Religion & Science

Sit down before the fact as a little child, and be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly whenever and to whatever abyss Nature leads, or you shall learn nothing.  T.H. Huxley

Science rules out all religion except the highest.  D.E. Harding

Only I am in a position to report on what's here. A kind of alert naivety is what I need. It takes an innocent eye and an empty head (not to mention a stout heart) to admit their own perfect emptiness.

Probably there is only one way of converting the sceptic who still says I've got a head here, and that is to invite him to come here and take a look for himself. But he must be an honest reporter, describing what he observes and nothing else.

Starting off on the far side of the room, he sees me as a full-length man-with-a-head. But as he approaches he finds half a man, then a head, then a blurred cheek or eye or nose, then a mere blur, and finally (at the point of contact) nothing at all. Alternatively, if he happens to be equipped with the necessary scientific instruments, he reports that the blur resolves itself into tissues, then cell-groups, then a single cell, a cell nucleus, giant molecules... and so on, until he comes to a place where nothing is to be seen, to space which is empty of all solid or material objects. In either case, the observer who comes here to see what it's really like finds what I find here -- vacancy. And if, having discovered and shared my non-entity here, he were to turn around (looking out with me instead of in at me) he would find again what I find -- that this vacancy is filled to capacity with the scene. He too would find this central Point exploding into an Infinite Volume, this Nothing into the All, this Here into Everywhere.  D.E. Harding

back to top