SOUNDNESS OF A FOUNDATION FOR A BELIEF IN A DEITY
_It is better to bury a delusion and forget it than to insult its
memory by retaining the name when the thing has perished_.
F. H. BRADLEY.
_A thousand miraculous happenings have been honoured by the
testimony of the ancients, which in later times under a more
exacting and sceptical scrutiny can no longer be believed. Inherent
in man's nature is his disposition to be gulled.... Emotion is
encouraged to supplant cool reason, fanaticism to supplant
tolerance. Not by such means can our race be saved_.
LLEWELYN POWYS.
Our interplanetary visitor is firmly convinced that all religion, no
matter what its antiquity or its modernity may be, is an invention of
our groping earthly minds. It occurs to him that it would be interesting
and proper to lay aside all theology, all creed, all the superficial
trappings placed by man about his conceptions of a deity, and consider
only the basic God-idea. The literature on the subject revealed to him
that even on this broad and basic principle not all religionists were
agreed. He found a threefold classification:
(1) Those who held to the belief in an anthropomorphic personal God who
was benevolent, omniscient, and omnipotent.
(2) Those who saw in the constitution of our universe an impersonal
Supreme Power, who had created the universe, but who had not given us
any revelation, and thus has no need for worship by prayer and
sacrifice.
(3) Those who very recently conceived of the deity as a "cosmic force,"
an "ultimate," or as a mathematical or physical law. Such are the
hypotheses of Jeans and Eddington. The Martian set about, therefore,
with the principle that, "God is a hypothesis, and as such, stands in
need of proof."
(1) The belief in a personal God:
The Martian, as our guest, had by this time had ample opportunity to
survey our civilization, and to acquaint himself with the things with
which God in His goodness had endowed His earthly children. A proponent
of a personal God informs him that his deity is an infinite personal
being of consciousness, intelligence, will, good, unity, and Beauty; the
Supreme, the infinite personality, who was loving, benevolent,
omnipotent, and omniscient. Like the American from Missouri, the visitor
hastened to see for himself the marvelous workings of such an exalted
being, for surely such a being, with such attributes as he was credited
with, would certainly be in an excellent position to bestow great gifts
upon his earthly children.
The Martian is informed that the vast majority of our inhabitants, no
matter what their geographical distribution may be, are suffering from a
"financial depression" brought on by the last World War. War and cruelty
are synonymous in the mind of our seeker for God; and immediately, there
arises a conflict between the conception of an omnipotent, all-wise and
loving God and one who would permit war and cruelty. Fearing that he has
not comprehended the meaning of an omnipotent being, he turns to the
lexicon for verification, only to learn that it means an all-powerful
being. How, then, could an omnipotent being permit wholesale and
private murder? Is He not rather a demon than a God? On the other hand,
if this being is not omnipotent, then He is a useless god, and there is
no need for all the fears which religion breeds, no need for creed and
worship. Every war, particularly this last one, is an indictment of God.
"God's in His Heaven, all's right with the world," is seemly only to
minds drugged with an irrational creed.
"If there is a God, he is quite careless of human well-being or human
suffering. The deaths of a hundred thousand men mean no more to him than
the deaths of a hundred thousand ants. A couple of million men locked in
a death struggle on the battlefield is only a replica of the struggle
that has been going on in the animal world throughout time. If there be
a God, he made, he designed all this. He fashioned the hooks for the
slaughter, the teeth for the tearing, the talons for destruction, and
man with his multiplied weapons of destruction has but imitated his
example. A world without God, and in which humanity is gradually
learning the way to better things, is an inspiration to renewed effort
after the right. A world such as this, with God, is enough to drive
insane all with intelligence enough to appreciate the situation."
(_Chapman Cohen: "War, Civilization and the Churches."_)
When the Martian investigated the annals of the World War he found,
despite the opportunities Providence had had of showing its benevolence,
the affair of the sinking of the _Lusitania_, the torpedoing of hospital
ships, vessels that were not engaged in fighting but in bringing home
wounded men who had fought in "God's Cause." He found descriptions of
the slaughter of men and women and children in air raids, and he
naturally concludes that the "providence of God" is an insult to the
earthly intelligence.
