Now, the danger of symbols and symbolic thinking comes when the symbols are accepted for real, and taken as they stand for bases from which conclusions shall be drawn. The Christian theologians did not hesitate--why should they, in their position?--to use the personal nature of the Deity as one premiss in a whole series of syllogisms, and to accept at their full face value the conclusions which emerged from these syllogisms.
If a personal God was ruler of the universe, then he must be omnipotent; if truly divine, then omniscient; if worthy of worship, then all-wise. He must be capable of interfering with the course of events by “miracles,” of granting our prayers, of communicating directly with us, of deciding our fate in afterlife. From these conclusions yet further conclusions were drawn. If God revealed himself in the Bible, then the Bible was “true” ... with all that this in its turn involved as to our beliefs concerning natural causation, creation, our relations with God, or personal immortality. The whole scheme was self-consistent, and worked as well as many other human schemes. But what if the whole premiss, of God as a personal being, ruler and father and judge--what if this were not in fact tenable? Then, of course, the whole edifice itself would come toppling down. That is what is actually happening to-day. God, as personal ruler, is being slowly driven out of the universe, but returning as this organized idea of which we have spoken.
Another cardinal point in the older systems has always been its claim to possess a revelation of Truth which is in some real ways complete and absolute.
This leads us on immediately to a subject of especial interest to us as rationalists--namely, the relation of religion to science and to free inquiry. Religious beliefs, if they are really believed with any conviction, will be to a greater or less extent dominant beliefs, because by their nature they concern the general relationship between man and his surroundings, which must bulk large in all our lives; and it is matter of common experience with what obstinacy and fanaticism they may be held. If therefore a system of religious belief includes the belief that it is revealed, and therefore true with a more ultimate and complete truth than the truths of observation or experiment, any fact or idea which conflicts with any part of the system will be inevitably treated not only as dangerous to the system, but as actually evil: and this tendency is reinforced by the craving of the average man for certainty, for intellectual satisfaction without undue intellectual effort. The cynic who said that beliefs are generally held with an intensity inversely proportional to the amount of evidence which can be adduced in their support was not wholly or only cynical.