Communism and Christianism / Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View

by William Montgomery Brown

III.

You say in effect that we must postulate a divine consciousness to account for human consciousness; but, on your theory, how could human consciousness come out of a divine consciousness; and, anyhow, contrary to your implication, we know of no consciousness which has come, except by inheritance, from another consciousness, but only of consciousnesses which have come from unconsciousnesses.

Your contention, in this connection, is to the effect that nothing can come out of nothing, and this is the core of a book, "A Short Apology for Being a Christian in the Twentieth Century," by the learned ex-president of Trinity College, Hartford, Dr. Williamson Smith, with whom you have had, I think, some correspondence.

This Apology was written against a letter of mine to the House of Bishops, entitled, "A Natural Gospel for a Scientific Age," which has never seen the light, partly because the ex-President convinced me that if I must give up the orthodox conception of God, I could not hold to the one which I had worked out in the letter.

If you have not seen the ex-President's book, you will, I am sure, enjoy it more than I did, but I doubt whether you will profit as much by it, for it verges towards your lines and away from mine; and so it set me to studying as it will not you, with the result of rejecting the new conception of God which I had worked out for myself, but with it I threw over the old one and ceased to believe in the existence of a conscious, personal divinity. Of course, my faith in the existence of a spiritual world and hope for a future life in it went with the god.

Dr. Williamson Smith and you are entirely correct in the contention that something cannot come out of nothing: but I no longer pretend that it can and I now see that the stones which have been thrown at me by you both and others have come from glass houses; for this is really the pretension of orthodox theologians. They affirm that the universe was created by God out of nothing, but produce no scrap of evidence for His existence, and even if they could prove that He exists, they would have to admit that He came out of nothing, or at least from something which did so.

It is indeed true that I am unable to tell what matter, force and motion came from, or if I agree with most physicists that they arose from ether, I cannot give its derivative; but, granting that I am as incapable of proving their existence as you are of proving the existence of the Christian trinity, nevertheless I have this immense advantage over you, that I can prove that everything both physical and psychical (including man and his civilization) entering into the constitution of the universe, lives, moves and has its being in my divine trinity—matter, force and motion: whereas you cannot prove that anything is indebted for what it is to your divine trinity—Father, Son and Spirit: therefore I insist that your trinity is a symbol of mine.

What is true of the Christian trinity is true of all the divinities of the supernaturalistic interpretations of religion. The Jews live with no reference to the Christian God, or at least not with any to his second and third persons, and neither Christians nor Jews do so in the case of either the Mohammedan or Buddhistic divinity, and so on, all around the whole circle of gods.

But no representative of any god lives without constant reference to mine, of which yours and all the others are, as I think, symbols, if they are anything better than fetishes.

If you and ex-President Smith mean by your fundamental thesis, that a thing which is essentially different from that from which it came is an impossibility, you are certainly wrong, for the world is full of such things. In the tree of life there are millions of examples, since (using language in its general significance) everything above the amoeba must be regarded as essentially different from it, though all, including man, came out of it.

Going back as far as we safely can on solid ground, we come to the nebulae from which the solar systems of the universe have evolved, and surely a solar system is as essentially different from the nebula as a man is from an amoeba. Coming to our earth when its primeval, flaming, swirling gases had been condensed into inorganic matter, the protoplasm which is organic matter, arose from it, and so something which grows from within out, comes from something which grows from without in.

The large hoofed horse came from a small five-toed animal, not much larger than a rabbit. The piano and the gun are brother and sister, born of the bow and arrow, yet how different the children from the parent.

An infant is unconscious at birth and what it has of consciousness as a child and an adult is dependent upon the development of its body.

Moreover, as the human body is a development through animal bodies, we may logically conclude that human consciousness is ultimately dependent upon and inherited from animal consciousness rather than a divine one.

Jesus is represented as saying that God is a spirit; and the fathers of the English part of the Christian reformation said that there is but one living and true God without body, parts or passions. This is their explanation of his conception of God.

When the Jesuine definition of God and the Anglican explanation of it were framed, the Divine Spirit was supposed to be an objective personality.

Modern psychology teaches that no spirit, divine, human or otherwise, is a personality. According to this science, spirit and soul are synonyms for the subjective content of a conscious life, which content consists of feelings, aspirations, ideals, convictions and determinations.

