Evolution, the Religious Argument, aka Intelligent Design - by Eudaemon
If I may paraphrase the religious argument as pertains to evolution, and exhibit the silliness in a rather succinct manner:
Religions have resorted to subterfuge, obfuscation, and occasionally violence in order to defend theology when faced with scientific theories that threaten theological tenets; and only when faced with arguments that could not be reasonably opposed did they begrudgingly offer some ground. Indeed, religion, as ironic as it is, acts like an organism struggling for survival against a harsh environment of rationalism and a seemingly predatorial biological foe - science.
The theological argument for acceptance of evolution as a concept relies upon the religious adherents' continued belief in a God. Therefore, when science has offered evidence that suggested the biblical mythology to be in error, religion has merely changed its arguments. In ceding ground and changing arguments, again an irony, religion has evolved. Biblical stories became allegorical rather than literal. So long as the religious-minded believers could continue to believe that whatever mechanism was at play in the evolution of life, that God was surely behind the scenes turning the wheels and cogs, then not all would be lost. This, then, changes the argument in order to maintain that there was a cosmic purpose for the creation and evolution of life. It is therefore upon this bedrock of "purpose" that the entire religious house of cards stands. Mankind refuses to believe that his hallowed position in the universe which is itself a malignant and arrogant premise that he is the epitome or apex of God's creative powers and that all of the universe was created for his own delight. He is king! And the earth and all other elements of creation were created for him and the earth or the universe was his domain. But is this arrogant belief even tenable?
The church decried Copernicus and subsequent scientists for threatening mankind's central position in the universe. Geologists and archeologists likewise were ridiculed for daring to say that there was evidence that the earth had slowly evolved over vast periods of time - perhaps millions of years (or billions). Then biologists and archeologists similarly began to show how life had evolved over time. Then along came Darwin, who had the gall to imply that the mechanism for this gradual change was purely algorithmic, economic, and natural. Imagine, now not only was mankind's preeminent position threatened, but even God's was...how dare he! But that was not the end, it was only the beginning. The numerous implications took some time to set in. But so long as religion could maintain that there was this purpose behind it all...maybe religious dogmas could accept some of evolutionary theory so long as those thoughts never, ever implied that there was no purpose or a God behind it all.
So here we have purpose. The ever important question - why? Does it need to be answered? Why is there water on earth? - God put it there to nourish us. Why is there a sun? - God put it there to provide a source of heat and light and to nourish the plants. Why is there a moon? - Because God put it there to light the night sky. Why are there plants and animals? - God put them there to feed and nourish us. Really? Is it more likely that this “purpose” concept is simply turning cause and effect upside down? Isn't this a form of childish thinking? Isn't, then, science a more mature way of looking at things?
The sun? It shines because of a sustained fusion reaction. The water? It exists on earth because the earth attracted water molecules (abundant in space) over time, the earth's gravitational pull was enough to hold onto it, and the temperatures were right to keep the molecules together. The plants and animals? They exist because they evolved over time from more simple forms through a process of natural selection and genetic variation. Humans? We exist because we descended from apes in the same way that every other species of life was created - through natural/sexual selection and genetic variation. That life slowly adapted to its environment gave us the illusion that our environment was created for us, when, in fact, we were adapted to it. God and purpose are therefore simply illusions, figments of our imagination.
Tuesday, August 09, 2011
Excerpt from Theory of Moral Sentiments - John Locke
Of Moral Philosophy, Chapter III, Of those Systems which make Virtue consist in Benevolence
[In this text, as in other texts from Locke, one can see how Locke may have influenced the ideas of Utilitarianism...which promotes the idea that the greatest common good ought to be the ultimate goal of society.]
The system which makes virtue consist in benevolence, though I think not so ancient as all of those which I have already given an account of, is, however, of very great antiquity. It seems to have been the doctrine of the greater part of those philosophers who, about and after the age of Augustus, called themselves Eclecticks, who pretended to follow chiefly the opinions of Plato and Pythagoras, and who, upon that account, are commonly known by the name of the later Platonists.
In the divine nature, according to these authors, benevolence or love was the sole principle of action, and directed the exertion of all the other attributes. The wisdom of the Deity was employed in finding out the means for bringing about those ends which his goodness suggested, as his infinite power was exerted to execute them. Benevolence, however, was still the supreme and governing attribute, to which the others were subservient, and from which the whole excellency, or the whole morality, if I may be allowed such an expression, of the divine operations, was ultimately derived. The whole perfection and virtue of the human mind consisted in some resemblance or participation of the divine perfections, and, consequently, in being filled with the same principle of benevolence and love which influenced all the actions of the Deity. The actions of men which flowed from this motive were alone truly praiseworthy, or could claim any merit in the sight of the Deity. It was by actions of charity and love only that we could imitate, as became us, the conduct of God, that we could express our humble and devout admiration of his infinite perfections, that by fostering in oru own minds the same divine principle, we could bring our own affections to a greater resemblance with his holy attributes, and thereby become more proper objects of his love and esteem; till at last we arrived at that immediate converse and communication with the Diety to which it was the great object of this philosophy to raise us.
This system, as it was much esteemed by many ancient fathers of the Christian church, so, after the reformation, it was adopted by several divines of the most eminent piety and learning, and of the most amiable manners...
That virtue consists in benevolence, is a notion supported by many appearances in human natuer. It has been observed already, that proper benevolence is the most graceful and agreeable of all the affections; that it is recommended to us by a double sympathy; that as its tendency is necessarily beneficient, it is the proper object of gratitude and reward; and that, upon all these accounts, it appears to our natural sentiments to possess a merit superior to any other. It has been observed too, that even the weaknesses of benevolence are not very disagreeable to us, whereas those of every other passion are always extremely disgusting. Who does not abhor excessive malice, excessive selfishness, or excessive resentment? But the most excessive indulgence, even of partial friendship, is not so offensive. It is the benevolent passions only which can exert themselves without any regard or attention to propriety, and yet retain something about them which is engaging. There is something pleasing even in mere instinctive good will, which goes on to good offices without once reflecting, whether, by this conduct, it is the proper object either of blame or approbation. It is not so with the other passions. The moment they are deserted, the moment they are unaccompanied by the sense of propriety, they cease to be agreeable.
[I am omitting some text where Locke simply expounds on some of these arguments concerning other passions]
Since benevolence, therefore, was the only motive which could bestow upon any action the character of virtue, the greater the benevolence which was evidenced by any action, the greater the praise which must belong to it.
Those actions which aimed at the happiness of the great community, as they demonstrated a more enlarged benevolence than those which aimed only at that of a smaller system, so were they, likewise, proportionally the more virtuous. The most virtuous of all affections, therefore, was that which embraced as its objects the happiness of all intelligent beings. [Personal note: in the modern age, we would extend this virtue as being in its greatest form to those who embrace the preservation of all life on earth as a goal] The least virtuous, on the contrary, of those to which the character of virtue could in any respect belong, was that which aimed no further than at the happiness of an individual, such as a son, a brother, a friend [or of the self].
In directing all our actions to promote the greatest possible good, in submitting all inferior affections to the desire of the general happiness of mankind, in regarding one's self but as one of the many, whose prosperity was to be pursued no further than it was consistent with, or conducive to, that of the whole, consisted the perfection of virtue.
Self-love was a principle which could never be virtuous in any degree or in any direction. [Personal note: individualists and objectivists would find this statement abhorrent and incorrect in the greatest degree] It was vicious whenever it obstructed the general good. When it had no other effect than to make the individual take care of his own happiness, it was merely innocent, and though it deserved no praise, neither ought it to incur any blame. Those benevolent actions which were performed, notwithstanding some strong motive from self-interest, were the more virtuous upon that account. They demonstrated the strength and vigour of the benevolent principle. [Personal note: in fact, what this is implying is that the greatest virtues apply when a person's actions benefit him/herself in addition to the community at large.] [Personal note: to a degree I would submit that the Epicureans were probably closer to a healthier point of view concerning the need to satisfy the self - a degree of balance, therefore is probably more desirable, in my view.]
[I am omitting those general arguments that seek to further establish the desire to build the esteem of a Diety through benevolent actions. The text below, which is Locke's final paragraph in this chapter, is what I can only assume helped to influence Utilitarianism as a philosophical thread for those who came after him.]
That system which places virtue in utility, coincides too with that which makes it consist in propriety. According to this system, all those qualities of the mind which are agreeable or advantageous, either to the person himself or to others, are approved of as virtuous, and the contrary disapproved of as vicious. But the agreeableness or utility of any affection depends upon the degree which it is allowed to subsist in. Every affection is useful, when it is confined to a certain degree of moderation; and every affection is disadvantageous when it exceeds the proper bounds. According to this system, therefore, virtue consists not in any one affection, but in the proper degree of all the affections. The only difference between it and that which I have been endeavouring to establish, is, that it makes utility, and not sympathy, or the correspondent affection of the spectator, the natural and original measure of this proper degree.
Of Moral Philosophy, Chapter III, Of those Systems which make Virtue consist in Benevolence
[In this text, as in other texts from Locke, one can see how Locke may have influenced the ideas of Utilitarianism...which promotes the idea that the greatest common good ought to be the ultimate goal of society.]
The system which makes virtue consist in benevolence, though I think not so ancient as all of those which I have already given an account of, is, however, of very great antiquity. It seems to have been the doctrine of the greater part of those philosophers who, about and after the age of Augustus, called themselves Eclecticks, who pretended to follow chiefly the opinions of Plato and Pythagoras, and who, upon that account, are commonly known by the name of the later Platonists.
In the divine nature, according to these authors, benevolence or love was the sole principle of action, and directed the exertion of all the other attributes. The wisdom of the Deity was employed in finding out the means for bringing about those ends which his goodness suggested, as his infinite power was exerted to execute them. Benevolence, however, was still the supreme and governing attribute, to which the others were subservient, and from which the whole excellency, or the whole morality, if I may be allowed such an expression, of the divine operations, was ultimately derived. The whole perfection and virtue of the human mind consisted in some resemblance or participation of the divine perfections, and, consequently, in being filled with the same principle of benevolence and love which influenced all the actions of the Deity. The actions of men which flowed from this motive were alone truly praiseworthy, or could claim any merit in the sight of the Deity. It was by actions of charity and love only that we could imitate, as became us, the conduct of God, that we could express our humble and devout admiration of his infinite perfections, that by fostering in oru own minds the same divine principle, we could bring our own affections to a greater resemblance with his holy attributes, and thereby become more proper objects of his love and esteem; till at last we arrived at that immediate converse and communication with the Diety to which it was the great object of this philosophy to raise us.
