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Bank of Wisdom, Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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The following debate was held at The Linwood Forum of Kansas
City, Mo. -- in Dr. Jenkins' Linwood Boulevard Christian Church --
on Sunday evening, April 13, 1930. Rev. Burris A. Jenkins argued
the affirmative and E. Haldeman-Julius argued the negative in this
debate, which was stated in the following form: "Resolved, That
Theism Is a Logical Philosophy." We publish herewith a verbatim
report of the debate.
**** ****
IS THEISM A LOGICAL PHILOSOPHY?
Affirmative Argument
By Rev. Burris Jenkins
Ladies and Gentlemen: Permit me first of all to express, or
try to express, my personal gratitude to Mr. E. Haldeman-Julius for
coming up here tonight to debate with me, and incidentally to help
The Linwood Forum out of the hole; and no doubt I may be permitted
in your behalf to express your gratitude to him for this work of
kindliness and charity.
I have debated with a good many brilliant men, here and
elsewhere, such as our good old friend Clarence Darrow, a number of
times, Judge Ben Lindsey, a number, and Harry Elmer Barnes; but I
have never debated with a keener mind, crossed swords with a more
brilliant rapier, than I shall be called upon to do tonight. And I
must confess a great deal of timidity in going up against the power
of this man's mind. There is no discount, too, on his courage. He
maintains his view, whether it is popular or unpopular, whether the
skies stand or whether they fall.
I should like the question to read -- and I think he gives his
consent -- Resolved, that belief in God is a logical philosophy.
Theism is a term that not everybody grasps, but belief in God
everybody does. Of course the subject is a metaphysical one, a
philosophical theme. Somebody has said that a metaphysician is a
blind man groping around in a dark room after a black cat that is
not there. A pretty fair definition of those who try to explore the
ultimate sources of human knowledge and the ultimate basis of human
thinking. And that is exactly what we are undertaking to do here
tonight.
**** ****
Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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IS THEISM A LOGICAL PHILOSOPHY?
A Universal Tendency of Men to Believe in God
One who sets out to prove that there is a God is rather
wasting breath. There is no demonstration, either for or against.
People are incorrigible believers, for the most part, and have been
throughout the course of history, in the existence of a controlling
mind, spirit, something which they personify as God; and perhaps
the very first argument which may be adduced for the probability of
his being lies in this all but universal tendency of the human mind
so to think. Particularly the greatest of human minds from the dawn
of history have been theists, from Plato and Aristotle, easily to
be recognized as perhaps the greatest minds of antiquity, and
beyond whom we have not grown very much, with all of our so-called
evolution and development, on down through the Middle Ages and the
Renaissance, to such men as Leonardo da Vinci, the universally
minded, and Goethe, and Heine, and Shakespeare, clear on to our
present day. It is a rare thing to find in the course of history
one who has declared for a very definite atheism. Perhaps you may
meet a man who calls himself an atheist. But when you come to know
him, his actions speak louder than his words. Clarence Darrow
claims to be an atheist. You all have met him -- at least you have
seen him -- and you know the difference between his philosophy and
the practicality of his life. He holds that this great universe of
ours is nothing but a machine; that it is just a happen-so, nobody
ever started it, no mind ever designed it; that it is a pretty
dangerous and a pretty cruel machine, that it grinds these little
human beings, each one of us, into powder, and that when the
curtain comes down on the end of our careers there is night; that
we go out into everlasting darkness and everlasting sleep; and he
does not think that life is worth living at all. I hold that
pessimism is the logic of atheism, the feeling that life is not
worth while. I do not see how one can very well escape from that
natural result of the premise that there is no controlling over-
soul, or mind. One time when I said to Mr. Darrow, "If you think it
is true we are only happy when we are asleep and don't know
anything, why don't you go to sleep? It is an easy thing, just one
little pull at a trigger," the dear old gentleman said, "I want to
see the curtain go down on the last act." The logic of his
unconscious belief is more powerful than that of his avowed belief.
The interest that my opponent takes in life, the avidity with
which he attacks his work -- he just now told me in my office that
he was having a world of fun out of his business, his life; of
course be is; you can see it shining in his face; and his actions
speak louder than his words -- show that he believes in life. It
seems to me that this thing which we call personality,
contradictory as it is oftentimes, living differently from what it
thinks and believes, this strange, queer thing we call I, Me,
individuality, is the hardest thing for the atheist to get over, to
account for. I do not See how he can reach any philosophy which
will be final without explaining, to a degree at least, the
existence of the Me, the I.
Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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IS THEISM A LOGICAL PHILOSOPHY?
The Argument by Descartes
from Personality
It is the father of modern philosophy who starts with this
proposition as the beginning of his whole system. I refer, of
course, to Descartes. There are those who, of course, would try to
persuade us that we can't be sure of our own existence; that we
can't be sure of anybody else in the world; that all this scheme of
things, the stars, the moon, the rain, these whirling worlds, all
this may be illusion, delusion; that we can't be sure of the
existence of any of them; that we may simply deceive ourselves all
the time.
But Descartes starts out with this proposition: "I think.
Therefore I am." And with that as a basis he builds up his entire
system of philosophy. I think that he stands upon firm ground and
that he starts from a good starting-point. When I realize that I am
an entity, an individual, a personality, I think, there is no
illusion about it, because I am sure. I think. Therefore I must
exist. From that I pass on by graduated steps to the assurance that
my neighbor exists. I meet and compare notes with my friend; I know
that he exists; he gives me his ideas and I give him mine, for what
they are worth. We interchange thoughts; and nothing can convince
me that E. Haldeman-Julius does not live, He is very much alive.
From that we go on by steps building up a system that is
logical and practicable and applicable to human life, which lands
us at theism. As a matter of fact, it is a far easier thing to
account for this universe on a theistic basis than it is on an
atheistic one. I do not envy the man who tries to make some sort of
logical and philosophical scheme which will account for all this
without a great mind, a great soul, a great creative artist back of
it all. It seeing to me there is no escape from the assumption
that, unless there is such an individuality behind our personality
and behind all this great system of whirling worlds, the whole
thing is just chance, just chaos, just a happen-so: that is utterly
inescapable. There is no philosophy that fits it except the
philosophy of a creative mind and a purpose running through. Of our
great scientists of today, most of them are driven by their
researches beyond the limits of human knowledge to the belief that
the origin of it all must be in another Great Scientist who built
it, established its laws, set it going upon its way.
You may call the names of the leading scientists of today and
most of them are theists, believers in God. On the other side of
the water there are Sir Oliver Lodge and J.B.S. Haldane; on this
side of the water, Michael Pupin, Robert Millikan, men of that
stamp, experts in their field of scientific investigation. I know
that Mr. Harry Elmer Barnes, in his The Twilight of Christianity,
insists that these men all have compartmental minds, that they are
all right enough in their own compartments of astronomy, or
physics, but that they have no right at all to speculate as to
ultimate things of philosophy, metaphysics. Mr. Barnes insists that
he has that right because his science is anthropology and
sociology, and that he can speculate as to all this, but all these
other gentlemen are not sufficiently informed. And so he says there
is a twilight.
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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IS THEISM A LOGICAL PHILOSOPHY?
