Religion in an Age of Science

Abstract

Comte's proclamation seems to have been premature. The military system is even more out of place in this age of science than Comte could have suspected in 1839, but it enshackles our world with more deadly grip than ever before. On the other hand, interest in God is still to be found in every land, and is, in fact, just now showing a marked increase everywhere. This rise in religious interest is by no means least where the sciences and arts are best known. Nor do the efforts of even such a powerful police state as the Soviet Union to supplant religion with an exclusively this-worldly and predominantly materialistic interest show much sign of success. Professor N. S. Timasheff of Fordham University, hardly a source of pro-Russian propaganda, tells in a recent symposium how the tide has swung so that in recent years the churches have gained rapidly, both in legal status and in attendance by all ages, throughout the Soviet Union. Both Comte and Marx greatly underestimated the power of religion to survive in an age of science. Why? There were many mistakes in the reasoning of both men. Time will not permit an analysis of them. We shall only examine two reasons why in this age of science religion is actually so prominent in the thoughts and hopes of mankind. The first of these reasons is that the sciences do not, as was expected, refute, nor even weaken the grounds of an intelligent belief in God. Comte believed that the formulation