Psychologists know of no spirit or soul without a body constituted of parts any more than physicists know of a force without matter constituted of molecules, atoms, electrons and ions.

Gods represent the religious ideals of people and are symbols of what they think they should be as religionists. They are symbolic, emblematic, parabolic, allegoric devices of the imagination, and contain nothing but the ideal, imaginary things which are put into them by people for themselves, and they do nothing except what the people perform through them in their names for themselves.

Matter and force constitute a machine, an automatic one, which produces things, everything which enters into the constitution of the cosmos, by evolutionary processes, or rather all such things, and there are no others, are the result of one universal and eternal process of evolution.

What is known as nature is the aggregation of the products of this machine by this process. The machine is unconscious and its workings are mechanical, yet some of its products rise into self-consciousness with the power of self-determination, but both the consciousness and the determination are limited. The infinite consciousness, personality and determination which are postulated of gods are contradictions.

Of all beings man possesses most of consciousness, personality and determination. What he has of these is not dependent upon gods, but all they have of them is dependent upon him. Divine beings are, as to their self-consciousness, personality and determination, human beings personified and placed in the sky. Man does everything for gods. They do nothing for him.

Such are the facts and arguments based upon them, which have forced me step by step over the long way from the position of supernaturalistic traditionalism in its Christian form, still occupied by you, to that of naturalistic scientism in its socialist form which I am now occupying, as tentatively as possible, pending further study in the light of additional facts, for which (some six years ago, when I was desperately battling to prevent the shipwreck of my faith in the god and heaven of orthodox Christianity) I appealed to about 800 outstanding theologians, among them yourself, representing all parts of christendom and every great church, including of course all our bishops among the theologians, and the Anglican communion among the churches.

You may remember how much of correspondence we had at that time, though neither you nor any one who kindly tried to reach me with the rope of the new scientific apologetics for which I appealed, can realize how eagerly I looked for the replies to my questions, nor the sickness of heart which I experienced when I saw that, in spite of every possible effort of my own and help of others, I was slowly but surely drifting towards what I then thought to be the fatal whirlpools and rocks, but what I now regard as a sheltered port—the golden gate of that delectable country, Marxian socialism, the only heaven that I am now hoping to behold.

You earnestly contend that I am wrong in representing that the majority of outstanding men of science and scientific philosophers do not believe in the existence of a conscious, personal divinity, who created, sustains and governs the universe, or in a conscious, personal life for man beyond the grave, and that none among such scientists and philosophers are orthodox Christians.

Prof. Leuba, the Bryn Mawr psychologist, is one among my authorities for these representations. In his "Belief in God and Immortality" (1916) he exhibits the results of a recent and thorough-going investigation in a chart from which it appears that, taking the greater and lesser representatives of the scientists together, they fall below 50 per cent as to their belief in God, and below 55 per cent in their belief in immortality.[I]

The showing for the scientists who are especially concerned with the origin and destiny of life, biologists and psychologists, is much less favorable to you; for, taking the greater and lesser together, only 31 per cent of the biologists believe in God and 35 per cent in immortality; and only 25 per cent of the psychologists believe in God, and 20 per cent in immortality.

But the worst by far, is yet to come; for, taking the greater biologists and psychologists, those who count most, of the former 18 per cent believe in God, and 25 per cent in immortality; and of the latter, the greatest of all authorities, only 13 per cent believe in God, and only 8 per cent in immortality.

The greater psychologists are comparatively consistent in that fewer among them believe in a conscious, personal life for humanity beyond the grave than in the conscious, personal life of divinity beyond the clouds. Human immortality is an absurdity without divine existence. The overwhelming majority of great psychologists (the greatest of all authorities, as to whether or not gods "without bodies, parts or passions" can consciously exist in the skies, and disembodied men, women and children in celestial paradises) see this and limit the career of man to earth. In their judgment his heaven and hell are here, and the gods who make and the devils who unmake civilizations are humans, not good or bad divinities.

This is the conclusion of a rapidly increasing number of educated people. A century ago only a few men of science and scientific philosophers had reached it, not twenty five per cent, but now the percentage is nearly ninety and it will soon be ninety-nine. The time is coming, and in the not distant future, when no educated man shall look to the god of any supernaturalistic interpretation of religion for light or strength, and when none shall hope for a heaven above the earth or fear a hell below it.