Greatly disturbed, he picks up one of our newspapers and the stories of
hate and racial antagonism rear their ugly heads. These, together with
jealousy and fear, seem to him to be the outstanding features of our
attitudes. A benevolent, loving, omnipotent father, guiding our
destinies, yet allowing such monstrosities to exist! The conundrum grows
deeper as he proceeds.
It is a bright day, and the Martian is aware of a head-ache brought on
by the effort to understand the ways of earthlings, and therefore
decides to drive through the city streets. Yet this drive affords him no
relaxation, for on every side two diametrically opposed sights meet his
keen eyes--luxury and poverty. Poverty and starvation, yet the Lord's
Prayer: "Our Father which art in Heaven, give us this day our daily
bread!" No Martian father would allow his children to starve; if he did,
the law would fine him and imprison him. Since these earthlings are
neglected by their Heavenly Father, and are powerless to indict him, the
least they could do would be to stop paying tribute to him. If the God
of these earthlings bothers not about them, why should they trouble
about God? The Son of God who could once create a miraculous batch of
fish to satisfy a few fishermen, can do nothing to help these starving
millions! Aloud he muses, "Is there no place on Earth which is free from
this contradiction?"
His automobile happens to stop in front of an immense edifice marked
"Hospital," and his curiosity is sufficiently aroused to cause him to
alight and enter. The physician in charge courteously asks his
distinguished visitor to inspect this refuge for those suffering with
pain. He remembers that a religionist had told him that disease is a
visitation of the Lord for our sins, in the same breath with which he
had added that the Lord was loving and compassionate. If that were so,
then this was the ideal place to witness the infinite goodness and
compassion of the Creator of all earthlings. But, the first scene to
meet his gaze was that of a woman in childbirth. The torture, the
excruciating pain, and the mental anguish of the human female before his
eyes, defied his Martian power of expression. This process of birth, it
was explained to him, was not a pathological one, nor a disease, but a
physiological function. To this, the Martian could not refrain from
replying, "From your own words, Doctor, it is readily understood that
your women experience a torture more acute, more nerve-wracking, and of
longer duration than your Jesus experienced during his crucifixion. And
your world commiserates and sheds oceans of tears when they contemplate
the anguish of Jesus on the cross; but no mention is made of the agony
which is the fate of every woman who brings another human being into
this 'best of worlds.'"
"But, my dear Martian," exclaims the physician, "the Heavenly Father has
ordained that in anguish shall woman bring forth her young." The other
deliberated on the compassion of the Benevolent Father in silence, and
continued on his rounds through the hospital.
Nearby was the crib containing a baby of a few days, suffering with a
congenital heart disease. The infant's lips were blue, so was the body
blue, and the gasping for breath and heaving of the small chest were
pitiful to behold.
"This infant," nonchalantly remarked the physician, "was born with a
greatly defective heart. It will live for a few days, it will thirst for
air, it will have intense air-hunger, the lungs will fill with fluid and
then it will drown in its own secretions."
The Martian recalled the time he had plunged under the water and
remained there too long; vividly, he remembered the thirst for air, the
seeming bursting of the lungs, the compression and vise-like grip of
the muscles of the throat and chest, and he could not help exclaiming,
"Benevolent, Compassionate Being!"
The physician continued, "This child," pointing to a beautiful, robust
boy of ten years, "was in perfect health, until he fell in the street
and received a minor cut which the parents treated with home remedies,
but which in a few days was diagnosed as Tetanus." And the doctor went
on to explain that the compassion of the Lord is great when this occurs,
for the child gets convulsions, the jaws become locked, and beads of
cold sweat stand out on the child's forehead in his anguish; the
convulsions increase in severity and in duration so that finally they
are continuous and the child lies with the heels and back of the head
only touching the bed, the rest of the body is arched. The convulsions
then become so severe that the body is so bent backwards at times that
the head and trunk touch the heels. The misery of such a child is
sufficient to cause a physician to lose his reason. Again the Martian
murmurs, "Verily, the compassion of the Lord is beyond understanding."
The child in the next bed had just become paralyzed by an attack of
poliomyelitis (infantile paralysis). The Martian observes how the Lord
in His compassion saved a certain number of these children upon whom he
vents His anger for their sins, by inflicting upon them this hideous
disease. He saves their lives, but to serve as an everlasting reminder,
as a covenant between them and their Lord, He paralyzes their limbs. The
spectacle of these children attempting to move, making intense effort to
move paralyzed limbs, was the most revolting and heart-breaking sight
that he had ever witnessed. This time, too, the Martian remarked,
"Verily, the Lord in His infinite wisdom and goodness strange tasks does
perform."
