Modern Naturalists | Classics in the Philosophy of Religion

MODERN NATURALIST

From Classics in the Philosophy of Religion, by James Fieser

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CONTENTS

• Charles Darwin: Evolution and Agnosticism (from Autobiography, Variation on Plants, Descent)

• David Strauss: The New Cosmic View (from The Old Faith and the New Faith)

• John Stuart Mill: Empirical Limits of Theism (from Three Essays on Religion)

By the mid-to-late nineteenth century, the conversation shifted to the authority of natural science. While the idealist and anti-idealist system-builders of the nineteenth-century had reinterpreted religion as an expression of inward human needs, the thinkers in this chapter grounded their critiques in empirical investigation of the physical world and human history. They did not merely examine what religion felt like from within. Instead, they asked how traditional beliefs stood up to the emerging laws of nature and the rules of scientific evidence. This naturalistic shift provided a data-driven baseline that permanently dismantled the remaining foundations of traditional theology. Darwin provides the pivotal scientific breakthrough by demonstrating that the intricate adaptations within the biological world arise through natural selection. This discovery directly undermined the traditional design argument for God by replacing a conscious creator with an unguided natural mechanism. Strauss applied this naturalistic viewpoint to theology, declaring that the rise of modern science and evolutionary thought had made the old faith entirely unbelievable and obsolete. Mill then offered a philosophical evaluation of this post-Darwinian landscape. Using inductive logic, he argued that traditional revelation and the idea of God as first cause are indefensible. While Mill supports a rational skepticism on religious issues, he argues that it still leaves room for a secular religion of humanity and possibly a finite, well-meaning creator.

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CHARLES DARWIN:

EVOLUTION AND AGNOSTICISM

Charles Darwin (1809–1882) was born in Shrewsbury, England, into a prosperous and well‑educated family. His father was a physician and his grandfather the noted intellectual Erasmus Darwin. He studied first at the University of Edinburgh, where he briefly pursued medicine, and later at Cambridge University, where he prepared for the clergy but developed a growing interest in natural history. In 1831 he secured a position as naturalist on the HMS Beagle, a five‑year voyage that took him around the world and provided the observations that shaped his later scientific work. After returning to England, he settled into a peaceful life of research and writing at his home in Down, Kent, while maintaining extensive correspondence with scientists across Europe. Over the next two decades he published several works on geology and natural history, culminating in On the Origin of Species (1859), the book that made him internationally famous. He continued to write on biological topics for the rest of his life, producing influential studies on variation, human evolution, and emotional expression. He died at the age of 73 and was buried in Westminster Abbey. The selections below are from three of his writings.

In the first section from Darwin's Autobiography, he describes his gradual movement from Christian orthodoxy to agnosticism. He states how he came to doubt revelation when he recognized the Old Testament's "manifestly false history" and morally troubling depictions of God, concluding it was no more credible than the sacred books of other cultures. Further, he found the evidence for Christian miracles increasingly inadequate: ancient writers were not believable, the Gospels conflicted, and no amount of imagined archaeological discovery could restore his belief. The doctrine of eternal punishment, he argues, made Christianity morally repugnant, since it condemned many people he loved. Most importantly for Darwin, the discovery of natural selection undermined the design argument and explained both adaptation and suffering without invoking a divine creator. Finally, he rejected appeals to inward conviction, noting that such feelings vary across cultures and resemble the natural sense of sublimity rather than evidence of God. Unable to resolve ultimate questions, he accepted agnosticism as the only honest position.

In the second section from Variation of Animals and Plants (1868), Darwin explains in more detail how natural selection undermines the traditional design argument. First, the vast differences among species arise from countless small variations preserved or eliminated over immense time, producing structures as intricate as those attributed to design. Natural selection, he argues, is like a builder who constructs an impressive building solely by choosing among naturally irregular stones, without shaping any of the stones in advance. Finally, attributing each variation to divine guidance creates theological problems regarding intention, suffering, and predestination, whereas natural selection avoids these completely.

In the final section from the Descent of Man (1871), Darwin explains the natural, psychological, and social origins of early religious belief. First, he argues, many human groups historically lacked any concept of a single God. What is universal is animism, that is, the belief that spirits inhabit natural objects and forces. Second, this belief arises naturally once imagination and rudimentary reasoning develop: dreams, shadows, and the sense of a "double self" lead early humans to infer unseen agents. Third, these spirit‑beliefs evolve into gods endowed with human motives, producing fear, propitiation, and elaborate superstitions, including sacrifice and witchcraft. He continues arguing that the same mental faculties that generate religion also generate harmful customs, because early reasoning is weak and easily misled. Further, social pressure and early childhood ingraining give religious customs the force of instinct. This suggests that custom, not innate revelation, shapes belief and moral feeling.

FROM ORTHODOXY TO AGNOSTICISM (From Autobiography, 1887/1958)

Critique of Revelation and Christian Dogma

During these two years [October 1836 to January 1839] I was led to think much about religion. Whilst on board the Beagle I was quite orthodox, and I remember being heartily laughed at by several of the officers (though themselves orthodox) for quoting the Bible as an unanswerable authority on some point of morality. I suppose it was the novelty of the argument that amused them. But I had gradually come, by this time, to see that the Old Testament from its manifestly false history of the world, with the Tower of Babel, the rainbow as a sign, etc., etc., and from its attributing to God the feelings of a revengeful tyrant, was no more to be trusted than the sacred books of the Hindoos, or the beliefs of any barbarian. The question then continually rose before my mind and would not be banished,—is it credible that if God were now to make a revelation to the Hindoos, would he permit it to be connected with the belief in Vishnu, Siva, &c., as Christianity is connected with the Old Testament. This appeared to me utterly incredible.

By further reflecting that the clearest evidence would be requisite to make any sane man believe in the miracles by which Christianity is supported,—that the more we know of the fixed laws of nature the more incredible do miracles become,—that the men at that time were ignorant and credulous to a degree almost incomprehensible by us,—that the Gospels cannot be proved to have been written simultaneously with the events,—that they differ in many important details, far too important as it seemed to me to be admitted as the usual inaccuracies of eye-witnesses;—by such reflections as these, which I give not as having the least novelty or value, but as they influenced me, I gradually came to disbelieve in Christianity as a divine revelation. The fact that many false religions have spread over large portions of the earth like wild-fire had some weight with me. Beautiful as is the morality of the New Testament, it can hardly be denied that its perfection depends in part on the interpretation which we now put on metaphors and allegories.

But I was very unwilling to give up my belief;—I feel sure of this for I can well remember often and often inventing day-dreams of old letters between distinguished Romans and manuscripts being discovered at Pompeii or elsewhere which confirmed in the most striking manner all that was written in the Gospels. But I found it more and more difficult, with free scope given to my imagination, to invent evidence which would suffice to convince me. Thus disbelief crept over me at a very slow rate, but was at last complete. The rate was so slow that I felt no distress, and have never since doubted even for a single second that my conclusion was correct. I can indeed hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true; for if so the plain language of the text seems to show that the men who do not believe, and this would include my Father, Brother and almost all my best friends, will be everlastingly punished.

And this is a damnable doctrine.

Natural Selection and the Teleological Argument

Although I did not think much about the existence of a personal God until a considerably later period of my life, I will here give the vague conclusions to which I have been driven. The old argument of design in nature, as given by Paley, which formerly seemed to me so conclusive, fails, now that the law of natural selection has been discovered. We can no longer argue that, for instance, the beautiful hinge of a bivalve shell must have been made by an intelligent being, like the hinge of a door by man. There seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings and in the action of natural selection, than in the course which the wind blows. Everything in nature is the result of fixed laws.

But I have discussed this subject at the end of my book on the Variation of Domestic Animals and Plants, and the argument there given has never, as far as I can see, been answered.

But passing over the endless beautiful adaptations which we everywhere meet with, it may be asked how can the generally beneficent arrangement of the world be accounted for? Some writers indeed are so much impressed with the amount of suffering in the world, that they doubt if we look to all sentient beings, whether there is more of misery or of happiness;—whether the world as a whole is a good or a bad one. According to my judgment happiness decidedly prevails, though this would be very difficult to prove. If the truth of this conclusion be granted, it harmonises well with the effects which we might expect from natural selection. If all the individuals of any species were habitually to suffer to an extreme degree they would neglect to propagate their kind; but we have no reason to believe that this has ever or at least often occurred. Some other considerations, moreover, lead to the belief that all sentient beings have been formed so as to enjoy, as a general rule, happiness.

Everyone who believes, as I do, that all the corporeal and mental organs (excepting those which are neither advantageous or disadvantageous to the possessor) of all beings have been developed through natural selection, or the survival of the fittest, together with use or habit, will admit that these organs have been formed so that their possessors may compete successfully with other beings, and thus increase in number. Now an animal may be led to pursue that course of action which is the most beneficial to the species by suffering, such as pain, hunger, thirst, and fear,—or by pleasure, as in eating and drinking and in the propagation of the species, &c. or by both means combined, as in the search for food. But pain or suffering of any kind, if long continued, causes depression and lessens the power of action; yet is well adapted to make a creature guard itself against any great or sudden evil. Pleasurable sensations, on the other hand, may be long continued without any depressing effect; on the contrary they stimulate the whole system to increased action. Hence it has come to pass that most or all sentient beings have been developed in such a manner through natural selection, that pleasurable sensations serve as their habitual guides. We see this in the pleasure from exertion, even occasionally from great exertion of the body or mind,—in the pleasure of our daily meals, and especially in the pleasure derived from sociability and from loving our families. The sum of such pleasures as these, which are habitual or frequently recurrent, give, as I can hardly doubt, to most sentient beings an excess of happiness over misery, although many occasionally suffer much. Such suffering, is quite compatible with the belief in Natural Selection, which is not perfect in its action, but tends only to render each species as successful as possible in the battle for life with other species, in wonderfully complex and changing circumstances.

That there is much suffering in the world no one disputes. Some have attempted to explain this in reference to man by imagining that it serves for his moral improvement. But the number of men in the world is as nothing compared with that of all other sentient beings, and these often suffer greatly without any moral improvement. A being so powerful and so full of knowledge as a God who could create the universe, is to our finite minds omnipotent and omniscient, and it revolts our understanding to suppose that his benevolence is not unbounded, for what advantage can there be in the sufferings of millions of the lower animals throughout almost endless time? This very old argument from the existence of suffering against the existence of an intelligent first cause seems to me a strong one; whereas, as just remarked, the presence of much suffering agrees well with the view that all organic beings have been developed through variation and natural selection.

Inward Conviction, Sublimity, and the Problem of Immortality

At the present day the most usual argument for the existence of an intelligent God is drawn from the deep inward conviction and feelings which are experienced by most persons. But it cannot be doubted that Hindoos, Mahomadans and others might argue in the same manner and with equal force in favour of the existence of one God, or of many Gods, or as with the Buddists of no God. There are also many barbarian tribes who cannot be said with any truth to believe in what we call God: they believe indeed in spirits or ghosts, and it can be explained, as Tyler and Herbert Spencer have shown, how such a belief would be likely to arise.

Formerly I was led by feelings such as those just referred to, (although I do not think that the religious sentiment was ever strongly developed in me), to the firm conviction of the existence of God, and of the immortality of the soul. In my Journal I wrote that whilst standing in the midst of the grandeur of a Brazilian forest, "it is not possible to give an adequate idea of the higher feelings of wonder, admiration, and devotion which fill and elevate the mind." I well remember my conviction that there is more in man than the mere breath of his body. But now the grandest scenes would not cause any such convictions and feelings to rise in my mind. It may be truly said that I am like a man who has become colour-blind, and the universal belief by men of the existence of redness makes my present loss of perception of not the least value as evidence. This argument would be a valid one if all men of all races had the same inward conviction of the existence of one God; but we know that this is very far from being the case. Therefore I cannot see that such inward convictions and feelings are of any weight as evidence of what really exists. The state of mind which grand scenes formerly excited in me, and which was intimately connected with a belief in God, did not essentially differ from that which is often called the sense of sublimity; and however difficult it may be to explain the genesis of this sense, it can hardly be advanced as an argument for the existence of God, any more than the powerful though vague and similar feelings excited by music.

With respect to immortality, nothing shows me how strong and almost instinctive a belief it is, as the consideration of the view now held by most physicists, namely that the sun with all the planets will in time grow too cold for life, unless indeed some great body dashes into the sun and thus gives it fresh life.—Believing as I do that man in the distant future will be a far more perfect creature than he now is, it is an intolerable thought that he and all other sentient beings are doomed to complete annihilation after such long-continued slow progress. To those who fully admit the immortality of the human soul, the destruction of our world will not appear so dreadful.

The First Cause, Evolutionary Agnosticism, and Secular Morality

Another source of conviction in the existence of God, connected with the reason and not with the feelings, impresses me as having much more weight. This follows from the extreme difficulty or rather impossibility of conceiving this immense and wonderful universe, including man with his capacity of looking far backwards and far into futurity, as the result of blind chance or necessity. When thus reflecting I feel compelled to look to a First Cause having an intelligent mind in some degree analogous to that of man; and I deserve to be called a Theist.

This conclusion was strong in my mind about the time, as far as I can remember, when I wrote the Origin of Species; and it is since that time that it has very gradually with many fluctuations become weaker. But then arises the doubt—can the mind of man, which has, as I fully believe, been developed from a mind as low as that possessed by the lowest animal, be trusted when it draws such grand conclusions? May not these be the result of the connection between cause and effect which strikes us as a necessary one, but probably depends merely on inherited experience? Nor must we overlook the probability of the constant inculcation in a belief in God on the minds of children producing so strong and perhaps an inherited effect on their brains not yet fully developed, that it would be as difficult for them to throw off their belief in God, as for a monkey to throw off its instinctive fear and hatred of a snake. I cannot pretend to throw the least light on such abstruse problems. The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us; and I for one must be content to remain an Agnostic.

