A Candid Examination of Theism

by George John Romanes

Now it is obvious that we have here no real argument, since it is obvious that science can never be in a position to assert that atoms, the very existence of which is hypothetical, were never "made by any of the processes we call natural." The mere fact that in the universe, as we now know it, the evolution of material atoms is not observed to be taking place "by any of the processes we call natural," cannot possibly be taken as proof, or even as presumption, that there ever was a time when the material atoms now in existence were created by a supernatural cause. The fact cannot be taken to justify any such inference for the following reasons. In the first place, assuming the atomic theory to be true, and there is nothing in the argument to show that the now-existing atoms are not self-existing atoms, endowed with their peculiar and severally distinctive properties from all eternity. Doubtless the argument is, that as there appear to be some sixty or more elementary atoms constituting the raw material of the observable universe, it is incredible that they can all have owed their correlated properties to any cause other than that of a designing and manufacturing intelligence. But, in the next place—and here comes the demolishing force of the criticism—science is not in a position to assert that these sixty or more elementary atoms are in any real sense of the term elementary. The mere fact that chemistry is as yet in too undeveloped a condition to pronounce whether or not all the forms of matter known to her are modifications of some smaller number of elements, or even of a single element, cannot possibly be taken as a warrant for so huge an inference as that there are really more than sixty elements all endowed with absolutely distinctive properties by a supernatural cause. Now this consideration, which arises immediately from the doctrine of the relativity of knowledge, is alone amply sufficient to destroy the present argument. But we must not on this account lose sight of the fact that, even to our strictly relative science in its present embryonic condition, we are not without decided indications, not only that the so-called elements are probably for the most part compounds, but even that matter as a whole is one substance, which is itself probably but some modification of energy. Indeed, the whole tendency of recent scientific speculation is towards the view that the universe consists of some one substance, which, whether self-existing or created, is diverse only in its relation to ignorance. And if this view is correct, how obvious is the inference which I have elaborated in [§ 32], that all the diverse forms of matter, as we know them, were probably evolved by natural causes. So obvious, indeed, is this inference, that to resort to any supernatural hypothesis to explain the diverse properties of the various chemical elements appears to me a most glaring violation of the law of parcimony—as much more glaring, for instance, than the violation of this law by Paley, as the number and variety of organic species are greater than the number and variety of chemical species. And if it was illegitimate in Paley to use a mere absence of knowledge as to how the transmutation of apparently fixed species of animals was effected as equivalent to the possession of knowledge that such transmutation had not been effected, how much more illegitimate must it be to commit a similar sin against logic in the case of the chemical elements, where our classification is confessedly beset with numberless difficulties, and when we begin to discern that in all probability it is a classification essentially artificial. Lastly, the mere fact that the transmutation of chemical species and the evolution of chemical "atoms" are processes which we do not now observe as occurring in nature, is surely a consideration of a far more feeble kind than it is even in the case of biological species and biological evolution; seeing that nature's laboratory must be now so inconceivably different from what it was during the condensation of the nebula. What an atrocious piece of arrogance, therefore, it is to assert that "none of the processes of nature, since the time when nature began, have produced the slightest difference in the properties of any molecule!" No one can entertain a higher respect for Professor Clark Maxwell than I do; but a single sentence of such a kind as this cannot leave two opinions in any impartial mind concerning his competency to deal with such subjects.

