Religion and Science
1. The Method of Argument
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1. THE METHOD OF ARGUMENT
It might be said that metaphysicians of the
past have done something comparable to
writing a dud cheque without adequate funds
in the bank. They have used words without
proper ‘cash’ to back them; they have been
unable to give their words ‘cash-value’ in
terms of states of affairs.
‘The absolute is incapable of evolution and
progress’ is a grammatically correct sentence;
but the words are like a dud cheque, and
cannot be ‘cashed’.
These statements, made by T.R. Miles in his book,
Religion and the Scientific Outlook,
(p. 20) would
appear to indicate that as religion belongs purely to
the domain of faith, its claims are not based on valid
arguments, and that if they are to be acceptable they
must be verifiable outside this domain. This implies
that the intellectual processes by which scientific
proofs are arrived at are in some way different from
those, which lead to acceptance of religious
phenomena. We shall see that this is true only in
