The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and MoralitySchmid, Rudolf
Religion
The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality
Schmid, Rudolf
Evolution; Religion and science
We quite fail to conceive how those who acknowledge design in the world,
can avoid the acknowledgment of the resurrection of Jesus--supposing the
fact to be historically established: whereof we shall have to speak
hereafter. It is, indeed, quite impossible to speak of a goal of mankind,
if annihilation--annihilation of single personalities as well as of mankind
as a whole--is its certain destiny. Where and what is this end of mankind,
if the last generation of the globe is to perish with the destruction of
this globe, or languish and die even before that destruction, and if
nothing will be left of mankind beyond the soulless material for new
formations in their putrifying corpses and desolate homes and works of art?
Where and what is this goal, if all which once set human minds and hearts
in motion, and which stimulated the intellectual and moral work of the
human races, simply ceases to exist, no longer finds anywhere even a place
of remembrance, and nowhere has a fruit to exhibit, except perhaps in the
mind of a God who once set the cruel play in motion, and now permits it to
cease, in order to procure for himself a change in the entertainment? A
mere immortality of human {333} souls, without resurrection and without the
perfection and transfiguration of the universe, is not afforded us by this
goal, which we certainly need, if we are to think at all of a goal for
mankind. For if all departing souls should be carried into another world
whose only relation to the further course of the earthly history of mankind
was in the fact, that the dead are always gathered in it; into another
world whose only relation to the past of the earthly history of mankind
should be in the fact, that it is divided into a heaven and a hell for
those who reach it; if in this world everything should move on, without
end, in eternal coming and going; and if nothing could be said of that
other world than that everything there is different from ours--even that we
should there have no possible points of contact with this world: then we
should have nothing else but a gloomy dualism of the world for which
neither our intellectual, nor our psychical, and least of all our physical,
organization is in any way prepared, we should have in it no satisfaction
of our noblest instincts, no goal to which we would be led by any of the
guides who show us the paths which we have to follow on earth. Only a
resurrection and transfiguration of the earth and the universe, as well as
of a glorified mankind, show us such a goal. For this aim, for such a
_real_ continuation of life of the single personality, and of all mankind,
after the long work of moral and intellectual development, all noble and
worthy instincts of mankind are prepared--from the instinct of
self-preservation up to the instinct of self-sacrifice for ideal purposes
and the instinct of moral perfection and community with God. We find that
in all the rest of creation, instincts and inherent powers {334} are
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