Religion: The Inner Aim

Science is corrupting the religion and philosophy of modern man by giving him means without ends. So Theologian Paul Tillich told the centennial celebration of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology last week.

As his gauge for measuring the influence of science, Tillich took the Greek word telos: "the inner aim of a life process." To the classical Greeks, said Tillich, man's inner aim—his telos—was "the actualization of his potentialities and the conquest of those distortions of his nature which are caused by his bondage to error and passions." This idea, common to...