192 SCIENTIST 



and man's relation to the lower animals, how do we know 

 that it is right about morals and ethics. In point of fact, 

 the Church itself thought of this question before anyone 

 else and tried very hard to halt the progress of science, 

 sometimes by argument and persuasion and sometimes by 

 trials for heresy followed by execution. Even today, it is 

 still illegal to teach the theory of evolution in at least one 

 of the United States. 



Surprisingly enough, rehgion has really lost little of its 

 authority in the reahn of morals and ethics, even though 

 its prestige as an explainer of the natural world has been 

 greatly reduced. Fears that men would give up honoring 

 their fathers and mothers or go about murdering, steaUng, 

 and coveting when they found out that the Church was 

 wrong about the speed of falUng bodies have proved to be 

 largely unfounded. 



Science and rehgion have learned to hve together, in 

 large part because of the good will shown by both sides. 

 In the first place, very few scientists really wanted to at- 

 tack rehgion as such; most of them have been basically 

 religious themselves, and even when they were not, they 

 have usually beheved that the existing moral order is as 

 good as any available. The evidence seems to be that 

 scientists have less tendency to steal, to murder, and to 

 have multiple wives than does the usual run of mankind. 

 What we have experienced during the twentieth century 

 is a kind of truce between science and rehgion in which 

 it is more or less agreed that science is free to deal with 

 the material world and religion with the spiritual and that 

 morals are to be regarded as part of the latter. 



But this hands-off policy has been more and more diffi- 

 cult for the scientist to maintain. The increasing power of 

 science has forced the scientist to consider the long-term 

 effects of science on the conditions of human life. Decisions 



