§ 2. The Existence of a First Cause—An Uncaused Cause.[5]
The hypothesis of modern science is that everything as it now exists in the universe is the result of an infinite series of causes and effects; everything that happens is the result of something else that happened previously, and so on backwards to all eternity. The agnostic scientist says that we know nothing about this Infinite Cause, and that the idea of a First Cause is absurd. The Theist affirms that there is an Eternal Infinite Being who is the First Cause. He says that it is absurd not to believe in a First Cause, that materialistic theories are so absurd compared with his that for this reason alone he would remain a Theist. He appears entirely to lose sight of the fact that by predicating a First Cause he only removes the mystery a stage further back. He tells us nothing about the origin of the First Cause or the state of things that preceded it. The appearance of a First Cause upon the scene only increases the great mystery. Certainly it does not solve it. We are no forwarder. The creation of a mystery to explain a mystery is a very ancient custom, but it is a custom that has not met with the approbation of science.
The Theist apparently thinks, however, that he has science on his side. Thus, in the Baird Lectures of 1876, Dr. Flint stated that “the progress of science has not more convincingly and completely dispersed the once prevalent notion that the universe was created about 6,000 years ago than it has convincingly and completely established that everything of which our senses inform us has had a commencement in time.”[6] This opinion is still proclaimed by the Church to be the opinion of science. But modern science does not point to a beginning of the scheme of things. The consensus of opinion is entirely the other way. So far as we know, the ultimate cause recedes for ever and ever beyond the time when there was no distinction of earth and sea and atmosphere, all being mingled together in nebulous matter. Where would the Theist fix the “commencement”? The gaps on which theology at one time relied are rapidly disappearing. The apparent chasm between the organic and inorganic, between the lifeless and that which lives, according to the latest conceptions of science, no longer exists. Man may even succeed in manufacturing life, so that yet another teleological argument may collapse.
§ 3. The First Cause an Intelligence.
DESIGN AND DIRECTIVITY.
The argument from design is one which appeals perhaps more than any other to the average man. As he looks around and reflects, he feels that there must be design, and, therefore, a Designer. He feels also that God must be constantly present directing the carrying out of His design. He is in accord with the Theist who maintains that purpose and plan are manifest throughout the cosmos, and that, although it might be conceded that every step of the process has been achieved by the forces of Evolution, it is impossible to exclude the presiding activity of a mind which has planned the whole and predetermined the movements of every portion. We are to believe, then, that the Designer Himself put the forces in motion for the first time, that He knew exactly what would be the product of those forces down to the minutest detail and for all time, and yet, in face of the undeviating law-regulated cosmos which He has created, He in some way continues to guide these forces. From the very first step, the making of the electron and thence the atom, to the last, the making of man’s brain, the Theist sees the finger of God. The mystery of life is thus taken to be explained or diminished by asserting that it is produced and controlled by some other mystery. The only alternative to this belief, so he maintains, is a universe of random chance and capricious disorder. But “Haeckel and his colleagues hold that the direction which the evolutionary agencies take is not ‘fortuitous’; that they never could take but the one direction which they have actually taken.”[7] While “the Theist says the ultimate object must have been foreseen and the forces must have been guided, or they would never have worked steadily in this definite direction, the Monist says that these forces no more needed guiding than does a tramcar; there was only one direction possible for them.”[8] To refute this the apologist gravely replies that, “if you cast to the ground an infinite (or a finite) number of letters, they might after infinite gyrations make a word here and there; but we should think the man an enthusiast who expected even a short sentence, and a fool if he ever expected them to make a poem.” We are expected, it seems, to regard it as a miracle that natural forces should not lose their uniform character, and act miraculously! Evidently, either the question is begged or the analogy is absurd. An argument of this kind is worse than useless, for it only serves to demonstrate the hopelessness of the teleologist’s position. Spinoza’s position is more reasonable; for he conceives that all is the outcome of inexorable necessity—that neither chance nor purpose governs the eternal and the infinite.
DIRECTIVITY.
Directivity has hitherto been insisted upon by Theists. It would not conform with our ideas of God that He should remain a passive observer so soon as He had invented a machine that would never stop, and had started it going. Yet interference with the machinery is inconceivable, the universe being ruled by eternal, immutable, and irrefragable laws. “The only possible conception of telic [purposeful] action on a cosmic scale is that, from the start, the matter-force reality was of such a nature that it would infallibly evolve into the cosmos we form part of to-day. Any other conception of ‘guidance’ and ‘control’ is totally unthinkable. And, as a fact, Theists are settling down to formulate their position in that way. The interference, as Ward says, took place before the process began.”[9] A Law Maker can be postulated, but there is not a particle of evidence that He is also a Law Breaker.
Attempts are still made, however, by clerical scientists to prove that there is directivity. The Rev. Professor George Henslow, in his book, Present-Day Rationalism Critically Examined, argues that the tendency which living organisms show to develop in one direction rather than another, and their capacity to respond to environment, betoken a directing Mind. Granting, for the moment, that the doctrine of Natural Selection is false or inadequate, it seems to me that the acknowledged facts of the “struggle for existence” and “survival of the fittest” sufficiently dispose of this new apology. Organisms do not all adapt themselves to environment, and their fate, in consequence, is first one of increasing misery, and finally of extinction. Only those that do adapt themselves survive. It appears that a scientist when he turns apologist is conveniently able to forget all but the more fortunate organisms.