God Arises
Challenge of Modern Knowledge
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Newton showed that God did not control the
movements of the planets. Laplace in a
famous aphorism affirmed that astronomy
had no need of the god hypothesis; Darwin
and Pasteur between them did the same for
biology; and in our own century, the rise of
scientific psychology and the extension of
historical knowledge have removed gods to a
position where they are no longer of value in
interpreting human behaviour and cannot be
supposed to control human history or
interfere with human affairs.
3
Physics, psychology and history have proved
conclusively that all those events which man
explained in terms of the existence of a God or gods,
or some abstract ‘Power’ had entirely different
causes, but that man, steeped in ignorance,
continued to speak of them in terms of religious
mystery.
In the world of physics, Newton is the hero of this
revolution. It was he who put forward the theory
that the universe is bound by certain unchangeable
principles, there being certain laws according to
