For whereas the Christian theory of free will and personal
responsibility results in established ignorance and injustice, with no
visible remedies beyond personal denunciation, the prison, and a few
coals and blankets, the Determinist method would result in the abolition
of lords and burglars, of slums and palaces, of caste and snobbery.
There would be no ignorance and no poverty left in the world.
That is because the Determinist understands human nature, and the
Christian does not. It is because the Determinist understands morality,
and the Christian does not.
For the Determinist looks for the cause of wrong-doing in the
environment of the wrong-doer. While the Christian puts all the wrongs
which society perpetrates against the individual, and all the wrongs
which the individual perpetrates against his fellows down to an
imaginary "free will."
Some Free-Willers are fond of crying out: "Once admit that men are not
to be blamed for their actions, and all morality and all improvement
will cease." But that is a mistake. As I have indicated above, a good
many evils now rife would cease, because then we should attack the
evils, and not the victims of the evils. But it is absurd to suppose
that we do not detest cholera because we do not detest cholera patients,
or that we should cease to hate wrong because we ceased to blame
wrong-doers.
Admit the Determinist theory, and all would be taught to do well, and
most would take kindly to the lesson. Because the fact that environment
is so powerful for evil suggests that it is powerful for good. If man is
what he is made, it behoves a nation which desires and prizes good men
to be very earnest and careful in its methods of making them.
I believe that I am what heredity and environment made me. But I know
that I can make myself better or worse if I try. I know that because I
have learnt it, and the learning has been part of my environment.
My claim, as a Determinist, is that it is not so good to punish an
offender as to improve his environment. It is good of the Christians to
open schools and to found charities. But as a Determinist I am bound to
say that there ought to be no such things in the world as poverty and
ignorance, and one of the contributory causes to ignorance and poverty
is the Christian doctrine of free will.
Take away from a man all that God gave him, and there will be nothing of
him left.
Take away from a man all that heredity and environment have given him,
and there will be nothing left.
Man is what he is by the act of God, or the results of heredity and
environment. In either case he is not to blame.
In one case the result is due to the action of his ancestors and
society, in the other to the act of God.
Therefore a man is not responsible for his actions, and cannot sin
against God.
_If God is responsible for Man's existence, God is responsible for Man's
acts._
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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