Creation or Evolution? a Philosophical Inquiry

CHAPTER I.

Nature and importance of the subject--Is there a relation of Creator and creature between God and man?--Rules of rational belief--Is natural theology a progressive science?

Man finds himself in the universe a conscious and thinking being. He has to account to himself for his own existence. He is impelled to this by an irresistible propensity, which is constantly leading him to look both inward and outward for an answer to the questions: What am I? How came I to be? What is the limit of my existence? Is there any other being in the universe between whom and myself there exists the relation of Creator and creature?

The whole history of the human mind, so far as we have any reliable history, is marked by this perpetual effort to find a First Cause.

However wild and fantastic may be the idea which the savage conceives of a being stronger and wiser than himself; however groveling and sensual may be his conception of the form, or attributes, or action of that being, he is, when he strives after the comprehension of his deity, engaged in the same intellectual effort that is made by the most civilized and cultivated of mankind, when, speculating upon the origin of the human soul, or its relation to the universe, or the genesis of the material world, they reach the sublime conception of an infinite God, the creator of all other spiritual existences and of all the forms of animal life, or when they end in the theory that there is no God, or in that other theory which supposes that what we call the creation, man included, is an evolution out of primordial matter, which has been operated upon by certain fixed laws, without any special interposition of a creating power, exerted in the production of the forms of animal life that now inhabit this earth, or ever have inhabited it. In the investigation of these contrasted theories, it is necessary to remember that the faculties of the human mind are essentially the same in all conditions of civilization or barbarism; that they differ only in the degree of their growth, activity, and power of reasoning, and therefore that there must be a common standard to which to refer all beliefs. The sole standard to which we can refer a belief in anything is its rationality, or a comparison between that which is believed and that which is most probable, according to the power of human reason to weigh probabilities. In the untutored and uncultivated savage, this power, although it exists, is still very feeble; partly because it is exercised upon only a few objects, and partly because the individual has comparatively but little opportunity to know all the elements which should be taken into account in determining a question of moral probabilities.

In the educated and cultivated man this power of judging probabilities, of testing beliefs by their rationality, is carried, or is capable of being carried, to the highest point of development, so as to comprehend in the calculation the full elements of the question, or at least to reduce the danger of some fatal omission to the minimum. It is, of course, true that the limited range of our faculties may prevent a full view of all the elements of any question of probability, even when our faculties have attained the highest point of development experienced by the age in which we happen to live. This renders the rationality of any hypothesis less than an absolutely certain test of truth. But this rationality is all that we have to apply to any question of belief; and if we attend carefully to the fact that moral probabilities constitute the groundwork of all our beliefs, and note the mental processes by which we reach conclusions upon any question depending upon evidence, we shall find reason to regard this power of testing beliefs by a conformity between the hypotheses and that which is most probable to be the most glorious attribute of the human understanding, as it is unquestionably the safest guide to which we can trust ourselves.

It may be that, while philosophers will not object to my definition of rationality, churchmen will ask what place I propose to assign to authority in the formation of beliefs. I answer, in the first place, that I am seeking to make myself understood by plain but reflecting and reasoning people. Such persons will perceive that what I mean by the rationality of a belief in any hypothesis is its fitness to be accepted and acted upon because it has in its favor the strongest probabilities of the case, so far as we can grasp those probabilities. I know of no other foundation for a belief in anything; for belief is the acceptance by the mind of some proposition, statement, or supposed fact, the truth of which depends upon evidence addressed to our senses, or to our intellectual perceptions, or to both. In the next place, in regard to the influence of authority over our beliefs, it is to be observed that the existence of the authority is a question to be determined by evidence, and this question, therefore, of itself involves an application of the test of rationality, or conformity with what is probable. But, assuming that the authority is satisfactorily established, it is not safe to leave all minds to the teaching of that authority, without the aid of the reasoning, which, independent of all authority, would conduct to the same conclusion. There are many minds to whom it is useless to say, You are commanded to believe. The question instantly arises, Commanded by whom, or what? And if the answer is, By the Church, or by the Bible, and the matter is left to rest upon that statement, there is great danger of unbelief. It is apparent that a large amount of what is called infidelity, or unbelief, now prevailing in the world, is due to the fact that men are told that they are commanded to believe, as if they were to be passive recipients of what is asserted, and because so little is addressed to their understandings.

I do not wish to be understood as maintaining that there is no place for authority in matters of what is called religious belief. I am quite sensible that there may be such a thing as authority even in regard to our beliefs; that it is quite within the range of possibilities that there should be such a relation between the human soul and an infinite Creator as to require the creature to accept by faith whatever a proved revelation requires that intelligent creature to believe. But, in view of the fact that what is specially called revealed religion is addressed to an intelligent creature, to whom the revelation itself must be proved by some evidence that will satisfy the mind, there is an evident necessity for treating the rationality of a belief in God as an independent question. In some way, by some process, we must reach a belief in the existence of a being before we can consider the claims of a message which that being is supposed to have sent to us. What we have to work with, before we can approach the teaching of what is called revealed religion, is the mind of man and the material universe. Do these furnish us with the rational basis for a belief in God?

And here I shall be expected to say what I mean by a belief in God. I have neither so little reverence for what I myself believe in, nor so little respect for my readers, as to offer them anything but the common conception of God. All that is necessary for me to do, in order to put my own mind in contact with that of the reader, is to express my conception of God just as it would be expressed by any one who is accustomed to think of the being called God by the Christian, the Jew, the Mohammedan, or by some other branches of the human race. These different divisions of mankind may differ in regard to some of the attributes of the Deity, or his dealings with men, or the history or course of his government of the world. But what is common to them all is a belief in God as the Supreme Being, who is self-existing and eternal, by whose will all things and all other beings were created, who is infinite in power and wisdom and in goodness and benevolence. As an intellectual conception, this idea of a Supreme Being, one only God, who never had a beginning and can have no end, and who is the creator of all other beings, excludes, of course, the polytheism of the ancient civilized nations, or that of the present barbarous tribes; and it especially excludes the idea of what the Greeks called Destiny, which was a power that governed the gods as well as the human race, and was anterior and superior to Jove himself. The simple conception of the one God held by the Christian, the Jew, or the Mohammedan, as the First Cause of the universe and all that it embraces, creating all things and all other beings by his will, in contrast with the modern idea that they came into existence without the volition of a conscious and intelligent being making special creations, is what I present to the mind of the reader.

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