GOD AND EVOLUTION.
There is no logical connection between what is called the "Moral
government of the universe" and the belief in God, but it must be
confessed that the criticism of the belief from the point of view of
moral feeling is of considerable importance. This is in itself a
striking illustration of the reaction of social developments on
religious beliefs. For there is originally no connection between
morality and the belief in God. Man does not believe in the gods because
they are moral, but because they are there. If they are, to his mind,
good, that is so much the better. But whether they are good or bad they
have to be faced as facts. The gods, in short belong to the region of
belief, while morality belongs to that of practice. It is in the nature
of morality that it should be implicit in practice long before it is
explicit in theory. Morality belongs to the group and is rooted in
certain impulses that are a product of the essential conditions of group
life. It is as reflection awakens that men are led to speculate upon the
nature and origin of the moral feelings. Morality, whether in practice
or in theory, is thus based upon what is. On the other hand, religion,
whether it be true or false, is in the nature of a discovery. However
crude or uninformed the thinking, the belief in God must be regarded as
the product of reflection. The situation is not unfairly described by
Dr. Jastrow:--
The various rites practiced by primitive society in order to ward
off evils, or to secure the protection of dreaded powers or
spirits, are based primarily on logical considerations. If a
certain stone is regarded as sacred, it is probably because it is
associated with some misfortune, or some unusual piece of good
luck. Someone sitting on the stone may have died; or on sleeping on
it may have seen a remarkable vision, which was followed by a
signal victory over a dangerous foe.... In all this, however,
ethical considerations are remarkable for their absence.... Taking
again so common a belief among all peoples as the influence for
good or evil exerted by the dead upon the living and the numerous
practices to which it gives rise ... it will be difficult to
discover in these beliefs the faintest suggestion of any ethical
influence. It is not the good but the powerful spirits that are
invoked; an appeal to them is not made by showing them examples of
kindness, justice, or noble deeds, but by bribes, flatteries, and
threats. (_The Study of Religion_; Ch. VI.).
So we have Tylor also endorsing this opinion by remarking that, "The
popular idea that the moral government of the universe is an essential
tenet of natural religion simply falls to the ground. Savage animism is
almost devoid of that ethical element which, to the educated, modern
mind, is the very mainspring of religion." And Hoffding says that, "In
the lowest forms of it with which we are acquainted religion cannot be
said to have any ethical significance. The gods appear as powers on
which man is dependent, but not as patterns of conduct or administrators
of an ethical world order.... Not till men have discovered ethical
problems in practical life and have developed an ethical feeling ... can
the figures of the gods assume an ethical character." ("Philosophy of
Religion"; pp. 323-4).
It is quite unnecessary to multiply evidence, the truth of the matter
would seem obvious. One cannot conceive man actually ascribing ethical
qualities to his gods before he becomes sufficiently developed to
formulate moral rules for his own guidance, and to create moral laws for
his fellow man. The moralisation of the gods will then follow as a
matter of course. And thereafter we can plainly observe the operation of
the moral sense on the belief in god, and upon the recognition of crude
power. Man really modifies his gods in terms of the ideal human being.
Paul's picture of a god who uses man as the potter uses his clay could
never flourish in a society which believed in the "rights of man." And
so soon as that conception developes so soon does man begin to revise
his conception of god. So with almost every great change in the form of
government or in the notions of right and wrong. In a slave state, God
favours slavery. When slavery gives place to another form of labour the
gods are equally vigorous in its condemnation. The history of the belief
in witch burning, heresy hunting, eternal damnation, etc., all
illustrate the same point--religious teachings are all modified and
moralised in accordance with the changing moral conceptions of mankind.
It is not the gods who moralise man, it is man who moralises the gods.
The gods have their beginnings as mere powers. They are feared because
they are, not for the moral value of what they are. Social development
does all the rest. But with that development the feeling of
helplessness, of weakness, decays and there arises the demand that if
god is to be worshipped he must prove worthy of it. The conviction
arises very gradually, but it is there, and it becomes a powerful
solvent of religious ideas. Merely to govern is not enough, God must
govern well, and in terms of what we have come to understand by the word
"Justice." And to the minds of millions of moderns, when tried by that
test the idea of god breaks down. That there is a god who rules the
universe is one question; that he rules it well and in accord with what
is understood when we talk of morality, is quite another. The two
questions are quite distinct since the first might be true and the
second false. We have already seen how slender are the grounds for
believing in the first; we have now to show that the reasons for
believing in the second are quite as unsatisfactory.
Theism has been defined as consisting in the belief in a God who is
wise, powerful, and loving, and who has selected man as the object of
his preferential care, and to this may be added the statement that most
modern theists would extend that care to the whole of sentient life.
