CHAPTER XIX

CREATION AND DESIGN

If we can deduce no safe theological conclusions from alleged irregularities in nature, can we do so from the regularity of the natural order, from any peculiar phenomena which it includes, or from the sheer fact of its existence? We shall examine some current inferences of this sort.

Can we draw theological inferences from

I. The sheer existence of the universe? Many have held that the very existence of the universe, with its causal order, requires us to postulate God as its creator; here, then, would be a big step beyond that empirical knowledge of God of which we spoke in chapter IX. The form of the argument varies with its various exponents, but one quotation must suffice: "No movable body moves itself. A does not move unless acted upon by B; nor can B move A unless preceded by C. Somewhere there must be an X which is unmoved, and yet which is in itself sufficient to explain the motion in D, C, B, and A. If X is not given, none of the series will move. At last, somewhere or other in this series, we are forced to admit the existence of an uncaused cause. This first efficient cause we call God."1 Generalized, the argument is that every event must have had a cause; we are involved then in an endless regress unless we can get back to some First Cause which needs no prior cause to explain it. Our causal chain must have some peg to 1 Aveling, op. cit., pp. 63–76.

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hang from; only in the creative fiat of God can we find such a satisfactory end to our search.

(1) But, if every event must have its cause, what caused that creative fiat of God? Must we not, in consistency, postulate a prior cause for that — and find ourselves still involved in the endless regress? How is it easier to account for God than for the universe? If one may be conceived as eternal, why may not the other? If God can exist uncaused, why may not the other realities? The universe is, at bottom, an inexplicable fact; but to postulate another and equally inexplicable fact to explain it leaves us with as many questions to ask as before. Putting God at the point where we cannot read history any farther back, because we crave some explanation, is like the ancient acceptance of the belief in a gigantic turtle that supported the earth. Surely the earth must have some support, and what else could the skeptic point to? But how did they know it was a turtle? And what supported the turtle? So we may ask our theologian: How do you know that the earth was created by God? And what created God? The modern inference is as precarious, as much a leap in the dark, as the ancient one.

(2) Well, then, we shall be asked, how else did the universe come into being? The answer is simply - we have no means of knowing. Perhaps the law of cause and effect did not always holdas, indeed, it may not hold everywhere today; perhaps the world just began to be, without any antecedent cause. Or perhaps it is eternal. Eternal existence baffles our realization; but the limitations of our power of clear conception should not bias our acceptance of conceptual possibilities. Or the world may be the product of many gods; this is, indeed, man's earliest idea, and in spite of our predilection for unity, there is no proof that there was but one first cause. The idea of the creation of the world by God is the idea which comes most readily to most of us, with our

theistic education; it is the most consoling and emotionally satisfying answer to the question how the world came intc being. But it has no more evidence in its favor than any other answer, and may not, for all its pleasing associations, be the true answer.

(3) Granted that there must be a first cause, what right have we to capitalize it into a First Cause, and call it God? God we know in experience, as the great Power making for good. What right have we to identify that Power with the original creative-power? The first cause may have been a Devil, or a non-rational cause. As a matter of fact, the farther back we can read the causal process, the nearer we get not to God, but to a nebula, scattered atoms, or ether - all purely material states. There is no hint that we should reach any other kind of a cause. And so a First Cause, even if we can logically assume it, and even if we choose to give it the name God, is not proved to be what we mean by God in experience; it is only a force at the beginning of things, not necessarily a living, present, helpful, or good God, and so of no interest to religion.

In a word, how the universe came into existence, or whether it has always existed; we do not know; and wherever we are ignorant, imagination readily leaps in to fill the void. Creation by an intelligent Being is a conceivable explanation; but there are many other explanations equally conceivable, and for neither the one nor the others does the mere existence of the cosmos afford the least evidence.

II. The existence of certain classes of facts. But do not the particular characteristics of this universe of ours imply creation by an intelligent Being? Theologians have thought to find such an implication in the existence of natural law, of organic life, of mental life, and of morality.

(1) Curiously enough, some of the same theologians who

point to irregularities in the natural course of eventsi.e., miracles as a witness of God, point also to the regularity of the course of events as a witness of God. This marvelous mechanism, they say, must have been created by an Intelligence. One way of putting it is to say that “natural law implies a lawgiver." That is, however, a palpable play on words. For the term "natural law" is merely a metaphor for the uniformities which we find in the sequence of events; and uniformities of behavior do not imply a lawgiver, but may be quite spontaneous or produced by non-intelligent causes. Another play on words has it that the “objective reason or “rationality" of the world presupposes a "subjective reason" or "intelligence" as its source. This so-called "rationality" of the world turns out to mean, again, only its orderliness, its mechanistic character, which may not be imposed upon it from without at all. The fact that the universe is a marvelously intricate structure, which we can to some degree map in our minds, comprehend, and master, cannot logically afford the inference that that intricate and intelligible structure was planned and moulded by an antecedent Mind. Perhaps this complex world-life has evolved, unplanned and unforeseen, through the simple but uniform habits of its innumerable component parts, which have become gradually more and more intricately intermingled.1

1 This argument merges into a consideration of the problem of knowledge; and all sorts of theories have been constructed around the assumption that the intelligibility of the world must be the work of Intelligence. Into these deep philosophical waters we cannot here go. But let me quote a typical writer of this sort, B. P. Bowne. He speaks of the "numerical exactness of mathematical processes," and asserts that "the truly mathematical is the work of the spirit." The atheist has to assume a power which produces the intelligible and rational, without being itself intelligent and rational. . . . There is no proper explanation except in theism." (Theism, pp. 67-70.) "Things which are to be known must exist in intelligible, that is, rational, order and relations. The world as we grasp it is a world of thought relations; for thought can grasp nothing else. Now if the real world were an expression of thought, this would be quite intelligible.

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(2) But do we not, then, need to assume the hand of God to account for the existence of organic life on earth? or of psychic life? or of moral life? "Organic life had a beginning in the material universe. But life could not have its origin in mere material forces. Therefore that origin is to be assigned to the action of a living being altogether different and extraneous to that matter which it endowed with the various substantial principles of life." Again, "this rare and lonely endowment [human intelligence] must have its roots in the universe. . . . The problem then arises how to deduce the conscious from the unconscious, the intelligent from the non-intelligent. . . . The more clearly we conceive physical elements or processes, the more clearly we perceive the impossibility of such a transition." 2 Again, "He that implanted in man an unalterable reverence for righteousness, shall not he himself be righteous? This inference is so spontaneous and immediate that it is seldom questioned when the moral interest is strong and thought is clear. . . . As there is no known way of deducing intelligence from non-intelligence, so there is no known way of deducing the moral from the non-moral." 3

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These three arguments are alike in alleging the necessity

The world without exists through a mind analogous to the mind within. . . . But on the atheistic scheme the thing-world has no thought whatever in it. It just exists in its own mechanical way. . . . But in that case there is no way to thought at all, and still less is there any provision for knowledge." (Ibid, pp. 132-33.) An introductory survey like the present volume cannot afford the space to discuss the epistemological problem, about which many bulky volumes have been written. It must suffice to refer the reader to such books as Perry's Present Philosophical Tendencies, or the coöperative volume, The New Realism, or Fullerton's The World We Live In, or Strong's Why the Mind has a Body, as illustrations of the contemporary tendency to abandon all of this older epistemological theory. According to the reigning modes of philosophic thought there is no logical inference to theism to be found in the fact of knowledge.

1 Aveling, op. cit., p. 134.

3 Ibid., pp. 251-52.

2 Bowne, op. cit., p. 120.