“[S]cience has replaced magic and superstition in our era only by inheriting from Christianity its faith in progress† and its power to fight against the vicious circle of mental habits for an open future, the power to change our minds through suffering…
“Scholars have been complacently sawing off the trunk of Revelation on which their science was but a branch. By refusing to acknowledge their indebtedness to the Christian era for one future, one time common to all men, they lose orientation. Sciences do not give orientation; they presuppose it. The pillars of time are erected by lived lives, not by theories.”
~from The Christian Future, page 84 & 86.
† “Outside of science, progress is simply a myth… Without [progress], will we not despair? Like trembling Victorians terrified of losing their faith … humanists cling to the moth-eaten brocade of progressive hope. Today religious believers are more free-thinking. Driven to the margins of a culture in which science claims authority over all of human knowledge, they have had to cultivate a capacity for doubt. In contrast, secular believers – held fast by the conventional wisdom of the time – are in the grip of unexamined dogmas.”
~John Gray, from Straw Dogs, Forward
“Without the scientist’s feeling that truth is of the utmost concern, truth ceases to be of concern, in the mores of the people…
“Progress is impossible in a society which has lost orientation.”
~TCF, page 89.
Pursuit of Percipience 