The Evolution of Religion (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER I. The Foundation of Faith at What Shall We Believe? It was said by one of olden times: "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.'' This bit of good advice is no less appropriate now than it was nineteen hundred years ago when Paul, its reputed author, addressed it to the Thessa- lonians. Had he told us by what process we uhould "prove all things," by what means we are to know what "is good," what a lot of bad mistakes his followers might have avoided! Perhaps he did not think it necessary to give explicit directions about so simple a matter. Perhaps he thought that all rational beings would know that to prove anything requires the exercise of their reason, that faculty which entitles them to be called rational. Simple as seems the proposition that we hould investigate or prove all things by the process of reasoning, and that we should accept, believe, or hold fast only that which to us seems good or true, yet there are many who in laying the foundation for their belief would assign to this faculty of the human mind a role of only secondary importance. Especially is this truein religion, in which many would place authority above reason, forgetting that without reason there can be no authority. One who would found his beliefs on authority must first determine what to him shall be authority. To do this he must exercise his reason. If the authority to be followed be a religious one, then he must choose between the Christian Bible, the Mohammedan Koran, the Buddhist Tripitaka, the Brahman Vedas, and other so-called sacred books or authorities. To "prove" these authorities and determine to which one he will "hold fast," he must depend upon his reason. He may consciously or unconsciously reason that his ancestors, his friends, and his countrymen have for...