CORRESPONDENCE WEEK 12
The Fool’s Opinion
(R) “The fool has said in his heart, there is no God.” You are acquainted with the utterance of David’s on the subject?
(J) Yes; I should think everyone must have heard of it.
(R) What do you think of it?
(J) It would be very disrespectful to David were I to suggest there is any weakness in it.
(R) Do you think there is?
(J) It has never seemed so strong to me as it has to other people
(R) Where is the lack of strength?
(J) It begs the question: it is a dogmatic assertion, and I never find anything satisfactory in mere assertion.
(R) It depends on the assertor, doesn’t it? If your father or friend asserts that he has made up his mind to settle a handsome income on you forthwith, you would not think the assertion unsatisfactory?
(J) That is a different thing.
(R) Not if David had as much personal knowledge of the matter he asserts as your father or friend might have as to his own ability or intention.
(J) Ah, but you see, he had not, and could not have.
(R) Don’t be so sure about that.
(J) Where is the room for doubt?
(R)“The Spirit of the Lord came upon David from that day and forward,” that is, from his youth upwards. If the Spirit of the Lord was upon David, he would have knowledge of the things of the Spirit. Accordingly, we read concerning the Divine temple built by Solomon, that it was built to a pattern or plan that “David had by the Spirit.” “All this,” said David, “the Lord made me understand in writing by His hand upon me” (1 Samuel 16 v13; 1 Chronicles 28 v12-19). At the close of his days, he said, “The Spirit of the Lord spoke by me, and His word was on my tongue” (2 Samuel 23 v2). Now, suppose this was true, David would have the same personal knowledge of God that he would have of the earth or sky, would he not?
(J) I don’t know that.
(R) Why, certainly. “The things of God no man knows but the Spirit of God. Now we have received the Spirit,” says Paul, “… that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God.” “God has revealed them unto us by His Spirit: for the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God” (1 Corinthians 2 12 v10). If David had the Spirit of God abiding with him from the day of his anointing to the day of his death, the verities of Divine existence must have been as obvious to his consciousness as anything is to any of us.
(J) But how do we know that David had the Spirit of God?
(R) Because the Bible asserts it, as I have read.
(J) Yes but a loose historical statement like that, does not amount to much.
(R) Peter says, “David was a prophet” (Acts 2 29 v30), and that “The Spirit of Christ was in the prophets” (1 Peter 1 v10-11).
(J)Yes that is Peter.
(R) Jesus says David spoke “in Spirit” (Matthew 22 v43). You see it does not rest on what you call “a loose historical statement.” You will have to reject the New Testament: you will have to part company with Christ and Peter before you can get rid of the evidence that the Spirit of God was a presence with David. Are you prepared to say that all these were a work of error and imposture?
(J) You press me hard.
(R) Legitimately. The question justifies it, and the state of facts surrounding it. If David was the subject of a Divine illumination, which made him in actual touch with God, I submit that there is something very weighty in his declaration that “the fool has said in his heart there is no God.” He was speaking with personal knowledge and, therefore, with all the assurance that you would feel in rebutting the assumptions of ignorant people who might call in question the wonderful applications of science in our day.
(J) I see where you are. There is something in it put in that way.
(R) Besides, David does not rest his dictum on his mere authority. There is an implication in a direction of evidence in his use of the term “fool.” He seems to say that a man, with all the facts before him that any man has, must be a fool who says or thinks “There is no God.” This is, in fact, his very argument in one of the psalms. “Be not,” says he, “as the horse or the mule, which have no understanding.” “Understand you brutish among the people: and you fools, when will you be wise? He that has planted the ear, shall He not hear? He that formed the eye, shall He not see?” (Psalm 94 v8-9). This is the argument that Paul uses in another shape: “That which may be known of God is manifest … for the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse” (Romans 1 v19-20). This is in fact, the argument I have been pressing upon your attention for some time past.
(J) I have to thank you for your pertinacity.
(R) The matter is of the utmost moment. Let me put it again. It is really based upon a scientific maxim. Science lays down that, in the realm of physical nature, it is not possible that anything can occur without an adequate cause. If this is true (and its truth cannot be questioned), consider how God is forced upon us (under whatever name you please), by the spectacle of the mighty universe so replete with the works of wisdom and power. Must it not have had a Cause equal to its production? Is not David’s proposition scientifically unassailable, that the man who says there is no such Cause is a fool?
Sunday, 15 August 2010
Sunday, 8 August 2010
CORRESPONDENCE WEEK 11
CORRESPONDENCE WEEK 11
The Self-action of the Universe
(J) You surprised me last week by your suggestion about God saving Himself trouble.
(R) You need not be surprised. The conclusion will force itself on you after reflection. The universe has self evidently, been constructed by Eternal power and wisdom; but, as self-evidently, it has had imparted to it a certain power of self-action that relieves Eternal power from the necessity of perpetual volition in the evolution of details.
(J) That is what is not at first sight quite evident.
(R) Why, my friend, it is the thing that is most of all evident, and the thing that, perhaps, has more to do with suggesting to the superficial mind that there is no God than anything else.
(J) How so?
(R) Take the familiar instance of grain. So long as the farmer holds it in sacks, it is simply grain; but let him sow it in his field; it sprouts and brings a new crop. Here is an automatic action and not Divine volition. The constitution of the grain has been so adjusted to the chemical action of soil and moisture that the subjection of the grain to soil and moisture is all that is necessary to produce fructification. The Divine volition has not to intervene to produce the result. The Divine volition has already established the conditions that lead to the result, and these conditions are so automatic in their action that they only require to be brought into relation, one with another, for the result to ensue like a ball rolling down a hill when brought to the edge, or gunpowder going off with an explosion when fire is brought near. It is because of this that man can control the works of God to the extent to which he can manipulate the conditions, but this extent is very limited, and always subject to permission.
(J) Your argument seems to exclude God.
(R) By no means. He cannot be excluded. He is necessitated as the contriver of the conditions in the first instance, as we have seen; for the things did not make themselves. And he is required when anything extra has to be done: as when Aaron’s rod has to bud and yield almonds in one night, that the Divine foundations of the Aaronic priesthood may be demonstrated; or, as when a multitude has to be fed with loaves that did not come out of the field. These things could not happen without the express volition of Omnipotence. But we cannot shut our eyes to the evident truth that that creation has a passive aspect in which the power of God is not operative in the direct volitional sense. Creation is the power of God incorporate: but as an incorporation of that power, it has automatic properties with which He has invested it in the process of incorporation. All these properties are subject to His control. He has not made a machine that can ever get beyond His management. At the same time, it is a machine to which He has imparted a self-action within certain limits.
(J) If there is a self-action, what need for God?
(R) My friend, self-action is a different thing from self manufacture. You may make a self-acting machine: but a self-acting machine could not make itself. A railway train in motion is a self-acting machine for the time being: what should you think of a man who should say, what need for a maker?
(J) Perhaps I should have put the question the other way: If there is God, what room is there for self-action?
(R) There is just the room that God has provided. We must recognise facts. Here is a fireplace, and there is firewood and coal. If I leave them where they are, they remain as they are; but if I put the firewood in the grate, and the coals on the firewood, and apply a light, there is fire that consumes both wood and coal and gives out heat. You would not say that that consumption and that heat are due to the direct action of Divine volition. They are due to conditions established by Divine volition; but the action of those conditions itself is not a Divine volition. In fact, here lies the difference between God and His works: “miracle,” as we call it, and Nature. Nature, at first is a miracle, in being the product of Divine volition. Afterwards, we call its self-acting powers natural. And this is a real distinction, the omission to recognize which, is the cause of much of the confusion of thought that reigns among students of Nature on the subject of God.
(J) I must, of course, admit the cogency of your remarks. It was your description of it as a saving of trouble that grated on my understanding. And I cannot now say that you have reconciled me to it. It must take as much trouble” as you call it, to uphold a self-acting system in being, as to perform all its operation in detail.
(R) I do not insist on the term. There may be a better description of the doings of Him “who faints not, neither is weary;” “who slumbers not, nor sleeps.” At the same time, there is a tangible truth in the matter that supplies an important link in the harmonization of the truth of God’s existence with the operations of Nature. “A sparrow cannot fall” without His knowledge and permission: but He is not the direct Author of the fall of the thousands of sparrows that are killed by the cruel and hungry. “All things are naked and open to Him, neither is any creature that is not manifest in His sight.” Yet their actions are subject to their own unconstrained volitions. “None can hide himself” from the divine perception, . . none can elude the Divine power. Heaven and earth are embraced in His universal presence, as scripture so sublimely declare. Yet it remains as yet only as a matter of prayer that His will may be done on earth as it is done in heaven. “In Him we live, and move, and have our being,” and yet we stand related to an inflexible rule of mechanical law that will kill us if we do not conform: by drowning if we submerge ourselves in water; by burning if we go into fire; by starvation if we neglect to eat and drink.
(J) It is a subject that requires much thinking about.
(R) But which will repay the process.