A man who has no assured and ever present belief in the existence of a personal God or of a future existence with retribution and reward, can have for his rule of life, as far as I can see, only to follow those impulses and instincts which are the strongest or which seem to him the best ones. A dog acts in this manner, but he does so blindly. A man, on the other hand, looks forwards and backwards, and compares his various feelings, desires and recollections. He then finds, in accordance with the verdict of all the wisest men that the highest satisfaction is derived from following certain impulses, namely the social instincts. If he acts for the good of others, he will receive the approbation of his fellow men and gain the love of those with whom he lives; and this latter gain undoubtedly is the highest pleasure on this earth. By degrees it will become intolerable to him to obey his sensuous passions rather than his higher impulses, which when rendered habitual may be almost called instincts. His reason may occasionally tell him to act in opposition to the opinion of others, whose approbation he will then not receive; but he will still have the solid satisfaction of knowing that he has followed his innermost guide or conscience.—As for myself I believe that I have acted rightly in steadily following and devoting my life to science. I feel no remorse from having committed any great sin, but have often and often regretted that I have not done more direct good to my fellow creatures. My sole and poor excuse is much ill-health and my mental constitution, which makes it extremely difficult for me to turn from one subject or occupation to another. I can imagine with high satisfaction giving up my whole time to philanthropy, but not a portion of it; though this would have been a far better line of conduct.

AGAINST THE DESIGN ARGUMENT (from Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication, 1868, 2.28)

The Architect Analogy and Natural Selection

In accordance with the views maintained by me in this work and elsewhere, not only the various domestic races, but the most distinct genera and orders within the same great class – for instance, mammals, birds, reptiles, and fishes – are all the descendants of one common progenitor, and we must admit that the whole vast amount of difference between these forms has primarily arisen from simple variability. To consider the subject under this point of view is enough to strike one dumb with amazement. But our amazement ought to be lessened when we reflect that beings almost infinite in number, during an almost infinite lapse of time, have often had their whole organization rendered in some degree plastic [i.e., flexible], and that each slight modification of structure which was in any way beneficial under excessively complex conditions of life has been preserved, whilst each which was in any way injurious has been rigorously destroyed. And the long-continued accumulation of beneficial variations will infallibly have led to structures as diversified, as beautifully adapted for various purposes and as excellently coordinated, as we see in the animals and plants around us. Hence I have spoken of selection as the paramount power, whether applied by man to the formation of domestic breeds, or by nature to the production of species.

I may recur to the metaphor given in a former chapter: if an architect were to rear a noble and commodious edifice, without the use of cut stone, by selecting from the fragments at the base of a precipice wedge-formed stones for his arches, elongated stones for his lintels, and flat stones for his roof, we should admire his skill and regard him as the paramount power. Now, the fragments of stone, though indispensable to the architect, bear to the edifice built by him the same relation which the fluctuating variations of organic beings bear to the varied and admirable structures ultimately acquired by their modified descendants.

Some authors have declared that natural selection explains nothing, unless the precise cause of each slight individual difference be made clear. If it were explained to a savage utterly ignorant of the art of building, how the edifice had been raised stone upon stone, and why wedge-formed fragments were used for the arches, flat stones for the roof, etc.; and if the use of each part and of the whole building were pointed out, it would be unreasonable if he declared that nothing had been made clear to him, because the precise cause of the shape of each fragment could not be told. But this is a nearly parallel case with the objection that selection explains nothing, because we know not the cause of each individual difference in the structure of each being.

The shape of the fragments of stone at the base of our precipice may be called accidental, but this is not strictly correct; for the shape of each depends on a long sequence of events, all obeying natural laws; on the nature of the rock, on the lines of deposition or cleavage, on the form of the mountain, which depends on its upheaval and subsequent denudation, and lastly on the storm or earthquake which throws down the fragments. But in regard to the use to which the fragments may be put, their shape may be strictly said to be accidental. And here we are led to face a great difficulty, in alluding to which I am aware that I am traveling beyond my proper province. An omniscient Creator must have foreseen every consequence which results from the laws imposed by Him. But can it be reasonably maintained that the Creator intentionally ordered, if we use the words in any ordinary sense, that certain fragments of rock should assume certain shapes so that the builder might erect his edifice?

The Rejection of Guided Variation

If the various laws which have determined the shape of each fragment were not predetermined for the builder's sake, can it be maintained with any greater probability that He specially ordained for the sake of the breeder each of the innumerable variations in our domestic animals and plants; – many of these variations being of no service to man, and not beneficial, far more often injurious, to the creatures themselves? Did He ordain that the crop and tail-feathers of the pigeon should vary in order that the fancier might make his grotesque pouter and fantail breeds? Did He cause the frame and mental qualities of the dog to vary in order that a breed might be formed of indomitable ferocity, with jaws fitted to pin down the bull for man's brutal sport? But if we give up the principle in one case, – if we do not admit that the variations of the primeval dog were intentionally guided in order that the greyhound, for instance, that perfect image of symmetry and vigor, might be formed, – no shadow of reason can be assigned for the belief that variations, alike in nature and the result of the same general laws, which have been the groundwork through natural selection of the formation of the most perfectly adapted animals in the world, man included, were intentionally and specially guided. However much we may wish it, we can hardly follow Professor Asa Gray in his belief "that variation has been led along certain beneficial lines," like a stream "along definite and useful lines of irrigation." If we assume that each particular variation was from the beginning of all time preordained, then that plasticity of organization, which leads to many injurious deviations of structure, as well as the redundant power of reproduction which inevitably leads to a struggle for existence, and, as a consequence, to the natural selection or survival of the fittest, must appear to us superfluous laws of nature. On the other hand, an omnipotent and omniscient Creator ordains everything and foresees everything. Thus we are brought face to face with a difficulty as insoluble as is that of free will and predestination.

NATURAL ORIGIN OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF (from Descent of Man, 1871, chapter 3-4)

Animism and Spirit Belief

There is no evidence that man was aboriginally endowed with the ennobling belief in the existence of an Omnipotent God. On the contrary there is ample evidence, derived not from hasty travelers, but from men who have long resided with savages, that numerous races have existed, and still exist, who have no idea of one or more gods, and who have no words in their languages to express such an idea. The question is of course wholly distinct from that higher one, whether there exists a Creator and Ruler of the universe; and this has been answered in the affirmative by some of the highest intellects that have ever existed.

If, however, we include under the term "religion" the belief in unseen or spiritual agencies, the case is wholly different; for this belief seems to be universal with the less civilized races. Nor is it difficult to comprehend how it arose. As soon as the important faculties of the imagination, wonder, and curiosity, together with some power of reasoning, had become partially developed, man would naturally crave to understand what was passing around him, and would have vaguely speculated on his own existence. As Mr. M'Lennan has remarked, "Some explanation of the phenomena of life, a man must feign for himself, and to judge from the universality of it, the simplest hypothesis, and the first to occur to men, seems to have been that natural phenomena are ascribable to the presence in animals, plants, and things, and in the forces of nature, of such spirits prompting to action as men are conscious they themselves possess." It is also probable, as Mr. Tylor has shewn, that dreams may have first given rise to the notion of spirits; for savages do not readily distinguish between subjective and objective impressions. When a savage dreams, the figures which appear before him are believed to have come from a distance, and to stand over him; or "the soul of the dreamer goes out on its travels, and comes home with a remembrance of what it has seen." In a like manner Mr. Herbert Spencer, in his ingenious essay in the "Fortnightly Review", accounts for the earliest forms of religious belief throughout the world, by man being led through dreams, shadows, and other causes, to look at himself as a double essence, corporeal and spiritual. As the spiritual being is supposed to exist after death and to be powerful, it is propitiated by various gifts and ceremonies, and its aid invoked. He then further shews that names or nicknames given from some animal or other object, to the early progenitors or founders of a tribe, are supposed after a long interval to represent the real progenitor of the tribe; and such animal or object is then naturally believed still to exist as a spirit, is held sacred, and worshipped as a god. Nevertheless I cannot but suspect that there is a still earlier and ruder stage, when anything which manifests power or movement is thought to be endowed with some form of life, and with mental faculties analogous to our own.) But until the faculties of imagination, curiosity, reason, etc., had been fairly well developed in the mind of man, his dreams would not have led him to believe in spirits, any more than in the case of a dog.

The tendency in savages to imagine that natural objects and agencies are animated by spiritual or living essences, is perhaps illustrated by a little fact which I once noticed: my dog, a full-grown and very sensible animal, was lying on the lawn during a hot and still day; but at a little distance a slight breeze occasionally moved an open parasol, which would have been wholly disregarded by the dog, had any one stood near it. As it was, every time that the parasol slightly moved, the dog growled fiercely and barked. He must, I think, have reasoned to himself in a rapid and unconscious manner, that movement without any apparent cause indicated the presence of some strange living agent, and that no stranger had a right to be on his territory.

Deities, Devotion, and Superstition

The belief in spiritual agencies would easily pass into the belief in the existence of one or more gods. For savages would naturally attribute to spirits the same passions, the same love of vengeance or simplest form of justice, and the same affections which they themselves feel. The Fuegians appear to be in this respect in an intermediate condition, for when the surgeon on board the "Beagle" shot some young ducklings as specimens, York Minster declared in the most solemn manner, "Oh, Mr. Bynoe, much rain, much snow, blow much"; and this was evidently a retributive punishment for wasting human food. So again he related how, when his brother killed a "wild man," storms long raged, much rain and snow fell. Yet we could never discover that the Fuegians believed in what we should call a God, or practiced any religious rites; and Jemmy Button, with justifiable pride, stoutly maintained that there was no devil in his land. This latter assertion is the more remarkable, as with savages the belief in bad spirits is far more common than that in good ones.

The feeling of religious devotion is a highly complex one, consisting of love, complete submission to an exalted and mysterious superior, a strong sense of dependence, fear, reverence, gratitude, hope for the future, and perhaps other elements. No being could experience so complex an emotion until advanced in his intellectual and moral faculties to at least a moderately high level. Nevertheless, we see some distant approach to this state of mind in the deep love of a dog for his master, associated with complete submission, some fear, and perhaps other feelings. The behavior of a dog when returning to his master after an absence, and, as I may add, of a monkey to his beloved keeper, is widely different from that towards their fellows. In the latter case the transports of joy appear to be somewhat less, and the sense of equality is shewn in every action. Professor Braubach goes so far as to maintain that a dog looks on his master as on a god. It is said, that Bacon long ago, and the poet Burns, held the same notion.

The same high mental faculties which first led man to believe in unseen spiritual agencies, then in fetishism, polytheism, and ultimately in monotheism, would infallibly lead him, as long as his reasoning powers remained poorly developed, to various strange superstitions and customs. Many of these are terrible to think of—such as the sacrifice of human beings to a blood-loving god; the trial of innocent persons by the ordeal of poison or fire; witchcraft, etc.—yet it is well occasionally to reflect on these superstitions, for they shew us what an infinite debt of gratitude we owe to the improvement of our reason, to science, and to our accumulated knowledge. As Sir J. Lubbock has well observed, "it is not too much to say that the horrible dread of unknown evil hangs like a thick cloud over savage life, and embitters every pleasure." These miserable and indirect consequences of our highest faculties may be compared with the incidental and occasional mistakes of the instincts of the lower animals.

The Influence of Custom on Religion

The wishes and opinions of the members of the same community, expressed at first orally, but later by writing also, either form the sole guides of our conduct, or greatly reinforce the social instincts; such opinions, however, have sometimes a tendency directly opposed to these instincts. This latter fact is well exemplified by the Law of Honor, that is, the law of the opinion of our equals, and not of all our countrymen. The breach of this law, even when the breach is known to be strictly accordant with true morality, has caused many a man more agony than a real crime. We recognize the same influence in the burning sense of shame which most of us have felt, even after the interval of years, when calling to mind some accidental breach of a trifling, though fixed, rule of etiquette. The judgment of the community will generally be guided by some rude experience of what is best in the long run for all the members; but this judgment will not rarely err from ignorance and weak powers of reasoning. Hence the strangest customs and superstitions, in complete opposition to the true welfare and happiness of mankind, have become all-powerful throughout the world. We see this in the horror felt by a Hindoo who breaks his caste, and in many other such cases. It would be difficult to distinguish between the remorse felt by a Hindoo who has yielded to the temptation of eating unclean food, from that felt after committing a theft; but the former would probably be the more severe.

How so many absurd rules of conduct, as well as so many absurd religious beliefs, have originated, we do not know; nor how it is that they have become, in all quarters of the world, so deeply impressed on the mind of men; but it is worthy of remark that a belief constantly inculcated during the early years of life, whilst the brain is impressible, appears to acquire almost the nature of an instinct; and the very essence of an instinct is that it is followed independently of reason. Neither can we say why certain admirable virtues, such as the love of truth, are much more highly appreciated by some savage tribes than by others; nor, again, why similar differences prevail even amongst highly civilized nations. Knowing how firmly fixed many strange customs and superstitions have become, we need feel no surprise that the self-regarding virtues, supported as they are by reason, should now appear to us so natural as to be thought innate, although they were not valued by man in his early condition.

Source: Charles Darwin, Autobiography (1887/1958); Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication (1868); Darwin, Charles. Descent of Man (1871), adapted.

