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“Truth
is always fighting; each new truth undergoes a veritable struggle for existence,
and if Hercules is to live to perform his labors he must succeed in strangling
the serpents that hiss round his cradle.”
To recognise our limitations, to accept the inevitable,
to amend — so far as amendment is possible—both ourselves and our environment,
all this forms part of a rational philosophy of life; but what has such
self-controlled and keen-eyed sternness of resolve to do with hysterical
outcries for help to some power outside nature, which, if it existed as
creator, must have modeled our existence at its pleasure, and towards which
our attitude could be only one of bitterest, if silent, rebellion?
To bow to the inevitable evil, while studying its
conditions in order to strive to make it the evitable, is consistent with
strong hope which lightens life’s darkness; but to yield crushed before
evil deliberately and consciously inflicted by an omnipotent intelligence—
in such fate lies the agony of madness and despair.
Nor do we find any reliable signs of the presence
of a god in glancing over the incidents of human history. We note unjust
wars, in which right is crushed by might, in which victory sides with “the
strongest battalions,” in the issue of which there appears no trace of
a “God that judgeth the earth.” We meet with cruelties that sicken us inflicted
on man by man; butcheries that desolate a city, persecutions that lay waste
a province. In every civilised land of to-day we see wealth mocking poverty,
and poverty cursing wealth; here, thousands wasted on a harlot, and there
children sobbing themselves in hunger to sleep. Our earth rolls wailing
yearly round the sun, bearing evidence that it has no creator who loves
and guides it, but has only its men, children of its own womb, who by the
ceaseless toil of countless generations are hewing out the possibility
of a better and gladder world.
Similar testimony is borne by the slow progress
of the human race. Truth is always fighting; each new truth undergoes a
veritable struggle for existence, and if Hercules is to live to perform
his labors he must succeed in strangling the serpents that hiss round his
cradle. The new truth must first be held only by one, its discoverer; if
he is not crushed at the outset, a few disciples are won; then the little
band is persecuted, some are martyred, and, it may be, the movement destroyed.
Or, some survive and gain converts, and so the new truth slowly spreads,
winning acceptance at the last. But each new truth must pass through similar
ordeal, and hence the slowness of the upward climb of man.
Look backwards over the time which has passed since
man was emerging from the brute, and then compare those millenniums with
the progress that has been made, and the distance which still separates
the race from a reasonably happy life for all its members. If a God cannot
do better for man than this, man may be well content to trust to his own
unaided efforts. We turn from the phænomena of human life, as from
those of non-human nature, without finding any evidence which demonstrates,
or even renders probable, the existence of a God.
The argument from causation
There is another line of reasoning, however, apart
from the consideration of phænomena, which must, it is alleged, lead
us to believe in the existence of a god. This is the well-used argument
from causation. Every effect must have a cause, therefore the universe
must have a cause, is a favorite enthymeme,1
of which the suppressed minor is, the universe is an effect. But this is
a mere begging of the question. Every effect must have a cause; granted;
for a cause is defined as that which produces an effect, and an effect
as that which is produced by a cause; the two words are co-relatives, and
the one is meaningless separated from the other.
Prove that the universe is an effect, and in so
doing you will have proved that it has a cause; but in the proof of that
quietly-suppressed minor is the crux of the dispute. We see that
the forces around us are the causes of various effects, and that they,
the causes of events which follow their action, are themselves the effects
of causes which preceded such action. From the continued observation of
these sequences, ourselves part of this endless chain, the idea of causation
is worked into the human mind, and becomes, as it were, part of its very
texture, so that we cannot in thought separate phænomena from their
causes, and the uncaused becomes to us the inconceivable.
But we cannot rationally extend reasoning wholly
based on phænomena into the region of the noumenon.2
That which is true of the phænomenal universe gives us no clue when
we try to pass without it, and to penetrate into the mystery of existence
per se. To call God “the first cause” is to play with words after
their meaning has been emptied from them. If the argument from causation
is to be applied to the existence of the universe, which is, without any
proof, to be accepted as an effect, why may it not with equal force be
applied to “God,” who, equally without any proof, may be regarded as an
effect? and so we may create an illimitable series of Gods, each an assumption
unsupported by evidence.
If we once begin puffing divine smoke-rings, the
only limit to the exercise is our want of occupation and the amount of
suitable tobacco our imagination is able to supply. The belief of the Atheist
stops where his evidence stops. He believes in the existence of the universe,
judging the accessible proof thereof to be adequate, and he finds in this
universe sufficient cause for the happening of all phænomena. He
finds no intellectual satisfaction in placing a gigantic conundrum behind
the universe, which only adds its own unintelligibility to the already
sufficiently difficult problem of existence.
