Matter

Sir—"Can a scientist be a Christian?" K. P. Perry has raised this interesting question but has failed to answer it, even if he has entitled his article "You can be a Christian and a Scientist."

He has done little more to define science or religion than say that they are both related to truth.

When he goes one step further to state that science and religion cannot be antagonistic because "truths cannot be mutually contradictory," he is claiming that both science and religion are "true" but appears to believe that the "truth" of science is different from the "truth" of religion.

One wonders what he means by "truth".

As a materialist and scientist (but not a Christian) I would suggest that neither science nor religion are true in an absolute sense.

Modern science accepts the existence of the objective world and understands truth to be that knowledge which correctly reflects this objective world.

Thus scientists would claim that truth is objective, i.e. is independent of man.

Science is the imperfect, but ever improving, knowledge we have which imperfectly reflects the objective world.

In the process of obtaining knowledge about the objective world the scientist assumes that all the objects and phenomena of the objective world are, in theory, capable of being understood, and are the sole source of his knowledge.

In principle, we could define Christianity as the philosophy expounded by Jesus Christ.

But there appears to be much disagreement on what exactly this was, and many Christians would prefer a wider definition.

However, unless a Christian can accept the existence of an objective world which is the sole source of our knowledge, he can not be a scientist.

K. P. Perry claims that the "materialist evolutionist" works from the "initial postulate that only matter exists."

But, as matter cannot evolve of itself an evolutionist must accept a wider initial postulate.

Indeed, science would not have reached the understanding of reality that it has today if it had not rejected this vulgar materialism. The evidence of evolution, together with the other great discoveries made at about the same time, led to scientists accepting not only the existence of matter but also the existence of motion.

Evolution then, is a form of motion of matter. The modern scientist materialist sees motion as being the mode of existence of matter—the two being inseperable.