Latest / Theism or Atheism, The Great Alternative / 008 - The Disharmonies of Nature

Transcript

008 - The Disharmonies of Nature · Theism or Atheism, The Great Alternative

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Chapter seven of Theism or Atheism, The Great Alternative by
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Chapman Cohen. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: The Disharmonies of Nature. It has already been indicated that
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: it is not really necessary in order to prove design
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: to establish the fact that the design is perfect, or
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: that it exhibits complete goodness. It is enough that there
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: be design. Its moral quality or value is quite another question. Nevertheless,
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: it will be as well to deal with this latter
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: aspect of the subject, and to see what kind of
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: plan it is that nature does exhibit, even assuming the
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: existence of some design. Now it is evident that of
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: there be design in nature, and if the design is
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: the expression of a single supreme mind, one quality of
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: that plan should be unity. The products should, so to speak,
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: dovetail into each other in such a way that they
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: work together and even harmonize with each other. But this
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: is notoriously not the case. If from one point of
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: view there is a certain harmony throughout the world of
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: living beings in virtue of which life is preserved, it
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: is at least equally true that from another point of view,
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: the harmony is one of destruction, and in the end
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: death wins. Sooner or later death overtakes all forms of life,
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: while in the grand total of living beings born into
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: the world, a far larger number perish than can reach maturity.
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: Wasted effort is the mildest judgment that can be passed
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: upon these abortive attempts. And not only does death eventually
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: win in the case of each individual, and against which
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: may be set the consideration that in the economy of nature,
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: death plays a part in the development of life, but
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: eventually death will, if we are to trust science, reap
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: a sweeping and universal triumph by the consummation of terrestrial
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: conditions that will render the maintenance of life impossible. Or again,
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: the relations of species are clearly not what we have
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: a right to expect in the working out of a
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: reasonably wise and benevolent plan. It is a general truth that,
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: with the exception of a few instances, chiefly connected with
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: the relations existing between insects and flowers, the development of
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: one species in relation to another is not that of
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: mutual helpfulness. The general rule here is that of mutual injury.
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: The carnivora prey on the herbivora and upon each other,
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: and the herbivora crush each other by methods that are
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: as effective as the method of direct attack. Any variation
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: is good provided it be of advantage to its possessor,
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: and the good of the one kind may mean the
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: destruction of another order. All the exquisite design shown in
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: the development of the finer feelings of man, and upon
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: which theistic sentimentalists love to dwell, may be seen in
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: the structure of those parasites which destroy man and bring
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: his finer feelings to naught. The late Theodore Roosevelt says
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: of the Brazilian forests. In these forests, the multitude of
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: insects that bite, sting, devour, and prey on other creatures,
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: often with accompaniments of atrocious suffering, passes belief. The very
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: pathetic myths of beneficent nature could not deceive even the
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: least wise being if he once saw the iron cruelty
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: of life in the tropics. Of course, nature, in common parlance,
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: a wholly inaccurate term, by the way, especially when used
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: to express a single entity, is entirely ruthless, no less
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: so as regards types than as regards individuals, and entirely
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: indifferent to good or evil, and works out her ends
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: or no ends with utter disregard of pain and woe
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: unquote cited by E. D. Fawcett in the World as Imagination,
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: pages five, seventy one and two, and mister carveth Read
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: expresses the same thing in a more elaborate summing up quote.
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: The merciless character of organic evolution appears to us first
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: in reckless propagation and the consequent destruction. Every species is
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: as prolific as it can be, compatibly with the development
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: of its individuals and the deaths that ensue from inanition,
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: disease violence present a stupefying scene. The best one can
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: say for it is that as life rises in the
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: organic scale, the death rate declines, Yet even man still
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: suffers outrageously by violence disease inanition. The notion that Malthus's
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: law no longer holds of civilized man is a foolish delusion.
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: But more sinister than the direct destruction of life is
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: the spectacle of innumerable species profiting by a life parasitic
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: or predatory at the expense of others. The parasites refute
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: the vulgar prejudice that evolution is by the measure of man.
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: Progressive adaptation is indifferent to better or worse, except as
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: to each species that its offspring shall survive by atrophy
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: and degradation, the predatory species flourish. As even derision of
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: moral maxims, we see that though human morality is natural
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: to man, it is far from expressing the whole of nature.
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: Animals at first indistinguishable vegetables and enjoy a far richer life.
