A Candid Examination of Theism

by George John Romanes

Now here we have in another form that same vicious tendency to take refuge in the more obscure cases of physical causation as proofs of supernatural design—the obscurity in this case arising from the complexity of the causes and work, as in the former case it arose from their remoteness in time. But in both cases the same answer is patent, viz., that although "physical science cannot answer these questions" by pointing out the precise sequence of causes and effects, physical science is nevertheless quite as certain that this precise sequence arises in its last resort from the persistence of force, as she would be were she able to trace the whole process. And therefore, in view of the considerations set forth in [Chapter IV.] of this work, it is no longer open to Professor Flint or to any other writer logically to assert—"I can conceive of no other intelligent answer being given to" such questions "than that there is a God of wisdom."

The same answer awaits this author's further disquisition on other biological laws, so it is needless to make any further quotations in this connection. But there is one other principle embodied in some of these passages which it seems undesirable to overlook. It is said, for instance, "Natural selection might have had no materials, or altogether insufficient materials, to work with, or the circumstances might have been such that the lowest organisms were the best endowed for the struggle for life. If the earth were covered with water, fish would survive and higher creatures would perish."

Now the principle here embodied—viz., that had the conditions of evolution been other than they were, the results would have been different—is, of course, true; but clearly, on the view that all natural laws spring from the persistence of force, no other conditions than those which actually occurred, or are now occurring, could ever have occurred,—the whole course of evolution must have been, in all its phases and in all its processes, an unconditional necessity. But if it is said, How fortunate that the outcome, being unconditionally necessary, has happened to be so good as it is; I answer that the remark is legitimate enough if it is not intended to convey an implication that the general quality of the outcome points to beneficent design as to its cause. Such an implication would not be legitimate, because, in the first place, we have no means of knowing in how many cases, whether in planets, stars, or systems, the course of evolution has failed to produce life and mind—the one known case of this earth, whether or not it is the one success out of millions of abortions, being of necessity the only known case. In how vastly greater a number of cases the course of evolution may have been, so to speak, deflected by some even slight, though strictly necessary, cause from producing self-conscious intelligence, it is impossible to conjecture. But this consideration, be it observed, is not here adduced in order to disprove the assertion that telluric evolution has been effected by Intelligence; it is merely adduced to prove that such an assertion cannot rest on the single known result of telluric evolution, so long as an infinite number of the results of evolution elsewhere remain unknown.

And now, lastly, it must be observed that even in the one case with which we are acquainted, the net product of evolution is not such as can of itself point us to beneficent design. Professor Flint, indeed, in common with theologians generally, argues that it does. I will therefore briefly criticise his remarks on this subject, believing, as I do, that they form a very admirable illustration of what I conceive to be a general principle—viz., that minds which already believe in the existence of a Deity are, as a rule, not in a position to view this question of beneficence in nature in a perfectly impartial manner. For if the existence of a Deity is presupposed, a mind with any particle of that most noble quality—reverence—will naturally hesitate to draw conclusions that partake of the nature of blasphemy; and therefore, unconsciously perhaps to themselves, they endeavour in various ways to evade the evidence which, if honestly and impartially considered, can scarcely fail to negative the argument from beneficence in the universe.

Professor Flint argues that the "law of over-production," and the consequent struggle for existence, being "the reason why the world is so wonderfully rich in the most varied forms of life," is "a means to an end worthy of Divine Wisdom." "Although involving privation, pain, and conflict, its final result is order and beauty. All the perfections of sentient creatures are represented as due to it. Through it the lion has gained its strength, the deer its speed, and the dog its sagacity. The inference seems natural that these perfections were designed to be attained by it; that this state of struggle was ordained for the sake of the advantages which it is actually seen to produce. The suffering which the conflict involves may indicate that God has made even animals for some higher end than happiness—that he cares for animal perfection as well as for animal enjoyment; but it affords no reason for denying that the ends which the conflict actually serves it was intended to serve."

Now, whatever may be thought of such an argument as an attempted justification of beneficent design already on independent ground believed to exist, it is manifestly no argument at all as establishing any presumption in favour of such design, unless it could be shown that the Deity is so far limited in his power of adapting means to ends that the particular method adopted in this case was the best, all things considered, that he was able to adopt. For supposing the Deity to be, what Professor Flint maintains that he is—viz., omnipotent—and there can be no inference more transparent than that such wholesale suffering, for whatever ends designed, exhibits an incalculably greater deficiency of beneficence in the divine character than that which we know in any, the very worst, of human characters. For let us pause for one moment to think of what suffering in nature means. Some hundreds of millions of years ago some millions of millions of animals must be supposed to have been sentient. Since that time till the present, there must have been millions and millions of generations of millions of millions of individuals. And throughout all this period of incalculable duration, this inconceivable host of sentient organisms have been in a state of unceasing battle, dread, ravin, pain. Looking to the outcome, we find that more than half of the species which have survived the ceaseless struggle are parasitic in their habits, lower and insentient forms of life feasting on higher and sentient forms; we find teeth and talons whetted for slaughter, hooks and suckers moulded for torment—everywhere a reign of terror, hunger, and sickness, with oozing blood and quivering limbs, with gasping breath and eyes of innocence that dimly close in deaths of brutal torture! Is it said that there are compensating enjoyments? I care not to strike the balance; the enjoyments I plainly perceive to be as physically necessary as the pains, and this whether or not evolution is due to design. Therefore all I am concerned with is to show, that if such a state of things is due to "omnipotent design," the omnipotent designer must be concluded, so far as reason can infer, to be non-beneficent. And this it is not difficult to show. When I see a rabbit panting in the iron jaws of a spring-trap, I abhor the devilish nature of the being who, with full powers of realising what pain means, can deliberately employ his noble faculties of invention in contriving a thing so hideously cruel. But if I could believe that there is a being who, with yet higher faculties of thought and knowledge, and with an unlimited choice of means to secure his ends, has contrived untold thousands of mechanisms no less diabolical than a spring-trap; I should call that being a fiend, were all the world besides to call him God. Am I told that this is arrogance? It is nothing of the kind; it is plain morality, and to say otherwise would be to hide our eyes from murder because we dread the Murderer. Am I told that I am not competent to judge the purposes of the Almighty? I answer that if these are purposes, I am able to judge of them so far as I can see; and if I am expected to judge of his purposes when they appear to be beneficent, I am in consistency obliged also to judge of them when they appear to be malevolent. And it can be no possible extenuation of the latter to point to the "final result" as "order and beauty," so long as the means adopted by the "Omnipotent Designer" are known to have been so revolting. All that we could legitimately assert in this case would be, that so far as observation can extend, "he cares for animal perfection" to the exclusion of "animal enjoyment," and even to the total disregard of animal suffering. But to assert this would merely be to deny beneficence as an attribute of God.

