226 HAS SCIENCE DISCOVERED GOD? 



reverence. Reverence for tradition Is what makes fun- 

 damentalism possible In a modern epoch. Yet it is this 

 same reverence for tradition which has bred that con- 

 servatism that recoils from the strange and the new, 

 and has retarded to the danger point the progress of 

 religion. 



The principal religious systems to-day have come 

 down from the age of primitive cosmology. The re- 

 sulting clash of the system of thought fostered in 

 assthetlcism with the modern scientific age was inevit- 

 able, and is not inconsequential. 



It is, therefore, not surprising that millions of people 

 to-day, by nature truly religious, feel themselves near 

 the brink of spiritual disaster in endeavoring to adapt 

 certain religious traditions to a universe of several 

 billion suns in which man appears to play less than a 

 puppet's part. It Is little wonder, therefore, that 

 many intelligent minds have abandoned all attempts 

 to reconcile any scheme of religion with the world of 

 science. Many a creative mind would prefer to share 

 in the fatalism of Theodore Dreiser, or the philosophy 

 of Harry Elmer Barnes, than to indulge himself in 

 what he regards as puerile platitudes of religion. 



For the scientist who regards the universe as an 

 expression of law and order, which in turn has alone 

 been discoverable by virtue of mind, such an extreme 

 position appears neither to be Inevitable nor a satis- 

 factory solution to one's intellectual dilemma. That 

 a new religion shall be evolved, based on a reverence 

 for the universe as is, rather than upon tradition 

 which was, appears not only possible but probable. 

 In attempting to follow the gleam which may lead 

 towards such a religious experience let us examine the 