Our lungs are not fitted to breathe beyond the
atmosphere which surrounds our globe, and our faculties cannot breathe
outside the atmosphere of the phænomenal. If I went up in a balloon
I should check it when I found it carrying me into air too rare for my
respiration; and I decline to be carried by a theological balloon into
regions wherin thought cannot breathe healthily, but can only fall down
gasping, imagining that its gasps are inspiration.
There remain for us to investigate two lines of
evidence, either of which suffices, apparently, to carry conviction to
a large number of minds; these are, the argument from human experience,
and the argument from design.
The argument from human experience
I have no desire to lessen the weight of an argument
drawn from the sensus communis, the common sense, of mankind. It
is on this that we largely rely in drawing distinctions between the normal
and the abnormal; it is this which serves as test between the sane and
the insane; no thoughtful student can venture to ignore the tremendous
force of the consensus of human experience.
But while he will not ignore, he must judge: he
must ask, first, is this experience universal and unanimous? Secondly,
on what experimental or other evidence is it based? The universal and unanimous
verdict of human experience, based on clear verifiable experience, is one
which the thinker will challenge with extreme hesitation.
Yet cause may arise which justifies such challenge.
Perhaps no belief has at once been so general, and so undeniably based
on the evidence of the senses, as the belief in the movement of the sun
and the immobility of our globe. All but the blind could daily see the
rising of the sun in the eastern sky, and its setting in the west; all
could feel the firmness of the unshaken earth, the solid unmoving steadfastness
of the ground on which we tread.
Yet this consensus of human experience, this universality
of human testimony, has been rejected as false on evidence which none who
can feel the force of reasoning is able to deny. If this belief, in defence
of which can be brought the ne plus ultra of the verdict of common
sense, be not tenable in the light of modern knowledge, how shall a belief
on which the sensus communis is practically non-existent, on which
human testimony is lacking in many cases, contradictory in all others,
and which fails to maintain itself on experimental or other evidence, how
shall it hold ground from which the other has been driven?
The reply to the question, “Is the evidence universal
and unanimous?” must be in the negative. The religion of Buddha, which
is embraced by more than a third of the population of the globe, is an
Atheistic creed; many Buddhists pay veneration to Buddha, and to the statues
of their own deceased ancestors, but none pretend that these objects of
reverence are symbols of a divine power. Many of the lower savage tribes
have no idea of God. Darwin writes:
“There is ample evidence, derived not from hasty
travellers, but from men who have long resided with savages, that numerous
races have existed, and still exist, who have no idea of one or more Gods,
and who have no words in their language to express such an idea” (Descent
of Man, pp. 93, 94, ed. 1875).
Büchner (Force and Matter, pp. 382-393)
has collected a mass of evidence showing that whole races of men have no
idea of God at all. Sir John Lubbock has done the same. When savages reach
a stage of intelligence at which they begin to seek the causes of phænomena,
they invariably postulate many Gods as causes of the many objects around
them.
A New Zealander who was told of the existence of
the one God by a missionary, asked him scoffingly if, among Europeans,
one man made things of every sort; and he argued that as there were various
trades among men, so there were various Gods, each with his own business,
and one made trees, another the sea, another the animals, and so on…
Not only is the universal evidence a-wanting, but
such evidence as there is wholly lacks unanimity. What attribute of the
divine character, what property of the divine nature, is attested by the
unanimous voice of human experience? What is there in common between the
Mumbo-Jumbo of Africa and the “heavenly Father” of refined nineteenth century
European Theism? What tie, save that of a common name, unites the blood-dripping
Tezcatlepoca of Mexico with him “whose tender mercy is over all his works”?
“Now,
it may be taken as an undeniable fact that where there is confusion of
belief there is deviciency of evidence.”
Even if we confine ourselves to the Gods of the
Jews, the Christians, and the Mahommedans, how great is the clash of dissension.
The Jew proclaims it blasphemy to speak of a divine Trinity, and shrinks
with horror from the thought of an incarnate God. The Christian calls it
blasphemy to deny the deity of the man Christ Jesus and affirms, under
anathema, the triune nature of the Godhead. The Mahommedan asserts the
unity of God, and stamps as infidel everyone who refuses to see in Mahommed
the true revealer of the divinity. Each is equally certain that he is right,
and each is equally certain that the others are wrong, and are in peril
of eternal damnation for their rejection of the one true faith.
