I. It is difficult even to attach a precise
meaning to the term "scientific truth." Thus the meaning of
the word "truth" varies according to whether we deal with
a fact of experience, a mathematical proposition, or a scientific theory.
"Religious truth" conveys nothing clear to me at all.
II. Scientific research can reduce superstition
by encouraging people to think and view things in terms of cause and
effect. Certain it is that a conviction, akin to religious feeling,
of the rationality or intelligibility of the world lies behind all scientific
work of a higher order.
III. This firm belief, a belief bound
up with deep feeling, in a superior mind that reveals itself in the
world of experience, represents my conception of God. In common parlance
this may be described as "pantheistic" (Spinoza).
IV. Denominational traditions I can only
consider historically and psychologically; they have no other significance
for me.