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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 24a

Science and Theology

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Science and Theology.

Rule 1. we are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances.

Rule 2. Therefore to the same natural effects we must, as far as possible, assign the same causes.

Rule 3. The qualities of bodies which admit neither of intention nor of remission of degrees, and which are found to belong to all bodies within the reach of our experience, are to be esteemed the universal qualities of all bodies whatsoever.

Rule 4. In experimental philosophy we are to look upon propositions collected by general induction from phenomena as accurately or very nearly true, notwithstanding any contrary hypothesis that may be imagined, till such time as other phenomena occur, by which they may either be made more accurate, or liable to exceptions.—Isaac Newton's Principles of Natural Philosophy. Book 3.

An interesting discussion took place some time ago in the columns of the Melbourne papers, on "Science and Sermons but it soon lost all the point and vigour with which it commenced; which was attributable to the fact, that the real points of radical opposition were not stated with sufficient sharpness, and the question narrowed to some specific issue. If we can succeed in exposing the true basis of antagonism, surely we may more reasonably hope for a practical useful result, from what can scarcely have tended then but to create mistrust, if not alarm.

In the first place, the relegation of the argument to times so ancient and conditions so exceptional as to be entirely removed from observation and verification, renders the disproof of bold assertion page 2 and of plausible theory alike impossible, and deprives the question also of more than a very superficial interest. A few words, however, upon that view of the subject may serve as a useful introduction to something more relevant.

What can it matter to us now how many thousands or millions of years have elapsed since man first walked or talked? Whether it was six thousand or six thousand millions of years, it is in either case the facts of to-day that are superlatively important to us now. Being indisputably in possession now of our present organisms, powers, privileges, and responsibilities, what is it to us whether the Valley of the Dead Sea thousands of years ago was covered with twenty-five thousand feet of water or none at all? However that might be, the present facts remain the same. Whatever affects our present conduct and prospects is alone of actual pressing iuterest to us. How futile also to devote our time to the investigation of the primeval origin of matter—which, for all we know, never had a beginning—when we certainly have it substantially before us now, and can try every available means to analyse it, and test its destructibility and creatability at our leisure. Grant that all possible tests cannot produce a demonstration, we can have no stronger evidence or test than those which actual experience supplies, and which constitute amply sufficient reasons for not only our opinions, but even our actions. Upon facts all our knowledge is based.

To talk of reasonableness or probability with respect to events said to have occurred in an age when it is assumed that miracles were current, page 3 seems to us to be equivalent to a surrender of the whole argument. When the geologist points to a gigantic stratum, consisting, apparently, of incalculable multitudes of cretaceous fossils, which he reckons took thousands of centuries to accumulate; how, without impugning the theory of miraculous power, can his inferences from natural experience be received as of any weight compared with the statements of a record which authoritatively affirms that all strata were supernaturally produced? Was it not quite as practicable for Omnipotence to create the rock at once by fiat, with the appearance of having been slowly deposited in conjunction with fossiliferous remains through, countless ages, as to create the inorganic constituents of the rock and the cretacea, etc., separately, to be afterwards deposited together? Was it not fully as competent to the Almighty to cause supernatural rain from heaven during forty days and forty nights to cover the whole earth with water above the tops of the highest mountains, as the Scriptures simply tell us was the case, as to anthropomorphically manage it by a sudden subsidence of the east coast of the Mediterranean Sea, as has been repeatedly suggested? Whoever thus substitutes natural causes for the supernatural action of the Creator, yields entirely the broadest distinction made by any one between the two theories of causation, and does evident violence to the sacred text; the essential character of which is professedly miraculous. The man of science who accepts such a compromise is as inconsistent as he who offers it. Each, out of deference to the other, yields, not a portion, but the whole of his own principle. Compromise is page 4 suicidal. For, in acknowledging any efficacy in his antagonist's principle of causation, he admits that so far his own has none. And if so far, why not altogether? For if one principle he at all adequate to the production of the effect, to suppose the second must be superfluous and unphilosophical. It is clear that the supernatural cause must he amply adequate to every effect if valid at all; but the supposition of natural causes in lieu, or in addition, at once implies its inadequacy in the instance in which they are supposed; and the man of science may well retort that the admission of the intrinsic efficacy of natural causes to any extent should he held to render their adequacy to the production of every phenomenon more than probable; because their efficacy should not have been admitted, if that of the supernatural cause could have been maintained as indisputable or reasonable.