Heav'n but the Vision of fulfill'd Desire, And Hell the Shadow from a Soul on fire Cast on the Darkness into which Ourselves, So late emerg'd from, shall so soon expire.

—Omar.

Joseph McCabe and Chapman Cohen are among the most brilliant of present day writers on scientific and philosophic subjects. They are not socialists, but both see that modern socialism and orthodox Christianism are utterly irreconcilable incompatibilities.

"How is it that on the Continent democratic bodies are so sceptical, or sceptical bodies so democratic? Precisely because they doubt (or reject altogether) the Christian heaven. They want to make this earth as happy as it can be, to make sure of happiness somewhere. Having taken their eyes from the sky, they have discovered remarkable possibilities in the earth. Having to give less time to God, they have more time to give to man. They think less about their heavenly home, and more about their earthly home. The earthly home has grown very much brighter for the change. The heavenly home is just where it was.

"The plain truth is, of course, that the sentiment which used to be absorbed in religion is now embodied in humanitarianism. Religion is slowly dying everywhere. Social idealism is growing everywhere. People who want to persuade us that social idealism depends on religion are puzzled by this. It is only because they are obstinately determined to connect everything with Christianity, in spite of its historical record. There is no puzzle. We have transferred our emotions from God to man, from heaven to earth."—Joseph McCabe.

"Socialists who have one eye on the ballot box may assure these people that Socialism is not Atheistic, but few will be convinced. The statement that Socialism has nothing to do with religion, or that many professedly religious people are Socialist, is quite futile. A thoughtful religionist would reply that the first point concedes the truth of all that has been said against Socialism, while the second evades the question at issue. No one is specially concerned with the mental idiosyncracies of individual Socialists; what is at issue is the question whether Socialism does or does not take an Atheistic view of life? He might add, too, that a Socialism which leaves out the belief in God and a future life, which does not, in even the remotest manner, imply these beliefs, which does not make their acceptance the condition of holding the meanest office in the State, and, at most, will merely allow religious beliefs to exist so long as they do not threaten the well-being of the State, is, to all intents and purposes, an Atheistical system."—Chapman Cohen.

In summing up the results of his investigations Prof. Leuba observes that:

In every class of persons investigated, the number of believers in God is less and in most classes very much less than the number of non-believers, and that the number of believers in immortality is somewhat larger than in a personal God; that among the more distinguished, unbelief is very much more frequent than among the less distinguished; and finally that not only the degree of ability, but also the kind of knowledge possessed, is significantly related to the rejection of these beliefs.

In another connection Prof. Leuba speaking of Christian dogmatism as a whole says:

Christianity, as a system of belief, has utterly broken down, and nothing definite, adequate, and convincing has taken its place. There is no generally acknowledged authority; each one believes as he can, and few seem disturbed at being unable to hold the tenets of the churches. This sense of freedom is the glorious side of an otherwise dangerous situation.

Your conception of the origin, sustenance and governance of the universe is burdened, as are all interpretations of religion which are hinged upon the existence of conscious, personal divinities, with two difficulties: (1) its physical impossibility, and (2) its moral impossibility.

1. Physical Impossibilities. The atomic and molecular movements required for the thinking of a single man would be beyond the capacity of all the gods of the supernaturalistic interpretations of religion together.

Some idea of the number of such motions which are taking place in every human brain, will be derived from the conservative representations of Hofmeister as exhibited in the following condensed form by McCabe in his book, "The Evolution of Mind:"

We have reason to believe that there are in each molecule of ordinary protoplasm at least 450 atoms of carbon, 720 atoms of hydrogen, 116 of nitrogen, 6 of sulphur, and 140 of oxygen. Nerve-plasm is still more complex.

Recent discoveries have only increased the wonder and potentiality of the cortex. Each atom has proved to be a remarkable constellation of electrons, a colossal reservoir of energy. The atom of hydrogen contains about 1,000 electrons, the atom of carbon 12,000, the atom of nitrogen 14,000, the atom of oxygen 16,000, and the atom of sulphur 32,000. These electrons circulate within the infinitesimal space of the atom at a speed of from 10,000 to 90,000 miles a second. It would take 340,000 barrels of powder to impart to a bullet the speed with which some of these particles dart out of their groups. A gramme of hydrogen—a very tiny portion of the simplest gas—contains energy enough to lift a million tons more than a hundred yards.

