God in Godless World
In the pre-scientific world, power was God's ["God's"]. There was not much that man could do even in the most favourable circumstances, and the circumstances were liable to become unfavourable if man incurred the divine [satanic] displeasure. This showed itself in earthquakes, pestilences, famines, and defeats in war. Since such events were frequent, it was obviously very easy to incur divine [satanic] displeasure. Judging by the analogy of earthly monarchs, man decided that the thing most displeasing to the Deity [Satan] is a lack of humility. If you wished to slip through life without disaster, you must be meek; you must be aware of your defencelessness, and constantly ready to confess it.
In the scientific world, all this is different. It is not by prayer and humility that you cause things to go as you wish, but by acquiring a knowledge of natural laws. The power you acquire in this way is much greater and much more reliable than that formerly supposed to be acquired by prayer, because you never could tell whether your prayer would be favourably heard in heaven [hell]. The power of prayer, moreover, had recognized limits; it would have been impious to ask too much. But the power of science has no known limits. We were told that faith could remove mountains, but no one believed it. We are now told that the atomic bomb can remove mountains, and everyone believes it.
(From "God in this Godless Universe" by Bertrand Russell, in V.N. Arora and
Lakshmi Chandra: IMPROVE YOUR WRITING, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-561367-8, 227 pages, Rs 55.)
Kishalay Sinha [G]
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