30 HAS SCIENCE DISCOVERED GOD? 



become merely shibboleths completely devoid of mean- 

 ing. 



Personally I believe that essential religion is one of 

 the world's supremest needs. And I believe that one 

 of the greatest contributions the United States ever 

 can, or ever will, make to world progress — greater by 

 far than any contribution which we ever can make to 

 the science of government — will consist in furnishing 

 an example to the world of how the religious life of a 

 nation can evolve intelligently, wholesomely, inspir- 

 ingly, reverently, completely divorced from all un- 

 reason, all superstition, and all unwholesome emotion- 

 alism." 



We can still look with a sense of wonder and mys- 

 tery and reverence upon the fundamental elements of 

 the physical world as they have been partially revealed 

 to us in this century. The childish mechanical concep- 

 tions of the nineteenth century are now grotesquely 

 inadequate. 



We have at present no one consistent scheme of in- 

 terpretation of physical phenomena, and we have be- 

 come wise enough to see, and to admit, that we have 

 none. We use the wave theory, for example, where it 

 works; we use the quantum theory where it works; 

 and we try to bridge the gap between the two appar- 

 ently contradictory theories, in purely formal fashion, 

 by what we call the correspondence principle. It is 

 true we are still slowly learning more of the rules of 

 nature's game, so that our progress is not made by hit 

 or miss experimenting, nor by random theorizing, but 



2 The following pages are reprinted from Evolution of Science and 

 Religion. By permission of The Yale University Press, publishers. 



