The Monist, Vol. 2, 1891-1892 : $b A quarterly magazineVarious
Philosophy
The Monist, Vol. 2, 1891-1892 : $b A quarterly magazine
Various
Philosophy -- Periodicals
When Darwin speaks of “life as having been originally breathed into a few
forms or into one _by the Creator_,” he either uses allegorical language
or he means that the beginning of life was an act of special creation.
He apparently means the latter and is in this respect not a consistent
evolutionist. Darwin was great as a reformer of natural science, but
in theology he still stood upon the old standpoint. He calls God to
rescue where science fails. The Creator did not originally breathe life
into the organism, but his breath is constantly ensouling all living
beings. Now suppose there were or there could be exceptions to the law of
causation, to the conservation of matter and energy, or to the continuity
of evolution, would that not rather be a drawback in nature? Are the
patches on a coat better proof that it was made by a tailor than the
whole coat? Any kind of theology which still recognises special-creation
acts, or miracles, or breaks in evolution, we do not hesitate to say,
is not yet free from paganism, for it still sticks to the religious
conception of the medicine-man that God is a great magician. The God of
the medicine-man lives in the realm of the unknown and he appears in
man’s imagination where the light of science fails. The God of science
however is the God of truth, and evidence of his existence is not found
in the darkness of ignorance but in the light of knowledge. God’s being
is not recognised in the seeming exceptions to natural laws, but in the
natural laws themselves. God’s existence is not proved by our inability
to trace here or there the order of cause and effect, as if a disorder
in the world made it divine; on the contrary the only rational ground
of a faith in God is the irrefragable cosmic order of the universe. It
is true that we have to give up the idea of a personal God, but is not a
superpersonal God greater than the idol which we have made unto our own
likeness?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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