Of these astounding arsenals of energy, the atoms, we have, on the lowest computation, at least 600 million billion in the cortex of the human brain.

Scientists, says Professor Olerich, in his book, "A Modern Look at the Universe," estimate that the chemical atom is so infinitesimally small that it requires a group of not less than a billion to make the group barely visible under the most powerful microscope, and a thousand such groups would have to be put together in order to make it just visible to the naked eye as a mere speck floating in the sunbeam.

The microscope reveals innumerable animalcules in the hundredth part of a drop of water. They all eat, digest, move and from all appearances of their frolics, they are endowed with sensation and ability of enjoyment. What then shall we say of the minuteness of the food they eat; of the blood that surges through their veins; of their nervous system that thrills and guides them? Their minutest organs must be composed of molecules, atoms, ions and electrons inconceivably smaller than are the organs themselves.

Is there any god in a celestial field who could care for the movements which occur in the molecules constituting a hundredth part of a drop of water, not to speak of those which occur in the bodies of its myriads of inhabitants? And what shall we say of all the inorganic and organic movements in a small cup of whole drops of water, let alone those of a great ocean of them?

But why go further into this subject? Is not the utter childishness of the orthodox representative of a supernaturalistic interpretation of religion, who credits his god with the governance of the motions occurring in the mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms of this globe, leaving out of account those of its solar system, and of other systems which constitute the universe, sufficiently manifest?

If you say that the motions which issue in the phenomena of the universe are regulated by a law which was once for all willed by the god of the Christian interpretation of religion, I ask why the law should be credited to the willing of this god rather than to that of the god of Jewish, Mohammedan or Buddhistic interpretation.

Newton took the first of the six initiatory steps in the long way which led to the conclusion that the universe is self-existing, self-sustaining and self-governing, by showing that all the movements of the solar systems were necessarily what they have been by reason of a matter-force law, gravitation. This discovery is the most momentous event in the whole history of mankind.

Laplace took the second step by showing that the cosmic nebulae contain within themselves all the potentialities necessary to the formation of solar systems.

Lavoisier took the third step by showing that the matter which enters into the constitution of the universe is an eternality.

Mayer took the fourth step by showing that the force which enters into the constitution of the universe is an eternality.

Darwin took the fifth step by showing that the protoplasm contains all the potentialities of every form of physical and degree of psychical life from the moneron to man; that all representatives of both the vegetable and animal kingdoms, including man, are related and so on a level as to their origin and destiny, and that the different species are the natural results of the necessary struggle with rivals and with adverse environments for existence.

Marx took the sixth step by showing that the essential difference between humans and beasts is primarily a question of the hand and secondarily of the machines by which its efficiency is immeasurably increased; that slavery has been and must continue to be the means of advancement towards the ideal civilization; that the kinds of human slavery were what they have been because machines have been what they were, and that the time is coming when the slaves will no longer be men, women and children, but machines which will be exploited for the good of the many, not the profit of the few—then, and not until then, rapid advance shall be made towards the goal where the whole world shall be one great co-operative family, every member of which shall have the greatest of possible opportunities to make the most of terrestrial life by having it as long and happy as possible.

2. Moral Impossibilities. The moral impossibility of the assumptions of these apologies is seen by all who have eyes for seeing things as they are in the fact that if God is credited with the good He must also be debited with the evil. If for example, He endowed the human body with its useful and necessary parts. He also endowed it with its harmful and unnecessary parts.

Experts in the field of anatomy tell us that there are in our bodies at least 180 useless parts, some among which are the occasion of much suffering and many premature deaths, the vermiform appendix alone causing many thousands of such cases annually.

Do you not see that these useless structures, all of which are inherited from the lower animals, are so many evidences of the truth of Darwinism and the untruthfulness of Mosaism? Eleven of these wholly useless and more or less harmful inheritances have been of no use to any of our ancestors from the fish up and four are inherited from our reptilian and amphibian forefathers, but according to Moses we have no such progenitors.