Well, there are compartments and compartments; and these
gentlemen, having demonstrated their ability in scientific realms,
are surely justified in using the same brain power in speculating
in metaphysical realms as well; and when we bear in mind that the
greatest of the human intellects from the beginning clear down to
the present time, so far as their thoughts are recorded, are driven
to the conclusion that there must be a creative power back of it
all and an increasing purpose running through it all, when we
realize this fact, then we begin to appreciate that, unless the
whole of the human race, with its past experience, is utterly
illogical, then belief in God must be a logical position.
The Pragmatic Working of the
Theistic Belief
It is not very long since there was current in America a
system of philosophy called pragmatism. It was in very great vogue
about thirty years ago, and it left a great impress upon our
thinking. One of the great progenitors of that vogue was William
James, the psychologist. Surely be has a right to think in this
realm of metaphysics, because he is a scientist of a psychological
turn, as Mr. Barnes is. Then it was carried on by Professor George
Burman Foster of the University of Chicago, very able in
philosophy. Pragmatism was this: that is true which functions
serviceably for humanity; that proposition is likely to be correct
which works well in human life.
Now, I recognize the limitations of that philosophy. I know
that it has been tried through a generation and has not been
established as infallible and absolutely true in all particulars.
Nevertheless, there is a modicum of truth in it, that that thing is
likely to be true which works well in human life. If it functions
serviceably for humanity, then the inference is that more than
likely it is in harmony with the logic of affairs and of events.
Now, the theistic philosophy is the only thing that has worked
in human society at all. There never has been any other philosophy
tried out among men, either in a small way or in a large way, in
social construction, except the theistic belief. Well, you say,
there is an experiment going on right now over in Russia, in
establishing an atheistic society. Once again, the actions of the
Russians speak louder than their words, over and over. We all know
of a Lenin cult. They are not very far from worshiping as their
Messiah the founder of their republic, the Soviet Union, Lenin. And
he is well worth believing in, for he was a very great and fearless
man. But Russia, better than almost anybody else, is showing up the
impossibility of the human mind resting in atheism. In Russia today
there is an enthusiasm for the social program, for the communistic
regime, that is nothing less than a worship, a devotion to the
cause, that is profoundly theistic in its very spirit, a
sacrificial devotion that amounts to worship.
Now, we see men acting as if they were theists, even while
with their lives they express agnosticism and occasionally atheism;
not often atheism, but usually agnosticism. My young son, fifteen
years old, came home from high school one day -- he was then a
sophomore -- and said, "I have got through with all this old stuff,
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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IS THEISM A LOGICAL PHILOSOPHY?
I am an atheist." I didn't say anything then. Days passed on and
weeks; when a favorable opportunity came and we were having a good
chin-chin, I talked things all out with him. He said, "Maybe I am
not an atheist after all. Maybe I am an agnostic." I said, "That
indicates that you are growing, that you don't think you know it
all. I thought you thought you knew it all; but if you have reached
a position where you are doubtful about things, or you have reached
a position where you call yourself an agnostic -- an honorable term
-- you are growing." He has got over being a sophomore, and still
he is an agnostic.
I see in people who claim agnosticism a great many who would
like to see if there is any purpose behind the world, if life is
going anywhere; and yet they all act all the time as though there
were a purpose, as though law does reign and not chaos, as though
something can be done to affect the machine for the good of the
human being; so they set to work very vigorously and determinedly
to make the machine work for their benefit.
Faith in a God Through Nature
I often travel out in the country in an automobile and I have
seen some of the days of this springtime when the world is white
with April, if not with May, and I have seen the works of the
farming people. They act as if they believe in the procession of
the equinoxes, in the return of spring, of summer, of harvest and
fruitage. They go on that basis. They consider that there is logic
in the events of the world in which they are a part. They may not
be able to explain it; don't stop to think, perhaps, that there is
a lawgiver behind the law; but they act just as if they thought the
law was working just the same. How do I know? Because I see it.
They make careful preparation. There I see the hillside dotted with
white leghorns like great flower petals; I see the fuzzy balls as
big as my hand, chasing around on toothpicks after their fussy old
mothers, the hens; and I think maybe I can get an invitation later
down to Girard or in that neighborhood. And then I see little
calves, fresh born -- I saw one lying one day under a hedge-row; it
must have been born that morning, its sides still wet and the old
mother standing licking them; I see little mule colts, even out in
Kansas I see queer and wobbly mule colts, with bodies about as big
as a hobby-horse, and ears and legs as long as they will ever get
to be. Now, how do those things all come about? Just a happen-so?
I see the corn come up, as big as my hand, and the wheat in head
and the oats ready to cut, along early in June, Those farmers,
because they have believed that the harvest was coming, that they
could get something out of their fields, have prepared this land
for the resurgence of fresh, new life in the spring. They are
putting their trust in the creative power that is back of it all.
Then I see men and women bearing life when it is scarcely to
be borne. In the midst of weariness, pain, suffering,
disillusionment, and lives wrecked and broken, I see them pulling
their belts tighter and saying, "It is going to be better tomorrow.
I will be better tomorrow. Things are going to be better with me
after a little while." And they thrust out their jaws and clench
their teeth and go ahead. I take off my hat to the courage of
humanity that can endure so bravely and so well. They act as if
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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IS THEISM A LOGICAL PHILOSOPHY?
they believe that there is an order in it all; that it is not a
machine grinding us to powder, wrecking and destroying our poor,
little lives; that nature is something else than red in tooth and
claw; they anticipate something better to come tomorrow, and
tomorrow.
Last night I saw Otis Skinner playing the part of a one-
hundred-year-old man, and the most beautiful part in the play is
when he sits and looks out musingly and says, "I have lived here so
long because I liked it. Ahead of me was a little light burning. I
looked forward to this day when my children and my grandchildren
and my great-grandchildren would be coming to celebrate my one-
hundredth birthday." And then he says, "As this light has come, I
look forward to another light, dimmer and farther off, that will
keep me." He adds, "I want to see my great great grandchildren!"
Here it is, human life looking forward, always something tomorrow,
and tomorrow, and tomorrow, and it is going to be better and
better. We believe in life, even when we think we do not. We
believe in its logicality, in the reign of laws; we believe in its
purpose, that it is going somewhere and getting somewhere.
We would not be able to lie down and sleep at night if we did
not believe that there were an over-arching power, something I
cannot define. I don't know what you call it. Call it the Over-
soul, with Emerson, if you like; call it Father, as Jesus called
it, and as most other nations and religions have called it; call it
what you please, we could not sleep if we did not have an
unconscious dependence upon that power. Suppose you did not believe
that the sun would rise tomorrow morning; or suppose that you had
grave doubts of it, or agreed that the probabilities were against
its coming up tomorrow, or that there would be any tomorrow. You
could not sleep any more than a man that was going to face the
electric chair at seven o'clock in the morning; you would pace up
and down your bedroom all night long, unable to rest. If you didn't
believe that some-how some power would bring the sun back again
over the eastern horizon -- I know that is not scientific; no, that
the world would turn during the night toward the sun over on the
east -- you could not sleep.