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: Animals that eat other animals are nearly always superior, not
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: only in strength, grace, and agility, but in intelligence. There
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: are exceptions to this rule. Some snakes eat monkeys, thanking providence,
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: and the elm is content with foliage. But compare cats
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: and wolves with the ungulates that make a first concoction
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: of herbs for their sake. It is true that our
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: monkey kin are chiefly fugiferous, for it may be plausibly
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: argued that man was first differentiated by becoming definitely carnivorous,
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: a sociable hunter, as it were a wolf ape. Hence
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: the advantage of longer legs, the use of weapons, the
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: upright gait, and defter hands to use and make weapons,
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: more strategic brains, tribal organization, and hence liberation from the
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: tropical forest, and citizenship of the world. The greater part
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: of his subsequent history is equally unedifying having made the
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: world his prey. He says that God made the world
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: to that end, And those who have preyed upon their
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: fellows and enslaved them and flourished upon it, have declared
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: that to have the intention of nature the Metaphysics of Nature,
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: pages three forty four to five, a perpetual pulling down
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: and building up, and the building altogether dependent upon the demolition.
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: The tiger built with tastes and capacities for catching the gazelle,
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: the gazelle built with capacities that enable it to escape
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: the tiger. There is no evidence here of the existence
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: of a single mind working out an intelligent plan. At most,
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: we have either the proof for a number of warring powers,
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: each one striving to destroy what the other is striving
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: to create, or a single mind that has deliberately fashioned things,
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: so that each part may work for the destruction of
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: the other part, the whole to presently end in a
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: grand catastrophe. But that is not all. If we limit
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: our attention to man, can it be said that we
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: find in the human structure what we might reasonably expect
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: to find if man be indeed the crown of the
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: divine plan, the event to which for untold ages all
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: things were designedly tending. What we actually do find is
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: that the structure of man physically and mentally is such
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: as to altogether negative the notion of complete or harmonious
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: adjustment to environment. That the human has within it. A
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: large number of vestigial structures some scientists place it as
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: high as one hundred and seventy is now well known
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: and forms at the same time one of the evidences
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: of evolution and an impeachment of the theistic theory. There
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: is only need to instance now the vermiform appendage which
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: forms the seat of appendicitis the wisdom teeth, of very
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: little use and one of the most fruitful of causes
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: of disease. Of the teeth. The hair which covers the
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: human body now of no use whatever except to form
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: a lodgment for microbes, and so makes the acquisition of
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: disease the more. In addition to the number of rudimentary
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: organs that actually encourage disease, Metchnikov counts among these the
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: larger intestine. The body is full of rudimentary muscles and
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: structures that when not positively harmful, impose attacks on the
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: organism for which no corresponding service is performed. The meaning
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: and significance of these structures are, however, so well recognized
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: that one need not dwell upon their existence. Not so
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: well known is the complementary fact that, just as in
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: his physical structure, man bears evidence of his emergence from
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: lower forms of life, which result in a certain degree
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: of disharmony between him and an ideal environment, so in
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: his psychic life, his instincts and feelings are often sugg
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: as to prevent that ideal adaptation which so many desire.
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: The earlier conception of optimistic evolutionists that the instincts of
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: man were, through the operation of natural selection, converted into
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: beneficent guides is quite faulty in itself. This was probably
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: a survival of the theism which tried to prove that
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: this was the best of all possible worlds, and which
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: led evolutionists to try and prove that their theory was
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: also ethically desirable. At any rate, the theory of the
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: wholly beneficent nature of human instincts is not tenable. Our
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: instincts are inherited from our animal ancestors, they were brought
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: to fruition under conditions different in form from those which
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: obtain with human beings, with the result that whether an
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: instinct is helpful or the contrary depends largely upon the
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: educational quality of the environment, and even then, inherited tendencies
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: may be so strong as to make them a source
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: of danger to the community rather than of benefit. It
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: is noted, for example, that a deal of what may
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: be called crime, or at least lawlessness, is the result
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: of an individual being born with tendencies developed in a
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: way that fits him for an environment of centuries ago,
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: rather than an environment of today. Very many of our
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: national heroes of a few centuries ago would rank as
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: criminals today, just as many of our criminals today would
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: had they been born a few centuries since, have been
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: handed down to us as examples of chivalry or of
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: national heroism. Instead of what one may call the natural
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: endowments of man pointing towards a more civilized form of life,
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: they point to a less civilized form, while it is
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: the artificially or socially induced feelings and ideas that point
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: to a better future. Thus, if we take the primitive
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: or brute feeling of retaliation. We find it assuming the
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: form of war, and without discussing the value of war
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: in the past, or even its admissibility in special circumstances
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: in the present, I do not think it will be
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: seriously disputed that the great need of the present is
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: to transfer that feeling from the lower level of brute
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: force to the higher one of adventure in the interests
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: of science and human betterment. Here it is not the
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: existence of a lofty god given endowment that puts man
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: out of harmony with his environment. It is, on the contrary,
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: the operation of an earlier form of feeling manifestation, which
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: retards the coming of a better day. There is, in fact,
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: not a single quality of human nature that can be
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: said to act with inerrancy. The baby seizes objects indiscriminately
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: and puts them in its mouth. The man falling into
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: the water does the very thing he should not do,
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: throws up his arms intense cold, lulls to some nulency
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: instead of rousing to activity. The love of children, on
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: which the preservation of the race depends, is absent with many,
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: while with others the sexual instinct undergoes strange and morbid manifestations.