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DAVID STRAUSS:

THE NEW COSMIC VIEW

David Friedrich Strauss (1808–1874) was born in Ludwigsburg, in the German kingdom of Württemberg, and educated at the seminary in Tübingen, where he learned both traditional Lutheran theology and the emerging historical‑critical methods of biblical scholarship. After a brief period as a parish assistant and lecturer, he turned toward independent study, producing in 1835–36 his groundbreaking and controversial Life of Jesus. In this he argued that many elements of the Gospel narratives are best understood as mythic expressions of early Christian belief rather than literal historical reports. The book provoked a storm of criticism, cost him his academic prospects, and forced him into a life of writing outside the university system. Over the following decades he continued to publish works on theology, philosophy, and cultural criticism, including a later Life of Jesus for the German People (1864). In his final years he wrote The Old Faith and the New Faith (1872), a forthright statement of his mature naturalistic worldview that reignited public controversy. He died in Ludwigsburg in 1874 at the age of 66.

The first discussion below is from the conclusion of Strauss's Life of Jesus. In the section on accounts of Jesus discredited, Strauss admits that his historical criticism of the Gospels has torn apart nearly everything traditional Christians believe about Jesus. It has stripped away the miracles, the divine backstory, and much of the comfort people have drawn from their faith for centuries. He acknowledges this feels devastating, like tearing down the bridge between God and humanity. However, he argues that believers already carry some religious doubt inside them, and skeptics already carry some reverence for religion. Thus the two sides are not as opposed as they seem. Once the old stories are shown not to be literal history, they do not disappear, but instead move inside the believer as ideas and doctrines. Strauss then offers his replacement idea in the section on Hegelian human development as divine incarnation. Instead of thinking that one man, Jesus, was literally God in human form, Strauss suggests that the true "God becoming human" is humanity as a whole, which, as Hegel describes, unfolds across all of history. Every trait Christians assign to Christ (miracle-working, sinlessness, dying and rising to new life) fits with the entire human race better than with one person. Accordingly, Christ's story is not false, it is rather a symbol for what all of humanity accomplishes together.

The next set of selections are from Strauss's book The Old Faith and the New Faith. Written nearly 40 years later, Strauss has become more skeptical. He rejects his Hegelian solution an accepts the finding of modern science. He suggests that an entirely secular approach to religion where the values that we once grounded in religion can be regrounded in human secular society. Strauss opens by describing the growing conflict between science and traditional religion. Many people, he says, now sense that Christianity no longer fits with modern knowledge, but most try to preserve it by trimming away outdated doctrines, denying papal infallibility, redefining Christ, or softening miracles. A smaller minority, however, sees such compromises as incoherent: once Jesus is no longer divine and the Gospels no longer historically reliable, the entire system of worship, dogma, and ecclesiastical authority collapses. Strauss speaks for this minority and announces that he will address four questions that define the transition from the "old faith" to a modern, scientific worldview.

The first question is "Are we still Christians?" and his answer is "no". To show why, he examines the Apostles' Creed, whose claims about creation, miracles, and salvation contradict astronomy, geology, and historical criticism. Genesis cannot survive modern science's vast timescales. Doctrines of the Fall, Original Sin, and eternal damnation are morally indefensible. The Gospels cannot yield a reliable human portrait of Jesus because they are shaped by supernatural interests and conflicting traditions. Christianity's ethical insights remain valuable, but its supernatural structure cannot be retained. Speaking plainly, Strauss concludes that modern people are no longer Christians in any doctrinal sense. To the second question, "Do we still have a religion?" his answer is yes and no. He accepts the anthropological origin of religion, where early humans turned to gods out of fear, suffering, and uncertainty. It is true that modern people still experience a legitimate religious feeling of reverence, dependence, and moral seriousness. But these are directed toward the cosmos, not toward a personal deity. To deny this cosmic dependence would be to deny the humility owed to the natural order itself.

To the third question, "What Is Our Conception of the Universe?", he presents a fully naturalistic account as provided by modern science. It is a monistic, law‑governed cosmos shaped by natural forces rather than divine interventions. Drawing on Kant, Laplace, and especially Darwin, he argues that evolution provides the first scientific account capable of replacing miracles and design. Darwin shows how complex adaptations arise without foresight, thereby removing the last refuge of supernatural explanation. This worldview, he says, is not crude materialism, but rather a unified vision in which mind and life emerge from the same natural processes that shape the stars. To the fourth question, "What is our rule of life?", he gives an answer based on human development and not in divine command. Human beings did not fall from perfection but rose from animal origins through social cooperation and cultural growth. Morality arises from the need for mutual support, and it is enhanced through the cultivation of dignity, sympathy, and conscience. No church is required. Ethical life grows from education, culture, and the shared work of humanity. The task is to live as members of a developing species, advancing justice and human flourishing within the natural world that produced us.

MOVING BEYOND JESUS THE INDIVIDUAL (from Life of Jesus Critically Examined, 1835)

Accounts of Jesus Discredited (Section 144)

144. The results of the inquiry we have now brought to a close have apparently annihilated the greatest and most valuable part of what the Christian has been inclined to believe concerning his Savior Jesus. They have uprooted all the animating motives he has gathered from his faith, and withered all his consolations. The boundless store of truth and life which for eighteen centuries has been the nourishment of humanity seems irretrievably dissipated. The most sublime is leveled with the dust, God is divested of his grace, man is divested of his dignity, and the tie between heaven and earth is broken. Piety turns away with horror from so fearful an act of desecration, and, strong in the unshakable self-evidence of its faith, declares that no matter what an audacious criticism may attempt, everything the Scriptures declare and the Church believes of Christ will still stand as eternal truth, and not one part of it needs to be given up. Thus, at the conclusion of the criticism of the history of Jesus, this problem presents itself: to re-establish dogmatically what has been destroyed critically.

At first glance, this problem appears to exist merely as a challenge posed by the believer to the critic, not as something demanded by the moral requirements of either. The believer would seem to need no re-establishment of the faith, since for him it cannot be undermined by criticism. The critic seems to need no such re-establishment either, since he is able to bear the annihilation that results from his own work. It might therefore be supposed that when the critic tries to rescue the dogma from the flames that his own criticism has kindled, he is acting falsely toward his own position. This is because, to satisfy the believer, he would be treating as a jewel something that is worthless to him; while toward the believer, he would be undertaking a pointless task, laboring to defend something the believer considers to be in no danger at all.

But on closer view, the case appears otherwise. In all belief that is not built on demonstration, doubt is inherent, even if it is not developed. The most firmly believing Christian carries within him the elements of criticism as a dormant deposit of unbelief, or rather as a negative seed of knowledge, and only by constantly holding it in check can he maintain the dominance of his faith, which is thus essentially a re-established faith. And just as the believer is at bottom a skeptic or critic, so too, on the other hand, the critic is at bottom a believer. To the extent that he differs from the naturalistic theologian and the free-thinker — to the extent that his criticism is shaped in the spirit of the nineteenth century — he is filled with reverence for every religion, and especially for the substance of the most sublime of all religions, the Christian religion, which he recognizes as identical with the deepest philosophical truth. Hence, after having shown in the course of his criticism only the differences between his own conviction and the historical belief of the Christian, he will feel compelled to place that underlying identity in its proper light.

Further, our criticism, though it deals with details as it proceeds, resolves itself, once it becomes part of our inner conviction, into the simple element of doubt. The believer neutralizes this doubt with an equally simple denial, and then spreads out anew, in undiminished abundance, the full richness of his creed. But by doing this, the conclusions of criticism are only set aside, not overcome, and what is believed is supported by no intermediate proof, but rests entirely on its own self-evidence. Criticism cannot help but turn against this lack of intermediate proof, and so the controversy that seemed finished is renewed, throwing us back to the beginning of our inquiry — yet with a difference that marks a step forward in the discussion. Until now, our criticism has had as its object the data of Christianity as historically presented in the Gospel records. Now, these data, having been called into question in their historical form, take on the form of a mental product instead, and find refuge in the soul of the believer. There they exist not as a simple history, but as a reflected history — that is, as a confession of faith, a received dogma. Against this dogma, which presents itself wholly unsupported by evidence, criticism must indeed rise up, as it does against every deficiency of proof, acting as a negating power and demanding intermediate proof. It will, however, no longer be occupied with history, but with doctrines. In this way, our historical criticism is followed by a dogmatic criticism, and it is only after faith has passed through both of these trials that it is fully tested and made into a genuine science.

Hegelian Human Development as Divine Incarnation (Section 151)

151. Thus, by a higher mode of argument, from the idea of God and man in their reciprocal relation, the truth of the conception which the church forms of Christ appears to be confirmed, and we seem to be led back to the orthodox point of view, though by an inverted path. For while there, the truth of the church's conceptions concerning Christ is deduced from the correctness of the Gospel history, here, the accuracy of the history is deduced from the truth of those conceptions. . . . Though I may see the human mind, in its unity with the divine, more and more fully establishing itself over the course of the world's history as the power that subdues nature, this is quite a different thing from conceiving of a single man endowed with such power for individual, voluntary acts. Lastly, from the truth that the suppression of natural existence is the resurrection of the spirit, the bodily resurrection of an individual can never be deduced.

We would thus have fallen back again to Kant's point of view, which we ourselves found unsatisfactory, for if the idea has no corresponding reality, it is an empty [moral] obligation and ideal. But do we then deprive the idea of all reality? Not at all — we reject only what does not follow from the premises. If reality is ascribed to the idea of the unity of the divine and human natures, does this mean admitting that this unity must actually have been manifested once, as it never had been and never will be again, in one individual? This is indeed not the way the Idea realizes itself. It is not in the habit of lavishing all its fullness on one example while being stingy toward all others — expressing itself perfectly in that one individual and imperfectly in all the rest. Rather, it prefers to distribute its riches among a multitude of examples that complete one another in turn — through the alternating rise and fall of a series of individuals. And is this not a true realization of the idea? Is not the idea of the unity of the divine and human natures real in a far higher sense when I regard the whole human race as its realization, rather than singling out one man as such a realization? Is not an incarnation of God from eternity a truer one than an incarnation limited to a single point in time?

This is the key to the whole of Christology: that instead of an individual, we place, as the subject of the predicate the church assigns to Christ, an idea — but an idea that has existence in reality, not merely in the mind, as it does for Kant. In an individual, a God-man, the properties and functions the church ascribes to Christ contradict one another; in the idea of the human race, they agree perfectly. Humanity is the union of the two natures — God become man, the infinite manifesting itself in the finite, and the finite spirit remembering its infinite nature. It is the child of the visible Mother and the invisible Father, Nature and Spirit. It is the worker of miracles, in that over the course of human history the spirit more and more fully subdues nature, both within and around man, until nature lies before him as inert matter on which he exercises his active power. It is the sinless existence, for the course of its development is blameless — corruption clings only to the individual, and does not touch the human race or its history. It is Humanity that dies, rises, and ascends to heaven, for from the negation of its outward, visible life there always arises a higher spiritual life. From the suppression of its mortality as a personal, national, and earthly spirit arises its union with the infinite spirit of the heavens. Through faith in this Christ, especially in his death and resurrection, man is justified before God — that is, by the kindling within him of the idea of Humanity, the individual man shares in the divinely human life of the species. Now the central element of that idea is that the negation of the merely natural and sensory life, which is itself the negation of the spirit (and is therefore the negation of a negation), is the only path to true spiritual life.

This alone is the absolute meaning of Christology. That it is attached to the person and history of one individual is simply a necessary result of the historical form Christology happens to have taken. Schleiermacher was quite right when he sensed that the speculative view would leave little more of the historical person of the Savior than the Ebionites had retained. The visible, historical existence of the individual, says Hegel, is only a starting point for the mind. Faith, in its early stages, is governed by the senses, and therefore looks to a history unfolding in time. What it holds to be true is the outward, ordinary event, whose evidence is of the historical, courtroom kind — a fact to be proved by the testimony of the senses and the moral confidence inspired by witnesses. But once the mind has used this outward fact as an occasion to bring the idea of humanity's oneness with God into its own awareness, it sees in the history only the presentation of that idea. The object of faith is completely transformed: instead of a sensory, empirical fact, it has become a spiritual and divine idea, whose confirmation lies no longer in history but in philosophy. Once the mind has thus moved beyond the sensory history and entered the domain of the absolute, that history ceases to be essential. It takes a subordinate place, above which the spiritual truths suggested by the history stand on their own; it becomes like the faint image of a dream, belonging only to the past, and does not, like the idea itself, share in the permanence of a spirit that is fully present to itself.

THE CONFLICT BETWEEN SCIENCE AND RELIGION

1. . . . Without doubt, an innumerable multitude are no longer satisfied with the old faith, the old church, whether it is Protestant or Catholic. This multitude includes those who either dimly sense, or distinctly perceive, the contradiction into which both are increasingly forced — a contradiction with the knowledge, the view of life and the world, and the social and political developments, all of the present age. They consequently consider a change, a modification, as an urgent necessity.

At this point, however, the dissatisfied and the progressive part ways. One party (and undeniably it forms the great majority in both confessions) considers it sufficient to lop off the notoriously decayed branches of the ancient tree in hopes of thereby giving to it fresh vitality and fruitfulness. Here people will let the Pope pass, only he must not be infallible. There they are quite ready to keep hold of Christ, but let him no longer be proclaimed the Son of God. In the main, however, both churches are to continue as they were: the one will retain its priests and bishops set apart from the laity as consecrated dispensers of the ecclesiastical means of grace. The other, although with an elective clergy and a constitution prescribed by itself, must continue preaching Christ, the distribution of the sacraments as by him ordained, the celebration of the festivals, which serve to retain the chief events of his life in our memory.

