R. S., 211 n., 222 World, and God, 319, 326, 424, 463 f. and value, 402 as a moral order, 347-373 World-Ground, and First Cause, 280 World order, and morality, 410-413 Worship, and God, 461 Wright, W. K., 9 a., 248, 441, 518, 551 Xenophanes, 306 Young, J., 5 n.