It may be said that to regard the ruling principle of the cosmos as a
moral agent is to commit the anthropomorphic fallacy. What, then, shall
we say of science, which is engaged in demonstrating that the cosmic
process is always logical? That science simply describes the facts as
they are, and that if they are logical, it is not her fault? Then the
presence of an intelligence other than human is revealed to science in
the facts; and it is false to say that science merely imports her own
intelligence into them. In the same way, the presence of a moral
personality other than our own is revealed to us in the facts of
conscience, and not imported into them by us. The presence of the
Comforter is one of the facts apprehended by the religious
consciousness; it is not merely the religious man's way of interpreting
some other fact. From this conclusion the only way of escape is to say
that anthropomorphism is a fallacy, and that it is a fallacy to which
the human mind, by its very constitution, is always and inevitably
subject. This argument gets rid at one blow of all indications of any
intelligence or morality other than human. But how? Simply by begging
the question, by tacitly taking it for granted that there is no other
personality than human personality. In that case it is obvious, indeed,
that man's perpetual discovery of personal power in the forces of
nature, of more than human wisdom in nature's laws, and of more than
human goodness in the human heart, is and must be fallacious. But only
on the assumption that there is no wisdom in the world but man's, no
love in all the universe but his, can we say that man reads into the
facts a wisdom and a love which are not there. Are we, then, prepared to
say that, in giving us a logical account of the cosmic process, science
has--naturally and necessarily indeed, but none the less
completely--been mistaken? If the scientific account corresponds to the
facts, then the facts behave logically. If it is the anthropomorphic
fallacy to imagine that things can behave logically, then science's
description of the facts must be fallacious.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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