The Comfort of Belief in a God
Then all this life of beauty and cleanliness which is embedded
in us. Now, in this springtime we are all getting out our paint
brushes and whitewash brushes and whitening up the fences -- not in
the city, but in the country. If we have a back yard, we are
cleaning it up; if we don't, the Boy Scouts will come tumbling over
the back fence and remind us of it. It is the duty of a citizen to
clean up, make his place just as beautiful and ornamental as he
can. A chap said to me one time, "When I get way down I have only
two things to do, get drunk or put on dress clothes." I knew that
the first was all talk. He had never been drunk -- he may have been
just a little "lit-up" but he had never been drunk, I know. He was
talking with respect to the old Greek gods; it was either Bacchus
on the one hand or Apollo on the other with him. In 1917, working
with the British army, to my astonishment I found out that there
was a regulation that every Tommie had to shave every morning, no
matter whether he had water to shave in or only mud; whether in the
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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IS THEISM A LOGICAL PHILOSOPHY?
barracks or in the trenches, he had to scrape his face, and they
came out rosy and fresh, even in the trench period. Better
orderliness, cleanliness. Water has an effect upon our lives.
Pragmatic philosophy, undoubtedly; works serviceably for humanity.
People think there is something back of it all, a great artist,
creating beauty and art.
If we didn't believe that there was a great power directing
eternal destiny, how should we even be able to stand by the side of
those we love better than ourselves and see them slipping through
our fingers, out into the unknown? Or how should we ever be able to
recover after such a loss? Have you been through it? Something more
precious than your own life ebbing away, and you clutch at it and
try to hold it back, and you can't. And then you see the green door
of the earth swinging over it and you say "Good-bye." How can you
go on living, how is it possible to go on living? Why don't we
destroy ourselves when losses like that come unless deep down in
our life somewhere we have the consciousness that "it is not all of
life to live nor all of death to die"; that back of it is
beneficence, kindliness; that there is more of good than evil; that
the problem of good is just as great as the problem of evil for us
to solve. In our philosophy, consciously or unconsciously, that is
what we believe, and we act as if we believed it, no matter what
our words.
And so the purpose of all human thinking and all human
knowledge is, I think, to bring the human mind at rest somewhere.
I don't think the human mind can rest in an unexplained universe.
The purpose of all life is to find equilibrium, rest. The
psychologists now, in their most modern researches, are teaching us
that this is the end and aim of existence: consciously or
unconsciously to find rest, peace, confidence. Down in the lower
strata of our nature sometimes we manifest very, very queer urges,
such as the desire to go clear back to our mother's breast to rest
again. And the psychologist tells that we go farther than that,
that we yearn for the rest of the mother's womb, the prenatal rest,
for the warmth and the repose and the unconsciousness that preceded
birth.
Those are results of recent scientific investigation. And if
that is true, then all of human kind, with all of its thinking, is
seeking to find rest, equilibrium, calm. And I defy anybody to find
rest in an unexplained and inexplicable universe. Now, maybe Mr.
Haldeman-Julius can do it. Let us see.
**** ****
Negative Argument
By E. Haldeman-Julius
I agree that an explanation of the universe is necessary for
the satisfaction of the mind. But different minds demand different
explanations. The realistic-minded individual seeks for proofs, for
scientific tests, for reasonable conclusions, for merciless
examination of all assumptions. He is willing to suspend judgment
in those domains where he still lacks complete knowledge.
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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IS THEISM A LOGICAL PHILOSOPHY?
On the other hand, we find the so-called "spiritual"-minded
individual who believes because he has been taught to accept
certain notions about God, because he has grown accustomed to
relying on his emotions for opinions instead of the full use of his
rational faculties. Such tender-minded, non-realistic individuals
usually seek out those domains of knowledge that are still
unexplored and place their God in that environment of mystery and
darkness.
Only a few centuries ago man knew little of the world in which
he lived, so it was his habit to have his God right around the
corner. As knowledge grew, God was sent farther and farther into
space. Now it seems, with God driven from pillar to post until a
new hiding place is desperately required, a few believers have
resorted to invisible electrons. They have tucked their God away --
temporarily -- in that still uncharted world. But it is safe to
predict that in another generation or two man will understand the
electrons, and perhaps the ether beyond the electrons, and these
will also show the operation of natural, mechanical processes that
do not admit any agency outside and above matter. It is typical of
the theological mind to claim as its sphere the outermost, receding
points of darkness and ignorance. As knowledge grows, such centers
of theism disappear.
Does Chance, Mechanism or
Naturalism Offer an
Explanation?
There is strong authority for the idea that man, like the
lower animals, is a mechanism -- a machine -- and that the whole
universe is mechanical. The philosophy of materialism has not been
discredited. Dr. Jenkins brings in Descartes' argument for God.
Does he not know that Descartes' reasoning included the idea that
all animals were machines, except man? Descartes was really the
first of the modern mechanists, though in a jumbled, incoherent
way. He separated man from the animals because he did not have the
benefit of Darwin's myth-destroying discoveries in biology. Darwin
laid the foundation for the truth of evolution, for the
comparatively simple conclusion that man is nothing more than a
distant cousin of the apes.
Descartes also suggested that the mind is "spiritual" and the
body material, and that God had decreed neither should be
influenced by the other -- that they were separate entities. In
this he lacked the knowledge given us later by psychologists, who
have shown that mind is merely the function of the brain and that
the brain is a material substance. One might as well argue that
digestion is a separate reality, when the fact is that physiology
corrects us so simply and shows that digestion is merely the
stomach in action, a purely materialistic, physical function.
To hold that this non-material substance (as Descartes
described the brain) comes from God, and that this substance's
picture of a God must be based on a reality, is to utter the
sheerest fancy of formless words. There must first be evidence that
the brain is not a material thing.
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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IS THEISM A LOGICAL PHILOSOPHY?
Yes, chance, mechanism, naturalism, materialism do offer
interesting grounds for the belief that there is nothing in matter
that is above matter, that what we call power or force is the
result of matter in motion -- that and nothing more -- and the
further belief that the materials of our limitless, immeasurable
universe perhaps always existed.
It seems more reasonable to picture something like ether
always having been instead of imagining its creation out of nothing
by something outside nature and matter. That this is still a
mystery I do not deny. But I do insist that it is not solved by the
theistic assumption that matter was created at the word or the will
of a God or Gods. Such a belief implies a First Cause, which is a
logical absurdity. For this notion has it that everything is the
effect of some cause, that a cause is the effect of some other
cause and that nature works back from effect to cause and from
cause to effect until it rests upon a Prime Mover, a First Cause --
which, according to this peculiar logic, assumes that there can be
a cause that was not caused, and that that First Cause was God.
This brings up the logical question: Who made God? If everything
must have a cause, then the First Cause must be caused. To say that
this First Cause always existed is to deny the basic assumption of
the theory and to provoke the rejoinder that if it is reasonable to
assume a First Cause as having always existed, why is it
unreasonable to assume that the materials of the universe always
existed?