This system, as it was much esteemed by many ancient fathers of the Christian church, so, after the reformation, it was adopted by several divines of the most eminent piety and learning, and of the most amiable manners...
That virtue consists in benevolence, is a notion supported by many appearances in human natuer. It has been observed already, that proper benevolence is the most graceful and agreeable of all the affections; that it is recommended to us by a double sympathy; that as its tendency is necessarily beneficient, it is the proper object of gratitude and reward; and that, upon all these accounts, it appears to our natural sentiments to possess a merit superior to any other. It has been observed too, that even the weaknesses of benevolence are not very disagreeable to us, whereas those of every other passion are always extremely disgusting. Who does not abhor excessive malice, excessive selfishness, or excessive resentment? But the most excessive indulgence, even of partial friendship, is not so offensive. It is the benevolent passions only which can exert themselves without any regard or attention to propriety, and yet retain something about them which is engaging. There is something pleasing even in mere instinctive good will, which goes on to good offices without once reflecting, whether, by this conduct, it is the proper object either of blame or approbation. It is not so with the other passions. The moment they are deserted, the moment they are unaccompanied by the sense of propriety, they cease to be agreeable.
[I am omitting some text where Locke simply expounds on some of these arguments concerning other passions]
Since benevolence, therefore, was the only motive which could bestow upon any action the character of virtue, the greater the benevolence which was evidenced by any action, the greater the praise which must belong to it.
Those actions which aimed at the happiness of the great community, as they demonstrated a more enlarged benevolence than those which aimed only at that of a smaller system, so were they, likewise, proportionally the more virtuous. The most virtuous of all affections, therefore, was that which embraced as its objects the happiness of all intelligent beings. [Personal note: in the modern age, we would extend this virtue as being in its greatest form to those who embrace the preservation of all life on earth as a goal] The least virtuous, on the contrary, of those to which the character of virtue could in any respect belong, was that which aimed no further than at the happiness of an individual, such as a son, a brother, a friend [or of the self].
In directing all our actions to promote the greatest possible good, in submitting all inferior affections to the desire of the general happiness of mankind, in regarding one's self but as one of the many, whose prosperity was to be pursued no further than it was consistent with, or conducive to, that of the whole, consisted the perfection of virtue.
Self-love was a principle which could never be virtuous in any degree or in any direction. [Personal note: individualists and objectivists would find this statement abhorrent and incorrect in the greatest degree] It was vicious whenever it obstructed the general good. When it had no other effect than to make the individual take care of his own happiness, it was merely innocent, and though it deserved no praise, neither ought it to incur any blame. Those benevolent actions which were performed, notwithstanding some strong motive from self-interest, were the more virtuous upon that account. They demonstrated the strength and vigour of the benevolent principle. [Personal note: in fact, what this is implying is that the greatest virtues apply when a person's actions benefit him/herself in addition to the community at large.] [Personal note: to a degree I would submit that the Epicureans were probably closer to a healthier point of view concerning the need to satisfy the self - a degree of balance, therefore is probably more desirable, in my view.]
[I am omitting those general arguments that seek to further establish the desire to build the esteem of a Diety through benevolent actions. The text below, which is Locke's final paragraph in this chapter, is what I can only assume helped to influence Utilitarianism as a philosophical thread for those who came after him.]
That system which places virtue in utility, coincides too with that which makes it consist in propriety. According to this system, all those qualities of the mind which are agreeable or advantageous, either to the person himself or to others, are approved of as virtuous, and the contrary disapproved of as vicious. But the agreeableness or utility of any affection depends upon the degree which it is allowed to subsist in. Every affection is useful, when it is confined to a certain degree of moderation; and every affection is disadvantageous when it exceeds the proper bounds. According to this system, therefore, virtue consists not in any one affection, but in the proper degree of all the affections. The only difference between it and that which I have been endeavouring to establish, is, that it makes utility, and not sympathy, or the correspondent affection of the spectator, the natural and original measure of this proper degree.
Excerpt from an essay by Martin Gardner - Seems appropriate with the Doomsday prophets coming out of the woodwork again...
'For the son of man shall come in the glory
of his Father, with his angels, and then he
shall reward every man according to his
works. Verily I say unto you. There be
some standing here, which shall not taste
of death till they see the Son of man
coming in his kingdom' - Matthew 16; 27,28
The statement of Jesus quoted above from Matthew, and repeated in similar words by Mark (8.38, 9:1) and Luke (9:26,27) is for Bible fundamentalists one of the most troublesome of all New Testament passages.
It is possible, of course, that Jesus never spoke those sentences, but all scholars agree that the first-century Christians expected the Second Coming in their lifetimes. In Matthew 24, after describing dramatic signs of his imminent return, such as the falling of stars and the darkening of the moon and sun, Jesus added: Verily I say unto you. This generation shall not pass until all these things be fulfilled."
Until about 1933 Seventh-Day Adventists had a clever way of rationalizing this prophecy. They argued that the spectacular meteor shower of 1833 was the falling of the stars, and that there was a mysterious darkening of the sun and moon in the US in 1870. Jesus meant that a future generation witnessing these celestial events would be the one to experience the Second Coming.
For almost a hundred years Adventist preachers and writers of books assured the world that Jesus would return within the lifetimes of some who had seen the great meteor shower of 1833. After 1933 passed, the curch gradually abandoned this interpretation of Christ's words. Few of today's faithful are even aware that their church once trumpeted such a view. Although Adventists still believe Jesus will return very soon, they no longer set conditions for an approximate date.
How do they explain the statements of Jesus quoted in the epigraph? Following the lead of Saint Augustine and other early Christian commentators, they take the promise to refer to Christ's Transfiguration. Ellen White, the prophetess who with her husband founded Seventh-Day Adventism, said it this way in her life of Christ, The Desire of Ages: "The Savior's promise to the disciples was now fulfilled. Upon the mount the future kingdom of glory was represented in minature..."
Hundreds of adventist sects since the time of Jesus, starting witht he Montanists of the second century, have all interpreted Christ's prophetic statements about his return to refer to THEIR generation. Apocolyptic excitement surged as the year 1000 approached. Similar excitement is now gathering momentum as the year 2000 draws near. Expectation of the Second Coming is not confined to adventist sects. Fundamentalists in mainstream Protestant denominations are increasingly stressing the imminence of Jesus' return. Babtist Billy Graham, for example, regularly warns of the approaching battle of Armageddon and the appearance of the Anti-Christ. He likes to emphasize the Bible's assertion that the Second Coming will occur after the gospel is preached to all nations. This could not take place, Graham insists, until the rise of radio and television.
Preacher Jerry Falwell is so convinced that he will soon be raptured--caught up in the air to meet the return of Jesus--that he once said he has no plans for a burial plot. Austin Miles, who once worked for Pat Robertson, reveals in his book Don't Call Me Brother (1989) that Pat once seriously considered plans to televise the Lord's appearance in the skies! Today's top native drumbeater for a soon Second Coming is Hal Lindsey. His many books on the topic, starting with The Late Great Planet Earth, have sold by the millions.
For the past two thousand years individuals and sects have been setting dates for the Second Coming. When the Lord fails to show, there is often no recognition of total failure. Instead, errors are found in the calculations and new dates set. In New Harmony, Indiana, an adventist sect called the Rappites was established by George Rapp. When he became ill he said that were he not absolutely certain the Lord intended him and his flock to witness the return of Jesus, he would think this was his last hour. So saying, he died.
The Catholic Church, following Augustine, long ago moved the Second Coming far into the future at some unspecified date. Liberal Protestants have tended to take the Second Coming as little more than a metaphor for the gradual establishment of peace and justice on earth. Julia Ward Howe, a Unitarian minister, had this interpretation in mind when she began her famous Battle Hymn of the Republic with "Mind eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord..." Protestant fundamentalists, on the other hand, believe that Jesus described actual historical events that would precede his literal return to earth to banish Satan and judge the quick and the dead. They also find it unthinkable that the Lord could have blundered about the time of his Second Coming.
[personal note: I'm omitting the remainder of the text. But one gets the point that Gardner is making. And so we now have yet another divined date come and gone...]
'For the son of man shall come in the glory
of his Father, with his angels, and then he
shall reward every man according to his
works. Verily I say unto you. There be
some standing here, which shall not taste
of death till they see the Son of man
coming in his kingdom' - Matthew 16; 27,28
The statement of Jesus quoted above from Matthew, and repeated in similar words by Mark (8.38, 9:1) and Luke (9:26,27) is for Bible fundamentalists one of the most troublesome of all New Testament passages.
It is possible, of course, that Jesus never spoke those sentences, but all scholars agree that the first-century Christians expected the Second Coming in their lifetimes. In Matthew 24, after describing dramatic signs of his imminent return, such as the falling of stars and the darkening of the moon and sun, Jesus added: Verily I say unto you. This generation shall not pass until all these things be fulfilled."
Until about 1933 Seventh-Day Adventists had a clever way of rationalizing this prophecy. They argued that the spectacular meteor shower of 1833 was the falling of the stars, and that there was a mysterious darkening of the sun and moon in the US in 1870. Jesus meant that a future generation witnessing these celestial events would be the one to experience the Second Coming.
For almost a hundred years Adventist preachers and writers of books assured the world that Jesus would return within the lifetimes of some who had seen the great meteor shower of 1833. After 1933 passed, the curch gradually abandoned this interpretation of Christ's words. Few of today's faithful are even aware that their church once trumpeted such a view. Although Adventists still believe Jesus will return very soon, they no longer set conditions for an approximate date.
