The Churches and Modern Thought: An inquiry into the grounds of unbelief and an appeal for candourPhelips, Vivian
Religion
The Churches and Modern Thought: An inquiry into the grounds of unbelief and an appeal for candour
Phelips, Vivian
Rationalism
I have finally to call attention to the fact that even among the
apologists themselves there is considerable difference of opinion
as to the value of these arguments for Theism. Dr. Flint exclaims:
"Strange as it may seem, there are many Theists at the present day
who represent it [revelation of God in the whole of nature external to
us] as insufficient, or even worthless, and who join the Atheists in
denying that God's existence can be proved, and in affirming that all
the arguments for His existence are inconclusive and sophistical. Such
Theists seem to me not only the best allies of Atheists, but even
more effective labourers in the cause of unbelief than Atheists
themselves." [202] Since Dr. Flint wrote these words the number of
"such Theists" has vastly increased. It is owned on all sides by the
advanced school of apologists that God's existence cannot be proved
by an appeal to the reasoning faculties; and, among other arguments,
that from design is gradually being discarded.
Father Waggett offers us interesting information regarding this
argument in his little book, Religion and Science. [203] He considers
that Paley and others of the old teleologists were wrong in leaning
upon a narrow argument from design. "It need not here be repeated,"
he says, "that the evidence of such workmanship cannot prove God
in the true sense of an infinite and all-wise Cause; but only a
cause possessed of immense wisdom and immense though limited power,
a Demiurgus of the greatest force and the most minute care, but not
a Creator in the sense of theology." [204] Father Waggett, who is
a biologist, and, therefore, necessarily an Evolutionist, would not
be disconcerted if living things were manufactured in the laboratory
to-morrow. In his opinion, "If anywhere we catch nature in the making,
if we surprise the sequence by which even man himself gained his
difference from other things, we shall not by this find reverence
lowered.... It is a theological readjustment which is required,
and not one in 'natural science.'" [205] The position here taken up
is wise, and one that all who remain Theists will eventually have
to adopt. But for most of us these theological readjustments are
no easy matter. We reason that Paley's Evidences have in their time
assisted men to be Theists, and now his arguments are condemned by
the better informed. How do we know that the same fate may not await
the new arguments of the Christian evolutionist? 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?
§ 4. The First Cause a Beneficent Intelligence.
A PERSONAL GOD.
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