These preliminary considerations are offered to those who from a long tradition of rationalist literature are apt to regard the struggle as one of truth against untruth. If that were the case, it would be over in a few decades. What has really happened in Russia, we shall see, proves that. If we could put to the American people the relevant facts of history and truths of science as freely and unceasingly as the Churches put their untruths, no one can doubt the issue. Unfortunately, but very naturally, most people who quit church-going do not want to hear religion mentioned again. They switch off the sermon or religious address on the radio and skip the sermon-page in the paper. Let them get on with it, is the general sentiment. So atheistic organizations remain small and poor, opposing ridiculously slender resources and activities to a clerical organization with 250,000 servants of one kind or other and an income of a billion dollars a year. One of those literary men who feel that we aggressive Atheists are "on the wrong line" asked me how it was that we had such poor results. Like most of his class, he had not the least idea how enormously Atheism has spread, but the direct answer is that a few thousand people with almost no resources do not usually make a spectacular success against a billion-dollar corporation that controls the general education of the country.
Let us not fool ourselves with phrases like, Great is Truth and it will prevail. They knew quite a lot of truth in ancient Greece, and it was buried for 15 centuries, Yet it is an inestimable advantage to have the truth on your side, and it is the first point in the strengthening of the position of the Atheist in recent years that we have got weighty corroboration of our claim to possess the truth. Materialistic Atheism—and any other kind is so rare, comparatively, that it need not be considered here—is the kind of negative position which is, nevertheless, based upon a massive knowledge of realities. For most Theists nature proves, in one way or other, the existence of God. And this at once makes science a rival interpretation of nature and the natural enemy of religion. It is a mere quibble to insist that science has no concern whatever with God or spiritual realities, For more than a century science has been busy giving a natural explanation of phenomena which religious writers claimed to be inexplicable except by assuming that there was an infinite spirit in the heavens and a finite spirit in man. Attempts to shift the basis of Theism we will consider in later essays, but for at least four-fifths of the religious folk of America the basis of their belief in God is some aspect of nature (beauty, order, the mind, the moral sense, etc.) which, they say, science will never explain without God and the soul. Hence the question of the religious beliefs of scientific men has always had considerable fascination, and I will take this first.
1. American Men of Science
In the last essay I remarked that to a religions person it must seem singular that, while he was assured on all sides that science had ceased to be materialistic and had "created an atmosphere more favorable to religion," he heard nothing about conversions of scientific men. Possibly he gathered from the incessant droning about the beautiful harmony of science and religion that there was no need for conversions. One of the most liberal and cultivated preachers of New York said, when certain skeptical remarks of a scientist of secondary rank were reported to him: "Yes, the little men of science say these things: the big men are religious." Less liberal preachers will hardly grant us the little men. Yet there is no other country in which the opinions of scientific men about the fundamental propositions of religion—God and immortality—are so easily ascertained as they are in America. Apart from other evidence, Professor Leuba gave very definite and reliable statistics 20 years ago. That was in the bad old materialistic days, before the heavenly twins of British astronomy burst upon the scientific world. Fortunately, Professor Leuba has covered the ground once more, and we have the most positive evidence of what has really happened in the American scientific world while the press and pulpits were rejoicing in the change of heart of science.