56 Proceedings of Indiana Academy of Science 
training of the past, these young people have been taught a vast num- 
ber of things that have to be unlearned when they begin the process 
of absorbing scientific fundamentals. Now, in order to keep them in 
the proper channels of religious thought, the possibilities of their scien- 
tific training must be counteracted in some manner. They must be 
impressed with the idea’ that their “doubts” are only imaginary and 
temporary and that future training will dispel them because: “I” (the 
speaker) “have had such doubts and have overcome them, and is it 
not evident that IJ am scientific?” In addition to this very prevalent 
vice among the stationary teachers of religion we have numbers of 
eminent divines going about the country, making a specialty of talks 
to mass meetings of college students and using the methods above out- 
lined. No doubt they have visited your town as they have ours. These 
men are usually orators of first distinction. They mix with their ad- 
dresses a perfectly amazing patter of science. Dinosaurs, relativity, 
electrons, paleontology, anti-toxins, protoplasm, light-years and gamma 
rays are the breath of life to them. Even the more or less mature 
scientist is somewhat hypnotized by the brilliancy of the discourse. It 
is only on the way home that he begins to realize that the speaker 
had very little realization of the true meaning and __ significance of 
the half of what he said and that he had been guilty of brazenly faking 
science in order to appear to prove something that, in the very nature 
of things, can not be proved. 
Unfortunately the young student is dazzled by this procedure be- 
cause he is in a period of his development where he is only beginning 
to think logically and independently about the deeper things of life 
and he is very likely to regard his religious instructor as one of his 
scientific authorities and to be led to put aside real questions that should 
be decided, if his future training is to be along sane and logical lines. 
If the student is really serious-minded his doubts cannot be permanently 
satisfied in this way and he will not be content with the plan of think- 
ing along one set of ideas within the laboratory and another, incom- 
patible with the first, in the pew. 
It may appear from this that I regard it as unfortunate that a 
young man should be won to religion by pulpit orators. Not at all. 
As it was remarked in the discussion of the Mineral Water faker that 
a cure as the result of deception is probably preferable to no cure at 
all, so it may be better that a man should be won to a life of rectitude 
by a religious faker than that he should ultimately fail to see the real 
significance of life. Yet here again I adhere to the idea that decep- 
tion is unnecessary and that in the long run more people will be at- 
tracted to religion by the policy of playing fair and telling the truth, 
fer if they think at all they will find out the truth sooner or later. 
Why must our religious leaders ever persist in standing upon 
ground that they will be compelled to abandon later, just as they have 
stood upon and fought for ground that later had to be ahandoned, 
through all the history of religion? Why must they insist upon giving 
so much prominence as essentials to the views and theories of men 
who lived in the very infancy of our civilization, instead of standing 
upon the simple and absolutely unassailable proposition that religion is 
