The Heavenly Father: Lectures on Modern Atheism

by Ernest Naville

1. How does the fact manifest itself? what is the mode of its existence? The answer gives us the law of the phenomenon. Bodies fall to the ground at a determined rate of speed: the determination of this rate is the law of their fall.

2. What is the real effective power which produces the phenomenon? This is the inquiry after the cause.

3. What is the intention which presided at the production of the phenomenon? This is the search after the object, which philosophers call the final cause.

What we call understanding or explaining a fact, is answering these three questions; it is finding the law, the cause, the end. This analysis was made by Aristotle, and seems to have been well made. The science of nature, as it is conceived by the moderns, does not undertake to satisfy entirely the desires of the human mind. It confines itself to the first question; it classes phenomena; it then seeks their law; arrived at this, it stops. The cause and design of things remain out of the sphere of its investigations; the question of God therefore continues foreign to it.

A story is told that when Buonaparte expressed his astonishment that the Marquis de la Place could have written a large book on the system of the universe, without making any mention of the Creator, the learned astronomer replied to his sovereign: "Sire, I had no need of that hypothesis." The answer is admissible if we regard only the science of nature. An astronomer has no need of God in order to follow out the series of his calculations, and compare their results with the course of the stars; a chemist has no need of God in order to ascertain the simple elements combined in composite bodies; a natural philosopher has no need of God in order to determine the laws of waves of sound or of electric currents. The science of nature does not demonstrate the existence of God; still less can it deny His existence. To deny God, it would be necessary for science to demonstrate that there is no order, and consequently no cause of the order to discover; for when we point out the harmony of the universe, we manifestly prepare a basis for the argument which, from the intelligence recognized in the phenomena, will infer the intelligence of the Power which governs them. To prove that there is no order would be to prove that there is no science. For any one who well understands the value of terms, the words atheistical science contain a contradiction; they signify science which proves that there is no science.

Such, Gentlemen, is the real state of the question. Our savants, when they remain faithful to their method, seek to determine the laws of phenomena, and do not occupy themselves either with the First Cause of nature, or with its general object; they leave the question of God on one side. Whence come then the negations of naturalists? They arise in this way: those savants who succeed in strictly confining themselves within the limits of their science are rare exceptions. Almost always the man introduces his thoughts into the work of the savant, and the results of his study appear to him religious or irreligious, according to his views of religion. Newton ends his book with a hymn to the Creator; but it is not the mathematical principles of nature which have revealed to him the Sovereign God. He perceives the rays of His glory because he believes in Him. In the same way, the atheist thinks that his researches disprove the existence of God, because God is veiled from his soul. In both cases it is a doctrine foreign to pure natural science which gives a color to its results. Self-deception is very common in this matter, and in both directions. The religious mind does not understand how it is possible to contemplate the universe, and not see inscribed upon it distinctly the name of its Author; and the intrusion of atheism into the sciences of observation is veiled beneath confusions of ideas which it is of importance for us to dissipate.

Modern science, as we have said, stops at laws, without troubling itself with causes. The laws which determine the series of facts as they offer themselves to observation express the mode of the action of the causes. There are here two ideas absolutely distinct: the power which acts, and the manner in which it acts. If the naturalist thinks that his science is everything, he must conclude that we can know nothing beyond the laws, and that an insuperable ignorance hides from our view the power of which they express the action. But he rarely succeeds in keeping this position, and deceives his reason by confounding the laws which he discovers with the causes with which his mind is not able to dispense. He says first of all with Franchi, "the universe is what it is"; this is the general formula of all the truths of experience; then he adds with the same author, "it is because it is." This because means nothing, or means that laws are their own causes. If it is asked, What is the cause of the motion of the stars? they will give for answer the astronomical formulæ which express this motion, and will think that they have explained the phenomena by stating in what way they present themselves to observation. This is a curious example of that confusion of ideas which opens the door to atheism.

An English naturalist, Mr. Darwin, has shown that in the successive life of animal generations, the favorable variations which are produced in the organization of a being are transmitted to its descendants and insure the perpetuity of its race, while the unpropitious variations disappear because they entail the destruction of the races in which they are produced. He tells us: "This preservation of favorable variations and the rejection of injurious variations, I call Natural Selection."[114] What does the author understand by law? He answers: "the series of facts as it is known to us."[115] Here we have the true definition of law: it is the simple expression of the series of the facts; the cause remains to be sought for. I open the book in another part. The author is speaking of the eye; and his doctrine is that the eye of the eagle was formed by the slow transformations of an extremely simple visual apparatus. There will have been then, in the development of animal existence, first of all a rudimentary eye, then an eye moderately well formed, and then the eye of the eagle, because the favorable modifications of the organ of sight will have been preserved and increased in the course of ages. Such is the series of facts, such is the law; suppose we grant it. What is the cause? The optician makes our spectacles; who made the eye of the eagle, by directing the slow transformations which at length produced it? Let us listen to the author: "There exists an intelligent power, and that intelligent power is natural selection, constantly on the watch for every alteration accidentally produced in the transparent layers, in order carefully to choose such of those alterations as may tend to produce a more distinct image.... Natural selection will choose with infallible skill each new improvement effected."[116] Natural selection is a law; a law is the series of facts; it seems that we must seek for the power which directs this series of facts; but, lo, the series of facts itself is transformed into a power—into an intelligent power—into a power which chooses with infallible skill! The confusion of ideas is complete. The mind is on a wrong scent; it concludes that the law explains everything, and has itself no need of explanation. The idea of the cause disappears, and, as Auguste Comte expresses it, "science conducts God with honor to its frontiers, thanking Him for His provisional services."[117] This is not perhaps the idea of Mr. Darwin, but it is at any rate the idea of some of his disciples, as we shall see by-and-by.

Thus the idea of the cause is kept out of sight. Let us now see the fate to which are consigned those other requirements of the reason—the eternal and the infinite. I take up Dr. Büchner's book, and I read: "We are incapable of forming an idea, even approximately, of the eternal and the infinite, because our mind, shut up within the limits of the senses, in what regards space and time, is quite unable to pass these bounds so as to rise to the height of these ideas." I follow the text, and thirteen lines further on, in the same page, I read, "Therefore matter and space must be eternal."[118] Observe well the use which this writer makes of the great ideas of the reason. Is it desired to employ them to prove the existence of God? He will have nothing to do with them. Is the object in question to deny God's existence? He makes use of them; and all in the same page. This is coarse work, no doubt, and Dr. Büchner damages his cause; but, under forms, often more subtle and more intelligent, the same sophism turns up in all systems of materialism.[119] It is affirmed that we have no real idea of the infinite, and it is sought at the same time to beguile the need which reason feels of this idea by applying it to matter.

Pray do not suppose that I am here attacking the natural sciences, in the interest of metaphysics. I am not attacking but defending them. I am endeavoring, as far as in me lies, to avenge them from the outrages which are offered to them by materialism, while it seeks to cover with their noble mantle its own shameful nakedness. Naturalists on the one hand, and theologians and philosophers on the other, are too often at war. They are men, and as nothing human is foreign to them, they are not unacquainted either with proud prepossessions, or with jealous rivalries, or with the miserable struggles of envy: with these things the passions are chargeable. But never render the sciences responsible for the errors of their representatives. Take away human frailties, and you shall see harmony established; the study of matter will thus agree with the study of mind, and the idea of nature with the idea of God. You will see all the sciences rise together in a majestic harmony. I say rise, and I say it advisedly; for the sciences also form a part of that golden chain which should unite the earth to heaven.