If the Christian has his lake of fire and brimstone
for those who deny Christ, the Mahommedan has his drinks of boiling water
for those who assert him. Among this clash of tongues, to whom shall turn
the bewildered enquirer after truth? All his would-be teachers are equally
positive, and equally without evidence. All are loud in assertion, but
singularly modest in their offers of proof.
Now, it may be taken as an undeniable fact that
where there is confusion of belief there is deficiency of evidence. Scientific
men quarrel and dispute over some much controverted scientific theory.
They dispute because the experimental proofs are lacking that would decide
the truth or the error of the suggested hypothesis. While the evidence
is unsatisfactory, the controversy continues, but when once decisive proof
has been discovered all tongues are still. The endless controversies over
the existence of God show that decisive proof has not yet been attained.
And while this proof is wanting, I remain Atheist, resolute not to profess
belief till my intellect can find some stable ground whereon to rest.
The argument from design
We have reached the last citadel, once the apparently
impregnable fortress of Theism, but one whose walls are now crumbling,
the argument from design. It was this argument which so impressed John
Stuart Mill that he wrote in his Essay on “Theism”:
“I think it must be allowed that, in the present
state of our knowledge, the adaptations in Nature afford a large balance
of probability in favor of creation by intelligence. It is equally certain
that this is no more than a probability” (Three Essays on Religion,
p. 174).
This essay was, however, written between the years
1868 and 1870, and at that time the tremendous effect of the hypothesis
of evolution had not yet made itself felt; Mill speaks (p. 172) of the
“recent speculations” on “the principle of the ‘survival of the fittest’,”
recognising that if this principle were sound “there would be a constant
though slow general improvement of the type as it branched out into many
different varieties, adapting it to different media and modes of existence,
until it might possibly, in countless ages, attain to the most advanced
examples which now exist” (p. 173). He admits that if this be true “it
must be acknowledged that it would greatly attenuate the evidence for”
creation.
And I am prepared to admit frankly that until the
“how” of evolution explained the adaptations in Nature, the weight of the
argument from design was very great, and to most minds would have been
absolutely decisive. It would not of course prove the existence of an omnipotent
and universal creator, but it certainly did powerfully suggest the presence
of some contriving intelligence at work on natural phænomena.
But now, when we can trace the gradual evolution
of a complex and highly developed organ through the various stages which
separate its origin from its most complete condition; when we can study
the retrogression of organs becoming rudimentary by disuse, and the improvement
of organs becoming developed by use; when we notice as imperfections in
the higher type things which were essential in the lower: what wonder is
it that the instructed can no longer admit the force of the argument from
design?
The human eye has often been pointed to as a triumphant
proof of design, and it naturally seemed perfect in the past to those who
could imagine no higher kind of optical instrument; but now, as Tyndall
says,
“A long list of indictments might indeed be brought
against the eye—its opacity, its want of symmetry, its lack of achromatism,
its absolute blindness in part.3
All these taken together caused Helmholtz to say that, if any optician
sent him an instrument so full of defects, he would be justified in sending
it back with the severest censure” (On Light, p. 8, ed. 1875).
It is only since men have made optical instruments
without the faults of the eye that we have become aware how much better
we might see than we do. Nor is this all; the imperfections which would
show incompetence on the part of a designer become interesting and significant
as traces of gradual development; and the eye, which in the complexity
of its highest form seemed, notwithstanding its defects, to demand such
great intelligence to conceive and fashion it, becomes more intelligible
when we can watch it a-building, and, as it were, see it put together bit
by bit. I venture to quote here from a pamphlet of my own a very brief
statement of the stages through which the eye has passed in its evolution:
The first definite eye-spot that we yet know of
is a little colored speck at the base of the tentacles of some of the Hydromedusæ,
jelly-fish in common parlance. They are only spots of pigment, and we should
not know they were attempts at eyes were it not that some relations, the
Discophora, have little refractive bodies in their pigment spots, and these
refractive bodies resemble the crystalline cones of animals a little higher
in the scale.
In the next class (Vermes), including all worms,
we find only pigment spots in the lowest; then pigment spots with a nerve-fibre
ending in them; pigment spots with rod-shaped cells, with crystalline rods;
pigment spots with crystalline cones. Next, the cones begin to be arranged
radially; and in the Alciopidæ the eye has become a sphere with a
lens and a vitreous body, layer of pigment, layer of rods, and optic nerve.