(J) Perhaps.
The Self-action of the Universe
(J) You surprised me last week by your suggestion about God saving Himself trouble.
(R) You need not be surprised. The conclusion will force itself on you after reflection. The universe has self evidently, been constructed by Eternal power and wisdom; but, as self-evidently, it has had imparted to it a certain power of self-action that relieves Eternal power from the necessity of perpetual volition in the evolution of details.
(J) That is what is not at first sight quite evident.
(R) Why, my friend, it is the thing that is most of all evident, and the thing that, perhaps, has more to do with suggesting to the superficial mind that there is no God than anything else.
(J) How so?
(R) Take the familiar instance of grain. So long as the farmer holds it in sacks, it is simply grain; but let him sow it in his field; it sprouts and brings a new crop. Here is an automatic action and not Divine volition. The constitution of the grain has been so adjusted to the chemical action of soil and moisture that the subjection of the grain to soil and moisture is all that is necessary to produce fructification. The Divine volition has not to intervene to produce the result. The Divine volition has already established the conditions that lead to the result, and these conditions are so automatic in their action that they only require to be brought into relation, one with another, for the result to ensue like a ball rolling down a hill when brought to the edge, or gunpowder going off with an explosion when fire is brought near. It is because of this that man can control the works of God to the extent to which he can manipulate the conditions, but this extent is very limited, and always subject to permission.
(J) Your argument seems to exclude God.
(R) By no means. He cannot be excluded. He is necessitated as the contriver of the conditions in the first instance, as we have seen; for the things did not make themselves. And he is required when anything extra has to be done: as when Aaron’s rod has to bud and yield almonds in one night, that the Divine foundations of the Aaronic priesthood may be demonstrated; or, as when a multitude has to be fed with loaves that did not come out of the field. These things could not happen without the express volition of Omnipotence. But we cannot shut our eyes to the evident truth that that creation has a passive aspect in which the power of God is not operative in the direct volitional sense. Creation is the power of God incorporate: but as an incorporation of that power, it has automatic properties with which He has invested it in the process of incorporation. All these properties are subject to His control. He has not made a machine that can ever get beyond His management. At the same time, it is a machine to which He has imparted a self-action within certain limits.
(J) If there is a self-action, what need for God?
(R) My friend, self-action is a different thing from self manufacture. You may make a self-acting machine: but a self-acting machine could not make itself. A railway train in motion is a self-acting machine for the time being: what should you think of a man who should say, what need for a maker?
(J) Perhaps I should have put the question the other way: If there is God, what room is there for self-action?
(R) There is just the room that God has provided. We must recognise facts. Here is a fireplace, and there is firewood and coal. If I leave them where they are, they remain as they are; but if I put the firewood in the grate, and the coals on the firewood, and apply a light, there is fire that consumes both wood and coal and gives out heat. You would not say that that consumption and that heat are due to the direct action of Divine volition. They are due to conditions established by Divine volition; but the action of those conditions itself is not a Divine volition. In fact, here lies the difference between God and His works: “miracle,” as we call it, and Nature. Nature, at first is a miracle, in being the product of Divine volition. Afterwards, we call its self-acting powers natural. And this is a real distinction, the omission to recognize which, is the cause of much of the confusion of thought that reigns among students of Nature on the subject of God.
(J) I must, of course, admit the cogency of your remarks. It was your description of it as a saving of trouble that grated on my understanding. And I cannot now say that you have reconciled me to it. It must take as much trouble” as you call it, to uphold a self-acting system in being, as to perform all its operation in detail.
(R) I do not insist on the term. There may be a better description of the doings of Him “who faints not, neither is weary;” “who slumbers not, nor sleeps.” At the same time, there is a tangible truth in the matter that supplies an important link in the harmonization of the truth of God’s existence with the operations of Nature. “A sparrow cannot fall” without His knowledge and permission: but He is not the direct Author of the fall of the thousands of sparrows that are killed by the cruel and hungry. “All things are naked and open to Him, neither is any creature that is not manifest in His sight.” Yet their actions are subject to their own unconstrained volitions. “None can hide himself” from the divine perception, . . none can elude the Divine power. Heaven and earth are embraced in His universal presence, as scripture so sublimely declare. Yet it remains as yet only as a matter of prayer that His will may be done on earth as it is done in heaven. “In Him we live, and move, and have our being,” and yet we stand related to an inflexible rule of mechanical law that will kill us if we do not conform: by drowning if we submerge ourselves in water; by burning if we go into fire; by starvation if we neglect to eat and drink.
(J) It is a subject that requires much thinking about.
(R) But which will repay the process.
(J) Perhaps.
Sunday, 1 August 2010
CORRESPONDENCE WEEK 10
CORRESPONDENCE WEEK 10
Human Intelligence itself a proof of God
(R) It seems to me that the very putting of the question is proof of the existence of that which is questioned.
(J) How do you make that out? It strikes me as a very extraordinary suggestion.
(R) Well, the question indicates considerable astuteness on the part of the questioner.
Here is a looking, thinking, prying creature called man, quick glancing east, west, north, south: noting this, noting that, putting this and that together: observing, reflecting, arguing, making experiments, studying, reasoning: constructing instruments, digging, boring, melting, dissolving: weighing, calculating, sailing on the sea, running over the land, exploring not only unknown parts of the earth which he inhabits, but even the vast regions of space are probed by man and even explored by man in a limited way physically and even more extensively mechanically. (This section has been revised due to the incursions of man’s endeavours into space. Ed.) If this audacious restless, prying creature had always been on the earth, we might have supposed him the root and source, in some inexplicable way, of the wonderful intellectual power he exhibits; but as we consider him, we note he had no existence a short way back, and that in each individual case, he shortly lies down and dies. The question, therefore, propounds itself in loud imperative tones, Where got man this wonderful faculty? Must it not have existed before him independently of him? Was there no wisdom before he was born?
(J) Is it possible that he is the highest intelligence in the universe?
(R) Is it conceivable that there was no contriving power anywhere till he himself wisely contrived to put in an appearance, seeing all things small and great in heaven and earth are wisely made? If man has a little wisdom where did he get his wisdom from? He is wisely constructed: must not the power that constructed him be wiser than he? “He that hath formed the eye, shall He not see? He that hath formed the ear, shall He not hear.” The propounding of the question, “Is there a God?” proves the existence of a power equal to the production of the intelligence that puts the question, and necessitates that that power shall be as much superior to that intelligence as all cause must be superior to all effects.
(J) Man’s intelligence is a mere effect: where is the cause?
(R) That is the question.
(J) Scientific men seem to find it in the molecular combination of atoms?
(R) But who or what combined the atoms? Granting the existence of atoms, they could not combine themselves. If there were nothing but atoms they must have remained as atoms, and filled the universe with eternal dust. Instead of that, it is a universe of order and glory and beauty; and it is all in one system under one control, as shown by the co-relation of the stars.
(J) Where is the seat of this control?
(R) Ah, who can tell? There must be such, must there not? If there were not, things would get into a whirl and a chaos. They do not. They are held together, and held apart, as with an iron rein.
(J) I should say that is the law of things.
(R) What do you mean by that?
(J) Well, the quality or tendency of things in general to keep in a certain relation. Fire burns; water finds its level; gravitation shapes the course of planets. It is the nature of things. I do not see that we require going outside of things themselves for an explanation of their behaviour.
(R) No doubt the law of their behaviour is in them (or rather, let us say, they in it): but that does not account for their being there to behave. How came they to be there at all, and to have that law? They must have had a cause equal to their production in the first instance.
(J) That is not to be denied.
(R) Must not that cause have combined power and wisdom? Without power, without wisdom, how could it have been equal to the production of works of power and wisdom?
(J) As a matter of terms, I cannot evade your argument. Yet I have a feeling as if it were not conclusive.
(R) A feeling is not a safe steersman in such a matter.
(J) Though I say feeling, of course I mean a reservation of reason.
(R) Can you define it?
(J) It is a little difficult.
(R) Try.
(J) Well, I have a difficulty in reconciling what I might call the mechanical relations of everything we see in the universe with the intelligent initiative and superintendence usually associated with the idea of God. Everything is interlocked in an endless chain of mechanical causes. The sun shines, the rain forms, the winds blow: vegetation springs: animals are born, and feed, and propagate, and die. The stars move in their courses by mutual influence and attraction; and there is nothing occurs anywhere, so far as we can see, but what springs naturally from some antecedent cause on mechanical principles.
(R) Therefore, what?
(J) Therefore, the intelligent causation of everything that you argue for is not so obvious to me.
(R) Perhaps you may not have apprehended my argument quite clearly?
(J) Perhaps.
(R) I am not contending for a moment to moment operation of Divine intelligence in detail. If I cut my finger, it does not require a Divine volition to make the blood flow. If a man gets no food, I do not say it requires a Divine volition to make him die. If a dry thicket catches fire on a hot summer’s day, I do not say it requires the action of Divine intelligence and power to cause the conflagration that follows. So in larger matters: the moon’s motion round the earth; the earths motion round the sun; the movements of the whole stellar universe are the result of the relations things sustain to one another.