The physician then informed him of the many men and women who have died
of cancer. A large number of these individuals had reached a period in
life where they could just afford to relax from their struggles for mere
sustenance; men and women who had reached a calm lake after journeying
through troubled and tortuous waters; who had fought the "good fight,"
and had won the just reward of resting after their labors. But no, the
Lord must trouble them for their sins.
A group of these sufferers is shown to the Martian, and the normal
course of this disease is explained. This time all he can do is to
protest that he firmly asserts that not one of our savage chiefs, even
were he of the most primitive tribe, of the cruelest imagination, of the
most base and insane nature, would nor could conceive of such torture as
the Loving Father conceived when he decided upon cancer as a visitation
for our sins. The roasting of a witch alive is but a mere trifle
compared to the long-drawn-out agony, the slow wasting, the anguish of a
cancer patient watching himself sink to death. And when death mercifully
releases this sufferer from his hellish torture the preacher murmurs,
"Lord, thy will be done."
The Martian talks for a few moments with a sufferer from this disease
and ascertains that the latter is a devout and true religionist, that he
has been a good, moral church-goer, and has lived strictly according to
the tenets of his creed, that he firmly and passionately believes that
he has lived so that he will merit the reward of heaven, an everlasting
sojourn in a land where there is no pain and suffering. And yet, this
devout religionist, when he was informed that he had an incurable
cancer, traveled the length and breadth of his land, from one surgeon to
another, allowing himself to be cut to pieces, in order that he might
remain on this earth but a moment longer. To stay and suffer the
tortures of the damned when he might go to heaven and get his reward in
the land where there is no pain!
"I wonder," mused the Martian, "did the grim spectre of death finally
instill a grain of scepticism into his mind?"
Later, in the quiet of his chambers, he reviews the day's
impressions--cruelty, hate, fear, jealousy, racial antagonism, poverty,
luxury, disease, pain, superstition, church, religion, and intolerance.
"If we suppose that the universe is the creation of an Omnipotent and
Benevolent God, it becomes necessary to ask how pain and evil arise.
Pain and evil are either real or unreal. If they are real then God, who,
being omnipotent, was bound by no limitations and constrained by no
necessities, willfully created them. But the being who willfully creates
pain and evil cannot be benevolent. If they are unreal, then the error
which we make when we think them real is a real error. There is no doubt
that we believe we suffer. If the belief is erroneous, then it follows
that God willfully called falsehood into existence and deliberately
involved us in unnecessary error. It follows once again that God cannot
be benevolent.
"If we regard pain and evil as due to the wickedness of man and not as
the creation of God, we are constrained to remember that man himself is
one of God's creations (God being conceived as all creative), and
received his wickedness, or his capacity for it, from whom? If we say
that man had no wickedness to begin with but willfully generated
wickedness for himself, we have to face the double difficulty of
accounting for: (a) How man, who is an emanation from God, can will with
a will of his own which is not also a piece of God's will; and (b) how a
benevolent God could, assuming pain and evil to be a purely human
creation, deliberately allow them to be introduced into a world that
knew them not, when it was open to Him to prevent such introductions."
(_C. E. M. Joad, "Mind and Matter."_)
He had seen that crime and immorality exist now, just as they had
existed before the belief in one personal God, and just as they promise
to exist beyond our time. He had scrutinized evidence revealing the
incontestable fact that most criminals were religious, and absolutely
and proportionately, a smaller number of criminals were non-believers in
a personal deity. Judging by these alone, a belief in a benevolent,
loving, omniscient, omnipotent, and compassionate Being could not be
sustained. Furthermore, if such a God ever existed, he certainly would
have revealed his true religion to the first man, Adam. If he required
prayer to satisfy his vanity, he surely would have told Adam how, when,
why, and where to pray. Then again, once having neglected to inform his
first model about all this, since He is omnipotent, he would certainly
have instilled into the minds of men "the" true creed so that no doubt
could have ever entered into any one's mind. What a universe of
suffering He would have saved!
