The Wonders of Life: A Popular Study of Biological PhilosophyHaeckel, Ernst
Philosophy
The Wonders of Life: A Popular Study of Biological Philosophy
Haeckel, Ernst
Biology; Evolution (Biology); Life -- Origin
When we compare the higher forms of religion of civilized nations we
find the same emotional cravings and thought-processes constantly
recurring, and the belief in miracles developing in much the same
way. The three founders of the great monotheistic Mediterranean
religion--Moses, Christ, and Mohammed--were equally regarded as
wonder-working prophets, having direct intercourse with God in virtue
of their special gifts, and transmitting his commands to men in the
shape of laws. The extraordinary authority they enjoy, which has
given so much prestige to the religions they founded, is grounded for
ordinary people on their miraculous powers--the healing of the sick,
the raising of the dead, the expulsion of devils, and so on. If we
examine the miracles of Christ as they are given in the gospels, they
run counter to the laws of nature and rational explanation just in
the same way as the similar miracles of Buddha and Brahma in Hindoo
mythology, or of Mohammed in the Koran. The same must be said of the
belief in the miracle of the bread and wine in the Lord's supper,
and the like. The Creed which was probably drawn up by the leaders
of the Christian communities of the second century, and received its
final and present form in the Church of South Gaul in the fourth
and fifth centuries, has been obligatory for Christians for fifteen
hundred years, and recognized by both Church and State as compulsory.
This Apostles' Creed was also recognized in Luther's catechism to
be fundamental, and is taught in all Protestant and Roman Catholic
schools (though not in the Greek Catholic) as the foundation of
religious instruction. This extraordinary prestige of the Apostles'
Creed, and its great influence on the education of the young, no less
than its glaring inconsistency with rational knowledge, compel us to
devote a few pages to a critical examination of its three articles.
The first article of the Creed deals with creation, and runs: "I
believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth."
The modern science of evolution has shown that there never was any
such creation, but that the universe is eternal and the law of
substance all-ruling. God himself is anthropomorphically conceived as
an "Almighty Creator" and the Father of man; heaven (in the sense of
the geocentric system) is imagined as a great blue vault spanning the
earth. The notion of this "personal God" as an intelligent, immaterial
being, creating the material world out of nothing, is wholly irrational
and meaningless. That Luther accepted this childish and scientifically
worthless idea is clear from his commentary on the first article--"What
is that?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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