which humanity is set on the road to progress. This was the damnable
precept foisted on the minds of men which enslaved them throughout the
ages, and from which we are just emerging. This was the precept that
plunged the world into the Dark Ages, and retarded the advance of
mankind for centuries.

This is the reason that it is utterly impossible for the intellectually
honest scientist, and for that matter any individual, to reconcile
science with religion. On the one hand, that of religion, we have the
forces of intolerance, superstition, and the endeavor to besmirch,
repress, and ridicule every advance favorable to mankind; to cloak with
meaningless words obsolete rites, to stand in the way of human progress,
because it does not permit men to think boldly and logically. Science,
on the other hand, does not hesitate to tear down old conceptions, and
has only one motive, the ultimate truth. Religion has the purpose of
keeping the masses in the narrow and false path of only accepted
doctrines. The true scientist is the man with the open mind, one who
will discard the worthless and accept only the proven good. The
religionist closes his mind to all facts which he is unwilling to
believe, everything which will endanger his creed. Religion teaches the
individual to place all hope, all desire, in a problematical hereafter.
The stay on earth is so short compared to the everlasting life to come,
that of what interest is this life; all things are vain. The misery, the
suffering, of his fellow men leave him cold; he can only think of living
in the light of his narrow creed so that he may gain his future reward.
How well this philosophy has fitted in with the schemes of the select
few for the control of the many!

Truth to the scientific mind is something provisional, a hypothesis that
for the present moment best conforms to the recognized tests. It is an
evolving conception in a constantly changing universe. It is not that
science has attained true conclusions; not that the evidence at hand
must remain immutable; but that the scientific method of analyzing and
formulating assumptions on the basis of discovery, on ascertained facts,
is a superior method to the closed "infallible" method of "revelation."
These assumptions, based upon the known facts, lead to a working
hypothesis which in turn develops into a theory. If the theory is
adopted it must account for the facts known. But the theory is not held
as final, it is always ch