"God's care" must be "over all his creatures," and although this care
may be subservient to some wide and far-seeing plan, there must be
nothing that looks like obvious carelessness or criminal neglect.
To what conclusion do the facts point when they are examined in the
light of modern knowledge? Does the world supply us with the kind of
picture that one would expect to see if it were really presided over by
divine love under the guidance of divine wisdom, and backed by divine
power? The proof that it does not is shown in the almost endless
attempts made to harmonise the world as it is with the world as theory
would have it be. And a theory that needs so much defending, explaining,
and qualifying must have something radically weak about it. That there
is evil in the world all admit, that it offers _prima facie_ objection
to the theistic hypothesis is confessed by the many attempts made to fit
in this evil with the existence of God, to prove that it works in some
mysterious way for some larger good, or that its presence cannot be
dispensed with profitably. The question of why the world is as it is
with a god such as we are told exists, is, as Canon Green says, "the
really vital question, for it touches the very heart of religion." ("The
Problem of Evil"; p. 46.) How, then, does the Theist deal with it?
Broadly, two methods are adopted. In the one case we are presented with
the order of the world, or the course of evolution, as indicative of a
beneficent scheme. This claims to freely adopt all that science has to
say concerning the development of life and to prove that this is in
harmony with the legitimate demands of the moral sense. The second is
the more orthodox way, and taking the world as it is, claims that pain
and suffering play a disciplinary and educational part in the life of
the individual. We will take these in the order named.
When dealing with the argument from design little was said concerning
the evolutionary explanation of the special adaptations that meet us in
the animal world. It was thought better to fix attention on the purely
logical value of the argument presented. It is now necessary to look a
little closer at the ethical implications of the evolutionary process.
It has been pointed out that all life involves a special degree of
adaptation between an organism and its environment. Destroy that
adjustment and life ceases to exist. How is that adjustment secured? The
answer of the pre-Darwinian was that it represented a deliberate design
on the part of God. Against this Darwinism propounds a theory of
automatic or mechanical adjustment which makes the calling in of deity
altogether gratuitous. And it remains gratuitous, no matter how far the
scope of the theory of natural selection may be modified. But given the
continuous variations which we know to exist with all kinds of life,
given any sort of competition between animals as to which shall live,
given even a degree of adaptation below which an animal cannot fall and
live, and it is at once plain that the better adaptations will live and
the poorer adapted will be eliminated. This process is analogous to that
by which man has managed to breed so many varieties of domesticated
animals and plants, some of the varieties presenting so marked a
difference from the original type that if found in a state of nature
they would often be classed as a distinct species. Man _selects_ the
variation that pleases him, eliminates or segregates the type that does
not, and by following up the process eventually produces a distinct and
fixed variation. It was because of the likeness of what goes on in the
case of the breeder to what we see actually going on in nature that
Darwin used the phrase "Natural Selection" as descriptive of the
process. It was not an exact phrase, and it was not meant to be exact.
For one thing--a very important thing, while a breeder selects, nature
eliminates. Man's action, in relation to the type preserved, is
positive. Nature's attitude in relation to the type preserved is
negative. This is a very important distinction; and it is one that is
fatal to the claims of theism. For if it points to a plan in nature it
points to one that aims at killing off all that can be killed, and only
sparing those who are able to protect themselves against its attack. And
one is left wondering at the type of mind which can see goodness and
wisdom in a plan that goes, on generation, after generation
manufacturing an inferior or defective type in enormous numbers in order
that a few superior specimens may be found, these in their turn to
become inferior by the arrival of some other specimens a little more
fortunate in their endowment. One hardly knows at which to marvel the
most--at the clumsiness of the plan, or at the brutality of the design.
It was soon realised that the old argument from design was no longer
possible. But if one can only get far enough away from the possibility
of proof or disproof there is always a chance for the Goddite. So it was
argued that inasmuch as natural selection meant the emergence of a
"higher" type, and as there was no room for design within the process,
might not the process itself be an expression of design? There might
still be room for what Huxley, with one of those foolish concessions to
established opinion which is the bane of English thought, called the
"wider teleology." This was a teleology which placed a designing mind at
the back of the evolutionary process, and arranging it with a view to a
preconceived end. The process then becomes, to use Spencer's phrase, a
"beneficent" one, since it eliminates the poorer specimens and leaves
the better ones to perpetuate the species. We are thus asked to imagine
a divine wisdom selecting the better and destroying the inferior much as
an omniscient Eugenist might destroy at birth all human beings of an
undesirable type.
