The Churches and Modern Thought

CONCLUSIONS

These, then, are the difficulties created by the doctrine of Evolution. They are difficulties which appear completely to impugn the very nature of God, the veracity of the Bible, and the dogmas of sin and its atonement. We have already seen, by our study of Bible criticism and comparative mythology, how grave are the grounds for distrusting the Faith, and Evolution seems to be just the finishing stroke that was required for confirming our suspicions. We must now see whether there are any other arguments for belief of sufficient weight to warrant us in over-stepping the boundaries of reason by an act of faith.

THEISM

Chapter VI.

THE FAILURE OF THEISTIC ARGUMENTS

§ 1. Preliminary Remarks

Our next task is to study the arguments for theism. Under these may be ranged—the cosmological argument, which concludes that there must be one eternal, unconditioned, self-existent cause; the teleological191 argument, which concludes that nature’s first cause must be an intelligence; and the ethical argument—the proof from the moral order and conscience—which concludes that the supreme intelligence must be a moral, a beneficent being. To these may be added the argument from religious experience.

THEISM, AND WHO ARE THEISTS

First a word about theism. Theism is belief in the existence of a God as the creator and ruler of the universe. It assumes a living relation of God to his creatures, but does not define it. Although Θεός and Deus are equivalent, theism has come to be distinguished from deism. The latter, according to some theologians, while equally opposed to atheism, denies or ignores the personality of God, and therefore denies192 Christianity. Theism, on the contrary, underlies Christianity. Accordingly, in considering the truth or untruth of Christianity, we are concerned only with theism. However, it should be borne in mind that, although a man cannot be a Christian without being a Theist, he may be, and very often is in these days, a Theist without being a Christian. Of the cultured men who think they can still lay claim to the name of Christian, the bulk are, in point of fact, non-Christian Theists. Some of these quiet their conscience by the thought that they are still preserving a “reverent agnosticism” with regard to Christian dogmas; while certain anti-Haeckelites of the type of Professor E. Armitage (who urges scientific men to “remember that we only know appearances, and that whenever we affirm anything about what lies behind appearances we are making hazardous inferences”193) do not seem to be aware that they are adherents of one of the fundamental principles of agnosticism.

Theism in its modern Unitarian form is the creed of many of the most cultured and most religious minds of our time, alike in Europe and America; and it has also signally shown its power in contemporary India. Before I left the latter country a few years ago, I had an interesting discussion with one of the leading spirits of the Brahmo Samaj movement, and, in answer to my queries, he replied that it was with the Unitarians that he and his fellow thinkers were most in sympathy, and that they were never likely to turn Christians. This Unitarian theism, it may be remarked, is often seen to approximate to, or become absorbed into, pantheism or agnosticism. But it is not of Unitarians that I would speak so much as of the man who calls and often thinks himself a Christian proper, notwithstanding the admission that the Christian dogmas may be partially or wholly false. This misconception of “What it is to be a Christian”194 is one of the many that tend to confuse and delay a straight reply to the question, “Is Christianity true?” Having digested these prefatory remarks, let us now proceed to consider the Theistic arguments.

§ 2. The Existence of a First Cause—An Uncaused Cause.195

The hypothesis of modern science is that everything as it now exists in the universe is the result of an infinite series of causes and effects; everything that happens is the result of something else that happened previously, and so on backwards to all eternity. The agnostic scientist says that we know nothing about this Infinite Cause, and that the idea of a First Cause is absurd. The Theist affirms that there is an Eternal Infinite Being who is the First Cause. He says that it is absurd not to believe in a First Cause, that materialistic theories are so absurd compared with his that for this reason alone he would remain a Theist. He appears entirely to lose sight of the fact that by predicating a First Cause he only removes the mystery a stage further back. He tells us nothing about the origin of the First Cause or the state of things that preceded it. The appearance of a First Cause upon the scene only increases the great mystery. Certainly it does not solve it. We are no forwarder. The creation of a mystery to explain a mystery is a very ancient custom, but it is a custom that has not met with the approbation of science.