The dilemma, therefore, which Epicurus has stated with great lucidity, and which Professor Flint quotes, appears to me so obvious as scarcely to require statement. The dilemma is, that, looking to the facts of organic nature, theists must abandon their belief, either in the divine omnipotence, or in the divine beneficence. And yet, such is the warping effect of preformed beliefs on the mind, that even so candid a writer as Professor Flint can thus write of this most obvious truth:—

"The late Mr. John Stuart Mill, for no better reason than that nature sometimes drowns men and burns them, and that childbirth is a painful process, maintained that God could not possibly be infinite. I shall not say what I think of the shallowness and self-conceit displayed by such an argument. What it proves is not the finiteness of God, but the littleness of man. The mind of man never shows itself so small as when it tries to measure the attributes and limit the greatness of its Creator."

But the argument—or rather the truism—in question is an attempt to do neither the one nor the other; it simply asserts the patent fact that, if God is omnipotent, and so had an unlimited choice of means whereby to accomplish the ends of "animal perfection," "animal enjoyment," and the rest; then the fact of his having chosen to adopt the means which he has adopted is a fact which is wholly incompatible with his beneficence. And on the other hand, if he is beneficent, the fact of his having adopted these means in order that the sum of ultimate enjoyment might exceed the sum of concomitant pain, is a fact which is wholly incompatible with his omnipotence. To a man who already believes, on independent grounds, in an omnipotent and beneficent Deity, it is no doubt possible to avoid facing this dilemma, and to rest content with the assumption that, in a sense beyond the reach of human reason, or even of human conception, the two horns of this dilemma must be united in some transcendental reconciliation; but if a man undertakes to reason on the subject at all, as he must and ought when the question is as to the existence of such a Deity, then clearly he has no alternative but to allow that the dilemma is a hopeless one. With inverted meaning, therefore, may we quote Professor Flint's words against himself:—"The mind of man never shows itself so small as when it tries to measure the attributes ... of its Creator;" for certainly, if Professor Flint's usually candid mind has had a Creator, it nowhere displays the "littleness" of prejudice in so marked a degree as it does when "measuring his attributes."

Thus in a subsequent chapter he deals at greater length with this difficulty of the apparent failure of beneficence in nature, arguing, in effect, that as pain and suffering "serve many good ends" in the way of warning animals of danger to life, &c., therefore we ought to conclude that, if we could see farther, we should see pain and suffering to be unmitigated good, or nearly so. Now this argument, as I have previously said, may possibly be admissible as between Christians or others who already believe in the existence and in the beneficence of God; but it is only the blindest prejudice which can fail to perceive that the argument is quite without relevancy when the question is as to the evidences of such existence and the evidences of such character. For where the fact of such an existence and character is the question in dispute, it clearly can be no argument to state its bare assumption by saying that if we knew more of nature we should find the relative preponderance of good over evil to be immeasurably greater than that which we now perceive. The platform of argument on which the question of "Theism" must be discussed is that of the observable Cosmos; and if, as Dr. Flint is constrained to admit, there is a fearful spectacle of misery presented by this Cosmos, it becomes mere question-begging to gloss over this aspect of the subject by any vague assumption that the misery must have some unobservable ends of so transcendentally beneficent a nature, that were they known they would justify the means. Indeed, this kind of discussion seems to me worse than useless for the purposes which the Professor has in view; for it only serves by contrast to throw out into stronger relief the natural and the unstrained character of the adverse interpretation of the facts. According to this adverse interpretation, sentiency has been evolved by natural selection to secure the benefits which are pointed out by Professor Flint; and therefore the fact of this, its cause, having been a mindless cause, clearly implies that the restriction of pain and suffering cannot be an active principle, or a vera causa, as between species and species, though it must be such within the limits of the same organism, and to a lesser extent within the limits of the same species. And this is just what we find to be the case. Therefore, without the need of resorting to wholly arbitrary assumptions concerning transcendental reconciliations between apparently needless suffering and a supposed almighty beneficence, the non-theistic hypothesis is saved by merely opening our eyes to the observable facts around us, and there seeing that pain and misery, alike in the benefits which they bring and in the frightful excesses which they manifest, play just that part in nature which this hypothesis would lead us to expect.