How do they explain the statements of Jesus quoted in the epigraph? Following the lead of Saint Augustine and other early Christian commentators, they take the promise to refer to Christ's Transfiguration. Ellen White, the prophetess who with her husband founded Seventh-Day Adventism, said it this way in her life of Christ, The Desire of Ages: "The Savior's promise to the disciples was now fulfilled. Upon the mount the future kingdom of glory was represented in minature..."
Hundreds of adventist sects since the time of Jesus, starting witht he Montanists of the second century, have all interpreted Christ's prophetic statements about his return to refer to THEIR generation. Apocolyptic excitement surged as the year 1000 approached. Similar excitement is now gathering momentum as the year 2000 draws near. Expectation of the Second Coming is not confined to adventist sects. Fundamentalists in mainstream Protestant denominations are increasingly stressing the imminence of Jesus' return. Babtist Billy Graham, for example, regularly warns of the approaching battle of Armageddon and the appearance of the Anti-Christ. He likes to emphasize the Bible's assertion that the Second Coming will occur after the gospel is preached to all nations. This could not take place, Graham insists, until the rise of radio and television.
Preacher Jerry Falwell is so convinced that he will soon be raptured--caught up in the air to meet the return of Jesus--that he once said he has no plans for a burial plot. Austin Miles, who once worked for Pat Robertson, reveals in his book Don't Call Me Brother (1989) that Pat once seriously considered plans to televise the Lord's appearance in the skies! Today's top native drumbeater for a soon Second Coming is Hal Lindsey. His many books on the topic, starting with The Late Great Planet Earth, have sold by the millions.
For the past two thousand years individuals and sects have been setting dates for the Second Coming. When the Lord fails to show, there is often no recognition of total failure. Instead, errors are found in the calculations and new dates set. In New Harmony, Indiana, an adventist sect called the Rappites was established by George Rapp. When he became ill he said that were he not absolutely certain the Lord intended him and his flock to witness the return of Jesus, he would think this was his last hour. So saying, he died.
The Catholic Church, following Augustine, long ago moved the Second Coming far into the future at some unspecified date. Liberal Protestants have tended to take the Second Coming as little more than a metaphor for the gradual establishment of peace and justice on earth. Julia Ward Howe, a Unitarian minister, had this interpretation in mind when she began her famous Battle Hymn of the Republic with "Mind eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord..." Protestant fundamentalists, on the other hand, believe that Jesus described actual historical events that would precede his literal return to earth to banish Satan and judge the quick and the dead. They also find it unthinkable that the Lord could have blundered about the time of his Second Coming.
[personal note: I'm omitting the remainder of the text. But one gets the point that Gardner is making. And so we now have yet another divined date come and gone...]
Excerpt from Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (and Why We Don't Know About Them) by Ehrman
Jesus' Teaching in Mark
In many ways the teaching of Jesus in Mark is summarized in the first words he speaks: "The time has been fulfilled; the kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!" (Mark 1:15).
Anyone familiar with ancient Judaism can recognize the apocalyptic nature of this message. Jewish apocalypticism was a worldview that came into existence about a century and a half before Jesus' birth and was widely held among Jews in his day. The Greek word apocalypsis means a "revealing" or an "unveiling." Scholars have called this view apocalyptic because its proponents believed that God had revealed or unveiled to them the heavenly secrets that could make sense of the realities they were experiencing - many of them nasty and ugly - here on earth. One of the questions apocalypticists were intent on answering was why there was so much pain and suffering in the world, especially among the people of God. It might make sense that wicked people suffer: they are simply getting their due. But why do the righteous suffer? In fact, why do the righteous suffer more than the wicked, at the hands of the wicked? Why does God allow that?
Jewish apocalypticists believed that God had revealed to them the secrets that made sense of it all. There are cosmic forces in the world aligned against God and his people, powers like the Devil and his demons. These forces are in control of the world and the political powers that run it. For some mysterious reason God has allowed these forces to thrive in the present evil age. But a new age is coming in which God would overthrow the forces of evil and bring in a good kingdom, a kingdom of God, in which there will be no more pain, misery, or suffering. God will rule supreme, and the Devil and his demons, along with all the other nasty powers causing such suffering (hurricanes, earthquakes, famine, disease, war), will be done away with.
Jesus' teaching in Mark is apocalyptic: "The time has been fulfilled" implies that this current evil age, seen on a time line, is almost over. The end is almost within sight. "The Kingdom of God is near" means that God will soon intervene in this age and overthrow its wicked powers and the kingdoms they support, such as Rome, and establish his own kingdom, a kingdom of truth, peace, and justice. "Repent and believe the good news" means that people need to prepare for this coming kingdom by changing their lives, beginning to align themselves with the forces of good instead of the forces of evil, and by accepting Jesus' teaching that it was soon to happen.
For Mark's Jesus, this kingdom is soon to come. As he tells his disciples at one point, "Truly I tell you, some of those standing here will not taste death before they see the Kingdom of God having come in power" (Mark 9:1); later he tells them, after describing the cosmic upheavals that would transpire at the end of the age, "Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away before all these things take place" (Mark 13:30).
[Personal note: I am omitting some text.]
But since Jesus is the one who will bring the kingdom, for Mark the kingdom is already being manifest in the earthly life and ministry of Jesus in an anticipatory way. In the kingdom there will be no demons, so Jesus casts out demons; in the kingdom there will be no disease, and so Jesus heals the sick; in the kingdom there will be no more death, and so Jesus raises the dead. The kingdom of God could already be seen in Jesus' own ministry and that of his followers (6:7 - 13). That is the point of many of Jesus' parables in Mark: the kingdom has a small, even hidden, appearance in the activities of Jesus, but it will appear in a big way at the end. It is like a small mustard seed that when put in the ground becomes an enormous shrub (4:30 - 32). Most of Jesus' listeners rejected his message, but a judgement day was coming, and God's kingdom would arrive in power, and then this world will be remade (Mark 13).
[Personal note: I am omitting more text.]
Jesus' Teaching in John
Things are quite different in the Gospel of John. In Mark, Jesus teaches principally about God and the coming kingdom, hardly ever talking directly about himself, except to say that he must go to Jerusalem to be executed, whereas in John, that is practically all that Jesus talks about: who he is, where he has come from, where he is going, and how he is the one who can provide eternal life.
Jesus does not preach about the future kingdom of God in John. The emphasis is on his own identity, as seen in the "I am" sayings. He is the one who can bring life-giving sustenance ("I am the bread of life" 6:35); he is the one who brings enlightenment ("I am the light of the world" 9:5); he is the only way to God ("I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but by me" 14:6). Belief in Jesus is the way to have eternal salvation: "whoever believes in him may have eternal life" (3:36). He in fact is equal with God: "I and the Father are one" (10:30). His Jewish listeners appear to have known full well what he was saying: they immediately pick up stones to execute him for blasphemy.
In one place in John, Jesus claims the name of God for himself, saying to his Jewish interlocutors, "Before Abraham was, I am" (John 8:58). Abraham, who lived 1,800 years earlier, was the father of the Jews, and Jesus is claiming to have existed before him. But he is claiming more than that. He is referring to a passage in the Hebrew scriptures where God appears to Moses at the burning bush and commissions him to go to Pharoah and seek the release of his people. Moses asks God what God's name is, so that he can inform his fellow Israelites which divinity has sent him. God replies, "I Am Who I Am...say to the Israelites, 'I am has sent me to you' (Exodus 3:14). So when Jesus says "I Am," in John 8:58, he is claiming the divine name for himself. Here again his Jewish hearers had no trouble understanding his meaning. Once more, out come the stones.
The difference between Mark and John is not only that Jesus speaks about himself in John and identifies himself as divine but also that Jesus does not teach what he teaches in Mark, about the coming kingdom of God. The idea that there would be a future kingdom on earth in which God would rule supreme and all the forces of evil would be destroyed is no part of Jesus' proclamation in John. Instead he teaches that people need to have eternal life, in heaven above, by achieving a heavenly birth (3:3 - 5). That's what the "kingdom of God" means to John, the very few times it occurs: it means life in heaven, above, with God - not a new heaven and new earth down here below. Faith in Jesus is what gives eternal life. Those who believe in Jesus will live with God forever; those who do not will be condemned (3:36).
For many historical critics it makes sense that John, the Gospel that was written last, no longer speaks about the imminent appearance on earth of the Son of Man to sit in judgement on the earth, to usher in the utopian kingdom. In Mark, Jesus predicts that the end will come right away, during his own generation, while his disciples are still alive (Mark 9:1; 13:30). By the time John was written, probably from 90 to 95 CE, that earlier generation had died out and most if not all the disciples were already dead. That is, they died before the coming of the kingdom. What does one do with a teaching about an eternal kingdom here on earth if it never comes? One reinterprets the teaching. The way John reinterprets it is by altering the basic conceptualization.
An apocalyptic worldview like that found in Mark involves a kind of historical dualism in which there is the present evil age and the future kingdom of God. This age, and the age to come: they can be drawn almost like a time line, horizontally across the page. The Gospel of John rotates the horizontal dualism of apocalyptic thinking so that it becomes a vertical dualism. It is no longer a dualism of this age on earth and the one that has yet to come, also on earth; instead, it is dualism of life down here and the life above. We are down here, God is above. Jesus as God's Word comes down from above, precisely so we can ourselves experience a birth "from above" (the literal meaning of John 3:3 - not that "you must be born a second time," but that "you must be born from above"). When we experience this new birth by believing in Christ, the one who comes from above, then we, too, will have eternal life (John 3:16). And when we die, we will then ascend to the heavenly realm to live with God (John 14:1 - 6).
No longer is the kingdom coming to earth. The kingdom is in heaven. And we can get there by believing in the one who came from there to teach us the way. This is a very different teaching from what you find in Mark.
[Personal note: If you enjoy this sort of commentary and analysis of the Bible, I encourage you to pick up the book from Amazon.
My own personal point of view, as most people who know me would easily guess, is that both John and Mark have it wrong. Indeed, the Jewish apocalyptic tradition (according to the gospels, believed by Jesus and John the Babtist), the Christian apocalyptic tradition (continued by a good number of Christian sects), the Muslim apocalyptic tradition (none more so than the Shia traditions still believed by the Iranian government), and any other 'end of the world' prophecies and storytelling, in my point of view, is nothing but a delusion created by an ignorant, mentally troubled mind. John is only trying to reconcile the fact that Jesus did not come as he had promised. At root, as described by Bart D. Ehrman in Jesus Interrupted, these beliefs are derived from an inherent inability to explain away the suffering that exists in the world.