The Theist apparently thinks, however, that he has science on his side. Thus, in the Baird Lectures of 1876, Dr. Flint stated that “the progress of science has not more convincingly and completely dispersed the once prevalent notion that the universe was created about 6,000 years ago than it has convincingly and completely established that everything of which our senses inform us has had a commencement in time.”196 This opinion is still proclaimed by the Church to be the opinion of science. But modern science does not point to a beginning of the scheme of things. The consensus of opinion is entirely the other way. So far as we know, the ultimate cause recedes for ever and ever beyond the time when there was no distinction of earth and sea and atmosphere, all being mingled together in nebulous matter. Where would the Theist fix the “commencement”? The gaps on which theology at one time relied are rapidly disappearing. The apparent chasm between the organic and inorganic, between the lifeless and that which lives, according to the latest conceptions of science, no longer exists. Man may even succeed in manufacturing life, so that yet another teleological argument may collapse.

§ 3. The First Cause an Intelligence

DESIGN AND DIRECTIVITY

The argument from design is one which appeals perhaps more than any other to the average man. As he looks around and reflects, he feels that there must be design, and, therefore, a Designer. He feels also that God must be constantly present directing the carrying out of His design. He is in accord with the Theist who maintains that purpose and plan are manifest throughout the cosmos, and that, although it might be conceded that every step of the process has been achieved by the forces of Evolution, it is impossible to exclude the presiding activity of a mind which has planned the whole and predetermined the movements of every portion. We are to believe, then, that the Designer Himself put the forces in motion for the first time, that He knew exactly what would be the product of those forces down to the minutest detail and for all time, and yet, in face of the undeviating law-regulated cosmos which He has created, He in some way continues to guide these forces. From the very first step, the making of the electron and thence the atom, to the last, the making of man’s brain, the Theist sees the finger of God. The mystery of life is thus taken to be explained or diminished by asserting that it is produced and controlled by some other mystery. The only alternative to this belief, so he maintains, is a universe of random chance and capricious disorder. But “Haeckel and his colleagues hold that the direction which the evolutionary agencies take is not ‘fortuitous’; that they never could take but the one direction which they have actually taken.”197 While “the Theist says the ultimate object must have been foreseen and the forces must have been guided, or they would never have worked steadily in this definite direction, the Monist says that these forces no more needed guiding than does a tramcar; there was only one direction possible for them.”198 To refute this the apologist gravely replies that, “if you cast to the ground an infinite (or a finite) number of letters, they might after infinite gyrations make a word here and there; but we should think the man an enthusiast who expected even a short sentence, and a fool if he ever expected them to make a poem.” We are expected, it seems, to regard it as a miracle that natural forces should not lose their uniform character, and act miraculously! Evidently, either the question is begged or the analogy is absurd. An argument of this kind is worse than useless, for it only serves to demonstrate the hopelessness of the teleologist’s position. Spinoza’s position is more reasonable; for he conceives that all is the outcome of inexorable necessity—that neither chance nor purpose governs the eternal and the infinite.

DIRECTIVITY

Directivity has hitherto been insisted upon by Theists. It would not conform with our ideas of God that He should remain a passive observer so soon as He had invented a machine that would never stop, and had started it going. Yet interference with the machinery is inconceivable, the universe being ruled by eternal, immutable, and irrefragable laws. “The only possible conception of telic [purposeful] action on a cosmic scale is that, from the start, the matter-force reality was of such a nature that it would infallibly evolve into the cosmos we form part of to-day. Any other conception of ‘guidance’ and ‘control’ is totally unthinkable. And, as a fact, Theists are settling down to formulate their position in that way. The interference, as Ward says, took place before the process began.”199 A Law Maker can be postulated, but there is not a particle of evidence that He is also a Law Breaker.