The Martian is aware that a great number of earthlings hold that every
event must have a cause, therefore the Universe must have had a cause,
which cause was God. 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. Applying this reasoning that everything is
the effect of some cause, and that a cause is the effect of some other
causes, the theists work back from effect to cause and from cause to
effect until they reach a First Cause. By predicating a First Cause,
however, the theist removes the mystery a stage further back. This
First Cause they assume to be a cause that was not caused and this First
Cause is God. Such a belief is a logical absurdity, and is an example of
the ancient custom of creating a mystery to explain a mystery. If
everything must have a cause, then the First Cause must be caused and
therefore: Who made God? To say that this First Cause always existed is
to deny the basic assumption of this "Theory." Moreover, if it is
reasonable to assume a First Cause as having always existed, why is it
unreasonable to assume that the materials of the universe always
existed? To explain the unknown by the known is a logical procedure; to
explain the known by the unknown is a form of theological lunacy.
The effect noted in any particular case is not of necessity related to a
single cause, and science gives no assurance that causes and effects can
be traced backward to a simple First Cause. A man is so unfortunate as
to contract pneumonia. What is the cause? An infection of the
respiratory tract by the pneumococcus. It is not quite so simple as to
ultimate causation. The person afflicted was harboring these germs in
his nose and throat, and his resistance was weakened by wetting his
feet. The day was cold and his shoes were thin. The humidity and
temperature were such that rain fell. The temperature and humidity were
caused by air currents hundreds of miles distant from the scene, and so
ad infinitum. In this series of complications where may we discern a
first cause? When applied to the much more difficult problem of physical
phenomena, we can conceive of an endless cycle of causes, but we cannot
conceive of a First Cause. "Cause and effect are not two separate
things, they are the same thing viewed under two separate aspects.... If
cause and effect are the expressions of a relation, and if they are not
two things, but only one, under two aspects, 'cause' being the name for
the related powers of the factors, and 'effect' the name for their
assemblage, to talk, as does the theist, of working back along the chain
of causes until we reach God, is nonsense." (_Chapman Cohen: "Theism or
Atheism."_)
A great many theists attempt to deduce the existence of an invisible
creator and ruler of the universe from the visible features of nature
such as the design, regularity of movement and structure, and the
various aspects of beauty which one may find in studying natural
objects. This argument from design in nature has been overruled by a
study of the evolutionary processes. Paley based his argument on the
assertion of a mind behind phenomena, the workings of which could be
seen in the forms of animal life. The theists no longer use Paley's
original arguments, but a great deal of the theistic arguments are still
based on his assumptions. From the humanistic point of view, and the
theist bases his entire arguments from design in nature from the
humanistic view, an understanding of the merciless character of organic
evolution shows clearly that the forces at work in nature are full of
waste, there are numerous plans that are futile, there is an unrelenting
preying of one form of life upon the other, and it is not always the
"higher" form that is victor; there are myriads of living organisms
coming to life only to perish before reaching an age at which they can
play their part in the perpetuation of the species; and there is a
universe of pain and misery that serves no useful purpose. The impartial
eye of science observes ugliness as well as beauty, disorder as well as
order, in nature. If there is evidence of design in a rose, there is at
least as much evidence of design in the tubercle bacillus, and the
tetanus bacillus. Whatever in nature produced the peacock produced the
itch-mite; whatever produced man produced the spirochete of syphilis. If
this earth is evolving for the better, the past is still vivid in all
its cruelty. The old and familiar argument from design and beauty in
nature is so inconsistent with the facts at hand, that most theists have
abandoned this attitude, and the retreat from this position has been
turned into a veritable rout by the steady advance of scientific
knowledge. God could by exercising His omnipotence reveal His existence
with overpowering conviction at any moment; yet, men have been searching
for centuries for just the slightest evidence of His presence.
The Martian, moreover, holds that the entire argument is irrelevant, for
even if he grants that there is a supernatural being that fashions that
which we behold at work in the universe, how can we say that he designed
all this without first knowing what his intention was? Only by knowing
the intention in the mind of a supernatural being before the act, can we
infer that something was designed. When the theist finds intention and
design in nature he is but reading his own feeling and desires into
nature. Considering the universe as a whole, the Martian fails to find
anything that suggests a conscious and purposive god, and certainly
nothing to suggest a being that considers the welfare of man. The
individual is not much interested in God as manifested in nature, what
he is vainly seeking is _God as Providence_; he is seeking an
intelligence that his clergy tell him is devoted to his welfare, an
intelligence that will guide his stumbling efforts, that will relieve
him from war and misery, that will shield the innocent from pain and
poverty. He finds that his clergy cannot point to one clear trace of the
action of God in human affairs. In the whole long record of man's career
the finger of God cannot be found pointing to one well-substantiated
fact.