Side by side with this majority there exists, however, a minority not to be overlooked. . . . [I]f you no longer consider Jesus as the Son of God, but as a man, however excellent, they think that you are no longer justified in praying to him, in cleaving to him as the center of ritual worship, in year after year preaching about his actions, his fortunes, and his utterances. This is more especially when you see that the most important of these actions and incidents are fictitious. Yet at the same time those utterances and teachings are recognized by you as for the most part irreconcilable with our actual views of life and the universe. Thus if this minority notes the giving way of the close circle of ecclesiastical dogma, it confesses to not seeing what further needs ritual worship still serves. It proceeds to call in question the use of a distinct society like the church existing by the side of the state and the school, of science and art, the common property of all.

The minority which holds these opinions constitutes the "We" in whose name I undertake to speak. . . .

3. I therefore have a double task to perform; first, to expound our position towards the old creed, and then present the fundamental principles of that new Cosmic conception which we acknowledge as ours.

The [old] creed is Christianity. [1] Our first question therefore resolves itself into how and in what sense we still are Christians. Christianity is a definite form of religion, the generic essence of which is distinct from any form; it is possible to have severed oneself from Christianity and still to be religious. Out of this first question then arises the next, [2] whether we still possess religion. Our second leading question concerning the new Cosmic conception also, upon examination, resolves itself into two. In the first place, we would know [3] in what this Cosmic conception consists, on what evidence it rests, and what especially, as compared with the old ecclesiastical view, are its characteristic principles. In the second place we would learn [4] whether this modern Cosmic conception performs the same services as did the Christian dogma for its votaries, whether it performs them better or worse, whether it is more or less adapted to serve as a basis on which to erect the structure of a life truly human, that is to say truly moral, and because moral, happy.

FOUR QUESTIONS TO ADDRESS

Question 1: Are We still Christians?

4. Christians in what sense? The word today has a diverse meaning, not only in regard to the confessions themselves, but still more in view of the various gradations now existing between faith and rationalism. It will be taken for granted, after what has been said, that we are no longer Christians in the sense attached to the term by the ancient creed of any denomination. Whether we will be able to agree with any of the diverse forms assumed by the Christianity of today can, for us, be a question only insofar as it has reference to the most advanced and enlightened among them. Nevertheless, even as to this, many things would remain incomprehensible if we had not, at least in its outlines, first brought the old Christian faith clearly into our minds. This is because only with the help of the pure primitive form will mixed forms be possible to understand.

If we want to know the nature of the old, unadulterated creed, and the effect it would have on us today, then let us not go to a modern theologian, even an orthodox one, in whom it already invariably appears in a diluted form. Instead, let us draw it from the source, from one of the old confessions of faith. We will take that which is fundamentally the most ancient, and which still continues to be used by the Church, the so-called Apostles' Creed, while occasionally supplementing and clarifying it with later doctrinal definitions. . . .

Not According to the Apostles' Creed

5. The first article of the Apostles' Creed declares immediately the belief in God the Almighty Father, the maker of heaven and earth. We will have occasion to recur to this general conception of a world-creating Deity, as being a primitive religious conception. Now let us glance at those more particular definitions which the ecclesiastical idea of creation derived from the biblical narrative in the first chapter of Genesis, and which forthwith became stereotyped articles of faith. . . .

If such were the scruples of astronomy, geology soon added others of no less important. The sea and earth are said to have been divided from each other on the third day, and vegetation moreover created in all its forms; whereas our geologists now no longer speak of thousands but of hundreds of thousands of years as having been required by formative processes of this nature. On the sixth day-excepting the fowl, which were made on the one preceding it all the beasts of the earth, not omitting every creeping thing, and man himself at the last, are said to have been called into being; processes of growth for which, as shown by modern science, periods of immeasurable duration were no less requisite. . . .

12. . . . The Apostles' Creed concludes its outline of the Christian faith by the third article, which reads as follows: "I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting." . . .

The resurrected enter upon eternal life, but by no means all, for there is a twofold resurrection, one unto life, the other unto judgment, i.e., to everlasting hell. And unfortunately it appears that the number of the depraved infinitely exceeds that of the elect. Damned, in the first place, is the whole of the human race before Christ, excepting a few chosen souls, such as those of the Jewish patriarchs, who are liberated from hell by a special interposition; damned, again, the heathen of our own time, and Jews and Mohammedans, as well as the heretics and the godless in Christendom itself; and of these, the latter only because of their personal guilt, all the others solely on account of Adam's sin; their inaccessibility to Christianity, (with a few exceptions among those born after Christ's time) being no fault of theirs.

But this is an unsatisfactory conclusion. Any expectation we might have entertained of being compensated for so much that is revolting in the first principles of the ecclesiastical creed (notably the doctrines of the Fall and of Original Sin) proves to have been a bitter deception. "For the most part, nevertheless," says Reimarus, "men go to the devil, and hardly one in a thousand is saved." My pious and pensive grandfather, brooding over these things, was during the whole of his life tormented by this idea. Even as in a hive there is but one queen to many thousand bees, even so, argued he, with men also there only was one soul saved, to thousands doomed to the flames of hell. [Strauss continues discussing the critical theology of the nineteenth century, including Reimarus, Schleiermacher and Rénan.] . . .

28. . . . To begin with, we will be obliged to state that our authentic information respecting Jesus is far too scanty for this purpose. The evangelists have overlaid the picture of his life with a thick a coat of supernatural coloring. They have confused it by so many cross lights of contradictory doctrine, that the natural colors cannot now be restored. If one may not with liberty walk among palms, still less so among gods. He who has once been deified has irretrievably lost his manhood. It is an idle notion that by any kind of operation we could restore a natural and harmonious picture of a life and a human being from sources of information which, like the Gospels. They have been adapted to suit a supernatural being, and distorted, moreover, by factions whose conceptions and interests conflicted with each other's. To check these, we ought to possess information concerning the same life, compiled from a purely natural and common-sense point of view. In this case we are not in possession of such. The most recent delineators of the life of Jesus have pompously come forward, and pretended to be enabled by our actual sources of information to depict a human development, a natural germination and growth of insight, a gradual expansion of Jesus' horizon. However their essays have been shown to be apologetic artifices, devoid of all historical value, from the absence of all proof in the record (with the exception of that vague phrase in Luke's history of the Infancy) and by the necessity of most gratuitously transposing the various accounts. . . .

30. . . . The same holds good of all the other Christian precepts; Christianity did not bring them to the world, nor will they disappear from the world along with it. We will retain all that was really achieved by Christianity as we have retained what was accomplished by Greece and Rome, without the form of religion in which that kernel ripened as in its husk. Thus only will we succeed in discarding at the same time the narrowness and the partiality which throughout adhered to the doctrines of Christianity. . . .

31. . . . And now, I think we have reached the end. And the result? Our answer to the question with which we have headed this section of our account? Will I still give a distinct statement, and place the sum of all we have said in round numbers under the account? This is most unnecessary, I should say. But I would not, on any consideration, appear to evade even the most unpalatable word. My conviction, therefore, is, if we would not evade difficulties or put forced constructions upon them, if we would have our yea yea, and our nay nay, -- in short, if we would speak as honest, honorable men, we must acknowledge we are no longer Christians.

In saying this we have not, however, as already remarked at the beginning, altogether renounced religion. We might still be religious, even if we were so no longer in the form of Christianity. We therefore put our second question thus:

Question 2: Have We Still a Religion?

32. . . . Hume is undoubtedly correct in his assertion that mankind was originally led to religion, not by the disinterested desire of knowledge and truth, but by the selfish craving for material welfare; and that pain has contributed more forcefully than allurement to the propagation of religion. The Epicurean derivation of piety from fear has, incontestably, a good deal of truth in it. For if man had all he wished, if his needs were always satisfied, if his plans never miscarried, if no painful lessons of experience constrained him to regard the future with apprehension, the notion of a higher power would hardly have arisen within his heart. He would have thought that thus it must be, and accordingly have accepted his lot with emotionless indifference. . . . [Strauss continues discussing the anthropological development of religion and philosophers' critiques of religion.] . . .

41. . . . But this was a digression; for we wished to discover whether our standpoint, whose highest idea is the law-governed Cosmos, full of life and reason, can still be called a religious one. To this end we opened Schopenhauer, who takes every occasion to scout this our idea. Charges of this kind, as we remarked, impress our intelligence as absurd, but our feeling as blasphemous. We consider it arrogant and profane on the part of a single individual to oppose himself with such overconfident levity to the Cosmos, whence he springs, from which, also, he derives that spark of reason which he misuses. We recognize in this a repudiation of the sentiment of dependence which we expect from every man. We demand the same piety for our Cosmos that the devout man of old demanded for his God. If wounded, our feeling for the Cosmos simply reacts in a religious manner. Finally, therefore, if we are asked whether we still have a religion, our answer will not be as roundly negative as in the former case, but we will say Yes or No, according to the spirit of the enquiry.

By our previous investigations we have severed ourselves from the Cosmic conception of ancient Christianity, inasmuch as that part of religion to which we still prefer a claim rests on a basis essentially different from the traditional religious ideas. Now the question is, what do we propose to put in the vacant place? Let us therefore turn to the other part of our task, and endeavor to give an answer to the question:

Question 3: What Is Our Conception of The Universe?

42. In the investigation regarding our relations to religion, we finally arrived at the idea of the Cosmos. After the plurality of gods in the various religions had resolved themselves into the one personal God, he in like manner resolved himself into the impersonal but person-shaping All. This same idea forms likewise the ultimate point of departure from whichever point of view one regards it-of our Cosmic conception. . . .

44. In regard, however, to the finite space of our solar system, Kant undertook to explain these as having originated according to purely mechanical principles to the exclusion of a Creator acting with determinate aims. Kant thus became, in the above-mentioned work, the founder of a theory which is still accepted at the present day. He does not, that is, exclude the Creator in the sense of denying his existence. What he denies is any intervention of God in the cosmogonical process. The Creator, at the beginning, has endowed matter with such forces and laws as, without further action on his part, must develop into the well-ordered Cosmos.

From what do the sun and planets arise? From what do the revolutions of the planets arise, all following that of the sun round its own axis, and also much on the same plane? The pious Newton sought the explanation in the finger of God; Puffon in a comet. . . . [Strauss continues discussing the recent science of the natural world]

49. . . . Natural Science has long undertook to substitute the evolutionary theory in place of the conception of creation, so alien to her spirit. But it was Charles Darwin who made the first truly scientific attempt to deal seriously with this conception, and trace it throughout the organic world. . . .

50. Nothing is easier than to ridicule the Darwinian theory, nothing cheaper than those sarcastic attacks against the descent of man from the ape, in which even the better class of reviews and newspapers are still so fond of indulging. But this theory's peculiarity is the interpolation of intermediate members, thus linking the seemingly remote in an unbroken chain of development, and indicating the levers by means of which Nature achieved the progressive ascension in this process of evolution. Accordingly, this theory surely no one can suppose himself to have refuted by bringing two formations of such utterly different caliber as ape and man in their present condition into immediate contact with each other, and utterly ignoring those intermediate gradations which the theory partly proves, partly assumes. . . .

The theory is unquestionably still very imperfect. It leaves an infinity of things unexplained, and moreover, not only details, but leading and cardinal questions. It rather indicates possible future solutions than gives them already itself. But be this as it may, it contains something which exerts an irresistible attraction over spirits hungry for truth and freedom. It resembles a railway whose track is just marked out. What abysses will still require to be filled in or bridged over, what mountains to be tunneled, how many a year will elapse ere the train full of eager travelers will swiftly and comfortably be borne along and onwards! Nevertheless, we can see the direction it will take: thither it will and must go, where the flags are fluttering joyfully in the breeze. Yes, joyfully, in the purest, most exalted, spiritual delight. Vainly did we philosophers and critical theologians over and over again decree the extermination of miracles; our ineffectual sentence died away, because we could neither dispense with miraculous agency, nor point to any natural force able to supply it, where it had hitherto seemed most indispensable. Darwin has demonstrated this force, this process of Nature; he has opened the door by which a happier coming race will finally cast out miracles. Everyone who knows what miracles imply will praise him as one of the greatest benefactors of the human race. . . . [Strauss continues discussing evolutionary biology.] . . .

62. If this is considered pure unmitigated materialism, I will not dispute it. In fact, I have always tacitly regarded the contrast so loudly proclaimed between materialism and idealism (or by whatever term one may designate the view opposed to the former), as a mere quarrel about words. They have a common foe in the dualism which pervaded the conception of the world throughout the Christian era, dividing man into body and soul, his existence into time and eternity, and opposing an eternal Creator to a created and perishable universe. Materialism, as well as idealism, may, in comparison with this dualistic conception, be regarded as Monism; i.e., they endeavor to derive the totality of phenomena from a single principle-to construct the universe and life from the same block. In this endeavor one theory starts from above, the other from below; the latter constructs the universe from atoms and atomic forces, the former from ideas and idealistic forces. But if they would fulfil their tasks, the one must lead from its heights down to the very lowest circles of Nature, and to this end place itself under the control of careful observation. The other, then, must take into account the higher intellectual and ethical problems. . . . [T]he Darwinian theory is the first child of the true, though as yet clandestine, union of science and philosophy. . . .

66. In so far, therefore, as we still speak of a purpose in the universe, we are clearly conscious that we are expressing ourselves subjectively, and that we only express by it what we seem to recognize as the general result of the co-operation of the active forces in the world. . . .

Nevertheless the general object or result of the world is specially conditioned for every part, every class of beings. Although the variety of life, the struggle of forces, the progressive tendency, will be the same on one planet as on another, they will, nevertheless, in each be subjected to different rules of action, different forms of manifestation. And in like manner, the result will assume different proportions among the different organisms on the earth. The development of the dog or cat genus will produce, and humanly speaking, be intended to produce, a different result from that of the development of mankind.

