Word: belief
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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Professor Lewis admitted that it was impossible to prove the existence of God by scientific methods, and declared that the only basis for a belief in God rested upon moral grounds. There is no evidence concerning God, he admitted. The theory of evolution has exploded the previous theory that God had created the world. Science and experiment cannot prove His existence. But, he said, it is not necessary to do more than imagine that there...
...plain that the aim of education is not to implant in young intellects any given set of dogmas--even the very interesting dogmas of the dogma-hating Mr. Mencken. Education does not ignore the issues that confront the modern world, but, avoiding the ex cathedra dictation of belief, tries to lead the student to reason for himself, to cull and consider to become a thinking atom in a difficult universe of conflicting purposes...
...allow the conception of Heaven and Hell that the Fundamentalists have to flourish we will find many of our progressive moves being held in check. For instance their positive belief that everyone goes either to Heaven or Hell makes them argue in favor of capital punishment. At the time the time the Leopold-Loeb case was going on, I heard Doctor Straton from his own pulpit give as a reason for the horrible crime that the Devil had possessed the two boys...
...unnaturally arises of the social benefits of Modernism. It is a recognized historical fact that religion during the nineteenth century suffered a marked decline. And with a diminishing interest in religion itself there followed almost inevitably a lowering of ethical and moral standards. In the popular mind religious belief and moral conduct have such a very close relation that when the verity of traditional beliefs is doubted and rejected, observance of traditional codes of conduct suffers in consequence...
This outbreak of rationalism is not to be interpreted too literally. Perhaps it is another protest of the revivified Oriental mind against the same and unreligious institutions which seem inevitably to choke religion. This fresh violence of belief may be the painful force which will free the living core of faith from the incrustations which the centuries attach to it. This protest against authority in the name of intellectual self-assertion may dissolve the effluxes, which stagnate about the fountain of primitive creed...