The Non-religion of the Future: A Sociological Study

by Jean-Marie Guyau

A maximum of liberty.

In any event, in default of other attributes, we ought to be given the maximum of possible liberty; admitting that we could not be created free and equal to God, our liberty should differ from His by a minimum. This minimum, being susceptible of infinite diminution, might become less than any conceivable difference; it might become, that is to say, infinitely little, practically zero; but we are far from any such exalted station, and if God gave us liberty He was very miserly about it.

An abuse of language to call us free.

To say the truth, it is only by an abuse of language that any such ideal liberty is ascribed to us as is attributed to God, and regarded as of infinite value. The freedom that religion ascribes to us is freedom of the will, power to do evil or good, a power the very consequence of which is irreconcilable with the notion of God. Without entering upon a consideration of what such a power would be and of its moral worth, why does our free-will exist in the midst of conditions so unfavourable to it, so calculated to render it ineffective? The sole response is the classic theory of the temptation. The temptation, as an explanation of the world, practically involves the hypothesis of a father exposing his children, as a means of testing their virtue, to temptations of vice and crime, and knowing beforehand that they will succumb. Morally, the conception is simply inadmissible; is worthy of the distant times when hearts were harder than they are to-day. More than that, the only beings that could in any proper sense be put to the proof are truly conscientious beings, for they alone are capable of entertaining a moral alternative. A reflective conscience is so rare in the world! By virtue of what temptation resisted are minerals and vegetables permitted to exist in unconsciousness and sleep, while animals are torn by the miseries of life and death without being able to convert their sufferings into a confirmation of the moral will or amelioration of their lot?

Doctrine of the fall.

The supreme resource of Christianity and of religions generally is the doctrine of the fall, but this explanation of evil as the result of a primitive imperfection is an explanation of evil by evil. The fall must have been preceded by some defect in the will itself, or the will would not have failed. Original sin is not an ultimate; one does not stumble if there is no obstacle in the way, and one’s legs are well made, and one is walking in the eye of the Lord. Sin involves temptation, and the doctrine of the temptation necessarily implies that God was the first tempter; morally, it was God himself who fell in the fall of His creatures by Him planned. To explain original sin, which is the root of all sin, the sin of Lucifer, theologians have resorted not to a temptation within the realm of sense, but to a temptation within the realm of intelligence. It was by pride that the angels fell. Their sin rose thus out of the very centre of their minds. But pride is incidental only to short-sightedness. Complete science is aware of its own limitations. Pride, therefore, results from insufficiency of knowledge. The pride of the angels was due to God. One may have reasons for wishing to do and for doing evil, but reasons do not hold in the face of reason itself. If, according to the partisans of free-will, human intelligence is capable by virtue of pride and inner perversity of creating out of nothing motives for evil-doing, it is at least incapable of so doing except in so far as its knowledge is limited, ambiguous and uncertain. Practically, nobody hesitates except in the absence of absolute knowledge. There is no such thing as rationally and consciously flying in the face of reason. Lucifer was, therefore, by his very nature impeccable. The will to do evil is borne of the opposition which an imperfect intelligence fancies it perceives, in a world hypothetically perfect, between its own advantage and the advantage of everybody else. But if God and his works are really perfect, such an antinomy between the good of the individual and the universal good, which even to the best human intelligences appears provisional only, would a fortiori appear so to one of the archangels of the intelligence, to the Light-bearer of thought. To know is to participate in the supreme truth, in the divine conscience; to possess all knowledge would be to possess, among other things, the moral insight of God; and how out the midst of all that divinity should anything Satanic arise?

God always responsible in the last resort.

To-day, when a sin is committed among men and it cannot be traced to any fault of education, or of environment, or of overwhelming temptation, men of science look for the explanation among the ancestors of the guilty person, in the conviction that they must be in the presence of a case of atavism. No such explanation could exist in the case of God’s firstborn. When the world was young and beautiful and good, original sin was as wonderful as the first appearance of the world itself; it was a veritable creation of something out of nothing. Satan’s creation was superior to God’s. His moral fiat nox was greater in genius and creative power than God’s fiat lux. In effect, every religious explanation of evil ultimately leads to the ascription of it to God himself or to a being more powerful than God, and in both cases equally the Creator is debased. That fact constitutes the principal reason that compromises the creation hypothesis, properly so called, for every philosophical mind.