In passing, I want to add the thought that there is no basis
in science for the notion that causes and effects can be traced
backward to a simple First Cause. Each thing that seems to be an
effect cannot be said to have a single cause, but the causes and
the effects are so interrelated as to be beyond anyone's power to
separate them. For example, let me stand in the center of a room
and hear a telephone bell. I walk over, pick up the receiver, and
say "Hello." What was the cause of that act? Was it the fact that
I had ear drums, that I bad legs to carry me to that telephone,
that I had fingers to pick up the receiver, that I had an apparatus
for speaking that enabled me to say "Hello," that someone put the
telephone there, that someone invented it, that someone rang the
bell, that someone told someone to ring the bell? You see the
complications. If we can't get at the immediate cause of my
answering the telephone, how can we search back to a First Cause?
The whole thing is an illogical fancy and has been rejected by
thinkers for five hundred years. Even some theologians frequently
annihilate this argument before presenting their own equally
vulnerable arguments. The idea of the First Cause came originally
from Aristotle and then through the Catholic Church, which found it
necessary to buttress its faith with something akin to logic; this
argument had the appearance of logic -- but on examination that
poor semblance faded. My point is: We can conceive of an endless,
eternal cycle of causes, but we cannot conceive of a First Cause.
Just how the stuff of the universe came into existence, if it
ever "Came," I do not know. But that lack of knowledge should not
be considered a good reason for imaginative flights, for baseless
assumptions. We all recognize the factor of chance in many things.
We are familiar with games of chance. Bertrand Russell tells in one
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IS THEISM A LOGICAL PHILOSOPHY?
of his lectures that double sixes in dice will come once in about
thirty-six throws. That is a law of chance. When a thing acts
mechanically, when it always does the same thing in nature, we have
a different problem. If the forces of nature, acting through their
material properties, always behave in a certain way, we are seeing
a machine at work. If it were to be eccentric, or changeable, or
whimsical -- then we could say, perhaps, that some mind had shown
itself at work in nature.
Are the Difficulties of Atheism
Insuperable?
An atheist is one who rejects the assumptions of theism. The
atheist says he has good reasons for rejecting theism. It is an
explanation, so called, that does not satisfy his mind. He finds
that the difficulties of theism are insuperable. He analyzes the
First Cause argument, the argument for God from Design, from
Purpose, from Law implying a Lawgiver, the argument from Justice
and Moral Reasons. He finds them, each and all, a tissue of
assumptions and inconsistencies. He rejects them on the score of
logic and reason.
It is for theism to bring out its proofs for a God, not for
the atheist to prove that there is no God. If the theist has no
valid arguments, the atheist rests his case. To illustrate this:
Some man says that the earth is a hollow sphere and that at its
heart is a strange world, which he may fantastically describe. I
say that there are conclusive evidences in science that the center
of the earth is solid. He then says: "Prove to me that the earth's
center is not hollow and inhabited." And there you are. Proof --
disproof -- is a question of reason and evidence.
Dr. Jenkins is an evolutionary creationist, as I understand
his argument. He believes with Descartes that God gave the universe
a push and set it in motion, leaving it to finish itself and go
eternally on its way. That, I claim, is a bold assumption. There is
no evidence for that position. But you say: "Who made the world?"
I answer: Prove your statement that the world was "made." Doubtless
you will say: "Ah, it stands to reason -- it had to be made." But
that is an assumption. Science does not know the meaning of the
word "made." We know of things being fabricated, but not "made."
And to trace the universe back, with a thin wavering line of
rhetoric, to a First Cause is to evade the question.
If you believe in Creation, then you must believe the Creator
was created, and then you get something out of nothing. And if you
are going to prove that -- to attempt that amazing proof -- then
you are going to have a pretty hard job.
How Man's Knowledge
Is Growing
All that philosophy implies is that we seek an explanation.
But I agree that an explanation is possible and that it is likely
to come. It is only on this point that I disagree with the
agnostics who dogmatically say that the mystery of life is
unsolvable. I do not accept this theory. Knowledge is growing every
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IS THEISM A LOGICAL PHILOSOPHY?
day. Man conquers new domains each decade. Who is to say there is
a limit short of complete knowledge? Judging by the advances man
has made as a seeker after facts, it seems logical to conclude that
the day will come when man will be able to explain every act of
nature. And judging by the trend of his achievements thus far, it
is safe to say that supernaturalism or theism will not enter at any
point of the survey. It may be hundreds of years before the
explanation of science is complete; I am not trying to set any
date. But remember that man as a thinking animal is a recent
phenomenon. He has been using his head logically for only about
2,500 or 3,000 years. Science itself is less than 2,500 years old,
and out of that time you must discount the Dark Ages, a thousand
years of intellectual stagnation.
I am an optimist. I believe that man will never again
surrender to the forces of obscurantism. And this moving history of
man -- his cultural, scientific and economic history -- proves one
thing with bold significance: as man grows in intelligence, as he
learns to think for himself, as he grasps newer and greater secrets
from nature, his primitive fears disappear, his faith in
supernaturalism declines, his belief in Gods dies down. There is
more intelligence today than ever before in man's entire history.
There is also less of God in man's mind. The lesson is a simple
one. The growth of intelligence means the growth of skepticism.
It has been a slow evolution, but it has been a fairly steady
one. The process is being accelerated today. Man's mind is
achieving a quicker pace. Man's intellectual progress is a certain
abandonment of myths about God and supernaturalism. In the
evolution of mind I see the growth of skepticism; away from theism
to a mild form of deism; away from deism to agnosticism; and now I
see still greater progress -- the abandonment of all beliefs in
supernaturalism. And if you will make an honest survey of history,
you will be struck by the consistent fact that most of the world's
progress can be traced to those individuals who were brave enough
to defy conventional-minded religionists. The houses of God have
never been hospitable to progress. They have always been centers of
obscurantism, superstition and reaction.
The Starting Point of Descartes --
"Personality." Does the Logic
of Personality Lead to Theism?
It is interesting to note that the history of the church shows
that it has contributed little to theistic thinking. It has been
the source of no arguments for theism, so far as I know. The
Catholic Church had to go back to Aristotle, Plato and Socrates for
its arguments in support of the God idea. Other arguments had to be
taken from lay philosophers, like Lord Bacon, Descartes, Spinoza,
Kant. Each, particularly Kant, played havoc with the theistic ideas
of other philosophers, including the Church's school-men. I merely
throw out this suggestion to emphasize the thought that the church
has always been too active as a business enterprise to give much
thought to the validity of its beliefs.
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IS THEISM A LOGICAL PHILOSOPHY?
The theistic philosophers have shown themselves to be wrong --
each succeeding philosopher disputing the arguments of those who
went before, until we reach Kant, who killed off all their
arguments, then became frightened at his temerity and forthwith
invented an entirely new argument known as the Moral Law. If you
want to become an atheist, read Kant thoroughly, and you will get
rid of ninety percent of your theism; then read philosophers who
came after Kant, and you will get rid of the other ten percent. Of
course, this argument of Descartes' could not escape Kant's
philosophical axe. He struck off its head neatly in his Critique of
Pure Reason. Descartes' "ontological" proof never had any standing.
As I understand him, existence is something that is perfection in
itself, from which it must follow that God, being something
completely perfect, must be a reality.
Descartes' argument is best answered by stating it -- for its
absurdity is obvious. "I think, therefore I am," said Descartes.