Admitting the fact of the existence of evil there is no escaping from the logical conclusions of dear, old sensible Epicurus:

Either God is willing to remove evil from this world and cannot, or he can and is not willing, or finally he can and is willing. If he is willing and cannot, it is impotence, which is contrary to the nature of God. If he can and is unwilling, it is wickedness, and that is no less contrary to the nature of God. If he is not willing and cannot, there is both wickedness and impotence. If he is willing and can, which is the only one of these suppositions that can be applied to God, how happens it that there is evil on earth?

Oh, if only the world had been influenced by this logic instead of by the metaphysics of the supernaturalistic interpretations of religion, it would have been so far on the way towards the ideal civilization as to have long since passed the point where it would have been possible to have the world war which has recently deluged the earth with blood and tears, or to make the Versailles treaty which is destined to issue in one war after another, ever filling the world fuller with the tyranny, poverty, slavery and misery which are the inevitable concomitants of all wars.

In my opinion the fascinating essayist, Mallock, has written the best of all apologies for theism. I cannot imagine a better one. He, however, makes no more attempt than Sir Oliver Lodge does to establish Christianity, or any other supernaturalistic interpretations of religion. Like Kant and yourself, Mallock takes his stand on the ground that a belief in a celestial God, and in the immortality which goes with it, is necessary to morality, the basic virtue upon which civilization rests. As Kant admits that the existence of God cannot be inferred from pure reason, so Mallock admits and even strongly contends that it cannot be established on scientific grounds. I quote a striking passage:

We must divest ourselves of all foregone conclusions, of all question-begging reverences, and look the facts of the universe steadily in the face.

If theists will but do this, what they will see will astonish them. They will see that if there is anything at the back of this vast process, with a consciousness and a purpose in any way resembling our own—a Being who knows what he wants and is doing his best to get it—he is, instead of a holy and all-wise God, a scatter-brained, semi-powerful, semi-impotent monster. They will recognize as clearly as they ever did the old familiar facts which seemed to them evidences of God's wisdom, love and goodness; but they will find that these facts, when taken in connection with the others, only supply us with a standard in the nature of this being himself by which most of his acts are exhibited to us as those of a criminal madman. If he had been blind, he had not had sin; but if we maintain that he can see, then his sin remains. Habitually a bungler as he is, and callous when not actively cruel, we are forced to regard him, when he seems to exhibit benevolence, as not divinely benevolent, but merely weak and capricious, like a boy who fondles a kitten and the next moment sets a dog at it. And not only does his moral character fall from him bit by bit, but his dignity disappears also. The orderly processes of the stars and the larger phenomena of nature are suggestive of nothing so much as a wearisome court ceremonial surrounding a king who is unable to understand or to break away from it; whilst the thunder and whirlwind, which have from time immemorial been accepted as special revelations of his awful power and majesty, suggest, if they suggest anything of a personal character at all, merely some blackguardly larrikin kicking his heels in the clouds, not perhaps bent on mischief, but indifferent to the fact that he is causing it.

But we need not attempt to fill in the picture further. The truth is, as we consider the universe as a whole, it fails to suggest a conscious and purposive God at all; and it fails to do so not because the processes of evolution as such preclude the idea that God might have made use of them for a definite purpose, but because when we come to consider these processes in detail, and view them in the light of the only purposes they suggest, we find them to be such that a God who could deliberately have been guilty of them would be a God too absurd, too monstrous, too mad to be credible.

The god who had any part in bringing upon the world the English-German war, the Versailles peace, the Russian blockade, is for me a devil not a divinity. If you say that the Christian god had nothing to do with them, I reply that these are among the greatest of all curses wherewith mankind has been afflicted in modern times; and if he could not or would not prevent them, what ground is there for looking to him for help in any time of need?

How can I adequately express my contempt for the assertion that all things occur for the best, for a wise and beneficent end? It is the most utter falsehood, and a crime against the human race.... Human suffering is so great, so endless, so awful, that I can hardly write of it.... The whole and the worst, the worst pessimist can say is far beneath the least particle of the truth.... Anyone who will consider the affairs of the world at large ... will see that they do not proceed in the manner they would do for our happiness if a man of humane breadth of view were placed at their head with unlimited power. A man of intellect and humanity could cause everything to happen in an infinitely superior manner. But that which is ... credited to a non-existent intelligence (or cosmic "order," it is just the same) should really be claimed and exercised by the human race. We must do for ourselves what superstition has hitherto supposed an intelligence to do for us.—Richard Jeffries.

