The Idea of God as Affected by Modern KnowledgeFiske, John
Religion
The Idea of God as Affected by Modern Knowledge
Fiske, John
God (Christianity)
It would be little to my credit, however, had my views of the
doctrine of evolution and its implications undergone no development
or enlargement since the publication of "Cosmic Philosophy." To carry
such a subject about in one's mind for ten years, without having
any new thoughts about it, would hardly be a proof of fitness for
philosophizing. I have for some time been aware of a shortcoming
in the earlier work, which it is the purpose of these two Concord
addresses in some measure to remedy. That shortcoming was an imperfect
appreciation of the goal toward which the process of evolution is
tending, and a consequent failure to state adequately how the doctrine
of evolution must affect our estimate of Man's place in Nature. Nothing
of fundamental importance in "Cosmic Philosophy" needed changing, but
a new chapter needed to be written, in order to show how the doctrine
of evolution, by exhibiting the development of the highest spiritual
human qualities as the goal toward which God's creative work has from
the outset been tending, replaces Man in his old position of headship
in the universe, even as in the days of Dante and Aquinas. That which
the pre-Copernican astronomy naively thought to do by placing the home
of Man in the centre of the physical universe, the Darwinian biology
profoundly accomplishes by exhibiting Man as the terminal fact in that
stupendous process of evolution whereby things have come to be what
they are. In the deepest sense it is as true as it ever was held to be,
that the world was made for Man, and that the bringing forth in him of
those qualities which we call highest and holiest is the final cause
of creation. The arguments upon which this conclusion rests, as they
are set forth in the "Destiny of Man" and epitomized in the concluding
section of the present essay, may all be found in "Cosmic Philosophy;"
but I failed to sum them up there and indicate the conclusion, almost
within reach, which I had not quite clearly seized. When, after long
hovering in the background of consciousness, it suddenly flashed
upon me two years ago, it came with such vividness as to seem like a
revelation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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