(J) Then you seem to me to shut out God.
(R) By no means. Taking His existence as proved by “the things that are made” (to use Paul’s expression), and especially by the revelation of Himself He has made during the course of the world’s history, we have to realize that the universal fabric of things is put together in a way to give Him the least trouble of management as we might express it. His works are “in Him,” as the Scriptures declare, but He is separate from His works. That is, He holds them all in effluence of His eternal energy which the Bible denominates Spirit, but is Himself a distinct and separable entity, whose nucleus, as we might express it, is in eternal light, yet whose presence is as co-extensive with the Spirit as the sun is co-extensive with its light. Out of His omnipotent and eternal energy He has, by will and wisdom, concreted the tangible system of things which we call the universe. But He has so made this universe that, while in Him and subject to His power, it works by automatic action. This action which He started is what we call nature. His interference at any time when called for is what we call miracle.
(J) There are some strange things in your remarks. It is a new idea to me about God saving Himself the trouble. I always understood He was omnipotent and infinite, and did not require saving Himself trouble.
(R) You are thinking of the popular traditions on those subjects. We must take the Bible and Nature. They do not contradict each other. The modern demonstration of the conservation of energy proves that everything that is done involves the expenditure of energy, and that energy is measurable. It follows that when God works, He can spend much or little, as the case may require. When little does He does not spend much. He has spent much energy in the creation of heaven and earth; but the result of His work is a self working machine (self working as a motor car is self working when set a-going), which leaves Him little to do beyond the pleasure of superintendence in the evolution of His purpose.
(J) It is an extraordinary view, I must say.
(R) It is an inevitable view, when the various elements of truth in the case are combined. You cannot dispense with God as the explanation of things: but neither can you dispense with the automatic operation of Nature in its ordinary bearings. Therefore we must put two and two together with this grand result, that with the most exact study of Nature’s laws, we can combine the recognition and worship of God, and the exhilarating hope of that future glory which he has promised: the prospect of which supplies an interest and a principle to present mortal life otherwise entirely lacking.
Human Intelligence itself a proof of God
(R) It seems to me that the very putting of the question is proof of the existence of that which is questioned.
(J) How do you make that out? It strikes me as a very extraordinary suggestion.
(R) Well, the question indicates considerable astuteness on the part of the questioner.
Here is a looking, thinking, prying creature called man, quick glancing east, west, north, south: noting this, noting that, putting this and that together: observing, reflecting, arguing, making experiments, studying, reasoning: constructing instruments, digging, boring, melting, dissolving: weighing, calculating, sailing on the sea, running over the land, exploring not only unknown parts of the earth which he inhabits, but even the vast regions of space are probed by man and even explored by man in a limited way physically and even more extensively mechanically. (This section has been revised due to the incursions of man’s endeavours into space. Ed.) If this audacious restless, prying creature had always been on the earth, we might have supposed him the root and source, in some inexplicable way, of the wonderful intellectual power he exhibits; but as we consider him, we note he had no existence a short way back, and that in each individual case, he shortly lies down and dies. The question, therefore, propounds itself in loud imperative tones, Where got man this wonderful faculty? Must it not have existed before him independently of him? Was there no wisdom before he was born?
(J) Is it possible that he is the highest intelligence in the universe?
(R) Is it conceivable that there was no contriving power anywhere till he himself wisely contrived to put in an appearance, seeing all things small and great in heaven and earth are wisely made? If man has a little wisdom where did he get his wisdom from? He is wisely constructed: must not the power that constructed him be wiser than he? “He that hath formed the eye, shall He not see? He that hath formed the ear, shall He not hear.” The propounding of the question, “Is there a God?” proves the existence of a power equal to the production of the intelligence that puts the question, and necessitates that that power shall be as much superior to that intelligence as all cause must be superior to all effects.
(J) Man’s intelligence is a mere effect: where is the cause?
(R) That is the question.
(J) Scientific men seem to find it in the molecular combination of atoms?
(R) But who or what combined the atoms? Granting the existence of atoms, they could not combine themselves. If there were nothing but atoms they must have remained as atoms, and filled the universe with eternal dust. Instead of that, it is a universe of order and glory and beauty; and it is all in one system under one control, as shown by the co-relation of the stars.
(J) Where is the seat of this control?
(R) Ah, who can tell? There must be such, must there not? If there were not, things would get into a whirl and a chaos. They do not. They are held together, and held apart, as with an iron rein.
(J) I should say that is the law of things.
(R) What do you mean by that?
(J) Well, the quality or tendency of things in general to keep in a certain relation. Fire burns; water finds its level; gravitation shapes the course of planets. It is the nature of things. I do not see that we require going outside of things themselves for an explanation of their behaviour.
(R) No doubt the law of their behaviour is in them (or rather, let us say, they in it): but that does not account for their being there to behave. How came they to be there at all, and to have that law? They must have had a cause equal to their production in the first instance.
(J) That is not to be denied.
(R) Must not that cause have combined power and wisdom? Without power, without wisdom, how could it have been equal to the production of works of power and wisdom?
(J) As a matter of terms, I cannot evade your argument. Yet I have a feeling as if it were not conclusive.
(R) A feeling is not a safe steersman in such a matter.
(J) Though I say feeling, of course I mean a reservation of reason.
(R) Can you define it?
(J) It is a little difficult.
(R) Try.
(J) Well, I have a difficulty in reconciling what I might call the mechanical relations of everything we see in the universe with the intelligent initiative and superintendence usually associated with the idea of God. Everything is interlocked in an endless chain of mechanical causes. The sun shines, the rain forms, the winds blow: vegetation springs: animals are born, and feed, and propagate, and die. The stars move in their courses by mutual influence and attraction; and there is nothing occurs anywhere, so far as we can see, but what springs naturally from some antecedent cause on mechanical principles.
(R) Therefore, what?
(J) Therefore, the intelligent causation of everything that you argue for is not so obvious to me.
(R) Perhaps you may not have apprehended my argument quite clearly?
(J) Perhaps.
(R) I am not contending for a moment to moment operation of Divine intelligence in detail. If I cut my finger, it does not require a Divine volition to make the blood flow. If a man gets no food, I do not say it requires a Divine volition to make him die. If a dry thicket catches fire on a hot summer’s day, I do not say it requires the action of Divine intelligence and power to cause the conflagration that follows. So in larger matters: the moon’s motion round the earth; the earths motion round the sun; the movements of the whole stellar universe are the result of the relations things sustain to one another.
(J) Then you seem to me to shut out God.
(R) By no means. Taking His existence as proved by “the things that are made” (to use Paul’s expression), and especially by the revelation of Himself He has made during the course of the world’s history, we have to realize that the universal fabric of things is put together in a way to give Him the least trouble of management as we might express it. His works are “in Him,” as the Scriptures declare, but He is separate from His works. That is, He holds them all in effluence of His eternal energy which the Bible denominates Spirit, but is Himself a distinct and separable entity, whose nucleus, as we might express it, is in eternal light, yet whose presence is as co-extensive with the Spirit as the sun is co-extensive with its light. Out of His omnipotent and eternal energy He has, by will and wisdom, concreted the tangible system of things which we call the universe. But He has so made this universe that, while in Him and subject to His power, it works by automatic action. This action which He started is what we call nature. His interference at any time when called for is what we call miracle.
(J) There are some strange things in your remarks. It is a new idea to me about God saving Himself the trouble. I always understood He was omnipotent and infinite, and did not require saving Himself trouble.
(R) You are thinking of the popular traditions on those subjects. We must take the Bible and Nature. They do not contradict each other. The modern demonstration of the conservation of energy proves that everything that is done involves the expenditure of energy, and that energy is measurable. It follows that when God works, He can spend much or little, as the case may require. When little does He does not spend much. He has spent much energy in the creation of heaven and earth; but the result of His work is a self working machine (self working as a motor car is self working when set a-going), which leaves Him little to do beyond the pleasure of superintendence in the evolution of His purpose.
(J) It is an extraordinary view, I must say.
(R) It is an inevitable view, when the various elements of truth in the case are combined. You cannot dispense with God as the explanation of things: but neither can you dispense with the automatic operation of Nature in its ordinary bearings. Therefore we must put two and two together with this grand result, that with the most exact study of Nature’s laws, we can combine the recognition and worship of God, and the exhilarating hope of that future glory which he has promised: the prospect of which supplies an interest and a principle to present mortal life otherwise entirely lacking.
Sunday, 25 July 2010
CORRESPONDENCE WEEK 9
CORRESPONDENCE WEEK 9
The Seed of Plant and Animal
(R) Well, what have you to say to the contrivance that concentrates in a seed the power from which the future plant or animal will spring?
(J) It is very wonderful.
(R) Can you account for it apart from the operation of intelligence?
(J) My difficulty would be to account for it on any principal.
(R) It would not be so difficult to understand on the assumption of creative intelligence, would it?