Many alternate reasons could easily exist - such as God is not all powerful or that God is not entirely benevolent. The simplest and, in my point of view, the most likely reason is that God simply does not exist. What evil we perceive in the world exists due to natural forces (such as disease, earthquakes and tornadoes) or due to the problems that occur in social relations with others (mostly a struggle to meet cultural expectations while gratifying one's needs and desires).]
Jesus' Teaching in Mark
In many ways the teaching of Jesus in Mark is summarized in the first words he speaks: "The time has been fulfilled; the kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!" (Mark 1:15).
Anyone familiar with ancient Judaism can recognize the apocalyptic nature of this message. Jewish apocalypticism was a worldview that came into existence about a century and a half before Jesus' birth and was widely held among Jews in his day. The Greek word apocalypsis means a "revealing" or an "unveiling." Scholars have called this view apocalyptic because its proponents believed that God had revealed or unveiled to them the heavenly secrets that could make sense of the realities they were experiencing - many of them nasty and ugly - here on earth. One of the questions apocalypticists were intent on answering was why there was so much pain and suffering in the world, especially among the people of God. It might make sense that wicked people suffer: they are simply getting their due. But why do the righteous suffer? In fact, why do the righteous suffer more than the wicked, at the hands of the wicked? Why does God allow that?
Jewish apocalypticists believed that God had revealed to them the secrets that made sense of it all. There are cosmic forces in the world aligned against God and his people, powers like the Devil and his demons. These forces are in control of the world and the political powers that run it. For some mysterious reason God has allowed these forces to thrive in the present evil age. But a new age is coming in which God would overthrow the forces of evil and bring in a good kingdom, a kingdom of God, in which there will be no more pain, misery, or suffering. God will rule supreme, and the Devil and his demons, along with all the other nasty powers causing such suffering (hurricanes, earthquakes, famine, disease, war), will be done away with.
Jesus' teaching in Mark is apocalyptic: "The time has been fulfilled" implies that this current evil age, seen on a time line, is almost over. The end is almost within sight. "The Kingdom of God is near" means that God will soon intervene in this age and overthrow its wicked powers and the kingdoms they support, such as Rome, and establish his own kingdom, a kingdom of truth, peace, and justice. "Repent and believe the good news" means that people need to prepare for this coming kingdom by changing their lives, beginning to align themselves with the forces of good instead of the forces of evil, and by accepting Jesus' teaching that it was soon to happen.
For Mark's Jesus, this kingdom is soon to come. As he tells his disciples at one point, "Truly I tell you, some of those standing here will not taste death before they see the Kingdom of God having come in power" (Mark 9:1); later he tells them, after describing the cosmic upheavals that would transpire at the end of the age, "Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away before all these things take place" (Mark 13:30).
[Personal note: I am omitting some text.]
But since Jesus is the one who will bring the kingdom, for Mark the kingdom is already being manifest in the earthly life and ministry of Jesus in an anticipatory way. In the kingdom there will be no demons, so Jesus casts out demons; in the kingdom there will be no disease, and so Jesus heals the sick; in the kingdom there will be no more death, and so Jesus raises the dead. The kingdom of God could already be seen in Jesus' own ministry and that of his followers (6:7 - 13). That is the point of many of Jesus' parables in Mark: the kingdom has a small, even hidden, appearance in the activities of Jesus, but it will appear in a big way at the end. It is like a small mustard seed that when put in the ground becomes an enormous shrub (4:30 - 32). Most of Jesus' listeners rejected his message, but a judgement day was coming, and God's kingdom would arrive in power, and then this world will be remade (Mark 13).
[Personal note: I am omitting more text.]
Jesus' Teaching in John
Things are quite different in the Gospel of John. In Mark, Jesus teaches principally about God and the coming kingdom, hardly ever talking directly about himself, except to say that he must go to Jerusalem to be executed, whereas in John, that is practically all that Jesus talks about: who he is, where he has come from, where he is going, and how he is the one who can provide eternal life.
Jesus does not preach about the future kingdom of God in John. The emphasis is on his own identity, as seen in the "I am" sayings. He is the one who can bring life-giving sustenance ("I am the bread of life" 6:35); he is the one who brings enlightenment ("I am the light of the world" 9:5); he is the only way to God ("I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but by me" 14:6). Belief in Jesus is the way to have eternal salvation: "whoever believes in him may have eternal life" (3:36). He in fact is equal with God: "I and the Father are one" (10:30). His Jewish listeners appear to have known full well what he was saying: they immediately pick up stones to execute him for blasphemy.
In one place in John, Jesus claims the name of God for himself, saying to his Jewish interlocutors, "Before Abraham was, I am" (John 8:58). Abraham, who lived 1,800 years earlier, was the father of the Jews, and Jesus is claiming to have existed before him. But he is claiming more than that. He is referring to a passage in the Hebrew scriptures where God appears to Moses at the burning bush and commissions him to go to Pharoah and seek the release of his people. Moses asks God what God's name is, so that he can inform his fellow Israelites which divinity has sent him. God replies, "I Am Who I Am...say to the Israelites, 'I am has sent me to you' (Exodus 3:14). So when Jesus says "I Am," in John 8:58, he is claiming the divine name for himself. Here again his Jewish hearers had no trouble understanding his meaning. Once more, out come the stones.
The difference between Mark and John is not only that Jesus speaks about himself in John and identifies himself as divine but also that Jesus does not teach what he teaches in Mark, about the coming kingdom of God. The idea that there would be a future kingdom on earth in which God would rule supreme and all the forces of evil would be destroyed is no part of Jesus' proclamation in John. Instead he teaches that people need to have eternal life, in heaven above, by achieving a heavenly birth (3:3 - 5). That's what the "kingdom of God" means to John, the very few times it occurs: it means life in heaven, above, with God - not a new heaven and new earth down here below. Faith in Jesus is what gives eternal life. Those who believe in Jesus will live with God forever; those who do not will be condemned (3:36).
For many historical critics it makes sense that John, the Gospel that was written last, no longer speaks about the imminent appearance on earth of the Son of Man to sit in judgement on the earth, to usher in the utopian kingdom. In Mark, Jesus predicts that the end will come right away, during his own generation, while his disciples are still alive (Mark 9:1; 13:30). By the time John was written, probably from 90 to 95 CE, that earlier generation had died out and most if not all the disciples were already dead. That is, they died before the coming of the kingdom. What does one do with a teaching about an eternal kingdom here on earth if it never comes? One reinterprets the teaching. The way John reinterprets it is by altering the basic conceptualization.
An apocalyptic worldview like that found in Mark involves a kind of historical dualism in which there is the present evil age and the future kingdom of God. This age, and the age to come: they can be drawn almost like a time line, horizontally across the page. The Gospel of John rotates the horizontal dualism of apocalyptic thinking so that it becomes a vertical dualism. It is no longer a dualism of this age on earth and the one that has yet to come, also on earth; instead, it is dualism of life down here and the life above. We are down here, God is above. Jesus as God's Word comes down from above, precisely so we can ourselves experience a birth "from above" (the literal meaning of John 3:3 - not that "you must be born a second time," but that "you must be born from above"). When we experience this new birth by believing in Christ, the one who comes from above, then we, too, will have eternal life (John 3:16). And when we die, we will then ascend to the heavenly realm to live with God (John 14:1 - 6).
No longer is the kingdom coming to earth. The kingdom is in heaven. And we can get there by believing in the one who came from there to teach us the way. This is a very different teaching from what you find in Mark.
[Personal note: If you enjoy this sort of commentary and analysis of the Bible, I encourage you to pick up the book from Amazon.
My own personal point of view, as most people who know me would easily guess, is that both John and Mark have it wrong. Indeed, the Jewish apocalyptic tradition (according to the gospels, believed by Jesus and John the Babtist), the Christian apocalyptic tradition (continued by a good number of Christian sects), the Muslim apocalyptic tradition (none more so than the Shia traditions still believed by the Iranian government), and any other 'end of the world' prophecies and storytelling, in my point of view, is nothing but a delusion created by an ignorant, mentally troubled mind. John is only trying to reconcile the fact that Jesus did not come as he had promised. At root, as described by Bart D. Ehrman in Jesus Interrupted, these beliefs are derived from an inherent inability to explain away the suffering that exists in the world.
Many alternate reasons could easily exist - such as God is not all powerful or that God is not entirely benevolent. The simplest and, in my point of view, the most likely reason is that God simply does not exist. What evil we perceive in the world exists due to natural forces (such as disease, earthquakes and tornadoes) or due to the problems that occur in social relations with others (mostly a struggle to meet cultural expectations while gratifying one's needs and desires).]
Excerpt from "An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish" - by Bertrand Russel
To avoid the various foolish opinions to which mankind are prone, no superhuman genius is required. A few simple rules will keep you, not from all error, but from silly error.
If the matter is one that can be settled by observation, make the observation yourself. Aristotle could have avoided the mistake of thinking that women have fewer teeth than men, by the simple device of asking Mrs. Aristotle to keep her mouth open while he counted. He did not do so because he thought he knew. Thinking that you know when in fact you don't is a fatal mistake, to which we are all prone...[I'm omitting some text]
...If an opinion contrary to your own makes you angry, that is a sign that you are subconsciously aware of having no good reason for thinking as you do. If some one maintains that two and two are five, or that Iceland is on the equator, you feel pity rather than anger, unless you know so little of arithmetic or geography that his opinion shakes your own contrary conviction. The most savage controversies are those about matters to which there is no good evidence either way. Persecution is used in theology, not in arithmetic, because in arithmetic there is knowledge, but in theology there is only opinion. So whenever you find yourself getting angry about a difference of opinion, be on guard; you will probably find, on examination, that your belief is going beyond what the evidence warrants.