The Martian considers the theistic argument that it would be impossible
to have an orderly universe merely resulting from the inherent
properties of natural forces, and that "directivity" is necessary to
keep the universe on its present track. Keeping in mind the scientific
conception of the universe and the knowledge at hand concerning the
atoms and their properties, it is inconceivable that any other
arrangement than the present one should have resulted. The Martian
cannot marvel as most earthlings do that the present order exists as it
does; the marvel to him would be if any other order should be or that
any radical alteration in it should occur. He perceives that the state
of the universe at any moment is the result of all the conditions then
prevailing, and that the natural forces possess the capacity to produce
the universe as we see it. It matters not what the ultimate nature of
these forces may be, electrons, protons, electricity, or wave energy;
these material forces possess the capacity to produce the universe as we
see it. If these forces do not possess this capacity it is indeed
difficult for the Martian to conceive in what way even a "directing and
supreme mathematician" an "ultimate," or any supernatural power however
designated could produce this capacity. Unless the capacity for
producing the universe as we see it existed in the atoms themselves, no
amount of direction could have produced it. The property of the atom and
its combinations to produce the material universe is therefore inherent
in the atoms themselves and does not necessitate the operation of a
deity. The order manifest in the universe is the necessary consequence
of the persistence of force. If a supernatural, intelligent force
existed, the Martian believes that the claims of the theist could in no
way be better substantiated than if this controlling force would in some
way manifest an inhibitive influence and prevent certain things
occurring which would have transpired but for his interference. Such
manifestations have not occurred. It is impossible for the theist to
show any instance in which the normal consequences of known forces did
not transpire in which the aberration could not be accounted for by the
operation of other known forces.
A "law" of nature is not a statute drawn up by a legislator; it is the
interpretation and the summation which we give to the observed facts.
The phenomena which we observe do not act in a particular manner because
there is a law; but we state the "law" because they act in that
particular manner. It cannot be said that the laws of nature are the
result of a lawmaker; it cannot be affirmed that a supreme intelligence
told things in nature to act just that way and no other. If the theist
claims that a supreme intelligence issued laws for his own pleasure and
without any reason, then he must admit that there is something which is
not subject to law and the train of natural law is interrupted. If it is
claimed that a supreme intelligence had a reason for the laws which he
gave, the reason being to create the best possible universe, then it
follows that God himself was subject to law and there is no advantage in
introducing God as an intermediary. This contention would make it appear
that there is a law outside and anterior to the divine edicts, and God
does not serve the purpose of the theist since he is not the ultimate
lawgiver.
The anthropomorphic conception of God, our Martian finds, is now denied
by most cultured theists; nevertheless, they still maintain a belief in
a deity endowed with consciousness. Professor H. N. Wieman states that,
"God is superhuman, but not supernatural. He is a present, potent,
operative, observable reality.... He is more worthy of love than any
other beloved ... He is one to whom men can pray and do pray, and who
answers prayer." This can be understood to be not greatly removed from
the fundamentalists' conception of God, but when he continues to say,
"God is that interaction between individuals, groups, and ages which
generates and promotes the greatest possible mutuality of good," and "it
responds to prayer and is precisely what answers prayer, when prayer is
answered," the personal "He" has suddenly changed to the unpersonal
"It." Emotions and intelligence are connected with nerve structures in
all sentient beings that we have experience and knowledge of. How can we
attribute these qualities to a being who is described to us as devoid of
any nerve structure?