I am therefore sorry to see this absurd argument approvingly incorporated in Professor Flint's work. He says, "I believe that no reply to these words of Professor Clark Maxwell is possible from any one who holds the ordinary view of scientific men as to the ultimate constitution of matter. They must suppose every atom, every molecule, to be of such a nature, to be so related to others and to the universe generally, that things may be such as we see them to be; but this their fitness to be built up into the structure of the universe is a proof that they have been made fit, and since natural forces could not have acted on them while not yet existent, a supernatural power must have created them, and created them with a view to their manifold uses." Here the inference so confidently drawn would have been a weak one even were we not able to see that the doctrine of natural evolution probably applies to inorganic nature no less than to organic. For the inference is drawn from considerations of a character so transcendental and so remote from science, that unless we wish to be deceived by a merely verbal argument, we must feel that the possibilities of error in the inference are so numerous and indefinite, that the inference itself is well-nigh worthless as a basis of belief. But when we add that in [Chapter IV.] of the foregoing essay it has been shown to be within the legitimate scope of scientific reasoning to conclude that material atoms have been progressively evolved pari passu with the natural laws of chemical combination, it is evident that any force which the present argument could ever have had must now be pronounced as neutralised. Natural causes have been shown, so far as scientific inference can extend, as not improbably sufficient to produce the observed effects; and therefore we are no longer free to invoke the hypothetical action of any supernatural cause.

The same observations apply to Professor Flint's theistic argument drawn from recent scientific speculations as to the vortex-ring construction of matter. If these speculations are sound, their only influence on Theism would be that of supplying a scientific demonstration of the substantial identity of Force and Matter, and so of supplying a still more valid basis for the theory as to the natural genesis of matter from a single primordial substance, in the manner sketched out in [Chapter IV.] For the argument adduced by Professor Flint, that as the manner in which the vorticial motion of a ring is originated has not as yet been suggested, therefore its origination must have been due to a "Divine impulse," is an argument which again uses the absence of knowledge as equivalent to its possession. We are in the presence of a very novel and highly abstruse theory, or rather hypothesis, in physics, which was originally suggested by, and has hitherto been mainly indebted to, empirical experiments as distinguished from mathematical calculations; and from the mere fact that, in the case of such a hypothesis, mathematicians have not as yet been able to determine the physical conditions required to originate vorticial motion, we are expected to infer that no such conditions can ever have existed, and therefore that every such vortex system, if it exists, is a miracle!

And substantially the same criticism applies to the argument which Professor Flint adduces—the argument also on which Professors Balfour and Tait lay so much stress in their work on the Unseen Universe—the argument, namely, as to the non-eternal character of heat. The calculations on which this argument depends would only be valid as sustaining this argument if they were based upon a knowledge of the universe as a whole; and therefore, as before, the absence of requisite knowledge must not be used as equivalent to its possession.

These, however, are the weakest parts of Professor Flint's work. I therefore gladly turn to those parts which are exceedingly cogent as written from his standpoint, but which, in view of the strictures on the teleological argument that I have adduced in [Chapters IV.] and [VI.], I submit to be now wholly valueless.

"How could matter of itself produce order, even if it were self-existent and eternal? It is far more unreasonable to believe that the atoms or constituents of matter produced of themselves, without the action of a Supreme Mind, this wonderful universe, than that the letters of the English alphabet produced the plays of Shakespeare, without the slightest assistance from the human mind known by that famous name. These atoms might, perhaps, now and then, here and there, at great distances and long intervals, produce by a chance contact some curious collocation or compound; but never could they produce order or organisation on an extensive scale, or of a durable character, unless ordered, arranged, and adjusted in ways of which intelligence alone can be the ultimate explanation. To believe that these fortuitous and indirected movements could originate the universe, and all the harmonies and utilities and beauties which abound in it, evinces a credulity far more extravagant than has ever been displayed by the most superstitious of religionists. Yet no consistent materialist can refuse to accept this colossal chance hypothesis. All the explanations of the order of the universe which materialists, from Democritus and Epicurus to Diderot and Lange, have devised, rest on the assumption that the elements of matter, being eternal, must pass through infinite combinations, and that one of these must be our present world—a special collocation among the countless millions of collocations, past and future. Throw the letters of the Greek alphabet, it has been said, an infinite number of times, and you must produce the 'Iliad' and all the Greek books. The theory of probabilities, I need hardly say, requires us to believe nothing so absurd.... But what is the 'Iliad' to the hymn of creation and the drama of providence?" &c.