Thus it followed, in his reasoning, that as he thought of a God,
therefore a God must exist. That can only mean one thing: that
belief in an idea makes it true -- that an idea doesn't have to be
proved, but all one needs is to have the concept. Of course, that
is just as good a proof for atheism as it is for theism. It is just
as good a proof for a personal God as for an abstract modernistic
God. It is just as good a proof for a personal Devil, with horns,
as for a personal God. And plainly, in the light of common sense,
it isn't the shadow of a proof for anything.
Are all ideas that men have devoutly held, all notions in
which men have believed and which men have even died for, therefore
true? Surely not. What Descartes actually said, shorn of all its
involved philosophical lingo, was this: "Whatever I think is true."
Imagine it! What I think is true. What Dr. Jenkins thinks is true.
What Mrs. Eddy thought was true. What John Wesley, who believed in
witchcraft, thought was true. What everybody thinks is true --
which means that truth is equivalent to the sum of all absurdities.
I am sure that Dr. Jenkins does not believe in a hell; but,
according to Descartes' logic, Dante's hell -- a vision as vivid as
anyone ever had -- must be a reality. Dr. Jenkins doesn't believe
this -- he can't really believe in this antiquated reasoning of
Descartes -- no thinking man could believe it. Its only use, and
what a Poor use it is, can be as a mere confusing trick of
rhetoric. It is very sick logic, deformed logic, the sheer denial
of logic.
Furthermore, this principle of Descartes plainly begs the
question of the nature of ideas. it ignores the source of ideas in
analogies from the world around us; the idea of perfection, for
example, being, when all is said, merely a notion of something
indefinitely and vaguely better than what we have. What is a
perfect being? What is meant by a perfect life? What is meant by
the idea of perfection? It is an idea which cannot possibly be
stated in final, concrete, realizable terms. Some ideas are direct
reflections of things visibly before us. They are ideas that can be
tested. They are ideas that will work. Other ideas are indirect.
Some ideas are so remote and vague that they can scarcely be called
ideas and the God idea is a classic example of such remoteness.
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IS THEISM A LOGICAL PHILOSOPHY?
Many ideas are so tangled up with analogies, far-fetched
inferences, repetitions and assumptions that to speak of them as
clear (even though they may be stated in an orderly form of words)
is to violate the meaning of language.
Even on the basis of Descartes' own argument, is it
conceivable that he had a picture or a consciousness or an idea of
a God that was even dimly comparable to the picture or
consciousness or idea that he had of himself? Obviously not. His
idea of God was an abstraction or it was a mere personal simile --
a God greater than a man, a God-mind greater than the human mind,
and so on. To prove God's existence by his own -- in presuming to
attempt that, Descartes shows the pit-fall which philosophy spreads
for those who think in words and not in real images. If Descartes
had any picture of a God in his mind, it was probably the picture
of a being who had all the virtues and none of the defects of
Descartes himself -- a bigger and better Descartes.
The Universality of Theism?
The Belief of Great Minds?
Modern Science and Theism
It is not long since theists argued that belief in a God was
universal. They now say, "All but universal," because it has been
found that numerous tribes of primitive men do not believe in a
God, that such a belief comes much later in the scale. But this
knowledge given to us by the ethnologists did not succeed in
killing off the argument in its entirety; it still lingers.
But let me, for the sake of Dr. Jenkins' argument, grant that
belief in theism is universal. Is this to be accepted as a valid
argument in favor of the existence of a God? I think not. The
theists add that while error may be local and occasional, universal
agreement is something altogether different; it is man in the mass
using reason to discover some great truth, in this case the truth
of the existence of a God. This argument, used in this late day,
shows the poverty of intellect to be found among our theistic
apologists. It is unworthy of serious consideration, except to
remark that until man reaches a pretty far stage in history he is
almost certain to be universally wrong on most subjects of an
intellectual nature. According to this argument, we should have to
believe today that the sun swings around the earth and that the
earth is flat, for those were universal beliefs for thousands of
years. Religion might take some comfort from this argument if the
intelligence of the world today supported its position. But the
opposite is the fact. Religion is dead at the top; it is dying
rapidly at the bottom. The intelligence of the world is
relentlessly -- and cheerfully -- deserting the God idea.
Dr. Jenkins argues that most great minds in history have
embraced theism. This is not stating the case quite accurately. The
history of man's intellect shows that with the development of
reason and the spread of knowledge, he grows more skeptical; he
works closer and closer to atheistic conclusions. Knowledge
develops; it does not come with the climax of a Creator making a
universe. Historical perspective is essential to grasp the picture.
Great minds were convinced, even before modern science had
discovered such a growing case for atheism, that the God idea was
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IS THEISM A LOGICAL PHILOSOPHY?
false. Almost without exception, the great minds have certainly
rejected all the ideas which have been derived by religion from the
idea of God. The great minds, again almost without exception, have
denied the validity of the popular reasons and even of the best
philosophical reasons for belief in a God. Great minds, let me add,
have helped to build, from age to age, the knowledge which in a
logical, steady, inexorable evolution of thought leads to atheism.
But Dr. Jenkins says that modern science is moving rather
strongly in the direction of theism. This is not true, according to
the figures quoted by Professor J.H. Leuba, in his study entitled
Belief in God and Immortality, a most useful and important work.
First Professor Leuba went to one thousand students with questions
regarding their belief in a God and in immortality. He then put his
questions to professors. Among one thousand students, Professor
Leuba found eighty-two percent of the girl students and fifty-six
percent of the boy students believing in a God; and among the
professors he found only thirteen percent of the leading
psychologists who would admit belief in a God. Education does not
help theism.
But let us examine Leuba's figures more closely. Taking the
greater scientists (more than a thousand in number), Leuba found
the following believers in a God: physicists, 34 percent;
historians, 32 percent; sociologists, 19 percent; biologists, 16
percent; and psychologists, 13 percent.
You will notice that our theists, in seeking support for their
position among the scientists, usually draw on physicists like
Millikan and Eddington. These men are not competent to render a
conclusion with the same authority as a biologist or a
psychologist. Theistic questions do not enter their sphere. At
certain points, these questions do concern the psychologists. When
the theist argues that man has a religious instinct, psychologists
recognize that this argument is to be tested in their field of
research. As students of the emotions and instincts, they seek for
this "instinct" which theists attribute to man. But they cannot
find it. And it is among these psychologists that we find only
thirteen percent who accept theism. So that argument fails.
Where Is "the Finger of God"?
Biologists, who study the origin and processes of life, are
about as skeptical as the psychologists. They cannot find "the
finger of God" in the evolution of life. In these two fields of
science which bear most directly upon theism, we find belief in a
God is not considered a satisfactory explanation. As Leuba's
questionnaire was sent out fourteen years ago, it is safe to say
that the percent-age has fallen still lower, even though physicists
like Millikan and Eddington pay peculiar and illogical homage to
the theistic element. They take a religion that is without
supernaturalism and a science that they limit by denying scientists
the right to encroach on what they claim should be the proper
domain of the theologian; by twisting science and emasculating
religion they affect an unreal armistice. But the war goes on just
the same, and science goes ahead each day to new victories, while
religion falls before new defeats. It is my opinion that the
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psychologist, by virtue of his special science, is more qualified
to discuss problems of theism, because some of the arguments of the
theists encroach upon his science. For example, Dr. Jenkins made
use of Descartes' exploded argument that starts with thought ("I
think, therefore I exist") and leaps to the weird conclusion that
because a person thinks of a God it must follow that God exists.
