ON RELIGION AND MORALS

Shall we define our terms? Historically, religion has been the worship of supernatural powers.
Webster defines morality as “the quality of that which conforms to right ideals or principles of
human conduct.”

In the year 1830, a French customs official named Jacques Boucher de Crèvecœur de Perthes
unearthed in the valley of the Somme some strange implements of flint now interpreted by the
learned as the weapons with which the men of the Old Stone Age made war.

To what extent is freedom possible, and to what extent is it desirable, among human beings who live in communities? That is the general problem which I wish to discuss.

Before we can discuss this subject we must form some conception as to the kind of effect that
we consider a help to mankind.

The connection of science with war has grown gradually more and more intimate. It began with
Archimedes, who helped his cousin the tyrant of Syracuse to defend that city against the
Romans in 2I2 B.C.

Every man has a number of purposes and desires, some purely personal, others of a sort which
he can share with many other men.

I shall assume the following three propositions conceded…

Education in the past has been a haphazard and traditional affair, supposed not to begin until
the child was at least six years old, and to be concerned almost exclusively with the acquisition
of knowledge.

An Agnostic thinks it impossible to know the truth in matters such as God and the future life
with which Christianity and other religions are concerned. Or, if not impossible, at least
impossible at the present time.

The thing that above all others I have been concerned to say is that because of fears that once
had a rational basis mankind has failed to profit by the new techniques that, if wisely used,
could make him happy.