A handbook of Freethought

by Unknown

DESIGN ARGUMENT.

Nothing could have come by chance, it is said, and therefore it is inferred that this universe must have been created by a God.

Let us view this famous argument for a moment. God is something or nothing. To say he is nothing is to say there is no God. If he is something, he is not merely a property or quality, but an existence per se—an entity, a substance, whether material or immaterial is unimportant. If he is a substance, a material, or spiritual being, there must be order, harmony, and adaptation, or fitness, in his divine nature, to enable him to perceive, reflect, design, and execute his plans. If Deity does not reason, does not cogitate, but perceives truth without the labor of investigation and contrivance, he must still possess an adaptation or fitness thus to perceive, as well as to execute his design.

To say God is without order, harmony, and adaptation, or fitness, is to say he is a mere chaos—worse than that imaginary chaos that theologians tell us would result if divine agency were withdrawn from the universe. If a being without order, harmony, and adaptation, or a divine chaos, can create an orderly universe then there is no consistency in saying that unintelligent matter could not have produced the objects that we behold. If order, harmony, and adaptation do exist in the divine mind (or in the substance which produces thought, power, and purpose in the divine mind) they must be eternal, for that which constitutes the essential nature of a God must be the eternal basis of his being. If the order, harmony, and adaptation in God are co-existent with him, are eternal, they must be independent of design, for that which never began to exist could not have been produced, and does not therefore admit of design. If order, harmony, and adaptation are independent of design in the divine mind, it is certain that order, harmony, and adaptation exist, and are not evidence of a pre-existent, designing intelligence.

If order, harmony, and adaptation exist, which were not produced by design, which are therefore not evidence of design, it is unreasonable and illogical to infer designing intelligence from the fact alone that order, harmony, and adaptation exist in nature. Therefore an intelligent Deity cannot be inferred from the order, harmony, and adaptation in nature. If the order, harmony, and adaptation in Deity, to produce his thoughts, and to execute his plans, are eternal, why may not the formation of matter into worlds, and the evolutions of the various forms of vegetable and animal life on this globe be the result of the ceaseless action of self-existent matter in accordance with an inherent eternal principle of adaptation? Is it more reasonable to suppose the universe was created, or constructed by a being in whom exists the most wonderful order and harmony, and the most admirable adaptation to construct a universe (which order, harmony, and adaptation could have had no designing cause), than to suppose that the universe itself in its entirety is eternal, and the self-producing cause of all the manifestations we behold?

Is a God uncaused, and who made everything from nothing, more easy of belief than a universe uncaused and existing according to its own inherent nature? Is it wonderful that matter should be self-existent; that it should possess the power to form suns, planets, and construct that beautiful ladder of life that reaches from the lowest forms of the vegetable kingdom up to man? How much more wonderful that a great being should exist, without any cause, who had no beginning, and who is infinitely more admirable than the universe itself.

Again, the plan of a work is as much evidence of intelligence and design as the work which embodies the plan. The plan of a steam engine in the mind of Fitch—the plan of the locomotive in the mind of Stephenson—was as much evidence of design as the piece of machinery after its mechanical construction. If God be an omniscient being—a being who knows everything; to whose knowledge no addition can be made—his plans must be eternal—without beginning, and therefore uncaused. If God’s plans are not eternal; if from time to time new plans originate in his mind, there must be an addition to his knowledge, and if his knowledge admits of addition, it must be finite. But if his plans had no beginning; if, like himself, they are eternal, they must, like him, be independent of design. Now, the plan of a thing, we have already seen, is as much evidence of design as the object which embodies the plan. Since the plans of Deity are no proof of design that produced them (for they are supposed to be eternal), the plan of this universe, of course, was no evidence of a designing intelligence that produced it. But since the plan of the universe is as much evidence of design as the universe itself, and since the former is no evidence of design, it follows that design cannot be inferred from the existence of the universe.

The absurdity of the a posteriori argument of a God consists in the assumption that what we call order and adaptation in nature are evidence of design, when it is evident that whether there be a God or not, order and adaptation must have existed from eternity, and are not therefore necessarily proof of a designing cause. The reasoning of the theologian is like that of the Hindoo in accounting for the position of the earth. “Whatever exists must have some support,” said he. The earth exists, and is therefore supported. He imagined it resting on the back of an elephant. The elephant needing some support, he supposed rested on the back of a huge tortoise. He forgot that according to his own premise that whatever exists must have some support, that the tortoise should rest on something. The inconclusiveness of his reasoning is apparent to a child. Whatever exists is supported. The earth exists. Therefore, the earth is supported; it rests on an elephant; the elephant rests on a tortoise; the tortoise exists, but nothing is said about its support.

The theologian says order, harmony, and adaptation are evidence of a designing intelligence that produced them. The earth and its productions show order, harmony, and adaptation. Therefore, the earth and its productions have been produced by an intelligent designer. Just as the Hindoo stopped reasoning when he imagined the earth on an elephant, and the elephant on a tortoise, so the theologian stops reasoning when he says, God made the world. But as surely as from the premise that whatever exists must have some support, follows the conclusion that the tortoise rests on something, as rests on it the elephant, does it follow from the proposition that order, harmony, and adaptation are proof of an intelligent designer, that the order, harmony, and adaptation in the Deity to produce the effects ascribed to him are evidence of an intelligent designer who made him, as the various parts of nature, adapted to one another, are evidence of an intelligent designer that produced them. This reasoning leads to the conclusion that there has been an infinite succession of creative and created Gods, which is inconsistent with the idea of a First Cause, the creator of the universe. Then why attempt to explain the mysteries of the universe by imagining a God who produced everything but himself, and why argue from the order and fitness in the world the existence of a designer. It reminds me of the ostrich, that having buried its head in the sand, so as to render invisible its pursuers, fancies there is no further need of exertion to escape from the dangers and difficulties which surround it.

“Design represented as a search after final cause, until we come to a first cause, and then stop,” says F. N. Newman, “is an argument I confess which in itself brings me no satisfaction.” “The attempt,” says Buckle, “which Paley and others have made to solve this mystery by rising from the laws to the cause are evidently futile, because to the eye of reason the solution is as incomprehensible as the problem, and the arguments of the natural theologian, in so far as they are arguments, must depend on reason.”