64 HAS SCIENCE DISCOVERED GOD? 



cept in so far as it has been rendered a no less prob- 

 able belief. 



The various components of this assertion will need 

 some elaboration. I have already sufficiently outlined 

 my concept or definition of what I consider the basic 

 axiom of a religious belief or religious code of life. 

 This infinite concept has not changed essentially dur- 

 ing the past few millenniums any more than have any 

 other of the infinite concepts against whose barriers 

 the finite mind of man must admit defeat; — such con- 

 cepts as eternity or limitless space. The idea of God 

 in Akhenaton's psalm of 1400 B.C., in Micah's rule 

 of religion, in the Sermon on the Mount, is essentially 

 identical with the religious attitude of men of to-day. 

 The concept of God has become nobler as man him- 

 self has developed nobleness. But as a concept, as a 

 norm of belief and conduct, and however wide the dif- 

 ference in the minutiae of the belief, there is an essen- 

 tial identity between the strange gods of the savage 

 and the monotheism of those peoples which have at- 

 tained the highest development. 



The thesis that modern physical science has had no 

 effect on religious belief except in so far as it has ren- 

 dered it a no less probable belief is doubtless not 

 capable of rigorous treatment. The reasons adduced 

 for a belief in a higher power are to-day just what 

 they were five thousand years ago. A great deal has 

 been subtracted by science from two of these argu- 

 ments; a vastly greater amount has been added by the 

 same progress of science to the third. 



For two of the arguments advanced by the theolo- 

 gians or philosophers of old are arguments whose 

 validity has been seriously shaken, partly by science, 



