ctivity, the period when
science and secular knowledge had partially liberated themselves from
ecclesiastical domination. He came to the conclusion that in instituting
a comparison he had established a contrast.

CHAPTER VI

RELIGION AND SCIENCE

_Science, then, commands our respect, not on the basis that its
present assumptions and deductions are absolutely and for all time
true, but on the ground that its method is for all time true--the
method of discovery, the method of observation, research,
experimentation, comparison, examination, testing, analysis and
synthesis._

MAYNARD SHIPLEY, "The War on Modern Science."

_In the bare three and one-half centuries since modern science
began, the churches had conducted an unremitting crusade against it.
That much of this crusade had turned into a rear-guard action was
due less to the weakness of the defenders of the faith than to the
invulnerability of their non-resistant victim._

HORACE M. KALLEN, "Why Religion?"

Some sixty years ago in the "Dogmatic Constitution of the Catholic
Faith," the Church stated, "But never can reason be rendered capable of
thoroughly understanding mysteries as it does those truths which form
its proper subject. We, therefore, pronounce false every assertion which
is contrary to the enlightened truth of faith.... Hence, all the
Christian faithful are not only forbidden to defend as legitimate
conclusions of science those opinions which are known to be contrary to
the doctrine of faith, especially when condemned by the Church, but are
rather absolutely bound to hold them for errors wearing the deceitful
appearance of truth. Let him be anathema....

"Who shall say that human sciences ought to be pursued in such a spirit
of freedom that one may be allowed to hold true their assertions even
when opposed to revealed doctrine."

Can anything stronger be said to discourage research, investigation,
experiment, and retard progress? And only sixty years ago! It is but the
restatement of what the Church has uttered so many times and for so
long--that all knowledge, material as well as spiritual, is to be found
in the Bible as interpreted by the Church. It was this myth which had
stultified the mind of man for 1500 years (during the period in which
the Church was dominant); it was this that had killed the urge to search
and seek for the truth, which is the goal of all science, the means by