What the result of the latter ought to be, and is, we hope will become plain to us, if finally we still endeavor to answer the last of the questions we have proposed, namely, the question:

Question 4: What Is Our Rule of Life?

67. The path by which we have reached man, the process of development from which we have seen him evolved, has, as regards the conception of his destiny and the tasks of his terrestrial existence, naturally given us a standpoint different from that of Christian theology. For as man did not come forth from the hand of God, but arose from depths of Nature, his first estate was not paradisaical, but almost brutal. Neither, of course, did he in our eyes fall with the first step, and thus forfeit Paradise. He did not begin his career on a great elevation, to sink very low immediately afterwards; on the contrary, he began very low, to rise, although very slowly, yet gradually to ever greater heights. By this means alone he is included in the universal law of development, from which the Christian conception withdraws him at the very first. [Strauss continues discussing the emergence of morality and law.] . . .

72. But in the next place, the solidarity of mankind consists not only in a common descent and resemblance of organic structure, such as also forms the bond of every brute species. But it is of such a nature, that man can only come to be a man by the co-operation of men, mankind forming a consolidated united community in a sense quite other from that of any species of animal. It is only by the help of man that man has been able to raise himself above Nature; and only in so far as he acknowledges and treats others as his equals, as he respects the institutions of the family, the state, can he maintain himself at this height, and develop himself still further. At the same time, it is of the highest importance that this knowledge should be retransmitted, and enkindled by emotion. The moral principles thus acquired should become man's second nature. Thus the sentiment of human dignity should grow into a habit in his relation to himself, and sympathy in its various gradations in his relation to others; and every violation of the one or the other should find its echo in the moral verdict of the conscience. [Strauss continues discussing the emergence of national politics in his time.] . . .

83. . . . We do not for a moment ignore the necessity which now exists, and must long exist, of a Church for the majority of mankind. whether it will remain thus to the end of human affairs, we regard as an open question; but we look upon the opinion as a prejudice, which deems that every individual must necessarily belong to a church. And that he to whom the old no longer suffices, must join a new one. This is the reason of all that bungling meddling with the ancient Church, all that patchwork of the so-called theology of mediation. . . . The most consistent of all are the so-called free congregations, who take their stand outside the dogmatic tradition, on the ground of rational thought, of the natural sciences and history. This ground is, of course, firm enough, but not the basis for a religious society. . . . . We on our part . . . . feel so little the need of another church, which should be partly or entirely based on reason, that we would not become members of such a one, even if the State were liberally to endow it with all the privileges of the old churches.

84. It is as if meditation were only possible in a church, edification only to be found in a sermon! Why hold fast by an antiquated, exhausted form, at a time and in a state of culture, when there flow so many other and more abundant sources of intellectual stimulus and moral invigoration? After all, it is nothing but habit. . . . . To the end of forming just conclusions in these things, we study history, which has now been made easy even to the unlearned by a number of attractively and popularly written works. At the same time we work to enlarge our knowledge of the natural sciences, where also there is no lack of sources of information. Lastly, in the writings of our great poets, in the performances of our great musicians, we find a satisfying stimulus for the intellect and the heart, and for fancy in her deepest or most sportive moods. "Thus we live, and hold on our way in joy."

It is objected that this must always remain a path for scholars, or at least of the cultured few; that such reading and study does not suit the plain man; that he lacks the needful leisure and comprehension. Our poets, especially, it is said, are too much above him. The Bible is more suitable for the plain man; this he can understand. He understands the Bible, does he? But how many of the theologians understand it? pretend to understand it? Yes; men think they understand the Bible, because they have grown accustomed to misunderstanding it. The modern reader also, doubtless, puts as much edification into it as he takes out of it. Not to speak even of such books as the Revelation of St. John, and most of the prophets of the Old Testament, let it not be deemed that Lessing's "Nathan," or Goethe's "Hermann and Dorothea," are more difficult of comprehension, and contain fewer "saving truths" than an epistle of Paul, or a discourse of Christ as reported by John. Let it be specially considered whether if our peasant children should be less plagued in the village school with the geography of Palestine, and the history of the Jews, with unintelligible articles of faith and indigestible precepts. There would be all the more time to educate them so as to awaken their interest in the intellectual life of their own people, and to lead them on to draw for themselves from such abundant sources of culture.

Source: David Strauss, The Life of Jesus Critically Examined (1835), translated by George Elliot, adapted; The Old and the New Faith (1872), translated by Mathilde Blind, adapted.

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JOHN STUART MILL:

EMPIRICAL LIMITS OF THEISM

John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) was born in London, the eldest son of the Scottish philosopher James Mill. At the hands of his father, Mill experienced one of history's most demanding childhood educations: he began learning Greek at three, had read most of Plato in the original by seven, and started Latin, logic, and economics soon after, all while being kept deliberately isolated from other children his age. At twenty, this regimen caught up with him in what he later called a "mental crisis," a period of severe depression during which he questioned whether achieving all his father's utilitarian goals for society would actually bring him any happiness; he credited his recovery partly to discovering poetry, especially Wordsworth, which his rigidly rationalist upbringing had never made room for. He spent much of his career working for the British East India Company while writing philosophy on the side, and in 1851 married Harriet Taylor, a close friend and intellectual partner of some twenty years by then widowed. He credited her as a major, sometimes unacknowledged collaborator on his ideas about liberty and women's rights. His major works include On Liberty, Utilitarianism, and The Subjection of Women, and he later served briefly as a Member of Parliament, where he became the first sitting MP to formally propose extending the vote to women. He died in Avignon, France, in 1873, and was buried beside Harriet, who had predeceased him by over a decade. The selections below are from Three Essays on Religion, published posthumously in 1874.

In the first section he argues against the usefulness of religion. Mill maintains that the social morality and ethical cohesion traditionally credited to supernatural belief are actually products of human authority, early education, and public opinion. He points out that nearly all moral teaching has historically been delivered under the banner of religion, leading society to falsely assume that the moral effects require a religious foundation. In reality, he says, early childhood inculcation and the immense power of public praise and blame are what govern human conduct, wielding an authority that religion merely commands rather than inherently possesses. Mill proposes that a secular "Religion of Humanity," centered on a disinterested, unselfish devotion to the collective good of humankind, can fulfill every moral function of supernaturalism far more effectively. This humanistic alternative would create genuine altruism, unlike traditional creeds that fixate on personal salvation through rewards and punishments in the afterlife. Mill critiques the moral contradictions built into orthodox Christianity. Most prominently is the concept of an all-powerful deity who creates a hell and foreknows human damnation. For Mill, such doctrines distort the concept of justice. Finally, he addresses the desire for immortality. He concludes that as the earthly condition of humanity improves and individuals grow happier through unselfish pursuits, the psychological need for a future existence as a consolation for suffering will naturally decline.

In the second section from "Theism", Mill evaluates the intellectual and scientific validity of traditional theological proofs. He begins with an analysis of how monotheism emerges. He argues that polytheism is far more natural to the uncultivated human mind, which naturally infers a separate conscious will behind every distinct, variable force in nature. Monotheism is an artificial product that only becomes possible after scientific inquiry reveals that nature is governed by interconnected and unchanging laws, rather than a collection of independent and unpredictable wills. Turning to the specific evidences for a Creator, Mill dismisses a priori internal convictions as unscientific. It is only a posteriori arguments grounded in empirical experience deserve consideration. He criticizes the argument for a first cause on the grounds that our experience of causation applies exclusively to changeable phenomena and events, but never to the permanent elements of matter and physical force. These have no known beginning and thus require no initial cause.

Mill shifts to the Design Argument, which he considers as the only theological proof possessing a genuinely scientific inductive character. Examining the structure of the eye, he concludes that the precise combination of parts producing sight cannot be attributed to a random concurrence of independent causes. As such, he concludes, the adaptations in nature increase the inductive probability of creation by intelligence. However, he continues arguing that the recent theory of evolution offers an alternative explanation of how complex organic structures like the eye have emerged. If the theory of evolution proves true (at Mill's time only 20 years old), this would indeed undermine the design argument. Until then, he says, we must acknowledge some probability of divine design. But Mill continues arguing that empirical evidence also strictly constrains the attributes of the deity. For example, the very existence of design explicitly disproves omnipotence, since a being of unlimited power would have no need to use clever mechanisms or select specific means to overcome obstacles. Further, the total absence of natural justice and the immensity of natural suffering prove that this Creator is a strictly finite deity. At best, the creator would be a well-meaning architect of vast but limited power who must work around the inflexible properties of independent matter and force.

Next, Mill applies his empirical method to the questions of immortality and historical revelation. While science offers no positive experimental evidence for the survival of the soul independent of the physical brain, it also offers no absolute disproof. This leaves the afterlife as an open, unprovable mystery. Similarly, he rejects the evidence in favor of historical miracles, noting that they rest on weak, second-hand textual traditions rather than the testimony of our senses. Despite rejecting the supernatural mechanics of revelation, Mill praises unique moral genius of Jesus of Nazareth, whose ethical vision serves as an ideal model for human imitation. In his grand conclusion, Mill defines the rational attitude of a thinking mind as a state of skepticism that avoids both dogmatic belief and dogmatic atheism. This essentially moves the supernatural realm from the region of certain knowledge into that of imaginative hope. This brings about constructive ethical philosophy. If the Creator is finite and locked in a constant cosmic battle against evil, then human moral actions are meaningful. They allow individuals to actively cooperate with and assist God in that battle.

AGAINST THE USEFULNESS OF RELIGION (from "The Utility of Religion")

It has sometimes been remarked how much has been written, both by friends and enemies, concerning the truth of religion, and how little, at least in the way of discussion or controversy, concerning its usefulness. This, however, might have been expected; for the truth, in matters which so deeply affect us, is our first concernment. If religion, or any particular form of it, is true, its usefulness follows without other proof. If to know authentically in what order of things, under what government of the universe it is our destiny to live, were not useful, it is difficult to imagine what could be considered so. . . .

The inquiry divides itself into two parts, corresponding to the double aspect of the subject; its social, and its individual aspect. What does religion do for society, and what for the individual? What amount of benefit to social interests, in the ordinary sense of the phrase, arises from religious belief? And what influence has it in improving and ennobling individual human nature? . . .

Social Morality Belongs to Education and Human Opinion, Not Creed

To speak first, then, of religious belief as an instrument of social good. We must commence by drawing a distinction most commonly overlooked. It is usual to credit religion as such with the whole of the power inherent in any system of moral duties inculcated by education and enforced by opinion. Undoubtedly mankind would be in a deplorable state if no principles or precepts of justice, veracity, beneficence, were taught publicly or privately, and if these virtues were not encouraged, and the opposite vices repressed, by the praise and blame, the favourable and unfavourable sentiments, of mankind. And since nearly everything of this sort which does take place, takes place in the name of religion; since almost all who are taught any morality whatever, have it taught to them as religion, and inculcated on them through life principally in that character; the effect which the teaching produces as teaching, it is supposed to produce as religious teaching, and religion receives the credit of all the influence in human affairs which belongs to any generally accepted system of rules for the guidance and government of human life.

Few persons have sufficiently considered how great an influence this is; what vast efficacy belongs naturally to any doctrine received with tolerable unanimity as true, and impressed on the mind from the earliest childhood as duty. A little reflection will, I think, lead us to the conclusion that it is this which is the great moral power in human affairs, and that religion only seems so powerful because this mighty power has been under its command.

Consider first, the enormous influence of authority on the human mind. I am now speaking of involuntary influence; effect on men's conviction, on their persuasion, on their involuntary sentiments. Authority is the evidence on which the mass of mankind believe everything which they are said to know, except facts of which their own senses have taken cognizance. It is the evidence on which even the wisest receive all those truths of science, or facts in history or in life, of which they have not personally examined the proofs. Over the immense majority of human beings, the general concurrence of mankind, in any matter of opinion, is all powerful. Whatever is thus certified to them, they believe with a fulness of assurance which they do not accord even to the evidence of their senses when the general opinion of mankind stands in opposition to it. When, therefore, any rule of life and duty, whether grounded or not on religion, has conspicuously received the general assent, it obtains a hold on the belief of every individual, stronger than it would have even if he had arrived at it by the inherent force of his own understanding. . . .

The power of education is almost boundless: there is not one natural inclination which it is not strong enough to coerce, and, if needful, to destroy by disuse. . . . We have now considered two powers, that of authority, and that of early education, which operate through men's involuntary beliefs, feelings and desires, and which religion has hitherto held as its almost exclusive appanage. Let us now consider a third power which operates directly on their actions, whether their involuntary sentiments are carried with it or not. This is the power of public opinion; of the praise and blame, the favour and disfavour, of their fellow creatures; and is a source of strength inherent in any system of moral belief which is generally adopted, whether connected with religion or not. . . .

Anyone who fairly and impartially considers the subject, will see reason to believe that those great effects on human conduct, which are commonly ascribed to motives derived directly from religion, have mostly for their proximate cause the influence of human opinion. Religion has been powerful not by its intrinsic force, but because it has wielded that additional and more mighty power. . . .

The Religion of Humanity as a Superior, Disinterested Ideal

Let us then consider, what it is in human nature which causes it to require a religion; what wants [i.e., lacks] of the human mind religion supplies, and what qualities it develops. When we have understood this, we shall be better able to judge, how far these wants can be otherwise supplied and those qualities, or qualities equivalent to them, unfolded and brought to perfection by other means. . . .

Much more might be added on this topic; but enough has been said to convince any one, who can distinguish between the intrinsic capacities of human nature and the forms in which those capacities happen to have been historically developed, that the sense of unity with mankind, and a deep feeling for the general good, may be cultivated into a sentiment and a principle capable of fulfilling every important function of religion and itself justly entitled to the name. I will now further maintain, that it is not only capable of fulfilling these functions, but would fulfil them better than any form whatever of supernaturalism. It is not only entitled to be called a religion: it is a better religion than any of those which are ordinarily called by that title.

