So
that the attempt to symbolise the unknown is certain to involve
inconsistencies and absurdities of all kinds and it is childish to
complain of their existence unless one is prepared to advocate the
stifling of all religious sentiment, and this is like trying to
stifle hunger or thirst. To be at all is to be religious more or
less. There never was any man who did not feel that behind this
world and above it and about it there is an unseen world greater and
more incomprehensible than anything he can conceive, and this
feeling, so profound and so universal, needs expression. If
expressed it can only be so by the help of inconsistencies and
errors. These, then, are not to be ordered impatiently out of court;
they have grown up as the best guesses at truth that could be made at
any given time, but they must become more or less obsolete as our
knowledge of truth is enlarged. Things become known which were
formerly unknown and, though this brings us no nearer to ultimate
universal truth, yet it shows us that many of our guesses were wrong.
Everything that catches on to realism and naturalism as much as
Christianity does must be affected by any profound modification in
our views of realism and naturalism.
God and Convenience
I do not know or care whether the expression "God" has scientific
accuracy or no, nor yet whether it has theological value; I know
nothing either of one or the other, beyond looking upon the
recognised exponents both of science and theology with equal
distrust; but for convenience, I am sure that there is nothing like
it--I mean for convenience of getting quickly at the right or wrong
of a matter.
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