Now this I conceive to have been a fully valid argument at the time it was published, and indeed the most convincing of all the arguments in favour of Theism. But, as already so frequently pointed out, the considerations adduced in [Chapter IV.] of the present work are utterly destructive of this argument. For this argument assumes, rightly enough, that the only alternative we have in choosing our hypothesis concerning the final explanation of things is either to regard that explanation as Intelligence or as Fortuity. This, I say, was a legitimate argument a few months ago, because up to that time no one had shown that strictly natural causes, as distinguished from chances, could conceivably be able to produce a cosmos; and although the several previous writers to whom Professor Flint alludes—and he might have alluded to others in this connection—entertained a dim anticipation of the fact that natural causes might alone be sufficient to produce the observed universe, still these dim anticipations were worthless as arguments so long as it remained impossible to suggest any natural principle whereby such a result could have been conceivably effected by such causes. But it is evident that Professor Flint's time-honoured argument is now completely overthrown, unless it can be proved that there is some radical error in the reasoning whereby I have endeavoured to show that natural causes not only may, but must, have produced existing order. The overthrow is complete, because the very groundwork of the argument in question is knocked away; a third possibility, of the nature of a necessity, is introduced, and therefore the alternative is no longer between Intelligence and Fortuity, but between Intelligence and Natural Causation. Whereas the overwhelming strength of the argument from Order has hitherto consisted in the supposition of Intelligence as the one and only conceivable cause of the integration of things, my exposition in [Chapter IV.] has shown that such integration must have been due, at all events in a relative or proximate sense, to a strictly physical cause—the persistence of force and the consequent self-evolution of natural law. And the question as to whether or not Intelligence may not have been the absolute or ultimate cause is manifestly a question altogether alien to the argument from Order; for if existing order admits of being accounted for, in a relative or proximate sense, by merely physical causes, the argument from a relative or proximate order is not at liberty to infer or to assume the existence of any higher or more ultimate cause. Although, therefore, in [Chapter V.], I have been careful to point out that the fact of existing order having been due to proximate or natural causes does not actually disprove the possible existence of an ultimate and supernatural cause, still it must be carefully observed that this negative fact cannot possibly justify any positive inference to the existence of such a cause.

Thus, upon the whole, it may be said, without danger of reasonable dispute, that as the argument from Order has hitherto derived its immense weight entirely from the fact that Intelligence appeared to be the one and only cause sufficient to produce the observed integration of the cosmos, this immense weight has now been completely counterpoised by the demonstration that other causes of a strictly physical kind must have been instrumental, if not themselves alone sufficient, to produce this integration, So that, just as in the case of Astronomy the demonstration of the one natural principle of gravity was sufficient to classify under one physical explanation several observed facts which many persons had previously attributed to supernatural causes; and just as in the more complex science of Geology the demonstration of the one principle of uniformitarianism was sufficient to explain, without the aid of supernaturalism, a still greater number of facts; and, lastly, just as in the case of the still more complex science of Biology the demonstration of the one principle of natural selection was sufficient to marshal under one scientific, or natural, hypothesis an almost incalculable number of facts which were previously explained by the metaphysical hypothesis of supernatural design; so in the science which includes all other sciences, and which we may term the science of Cosmology, I assert with confidence that in the one principle of the persistence of force we have a demonstrably harmonising principle, whereby all the facts within our experience admit of being collocated under one natural explanation, without there being the smallest reason to attribute these facts to any supernatural cause.

But perhaps the immense change which these considerations must logically be regarded as having produced in the speculative standing of the argument from teleology will be better appreciated if I continue to quote from Professor Flint's very forcible and thoroughly logical exposition of the previous standing of this argument. He says:—

"To ascribe the origination of order to law is a manifest evasion of the real problem. Law is order. Law is the very thing to be explained. The question is—Has law a reason, or is it without a reason? The unperverted human mind cannot believe it to be without a reason."