The Side of the Serpent

Scientists, once so sure that they were leading mankind out of religious darkness, do not stress the point these days, and churchmen are speaking out quite boldly again about such old-fashioned concepts as Original Sin and the Last Judgment. Last week a prominent scientist did his best to answer back.

Before the Royal Society of New Zealand's Eighth Science Congress, Australia's top atomic physicist, Marcus Laurence Oliphant, attacked recent statements by Pope Pius XII and Labor Leader Clement R. Attlee citing the misuse of science as a menace to the world. Scientist Oliphant implied that the world's sorry state is the fault of the churches for not doing their job better. "I can find no evidence whatever," he said, "that the morality of mankind has improved over the 5,000 years or so of recorded history."

In the Garden of Eden incident, moreover, Professor Oliphant gladly ranged himself on the side of the Serpent. "We are told that . . . Adam and Eve were driven from the Garden of Eden because they disobeyed the law and ate of the fruit of the tree of knowledge. It seems strange to me that the exercise of the greatest faculty with which man has been endowed should ever have been regarded as a sin . . . By a deliberate act, probably the greatest step he ever took, [Man] chose to seek knowledge, thereby setting himself apart from all living things and ensuring his ultimate dominion over the earth. What is called the Fall of Man should be known as the Ascent of Man."

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