(J) I don’t know about that.
(R) If there were no intelligence, there would be no accounting for it at all, would there?
(J) Of course, I grant that the supposition of creative intelligence would simplify the problem, but I find it exceedingly difficult to apply the idea of an extraneous operative intelligence to such a work, with the conception we have formed of intelligence. We have derived that conception of intelligence from our own experiences as human beings, which is necessarily a totally different thing from the kind of operations we are invited to recognize in nature. Man is ignorant of everything apart from experience; in a sense he is outside of everything. His constructive or inventive achievements are the result of experimenting upon the things and conditions around him, and of his need for the things he constructs. It is not possible to apply such an idea to the operations of the power of the universe. He needs not, like man, to make and adapt to get over a difficulty. Therefore, I cannot reason from one to the other.
(R) Well, no, you cannot. No man can. I am not asking you to do so. Your remark draws reasonable distinctions; but if you think it out thoroughly enough, you will find that it relates to modes of operation, and not to the fact of operation. It is upon the fact of operation that I wish to fix your attention. I grant there is no parallel between the works of man and the works of God; but there are two classes of works, are there not?
(J) That is the question.
(R) There are works of man?
(J) Yes there are works of man.
(R) And there are works not of man?
(J) Are you right in calling them works?
(R) Call them what you like: they are facts, operations, things done.
(J) I wish to fence off assumption.
(R) Well, it is not an assumption that the seed of plant and animal contains the potentiality (as scientists say) of the future plant and animal. Consider what a complexity of concentrated power this almost always means. Consider the light and airy fabric of a bird for example, its bones light and hollow for easy carriage in the atmosphere; its wing feathers formed with mathematical exactness, of various sizes and curves, to give the right blows on the air for flying, and having just the right muscles to supply the needed action. Think of all this, automatically organized or built up in an egg, which to the human eye presents nothing but a mass of albumen. Here is a work a thing done. It is not done by man. It is not done by itself. Each nature comes from its own seed only. You never find sea-gulls come from the eggs of the sparrow, or any creature come without derivation. If the works were self done, everything would spring up everywhere. No seed would be necessary for anything; whereas you know the seed or propagation in some other way is essential. If the individuals and the seed of any species perish, the species becomes extinct. Consequently, I am justified in asking you to admit that the implantation of seed power must have been an operation performed in the beginning.
(J) What beginning?
(R)The beginning of the creatures.
(J) If they had a beginning!
(R) Ho ho! You are not going to say the creatures are eternal are you?
(J) Well, no.
(R) You recognize the doctrine of science, I presume; that there was a time in the history of the earth when there was no living creature upon it?
(J) Yes, but that is inconceivable ages back.
(R) It matters not how far back. When you get there, there were no creatures, and then you had the beginning I spoke of the introduction of creatures, with this wonderful capacity, bearing the stamp of supreme wisdom, and requiring the utmost power to perform.
(J) The whole process of reproduction is so automatic, as you expressed it, that I cannot clearly deduce your conclusion from it.
(R) My friend, was the start automatic?
(J) I am not clear about the start.
(R) There must have been a start. There must have been a first animal, a first fish, a first blade of grass. You would not say there was such a departure from Nature then that they came into being spontaneously.
(J) That would be a greater miracle than creation.
(R) If not spontaneously, it must have been from an Operative Cause, and as that operative cause could not have been a powerless animal, fish, or blade of grass, we are bound to ask what it was, and to demand that it was equal to the production of such wonderful organisms.
(J) Organisms without intelligence produce them now: why not assume they were produced in some such way then?
(R) Because the way is barred. There were none such to produce them. That is the argument. The power of unintelligent organisms to produce them now is only part of the mechanism which it required Wisdom and Power to set a-going in the first case.
You have heard of Edison’s phonograph. A man speaks into this instrument, and his voice causes indentations, which, when afterwards passed over a vibrator, give back the sounds that produced them in the first instance, and therefore speak back the words spoken, even after the original speaker may be long dead. Now, suppose the words spoken back by the phonograph were distinct enough to make the needful indentations on another instrument, and that again on another, you would have an instrument that could be mechanically multiplied with speaking power. What would you say to the man who, in after generations, should say that because a phonograph of Mr. Gladstone’s speech could multiply phonograph ad lib. Therefore it was not necessary that there should have been an original speech of Mr. Gladstone’s to start the thing? This is virtually the position of those who say that, because they see the most exquisite contrivances of intelligence propagated from age to age on mechanical principles, therefore no intelligence was needed to start the process in the beginning.
(J) There is some force in your illustration. I will consider it. I am anxious to believe, and shall only be too glad if you can make my judgment captive.
The Seed of Plant and Animal
(R) Well, what have you to say to the contrivance that concentrates in a seed the power from which the future plant or animal will spring?
(J) It is very wonderful.
(R) Can you account for it apart from the operation of intelligence?
(J) My difficulty would be to account for it on any principal.
(R) It would not be so difficult to understand on the assumption of creative intelligence, would it?
(J) I don’t know about that.
(R) If there were no intelligence, there would be no accounting for it at all, would there?
(J) Of course, I grant that the supposition of creative intelligence would simplify the problem, but I find it exceedingly difficult to apply the idea of an extraneous operative intelligence to such a work, with the conception we have formed of intelligence. We have derived that conception of intelligence from our own experiences as human beings, which is necessarily a totally different thing from the kind of operations we are invited to recognize in nature. Man is ignorant of everything apart from experience; in a sense he is outside of everything. His constructive or inventive achievements are the result of experimenting upon the things and conditions around him, and of his need for the things he constructs. It is not possible to apply such an idea to the operations of the power of the universe. He needs not, like man, to make and adapt to get over a difficulty. Therefore, I cannot reason from one to the other.
(R) Well, no, you cannot. No man can. I am not asking you to do so. Your remark draws reasonable distinctions; but if you think it out thoroughly enough, you will find that it relates to modes of operation, and not to the fact of operation. It is upon the fact of operation that I wish to fix your attention. I grant there is no parallel between the works of man and the works of God; but there are two classes of works, are there not?
(J) That is the question.
(R) There are works of man?
(J) Yes there are works of man.
(R) And there are works not of man?
(J) Are you right in calling them works?
(R) Call them what you like: they are facts, operations, things done.
(J) I wish to fence off assumption.
(R) Well, it is not an assumption that the seed of plant and animal contains the potentiality (as scientists say) of the future plant and animal. Consider what a complexity of concentrated power this almost always means. Consider the light and airy fabric of a bird for example, its bones light and hollow for easy carriage in the atmosphere; its wing feathers formed with mathematical exactness, of various sizes and curves, to give the right blows on the air for flying, and having just the right muscles to supply the needed action. Think of all this, automatically organized or built up in an egg, which to the human eye presents nothing but a mass of albumen. Here is a work a thing done. It is not done by man. It is not done by itself. Each nature comes from its own seed only. You never find sea-gulls come from the eggs of the sparrow, or any creature come without derivation. If the works were self done, everything would spring up everywhere. No seed would be necessary for anything; whereas you know the seed or propagation in some other way is essential. If the individuals and the seed of any species perish, the species becomes extinct. Consequently, I am justified in asking you to admit that the implantation of seed power must have been an operation performed in the beginning.
(J) What beginning?
(R)The beginning of the creatures.
(J) If they had a beginning!
(R) Ho ho! You are not going to say the creatures are eternal are you?
(J) Well, no.
(R) You recognize the doctrine of science, I presume; that there was a time in the history of the earth when there was no living creature upon it?
(J) Yes, but that is inconceivable ages back.
(R) It matters not how far back. When you get there, there were no creatures, and then you had the beginning I spoke of the introduction of creatures, with this wonderful capacity, bearing the stamp of supreme wisdom, and requiring the utmost power to perform.
(J) The whole process of reproduction is so automatic, as you expressed it, that I cannot clearly deduce your conclusion from it.
(R) My friend, was the start automatic?
(J) I am not clear about the start.
(R) There must have been a start. There must have been a first animal, a first fish, a first blade of grass. You would not say there was such a departure from Nature then that they came into being spontaneously.
(J) That would be a greater miracle than creation.
(R) If not spontaneously, it must have been from an Operative Cause, and as that operative cause could not have been a powerless animal, fish, or blade of grass, we are bound to ask what it was, and to demand that it was equal to the production of such wonderful organisms.
(J) Organisms without intelligence produce them now: why not assume they were produced in some such way then?
(R) Because the way is barred. There were none such to produce them. That is the argument. The power of unintelligent organisms to produce them now is only part of the mechanism which it required Wisdom and Power to set a-going in the first case.
