Science and Religion

War makes unexpected bedfellows in heaven as well as on earth. Because totalitarian thinking threatens U. S. democracy as much as totalitarian force, front-rank scientists and philosophers gathered last week for an epoch-making three-day conference with outstanding churchmen--Protestants, Catholics, Jews. The place: Manhattan's Jewish Theological Seminary. The purpose: to unify the thought of democracy, make it a united spiritual and intellectual force. The cast: seven Nobel laureates, a dozen college presidents, a host of philosophers, scientists, teachers, theologians. Altogether, over 600 representatives from 165 institutions attended, made a gallant effort to piece together the tree of knowledge which for more than a century men had busily sawed into separate branches.

To churchmen everywhere, the meeting was doubly historic: it paved the way for a possible reconciliation of science and religion, separated 80 years ago by the conflict between six-day Creation and the theory of evolution. Never had so many famed scientists of no religious affiliation answered a call to meet for a common purpose with religious leaders. Never had so many famed churchmen held their peace while an outstanding scientist urged them to give up their belief in a personal God.

"The more a man is imbued with the ordered regularity of all events, the firmer becomes his conviction that there is no room left by [its] side for causes of a different nature," wrote Physicist Albert Einstein addressing the gathering by proxy "To be sure, the doctrine of a personal god interfering with natural events could never be refuted ... by science for this doctrine can always take refuge in those domains in which scientific knowledge has not yet been able to set foot. ... In their struggle for the ethical good, teachers of religion must have the stature to give up the doctrine of a personal god--give up that source of fear and hope which in the past placed such vast power in the hands of priests. They will have to avail themselves of those forces which are capable of cultivating the Good, the True and the Beautiful in Humanity itself."

Einstein's message was the only false note of the entire conference after its chairman, President Louis Finkelstein of the Jewish Theological Seminary, key-noted its aims: "Our failure to harmonize science, philosophy and religion in their true relation to the democratic way of life has been a catastrophe. We must not allow Western civilization, already destroyed in much of Europe, to suffer any further disintegration. We believe that the military struggle in Europe is but one phase of a far greater conflict--the conflict between ideas which make for the development of human civilization and ideas which make for its destruction."

Many a theologian thinks the conflict started last century when the advances of science prompted agnostics to declare that it could supersede religion. Result was a rapidly increasing secularization of both men and nations, a trend which Conference Member F. Ernest Johnson of Columbia last week summed up in two points: 1) "from the earliest times until the modern era man's religion has been inseparable from his daily affairs and related to every phase of his life, and our age has made a sharp break with the past in this respect"; 2) "this secularization has occurred during the period that has witnessed the great effort in the West to build democratic states--one of the great anomalies of history, because democracy depends for its validity and permanence upon the sanctions of religion."

The Church's insistence on the dignity of man runs counter to the totalitarian belief that man was made for the State, and its decline has aided the dictatorships. Last week the scientists took a step toward the Church's view, with their fellow delegates condemned the gods of Marxian economic determinism and Fascist racism and nationalism. They proclaimed: "The conference was unanimous in its conviction that modem civilization can only be preserved by a recognition of the supreme worth and moral responsibility of the individual human person."

Said Physicist Philipp Frank of Harvard: "It must be the task of religion, according to the modern conception of science, to do what that science is unable to do, that is, set up certain goals for both private and social human life, and influence the disposition of human beings in favor of these goals."

The delegates threshed some of their differences thin, but left most for later meetings to handle. With thinkers' caution they decided to spend the next two academic years preparing statements of their agreement, to meet again in the fall of 1941 and 1942 to work on their great project: an inclusive system of thought for civilized man. Said the conference: "The departmentalization of human knowledge has been proceeding for more than a century; its integration, with the most valiant efforts, will take more than a meeting of three days."

The size of the job ahead was indicated by the variety of viewpoints represented on an executive committee which was set up. That committee includes Chairman Finkelstein, Critic Van Wyck Brooks, Educators Lyman Bryson and Lawrence K. Frank, Biophysicist Caryl P. Haskins, Political Scientist Harold D. Lasswell, Sociologist Robert M. Maclver, Physicist Robert J. Havighurst, Philosopher Filmer S. C. Northrop, Catholic Theologians Gerald B. Phelan and Gerald G. Walsh, Astronomer Harlow Shapley and Dean Luther A. Weigle of the Yale Divinity School. There was small hope that such men of good will could do the job before them in time to affect World War II.

Realizing that the help of doers as well as thinkers will be needed, the conference will soon appoint such an advisory committee, will have businessmen, lawyers, engineers, etc. take part in the plenary sessions of 1941 and 1942.

Last week Theologian Edwin E. Aubrey of Chicago gave future meetings something to strive toward. "I do not regard the democratic way of life as the supreme end of man," said he, "but I regard it as the best means of realizing that supreme end. For that reason I believe that it is of the utmost importance that science and religion should learn to live together not in mere toleration, but in active cooperation, that through these supporting attitudes of religion and science and through the discipline which each requires, men may be enabled to meet the requirements and to enjoy the fruits of democratic faith."

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