Attempts are still made, however, by clerical scientists to prove that there is directivity. The Rev. Professor George Henslow, in his book, Present-Day Rationalism Critically Examined, argues that the tendency which living organisms show to develop in one direction rather than another, and their capacity to respond to environment, betoken a directing Mind. Granting, for the moment, that the doctrine of Natural Selection is false or inadequate, it seems to me that the acknowledged facts of the “struggle for existence” and “survival of the fittest” sufficiently dispose of this new apology. Organisms do not all adapt themselves to environment, and their fate, in consequence, is first one of increasing misery, and finally of extinction. Only those that do adapt themselves survive. It appears that a scientist when he turns apologist is conveniently able to forget all but the more fortunate organisms.

DESIGN

If the evidence for a directing Mind has to be given up, the difficulties of a Theist are certainly increased. There would be difficulties, for instance, regarding the utility of prayer. Still, he could think with Father Waggett that “the interaction of forces inherent in the whole produces the infinite variety of living beauty which we see.”200 And he can still join with Dr. Flint in exclaiming: “Every atom, every molecule, must, even in what is ultimate in it, bear the impress of a Supernatural Power and Wisdom; must reflect the glory of God, and proclaim its dependence upon Him.”201 To remain a Theist, however, one must have not only evidence of design, but of the benevolent intention of the Designer. Before considering the latter question, I venture to offer a few further remarks about the former. Is there consistent evidence of design?

Beauty.—As a proof of design we are asked by the Theist to contemplate the beauty and sublimity which the universe exhibits. Let us contemplate, then, the beauty of the Bay of Naples. Is it not purely accidental, purely the outcome of natural agencies, of effects produced by position, distance, etc.? Again, “the beauty of the diatoms that are brought from the lowest depths of the ocean, the beauty of the radiolaria that swarm about the coast, and the beauty of a thousand minute animal structures, are obviously not designed and purposed beauties. They were unknown until the microscope was invented; the polariscope reveals yet further beauties; the telescope yet more. The idea of these being designed for our, or for God’s, entertainment belongs, as Mr. Mallock says, ‘to a pre-scientific age.’”202 It is sometimes urged that the tendency of evolution is towards greater beauty. Is it? That all depends upon what your idea of beauty may be—whether you will consider the structure best suited to its environment beautiful or otherwise. We are told that there are signs that the human race will one day be toothless. At present we admire pretty teeth; perhaps our descendants will go into raptures over a toothless gum. That their sense of beauty may not be outraged, let us hope it may be so. The hideous pigmies of Central Africa probably think themselves beautiful, and in the distant future, when the conditions of existence on this globe have radically changed, and when its inhabitants have adapted themselves to those conditions, the new “beauties” may possibly be quite as ugly as “missing links.” After all, beauty is a matter of taste. The sufficient objection to the “beauty” argument is, to my mind, contained in a very few words: “Look at the ugliness! Who designed that?”

Harmony.—But, it will be urged, if beauty is a poor argument, at least you must grant that the general harmony in Nature still remains to be accounted for. Beauty is only one of its countless harmonies. The objection to this argument is a very simple one. Nature is full of discords. Ugliness is by no means the only discord. It is because this is so little realised that M. Elie Metchnikoff has devoted nearly the whole of his book, The Nature of Man, to the discussion of the disharmonies in man’s nature alone. There are disharmonies in the organisation of the digestive system, in the organisation and activities of the reproductive apparatus, in the family and social instincts, and in the instinct of self-preservation, etc. For instance, in the human body there are disharmonies of the wisdom teeth, the bête-noire of dentistry; of the useless vermiform appendage, the seat of the disease appendicitis; of the large intestine, which could very well be dispensed with, and is the seat of many grave diseases, such as dysentery, and so on. The perversions of instinct among human beings (another disharmony) are likely to be attributed by the conservative Theist to the Devil, and by the liberal to Dr. Gore’s “Fall from Without,” so it will be better to take an example from the animal world. Darwin informs us that the “female of one of the emus (Dromœus irroratus), as soon as she catches sight of her progeny, becomes violently agitated, and, notwithstanding the resistance of the father, appears to use her utmost endeavours to destroy them” (Descent of Man, vol. ii., chap, xvi., pp. 204–205). To those who still hold by this argument I can only recommend a perusal of Professor Metchnikoff’s book of disharmonies, and would beg them to remember that it has been written by a man whose profession and attainments entitle his opinions on such a subject to the highest consideration. The cruelty attending the process by which harmony is attained has already been commented upon by me in § 2 of the previous chapter.