You have heard of Edison’s phonograph. A man speaks into this instrument, and his voice causes indentations, which, when afterwards passed over a vibrator, give back the sounds that produced them in the first instance, and therefore speak back the words spoken, even after the original speaker may be long dead. Now, suppose the words spoken back by the phonograph were distinct enough to make the needful indentations on another instrument, and that again on another, you would have an instrument that could be mechanically multiplied with speaking power. What would you say to the man who, in after generations, should say that because a phonograph of Mr. Gladstone’s speech could multiply phonograph ad lib. Therefore it was not necessary that there should have been an original speech of Mr. Gladstone’s to start the thing? This is virtually the position of those who say that, because they see the most exquisite contrivances of intelligence propagated from age to age on mechanical principles, therefore no intelligence was needed to start the process in the beginning.
(J) There is some force in your illustration. I will consider it. I am anxious to believe, and shall only be too glad if you can make my judgment captive.
Sunday, 18 July 2010
CORRESPONDENCE WEEK 8
CORRRESPONDENCE WEEK 8
The Construction of the Eye
(J) It was the eye last week: what is it now?
(R) I have not done with the eye yet. I must be content with amateur indications: but sometimes these are more useful than technical morass.
(J) I agree with you. The subject is often lost in the details, like a landscape when you apply your magnifying glass to the blades of grass. What more is there about the eye?
(Note: Dr. Michael J Behe wrote a book “Darwin’s Black Box” About irreducible complexity, see here http://www.truthinscience.org.uk/site/content/view/137/57/ However, we as Christadelphians do not hold to the vague scientific accounts of “Intelligent Design.” And that we believe that the Bible is the only source of divine revelation concerning the earth and its nations through God’s plan concerning them, not the fallible books and words of men however helpful they may be in helping us.
(R) Well, there is the system of muscles by which we turn it about at will in the socket. These are so placed with regard to thickness and thinness, and so attached to the ball of the eye as to enable the possessor of the eye to use it to the very utmost advantage, and with the rapidity of lightning. He can turn it this way and that, up or down, to the right side or the left side, just as he wishes. Who contrived this perfect apparatus, which excels the most exquisite machine ever invented by man, as much as the sunlight exceeds candle light? Man did not contrive it. It could not contrive itself.
It could not be there without being contrived. Give us God, and we are at rest. Take him from us, and you must give us something more baffling: for the wise workmanship you cannot deny. But you cannot take Him from us. Only “The fool has said in his heart there is no God.”
(J) I do not wish to take him from you.
(R) Pardon me. I am speaking to the impersonal mass of unbelief.
The force of the argument about the muscles of the eye becomes very great in connection with that one of them which enables us to turn the eye upwards. This differs from all the rest in a peculiar way. The others are all laid alongside the eye inside the socket, and work easily by contraction; but, on account of the jutting of the eyebrow over the eye, there is no room for the working of an ordinary muscle to give the upward motion. It is the way this difficulty has been got over that shows the participation of intelligence in the organizing of the human structure. An American professor recently explaining it to his students, said, “And here, gentlemen, I will show you what a clever thing God Almighty has done.” He called their attention to a little hole in the bone of the eyebrow (which anyone may see on inspecting a skull). He stated that the muscle for giving the upward motion, on getting to this hole, shrunk into a tendon and on getting through the hole, again turning into muscle, spread out upon and attached to the eye, so that when the muscle behind contracted, it pulled this tendon through the bone-hole, like a rope through a pulley, and so produced the motion otherwise impossible. What are we to say about such a thing as that? If we were to discover a contrivance to get round a difficulty in the clumsiest machine used by man, we should never think of attributing it to anything but the action of a human intelligence. In this case, we cannot attribute it to human intelligence. What are we to attribute it to?
(J) (Pauses)
(R) What have you to say?
(J) Well, I have a difficulty which I know not how to express.
(R) What is it?
(J) There is such a difference between the products of Nature and the contrivances of man, that I find myself unable to reason from one to the other. If I find an adaptation of machinery to accomplish some human end, I know man must have designed it and worked it out, because mechanical contrivances do not adjust themselves. But, in the matters you are speaking of, I cannot help feeling there is a great difference.
(R) Doubtless, there is a great difference, but the difference is not of a kind that affects the principal.
(J) I am not sure about that.
(R) Do you think natural adaptations are self adaptations?
(J) There is a good deal of self adaptation in Nature. If I cut my finger, the cut parts, if placed together, instantly begin to weave themselves together again.
(R) That is but the operation of an already existing machinery, is it not? It is not a self performance. It is the nature of the ruptured organism to re-unite its ruptured parts by the very law which maintains and perpetuates it from it from moment to moment, out of the blood. The oozing blood and the cut flesh have in them, by their properties, the power of coalescing with sundered parts. The power is already in the organism. It is part of it. It is not a self-evolved power. You would have to seek its origin in the origin of the organism as a whole.
(J) I am not quite clear about it.
(R) You would not say that the finger, being cut, says to itself: “Now I must stop this bleeding: I must heal this wound,” and goes to work, and does it by intelligent contrivance? The healing is done not by intelligent volition, but by a law already in the finger.
(J) No doubt, that is how it is; and it seems to me that that works against your argument.
(R) How so? I say that an intelligent arrangement of any kind argues the action of intelligence in arranging it.
(J) And yet the finger heals itself without intelligence.
(R) But the finger itself is the product of intelligence, and its power to heal is only a part of the constitution imparted to it in the original operation of that intelligence.
(J) You must go back to the origin of the finger to discuss the matter properly.
(R) Do you say the finger made itself?
(J) I am by no means lucid on these questions as I would like to be.
(R) Surely you cannot hesitate about so simple a matter.
(J) Of course the finger didn’t make itself; but it does not follow that it had a maker in the sense you are contending for.
(R) I am not contending for any sense inconsistent with the facts of the case. I do not say the finger was made as the watchmaker makes a watch, for that is a human performance, and God’s ways and methods are altogether different from man’s, as He Himself says. What I do say, that at some stage or other, Operative Wisdom must have contrived so wisely-constituted a thing as the finger.
(J) If it grows, it would not require to be “made.”
(R) Grows? What is that? Do you know what growth is?
(J) It looks pretty much like a self-development.
(R) Reconsider. Is not growth but the development of an already existing organism, by the power it has of assimilating suitable materials to its own nature?
(J) Suppose I say “Yes.” You say “it has” the power. This must be self power.
(R) A self power in the sense of possession: but how was it acquired?
(J) Ah, that is the question.
(R) Does not that take us away to the beginning of things?
(J) Well.
(R)Take the case of a man, a cow, or a rose. They all grow by assimilation of extraneous material; but is not the growth-power a helpless power, and in no sense a self power? Will food taken by a cow grow into man nature? Will a rose turn into a cabbage? What makes a rose a rose? What makes a cow a cow?
(J) Is it not growth, for they are rose and cow from the first moment of growth?
(R) The question can only be considered at the starting point. What is the origin of cow nature? What is the origin of rose nature? There is not a creature upon earth, in the actual experience of things, but what has come from a previous creature of like nature.
(J) But it is by growth.
(R) You seem to think that weakens the argument. In my judgement it strengthens it. It is a greater feat of power and wisdom to endow seed with the power of developing the full nature of a thing in all its forms and attributes, than to make it direct in each individual case. Is there anything like it in human works? Take into your hand the seed of a rose, or tomato, or a tree. Realise if you can, by what process of involution the nature of the previous plants from which these seeds have come, is condensed into the minute substance, so perfectly that, when subject to the right conditions, it will unfold a rose or other organism, as complete and identical in form, and nature and fragrance, as the original flower, plant, or animal. The parallel in human work of any kind would be, if a man, having made a sewing machine (say), was able to so contrive it that a speck of iron from the machine could be grown into another sewing machine by simply blowing it into a red heat. That would be an invention for you. You would say that such an inventor must be a superhumanly clever inventor. Yet, because God shows this wise power, you think it is no wise power at all, but…..what?
The Construction of the Eye
(J) It was the eye last week: what is it now?
(R) I have not done with the eye yet. I must be content with amateur indications: but sometimes these are more useful than technical morass.
(J) I agree with you. The subject is often lost in the details, like a landscape when you apply your magnifying glass to the blades of grass. What more is there about the eye?
(Note: Dr. Michael J Behe wrote a book “Darwin’s Black Box” About irreducible complexity, see here http://www.truthinscience.org.uk/site/content/view/137/57/ However, we as Christadelphians do not hold to the vague scientific accounts of “Intelligent Design.” And that we believe that the Bible is the only source of divine revelation concerning the earth and its nations through God’s plan concerning them, not the fallible books and words of men however helpful they may be in helping us.
(R) Well, there is the system of muscles by which we turn it about at will in the socket. These are so placed with regard to thickness and thinness, and so attached to the ball of the eye as to enable the possessor of the eye to use it to the very utmost advantage, and with the rapidity of lightning. He can turn it this way and that, up or down, to the right side or the left side, just as he wishes. Who contrived this perfect apparatus, which excels the most exquisite machine ever invented by man, as much as the sunlight exceeds candle light? Man did not contrive it. It could not contrive itself.
It could not be there without being contrived. Give us God, and we are at rest. Take him from us, and you must give us something more baffling: for the wise workmanship you cannot deny. But you cannot take Him from us. Only “The fool has said in his heart there is no God.”