A good way of ridding yourself of certain kinds of dogmatism is to become aware of opinions held in social circles different from your own. When I was young, I lived much outside my own country in France, Germany, Italy, and the United States. I found this very profitable in diminishing the intensity of insular prejudice. If you cannot travel, seek out people with whom you disagree, and read a newspaper belonging to a party that is not yours. If the people and the newspaper seem mad, perverse, and wicked, remind yourself that you seem so to them...[I'm omitting more text]
Be very wary of opinions that flatter your self-esteem. Both men and women, nine times out of ten, are firmly convinced of the superior excellence of their own sex. There is abundant evidence on both sides. If you are a man, you can point out that most poets and [scientists] are male; if you are a woman, you can retort that so are most criminals. The question is inherently insoluble, but self-esteem conceals this from most people. We are all, whatever part of the world we come from, persuaded that our own nation is superior to all others. Seeing that each nation has its characteristic merits and demerits, we adjust our standard of values so as to make out that the merits possessed by our nation are the really important ones, while its demerits are comparatively trivial. Here, again, the rational man will admit that the question is one to which there is no demonstrably right answer. [omitting more]
Other passions besides self-esteem are common sources of error; of these perhaps the most important is fear. Fear sometimes operates directly, by inventing rumors of disaster in war-time, or by imagining objects of terror, such as ghosts; sometimes it operates indirectly, by creating belief in something comforting, such as the elixir of life, or heaven for ourselves and hell for our enemies [personal note: I'm thinking of Hawking's latest statement when I read this]. Fear has many forms -- fear of death, fear of the dark, fear of the unknown, fear of the herd, and that vague generalized fear that comes to those who conceal from themselves their more specific terrors. Until you have admitted your own fears to yourself, and have guarded yourself by a difficult effort of will against their mythmaking power, you cannot hope to think truly about many matters of great importance, especially those with which religious beliefs are concerned. Fear is the main source of superstition and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom, in the pursuit of truth as in the endeavor after a worthy manner of life.
There are two ways of avoiding fear: one is by persuading ourselves that we are immune from disaster, and the other is by the practice of sheer courage. The latter is difficult, and to everybody becomes impossible at a certain point. The former has therefore always been more popular. Primitive magic has the purpose of securing safety, either by injuring enemies, or by protecting oneself by talismans, spell, or incantations. Without any essential change, belief in such ways of avoiding danger survived throughout the many centuries of Babylonian civilization, spread from Babylon throughout the empire of Alexander, and was acquired by the Romans in the course of their absorption of Hellenistic culture. From the Romans it descended to medieval Christendom and Islam. Science has now lessened the belief in magic, but many people place more faith in mascots than they are willing to avow, and sorcery, while condemned by the Church, is still officially a possible sin. [personal note: I'm thinking of the 'blessed' objects sold by the Catholic church...]
[omitting more text]
Under the influence of great fear, almost everybody becomes superstitious. The sailors who threw Jonah overboard imagined his presence to be the cause of the storm which threatened to wreck their ship. In a similar spirit the Japanese, at the time of the Tokyo earthquake took to massacring Koreans and Liberals. When the Romans won victories in the Punic wars, the Carthaginians became persuaded that their misfortunes were due to a certain laxity which had crept into the worship of Moloch. Moloch liked having children sacrificed to him, and preferred them aristocratic; but the noble familes of Carthage had adopted the practice of surreptitiously substituting plebeian children for their own offspring. This, it was thought, had displeased the god, and at the worst moments even the most aristocratic children were duly consumed by fire. Strange to say, the Romans were victorious in spite of this democratic reform ont eh part of their enemies. [personal note: in my research, I found that the Carthaginians had developed a sort of statue that emulated hands lifted upwards (holding the offering of babies or animals). The babies would roll down the arms into a fire. In a small way, one could say that the Jews of the Old Testament had reformed this rite by making offerings to their god that were strictly animals - the story of Abraham offering his son as a sacrifice as a poetic invention to remind the Jews that human sacrifice was not necessary to appease their god.]
Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd. So it was in the French Revolution, when dread of foreign armies produced the reign of terror. And it is to be feared that the Nazis, as defeat draws nearer, will increase the intensity of their campaign for exterminating Jews. [personal note: this statement was very prophetic] Fear generates impulses of cruelty, and therefore promotes such superstitious beliefs as seem to justify cruelty. Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of great fear. [personal note: the same statement can be made about other great passions. The passions draw the mind away from logical, well-reasoned actions. I am now thinking of the silly justifications for torturing prisoners to aid in the 'war on terror'.] And for this reason poltroons are more prone to cruelty than brave men, and are also more prone to superstition. When I say this, I am thinking of men who are brave in all respects, not only in facing death. Many a man will have the courage to die gallantly, but will not have the courage to say, or even to think, that the cause for which he is asked to die is an unworthy one. Obloquy is, to most men, more painful than death; that is one reason why, in times of collective excitement, so few men venture to dissent from the prevailing opinion. [omitting the rest of the text]
To avoid the various foolish opinions to which mankind are prone, no superhuman genius is required. A few simple rules will keep you, not from all error, but from silly error.
If the matter is one that can be settled by observation, make the observation yourself. Aristotle could have avoided the mistake of thinking that women have fewer teeth than men, by the simple device of asking Mrs. Aristotle to keep her mouth open while he counted. He did not do so because he thought he knew. Thinking that you know when in fact you don't is a fatal mistake, to which we are all prone...[I'm omitting some text]
...If an opinion contrary to your own makes you angry, that is a sign that you are subconsciously aware of having no good reason for thinking as you do. If some one maintains that two and two are five, or that Iceland is on the equator, you feel pity rather than anger, unless you know so little of arithmetic or geography that his opinion shakes your own contrary conviction. The most savage controversies are those about matters to which there is no good evidence either way. Persecution is used in theology, not in arithmetic, because in arithmetic there is knowledge, but in theology there is only opinion. So whenever you find yourself getting angry about a difference of opinion, be on guard; you will probably find, on examination, that your belief is going beyond what the evidence warrants.
A good way of ridding yourself of certain kinds of dogmatism is to become aware of opinions held in social circles different from your own. When I was young, I lived much outside my own country in France, Germany, Italy, and the United States. I found this very profitable in diminishing the intensity of insular prejudice. If you cannot travel, seek out people with whom you disagree, and read a newspaper belonging to a party that is not yours. If the people and the newspaper seem mad, perverse, and wicked, remind yourself that you seem so to them...[I'm omitting more text]
Be very wary of opinions that flatter your self-esteem. Both men and women, nine times out of ten, are firmly convinced of the superior excellence of their own sex. There is abundant evidence on both sides. If you are a man, you can point out that most poets and [scientists] are male; if you are a woman, you can retort that so are most criminals. The question is inherently insoluble, but self-esteem conceals this from most people. We are all, whatever part of the world we come from, persuaded that our own nation is superior to all others. Seeing that each nation has its characteristic merits and demerits, we adjust our standard of values so as to make out that the merits possessed by our nation are the really important ones, while its demerits are comparatively trivial. Here, again, the rational man will admit that the question is one to which there is no demonstrably right answer. [omitting more]
Other passions besides self-esteem are common sources of error; of these perhaps the most important is fear. Fear sometimes operates directly, by inventing rumors of disaster in war-time, or by imagining objects of terror, such as ghosts; sometimes it operates indirectly, by creating belief in something comforting, such as the elixir of life, or heaven for ourselves and hell for our enemies [personal note: I'm thinking of Hawking's latest statement when I read this]. Fear has many forms -- fear of death, fear of the dark, fear of the unknown, fear of the herd, and that vague generalized fear that comes to those who conceal from themselves their more specific terrors. Until you have admitted your own fears to yourself, and have guarded yourself by a difficult effort of will against their mythmaking power, you cannot hope to think truly about many matters of great importance, especially those with which religious beliefs are concerned. Fear is the main source of superstition and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom, in the pursuit of truth as in the endeavor after a worthy manner of life.
There are two ways of avoiding fear: one is by persuading ourselves that we are immune from disaster, and the other is by the practice of sheer courage. The latter is difficult, and to everybody becomes impossible at a certain point. The former has therefore always been more popular. Primitive magic has the purpose of securing safety, either by injuring enemies, or by protecting oneself by talismans, spell, or incantations. Without any essential change, belief in such ways of avoiding danger survived throughout the many centuries of Babylonian civilization, spread from Babylon throughout the empire of Alexander, and was acquired by the Romans in the course of their absorption of Hellenistic culture. From the Romans it descended to medieval Christendom and Islam. Science has now lessened the belief in magic, but many people place more faith in mascots than they are willing to avow, and sorcery, while condemned by the Church, is still officially a possible sin. [personal note: I'm thinking of the 'blessed' objects sold by the Catholic church...]
[omitting more text]
Under the influence of great fear, almost everybody becomes superstitious. The sailors who threw Jonah overboard imagined his presence to be the cause of the storm which threatened to wreck their ship. In a similar spirit the Japanese, at the time of the Tokyo earthquake took to massacring Koreans and Liberals. When the Romans won victories in the Punic wars, the Carthaginians became persuaded that their misfortunes were due to a certain laxity which had crept into the worship of Moloch. Moloch liked having children sacrificed to him, and preferred them aristocratic; but the noble familes of Carthage had adopted the practice of surreptitiously substituting plebeian children for their own offspring. This, it was thought, had displeased the god, and at the worst moments even the most aristocratic children were duly consumed by fire. Strange to say, the Romans were victorious in spite of this democratic reform ont eh part of their enemies. [personal note: in my research, I found that the Carthaginians had developed a sort of statue that emulated hands lifted upwards (holding the offering of babies or animals). The babies would roll down the arms into a fire. In a small way, one could say that the Jews of the Old Testament had reformed this rite by making offerings to their god that were strictly animals - the story of Abraham offering his son as a sacrifice as a poetic invention to remind the Jews that human sacrifice was not necessary to appease their god.]
Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd. So it was in the French Revolution, when dread of foreign armies produced the reign of terror. And it is to be feared that the Nazis, as defeat draws nearer, will increase the intensity of their campaign for exterminating Jews. [personal note: this statement was very prophetic] Fear generates impulses of cruelty, and therefore promotes such superstitious beliefs as seem to justify cruelty. Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of great fear. [personal note: the same statement can be made about other great passions. The passions draw the mind away from logical, well-reasoned actions. I am now thinking of the silly justifications for torturing prisoners to aid in the 'war on terror'.] And for this reason poltroons are more prone to cruelty than brave men, and are also more prone to superstition. When I say this, I am thinking of men who are brave in all respects, not only in facing death. Many a man will have the courage to die gallantly, but will not have the courage to say, or even to think, that the cause for which he is asked to die is an unworthy one. Obloquy is, to most men, more painful than death; that is one reason why, in times of collective excitement, so few men venture to dissent from the prevailing opinion. [omitting the rest of the text]
Excerpt from Autobiography of Charles Darwin
During these two years [October 1836 to January 1939] I was led to think much about religion. Whilst on board the Beagle, I was quite orthodox, and I remember being heartily laughed at by several of the officers (though themselves orthodox) for quoting the Bible as an unanswerable authority on some point of morality. I suppose it was the novelty of the argument that amused them. But I had gradually come by this time, i.e., 1836 to 1839, to see that the Old Testament was no more to be trusted than the sacred books of the Hindoos. The question then continually rose before my mind and would not be banished,--is it credible that if God were now to make a revelation to the Hindoos, he would permit it to be connected with the belief in Vishnu, Siva, &c., as Christianity is connected with the Old Testament? This appeard to me utterly incredible.
By further reflecting that the clearest evidence would be requisite to make any sane man believe in the miracles by which Christianity is supported,--and that the more we know of the fixed laws of nature, the more incredible do miracles become,--that the men at that time were ignorant and credulous to a degree almost incomprehensible by us,--that the Gospels cannot be proved to have been written simultaneously with the events,--that they differ in many important details, far too important, as it seemed to me, to be admitted as teh usual inaccuracies of eye-witnesses;--by such reflections as these, which I give not as having the least novelty or value, but as they influenced me, I gradually came to disbelieve in Christianity as divine revelation. The fact that many false religions have spread over large portions of the earth like wild-fire had some weight on me. [personal note: what exactly makes Christianity more true than other religions?]
But I was very unwilling to give up my belief; I feel sure of this, for I can well remember often and often inventing day-dremas of old letters between distinguished Romans, and manuscripts being discovered at Pompeii or elsewhere, which confirmed in the most striking manner that all that was written in the Gospels. But I found it more and more difficult, with free scope given to my imagination, to invent evidence which would suffice to convince me. Thus disbelief crept over me at a very slow rate, but was at last complete. The rate was so slow that I felt no distress.
Although I did not think much about the existence of a personal God until a considerably later period of my life, I will here give the vague conclusions to which I have been driven. The old argument from design in Nature, as given by Paley, which formerly seemed to me so conclusive, fails, now that the law of natural selection has been discovered. We can no longer argue that, for instance, the beautiful hinge of the bivalve shell must have been made by an intelligent being, like the hinge of a door by man. There seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings, and in the action of natural selection, than in the course which the wind blows. But I have discussed this subject at the end of my book on the Variation of Domesticated Animals and Plants, and the argument there given was never, as far as I can see, been answered. [Personal note: the primary argument, at least of a beneficient artificer, lies in the fact that untold misery exists in the animal kingdom. We as humans are not alone in the injustice of Providence over the whole of creation. This, Darwin rebuts below.]
But passing over the endless beautiful adaptations which we everywhere meet with, it may be asked how can the generally beneficient arrangement of the world be accounted for? Some writers indeed are so much impressed with the amount of suffering in the world, that they doubt, if we look to all sentient beings, whether there is more of misery or of happiness; whether the world as a whole is a good or bad one. According to my judgement happiness decidedly prevails, though this would be very difficult to prove. [Personal note: one wonders then if Darwin perhaps recounted the events of his life and of others he knew and realized that the vast majority of people would recognize either an equal amount of good and bad or that the events of human life are dominated by bad ones.] If the truth of this conclusion be granted, it harmonizes well with the effects which we might expect from natural selection. If all the individuals of any species were habitually to suffer to an extreme degree, they would neglect to propogate their kind; but we have no reason to believ ethat this has ever, or at least often occured. [Personal note: if one recounted the events of all creatures since the dawn of creation, one would realize that the vast numbers of species have gone extinct for a variety of reasons. This, one should conclude, provides proof that the environment, if one is to attribute human qualities to nature, conspires against the vast majority of beings.] Some other considerations, moreover, lead to the belief that all sentient beings have been formed so as to enjoy, as a general rule, happiness. [Personal note: This is true only so far as one should admit that happiness is derived from events which give pleasure and sadness from events which give pain. Thus 'enjoyment' is simply a measure of a positive feedback mechanism within the brain.]
Every one who believes, as I do, that all the corporeal and mental organs (excepting those which are neither advantageous nor disadvantageous to the possessor) of all beings have been developed through natural selection, or the survival of the fittest, together with use or habit, will admit that these organs have been formed so that their possessors may compete successfully with other beings, and thus increase in number. Now an animal may be led to pursue that course of action which is most beneficial to the species by suffering, such as pain, hunger, thirst, and fear; or by pleasure, as in eating and drinking, and in the propogation of the species, &c.; or by both means combined, as in the search for food. But pain or suffering of any kind, if long continued, causes depression and lessens the power of action, yet is well adapted to make a creature guard itself against any great or sudden evil. Pleasurable sensations, on the other hand, may be long continued without any depressing effect; on the contrary, they stimulate the whole system to increased action. Hence it has come to pass that most or all sentient beings have been developed in such a manner, through natural seleciton, that pleasurable sensations serve as their habitual guides. We see this in the pleasure from exertion, even occasionally from great exertion of the body or mind,--in the pleasure of our daily meals, and especially in the pleasure derived from sociability, and from loving our families [personal note: though Darwin would not allow himself to stoop to base concepts, by suggestion one could admit that the pleasure of sex is included in this category.]. The sum of such pleasures as these, which are habitual or frequently recurrent, give, as I can hardly doubt, to most sentient beings, an excess of happiness over misery, although many occasionally suffer much. Such suffering is quite compatible with the belief in Natural Selection, which is not perfect in its action, but tends only to render each species as successful as possible in the battle for life with other species, in wonderfully complex and changing circumstances. [personal note: one should then note that all beings, then, seek pleasure and are driven therefore toward extending their own, and by default the species', survival.]
That there is much suffering in the world no one disputes. Some have attempted to explain this with reference to man by imagining tha tit serves for his moral improvement. But the number of men in the world is nothing compared with that of all other sentient beings, and they often suffer greatly without any moral improvement. This very old argument from the existence of suffering against the existence of an intelligent First Cause seems to me a strong one; whereas, as just remarked, the presence of much suffering agrees well with the view that all organic beings have been developed through variation and natural selection. [personal note: the variation argument explains the number of people born with physical or mental abnormalities, as well.]
At the present day the most usual argument for the existence of an intelligent God is drawn from the deep inward conviction and feelings which are experienced by most persons.
Formerly I was led by feelings such as those just referred to (although I do not think that the religious sentiment was ever strongly developed in me), to the firm conviction of the existence of God, and of the immortality of the soul. In my Journal I wrote that whilst standing in the midst of the grandeur of a Brazilian forest, "it is not possible to give an adequate idea of the higher feelings of wonder, admiration, and devotion, which fill and elevate the mind." I well remember my conviction that there is more in man than the mere breath of his body. But now the grandest scenes would not cause any such convictions and feelings to rise in my mind. It may be truly said that I am like a man who has become colour-blind, and the universal belief by men of the existence of redness makes my present loss of perception of not the least value as evidence. This argument would be a valid one if all men of all races had the same inward conviction of the existence of one God; but we know that this is very far from being the case. Therefore I cannot see that such inward convictions and feelings are of any weight as evidence of what really exists. The state of midn which grand scenes formerly excited in me, and which was intimately connected with a belief in God, did not essentially differ from that which is often called the sense of sublimity; and however difficult it may be to explain the genesis of this sense, it can hardly be advanced as an argument for the existence of God, any more than the powerful though vague and similar feelings excited by music. [personal note: researchers have found that there are positive feedback mechanisms in the brain that are excited by music and other things. Chemicals are released and receptors receive them when these events occur. Many of our personal feelings of euphoria and sublimity are caused by this chemical reaction within the brain. Naturally this reinforces our desire to have these events recur in our lives and are simply a further argument for natural selection.]
With repsect to immortality, nothing shows me [so clearly] how strong and almost instinctive a belief it is, as the consideration of the view now held by most physicists, namely, that the sun with all the planets will in time grow too cold for life, unless indeed some great body dashes into the sun, and thus gives it fresh life. Believing as I do that man in the distant future will be a far more perfect creature than he now is, it is an intolerable thought that he and all other sentient beings are doomed to complete annihilation after such long-continued slow progress. To those who fully admit the immortality of the human soul, the destruction of our world will not appear so dreadful. [personal note: the desire for something to be is not evidence for it to exist. One should think that even the desire to live forever is a by-product of natural selection and the desire to continue living - aka to survive.]
Another source of conviction in the existence of God, connected with reason, and not with the feelings, impress me as having much more weight. This follows from the extreme difficulty or rather impossibility of conceiving this immense and wonderful universe, including man with his capacity of looking far backwards and far into futurity, as the result of blind chance or necessity. When thus reflecting I feel compelled to look to a First Cause having an intelligent mind in some degree analogous to that of man; and I deserve to be called a Theist. This conclusion was strong in my mind about the time, as far as I can remember, when I wrote the Origin of the Species; and it is since that time that it has very gradually, with many fluctuations, become weaker. But then arises the doubt, can the midn of man, which has, as I fully believe, been developed from the mind as low as that possessed by the lowest animals, be trusted when it draws such grand conclusions? [personal note: this concept of a first cause is, by default, a by-product of our conceptions of probability and determinism. Since, in fact, the multitude of events which eventually gave rise to us (even as individuals) seem so very unlikely, it gives as the illusion that things must have happened with the eventual goal in mind - that the universe must have been created so that we eventually came to be. The argument falls apart by its own design, since by default one admits that things did not have to occur the way they did. Chance, or at least an inconceivably large number of variables,indeed, has had the greatest role in the evolution of the universe.]
