The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Vol. 06 (of 12): Dresden Edition—DiscussionsIngersoll, Robert Green
Religion
The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Vol. 06 (of 12): Dresden Edition—Discussions
Ingersoll, Robert Green
Free thought
But does not reason really require us to go farther, to turn the tables
on the adversary, and to contend that evolution, by how much it binds
more closely together the myriad ranks of the living, aye, and of all
other orders, by so much the more consolidates, enlarges, and enhances
the true argument of design, and the entire theistic position? If orders
are not mutually related, it is easier to conceive of them as sent at
haphazard into the world. We may, indeed, sufficiently, draw an argument
of design from each separate structure, but we have no further title to
build upon the position which each of them holds as towards any other.
But when the connexion between these objects has been established, and
so established that the points of transition are almost as indiscernible
as the passage from day to night, then, indeed, each preceding stage is
a prophecy of the following, each succeeding one is a memorial of the
past, and, throughout the immeasurable series, every single member of
it is a witness to all the rest. The Reply ought surely to dispose of
these, and probably many more arguments in the case, before assuming
so absolutely the rights of dictatorship, and laying it down that
Darwinism, carried to its legitimate conclusion (and I have nowhere
endeavored to cut short its career), destroys the creeds and Scriptures
of mankind. That I maybe the more definite in my challenge, I would,
with all respect, ask the author of the Reply to set about confuting the
succinct and clear argument of his countryman, Mr. Fiske, who, in the
earlier part of the small work entitled _Man's Destiny_ (Macmillan,
London, 1887) has given what seems to me an admissible and also striking
interpretation of the leading Darwinian idea in its bearings on the
theistic argument. To this very partial treatment of a great subject I
must at present confine myself; and I proceed to another of the notions,
as confident as they seem to be crude, which the Reply has drawn into
its wide-casting net (p. 475):
"Why should God demand a sacrifice from; man? Why should the Infinite
ask anything from the finite? Should the sun beg of the glow-worm, and
should the momentary spark excite the envy of the source of light?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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