(J) I do not wish to take him from you.
(R) Pardon me. I am speaking to the impersonal mass of unbelief.
The force of the argument about the muscles of the eye becomes very great in connection with that one of them which enables us to turn the eye upwards. This differs from all the rest in a peculiar way. The others are all laid alongside the eye inside the socket, and work easily by contraction; but, on account of the jutting of the eyebrow over the eye, there is no room for the working of an ordinary muscle to give the upward motion. It is the way this difficulty has been got over that shows the participation of intelligence in the organizing of the human structure. An American professor recently explaining it to his students, said, “And here, gentlemen, I will show you what a clever thing God Almighty has done.” He called their attention to a little hole in the bone of the eyebrow (which anyone may see on inspecting a skull). He stated that the muscle for giving the upward motion, on getting to this hole, shrunk into a tendon and on getting through the hole, again turning into muscle, spread out upon and attached to the eye, so that when the muscle behind contracted, it pulled this tendon through the bone-hole, like a rope through a pulley, and so produced the motion otherwise impossible. What are we to say about such a thing as that? If we were to discover a contrivance to get round a difficulty in the clumsiest machine used by man, we should never think of attributing it to anything but the action of a human intelligence. In this case, we cannot attribute it to human intelligence. What are we to attribute it to?
(J) (Pauses)
(R) What have you to say?
(J) Well, I have a difficulty which I know not how to express.
(R) What is it?
(J) There is such a difference between the products of Nature and the contrivances of man, that I find myself unable to reason from one to the other. If I find an adaptation of machinery to accomplish some human end, I know man must have designed it and worked it out, because mechanical contrivances do not adjust themselves. But, in the matters you are speaking of, I cannot help feeling there is a great difference.
(R) Doubtless, there is a great difference, but the difference is not of a kind that affects the principal.
(J) I am not sure about that.
(R) Do you think natural adaptations are self adaptations?
(J) There is a good deal of self adaptation in Nature. If I cut my finger, the cut parts, if placed together, instantly begin to weave themselves together again.
(R) That is but the operation of an already existing machinery, is it not? It is not a self performance. It is the nature of the ruptured organism to re-unite its ruptured parts by the very law which maintains and perpetuates it from it from moment to moment, out of the blood. The oozing blood and the cut flesh have in them, by their properties, the power of coalescing with sundered parts. The power is already in the organism. It is part of it. It is not a self-evolved power. You would have to seek its origin in the origin of the organism as a whole.
(J) I am not quite clear about it.
(R) You would not say that the finger, being cut, says to itself: “Now I must stop this bleeding: I must heal this wound,” and goes to work, and does it by intelligent contrivance? The healing is done not by intelligent volition, but by a law already in the finger.
(J) No doubt, that is how it is; and it seems to me that that works against your argument.
(R) How so? I say that an intelligent arrangement of any kind argues the action of intelligence in arranging it.
(J) And yet the finger heals itself without intelligence.
(R) But the finger itself is the product of intelligence, and its power to heal is only a part of the constitution imparted to it in the original operation of that intelligence.
(J) You must go back to the origin of the finger to discuss the matter properly.
(R) Do you say the finger made itself?
(J) I am by no means lucid on these questions as I would like to be.
(R) Surely you cannot hesitate about so simple a matter.
(J) Of course the finger didn’t make itself; but it does not follow that it had a maker in the sense you are contending for.
(R) I am not contending for any sense inconsistent with the facts of the case. I do not say the finger was made as the watchmaker makes a watch, for that is a human performance, and God’s ways and methods are altogether different from man’s, as He Himself says. What I do say, that at some stage or other, Operative Wisdom must have contrived so wisely-constituted a thing as the finger.
(J) If it grows, it would not require to be “made.”
(R) Grows? What is that? Do you know what growth is?
(J) It looks pretty much like a self-development.
(R) Reconsider. Is not growth but the development of an already existing organism, by the power it has of assimilating suitable materials to its own nature?
(J) Suppose I say “Yes.” You say “it has” the power. This must be self power.
(R) A self power in the sense of possession: but how was it acquired?
(J) Ah, that is the question.
(R) Does not that take us away to the beginning of things?
(J) Well.
(R)Take the case of a man, a cow, or a rose. They all grow by assimilation of extraneous material; but is not the growth-power a helpless power, and in no sense a self power? Will food taken by a cow grow into man nature? Will a rose turn into a cabbage? What makes a rose a rose? What makes a cow a cow?
(J) Is it not growth, for they are rose and cow from the first moment of growth?
(R) The question can only be considered at the starting point. What is the origin of cow nature? What is the origin of rose nature? There is not a creature upon earth, in the actual experience of things, but what has come from a previous creature of like nature.
(J) But it is by growth.
(R) You seem to think that weakens the argument. In my judgement it strengthens it. It is a greater feat of power and wisdom to endow seed with the power of developing the full nature of a thing in all its forms and attributes, than to make it direct in each individual case. Is there anything like it in human works? Take into your hand the seed of a rose, or tomato, or a tree. Realise if you can, by what process of involution the nature of the previous plants from which these seeds have come, is condensed into the minute substance, so perfectly that, when subject to the right conditions, it will unfold a rose or other organism, as complete and identical in form, and nature and fragrance, as the original flower, plant, or animal. The parallel in human work of any kind would be, if a man, having made a sewing machine (say), was able to so contrive it that a speck of iron from the machine could be grown into another sewing machine by simply blowing it into a red heat. That would be an invention for you. You would say that such an inventor must be a superhumanly clever inventor. Yet, because God shows this wise power, you think it is no wise power at all, but…..what?
Sunday, 11 July 2010
CORRESPONDENCE WEEK 7
CORRESPONDENCE WEEK 7
Mechanism of the Human Frame
(J) You were very severe last time.
(R) You must allow for the immense consequence of the truth involved.
(J) It has been well said that there are two subjects in which human fervour is liable to be more strongly engaged than any other- family and religion: sex and God.
(R) It is true. Pardon my vehemence. The argument is strong. It is not at an end yet.
(J) Do you mean the argument of last week?
(R) Yes.
(J) I should have thought you had pretty well exhausted it.
(R) Not quite yet. You have not only to think of the absurdity of chance producing a human pair, essential to each other, but of producing either of them with their varied and exquisite powers. If chance were at work, its operation would necessarily work in every variety of caprice. Its results must certainly be marked as often by foolishness as wisdom. But, in fact, chance does not work in any region of nature that man is acquainted with. Whatever happens has a cause, and that cause has a cause, and so back and back. When a new plant or animal is discovered, no one imagines it has come into existence spontaneously, or that there has never been the like before. The discoverer sets to work to find its history its origin its habitat if he can. If this is the case with the simplest form of life, vegetable or animal, how much more in a case like man, whose organization shows such a complex adaptation of means to ends, and such an exquisite result from the whole?
(J) Man is no more remarkable in that respect than the animals is he?
(R) Well, yes; his powers are higher: but even if it were not so-even if the animals are on a par with him as regards the wisdom of their organization, the argument would only be all the stronger. I select the case of man because he is the most signal illustration.
(J) Well, what do you have to say about him?
(R) There is more to be said than I can say, but I will try and give a rough idea or two. First of all, look at him in his entirety. He is a perfectly extraordinary phenomenon. He is a working machine that not only does the work it was made for, but repairs itself as it performs its work: a self working, self repairing machine.
(J) I am not sure I catch your idea there. The working and the repairing are both one thing aren’t they?
(R) No: No doubt the repairing is a class of work, but it is not the kind of work I mean. By work, I mean the exercises and functions of intelligent life. For example, a man attends to business, or serves his friends, or engages in study, or devotes himself to politics or travel. In all this, he uses the mechanism of his being, but it is outside and extra to that mechanism. It is what the mechanism was designed for, speaking generally. The heart was not made to pump blood merely that blood might be pumped, but that blood so pumped might contribute to intelligent life as a result. The lungs were not made to breathe, and the stomach to digest, merely that breath might be inhaled and food converted into new forms, but that these functions might sustain life, and admit of the objects involved in life. Now, what I wished to say was, that here you have a wonderful machine, that not only does the work it was made for, but that repairs itself at the same time it goes along.
(J) Repairs itself?
(R) Yes. You know that there is continual waste going on with all that we do, and that if there were not continual renewal or repair, we should not be able to carry on a single day. Now, this renewal is going on every moment in every part of every organ of the body, and yet we don’t have to stop to let it be done, but go on working and repairing at the same time. Take the eye for example: you go on using it all day, and yet with every throb of the heart its substance is being renewed, without interference of your use of it. My contention is, that on this general view, we cannot contemplate the human organization without having reason to feel that extraordinary wisdom must have been at work to produce such an organization, and that the idea of chance doing it is an outrage upon reason.
(J) As I said before, the argument would apply to everything: because there is just as much wisdom, as you call it, in the organization of a snail.