This notion was promulgated in the first half of the seventeenth
century, before there was such a thing as the science of
psychology. Psychology had to meet this so-called argument, and
that it dismissed it curtly is to the credit of the psychologists,
for they, along with the philosophers, showed that it is quite
common for us to have ideas that do not correspond, save by false
analogy, to real objects -- centaurs, for example. My mind can
picture the idea of a being half man and half horse, but no
psychologist would accept that as proof of the existence of a
centaur.
Since theism touches psychology at so many points, it follows
that the observations of the important psychologists are more
worthy of respect than arguments emanating from physicists whose
training is limited exclusively to the study of matter. These few
physicists who speak favorably of theism are -- in that respect --
eccentric. It is to be noted, furthermore, that these physicists do
not offer any proof of theism and that their laboratory methods,
which have resulted in such important knowledge of material things,
have not produced the slightest evidence for a God. At the most,
even a Millikan or an Eddington has only said that there is a good
deal of the mystery of life which is yet unsolved. No intelligent
man denies this. It is indeed a statement of the obvious. And when
they talk about theism, about a God, Eddington and Millikan are
only guessing. They are deserting the scientific method and taking
refuge, at this outermost point, in mysticism.
Let me say this: the opinion of a scientist in favor of theism
is worth nothing unless that scientist can offer scientific
evidence in support of theism. Does Eddington offer any evidence of
physics that there is a God? He does not. To the farthest point
that science has reached, the case for atheism is strong -- it is
the only satisfactory, sound explanation -- and the case for theism
is very, very feeble. On the whole, the world of scientific thought
is atheistic. The few whimsical scientists who use theistic
language are seen plainly to be forgetting their character as
scientists and behaving in a temper of quite common fallacy. When
Eddington speaks of definite things in physics, for example, we
follow him respectfully. He is talking about his special subject.
He is offering facts, not fancies. But when he says that the inner
conviction that a God exists is a proof of the reality of God --
then be is clumsily stepping into the domain of the psychologists,
and I assure you that there isn't a first-rate psychologist who
doesn't smile at this unoriginal and unscientific argument of
Eddington.
Theism Collapses with Theology
In shirking the details of theism, Dr. Jenkins illustrates the
necessity of vagueness in defending God. I grant that the idea of
theism does not mean the doctrines of Christianity, nor revelation,
nor heaven and hell -- and all that rigmarole. However, theism is
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IS THEISM A LOGICAL PHILOSOPHY?
the essential basis of all these superstitions; and without the
belief in God, these superstitions could not exist. That is why it
is important to show that the idea of God is quite as baseless,
quite as superstitious in its essence, as any of the outmoded
concepts of theology which Dr. Jenkins agrees to discard.
It must be noted, however, as a curious and relevant
circumstance, that Dr. Jenkins believes certainly in the existence
of a being or a power of which he knows nothing certainly whatever.
He waives details -- which means, after all, that he waives
knowledge of God. Is God the reality -- the great and necessary and
unshakable reality -- that Dr. Jenkins contends? Then surely a
great deal should be known about God. The reality should have some
features upon which men, who have claimed all these centuries to
study God and his attributes, could reasonably and clearly agree.
But no -- Dr. Jenkins knows there is a God, but he is singularly
lacking in knowledge of this God. His knowledge is, we perceive,
only a form of words.
I am not asking Dr. Jenkins to give me a complete description
of God, but I think he should have something really definite and
demonstrable in the way of knowledge about his God. If he replies
that we see God in nature, I say that he is only calling nature by
another name; he is using as proof of his theistic assumption that
very assumption itself, alone and unsupported. No -- all of the
fancy names men have for God are merely the names of forces or
principles or realities which we recognize apart from the idea of
God. They don't reveal God. God doesn't explain them. The moment a
theologian tries to be definite about God, we find that he is
simply fastening the name of God upon something else -- upon
nature, upon life, upon the universe, upon the electron.
There is -- I make this statement carefully -- no such thing
as a clear, independent idea of God. It is all reflection and
analogy, it is all a super-fluity and mixture of terms, and its
only result is confusion. Details? Oh, certainly, Dr. Jenkins is
discreet in avoiding them. His God is an insubstantial mirage of
"the infinites and the indefinites." It is a fact, again, that
theism does not stand and never has stood as a solitary idea. It is
the basis of innumerable dogmas and superstitions. It is the idea
which has assuredly led men into the most fantastic tricks of
thought and belief. It is the idea which has been most sadly and
violently at war with the civilized effort to understand reality
and to find light and progress in the world.
Theism, says Dr. Jenkins, is not to be confused with theology.
But all that this means is that the theological idea of God does
not necessarily include all other theological ideas. After all,
theology is the deliberate and very ambitious effort to understand
God. To speak of God, in the tone of serious belief, is to speak
theologically -- only Dr. Jenkins, as a theologian, doesn't go as
far as some others. His theology is less in quantity -- and it is
just as vague, or rather it is more vague and fully as
unreasonable. I ought to point out, too, that the arguments which
Dr. Jenkins advances in behalf of theism are the identical
arguments which theologians have advanced (after borrowing them
from the philosophers); that they are arguments which come
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IS THEISM A LOGICAL PHILOSOPHY?
familiarly and quite as unconvincingly from the lips of men who
believe in inspiration, revelation, immortality and all those
details which Dr. Jenkins judiciously sets aside as unpromising.
Theology depends upon theism. If theism is an unsupported theory,
theology collapses. The two must share the same fate.
The Fallacious Argument of
"Law and a Lawgiver"
We now come to the theistic argument that where there is law
there must be a lawmaker. We are told that the orderly, regular
movements of the planetary system, for instance, prove "natural
laws," and the conclusion is asserted that these natural laws imply
the existence of a lawgiver. One could not expect to go through a
discussion of theism without meeting this fallacious and untenable
piece of reasoning. It has been dismissed as unsound by competent
thinkers, but the argument persists,
The fundamental error is found in the theist's habit of
confusing a human law with a natural "law." A legislature passes a
law saying that after a certain date it shall be illegal to behave
in a certain way, to have liquor, for instance. If you break this
law, and are not caught, nothing happens except the usual next
morning headache. If you are caught, you may be sent to the
penitentiary. Or let us say that the people make up their minds to
break the law so flagrantly that enforcement falls down and the law
is either ignored or repealed. That is a human law. That implies a
lawmaker, of course.
But it is treacherous logic to say the "laws" of nature are
the result of the will of a lawmaker. The scientific use of the
word "law" as applied to nature means only this: things in nature
act in certain ways -- their movements are Uniform -- and when you
use the word "law" you merely describe how things are observed to
conduct themselves. This does not mean that someone -- a God --
told them to act just that way. That is an assumption. Bertrand
Russell gives serious consideration to this argument in one of his
lectures, and after disposing of the claim of a lawgiver in nature
along the lines I have just followed, this English philosopher
adds: "Why did God issue just those natural laws and no others? If
you say that he did it simply for his own good pleasure, and
without any reason, you then find that there is something which is
not subject to law, and so your train of natural law is
interrupted. If you say, as more orthodox theologians do, that in
all the laws which God issues he had a reason for giving those laws
rather than others -- the reason, of course, being to create the
best universe, although you would never think it to look at it --
if there was a reason for the laws which God gave, then God himself
was subject to law, and therefore you do not get any advantage by
introducing God as an intermediary. You have really a law outside
and anterior to the divine edicts, and God does not serve your
purpose, because he is not the ultimate lawgiver. In short, this
whole argument about natural law no longer has anything like the
strength that it used to have."
