Part 14 (1/2)
Mayer took the fourth step by showing that the force which enters into the const.i.tution of the universe is an eternality.
Darwin took the fifth step by showing that the protoplasm contains all the potentialities of every form of physical and degree of psychical life from the moneron to man; that all representatives of both the vegetable and animal kingdoms, including man, are related and so on a level as to their origin and destiny, and that the different species are the natural results of the necessary struggle with rivals and with adverse environments for existence.
Marx took the sixth step by showing that the essential difference between humans and beasts is primarily a question of the hand and secondarily of the machines by which its efficiency is immeasurably increased; that slavery has been and must continue to be the means of advancement towards the ideal civilization; that the kinds of human slavery were what they have been because machines have been what they were, and that the time is coming when the slaves will no longer be men, women and children, but machines which will be exploited for the good of the many, not the profit of the few--then, and not until then, rapid advance shall be made towards the goal where the whole world shall be one great co-operative family, every member of which shall have the greatest of possible opportunities to make the most of terrestrial life by having it as long and happy as possible.
2. Moral Impossibilities. The moral impossibility of the a.s.sumptions of these apologies is seen by all who have eyes for seeing things as they are in the fact that if G.o.d is credited with the good He must also be debited with the evil. If for example, He endowed the human body with its useful and necessary parts. He also endowed it with its harmful and unnecessary parts.
Experts in the field of anatomy tell us that there are in our bodies at least 180 useless parts, some among which are the occasion of much suffering and many premature deaths, the vermiform appendix alone causing many thousands of such cases annually.
Do you not see that these useless structures, all of which are inherited from the lower animals, are so many evidences of the truth of Darwinism and the untruthfulness of Mosaism? Eleven of these wholly useless and more or less harmful inheritances have been of no use to any of our ancestors from the fish up and four are inherited from our reptilian and amphibian forefathers, but according to Moses we have no such progenitors.
Admitting the fact of the existence of evil there is no escaping from the logical conclusions of dear, old sensible Epicurus:
Either G.o.d is willing to remove evil from this world and cannot, or he can and is not willing, or finally he can and is willing. If he is willing and cannot, it is impotence, which is contrary to the nature of G.o.d. If he can and is unwilling, it is wickedness, and that is no less contrary to the nature of G.o.d. If he is not willing and cannot, there is both wickedness and impotence. If he is willing and can, which is the only one of these suppositions that can be applied to G.o.d, how happens it that there is evil on earth?
Oh, if only the world had been influenced by this logic instead of by the metaphysics of the supernaturalistic interpretations of religion, it would have been so far on the way towards the ideal civilization as to have long since pa.s.sed the point where it would have been possible to have the world war which has recently deluged the earth with blood and tears, or to make the Versailles treaty which is destined to issue in one war after another, ever filling the world fuller with the tyranny, poverty, slavery and misery which are the inevitable concomitants of all wars.
In my opinion the fascinating essayist, Mallock, has written the best of all apologies for theism. I cannot imagine a better one. He, however, makes no more attempt than Sir Oliver Lodge does to establish Christianity, or any other supernaturalistic interpretations of religion. Like Kant and yourself, Mallock takes his stand on the ground that a belief in a celestial G.o.d, and in the immortality which goes with it, is necessary to morality, the basic virtue upon which civilization rests. As Kant admits that the existence of G.o.d cannot be inferred from pure reason, so Mallock admits and even strongly contends that it cannot be established on scientific grounds. I quote a striking pa.s.sage:
We must divest ourselves of all foregone conclusions, of all question-begging reverences, and look the facts of the universe steadily in the face.
If theists will but do this, what they will see will astonish them.
They will see that if there is anything at the back of this vast process, with a consciousness and a purpose in any way resembling our own--a Being who knows what he wants and is doing his best to get it--he is, instead of a holy and all-wise G.o.d, a scatter-brained, semi-powerful, semi-impotent monster. They will recognize as clearly as they ever did the old familiar facts which seemed to them evidences of G.o.d's wisdom, love and goodness; but they will find that these facts, when taken in connection with the others, only supply us with a standard in the nature of this being himself by which most of his acts are exhibited to us as those of a criminal madman. If he had been blind, he had not had sin; but if we maintain that he can see, then his sin remains. Habitually a bungler as he is, and callous when not actively cruel, we are forced to regard him, when he seems to exhibit benevolence, as not divinely benevolent, but merely weak and capricious, like a boy who fondles a kitten and the next moment sets a dog at it. And not only does his moral character fall from him bit by bit, but his dignity disappears also. The orderly processes of the stars and the larger phenomena of nature are suggestive of nothing so much as a wearisome court ceremonial surrounding a king who is unable to understand or to break away from it; whilst the thunder and whirlwind, which have from time immemorial been accepted as special revelations of his awful power and majesty, suggest, if they suggest anything of a personal character at all, merely some blackguardly larrikin kicking his heels in the clouds, not perhaps bent on mischief, but indifferent to the fact that he is causing it.