(R) No doubt it is so; and as I said before, that only makes the argument all the stronger. Only it is more clearly seen, perhaps, in the case of man, because of his superior parts the case is very powerful when you come to the details.
(J) Such as?
(R) Well, such as the eye, taking the eye again in another way. You will admit the great importance and the great delicacy of the function of eye-sight?
(J) Certainly.
(R) Consider, then, how the eye is placed: in a bony socket which protects it absolutely from injury or interference on all sides. Even in front, where exposure is essential for its work, it is protected by the jutting eyebrow, and the socket sides come so nearly level with the organs as to make it difficult to hurt the eye. Does not such a placing of the eye argue the highest wisdom?
(J) That, of course, is not to be denied.
(R) Then consider the curtain of the eye-lid, by which, without interference with the eye-sight, the action of the eye is eased and guarded by an adjustment that works completely over it as quick as lightening subject to the control of will, and yet working most of the time automatically. See, too, the arrangement of tubes and vessels by which just the requisite amount of moisture is kept in constant supply, so that we are saved from the serious inconvenience that would result from the drying of so delicate a membrane. When men say that chance, or the operation of blind force has evolved such skilful combinations, we can but look in astonishment and wonder what they mean! In such talk “chance,” and “blindness,” and “wisdom” have lost their meanings. Not only so, but such talk goes against the most elementary postulate of science that for every phenomenon of Nature there must be an adequate cause.
(J) You have said nothing about the eye itself.
(R) Thank you. I was about to refer to the structure of the eye itself, as the most wonderful lesson of all. Whether we regard the result secured, or the means employed to secure the result, it is nothing less than an astounding marvel. Those are best able to appreciate the masterly result who has tried their hand at any time at the construction of optical glasses. By the due adjustment of convex or concave lenses, you can get a near or distant enlargement as you desire: but the adjustment involves much trouble, and when you have got it, it remains just what you have made it. If you want a different adjustment, you must work your ratchet backwards or forwards, who could invent a lens that would be self adjusting, and become convex or concave, according to the degree of light or the distance of the object to be operated on? This is the extraordinary character of the eye as an optical instrument. It requires an exquisiteness of construction, and a sensitiveness of action, that baffles the imagination.
Then we have to consider that besides an internal structure so perfectly adapted to the uses of sight, the whole apparatus is set in a gearing of muscles that enables the will to turn it into any position in a moment. We are so accustomed to the use and grace of this arrangement that we fail to be struck with it as the case warrants. There it is: a physiological miracle which we carry daily with us. How different would human expression and human deportment have been, if the eye, instead of being the flexible self-acting instrument it is, had been a mechanical fixture in the head? Lenses of unchangeable form would have unfitted the eye to see anything clearly under or over certain fixed distance; and, without muscles for turning the eye, we should have been compelled to turn the head with every new requirement of sight. Think of the awkward deportment: think of the expressionless countenance: think of the defectiveness of vision and the tiresomeness of the use of the eye in that case. If the eye had been had been the work of chance, there was much more likelihood of such a clumsiness, than of perfect skilfulness and beauty of the present arrangement. “Chance!” Away, away! It is an outrage upon reason; an insult to common sense; the denial of experience; the confounding of true science, and philosophy. Not chance, but contrivance: not blind force, but powerful wisdom: is called for as the only solution of the beautiful marvel.
Mechanism of the Human Frame
(J) You were very severe last time.
(R) You must allow for the immense consequence of the truth involved.
(J) It has been well said that there are two subjects in which human fervour is liable to be more strongly engaged than any other- family and religion: sex and God.
(R) It is true. Pardon my vehemence. The argument is strong. It is not at an end yet.
(J) Do you mean the argument of last week?
(R) Yes.
(J) I should have thought you had pretty well exhausted it.
(R) Not quite yet. You have not only to think of the absurdity of chance producing a human pair, essential to each other, but of producing either of them with their varied and exquisite powers. If chance were at work, its operation would necessarily work in every variety of caprice. Its results must certainly be marked as often by foolishness as wisdom. But, in fact, chance does not work in any region of nature that man is acquainted with. Whatever happens has a cause, and that cause has a cause, and so back and back. When a new plant or animal is discovered, no one imagines it has come into existence spontaneously, or that there has never been the like before. The discoverer sets to work to find its history its origin its habitat if he can. If this is the case with the simplest form of life, vegetable or animal, how much more in a case like man, whose organization shows such a complex adaptation of means to ends, and such an exquisite result from the whole?
(J) Man is no more remarkable in that respect than the animals is he?
(R) Well, yes; his powers are higher: but even if it were not so-even if the animals are on a par with him as regards the wisdom of their organization, the argument would only be all the stronger. I select the case of man because he is the most signal illustration.
(J) Well, what do you have to say about him?
(R) There is more to be said than I can say, but I will try and give a rough idea or two. First of all, look at him in his entirety. He is a perfectly extraordinary phenomenon. He is a working machine that not only does the work it was made for, but repairs itself as it performs its work: a self working, self repairing machine.
(J) I am not sure I catch your idea there. The working and the repairing are both one thing aren’t they?
(R) No: No doubt the repairing is a class of work, but it is not the kind of work I mean. By work, I mean the exercises and functions of intelligent life. For example, a man attends to business, or serves his friends, or engages in study, or devotes himself to politics or travel. In all this, he uses the mechanism of his being, but it is outside and extra to that mechanism. It is what the mechanism was designed for, speaking generally. The heart was not made to pump blood merely that blood might be pumped, but that blood so pumped might contribute to intelligent life as a result. The lungs were not made to breathe, and the stomach to digest, merely that breath might be inhaled and food converted into new forms, but that these functions might sustain life, and admit of the objects involved in life. Now, what I wished to say was, that here you have a wonderful machine, that not only does the work it was made for, but that repairs itself at the same time it goes along.
(J) Repairs itself?
(R) Yes. You know that there is continual waste going on with all that we do, and that if there were not continual renewal or repair, we should not be able to carry on a single day. Now, this renewal is going on every moment in every part of every organ of the body, and yet we don’t have to stop to let it be done, but go on working and repairing at the same time. Take the eye for example: you go on using it all day, and yet with every throb of the heart its substance is being renewed, without interference of your use of it. My contention is, that on this general view, we cannot contemplate the human organization without having reason to feel that extraordinary wisdom must have been at work to produce such an organization, and that the idea of chance doing it is an outrage upon reason.
(J) As I said before, the argument would apply to everything: because there is just as much wisdom, as you call it, in the organization of a snail.
(R) No doubt it is so; and as I said before, that only makes the argument all the stronger. Only it is more clearly seen, perhaps, in the case of man, because of his superior parts the case is very powerful when you come to the details.
(J) Such as?
(R) Well, such as the eye, taking the eye again in another way. You will admit the great importance and the great delicacy of the function of eye-sight?
(J) Certainly.
(R) Consider, then, how the eye is placed: in a bony socket which protects it absolutely from injury or interference on all sides. Even in front, where exposure is essential for its work, it is protected by the jutting eyebrow, and the socket sides come so nearly level with the organs as to make it difficult to hurt the eye. Does not such a placing of the eye argue the highest wisdom?
(J) That, of course, is not to be denied.
(R) Then consider the curtain of the eye-lid, by which, without interference with the eye-sight, the action of the eye is eased and guarded by an adjustment that works completely over it as quick as lightening subject to the control of will, and yet working most of the time automatically. See, too, the arrangement of tubes and vessels by which just the requisite amount of moisture is kept in constant supply, so that we are saved from the serious inconvenience that would result from the drying of so delicate a membrane. When men say that chance, or the operation of blind force has evolved such skilful combinations, we can but look in astonishment and wonder what they mean! In such talk “chance,” and “blindness,” and “wisdom” have lost their meanings. Not only so, but such talk goes against the most elementary postulate of science that for every phenomenon of Nature there must be an adequate cause.
(J) You have said nothing about the eye itself.
(R) Thank you. I was about to refer to the structure of the eye itself, as the most wonderful lesson of all. Whether we regard the result secured, or the means employed to secure the result, it is nothing less than an astounding marvel. Those are best able to appreciate the masterly result who has tried their hand at any time at the construction of optical glasses. By the due adjustment of convex or concave lenses, you can get a near or distant enlargement as you desire: but the adjustment involves much trouble, and when you have got it, it remains just what you have made it. If you want a different adjustment, you must work your ratchet backwards or forwards, who could invent a lens that would be self adjusting, and become convex or concave, according to the degree of light or the distance of the object to be operated on? This is the extraordinary character of the eye as an optical instrument. It requires an exquisiteness of construction, and a sensitiveness of action, that baffles the imagination.
