d of
the present age, is an agnostic who maintains "The objections to
religion are of two sorts, intellectual and moral. The intellectual
objection is that there is no reason to suppose any religion true; the
moral objection is that religious precepts date from a time when men
were more cruel than they are now, and therefore tend to perpetuate
inhumanities which the moral conscience of the age would otherwise
outgrow."

The Italian philosopher Benedetto Croce is an atheist who states that
philosophy removes from religion all reason for existing. C. E. M. Joad
is a young English philosopher who repeatedly predicts the disappearance
in the near future of the present forms of theistic beliefs. M. C. Otto
holds to "An affirmative faith in the non-existence of God." William P.
Montague discards all organized religions for a "Promethean Religion."
John Dewey is a naturalistic philosopher who will have nothing to do
with supernatural causation and insists that all things be explained by
their place and function in the environment. His philosophy is permeated
with the secular ideal of control of the external world.

What consolation does organized religion receive from the views of such
modern philosophers as Russell, Alexander, Joad, Croce, Santayana,
Dewey, Otto, Montague, Sellars, and the Randalls? The views of an
intellectual incompetent, such as Bryan was, are spread widecast, but
few know the extent of the scepticism of Edison, Luther Burbank, Albert
Einstein, Paul Ehrlich, Ernst Haeckel, Robert Koch, Fridjof Nansen, and
Swante Arrhenius. What consolation can the theists derive from the
religious views of Shelley, Swinburne, Meredith, Buchanan, Keats, George
Eliot, Thomas Hardy, Mark Twain, and Anatole France?

In the not far distant past deism and pantheism served as a polite
subterfuge for atheism. There is a growing tendency in this present age
to dress one's atheistic belief in an evening suit, and for the sake of
social approbation call such a belief "religious humanism." A quotation
from the Associated Press, appearing recently in one of our magazines,
states the need for this "new religion" as being the inadequacy of the
religious forms and ideas of our fathers, and the new creed to be:

"Religious humanists regard the universe as self-existing and not
created.

"Religion must formulate its hopes and plans in the light of the
scientific spirit and method.

"The distinction between the sacred and secular can