I cannot pretend to throw the least light on such abstruse problems. The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us; and I for one must be content to remain an Agnostic.
During these two years [October 1836 to January 1939] I was led to think much about religion. Whilst on board the Beagle, I was quite orthodox, and I remember being heartily laughed at by several of the officers (though themselves orthodox) for quoting the Bible as an unanswerable authority on some point of morality. I suppose it was the novelty of the argument that amused them. But I had gradually come by this time, i.e., 1836 to 1839, to see that the Old Testament was no more to be trusted than the sacred books of the Hindoos. The question then continually rose before my mind and would not be banished,--is it credible that if God were now to make a revelation to the Hindoos, he would permit it to be connected with the belief in Vishnu, Siva, &c., as Christianity is connected with the Old Testament? This appeard to me utterly incredible.
By further reflecting that the clearest evidence would be requisite to make any sane man believe in the miracles by which Christianity is supported,--and that the more we know of the fixed laws of nature, the more incredible do miracles become,--that the men at that time were ignorant and credulous to a degree almost incomprehensible by us,--that the Gospels cannot be proved to have been written simultaneously with the events,--that they differ in many important details, far too important, as it seemed to me, to be admitted as teh usual inaccuracies of eye-witnesses;--by such reflections as these, which I give not as having the least novelty or value, but as they influenced me, I gradually came to disbelieve in Christianity as divine revelation. The fact that many false religions have spread over large portions of the earth like wild-fire had some weight on me. [personal note: what exactly makes Christianity more true than other religions?]
But I was very unwilling to give up my belief; I feel sure of this, for I can well remember often and often inventing day-dremas of old letters between distinguished Romans, and manuscripts being discovered at Pompeii or elsewhere, which confirmed in the most striking manner that all that was written in the Gospels. But I found it more and more difficult, with free scope given to my imagination, to invent evidence which would suffice to convince me. Thus disbelief crept over me at a very slow rate, but was at last complete. The rate was so slow that I felt no distress.
Although I did not think much about the existence of a personal God until a considerably later period of my life, I will here give the vague conclusions to which I have been driven. The old argument from design in Nature, as given by Paley, which formerly seemed to me so conclusive, fails, now that the law of natural selection has been discovered. We can no longer argue that, for instance, the beautiful hinge of the bivalve shell must have been made by an intelligent being, like the hinge of a door by man. There seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings, and in the action of natural selection, than in the course which the wind blows. But I have discussed this subject at the end of my book on the Variation of Domesticated Animals and Plants, and the argument there given was never, as far as I can see, been answered. [Personal note: the primary argument, at least of a beneficient artificer, lies in the fact that untold misery exists in the animal kingdom. We as humans are not alone in the injustice of Providence over the whole of creation. This, Darwin rebuts below.]
But passing over the endless beautiful adaptations which we everywhere meet with, it may be asked how can the generally beneficient arrangement of the world be accounted for? Some writers indeed are so much impressed with the amount of suffering in the world, that they doubt, if we look to all sentient beings, whether there is more of misery or of happiness; whether the world as a whole is a good or bad one. According to my judgement happiness decidedly prevails, though this would be very difficult to prove. [Personal note: one wonders then if Darwin perhaps recounted the events of his life and of others he knew and realized that the vast majority of people would recognize either an equal amount of good and bad or that the events of human life are dominated by bad ones.] If the truth of this conclusion be granted, it harmonizes well with the effects which we might expect from natural selection. If all the individuals of any species were habitually to suffer to an extreme degree, they would neglect to propogate their kind; but we have no reason to believ ethat this has ever, or at least often occured. [Personal note: if one recounted the events of all creatures since the dawn of creation, one would realize that the vast numbers of species have gone extinct for a variety of reasons. This, one should conclude, provides proof that the environment, if one is to attribute human qualities to nature, conspires against the vast majority of beings.] Some other considerations, moreover, lead to the belief that all sentient beings have been formed so as to enjoy, as a general rule, happiness. [Personal note: This is true only so far as one should admit that happiness is derived from events which give pleasure and sadness from events which give pain. Thus 'enjoyment' is simply a measure of a positive feedback mechanism within the brain.]
Every one who believes, as I do, that all the corporeal and mental organs (excepting those which are neither advantageous nor disadvantageous to the possessor) of all beings have been developed through natural selection, or the survival of the fittest, together with use or habit, will admit that these organs have been formed so that their possessors may compete successfully with other beings, and thus increase in number. Now an animal may be led to pursue that course of action which is most beneficial to the species by suffering, such as pain, hunger, thirst, and fear; or by pleasure, as in eating and drinking, and in the propogation of the species, &c.; or by both means combined, as in the search for food. But pain or suffering of any kind, if long continued, causes depression and lessens the power of action, yet is well adapted to make a creature guard itself against any great or sudden evil. Pleasurable sensations, on the other hand, may be long continued without any depressing effect; on the contrary, they stimulate the whole system to increased action. Hence it has come to pass that most or all sentient beings have been developed in such a manner, through natural seleciton, that pleasurable sensations serve as their habitual guides. We see this in the pleasure from exertion, even occasionally from great exertion of the body or mind,--in the pleasure of our daily meals, and especially in the pleasure derived from sociability, and from loving our families [personal note: though Darwin would not allow himself to stoop to base concepts, by suggestion one could admit that the pleasure of sex is included in this category.]. The sum of such pleasures as these, which are habitual or frequently recurrent, give, as I can hardly doubt, to most sentient beings, an excess of happiness over misery, although many occasionally suffer much. Such suffering is quite compatible with the belief in Natural Selection, which is not perfect in its action, but tends only to render each species as successful as possible in the battle for life with other species, in wonderfully complex and changing circumstances. [personal note: one should then note that all beings, then, seek pleasure and are driven therefore toward extending their own, and by default the species', survival.]
That there is much suffering in the world no one disputes. Some have attempted to explain this with reference to man by imagining tha tit serves for his moral improvement. But the number of men in the world is nothing compared with that of all other sentient beings, and they often suffer greatly without any moral improvement. This very old argument from the existence of suffering against the existence of an intelligent First Cause seems to me a strong one; whereas, as just remarked, the presence of much suffering agrees well with the view that all organic beings have been developed through variation and natural selection. [personal note: the variation argument explains the number of people born with physical or mental abnormalities, as well.]
At the present day the most usual argument for the existence of an intelligent God is drawn from the deep inward conviction and feelings which are experienced by most persons.
Formerly I was led by feelings such as those just referred to (although I do not think that the religious sentiment was ever strongly developed in me), to the firm conviction of the existence of God, and of the immortality of the soul. In my Journal I wrote that whilst standing in the midst of the grandeur of a Brazilian forest, "it is not possible to give an adequate idea of the higher feelings of wonder, admiration, and devotion, which fill and elevate the mind." I well remember my conviction that there is more in man than the mere breath of his body. But now the grandest scenes would not cause any such convictions and feelings to rise in my mind. It may be truly said that I am like a man who has become colour-blind, and the universal belief by men of the existence of redness makes my present loss of perception of not the least value as evidence. This argument would be a valid one if all men of all races had the same inward conviction of the existence of one God; but we know that this is very far from being the case. Therefore I cannot see that such inward convictions and feelings are of any weight as evidence of what really exists. The state of midn which grand scenes formerly excited in me, and which was intimately connected with a belief in God, did not essentially differ from that which is often called the sense of sublimity; and however difficult it may be to explain the genesis of this sense, it can hardly be advanced as an argument for the existence of God, any more than the powerful though vague and similar feelings excited by music. [personal note: researchers have found that there are positive feedback mechanisms in the brain that are excited by music and other things. Chemicals are released and receptors receive them when these events occur. Many of our personal feelings of euphoria and sublimity are caused by this chemical reaction within the brain. Naturally this reinforces our desire to have these events recur in our lives and are simply a further argument for natural selection.]
With repsect to immortality, nothing shows me [so clearly] how strong and almost instinctive a belief it is, as the consideration of the view now held by most physicists, namely, that the sun with all the planets will in time grow too cold for life, unless indeed some great body dashes into the sun, and thus gives it fresh life. Believing as I do that man in the distant future will be a far more perfect creature than he now is, it is an intolerable thought that he and all other sentient beings are doomed to complete annihilation after such long-continued slow progress. To those who fully admit the immortality of the human soul, the destruction of our world will not appear so dreadful. [personal note: the desire for something to be is not evidence for it to exist. One should think that even the desire to live forever is a by-product of natural selection and the desire to continue living - aka to survive.]
Another source of conviction in the existence of God, connected with reason, and not with the feelings, impress me as having much more weight. This follows from the extreme difficulty or rather impossibility of conceiving this immense and wonderful universe, including man with his capacity of looking far backwards and far into futurity, as the result of blind chance or necessity. When thus reflecting I feel compelled to look to a First Cause having an intelligent mind in some degree analogous to that of man; and I deserve to be called a Theist. This conclusion was strong in my mind about the time, as far as I can remember, when I wrote the Origin of the Species; and it is since that time that it has very gradually, with many fluctuations, become weaker. But then arises the doubt, can the midn of man, which has, as I fully believe, been developed from the mind as low as that possessed by the lowest animals, be trusted when it draws such grand conclusions? [personal note: this concept of a first cause is, by default, a by-product of our conceptions of probability and determinism. Since, in fact, the multitude of events which eventually gave rise to us (even as individuals) seem so very unlikely, it gives as the illusion that things must have happened with the eventual goal in mind - that the universe must have been created so that we eventually came to be. The argument falls apart by its own design, since by default one admits that things did not have to occur the way they did. Chance, or at least an inconceivably large number of variables,indeed, has had the greatest role in the evolution of the universe.]
I cannot pretend to throw the least light on such abstruse problems. The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us; and I for one must be content to remain an Agnostic.
