Religion and Science
5. Religion and Science
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the existence of a God who was extraneous to that
universe. It was said, for example, that the rising
and setting of the sun had not been properly
understood until telescopes had been made and
mathematics developed. The former ascription of
these phenomena to the will and power of
supernatural beings had been due merely to man’s
poor comprehension of these matters. And now that
astronomy had proved that there was a universal
system of gravitation, which controlled the move-
ments of the sun, moon and stars, there was no
further need to believe in God. Gradually, all those
happenings in nature, which were supposed in
ancient times to have invisible superhuman forces
at work behind them, were shown to be the results
of the action and reaction of the forces of nature. It
was as if, after the natural causes of events had been
described in modern scientific terms, belief in God
should automatically cease. Julian Huxley, in his
book,
Man in the Modern World,
says:
If the rainbow is generated by the refraction of
the sun’s rays on falling rain, it is not set in
the sky as a sign by God. If the plague is
inevitably generated by the Bacillus pestis and
