CORRESPONDENCE WEEK 3

The origins of the Universe

(R) Have you found any flaw in the argument as to our mental constitution indicating God?
(J) Not exactly a flaw, but I thought you had skipped an argument that was weightier, and that was under your hand.
(R) What was that?
(J) You spoke of adaptation between our faculties and the various objects on which they act. It struck me that this adaptation is a powerful evidence of God, for how could such an adaptation exist if there were not a higher power to cause it? Yes, there is force in that: but the unbeliever could evade it by suggesting that our faculties are a natural development from the objects on which they operate.

(R) Such as the eye from the light, and its disappearance in creatures that live in the dark. But he could not maintain that, could he?

(J) No; except as a hypothesis, but, even then, it would leave last weeks argument for God untouched; because if the seeing faculty is due to the existence of light, the worshipping faculty must be due to the existence of God. I prefer to use arguments that cannot be taken in the rear, so to speak.

(R)That is the best sort of argument no doubt.

(J)Do you think of any other?

(R) There is another argument that is very powerful, but it deals with such a vast aspect of things that it is difficult to handle. It is one of those sorts of arguments that are almost too ponderous to be useful.

(J) What can it be? I should like to hear it.

(R) Well, it deals with the origin of the universe.

(J) Ah, that is a vast theme, indeed.

(R) Vast, unutterably vast: beyond us

(J) Infinite.

(R) Yet challenging our attention: for here the universe is, a thing of parts and measurements and order, although a thing infinite. It is impossible to dismiss the problem of its existence.
The fashionable way now is to refer it all to “Evolution”?

(J) Yes, that is the word, but what does it mean? It means the slow development or improvement of things from point to point, by exercise, does it not?

(R) That is something like the meaning, but it by no means excludes the argument for God, even if it were a true theory. Evolution would still need God for the explanation of itself.

(J) I should like to see that shown.

(R) The proof is very simple when you turn the subject over in your mind. Supposing Evolution (for the sake of argument) to be true, there must have been a time going back far enough, when nothing had been evolved when sun, moon, and stars were but an undeveloped potentiality. Now suppose we go back to such a time, and imagine ourselves onlookers. There would be nothing to see, of course; but the force of power now incorporate in the splendid frame of the universe must have existed. Without this, nothing could have ever come at all-manifestly.
There must have been a space filling ocean of invisible energy or force, out of which the universe afterwards came, even if it was by evolution. Now here is an inevitable conclusion: at whatever point of time the process of evolution began,, there must have come upon the scene a new impulse of some kind to start it.

(J) Why must we suppose that?

(R) Think of it, and you must see. At whatever point of time the process may be imagined to have commenced, there must have been time before then -time without beginning-necessarily: and the problem to be faced is this: Why did not the evoluting process begin in these previous ages of time, instead of just when it did? If a new condition came upon the scene, there is an answer otherwise, there seems no reason why the quiescence of antecedent eternity should not have continued. The problem is real and persistent. How came evolution to begin? How came potentiality to stir? Must not something have come upon the scene at the moment of the stirring which was not before at work? Must not an impulse have begun to move which was not moving before? Must not the previously sleeping “force” have begun to vibrate with a formulative stimulus not previously active? What could this be but the volition of intelligent power? Even evolution you see does not dispense with the necessity for a first cause. Something like the Mosaic start took place even on the evolutionist hypotheses. A creative impulse is a mathematical necessity, to account for things as they are. There is a deeper philosophy, than is commonly imagined in the words of Paul: “The invisible things of Him are clearly seen from the creation of the world, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead.”

(J) You speak as if Darwinism might be admissible after all?

(R) I do so only as a matter of argument. My aim is to show that, even if that system were accepted, it does not get rid of God. It only makes the process of his work slower.

(J) It is imagined that the Darwinian process is more conceivable to the human intellect.

(R) As to that, both Mosaic and Darwinian are inconceivable. The beginning of things, in either case, is equally out of the range of the human intellect. But there is a great difference between the two, in point of credibility and fitness. The Mosaic narrative comes to us with the authority of the Lord Jesus the Christ, and gives to us a cause adequate to the effects which we see in heaven and in the earth, an All wise, All powerful Intelligence, possessing, in Himself, all the power to exist, and all the capability of imparting that original formative initiative that the case requires; while Darwinism is a mere scientific guess, and asks us to believe that eternal force, without will or wisdom, has inexplicably evolved a system of things bearing marks of will and wisdom in their highest forms.