Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1930-11-18
FOES
IN FRIENDLY CHAT
barrow Dlsagrees Funda-
mentally With Rabbi Simon,
DR.. Pierce and Quin 0'Brien.

At a socratical breakfast under the
sparkling chandeliers of q washington
and engaged in friendly, philosophical
combat this morning. They represented
four major viewpoints on the nature
and destiny Of man.
There were two Washington clergy
men-Rabbi Abram Simon and Rev. DR..
Jason Noble Pierce, men who have
chung fast TO fairly well defined theo-
logical point OF view in the face Of the
TIDE. OF mechanism sweeping over the
Intellectual world from the laboratories
of physicists, biologists and psycholo-
g1sts. A third man was Quin O'Brien,
Chicago lawyer and staunch Catholic,
who delyes into Greek, Latin and
shakespeare with consummate ease,
makes any one who argues with him
define words exactly, and who shares
with Dr.. Pierce and Rabbi Simon q
broad, liberal viewpoint.
An Three Hold similar Faith.
Differing somewhat In their individ-
ual interpretations, all these three hold
last to this faith that has come down
the ageS--that there Is an absolute right
and wrong i'll the world, that. creation
must have had q first cause. that normal
man has an inherent capacity to dis
tinguish between the absolute good and
evil, and that man is more than dumb,
ol1nd, unconscious machine, reacting
automatically to the forces brought to
bear upon it.
All three insist that in his heart
when all the confusing tangle of words
mas been torn away, the fourth man at
the breakfast table also agrees with
Lnem IN this, for, they say, he is fun
oamentaily an evangelist for a cleaner,
kinder, and more tolerant world, And
they cannot believe that such an evan
gel can premise anything else, after ali
SAID and done, than q teleologicaf
scheme OF things-for they ask WHY
man should seek roads to q starIess
Heaven?
But the fourth man could not see 1t
that way. He was Clarence DarroH.-
preacher and prophet Of agnosticisrn.s
Just IN from Baltimore, where he dined
with the newly wed Henry L. Mencken,
fellow-evangelist for creed Of cold
facts Invested Of faith. And he was on
his way to inspect, at the Invitation of
MS old Zoe OF the debating platform,
Clarence True Wilson, the Methodist
Building on Copitol Hill, which he has
dubbed the Methodist Vatican" 49,
DarrOw Denies God.
Mr., Darrow believes that man. isz q
lnachine-tust that and nothing more.
Out of behavioristic psychology. the
present findings of biology, the physie-
lists demolition of the material unf-
verse as men see 1t with their eyes, and
the destructive inroads of paleopsy-
chology into the processes by which
men have arrived at anthropomorphi
concepts, the veteran defender of the
underdog has built for himself g. uni
verse with roads upward, where he
flndS no place for moral ideas, or pur-
posivenesS, or First Cause, or for God.
Over and over again at the breakfast
table this morning he reiterated his
belief that man Is machine-just q
nervous system incloSed in an envelope
of flesh and bones and irrigated by
blood. Something impingeS on this
nervous system and starts an impulse,
roughly like current Of electricity,
which goes to some central point, where
1t Is switched onto another wire and
comes out Of the mouths, hands, ETC.,
as behavior. The nervous system itself
has nothing to do about It, 1t depends
on where the current starts, what wires
1t follows and to what wires 1t Is
switched whether the resulting behavior
Is good, bad or indifferent, according
to anthropomorph concepts. And this
nervous system has been built up
from the nerve net Of the sponge TO
the cortex Of manly the mechanistic
processes of evolution. There Is no place
for God or conscience in such system,
says Mr.. Darrow-that is, unless one
says that conscience Is an inherent pat
tern of nerve fibers. He holds that
present-day psychology has proved
rather conclusively that there is no
such inherent pattern in the cortex-
that all arrangements of the wires oy
which nerve currents travel are the re-
suit of environment.
Right there Rabbi Simon puts his
foot down. He believes in the influence
Of environment and heredity, but he
thinks there is something in the ma
chine it$elf-something inherent ana
God given-that directs these currents.
Saws Mr. Darrow: There Is no Such
thing as right or wrong, anyway"
1t is all, he holds, a matter of adj
vantage or disadvantage to the organ
ism itself, and to the larger organism,
society, as 1t Is in any particular time
and place. What is wrong today may
be right tomorrow. What is wrong in
washington may be right in Timbuctu,
he asserts.
Rabbi Simon, Rev. DR.. Pierce and
Mr.. O'Brien all shake their heads. They
hold insistently that there is certain
Vi AA6Ab Civ
wrong which retains its identity, re-
CARELESS of time or place, which comes
from something outside the circum-
scribed world of the human senses.
There are some kinds of behavior, they
say, which were right or wrong in the
beginning and will be right or wrong
for all the endless tomorrows.
barrow Would Turn Tables.
Mr.. barrow believes his antagonists
are really sounder in philosophy than
they indicate by their words-that they
may be fellow agnostics at heart and
hence following with him the great
light that shines upon the day when
all men will love one another, which,
he holds, Is not the main path Of re-
ligion.
But they declare--rabbi, minister
and Catholic layman--that it is OAR
row himself who mininterprets his own
philosophy, that at heart he is deeply
religious, an apostle of the better world
and the kindlier heart. which they in
sist is the underlying nucleus of re-
ligion
said Mr.. O'Brien: somebody has
said that Shaw is not in revolt against
religion, but the narrow Presbyterian
Calvinism of his childhood. Probably
Mr.. Mencken Is not Ia revolt against
religion, but against the Lutheranism OF