To mark the evolution definitely in another way,
we find the more highly developed eye of the adult appearing as a pigment
spot in the embryo, so that both the evolution of the race and the evolution
of the individual tell the same story. …
In the Arthropoda (lobsters, insects, etc.), the
advance continues from the Vermes. The retina is formed more definitely
than in the Alciopidæ, and the eye becomes more complex. The compound
eye is an attempt at grouping many cones together, and is found in the
higher members of this sub-kingdom…
The line of argument here applied to the eye may be
followed in every instance of so-called design. The exquisite mechanism
of the ear may be similarly traced, from the mere sac with otoliths of
the Medusæ up to the elaborate external, middle, and internal ears
of man. ... Step by step is the ear built up, until we see it complete
as a slow growth, not as an intelligent design.
And if it be asked, how are these changes caused,
the answer comes readily: “By variation and by the survival of the fittest.”
Since organisms and their environments re-act on each other, slight variations
are constantly occurring; living organisms are ever in very unstable equilibrium,
chemical association and disassociation are continually going on within
them.
Some of these changes are advantageous to the organism
in the struggle for existence; some are indifferent; some are disadvantageous.
Those that are advantageous tend to persist, since the organism possessing
them is more likely to survive than its less fortunate competitors, and—since
variations are transmissible from parents to progeny—to hand on its favorable
variation to its young. On the other hand the disadvantageous variations
tend to disappear, since the organism which is by them placed at a disadvantage
is likely to perish in the fight for food.
Here are the mighty forces that cause evolution;
here the “not ourselves which makes for righteousness,” i.e., for
ever-increasing suitability of the organism to its environment.
The argument from absence of design
It is, of course, impossible in so brief a statement
as this to do justice to the fulness of the explanation of all cases of
apparent design which can be made in this fashion. The thoughtful student
must work out the line of argument for himself. Nor must he forget to notice
the argument from the absence of design, the want of adaptation,
the myriad failures, the ineptitudes and incompetences of nature.
How, from the point of view of design, can he explain
the numerous rudimentary organs in the higher animals? What is the meaning
of man’s hidden rudimentary tail? of his appendix cæci vermiformis
[the appendix of appendicitis infamy]? of the branchial clefts [gill slits]
and the lanugo [fine fur coat that covers the face and body of the fetus]
of the human being during periods of ante-natal life? of the erratic course
of the recurrent laryngeal [nerve]? of the communication between the larynx
and the alimentary canal? I might extend the list over a page. The fact
that uninstructed people do not appreciate these difficulties offers no
explanation to the instructed who feel their force; and the abuse so freely
lavished on the Atheist does not carry conviction to the intellect.
I do not believe in God. My mind finds no grounds
on which to build up a reasonable faith. My heart revolts against the spectre
of an Almighty Indifference to the pain of sentient beings. My conscience
rebels against the injustice, the cruelty, the inequality, which surround
me on every side. But I believe in Man. In man’s redeeming power; in man’s
remoulding energy; in man’s approaching triumph, through knowledge, love,
and work. ![[top]](../../uparrow.gif)
Editor's Notes:
1 In logic, an enthymeme is a
syllogism in which one of the premises is not expressed but implied. Here
it is the minor premise (“The universe is an effect”) that is “suppressed.” ![[back]](../../backarrow.gif)
2 In Kantian philosophy, noumenon
is the “thing-in-itself” (Ding an sich) , which cannot be known via perception
but is postulated as the intelligible ground of a phenomenon.
3 Helmholtz is referring here
to the retinal “blind spot.”
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eaving
the phænomena of nature exclusive of man, as yielding us no information
as to the existence of God, we turn next to human life and human history
to seek for traces of the “divine presence.” but here again we are met
by the same mingling of good and evil, the same waste, the same prodigality,
which met us in non-human nature. Instead of the “Providence watching over
the affairs of men” in which Theists believe, we note that “there be just
men, unto whom it happeneth according to the work of the wicked; again,
there be wicked men, to whom it happeneth according to the work of the
righteous.” A railway accident happens, in which a useful man, the mainstay
of a family, is killed, and from which a profligate escapes. An explosion
in a mine slays the hardworking breadwinners at their toil, and the drunken
idler whose night’s debauch has resulted in heavy morning sleep is “providentially”
saved as he snores lazily at home in bed. The man whose life is invaluable
to a nation perishes in his prime, while the selfish race-haunting aristocrat
lives on to a green old age. The honest conscientious trader keeps with
difficulty out of the bankruptcy court, and sees his smart, unscrupulous
neighbor pile up a fortune by tricks that just escape the meshes of the
law.