Would but some winged Angel ere too late Arrest the yet unfolded Roll of Fate, And make the stern Recorder otherwise Enregister, or quite obliterate!

Ah Love! could you and I with Him conspire To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire, Would not we shatter it to bits—and then Remold it nearer to the Heart's Desire!

—Omar.

You frequently intimate that my doctrine concerning the origin and destiny of the universe with all that therein is, including man, is not that of the majority of men of science and scientific philosophers, but that yours is. It will therefore be of interest to you to know that I have submitted the most radical of my materialistic pieces to three men of science, all great authorities, one of whom replied, that he was in substantial agreement with me, but thought me to be 400 years ahead of our time; another, that he found nothing to criticize unless it might be my failure to give greater prominence to the fact that the gods of the redemptive interpretations, of religion were so many versions of the sun-myth, and the other, that the essay would pass any world congress of scientists by a large majority.

You think that I am wrong in quoting Newton and Darwin on my side, because they believed in the existence of a conscious, personal god. I am persuaded that such was not the case with Darwin at his death; but, however this may be, it is in neither of these cases, nor in that of any other scientist, a question of what he philosophically believed concerning a god, but of what he scientifically established as a fact.

Newton established the fact that the movements of the stars in their courses are naturally regulated by the law of gravitation, not supernaturally by the will of a god.

Darwin established the fact that all living species of animal and vegetable life exist as the natural results of evolutionary processes, not as the supernatural results of creative acts.

If Newton were to stand by his theological writings, he would fall in your estimation, for his work on the book of Daniel would be regarded by you as an absurdity. He considered Daniel to be the great revelation of a God, Jehovah, but you know it to be the purest fiction of a man, quite as much the work of the imagination of its author as Don Quixote is that of Cervantes.

Among the many theological authorities whom you quote against me, the greatest, in my estimation, is Dr. Inge, Dean of St. Paul's, London, whose utterances I have been noting with great interest of late; partly, no doubt, because he seems to be giving up your orthodox side and coming over, slowly but surely, to my heterodox one. In a London paper which has just reached me, the Literary Guide, this is said of the Dean:

The theological opinions of Dean Inge, one of the official mouthpieces of the Church of England, and probably the most distinguished spokesman for the more liberally minded of the clergy, have now reached an interesting stage, both for those without the Church as well as for those within it. Although he does not feel called upon to state his own private conclusions on such debatable questions, he no longer regards the doctrines of the Immaculate Conception and the Bodily Resurrection as essential prerequisites of Christianity and would consider fit for ordination any candidate who rejected them, provided such a person still acknowledged the divine nature of Jesus Christ—that is, he would not exclude him from the Church's ministry.

If I understand Dean Inge as he is reported in the article of which this is the opening paragraph, he bases his faith in the divinity of Jesus upon the uniqueness of his character and teachings, not on the miraculousness of his birth and healings.

But Dean Inge has no authentic or reliable account of the life and teachings of Jesus; and so, as a theologian, like all theologians, he lives, moves and has his being in the realm of fiction, the difference between him and yourself being that he is in that part of it where the imagination sits enthroned, and you in the region where metaphysics is monarch of all it surveys.

An outstanding theologian who, as it seems to me, overshadows Dean Inge, commenting upon a piece of my writing which is quite as radical as any part of this letter goes even further than he.

"I have," he says, "just read the Chapter of your Natural Gospel for a Scientific Age, which you have kindly sent me, with the greatest interest. Indeed I have come so heartily to share your point of view that I can find no points for criticism; I can only say how grateful I am to have had an opportunity of seeing your uncompromising and clear expression of the only kind of Modernism that has any promise for the future. I am beginning to feel more and more uncomfortable in our Christian movement because so many of our leaders here are attempting an impossible compromise with dogma. Men like Dr. Rashdall have no place in the movement for men who cannot accept their 'fullblooded theism.' In fact they are Harnackians with their one or two unalterably fixed dogmas."