For, in the first place, it is disinterested. It carries the thoughts and feelings out of self, and fixes them on an unselfish object, loved and pursued as an end for its own sake. The religions which deal in promises and threats regarding a future life, do exactly the contrary: they fasten down the thoughts to the person's own posthumous interests; they tempt him to regard the performance of his duties to others mainly as a means to his own personal salvation; and are one of the most serious obstacles to the great purpose of moral culture, the strengthening of the unselfish and weakening of the selfish element in our nature; since they hold out to the imagination selfish good and evil of such tremendous magnitude, that it is difficult for any one who fully believes in their reality, to have feeling or interest to spare for any other distant and ideal object. . . .

Moral Perversions in Revelation

I say nothing of the moral difficulties and perversions involved in revelation itself; though even in the Christianity of the Gospels, at least in its ordinary interpretation, there are some of so flagrant a character as almost to outweigh all the beauty and benignity and moral greatness which so eminently distinguish the sayings and character of Christ. The recognition, for example, of the object of highest worship, in a being who could make a Hell; and who could create countless generations of human beings with the certain foreknowledge that he was creating them for this fate. Is there any moral enormity which might not be justified by imitation of such a Deity? And is it possible to adore such a one without a frightful distortion of the standard of right and wrong? Any other of the outrages to the most ordinary justice and humanity involved in the common christian conception of the moral character of God, sinks into insignificance beside this dreadful idealization of wickedness. . . . But there is one moral contradiction inseparable from every form of Christianity, which no ingenuity can resolve, and no sophistry explain away. It is, that so precious a gift, bestowed on a few, should have been withheld from the many: that countless millions of human beings should have been allowed to live and die, to sin and suffer, without the one thing needful, the divine remedy for sin and suffering, which it would have cost the Divine Giver as little to have vouchsafed to all, as to have bestowed by special grace upon a favoured minority. Add to this, that the divine message, assuming it to be such, has been authenticated by credentials so insufficient, that they fail to convince a large proportion of the strongest and most cultivated minds, and the tendency to disbelieve them appears to grow with the growth of scientific knowledge and critical discrimination. He who can believe these to be the intentional shortcomings of a perfectly good Being, must impose silence on every prompting of the sense of goodness and justice as received among men.

It is, no doubt, possible (and there are many instances of it) to worship with the intensest devotion either Deity, that of Nature or of the Gospel, without any perversion of the moral sentiments: but this must be by fixing the attention exclusively on what is beautiful and beneficent in the precepts and spirit of the Gospel and in the dispensations of Nature, and putting all that is the reverse as entirely aside as if it did not exist. Accordingly, this simple and innocent faith can only, as I have said, co-exist with a torpid and inactive state of the speculative faculties. For a person of exercised intellect, there is no way of attaining anything equivalent to it, save by sophistication and perversion, either of the understanding or of the conscience. It may almost always be said both of sects and of individuals, who derive their morality from religion, that the better logicians they are, the worse moralists. . . .

Earthly Happiness Eliminates the Selfish Need for an Afterlife

One advantage, such as it is, the supernatural religions must always possess over the Religion of Humanity; the prospect they hold out to the individual of a life after death. For, though the scepticism of the understanding does not necessarily exclude the Theism of the imagination and feelings, and this, again, gives opportunity for a hope that the power which has done so much for us may be able and willing to do this also, such vague possibility must ever stop far short of a conviction. It remains then to estimate the value of this element—the prospect of a world to come—as a constituent of earthly happiness. I cannot but think that as the condition of mankind becomes improved, as they grow happier in their lives, and more capable of deriving happiness from unselfish sources, they will care less and less for this flattering expectation. It is not, naturally or generally, the happy who are the most anxious either for a prolongation of the present life, or for a life hereafter: it is those who never have been happy. They who have had their happiness can bear to part with existence: but it is hard to die without ever having lived. When mankind cease to need a future existence as a consolation for the sufferings of the present, it will have lost its chief value to them, for themselves. I am now speaking of the unselfish. Those who are so wrapped up in self that they are unable to identify their feelings with anything which will survive them, or to feel their life prolonged in their younger contemporaries and in all who help to carry on the progressive movement of human affairs, require the notion of another selfish life beyond the grave, to enable them to keep up any interest in existence, since the present life, as its termination approaches, dwindles into something too insignificant to be worth caring about. But if the Religion of Humanity were as sedulously cultivated as the supernatural religions are (and there is no difficulty in conceiving that it might be much more so), all who had received the customary amount of moral cultivation would up to the hour of death live ideally in the life of those who are to follow them: and though doubtless they would often willingly survive as individuals for a much longer period than the present duration of life, it appears to me probable that after a length of time different in different persons, they would have had enough of existence, and would gladly lie down and take their eternal rest. Meanwhile and without looking so far forward, we may remark, that those who believe the immortality of the soul, generally quit life with fully as much, if not more, reluctance, as those who have no such expectation. The mere cessation of existence is no evil to any one: the idea is only formidable through the illusion of imagination which makes one conceive oneself as if one were alive and feeling oneself dead. What is odious in death is not death itself, but the act of dying, and its lugubrious accompaniments: all of which must be equally undergone by the believer in immortality. Nor can I perceive that the sceptic loses by his skepticism any real and valuable consolation except one; the hope of reunion with those dear to him who have ended their earthly life before him. That loss, indeed, is neither to be denied nor extenuated. In many cases it is beyond the reach of comparison or estimate; and will always suffice to keep alive, in the more sensitive natures, the imaginative hope of a futurity which, if there is nothing to prove, there is as little in our knowledge and experience to contradict.

LIMITS TO THE IDEA AND EVIDENCE FOR GOD (from "Theism")

The contest which subsists from of old between believers and unbelievers in natural and revealed religion, has, like other permanent contests, varied materially in its character from age to age; and the present generation, at least in the higher regions of controversy, shows, as compared with the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century, a marked alteration in the aspect of the dispute. One feature of this change is so apparent as to be generally acknowledged; the more softened temper in which the debate is conducted on the part of unbelievers. The reactionary violence, provoked by the intolerance of the other side, has in a great measure exhausted itself. Experience has abated the ardent hopes once entertained of the regeneration of the human race by merely negative doctrine—by the destruction of superstition. . . .

Polytheism to Monotheism as an Artificial Scientific Development

Though I have defined the problem of Natural Theology, to be that of the existence of God or of a God, rather than of Gods, there is the amplest historical evidence that the belief in Gods is immeasurably more natural to the human mind than the belief in one author and ruler of nature; and that this more elevated belief is, compared with the former, an artificial product, requiring (except when impressed by early education) a considerable amount of intellectual culture before it can be reached. For a long time, the supposition appeared forced and unnatural that the diversity we see in the operations of nature can all be the work of a single will. To the untaught mind, and to all minds in pre-scientific times, the phenomena of nature seem to be the result of forces altogether heterogeneous, each taking its course quite independently of the others; and though to attribute them to conscious wills is eminently natural, the natural tendency is to suppose as many such independent wills as there are distinguishable forces of sufficient importance and interest to have been remarked and named. There is no tendency in polytheism as such to transform itself spontaneously into monotheism. It is true that in polytheistic systems generally the deity whose special attributes inspire the greatest degree of awe, is usually supposed to have a power of controlling the other deities; and even in the most degraded perhaps of all such systems, the Hindoo, adulation heaps upon the divinity who is the immediate object of adoration, epithets like those habitual to believers in a single God. But there is no real acknowledgment of one Governor. Every God normally rules his particular department though there may be a still stronger God whose power when he chooses to exert it can frustrate the purposes of the inferior divinity. There could be no real belief in one Creator and Governor until mankind had begun to see in the apparently confused phenomena which surrounded them, a system capable of being viewed as the possible working out of a single plan. This conception of the world was perhaps anticipated (though less frequently than is often supposed) by individuals of exceptional genius, but it could only become common after a rather long cultivation of scientific thought.

The special mode in which scientific study operates to instill Monotheism in place of the more natural Polytheism, is in no way mysterious. The specific effect of science is to show by accumulating evidence, that every event in nature is connected by laws with some fact or facts which preceded it, or in other words, depends for its existence on some antecedent; but yet not so strictly on one, as not to be liable to frustration or modification from others: for these distinct chains of causation are so entangled with one another; the action of each cause is so interfered with by other causes, though each acts according to its own fixed law; that every effect is truly the result rather of the aggregate of all causes in existence than of any one only; and nothing takes place in the world of our experience without spreading a perceptible influence of some sort through a greater or less portion of Nature, and making perhaps every portion of it slightly different from what it would have been if that event had not taken place. Now, when once the double conviction has found entry into the mind—that every event depends on antecedents; and at the same time that to bring it about many antecedents must concur, perhaps all the antecedents in Nature, insomuch that a slight difference in any one of them might have prevented the phenomenon, or materially altered its character—the conviction follows that no one event, certainly no one kind of events, can be absolutely preordained or governed by any Being but one who holds in his hand the reins of all Nature and not of some department only. At least if a plurality be supposed, it is necessary to assume so complete a concert of action and unity of will among them that the difference is for most purposes immaterial between such a theory and that of the absolute unity of the Godhead.

The reason, then, why Monotheism may be accepted as the representative of Theism in the abstract, is not so much because it is the Theism of all the more improved portions of the human race, as because it is the only Theism which can claim for itself any footing on scientific ground. Every other theory of the government of the universe by supernatural beings, is inconsistent either with the carrying on of that government through a continual series of natural antecedents according to fixed laws, or with the interdependence of each of these series upon all the rest, which are the two most general results of science. . . .

Looking at the problem, as it is our business to do, merely as a scientific inquiry, it resolves itself into two questions. First: Is the theory, which refers the origin of all the phenomena of nature to the will of a Creator, consistent or not with the ascertained results of science? Secondly, assuming it to be consistent, will its proofs bear to be tested by the principles of evidence and canons of belief by which our long experience of scientific inquiry has proved the necessity of being guided?

First, then: there is one conception of Theism which is consistent, another which is radically inconsistent, with the most general truths that have been made known to us by scientific investigation.

The one which is inconsistent is the conception of a God governing the world by acts of variable will. The one which is consistent, is the conception of a God governing the world by invariable laws. . . .

We must now, however, pass to the next question. There is nothing to disprove the creation and government of Nature by a sovereign will; but is there anything to prove it? Of what nature are its evidences; and weighed in the scientific balance, what is their value?

Only Empirical A Posteriori Theistic Proofs Deserve Scientific Consideration

The evidences of a Creator are not only of several distinct kinds but of such diverse characters, that they are adapted to minds of very different descriptions, and it is hardly possible for any mind to be equally impressed by them all. The familiar classification of them into proofs à priori and à posteriori, marks that when looked at in a purely scientific view they belong to different schools of thought. Accordingly though the unthoughtful believer whose creed really rests on authority gives an equal welcome to all plausible arguments in support of the belief in which he has been brought up, philosophers who have had to make a choice between the à priori and the à posteriori methods in general science seldom fail, while insisting on one of these modes of support for religion, to speak with more or less of disparagement of the other. It is our duty in the present inquiry to maintain complete impartiality and to give a fair examination to both. At the same time I entertain a strong conviction that one of the two modes of argument is in its nature scientific, the other not only unscientific but condemned by science. The scientific argument is that which reasons from the facts and analogies of human experience as a geologist does when he infers the past states of our terrestrial globe, or an astronomical observer when he draws conclusions respecting the physical composition of the heavenly bodies. This is the à posteriori method, the principal application of which to Theism is the argument (as it is called) of design. The mode of reasoning which I call unscientific, though in the opinion of some thinkers it is also a legitimate mode of scientific procedure, is that which infers external objective facts from ideas or convictions of our minds. . . .

First Cause Argument: Experience Contradicts an Uncaused Creator

The argument for a First Cause admits of being, and is, presented as a conclusion from the whole of human experience. Everything that we know (it is argued) had a cause, and owed its existence to that cause. How then can it be but that the world, which is but a name for the aggregate of all that we know, has a cause to which it is indebted for its existence?

The fact of experience however, when correctly expressed, turns out to be, not that everything which we know derives its existence from a cause, but only every event or change. There is in Nature a permanent element, and also a changeable: the changes are always the effects of previous changes; the permanent existences, so far as we know, are not effects at all. It is true we are accustomed to say not only of events, but of objects, that they are produced by causes, as water by the union of hydrogen and oxygen. But by this we only mean that when they begin to exist, their beginning is the effect of a cause. But their beginning to exist is not an object, it is an event. If it be objected that the cause of a thing's beginning to exist may be said with propriety to be the cause of the thing itself, I shall not quarrel with the expression. But that which in an object begins to exist, is that in it which belongs to the changeable element in nature; the outward form and the properties depending on mechanical or chemical combinations of its component parts. There is in every object another and a permanent element, viz., the specific elementary substance or substances of which it consists and their inherent properties. These are not known to us as beginning to exist: within the range of human knowledge they had no beginning, consequently no cause; though they themselves are causes or con-causes of everything that takes place. Experience therefore, affords no evidences, not even analogies, to justify our extending to the apparently immutable, a generalization grounded only on our observation of the changeable.