DIFFERENCES OF OPINION AMONG THEISTIC APOLOGISTS

I have finally to call attention to the fact that even among the apologists themselves there is considerable difference of opinion as to the value of these arguments for Theism. Dr. Flint exclaims: “Strange as it may seem, there are many Theists at the present day who represent it [revelation of God in the whole of nature external to us] as insufficient, or even worthless, and who join the Atheists in denying that God’s existence can be proved, and in affirming that all the arguments for His existence are inconclusive and sophistical. Such Theists seem to me not only the best allies of Atheists, but even more effective labourers in the cause of unbelief than Atheists themselves.”203 Since Dr. Flint wrote these words the number of “such Theists” has vastly increased. It is owned on all sides by the advanced school of apologists that God’s existence cannot be proved by an appeal to the reasoning faculties; and, among other arguments, that from design is gradually being discarded.

Father Waggett offers us interesting information regarding this argument in his little book, Religion and Science.204 He considers that Paley and others of the old teleologists were wrong in leaning upon a narrow argument from design. “It need not here be repeated,” he says, “that the evidence of such workmanship cannot prove God in the true sense of an infinite and all-wise Cause; but only a cause possessed of immense wisdom and immense though limited power, a Demiurgus of the greatest force and the most minute care, but not a Creator in the sense of theology.”205 Father Waggett, who is a biologist, and, therefore, necessarily an Evolutionist, would not be disconcerted if living things were manufactured in the laboratory to-morrow. In his opinion, “If anywhere we catch nature in the making, if we surprise the sequence by which even man himself gained his difference from other things, we shall not by this find reverence lowered.... It is a theological readjustment which is required, and not one in ‘natural science.’”206 The position here taken up is wise, and one that all who remain Theists will eventually have to adopt. But for most of us these theological readjustments are no easy matter. We reason that Paley’s Evidences have in their time assisted men to be Theists, and now his arguments are condemned by the better informed. How do we know that the same fate may not await the new arguments of the Christian evolutionist? How is it that God allowed earnest and learned divines to commit themselves to arguments in proof of His existence, the subsequent overthrow of which has been a potent cause for unbelief?

§ 4. The First Cause a Beneficent Intelligence

A PERSONAL GOD

As ages roll on, God’s attributes—or rather, we should say, the attributes given Him by man—are continually altering. All that the early gods demanded was fear and worship. Even the Jehovah of the Jews asked at first little else than this. Anthropomorphic conceptions of God are now admitted by the cultured to be a thing of the past. Do they not, however, still survive when human emotions, such as love and anger, happiness and sorrow, are attributed to the Deity? We acknowledge God to be infinite, and, consequently, incomprehensible by finite minds; yet we imagine and attempt to argue that He possesses the same qualities—those we most admire—as ourselves! “How can we believe in a personal God?” asks the Rationalist. “A person must have limitations, or he ceases to be a person.” However, we must not forget that in philosophy and theology the word “person” simply implies “a nature endowed with consciousness,” and does not involve limits. Demurring to this definition, there still remains another difficulty. In all our experience and knowledge, emotions and intelligence are connected with nerve structures; how, then, can we attribute these qualities to a Being who is described to us as devoid of any nerve structure? I know of no answer that could be called satisfactory from a Theistic standpoint.

In the previous section we considered the doctrine of final causes. This doctrine, as Spinoza points out,207 “does away with the perfection of God; for, if God acts for an object, He necessarily desires something which He lacks.” The Theist goes a step further than the mere teleologist, and insists on a benevolent purpose throughout nature. Is he, then, oblivious to Spinoza’s objection? No, he is not; and therefore it is that he struggles to save his personal God by an infinite extension of the limits of His personality. In fine, Theism, in the hands of its modern advocates, and in spite of the seeming orthodoxy of the phrase, “Divine Immanence,” is often nothing less than another form of Pantheism.