In former ages the theist saw God in the color and construction of a
flower, in the starry heavens, and in a sunset or sunrise. The
biologists have driven the theists from this misconception, the
physicists have explained the phenomena of sunset and sunrise, and with
the advance of astronomy the heavens no longer proclaim the glory of
God, and the theistic arguments have shifted from worlds to atoms. At
the present moment the vision of God has narrowed down to a perception
of the divine intelligence noted in the design of the atom. Astronomy,
physics, geology, chemistry, medicine, psychology, ethics, aesthetics,
and the social sciences have left no room for a theistic explanation of
the universe. The mystics who proclaim God in their intuitive trances
are being crowded out into the light of reason by the researches of
psychologists. There are still many gaps in our knowledge, and if the
theist persists in finding the manifestation of a supreme being in these
vague zones of our present ignorance, he is at the mercy of the science
of the future. Science is concerned with mind as much as it is with the
material aspects of atoms and stars, hence the sciences of psychology,
ethics, and aesthetics. The entire universe is the province of science
and it is rapidly providing a scientific interpretation of all the
contents of the universe. It may well be a few more centuries before the
scientific explanation is partially complete, but it must be kept in
mind that science as we conceive the term is less than 2500 years old,
and out of this infantile period, at least 1000 years must be deducted
for the intellectual stagnation of the dark ages.
In tracing the retreat of the clergy from the arguments from the First
Cause, the arguments from design, causation, and directivity, the
Martian recalls the words of Vivian Phelips, "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?"
"The finite mind cannot expect to understand the Infinite," retorts a
theist to our Martian. "What manner of reasoning is this," asks our
Martian, "that denies my finite mind the right to question the 'proofs'
of the existence of an Infinite, when these same 'proofs' are derived by
finite minds? The theist cannot infer God from the cosmic process until
he can discover some feature of it which is unintelligible without him."
(2) The belief in a deity, but the rejection of revelations, theology,
priestcraft, and church.
To the Martian the opinion held by these individuals presented two
difficulties. First, if the adherents of this hypothesis considered
their deity as a providence which took an active part in the life of
this world, then the objections heretofore stated against belief in a
personal god are still valid. Secondly, if they considered this being as
only a creator, who then leaves this world to its own resources, they
are only assuming a philosophical existence behind phenomena. Such a
being, they believe, they deduce intellectually. But actually who
created this creator? They assume a god who remains always hidden behind
phenomena, but such a god has no connection with the God that the
religious man worships and to whom he prays for guidance and for
blessings, for actual interference in the life of this world. Such
theories impress our visitor as but a feeble attempt at new concepts of
the same hypothetical deity, and it seemed to him that we already had
sufficient ideas of God to trouble our earthly minds.
(3) The god of the Physicists.
It was brought to the Martian's attention that two scientists, Sir
Arthur Eddington, a British astronomer, and Sir James Jeans, a
mathematical physicist, had still another concept of God.
According to Eddington, "Phenomena all boil down to a scheme of symbols,
of mathematical equations." He admits that this mathematics of nature
does not explain anything. They do not define reality, they only define
the relations that exist between the phenomena of reality. So far does
he go, and then his limited mind, our Martian perceives, meets an
obstacle that he cannot explain. He, therefore, abandons the formula and
returns to the human mind which has conceived this formula. From the
"spiritual essence of Man's nature," he assumes the spiritual nature of
the cosmos itself, which he finds in what religion has known for
centuries as God. To him, it is impossible to explain the universe
except in terms of spirit.
Professor Jeans insists that in the equations which reveal the relations
between phenomena, there may reside also the revelation of the ultimate
which these phenomena express. He believes that there may exist "a great
architect of the universe who is a pure mathematician."
However, the Martian argues, "Is it not a fact that in your earthly
experience, you have created your gods in your own image? Your savages
created God in the only fashion their mental capacities could supply, in
the shape of an idol; now the modern physicist creates his god in the
light of his own intimate vision, which is that of a mathematician! This
is just another attempt to formulate an hypothetical existence of a
supernatural being."
The theologians, by this time thoroughly aroused, lay down a verbal
barrage, and learned Jesuits place before the visitor a recent
publication entitled, "The Question and Answer" by Hilaire Belloc. The
author, acting as the mouthpiece of the Roman Catholic Church, attempts
to prove two things: namely, whether God is, and that the witness to
Revelation is the Roman Catholic Church. Were it not for the fact that
the work was published by permission of the Church, one could logically
suppose from its arguments that the author was attempting to give the
answer, "No," to the question propounded, as to whether God is. There is
one sentence, however, to which the Martian agrees: this one, "But
religions, though not very numerous, considering the vast spaces of time
over which we can study them, and the vast number of millions to which
they apply, differ and contradict each other; on which account, any one
approaching this problem for the first time, and being made acquainted
at the outset with the variety of religions, would naturally conclude
that every religion is man-made, and every religion an illusion."