As a fact of experience, then, causation cannot legitimately be extended to the material universe itself, but only to its changeable phenomena; of these, indeed, causes may be affirmed without any exception. But what causes? The cause of every change is a prior change; and such it cannot but be; for if there were no new antecedent, there would not be a new consequent. If the state of facts which brings the phenomenon into existence, had existed always or for an indefinite duration, the effect also would have existed always or been produced an indefinite time ago. It is thus a necessary part of the fact of causation, within the sphere of our experience, that the causes as well as the effects had a beginning in time, and were themselves caused. It would seem therefore that our experience, instead of furnishing an argument for a first cause, is repugnant to it; and that the very essence of causation as it exists within the limits of our knowledge, is incompatible with a First Cause. . . .

It would seem then that in the only sense in which experience supports in any shape the doctrine of a First Cause, viz., as the primæval and universal element in all causes, the First Cause can be no other than Force. . . .

Here, then, this part of the discussion may stop. The result it leads to is that the First Cause argument is in itself of no value for the establishment of Theism: because no cause is needed for the existence of that which has no beginning; and both Matter and Force (whatever metaphysical theory we may give of the one or the other) have had, so far as our experience can teach us, no beginning—which cannot be said of Mind. The phenomena or changes in the universe have indeed each of them a beginning and a cause, but their cause is always a prior change; nor do the analogies of experience give us any reason to expect, from the mere occurrence of changes, that if we could trace back the series far enough we should arrive at a Primæval Volition. The world does not, by its mere existence, bear witness to a God: if it gives indications of one, these must be given by the special nature of the phenomena, by what they present that resembles adaptation to an end: of which hereafter. If, in default of evidence from experience, the evidence of intuition is relied upon, it may be answered that if Mind, as Mind, presents intuitive evidence of having been created, the Creative Mind must do the same, and we are no nearer to the First Cause than before. But if there be nothing in the nature of mind which in itself implies a Creator, the minds which have a beginning in time, as all minds have which are known to our experience, must indeed have been caused, but it is not necessary that their cause should have been a prior Intelligence. . . .

Design Argument: The Inductive Probability of a Conscious Designer

We now at last reach an argument of a really scientific character, which does not shrink from scientific tests, but claims to be judged by the established canons of Induction. The Design argument is wholly grounded on experience. Certain qualities, it is alleged, are found to be characteristic of such things as are made by an intelligent mind for a purpose. The order of Nature, or some considerable parts of it, exhibit these qualities in a remarkable degree. We are entitled, from this great similarity in the effects, to infer similarity in the cause, and to believe that things which it is beyond the power of man to make, but which resemble the works of man in all but power, must also have been made by Intelligence, armed with a power greater than human.

I have stated this argument in its fullest strength, as it is stated by its most thoroughgoing assertors. A very little consideration, however, suffices to show that though it has some force, its force is very generally overrated. Paley's illustration of a watch puts the case much too strongly. If I found a watch on an apparently desolate island, I should indeed infer that it had been left there by a human being; but the inference would not be from marks of design, but because I already knew by direct experience that watches are made by men. . . .

The parts of which the eye is composed, and the collocations which constitute the arrangement of those parts, resemble one another in this very remarkable property, that they all conduce to enabling the animal to see. These things being as they are, the animal sees: if any one of them were different from what it is, the animal, for the most part, would either not see, or would not see equally well. And this is the only marked resemblance that we can trace among the different parts of this structure, beyond the general likeness of composition and organization which exists among all other parts of the animal. Now the particular combination of organic elements called an eye had, in every instance, a beginning in time and must therefore have been brought together by a cause or causes. The number of instances is immeasurably greater than is, by the principles of inductive logic, required for the exclusion of a random concurrence of independent causes, or speaking technically, for the elimination of chance. We are therefore warranted by the canons of induction in concluding that what brought all these elements together was some cause common to them all; and inasmuch as the elements agree in the single circumstance of conspiring to produce sight, there must be some connection by way of causation between the cause which brought those elements together, and the fact of sight.

This I conceive to be a legitimate inductive inference, and the sum and substance of what Induction can do for Theism. The natural sequel of the argument would be this. Sight, being a fact not precedent but subsequent to the putting together of the organic structure of the eye, can only be connected with the production of that structure in the character of a final, not an efficient cause; that is, it is not Sight itself but an antecedent Idea of it, that must be the efficient cause. But this at once marks the origin as proceeding from an intelligent will.

Evolution, if Confirmed, Undermines the Design Argument

I regret to say, however, that this latter half of the argument is not so inexpugnable as the former half. Creative forethought is not absolutely the only link by which the origin of the wonderful mechanism of the eye may be connected with the fact of sight. There is another connecting link on which attention has been greatly fixed by recent speculations, and the reality of which cannot be called in question, though its adequacy to account for such truly admirable combinations as some of those in Nature, is still and will probably long remain problematical. This is the principle of 'the survival of the fittest."

This principle does not pretend to account for the commencement of sensation or of animal or vegetable life. But assuming the existence of some one or more very low forms of organic life, in which there are no complex adaptations nor any marked appearances of contrivance, and supposing, as experience warrants us in doing, that many small variations from those simple types would be thrown out in all directions, which would be transmissible by inheritance, and of which some would be advantageous to the creature in its struggle for existence and others disadvantageous, the forms which are advantageous would always tend to survive and those which are disadvantageous to perish. And thus there would be a constant though slow general improvement of the type as it branched out into many different varieties, adapting it to different media and modes of existence, until it might possibly, in countless ages, attain to the most advanced examples which now exist.

It must be acknowledged that there is something very startling, and prima facie improbable in this hypothetical history of Nature. It would require us, for example, to suppose that the primaeval animal of whatever nature it may have been, could not see, and had at most such slight preparation for seeing as might be constituted by some chemical action of light upon its cellular structure. One of the accidental variations which are liable to take place in all organic beings would at some time or other produce a variety that could see, in some imperfect manner, and this peculiarity being transmitted by inheritance, while other variations continued to take place in other directions, a number of races would be produced who, by the power of even imperfect sight, would have a great advantage over all other creatures which could not see and would in time extirpate them from all places, except, perhaps, a few very peculiar situations underground. Fresh variations supervening would give rise to races with better and better seeing powers until we might at last reach as extraordinary a combination of structures and functions as are seen in the eye of man and of the more important animals. Of this theory when pushed to this extreme point, all that can now be said is that it is not so absurd as it looks, and that the analogies which have been discovered in experience, favorable to its possibility, far exceed what any one could have supposed beforehand. Whether it will ever be possible to say more than this, is at present uncertain. The theory if admitted would be in no way whatever inconsistent with Creation. But it must be acknowledged that it would greatly attenuate the evidence for it.

Leaving this remarkable speculation to whatever fate the progress of discovery may have in store for it, I think it must be allowed that, in the present state of our knowledge, the adaptations in Nature afford a large balance of probability in favour of creation by intelligence. It is equally certain that this is no more than a probability; and that the various other arguments of Natural Theology which we have considered, add nothing to its force. Whatever ground there is, revelation apart, to believe in an Author of Nature, is derived from the appearances in the universe. Their mere resemblance to the works of man, or to what man could do if he had the same power over the materials of organized bodies which he has over the materials of a watch, is of some value as an argument of analogy: but the argument is greatly strengthened by the properly inductive considerations which establish that there is some connection through causation between the origin of the arrangements of nature and the ends they fulfil; an argument which is in many cases slight, but in others, and chiefly in the nice and intricate combinations of vegetable and animal life, is of considerable strength.

Attributes: A Well-Meaning but Finite Deity

The question of the existence of a Deity, in its purely scientific aspect, standing as is shown in the First Part, it is next to be considered, given the indications of a Deity, what sort of a Deity do they point to? What attributes are we warranted, by the evidence which Nature affords of a creative mind, in assigning to that mind?

It needs no showing that the power if not the intelligence, must be so far superior to that of Man, as to surpass all human estimate. But from this to Omnipotence and Omniscience there is a wide interval. And the distinction is of immense practical importance.

It is not too much to say that every indication of Design in the Kosmos is so much evidence against the Omnipotence of the Designer. For what is meant by Design? Contrivance: the adaptation of means to an end. But the necessity for contrivance—the need of employing means—is a consequence of the limitation of power. Who would have recourse to means if to attain his end his mere word was sufficient? The very idea of means implies that the means have an efficacy which the direct action of the being who employs them has not. Otherwise they are not means, but an incumbrance. A man does not use machinery to move his arms. If he did, it could only be when paralysis had deprived him of the power of moving them by volition. But if the employment of contrivance is in itself a sign of limited power, how much more so is the careful and skilful choice of contrivances? Can any wisdom be shown in the selection of means, when the means have no efficacy but what is given them by the will of him who employs them, and when his will could have bestowed the same efficacy on any other means? Wisdom and contrivance are shown in overcoming difficulties, and there is no room for them in a Being for whom no difficulties exist. The evidences, therefore, of Natural Theology distinctly imply that the author of the Kosmos worked under limitations; that he was obliged to adapt himself to conditions independent of his will, and to attain his ends by such arrangements as those conditions admitted of. . . .

Omnipotence, therefore, cannot be predicated of the Creator on grounds of natural theology. The fundamental principles of natural religion as deduced from the facts of the universe, negative his omnipotence. They do not, in the same manner, exclude omniscience: if we suppose limitation of power, there is nothing to contradict the supposition of perfect knowledge and absolute wisdom. But neither is there anything to prove it. The knowledge of the powers and properties of things necessary for planning and executing the arrangements of the Kosmos, is no doubt as much in excess of human knowledge as the power implied in creation is in excess of human power. And the skill, the subtlety of contrivance, the ingenuity as it would be called in the case of a human work, is often marvellous. But nothing obliges us to suppose that either the knowledge or the skill is infinite. We are not even compelled to suppose that the contrivances were always the best possible. If we venture to judge them as we judge the works of human artificers, we find abundant defects. . . .

Such are the indications of Natural Religion in respect to the divine benevolence. If we look for any other of the moral attributes which a certain class of philosophers are accustomed to distinguish from benevolence, as for example Justice, we find a total blank. There is no evidence whatever in Nature for divine justice, whatever standard of justice our ethical opinions may lead us to recognize. There is no shadow of justice in the general arrangements of Nature; and what imperfect realization it obtains in any human society (a most imperfect realization as yet) is the work of man himself, struggling upwards against immense natural difficulties, into civilization, and making to himself a second nature, far better and more unselfish than he was created with. But on this point enough has been said in another Essay, already referred to, on Nature.

These, then, are the net results of Natural Theology on the question of the divine attributes. A Being of great but limited power, how or by what limited we cannot even conjecture; of great, and perhaps unlimited intelligence, but perhaps, also, more narrowly limited than his power: who desires, and pays some regard to, the happiness of his creatures, but who seems to have other motives of action which he cares more for, and who can hardly be supposed to have created the universe for that purpose alone. Such is the Deity whom Natural Religion points to; and any idea of God more captivating than this comes only from human wishes, or from the teaching of either real or imaginary Revelation.

We shall next examine whether the light of nature gives any indications concerning the immortality of the soul, and a future life.

Immortality: An Unprovable Mystery

The indications of immortality may be considered in two divisions: those which are independent of any theory respecting the Creator and his intentions, and those which depend upon an antecedent belief on that subject.

Of the former class of arguments speculative men have in different ages put forward a considerable variety, of which those in the Phaedon of Plato are an example; but they are for the most part such as have no adherents, and need not be seriously refuted, now. They are generally founded upon preconceived theories as to the nature of the thinking principle in man, considered as distinct and separable from the body, and on other preconceived theories respecting death. As, for example, that death, or dissolution, is always a separation of parts; and the soul being without parts, being simple and indivisible, is not susceptible of this separation. Curiously enough, one of the interlocutors in the Phædon anticipates the answer by which an objector of the present day would meet this argument: namely, that thought and consciousness, though mentally distinguishable from the body, may not be a substance separable from it, but a result of it, standing in a relation to it (the illustration is Plato's) like that of a tune to the musical instrument on which it is played; and that the arguments used to prove that the soul does not die with the body, would equally prove that the tune does not die with the instrument, but survives its destruction and continues to exist apart. In fact, those moderns who dispute the evidences of the immortality of the soul, do not, in general, believe the soul to be a substance per se, but regard it as the name of a bundle of attributes, the attributes of feeling, thinking, reasoning, believing, willing, &c., and these attributes they regard as a consequence of the bodily organization, which therefore, they argue, it is as unreasonable to suppose surviving when that organization is dispersed, as to suppose the colour or odour of a rose surviving when the rose itself has perished. Those, therefore, who would deduce the immortality of the soul from its own nature have first to prove that the attributes in question are not attributes of the body but of a separate substance.

Now what is the verdict of science on this point? It is not perfectly conclusive either way. In the first place, it does not prove, experimentally, that any mode of organization has the power of producing feeling or thought. To make that proof good it would be necessary that we should be able to produce an organism, and try whether it would feel; which we cannot do; organisms cannot by any human means be produced, they can only be developed out of a previous organism. On the other hand, the evidence is well nigh complete that all thought and feeling has some action of the bodily organism for its immediate antecedent or accompaniment; that the specific variations and especially the different degrees of complication of the nervous and cerebral organization, correspond to differences in the development of the mental faculties; and though we have no evidence, except negative, that the mental consciousness ceases forever when the functions of the brain are at an end, we do know that diseases of the brain disturb the mental functions and that decay or weakness of the brain enfeebles them. We have therefore sufficient evidence that cerebral action is, if not the cause, at least, in our present state of existence, a condition sine qua non of mental operations; and that assuming the mind to be a distinct substance, its separation from the body would not be, as some have vainly flattered themselves, a liberation from trammels and restoration to freedom, but would simply put a stop to its functions and remand it to unconsciousness, unless and until some other set of conditions supervenes, capable of recalling it into activity, but of the existence of which experience does not give us the smallest indication.

