Discuss God in Light of Modern Science

The effect of the generally accepted results of modern psychology on the fundamental teachings of Christianity and Judaism were dealt with from the Christian and Jewish standpoints at a meeting of the Society of Jews and Christians held at the Liberal Jewish Synagogue.

The Rev. W. Fearon Halliday, lecturer in philosophy at the Selly Oak College, Birmingham, speaking from the Christian point of view, said that religion would eventually have to face an attack from modern psychology, although the real object of psychology was to observe and describe mind processes and determine the validity of religion. Some psychologists looked upon religion as an illusion, a projection of a subjective Father upon the Universe. But they did not explain how much such an illusion came into being. Psychology, however, was doing a great service in ridding religion of servile and fear elements. The sphere of religion was the sphere of the sacred. This sense of the sacred was the origin of all religion and probably of all civilization. It had two grades, the material- sacred and the personal, or spiritual-sacred. All primitive religion felt the need for a material ground-work, but the more advanced the religion, the more abstract it became. The Hebrew prophets instinctively experienced this more abstract phase.

Mr. Emanuel Miller, Medical Psychologist to the West End Hospital for Nervous Diseases, discussing the question from the scientific and also the Jewish standpoint, maintained that psychology did not deal in any way with the idea of God innate in the human mind. The only contribution psychology could give to the study of religion was in connection with its history of the processes of the human mind at every stage of development.