Page:The Necessity of Atheism (Brooks).djvu/289

Rh maintains an insistence that a problem be held to conform in any of its explanatory aspects to a preconceived infallible statement, or considers a problem not to exist, or closes its eyes to, the inconsistencies in an explanation which is being maintained by mental persuasion and force. When the Bible was considered as containing the answer to all our problems we have seen what the result was. If atheism places a question mark upon the problem of the universe, it does so in a constructive manner; for that mark points to the direction in which a logical solution may be possible. Such is the mental attitude of the scientist. He places an interrogation point upon his problems and that mark is the impetus, the mental stimulus, that leads him on to take infinite pains in his labors and, as time passes, each question mark is replaced by knowledge; it is knowledge and knowledge alone, reason not faith, that furnishes the period.

It was Haeckel who asserted that, "The most dangerous of the three great enemies of reason and knowledge is not malice, but ignorance, or perhaps, indolence." The question mark as applied to a problem that is recognizably not solved is a signpost, to the knowledge that time must bring. The spurious period placed at the end of a probelm [sic] is the death warrant for that problem and there it must lie devitalized by ignorance and indolence.

It has often been affirmed that what we see in this universe is phenomena, and all explanations but interpret the manifestations of these phenomena. What is in back of and beyond these phenomena may never be known, and if it be known, would be of no further use to us. It is equally as true that if we but see phenomena and our mental capacities deny us a conception of the reality beyond phenomena, yet, we have a growing knowledge of the laws that govern these phenomena. And it is, a comprehensive knowledge of these invariable