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: A complete list of these disharmonies would fill a volume. Indeed, Mechnikov,
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: in his Nature of Man, has filled half a volume
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: with describing some of the instances of physiological disharmony, and
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: then has not exhausted the list. It would indeed seem
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: as if nature, with its method of never creating a
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: new organ or structure, but only transforming and utilizing an
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: old one, had attached a penalty to every successful attempt
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: to rise above a certain level. If man will walk upright,
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: she sees to it that his doing so shall involve
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: a great liability to hernia. If he will live in cities,
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: she has ready the ravage of consumption. If he will
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: use clothing, she makes him carry round a coating of
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: useless hair. As a method of trapping disease microbes. So
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: soon as one disease is conquered, another is discovered. Pleasures
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: have their reverse side in pains, and to some pains
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: the pleasures bear a small relation, being chiefly of the
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: character of the pains being absent. As a social animal,
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: man is only imperfectly adapted to the state, there going
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: on a constant warfare between his egoistic and altruistic impulses.
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: In fact, It would certainly be an arguable proposition if
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: we allow intention in nature to say that man was
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: intended to remain at the animal level, and that having
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: so far defeated nature's intention, he is dogged by a
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: disappointed creator and made to pay the fullest price that
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: can be exacted for every step of progress achieved. Of course,
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: of proof of design in nature there is positively done. Design,
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: as I have said, is not a natural fact, but
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: a purely human construction. But if admitted, it is a
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: two edged weapon. For if assumed anywhere, it must be
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: assumed to exist everywhere, and designing intelligence must be made
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: responsible for the whole scheme. But this the most extravagant
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: piety refuses to do. Either we have the primitive theory
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: of a devil who divides with God the responsibility for
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: the state of the world, or we have the plea
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: that evil may be only good disguised or good in
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: the making. Or it is argued that we have to
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: contemplate the plan as a whole and must wait for
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: some future state to pass judgment. And whichever view we take,
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: there is the implied admission that the plan of creation
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: as we know it cannot be harmonized with the theory
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: of God that modern theism places before us, and instead
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: of man being the miracle of perfection that an earlier
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: generation saw in his structure, we know that the human
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: structure is such that, given the power to create, science
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: could really fashion, in the light of its present knowledge,
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: a better organism. Finally, disarmony is implied in and necessitated
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: by the very fact of progress. Progress means a better adjustment,
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: and the discomfort of maladjustment is the spur to improvement.
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: A perfect equilibrium is as impossible as perpetual motion, and
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: it is only with a perfect equilibrium that change, which
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: is the condition of progress, would cease. The ceaseless desire
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: for something better is therefore, in itself an impeachment of
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: things as they are. It is an indication of there
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: being something wanting, of the existence of a want, of
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: complete harmony between man and his surroundings. Nor is the
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: case of the theist bettered if he retorts that without
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: the sense of imperfection or of dissatisfaction, there would be
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: no such thing as a conscious striving action after improvement.
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: That may be admitted, but that is only proving that
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: perfection can never be achieved. And that even in this
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: last resort, God has so designed things as to make
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: a mock of man. At the end, the want of
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: complete harmony that is seen in the physical structure of
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: man is carried over into his mental life. If theism
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: be true, man is mocked by a mirage, and the
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: knowledge is made the more depressing by the belief that
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: the plan is not accidental. It is not a product
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: of the working of non conscious forces. It is the
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: preordained outcome of a plan that was deliberately resolved on
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: by a being with full power to devise something wiser
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: and better. At the side of that, any theory of
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: things is, by comparison, hopeful and inspiring. End of Chapter
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: seven