On reading the opening remarks, the Martian exclaims, "This earthling
plainly tells us at the beginning that he will make his theories fit in
with his conclusion! He informs us that he does not seek the truth, no
matter where it may lead, but he only deems it necessary to fit ideas,
no matter how distorted, in order that the final conclusion will
simulate what he deliberately sets out to prove."
Mr. Belloc's statement, "How many men will agree that wanton cruelty,
treason to family or the state, falsehood for private gain, breach of
faith, are admirable?" strikes the Martian as absurd when viewed in the
light of the historical annals of the Church itself. Mr. Belloc's creed
must have considered these very vices as virtues, judging from the
actions of his Church.
In calling the Roman Catholic Church the witness to revelation, the
author continues with, "Yet, that it should suffer from men's hatred and
persecution." If God has divinely ordained this institution as His
Church on earth, and in His omnipotence and omniscience allows this
Church to be hated, then how do the religionists assume that their god
is a god of love? The author tells us that He is a god of hate, such a
god as was conceived of by the barbarians and the Hebrews--cruel,
vengeful, and monstrous. Does not this apologist confuse his god with
his devil? Then again, has it not occurred to this apologist that he is
in all futility attempting to prove something which is a contradiction
within itself? If God is, and is benevolent, is it not logical to assume
(since the theologians assume all sorts of attributes to this deity)
that he would not have constructed the minds of men when He created them
so as to desire to doubt His being; would not have tortured the minds of
men with cruel doubt as to His existence?
If He is omnipotent, it would have been just as easy to instill into the
minds of men only the strongest desire to believe in His reality; and
even that would not be necessary had He so arranged matters that by His
everlasting presence He would reveal Himself or His deeds to man in such
a conclusive manner that even the feeblest of intellects could not
doubt His existence.
If He is omniscient, as the parable asserts, that not a hair falls from
the head of man, not a sparrow dies without His knowledge, it must
therefore be apparent that He created man with the foreknowledge that
man would doubt His existence. This is a contradiction in itself.
The Martian notes that in the entire length of the work not a reference
is made to the time-worn theological defense, "the revelation" which the
Church has always claimed for its scriptures.
Appended as an afterthought, as an apology, as it were, for the
philosophical defense and not the theological, the Jesuit father reminds
the reader of its messiah, Jesus and the New Testament. The Jesuit
states, "The New Testament writings, considered merely as trustworthy
historical documents, inform us that--" but at this point the Martian
interrupted the speaker, for the audacity of any learned man terming the
New Testament writings "historical" was beyond his comprehension. It
brought forcibly to his attention the great change which the apologies
for the Church had undergone, and the new methods which they assumed.
The old theological defense of the deity was gone; not even philosophy
was deemed strong enough support for the present day. How the Church had
fallen! The Church which had persecuted, anathematized, burned, and
tortured the scientist, the geologist, the astronomer, the geographer,
the biologist, the chemist, and the physician; this same Church in its
last extremus, casts aside theology as its weapon and its appeal to the
minds of the sceptics whom they aim to convert. The Church casts aside
its own theology, having learned by bitter experience and recanting of
opinions, bulls, and infallible statements by infallible popes, and now
succumbs to the opinions it has formerly anathematized. In the present
age the Church calls science to its aid, and utterly disregards its
obsolete theology which it still practices, and attempts, by means of
the misinterpretation of scientific facts and statements of a few men
such as Eddington and Jeans, to force science into some illogical and
unscientific concordance with the conception of a supreme being.
Ironically it occurs to the Martian that the shades of Hypatia, Bruno,
Galileo, Copernicus, Vanini, Darwin, and the vast numbers of Waldenses,
Albigenses, Huguenots, Jews, and the victims of the Inquisition and the
Witch Hunt, must, as they contemplate the present tactics of that Holy
Institution, the Church, find some consolation in the depths of that
hell to which the Church consigned them. The Martian logically deduces
that by employing science for its defense, the Church admits the
impotence of "divine revelation," in this age, to convince even its own
adherents of the problematical existence of a divine being. _Theology is
no longer recognized as authoritative even by theologians!_
Will the theologians now discard their theology based on the
supernatural, and build a system of theology based on science? Is this
all that is left to the theologian: that he must use the pitiful
"Theology of Gaps"? That is, wherever there are gaps in scientific
knowledge, the theologians insert their idea of God! This is but the
replacing of the question mark with a meaningless label.