DIVINE IMMANENCE IN NATURE

The Church’s great philosopher to-day, the Rev. J. R. Illingworth, D.D., argues208 that “Divine Immanence in Nature” excludes Pantheism—the belief that God is merely immanent in nature—as well as Deism and Monism, while it harmonises with Trinitarianism. We are to “conceive of God as at once transcending and immanent in nature.”209 He admits that “this relationship may be incomprehensible,”210 but states that “we know it in our own case to be a fact.”211 Afterwards he puts the question, “Is the universe His body or His work?”212 and proceeds to explain that the Trinitarian conception of God furnishes, or helps to furnish, an answer to this question. “It is,” he maintains, “intellectually the most satisfactory.”213 It apparently is so to certain subtle and biassed intellects; but the question is, Is it so, will it ever be so, to the average mortal?

A FACT IN HISTORY

In another place,214 when speaking again of the doctrine of the Trinity, he says: “Men forget that it supports and is supported by the whole weight of a fact in history, with which nothing else in the wide world can even for a moment be compared. That fact is the age-long empire of Jesus Christ over the hearts of men.” This, then, is the final argument in support of the Christian dogmas, including this the most incomprehensible of them all. Why should not the Buddhist claim the same authority for the dogmas of his faith? The evidential value is precisely the same. Turn to any well-known work bearing on this phase of the question. Read, we will say, Edwin Arnold’s poem, The Light of Asia; or, better still, read Mr. Fielding’s books, The Soul of a People and The Hearts of Men, and hear the words of one who has lived for years among Buddhists and studied their hearts.

That an ideal should reign over the hearts of men is no new thing; much less is this a cause for marvel when “One has come, claiming to be God made manifest—manifest in order to attract our love.”215 Christian apologists urge that He has not only attracted the hearts of men in the past, but still retains His hold upon their affections, and that therein lies an essential difference between Christianity and all other religions. Christianity, say they, in this respect at least, stands pre-eminently alone. Is not Buddhism, then, one of the great living religions of the present day? Has it not existed during twenty-four centuries? Does it not at the present time surpass, in the number of its followers and the area of its prevalence, any other form of creed? Is not Gautama Buddha worthy of men’s love, if we are to credit the best authenticated records of his life? “Discordant in frequent particulars,” writes216 Sir Edwin Arnold, “and sorely overlaid by corruptions, inventions, and misconceptions, the Buddhistical books yet agree in the one point of recording nothing—no single act or word—which mars the perfect purity and tenderness of this Indian teacher, who united the truest princely qualities with the intellect of a sage and the passionate devotion of a martyr.” Loving disciples, living in an age of ignorance and superstition, piously ascribed to him divine powers, and, disobeying his mandate, gave him fervent worship. That worship, that adoration, still persists. So likewise the adoration of Jesus Christ still persists. This is certainly a fact in history; but can we safely build upon it the metaphysical theories of the Christian Faith?

THE PAST AND PRESENT POSITION OF THE ETHICAL ARGUMENT

In my comments upon Dr. Illingworth’s views regarding “Divine Immanence” I fear I have digressed somewhat from the subject at present under consideration—the Theistic argument from a Beneficent Intelligence. “The ethical argument held a very subordinate place in the estimation of writers on natural theology until Kant rested on it almost the whole weight of Theism. It has ever since been prominent, and has been the argument most relied upon to produce practical conviction.”217 What was once the weakest argument has now become the strongest. Why? Not, I take it, because anything has occurred to make the weaker any stronger, but because what was thought to be the strongest is now found to be weaker than the weakest! How can the ethical argument be maintained in face of objections which continue to become ever graver as our knowledge increases? Theists contend218 that there must be a future life if only because the glaring wrongs of this world have to be righted. What is this but a naïve admission that the proofs of the Deity’s benevolence are sadly wanting?