The weakness of the thesis lies primarily in the fact that in the case
of the breeder he has to take the animal as he finds it, subject to the
play of forces, the characteristics of which are determined for him. He
has to make the best of the situation. In the case of the deity he
creates the animals with which he is assumed to be experimenting, he
creates the forces with all their qualities, and thus determines the
nature of the situation. Quite certainly no breeder would waste his time
in breeding over a number of generations if he could secure the desired
type at once. The whole of the argument of the advocate of the wider
teleology is that God wanted the higher type. But if that is so why did
he not produce it at once? What useful purpose could be served by
producing at the end of a lengthy and murderous process what might just
as well have been secured at the beginning? It is not wisdom but
unadulterated stupidity to take thousands of years securing what might
have been as well done in the twinkling of an eye.
There is, in short, no justification in the creation of a process so
long as the end at which the process is aiming can be reached by a less
tortuous method. As Mr. F. C. S. Schiller says:--
So long as we are dealing with finite factors, the function of pain
and the nature of evil can be more or less understood, but as soon
as it is supposed to display the working of an infinite power
everything becomes wholly unintelligible. We can no longer console
ourselves with the hope that "good becomes the final goal of ill,"
we can no longer fancy that imperfection serves any secondary
purpose in the economy of the universe. A process by which evil
_becomes_ good is unintelligible as the action of a truly infinite
power which can attain its end without a process; it is absurd to
ascribe imperfection as a secondary result to a power which can
attain all its aims _without_ evil. Hence the world process, and
the intelligent purpose we fancy we detect in it must be
illusory.... God can have no purpose, and the world cannot be in
process.... If the world is the product of an infinite power it is
utterly unknowable, because its process and its nature would be
alike unnecessary and unaccountable. (_Riddles of the Sphinx_; pp.
318-19).
Besides, as I have already pointed out, in the process as it meets us in
nature there is not a selection for preservation, but a selection for
killing. With the breeder preservation is primary. It is of no value to
him to kill, it is the preservation of a desired type that is all
important. In nature, so far as we can see, the whole aim is to destroy.
It is not the fittest that are preserved so much as it is the unfittest
that are killed. The fittest are left alive for no other apparent reason
than that nature is unable to kill them. The truth of this is seen in
the fact that where there is no death there is no evolution of a
"higher" type. In the case of diseases that kill there is a gradual
development of an immune type--which introduces the paradox that the
healthiest diseases from which a race may suffer are those that are most
deadly. Where a disease does not kill there is no development against
it. It is the winnowing fan of death that makes for the development of
animal life. And the correct picture of nature--if we must picture an
intelligence behind it--would be that of an intelligence aiming at
killing all, and only failing in its purpose because the natural
endowment of some placed them beyond its power.
And, without examining the question begging word "higher," it may be
said that natural selection does not make for the uniform covering of
the earth with representatives of higher types. If in some parts of the
world the higher have replaced the lower types, elsewhere the lower have
replaced the higher. Natural selection, in fact, works without reference
to whether the form which survives is "higher" or "lower." All that
matters is adaptation. The germ of malaria renders whole tracts of the
earth uninhabitable to those whom we consider representative of the
higher culture. In other parts an alteration of the rainfall may crush
out a civilisation, and leave a handful of nomadic tribes as the sole
denizens of lands where once a lofty civilisation flourished. Throughout
the whole of nature there is never the slightest indication that forces
operate with the slightest reference to what we are accustomed to
consider the higher interests of the race.
Moreover, from the standpoint of an apologetic theism, we are entitled
to ask precisely what is meant by this justification of the evolutionary
process in terms of the production of a higher type. The justification
of a painful or a costly experience by an individual is two-fold. First,
it is the only way, perhaps, in which certain things may be learned or
accomplished, and, second, it is the individual who passes through the
experience who benefits thereby. But suppose a person entered on a
course of training with the absolute certainty that he would never
survive it. Should we be justified in forcing the course on him?
Clearly not. The whole would be regarded as a wasted effort and as an
exhibition of gratuitous cruelty.
Now when we look closely at this evolutionary process, who is it that
benefits thereby? In a vague way we speak of the race benefiting. But
the race is made up of individuals, and while it may be said the
individual benefits from the experience through which the race has
passed, it cannot be truthfully said that he is the better because he
has gained from experience. He does not pass through the discipline, he
simply registers, so to speak, the result. And, therefore, so far as he
is concerned, he is exactly in the position that the first man would
have been had he possessed the endowment, social, and individual, which
the present man has. There is no greater fallacy than that contained in
the common saying that man learns through experience. Individually, so
far as civilisation is concerned, that is not true. Were it true,
civilisation would be impossible. If each man had to start where our
primitive ancestors started, and learn from experience, we should end
where the first generation of socialised human beings ended, and the
generations of men would represent an endless series of first steps to
which there would be no second ones. What the individual learns from
experience is very little and would never serve to lift him from out the
ranks of savagery. What he learns from the experience of the race is
much, and gives the whole distinction between the civilised man and the
savage. It is the discipline of the race, that experience which meets
each of us in the form of traditions, counsels, institutions, etc.,
from which we get the really vital lessons of life. But if that is so
the attempted justification of natural processes on the ground that God
designed them as they are so that man might learn from experience breaks
down. The individual does not so learn, but is presented with the
products of the experience of others, and which he accepts in the vast
majority of cases without even putting it to the test. And, therefore,
the method by which man learns was open from the start. Had there been
some _man_ who could have told us generations ago all that has been
slowly discovered since, we should all have been the better for it, and
we should have learned then exactly as we have learned since. And if God
was really anxious to teach us, what possible objection could there be
to his teaching us in some such way? In other words, how can we justify
the process if the result is possible by any other method?