At the same time it is of importance to remark that these considerations only amount to defect of evidence; they afford no positive argument against immortality. . .

There is, therefore, in science, no evidence against the immortality of the soul but that negative evidence, which consists in the absence of evidence in its favour. And even the negative evidence is not so strong as negative evidence often is. In the case of witchcraft, for instance, the fact that there is no proof which will stand examination of its having ever existed, is as conclusive as the most positive evidence of its non-existence would be; for it exists, if it does exist, on this earth, where if it had existed the evidence of fact would certainly have been available to prove it. But it is not so as to the soul's existence after death. That it does not remain on earth and go about visibly or interfere in the events of life, is proved by the same weight of evidence which disproves witchcraft. But that it does not exist elsewhere, there is absolutely no proof. A very faint, if any, presumption, is all that is afforded by its disappearance from the surface of this planet. . . .

We are told that the desire of immortality is one of our instincts, and that there is no instinct which has not corresponding to it a real object fitted to satisfy it. Where there is hunger there is somewhere food, where there is sexual feeling there is somewhere sex, where there is love there is somewhere something to be loved, and so forth: in like manner since there is the instinctive desire of eternal life, eternal life there must be. The answer to this is patent on the very surface of the subject. It is unnecessary to go into any recondite considerations concerning instincts, or to discuss whether the desire in question is an instinct or not. Granting that wherever there is an instinct there exists something such as that instinct demands, can it be affirmed that this something exists in boundless quantity, or sufficient to satisfy the infinite craving of human desires? What is called the desire of eternal life is simply the desire of life; and does there not exist that which this desire calls for? Is there not life? And is not the instinct, if it be an instinct, gratified by the possession and preservation of life? To suppose that the desire of life guarantees to us personally the reality of life through all eternity, is like supposing that the desire of food assures us that we shall always have as much as we can eat through our whole lives and as much longer as we can conceive our lives to be protracted to. . . .

Revelation: Miracles as Grounds for Hope rather than Certain Knowledge

A Revelation, therefore, cannot be proved divine unless by external evidence; that is, by the exhibition of supernatural facts. And we have to consider, whether it is possible to prove supernatural facts, and if it is, what evidence is required to prove them. . . .

But the evidence of miracles, at least to Protestant Christians, is not, in our own day, of this cogent description. It is not the evidence of our senses, but of witnesses, and even this not at first hand, but resting on the attestation of books and traditions. And even in the case of the original eye-witnesses, the supernatural facts asserted on their alleged testimony, are not of the transcendent character supposed in our example, about the nature of which, or the impossibility of their having had a natural origin, there could be little room for doubt. On the contrary, the recorded miracles are, in the first place, generally such as it would have been extremely difficult to verify as matters of fact, and in the next place, are hardly ever beyond the possibility of having been brought about by human means or by the spontaneous agencies of nature. . . .

What can be said with truth on the side of miracles amounts only to this: Considering that the order of nature affords some evidence of the reality of a Creator, and of his bearing good will to his creatures though not of its being the sole prompter of his conduct towards them: considering, again, that all the evidence of his existence is evidence also that he is not all-powerful, and considering that in our ignorance of the limits of his power we cannot positively decide that he was able to provide for us by the original plan of Creation all the good which it entered into his intentions to bestow upon us, or even to bestow any part of it at any earlier period than that at which we actually received it—considering these things, when we consider further that a gift, extremely precious, came to us which though facilitated was not apparently necessitated by what had gone before, but was due, as far as appearances go, to the peculiar mental and moral endowments of one man, and that man openly proclaimed that it did not come from himself but from God through him, then we are entitled to say that there is nothing so inherently impossible or absolutely incredible in this supposition as to preclude any one from hoping that it may perhaps be true. I say from hoping; I go no further; for I cannot attach any evidentiary value to the testimony even of Christ on such a subject, since he is never said to have declared any evidence of his mission (unless his own interpretations of the Prophecies be so considered) except internal conviction; and everybody knows that in prescientific times men always supposed that any unusual faculties which came to them they knew not how, were an inspiration from God; the best men always being the readiest to ascribe any honorable peculiarity in themselves to that higher source, rather than to their own merits.

Rational Skepticism, Hope, and the Virtue of Helping God

From the result of the preceding examination of the evidences of Theism, and (Theism being presupposed) of the evidences of any Revelation, it follows that the rational attitude of a thinking mind towards the supernatural, whether in natural or in revealed religion, is that of skepticism as distinguished from belief on the one hand, and from atheism on the other. . . . The whole domain of the supernatural is thus removed from the region of Belief into that of simple Hope; and in that, for anything we can see, it is likely always to remain; for we can hardly anticipate either that any positive evidence will be acquired of the direct agency of Divine Benevolence in human destiny, or that any reason will be discovered for considering the realization of human hopes on that subject as beyond the pale of possibility.

It is now to be considered whether the indulgence of hope, in a region of imagination merely, in which there is no prospect that any probable grounds of expectation will ever be obtained, is irrational, and ought to be discouraged as a departure from the rational principle of regulating our feelings as well as opinions strictly by evidence. . . .

There is another and a most important exercise of imagination which, in the past and present, has been kept up principally by means of religious belief and which is infinitely precious to mankind, so much so that human excellence greatly depends upon the sufficiency of the provision made for it. This consists of the familiarity of the imagination with the conception of a morally perfect Being, and the habit of taking the approbation of such a Being as the norma or standard to which to refer and by which to regulate our own characters and lives. This idealization of our standard of excellence in a Person is quite possible, even when that Person is conceived as merely imaginary. But religion, since the birth of Christianity, has inculcated the belief that our highest conceptions of combined wisdom and goodness exist in the concrete in a living Being who has his eyes on us and cares for our good. Through the darkest and most corrupt periods Christianity has raised this torch on high—has kept this object of veneration and imitation before the eyes of man. True, the image of perfection has been a most imperfect, and, in many respects a perverting and corrupting one, not only from the low moral ideas of the times, but from the mass of moral contradictions which the deluded worshipper was compelled to swallow by the supposed necessity of complimenting the Good Principle with the possession of infinite power. But it is one of the most universal as well as of the most surprising characteristics of human nature, and one of the most speaking proofs of the low stage to which the reason of mankind at large has ever yet advanced, that they are capable of overlooking any amount of either moral or intellectual contradictions and receiving into their minds propositions utterly inconsistent with one another, not only without being shocked by the contradiction, but without preventing both the contradictory beliefs from producing a part at least of their natural consequences in the mind. Pious men and women have gone on ascribing to God particular acts and a general course of will and conduct incompatible with even the most ordinary and limited conception of moral goodness, and have had their own ideas of morality, in many important particulars, totally warped and distorted, and notwithstanding this have continued to conceive their God as clothed with all the attributes of the highest ideal goodness which their state of mind enabled them to conceive, and have had their aspirations towards goodness stimulated and encouraged by that conception. And, it cannot be questioned that the undoubting belief of the real existence of a Being who realizes our own best ideas of perfection, and of our being in the hands of that Being as the ruler of the universe, gives an increase of force to these feelings beyond what they can receive from reference to a merely ideal conception.

This particular advantage it is not possible for those to enjoy, who take a rational view of the nature and amount of the evidence for the existence and attributes of the Creator. On the other hand, they are not encumbered with the moral contradictions which beset every form of religion which aims at justifying in a moral point of view the whole government of the world. They are, therefore, enabled to form a far truer and more consistent conception of Ideal Goodness, than is possible to any one who thinks it necessary to find ideal goodness in an omnipotent ruler of the world. The power of the Creator once recognized as limited, there is nothing to disprove the supposition that his goodness is complete and that the ideally perfect character in whose likeness we should wish to form ourselves and to whose supposed approbation we refer our actions, may have a real existence in a Being to whom we owe all such good as we enjoy. . . .

Impressions such as these, though not in themselves amounting to what can properly be called a religion, seem to me excellently fitted to aid and fortify that real, though purely human religion, which sometimes calls itself the Religion of Humanity and sometimes that of Duty. To the other inducements for cultivating a religious devotion to the welfare of our fellow-creatures as an obligatory limit to every selfish aim, and an end for the direct promotion of which no sacrifice can be too great, it superadds the feeling that in making this the rule of our life, we may be co-operating with the unseen Being to whom we owe all that is enjoyable in life. One elevated feeling this form of religious idea admits of, which is not open to those who believe in the omnipotence of the good principle in the universe, the feeling of helping God—of requiting the good he has given by a voluntary co-operation which he, not being omnipotent, really needs, and by which a somewhat nearer approach may be made to the fulfilment of his purposes. The conditions of human existence are highly favorable to the growth of such a feeling inasmuch as a battle is constantly going on, in which the humblest human creature is not incapable of taking some part, between the powers of good and those of evil, and in which every even the smallest help to the right side has its value in promoting the very slow and often almost insensible progress by which good is gradually gaining ground from evil, yet gaining it so visibly at considerable intervals as to promise the very distant but not uncertain final victory of Good. To do something during life, on even the humblest scale if nothing more is within reach, towards bringing this consummation ever so little nearer, is the most animating and invigorating thought which can inspire a human creature; and that it is destined, with or without supernatural sanctions, to be the religion of the Future I cannot entertain a doubt. But it appears to me that supernatural hopes, in the degree and kind in which what I have called rational skepticism does not refuse to sanction them, may still contribute not a little to give to this religion its due ascendancy over the human mind.

Source: John Stuart Mill, Three Essays on Religion (1874), adapted.

STUDY QUESTIONS

Please answer all of the following questions.

1. According to Darwin in his Autobiography, why did his historical and moral critiques of the Old Testament lead him to disbelieve in Christian revelation?

2. According to Darwin in his Autobiography, why does the presence of widespread suffering among animals fail to align with a benevolent creator but align with natural selection?

3. According to Darwin in Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication, how does his architect analogy illustrate that complex biological structures arise without guided variation?

4. According to Darwin in Descent of Man, how do human mental faculties like imagination and dreams generate early animistic spirit beliefs?

5. According to Darwin in Descent of Man, how do early childhood inculcation and community custom shape moral and religious beliefs into instinct-like behaviors?

6. According to Strauss in The Life of Jesus, why what does he aim to replace the literal divine incarnation of Christ with?

7. According to Strauss in The Old Faith and the New Faith, how do the timescales and mechanisms of modern geology and astronomy contradict the biblical creation narrative in Genesis?

8. According to Strauss in The Old Faith and the New Faith, why does Darwin's theory of natural selection successfully replace miraculous agency in explaining organic adaptation?

9. According to Strauss in The Old Faith and the New Faith, how does a monistic worldview unite materialism and idealism against traditional Christian dualism?

10. According to Strauss in The Old Faith and the New Faith, how does human morality arise through social cooperation and cultural progress rather than divine command or a original fall?

11. According to Mill in "The Utility of Religion," why are the moral effects commonly attributed to religion actually produced by education, authority, and public opinion?

12. According to Mill in "The Utility of Religion," why is the secular Religion of Humanity morally superior to traditional supernatural religions?

13. According to Mill in "The Utility of Religion," why does the orthodox Christian doctrine of hell create an insurmountable moral contradiction?

14. According to Mill in "The Utility of Religion," why will the psychological need for belief in an afterlife naturally diminish as human earthly conditions improve?

15. According to Mill in "Theism," why is polytheism more natural to the uncultivated mind, and how does scientific progress enable monotheism?

16. According to Mill in "Theism," why does causation in human experience apply only to changeable events and not to permanent matter and force?

17. According to Mill in "Theism," how does the intricate structure of the eye provide a strong inductive argument for a designing cause?

18. According to Mill in "Theism," why does the presence of contrivance and natural suffering in the cosmos logically disprove divine omnipotence?

19. According to Mill in "Theism," why is rational skepticism the proper attitude toward reported historical miracles and revelation?

20. According to Mill in "Theism," how does conceiving God as a finite, well-meaning Being provide a meaningful moral incentive to "help God"?

21. Short Essay Options: Please select one of the following and answer it in a minimum of 100 words.

(a) Critics argue that Darwin's rejection of guided variation leaves the origin of beneficial mutations unexplained. They state that natural selection cannot create raw materials, only filter them. How might Darwin respond?

(b) Critics argue that Darwin's explanation of morality as an evolved social instinct reduces ethics to biology. This view strips moral duties of objective truth and binding normativity. How might Darwin respond?

(c) Critics argue that Strauss's cosmic feeling of reverence is contradictory. Experiencing sacred dependence toward a blind, mechanical universe misapplies religious sentiment. How might Strauss respond?

(d) Critics argue that Strauss's total rejection of the historical Jesus strips society of a crucial moral anchor. Secular culture alone cannot sustain human dignity. How might Strauss respond?

(e) Critics argue that Mill's Religion of Humanity lacks the emotional power to inspire real sacrifice. Abstract devotion to future generations cannot replace a personal God. How might Mill respond?

(f) Critics argue that Mill's inductive argument for design contradicts his claims about finite divine power. An imperfect mechanism points to bad engineering rather than a benevolent architect. How might Mill respond?

(g) Critics argue that Mill's finite deity is a theological compromise. A God bound by external natural limitations is not truly God and cannot guarantee the ultimate triumph of good. How might Mill respond?

(h) Critics argue that nineteenth-century naturalism relies on a mechanistic view of how life emerged and developed that ignores self-organizing organic complexity. How might either Darwin, Strauss, or Mill respond?

(i) Critics argue that the naturalist attempt to replace traditional religion with secular ethics inevitably leads to moral relativism and nihilism. How might any one of these thinkers respond?

(j) Critics argue that the scientific arguments of Darwin, Strauss, and Mill fail to disprove the existence of a transcendent God who acts beyond natural laws. How might any one of these thinkers respond?