Facs
Transcript
central symbols of every religion – only in unity with the universe as a whole. You cannot isolate immortal souls from all other beings. One had to ask: when do they appear in a child? And you can give no answer in this case, as you can give no answer in the case of the world-development. Sometimes, there it is. There is a being with whom we can speak, whom we can consider as a “thou,” making us into a self, into an ego, and vice versa. But we can never say, with a child, when this can happen.
Therefore the idea of the immortal soul as a special entity is nothing which belongs to religion qua religion. What belongs to religion qua religion is that we, in our actual experience, as historical man, are able to experience responsibility, guilt, healing, eternity. And we cannot go beyond this. We only can look at the biblical symbolism which is much wiser than these pseudo-Platonic adherents of a separated soul, namely that man is fallen and estranged and will be reconciled and fulfilled with the whole of nature, with nature as a whole. Or in another terminology: that, as nature reaches into man, man reaches into nature, and vice versa, and that there is no point in which you are able, scientifically, to make a cut; and that, religiously, this is no ultimate question, but that the dimension of religion does not demand anything as the fact that beings are able to have ultimate concern.
Now this was the conflict between Darwinism and Christianity. And I repeat that if the terms “creation” and “evolution” ever come into conflict, you can diagnose that there is confusion or misunderstanding about the meaning of both of them, that people are not able