The standpoint of the theist is that God develops the species in order
to benefit the individual. But the order is that the individual is
sacrificed to benefit the species--so far as any benefit can be traced.
For it must be noted that it is not the individual who has passed
through all the suffering, who has lived through the years of
semi-animal life, or through the years of tyranny, that finally emerges
strengthened and triumphant. It is a different individual altogether.
The greatest benefit is secured by those who come latest, and who have
done the least to secure it. The reward bears no relation to the
personal desert. And at the end what happens? If we are to be guided by
the lessons of science, we must believe that one day the human race
will cease to exist, just as certainly as one day it began to exist.
And what are we to think of the almighty wisdom and goodness which is
responsible for all? An almighty intelligence designs a process to
produce a perfect animal through the sufferings of myriads of other
animals. It takes thousands and thousands of generations to complete the
process, and meantime every year is bringing the whole plan nearer to
extinction. Divine wisdom! Anything nearer complete stupidity and
futility it would be difficult to conceive.
I know that at this point it will be said that I am leaving out of
account the future life, and that the story of human growth is to be
continued elsewhere. But that will certainly not meet all that has been
said above. And it is a curious manner of meeting an objection based
upon the only phase of existence that we know with assurance to tell us
that our indictment will receive a complete refutation in another state
of existence of which we know nothing at all. The reply is in itself an
admission of the truth of the charges. If life admitted of a moral
justification here there would be no need to appeal to some other life
in which these blemishes are made good. If some other life is needed to
correct the moral abnormalities of this one, then the indictment of the
Atheist is justified. And one is left again wondering why, if almighty
intelligence could make all things straight in the next world, why the
same intelligence could not have made the necessary corrections in this
one.
The truth is that the God of the evolutionary process is as much a myth
as is the god of special creation. He has all the blemishes of the other
one--one step removed. The Paleyan God had at least the merit of coming
to close grips with his work. The evolutionary one shields himself
behind the fact that the work is done by his agents, and then it is
found that he created the agents for this special work and all that they
do is the product of the qualities with which he endowed them. If
anything the evolutionary deity is more objectionable than the older
one. And if theists will examine nature candidly and with an open mind,
they will see that it is so. I do not know that anyone has drawn a more
truthful picture of natural processes as they appear from the point of
view of being the product of a divine intelligence than has Mr. W. H.
Mallock, and his picture is the more deadly as coming from a champion of
theism. If, he says, theists will look the facts of the universe
steadily in the face:
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 God, a scatter-brained, semi-powerful, semi-impotent
monster. They will recognise as clearly as they ever did the old
familiar facts which seemed to them evidences of God'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 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....
The truth is, if we consider the universe as a whole, it fails to
suggest a conscious and purposive God at all; and it fails to do so
not because the processes of evolution as such preclude the idea
that a God 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 God who could deliberately have been guilty
of them would be a God too absurd, too monstrous, too mad to be
credible. (_Religion as a Credible Doctrine_; pp. 176-8).
As we have already seen, the attempt to find a plan in the processes of
evolution breaks down hopelessly. On analysis, the supposed plan turns
out to be nothing more than a perception of some sort of regularity, and
as regularity is an inescapable condition of existence, all that it
proves _is_ existence. On that point there is no dispute. And the moral
justification of the cosmic process while intellectually indefensible,
adds an element of moral repulsion. That the process as we know it is
morally repugnant is shown by the appeal to the future, the request to
suspend judgment till such time as the plan is completed, when it is
hoped that the end will justify the means. God, it is trusted, will
justify himself in the future. But in his anxiety to impress upon us
the fact that God has a moral future the theist forgets that he has had
a past, and that past is a black one. The uncounted generations of
suffering in the past is not to be compensated by a probable happiness
in the future. The myriads of organisms that have lived incomplete
lives, and ended them in deaths of suffering are not cancelled by the
probability that at some time, still in the future, a comparatively
small number will lead lives of happiness. The record is there, "there
is blood upon the hand," and not all the apologies of a self-convicted
animism can ever wipe it clean.