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IS THEISM A LOGICAL PHILOSOPHY?
Joseph McCabe says in one of his books: "The phrase, 'God has
impressed his laws on the universe,' is one of the loosest
conceivable. It is seen to be utterly unintelligible the moment you
remember the unconsciousness of objects; there is not the remotest
conceivable analogy with human legislation, as the argument
implies. In fine, it is clear that if things acted irregularly
there would be more reason to look for explanations. A thing acts
according to its nature, and if its nature be relatively stable
(like an atom). its action is consistent and regular."
There are many other theistic arguments, but all, on
examination, are seen to be mere assumptions, bare sophistry,
adroit evasion of obvious facts, the urging of metaphysical
balderdash in an attempt to refute realistic approaches to life.
The arguments for theism are heated and numerous, but the results
are always the same -- they cannot show us the slightest evidence
for the God idea. They cannot show us the finger of God in any
period of man's history. They cannot show us their God in nature.
They cannot show us that God exists, that there is any power
interested in man or his problems, that there is any method for man
to save himself except through his own efforts, through his own
mental exertions. Man must fight with his own sweat, and blood, and
tears. If he is winning a measure of joyousness and gladness and
laughter out of life, it is because of his faith in his own powers
and not in some mysterious entity beyond the clouds.
**** ****
Rebuttal Argument
By Rev. Burris Jenkins
Mr. Haldeman-Julius draws a distinction between the spiritual
mind and the scientific mind which does not seem to me valid; at
least, in my own thinking it is not valid. It is a very common
assumption that the spiritual has nothing to do with the real, with
facts, with life as it is. That is the constant mistake that the
pietistic world is making. I am surprised that Mr. Haldeman-Julius
should be betrayed into making this distinction, because everything
that has to do with truth, beauty, art, literature, science, is
spiritually minded; and I maintain that he himself is a profoundly
spiritually minded man because he is interested in all the beauties
of the world. And I maintain that I am no less scientific in
thinking if I have a little strain of spirituality in my own being.
He calls me an evolutionary creationist. Maybe that is what I
am, but my idea was that I was a mystic and something of an
agnostic -- pretty much of an agnostic. I have passed the
sophomoric period when I could say things categorically. I don't
know about this. I don't know about that. The mind is open. And I
think that is true of the great mystics down through the ages,
clear to the present time, including Buddha.
It is a mistake to call Buddha an atheist. One who is familiar
with the Buddhist hymns and the Buddhistic philosophy which
characterized the ancient Indian people, and Buddha in particular,
mythical and mystic character as he is, coming out of the great
past, would not call him an atheist. Buddha was a great humanist;
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IS THEISM A LOGICAL PHILOSOPHY?
he loved mankind; and he gave up a palace and a princess wife and
all power to go into the highways and the byways, the dusty roads
of India, to serve suffering humanity. Buddha was actuated in his
humanism by his desire for some sort of contact with the Great
Mystery. I claim some sort of kinship with Buddha. We are mutually
mystic. I think that is true of the great philosophers and
thinkers, religious and otherwise.
I admit that preachers have been awfully busy trying to raise
budgets and build churches and make the mare go; and too often they
have neglected to think. But even in odd moments thoughts have come
out. There have been thoughts among the philosophers of Oxford and
Cambridge; and the best book I know on this subject we have been
debating is from a great theological, philosophical professor in
Oxford, Dr. B.H. Streeter, a book called Reality. The profoundest
thing I know, it gets right down to the roots of this difficult
metaphysical question we have been trying to discuss,
I know that the argument from the first cause is no longer
used. I never used it. I insist I never used the phrase or the idea
throughout what I had to say, and if I implied a creator theory, I
did not intend to do that. I may have spoken of the Creator, but I
spoke of an Artist, the great Over-Us-All, Power, Mind, Spirit,
what you will to call it, that is back of it all. I don't care
whether you say matter was never created or not, or force was never
created or not; that they always existed. Einstein has just knocked
the spots out of the whole question of time and space, and it seems
we didn't know anything about either -- and I am sure I am not one
of the three men in America who understand Einstein. I don't know.
I say I am agnostic as to creation, its time, and all that sort of
thing.
Again, in speaking of Descartes, I don't think Mr. Haldeman-
Julius was quite fair to Descartes. He would lead you to believe
that Descartes said, "I think; therefore I am," and then right off
said, "I think God; therefore God is." There was a long space of
reasoning, careful building of his superstructure, step by step,
stone by stone, from that foundation, "I think; therefore I am,"
convincing him of his own existence, before he finally reached the
highest pinnacle of his philosophy, "I believe in God." You can't
jump just from the bottom to the top and say, "Look how foolish he
was, jumping at conclusions." There was long labor and a life of
thought before Descartes finished his structure.
And Kant I know, with his categorical imperative, his appeal
to the moral law in the universe. He looked at the starry heavens
above and said, "These things fill me with awe, the stars above and
the moral law within." That was his greatest argument, the moral
law in the universe, for logic in its construction, for the
creation of obligation and duty on the part of man.
Mr. Haldeman-Julius draws a distinction also between natural
law and civil law, which I realize is a frequent source of
confusion on the part of many religious thinkers; and I am glad he
drew that distinction, so that we can get it clearly and sharply in
mind. I will elaborate that point a little. Natural law, as I
understand it, is something that man finds out about the
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IS THEISM A LOGICAL PHILOSOPHY?
constitution of the earth and the universe. He studies causes and
effects, the results of certain conditions, and he writes them down
in his laboratory notebook or in his astronomical notebook. When he
finds a thousand or ten thousand times that, given certain
situations, certain results follow, then he writes that down and
calls it a law of nature. I make the bold assertion, and I think it
will hold water, that moral law is discovered in the same way. It
simply grows out of man's experience in all the events in this
complicated thing we call society, rubbing shoulders, jamming and
oftentimes stepping on each other. When, after long observation, we
find that under certain circumstances men will act and react
towards each other in certain ways which strike our sense of
justice and right, then we put it down on the statute books and we
say this is the law, it shall be so. Moral law, then, is the
outgrowth of our knowledge of ourselves, just as natural law is the
outgrowth of our knowledge of the material world. There is no real
distinction between the two.
And here, if anywhere, Bertrand Russell slips up a little in
his thinking. I tremble and catch my breath when I take the name of
Bertrand Russell on my lips and venture to suggest the possibility
that Jove has nodded in his philosophical thinking. I know he
probably is the greatest thinker in England at the present time,
without any doubt. When Bertrand Russell fails to perceive that the
laws of the Being, of the Artist, the Over-Us-All, the Creator, may
be just as truly laws of his nature as the laws of man proceed out
of his being or as natural law proceeds out of the material world,
it seems to me that he has lost a point.