But we need not attempt to fill in the picture further. The truth is, as we consider the universe as a whole, it fails to suggest a conscious and purposive G.o.d at all; and it fails to do so not because the processes of evolution as such preclude the idea that G.o.d might have made use of them for a definite purpose, but because when we come to consider these processes in detail, and view them in the light of the only purposes they suggest, we find them to be such that a G.o.d who could deliberately have been guilty of them would be a G.o.d too absurd, too monstrous, too mad to be credible.
The G.o.d who had any part in bringing upon the world the English-German war, the Versailles peace, the Russian blockade, is for me a devil not a divinity. If you say that the Christian G.o.d had nothing to do with them, I reply that these are among the greatest of all curses wherewith mankind has been afflicted in modern times; and if he could not or would not prevent them, what ground is there for looking to him for help in any time of need?
How can I adequately express my contempt for the a.s.sertion that all things occur for the best, for a wise and beneficent end? It is the most utter falsehood, and a crime against the human race.... Human suffering is so great, so endless, so awful, that I can hardly write of it.... The whole and the worst, the worst pessimist can say is far beneath the least particle of the truth.... Anyone who will consider the affairs of the world at large ... will see that they do not proceed in the manner they would do for our happiness if a man of humane breadth of view were placed at their head with unlimited power. A man of intellect and humanity could cause everything to happen in an infinitely superior manner. But that which is ... credited to a non-existent intelligence (or cosmic ”order,” it is just the same) should really be claimed and exercised by the human race. We must do for ourselves what superst.i.tion has. .h.i.therto supposed an intelligence to do for us.--Richard Jeffries.
Would but some winged Angel ere too late Arrest the yet unfolded Roll of Fate, And make the stern Recorder otherwise Enregister, or quite obliterate!
Ah Love! could you and I with Him conspire To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire, Would not we shatter it to bits--and then Remold it nearer to the Heart's Desire!
--Omar.
You frequently intimate that my doctrine concerning the origin and destiny of the universe with all that therein is, including man, is not that of the majority of men of science and scientific philosophers, but that yours is. It will therefore be of interest to you to know that I have submitted the most radical of my materialistic pieces to three men of science, all great authorities, one of whom replied, that he was in substantial agreement with me, but thought me to be 400 years ahead of our time; another, that he found nothing to criticize unless it might be my failure to give greater prominence to the fact that the G.o.ds of the redemptive interpretations, of religion were so many versions of the sun-myth, and the other, that the essay would pa.s.s any world congress of scientists by a large majority.
You think that I am wrong in quoting Newton and Darwin on my side, because they believed in the existence of a conscious, personal G.o.d. I am persuaded that such was not the case with Darwin at his death; but, however this may be, it is in neither of these cases, nor in that of any other scientist, a question of what he philosophically believed concerning a G.o.d, but of what he scientifically established as a fact.
Newton established the fact that the movements of the stars in their courses are naturally regulated by the law of gravitation, not supernaturally by the will of a G.o.d.
Darwin established the fact that all living species of animal and vegetable life exist as the natural results of evolutionary processes, not as the supernatural results of creative acts.
If Newton were to stand by his theological writings, he would fall in your estimation, for his work on the book of Daniel would be regarded by you as an absurdity. He considered Daniel to be the great revelation of a G.o.d, Jehovah, but you know it to be the purest fiction of a man, quite as much the work of the imagination of its author as Don Quixote is that of Cervantes.
Among the many theological authorities whom you quote against me, the greatest, in my estimation, is Dr. Inge, Dean of St. Paul's, London, whose utterances I have been noting with great interest of late; partly, no doubt, because he seems to be giving up your orthodox side and coming over, slowly but surely, to my heterodox one. In a London paper which has just reached me, the Literary Guide, this is said of the Dean:
The theological opinions of Dean Inge, one of the official mouthpieces of the Church of England, and probably the most distinguished spokesman for the more liberally minded of the clergy, have now reached an interesting stage, both for those without the Church as well as for those within it. Although he does not feel called upon to state his own private conclusions on such debatable questions, he no longer regards the doctrines of the Immaculate Conception and the Bodily Resurrection as essential prerequisites of Christianity and would consider fit for ordination any candidate who rejected them, provided such a person still acknowledged the divine nature of Jesus Christ--that is, he would not exclude him from the Church's ministry.