Then we have to consider that besides an internal structure so perfectly adapted to the uses of sight, the whole apparatus is set in a gearing of muscles that enables the will to turn it into any position in a moment. We are so accustomed to the use and grace of this arrangement that we fail to be struck with it as the case warrants. There it is: a physiological miracle which we carry daily with us. How different would human expression and human deportment have been, if the eye, instead of being the flexible self-acting instrument it is, had been a mechanical fixture in the head? Lenses of unchangeable form would have unfitted the eye to see anything clearly under or over certain fixed distance; and, without muscles for turning the eye, we should have been compelled to turn the head with every new requirement of sight. Think of the awkward deportment: think of the expressionless countenance: think of the defectiveness of vision and the tiresomeness of the use of the eye in that case. If the eye had been had been the work of chance, there was much more likelihood of such a clumsiness, than of perfect skilfulness and beauty of the present arrangement. “Chance!” Away, away! It is an outrage upon reason; an insult to common sense; the denial of experience; the confounding of true science, and philosophy. Not chance, but contrivance: not blind force, but powerful wisdom: is called for as the only solution of the beautiful marvel.
Sunday, 4 July 2010
CORRESPONDENCE WEEK 6
CORRESPONDENCE WEEK 6
The Existence of Sex a Proof of God.
(R) You remember our conversation last week?
(J) Yes, it was defective, I think, on one point.
(R) What was that?
(J) It disposed fairly of the idea of man being the evolution of a gradually ascending chain of development, but it did not allow for the possibility of man spontaneously coming into being under some chance combination of laws and forces, that produced a superior creature, not seen on earth before.
(R) Oh dear! You will excuse me, I am sure, if I say that strikes me as the most absurd of all wild suggestions to which atheistic pre-disposition has driven the cleverest of men.
(J) Why should it strike you so?
(R) Because of its inconsistency with the fundamental axiom of this very class of men everywhere, an axiom on which they base all their objections to the evidences of Divine revelation having taken place, however strong.
They lay down as their first principle, in their mode of thought, that Nature is immutable in her ways, and therefore miracle is impossible; and yet they ask us to believe that Nature has changed her mode of producing men.
(J) Not that exactly, is it?
(R) That is what it amounts to. She now produces them by generation, and the suggestion is that she first produced them by what shall we call it? By freak?
(J) No, not by freak, but by special conjunction of forces.
(R) An accident?
(J) Well, it would be accidental, of course.
(R) What evidence is there of such an accident ever having occurred?
(J) None that I know of: there is only the fact that man is here, and that once he was not here. And if there is no God, he must have come by accident.
(R) But if there was no God at the beginning, there is no God now; and Nature being immutable in her operations, the accident ought to happen now.
(J) Not necessarily.
(R) What? Think. Has nature lost her power then, to produce a man by spontaneous generation?
(J) No, no; Nature has lost nothing. What she has done, she can do.
(R) If she produced man at the beginning in the way suggested, it is no extravagance to insist that she ought to do so now. Did you ever hear of a case?
(J) Of course I never have.
(R) A man, whose mother should be the rock or the peat bog, and his father the suns rays, or some other blind energy?
(J) You put the thing too extremely.
(R) No, no. That is just what it would be, wouldn’t it, if it happened. What other mode do you conceive in the case?
(J) Oh, I do not make myself responsible for the suggestion at all. I place it before you as a hypothesis to be dealt with.
(R) Yes, but a hypothesis must have some shape and features before you can deal with it. It is not a hypothesis. It is a wild venture. Would not such a thing be a miracle if it happened, which the very men suggesting it declare themselves incapable of receiving?
(J) Ah, but a miracle is what God is supposed to do.
(R) Oh, and this is would be a thing that did itself! Why that would be a greater miracle still?
(J) The difficulty is about God you see.
(R) But you have the difficulty if you put away God. You have more difficulty without him than with him: is it not so?
(J) Well I am not championizing the atheistic view.
(R) It is a senseless view altogether, the more and more you think of it. Look at this element in the case: men are multiplied by the natural process of generation; but it takes two: man and woman. Now, if human population began with an accident it must have been a double accident. There must have been a woman as well as a man. Do you really think it is possible that blind nature, happening to brew a man in some vapour or pond, or rocky depth, should brew a woman at the same time? Is it a conceivable hypothesis that force without mind, impulse without plan, germinating energy without purpose should produce two instead of one, and each one different from the other, and both, between them, possessing power to re-produce their kind, a power which they did not require for themselves, and the possession of which was indicative of purpose with regard to the future?
(J) The difficulties are very great, I confess.
(R) Are they not insuperable?
(J) They look that way.
(R And we are to receive this incredible imagination without evidence, in order to dispense with God, whose existence is a mathematically involved necessity, and of which actual and irrefragable evidence has transpired in the history of mankind?
(J) Well, you see, they don’t now say there is no God. They say they don’t know.
(R) Well, well, well! They say they don’t know, and yet they reject the evidence, because they cannot imagine Him! They cannot imagine God doing wonders, but they can imagine nothing doing wonders! Extraordinary! It comes to this, by their own confession; they don’t know there is no God. Therefore there may be, and they have no reason at all for rejecting the evidence of His existence, except an invincible intellectual prejudice, which the Bible well describes as “an evil heart of unbelief,” which says God, “Depart from us; we desire not the knowledge of thy ways.”
The Existence of Sex a Proof of God.
(R) You remember our conversation last week?
(J) Yes, it was defective, I think, on one point.
(R) What was that?
(J) It disposed fairly of the idea of man being the evolution of a gradually ascending chain of development, but it did not allow for the possibility of man spontaneously coming into being under some chance combination of laws and forces, that produced a superior creature, not seen on earth before.
(R) Oh dear! You will excuse me, I am sure, if I say that strikes me as the most absurd of all wild suggestions to which atheistic pre-disposition has driven the cleverest of men.
(J) Why should it strike you so?
(R) Because of its inconsistency with the fundamental axiom of this very class of men everywhere, an axiom on which they base all their objections to the evidences of Divine revelation having taken place, however strong.
They lay down as their first principle, in their mode of thought, that Nature is immutable in her ways, and therefore miracle is impossible; and yet they ask us to believe that Nature has changed her mode of producing men.
(J) Not that exactly, is it?
(R) That is what it amounts to. She now produces them by generation, and the suggestion is that she first produced them by what shall we call it? By freak?
(J) No, not by freak, but by special conjunction of forces.
(R) An accident?
(J) Well, it would be accidental, of course.
(R) What evidence is there of such an accident ever having occurred?
(J) None that I know of: there is only the fact that man is here, and that once he was not here. And if there is no God, he must have come by accident.
(R) But if there was no God at the beginning, there is no God now; and Nature being immutable in her operations, the accident ought to happen now.
(J) Not necessarily.
(R) What? Think. Has nature lost her power then, to produce a man by spontaneous generation?
(J) No, no; Nature has lost nothing. What she has done, she can do.
(R) If she produced man at the beginning in the way suggested, it is no extravagance to insist that she ought to do so now. Did you ever hear of a case?
(J) Of course I never have.
(R) A man, whose mother should be the rock or the peat bog, and his father the suns rays, or some other blind energy?
(J) You put the thing too extremely.
(R) No, no. That is just what it would be, wouldn’t it, if it happened. What other mode do you conceive in the case?
(J) Oh, I do not make myself responsible for the suggestion at all. I place it before you as a hypothesis to be dealt with.
(R) Yes, but a hypothesis must have some shape and features before you can deal with it. It is not a hypothesis. It is a wild venture. Would not such a thing be a miracle if it happened, which the very men suggesting it declare themselves incapable of receiving?
(J) Ah, but a miracle is what God is supposed to do.
(R) Oh, and this is would be a thing that did itself! Why that would be a greater miracle still?
(J) The difficulty is about God you see.
(R) But you have the difficulty if you put away God. You have more difficulty without him than with him: is it not so?
(J) Well I am not championizing the atheistic view.
(R) It is a senseless view altogether, the more and more you think of it. Look at this element in the case: men are multiplied by the natural process of generation; but it takes two: man and woman. Now, if human population began with an accident it must have been a double accident. There must have been a woman as well as a man. Do you really think it is possible that blind nature, happening to brew a man in some vapour or pond, or rocky depth, should brew a woman at the same time? Is it a conceivable hypothesis that force without mind, impulse without plan, germinating energy without purpose should produce two instead of one, and each one different from the other, and both, between them, possessing power to re-produce their kind, a power which they did not require for themselves, and the possession of which was indicative of purpose with regard to the future?
(J) The difficulties are very great, I confess.
(R) Are they not insuperable?
(J) They look that way.
(R And we are to receive this incredible imagination without evidence, in order to dispense with God, whose existence is a mathematically involved necessity, and of which actual and irrefragable evidence has transpired in the history of mankind?
(J) Well, you see, they don’t now say there is no God. They say they don’t know.
(R) Well, well, well! They say they don’t know, and yet they reject the evidence, because they cannot imagine Him! They cannot imagine God doing wonders, but they can imagine nothing doing wonders! Extraordinary! It comes to this, by their own confession; they don’t know there is no God. Therefore there may be, and they have no reason at all for rejecting the evidence of His existence, except an invincible intellectual prejudice, which the Bible well describes as “an evil heart of unbelief,” which says God, “Depart from us; we desire not the knowledge of thy ways.”
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