Science and Morals 191 



the power in the hands of men; and third, science provides 

 us with a much clearer view of the probable consequences 

 of our acts than we have ever had before. 



We shall discuss each of these questions separately. The 

 tendency of science to erode traditional authority has been 

 recognized for a very long time, and we shall mention it 

 only very briefly. A full treatment of the historical aspects 

 of the problem will be found in Andrew White's two- 

 volume work. History of the Warfare of Science with 

 Theology in Christendom. The point is that, up until recent 

 times, organized rehgion took responsibility for explaining 

 all aspects of the universe and for ordering men's relation- 

 ship both to each other and with the divine order. The 

 Bible in effect contained all the knowledge available at 

 the time it was written on both science and morals. Indeed, 

 science and rehgion were pretty much one and the same 

 thing. As time went on in the Western world, the scientific 

 knowledge and some of the moral insights of the Greeks 

 and Romans were integrated into the system of Christianity 

 by the brilHant intellects of the church fathers — especially 

 perhaps St. Augustine and St. Thomas. 



I speak here of the Christian religion because it is the 

 most important to us and because it has had to make the 

 greatest effort to integrate scentific knowledge into its 

 structure. Many other rehgions have tended, of course, to 

 take responsibiUty for explaining the natural world as weU 

 as for conducting the moral order. 



It is painfully obvious that the progress of science since 

 about the sixteenth century has given us an entirely differ- 

 ent picture both of the universe and of the nature of man 

 than that available to the Jewish prophets and Greek 

 philosophers who produced the Western religions. The 

 question thus arises, if rehgion was so wrong about the 

 creation of the world, the motions of the heavenly bodies. 