Thoughts of God - by Mark Twain (excerpt from Fables of Man)
How often we are moved to admit the intelligence exhibited in both the designing and the execution of some of His works. Take the fly, for instance. The planning of the fly was an application of pure intelligence, morals not being concerned. Not one of us could have planned the fly, not one of us could have constructed him; and no one would have considered it wise to try, except under an assumed name. It is believed by some that the fly was introduced to meet a long-felt want. In the course of ages, for some reason or other, there have been millions of these persons, but out of this vast multitude there has not been one who has been willing to explain what the want was. At least satisfactorily. A few have explained that there was need of a creature to remove disease-breeding garbage; but these being then asked to explain what long-felt want the disease-breeding garbage was introduced to supply, they have not been willing to undertake the contract.
There is much inconsistency concerning the fly. In all ages he has not had a friend, there has never been a person in the earth who could have been persuaded to intervene between him and extermination; yet billions of persons have excused the Hand that made him - and this without a blush. Would they have excused a Man in the same circumstances, a man positively known to have invented the fly? On the contrary. For the credit of the race let us believe it would have been all day with that man. Would persons consider it just to reprobate in a child, with its underdeveloped morals, a scandal which they would overlook in a Pope?
When we reflect that the fly was as not invented for a pastime, but in the way of business; that he was not flung off in a heedless moment and with no object in view but to pass the time, but was the fruit of long and pains-taking labor and calculation, and with a definite and far-reaching, purpose in view; that his character and conduct were planned out with cold deliberation, that his career was foreseen and fore-ordered, and that there was no want which he could supply, we are hopelessly puzzled, we cannot understand the moral lapse that was able to render possible the conceiving and consummation of this squalid and malevolent creature.
Let us try to think the unthinkable: let us try to imagine a Man of a sort willing to invent the fly; that is to say, a man destitute of feeling; a man willing to wantonly torture and harass and persecute myriads of creatures who had never done him any harm and could not if they wanted to, and - the majority of them - poor dumb things not even aware of his existence. In a word, let us try to imagine a man with so singular and so lumbering a code of morals as this: that it is fair and right to send afflictions upon the just - upon the unoffending as well as upon the offending, without discrimination.
If we can imagine such a man, that is the man that could invent the fly, and send him out on his mission and furnish him his orders: "Depart into the uttermost corners of the earth, and diligently do your appointed work. Persecute the sick child; settle upon its eyes, its face, its hands, and gnaw and pester and sting; worry and fret and madden the worn and tired mother who watches by the child, and who humbly prays for mercy and relief with the pathetic faith of the deceived and the unteachable. Settle upon the soldier's festering wounds in the field and hospital and drive him frantic while he also prays, and betweentimes curses, with non to listen but you, Fly, who get all the petting and all the protection, without even praying for it. Harry and persecute the forlorn and forsaken wretch who is perishing of the plague, and in his terror and despair praying; bite, sting, feed upon his ulcers, dabble your feet in his rotten blood, gum them thick with plague-germs - feet cunningly designed and perfected for this function ages ago in the beginning - carry this freight to a hundred tables, among the just and the unjust. the high and the low, and walk over the food and gaum it with filth and death. Visit all; allow no man peace till he get it in the grave; visit and afflict the hard-worked and unoffending horse, mule, ox, ass, pester the patient cow, and all the kindly animals that labor without fair reward here and perish without hope of it hereafter; spare no creature, wild or tame; but wheresoever you find one, make his life a misery, treat him as the innocent deserve; and so please Me and increase My glory. Who made the fly.
We hear much about His patience and forbearance and long-suffering; we hear nothing about our own, which much exceeds it. We hear much about His mercy and kindness and goodness - in words - the words of His Book and of His pulpit - and the meek multitude is content with this evidence, such as it is, seeking no further; but whoso searcheth after a concreted sample of it will in time acquire fatigue. There being no instances of it. For what are gilded as mercies are not in any recorded case more than mere common justices, and due - due without thanks or compliment. To rescue without personal risk a cripple from a burning house is not a mercy, it is a mere commonplace duty; anybody would do it that could. And not by proxy, either - delegating the work but confiscating the credit for it. If men neglected "God's poor" and "God's stricken and helpless ones" as He does, what would become of them? The answer is to be found in those dark lands where man follows His example and turns his indifferent back upon them: they get no help at all; they cry, and plead and pray in vain, they linger and suffer, and miserably die. If you will look at the matter rationally and without prejudice, the proper place to hunt for the facts of His mercy, is not where man does the mercies and He collects the praise, but in those regions where He has the field to Himself.
It is plain that there is one moral law for heaven and another for earth. The pulpit assures us that wherever we see suffering and sorrow which we can relieve and do not do it, we sin, heavily. There was never yet a case of suffering or sorrow which God could not relieve. Does He sin, then? If He is the Source of Morals He does - certainly nothing can be plainer than that, you will admit. Surely the Source of law cannot violate law and stand unsmirched; surely the judge upon the bench cannot forbid crime and then revel in it himself unreproached. Nevertheless we have this curious spectacle: daily the trained parrot in the pulpit gravely delivers himself of these ironies, which he has acquired at second-hand and adopted without examination, to a trained congregation which accepts them without examination, and neither the speaker nor the hearer laughs at himself. It does seem as if we ought to be humble when we are at a bench-show, and not put on airs of intellectual superiority there.
How often we are moved to admit the intelligence exhibited in both the designing and the execution of some of His works. Take the fly, for instance. The planning of the fly was an application of pure intelligence, morals not being concerned. Not one of us could have planned the fly, not one of us could have constructed him; and no one would have considered it wise to try, except under an assumed name. It is believed by some that the fly was introduced to meet a long-felt want. In the course of ages, for some reason or other, there have been millions of these persons, but out of this vast multitude there has not been one who has been willing to explain what the want was. At least satisfactorily. A few have explained that there was need of a creature to remove disease-breeding garbage; but these being then asked to explain what long-felt want the disease-breeding garbage was introduced to supply, they have not been willing to undertake the contract.
There is much inconsistency concerning the fly. In all ages he has not had a friend, there has never been a person in the earth who could have been persuaded to intervene between him and extermination; yet billions of persons have excused the Hand that made him - and this without a blush. Would they have excused a Man in the same circumstances, a man positively known to have invented the fly? On the contrary. For the credit of the race let us believe it would have been all day with that man. Would persons consider it just to reprobate in a child, with its underdeveloped morals, a scandal which they would overlook in a Pope?
When we reflect that the fly was as not invented for a pastime, but in the way of business; that he was not flung off in a heedless moment and with no object in view but to pass the time, but was the fruit of long and pains-taking labor and calculation, and with a definite and far-reaching, purpose in view; that his character and conduct were planned out with cold deliberation, that his career was foreseen and fore-ordered, and that there was no want which he could supply, we are hopelessly puzzled, we cannot understand the moral lapse that was able to render possible the conceiving and consummation of this squalid and malevolent creature.
Let us try to think the unthinkable: let us try to imagine a Man of a sort willing to invent the fly; that is to say, a man destitute of feeling; a man willing to wantonly torture and harass and persecute myriads of creatures who had never done him any harm and could not if they wanted to, and - the majority of them - poor dumb things not even aware of his existence. In a word, let us try to imagine a man with so singular and so lumbering a code of morals as this: that it is fair and right to send afflictions upon the just - upon the unoffending as well as upon the offending, without discrimination.
If we can imagine such a man, that is the man that could invent the fly, and send him out on his mission and furnish him his orders: "Depart into the uttermost corners of the earth, and diligently do your appointed work. Persecute the sick child; settle upon its eyes, its face, its hands, and gnaw and pester and sting; worry and fret and madden the worn and tired mother who watches by the child, and who humbly prays for mercy and relief with the pathetic faith of the deceived and the unteachable. Settle upon the soldier's festering wounds in the field and hospital and drive him frantic while he also prays, and betweentimes curses, with non to listen but you, Fly, who get all the petting and all the protection, without even praying for it. Harry and persecute the forlorn and forsaken wretch who is perishing of the plague, and in his terror and despair praying; bite, sting, feed upon his ulcers, dabble your feet in his rotten blood, gum them thick with plague-germs - feet cunningly designed and perfected for this function ages ago in the beginning - carry this freight to a hundred tables, among the just and the unjust. the high and the low, and walk over the food and gaum it with filth and death. Visit all; allow no man peace till he get it in the grave; visit and afflict the hard-worked and unoffending horse, mule, ox, ass, pester the patient cow, and all the kindly animals that labor without fair reward here and perish without hope of it hereafter; spare no creature, wild or tame; but wheresoever you find one, make his life a misery, treat him as the innocent deserve; and so please Me and increase My glory. Who made the fly.
We hear much about His patience and forbearance and long-suffering; we hear nothing about our own, which much exceeds it. We hear much about His mercy and kindness and goodness - in words - the words of His Book and of His pulpit - and the meek multitude is content with this evidence, such as it is, seeking no further; but whoso searcheth after a concreted sample of it will in time acquire fatigue. There being no instances of it. For what are gilded as mercies are not in any recorded case more than mere common justices, and due - due without thanks or compliment. To rescue without personal risk a cripple from a burning house is not a mercy, it is a mere commonplace duty; anybody would do it that could. And not by proxy, either - delegating the work but confiscating the credit for it. If men neglected "God's poor" and "God's stricken and helpless ones" as He does, what would become of them? The answer is to be found in those dark lands where man follows His example and turns his indifferent back upon them: they get no help at all; they cry, and plead and pray in vain, they linger and suffer, and miserably die. If you will look at the matter rationally and without prejudice, the proper place to hunt for the facts of His mercy, is not where man does the mercies and He collects the praise, but in those regions where He has the field to Himself.
It is plain that there is one moral law for heaven and another for earth. The pulpit assures us that wherever we see suffering and sorrow which we can relieve and do not do it, we sin, heavily. There was never yet a case of suffering or sorrow which God could not relieve. Does He sin, then? If He is the Source of Morals He does - certainly nothing can be plainer than that, you will admit. Surely the Source of law cannot violate law and stand unsmirched; surely the judge upon the bench cannot forbid crime and then revel in it himself unreproached. Nevertheless we have this curious spectacle: daily the trained parrot in the pulpit gravely delivers himself of these ironies, which he has acquired at second-hand and adopted without examination, to a trained congregation which accepts them without examination, and neither the speaker nor the hearer laughs at himself. It does seem as if we ought to be humble when we are at a bench-show, and not put on airs of intellectual superiority there.
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