Now, Mr. Haldeman-Julius says that I don't believe in hell.
Well, I don't believe in certain kinds of hell. I believe in other
kinds. I don't believe in a literal brimstone lake of fire. I
remember that fifteen or twenty years ago when the papers got hold
of an utterance of mine of that kind and printed it, and there was
quite a good deal of discussion, a colored brother of mine, further
north, a very fervent preacher, announced he was going to answer
Burris Jenkins on this idea of hell. He said, "Now, that kind of
gospel may do all right up there on them boulevards where Dr.
Jenkins lives and preaches, but if I was to preach that kind of
gospel there would be no clothes on the lines nor chickens in the
coops of these same people up on the boulevards." That preacher was
a pragmatist, you see. He felt that truth was that which functioned
serviceably for his congregation, and that he would better preach
the kind of truth that worked well in his environment.
Now, I am agreeing with what Mr. Haldeman-Julius says about
pressing pragmatism to too great an extreme; I think there is a
little modicum of truth in what he says. But what the experience of
the race for thousands and thousands and thousands of years has
tested and found valuable; and what has rung true to that
mysterious thing within us which I call mysticism in myself, and
religions thinkers in all the world have followed for two thousand
years, I think there is likely to be a little something in.
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IS THEISM A LOGICAL PHILOSOPHY?
Rebuttal Argument
By E. Haldeman-Julius
I am sure of one thing: that at the end of this debate Dr.
Jenkins won't get off of his knees and I won't get down on my
knees. So I am sure that there will be no concessions at this end
and I am not so sure about any concessions at the other. I don't
think either one has been trying to win over any converts. I know
that is my attitude. I just get a lot of fun out of it. I enjoy
studying theologians, I think they are very amusing creatures, and
I can't imagine anything funnier than a theologian in action. But
instead of going to the circus, I read books on theism.
I am sure Dr. Jenkins does not get the scientific distinction
between a mystic and a realist. An accurate definition of a mystic
is one who believes that he can reach truth intuitively; that he
can reach truth within himself without reference to man's
experiences; that he has mystical power to reach in himself and
achieve what he would call truth; while the realist, of course,
follows the scientific method of laboratory tests, scrupulous
regarding of every fact and very careful observation. They are two
separate mentalities, two hopelessly different personalities, and
I can't imagine a good scientist permitting himself to become a
mystic, though there are a few, and the few mystical scientists are
those who are giving such comfort to the theologians; men like
Eddington and Millikan, who are very good physicists, who are men
of science in their own laboratories, but when they step out in the
arena of philosophical thought they utter ideas that would pass for
pretty good coin among the fanatics in a Salvation Army band. I
think I am speaking pretty literally, because some of their
arguments are the same arguments used on the street corners. In
Eddington's latest plea before the Society of Friends in London,
just a few months ago, and of course for that reason more important
than his book, 'The Nature of the Physical World,' that he wrote
about three years ago, he says that the reason the religious idea
is sound is because there is proof of it in man's experience, man
has experienced religion, he has experienced God, therefore it is
true. Well, according to that, same logic, the poor moron who gets
up on the street corner and gives his testimonial is scientific and
it is absolutely right and everything that he says is true, every
philosophical point that he is bringing out must be so, because he
says he has experienced it; and that, of course, is mysticism.
Eddington does not reach that conclusion through scientific means.
He does not take the same methods that he used in his laboratory,
to bring out that idea. He just simply reaches down into his
insides and intuitively reaches that opinion, and I leave it to any
reasonable person that it is completely without validity.
Now, Dr. Jenkins mentions Kant's moral law. As I said before,
I was surprised that he didn't bring up that argument. There are
several other good arguments for theism that you have neglected,
Doctor. I was looking for some of them. But this moral law also has
gone through the storm and also has no standing. It takes the
position, as I understand Kant, that because there is injustice and
evil and unhappiness in this world, there must be some sort of
balance, in the end there must be a balance. And so there must be
immortality, there must be a God to 'right these wrongs and give us
justice, love, righteousness and good for evil. I think that is
expressing his moral law, isn't it?
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IS THEISM A LOGICAL PHILOSOPHY?
DR. JENKINS: Pretty well.
MR. HALDEMAN-JULIUS: Well, that is based on such a flagrant
assumption that it was soon laughed out of court. It could not be
accepted. That appeared in one of Bertrand Russell's passages. I
notice Dr. Jenkins refers to him as the most learned thinker in
England today. He is, perhaps, the most learned philosopher in the
world today; he is also an atheist. He says that this life is the
only life we know anything about. And if this is a fair sample of
life, and this life is unhappy and there is injustice in it, why
isn't it safe to assume that the continuation of life is where it
left off? It is just the same thing. Don't you see the point? The
moral law. If we had a knowledge of any other life, we could then
make comparisons, but if we say life is continued and then say at
the end of our life there is a change, that is the assumption. The
logical thing is to say it is a continuation and if there is
another life it must have all the pains and unhappiness we have.
That was Bertrand Russell's argument. He said, suppose you get a
crate of oranges from California, you open it and find that all at
the top are rotten. He says that, according to Kant's moral law,
you, say that since the top layer is rotten it must follow that all
the rest of the oranges are good. That is exactly what Kant taught,
and it had no validity for that reason.
Now, as for beauty in nature, that, of course, is the argument
for design. That argument was very good for a while. That argument
was very good for a while until Darwinism appeared. The botanists
gave us that idea. You find this flower, they say, it is wonderful
--
DR. JENKINS: No, it was Paley, a theologian, an English
preacher.
MR. HALDEMAN-JULIUS: I take that correction. But the botanists
were fond of quoting it. They stole it from the theologians. It
appears that one argument for theism did come from the theologians;
and that, like the others, is very bad.
If there were proof of creation, then of course the created
thing would have its beauty of design. No question about it. But
life is an evolution and the ideas as propounded by Darwin are
accepted -- and most intelligent people do accept them -- evolution
is not a theory any more; it is a fact. We speak now of the truth
of evolution, not of the theory. If organic matter is the product
of its environment, in adjusting itself to its environment it takes
on the shapes that are possible within its conditions, its
fortuitous existence, the accidents of temperature, of soil, the
general accidents; and immediately nature will produce an animal of
one color here and of another color in another place; we will see
the white polar bear in the arctic zone and a different animal at
another place. Then of course it doesn't take into consideration
all the things that are ugly. We consider a germ an ugly thing.
Some people consider spiders ugly. I don't. Some people consider
mice ugly. I don't, but I do consider rats ugly. We don't consider
beauty to be an independent reality. Beauty is the effect that an
object has on us. When we look at a sunset, we would not say that
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IS THEISM A LOGICAL PHILOSOPHY?
that sunset was beautiful, but we would say that the effect it has
upon our aesthetic sense is pleasing, and therefore it is
beautiful. And to get a God idea out of that is stretching it
beyond all reason.
It seems to me what the religionists should do is to forget
about all these arguments about God -- this effort to prove that
their faith is founded on the rock of reason -- and go back to
their original position that they have faith and it is not
necessary for them to produce arguments for a God. And if they
would take that position, we would just consider them a little
psychopathic, and possibly humor them.
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