A Candid Examination of TheismRomanes, George John
Religion
A Candid Examination of Theism
Romanes, George John
Theism
Thus, upon the whole, it may be said, without danger of reasonable dispute,
that as the argument from Order has hitherto derived its immense weight
entirely from the fact that Intelligence appeared to be the one and only
cause sufficient to produce the observed integration of the cosmos, this
immense weight has now been completely counterpoised by the demonstration
that other causes of a strictly physical kind must have been instrumental,
if not themselves alone sufficient, to produce this integration, So that,
just as in the case of Astronomy the demonstration of the one natural
principle of gravity was sufficient to classify under one physical
explanation several observed facts which many persons had previously
attributed to supernatural causes; and just as in the more complex science
of Geology the demonstration of the one principle of uniformitarianism was
sufficient to explain, without the aid of supernaturalism, a still greater
number of facts; and, lastly, just as in the case of the still more complex
science of Biology the demonstration of the one principle of natural
selection was sufficient to marshal under one scientific, or natural,
hypothesis an almost incalculable number of facts which were previously
explained by the metaphysical hypothesis of supernatural design; so in the
science which includes all other sciences, and which we may term the
science of Cosmology, I assert with confidence that in the one principle of
the persistence of force we have a demonstrably harmonising principle,
whereby all the facts within our experience admit of being collocated under
one natural explanation, without there being the smallest reason to
attribute these facts to any supernatural cause.
But perhaps the immense change which these considerations must logically be
regarded as having produced in the speculative standing of the argument
from teleology will be better appreciated if I continue to quote from
Professor Flint's very forcible and thoroughly logical exposition of the
previous standing of this argument. He says:--
"To ascribe the origination of order to _law_ is a manifest evasion of the
real problem. Law is order. Law is the very thing to be explained. The
question is--Has law a reason, or is it without a reason? The unperverted
human mind cannot believe it to be without a reason."
I do not know where a more terse and accurate statement of the case could
be found; and to my mind the question so lucidly put admits of the direct
answer--Law clearly has a reason of a purely physical kind. And therefore I
submit that the following quotation which Professor Flint makes from
Professor Jevons, logical as it was when written, must now be regarded as
embodying an argument which is obsolete.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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