We are fully aware that this argument suffers much in its application to such events as the creation and the deluge. The lapse of ages introduces many elements of uncertainty, such as the imperfection and paucity of the evidence, the changes in the signification of words, and the elasticity of the processes of interpretation adopted with regard to the Scriptures. We, therefore, desire to lay no stress upon this application of our principle, and have only dwelt upon it so far that we might not appear to neglect what has been already said on the subject; to point out the hopelessness of any practical result from investigations into the events of such distant times; and also to prepare the way for the following adaptation of the same principle to facts within our personal observation.

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The question as to the nature or philosophy of causation, can, fortunately, be applied to current practical phenomena with immeasurably greater advantage and force. One of the most direct and obtrusive points of antagonism is that raised by Professor Tyndall in his article "On the Constitution of the Universe," in No. XIV. of the Fortnightly Review.* He there showed that to pray for, and praying for, to expect or suppose possible, any objective results different from those which would otherwise have occurred, is essentially unscientific, and puts the "intellect to shame;" that prayer, to be efficacious, can be so only by a miracle, though it is conceded that the age for miracles is past; in fact, the dispute is substantially the same as that respecting creation.

But a little careful attention and reasoning show that theories of natural and of supernatural causation mutually and essentially exclude each other. For the supposition of intrinsic efficacy in either, makes the introduction of the other unnecessary, and, therefore, unphilosophical. To suppose both is, therefore, inadmissible. In fact, the admission of the second amounts to a declaration of the inadequacy

* "A miracle is strictly defined as an invasion of the law of the conservation of energy. To create or annihilate matter would be deemed on all hands a miracle; the creation or annihilation of energy would be equally a miracle to those who understand the principle of conservation. Hence arises the scepticism of scientific men when called upon to join in national prayer for changes in the economy of nature. Those who devise such prayers admit that the age of miracles is past, and in the same breath they petition for the performance of miracles. They ask for fair weather and for rain, but they do not ask that water may flow uphill; while the man of science clearly sees that the granting of the one petition would be just as much an infringement of the law of conservation as the granting of the other. Holding this law to be permanent, he prays for neither."—Fortnightly Review., No. XIV., p. 144.

page 6 of the first to observed results. Nay, to any results. For whichever is held equal to the greater or more difficult results, must obviously be held equal to the lesser and more simple, and should, therefore, be preferred for both. Compromise is here again only self-destructive. For to suppose natural causes as dependent upon, or acting only by virtue of a supernatural cause operating through, or behind them, is obviously to suppose really nothing but the action of the supernatural cause itself. And to suppose their independence or intrinsic efficacy to any extent, is to admit and establish the radical distinction and antagonism between natural and supernatural force, and, as shown above, to declare the latter superfluous and inadmissible. Truth must be on one side or the other; not on both, or neither.

Again, natural causes are clearly perfectly adequate to the production of all natural effects; and the supposition of a supernatural cause should be, therefore, wholly superfluous for any other than supernatural effects. But while the law of conservation involves the eternity and constant total quantity of both matter and force, on the other side it is conceded that the age of overt miracles is past; and natural and supernatural causation cannot be supposed to co-operate in any proportions in the production of the same effects, for natural forces are accurately measurable in some instances, and are then found exactly commensurate with the observed effects; thus, of course, excluding the supposition of any additional force, supernatural or otherwise. If it be said that we only call the supernatural force by the name of natural force, because of the natural forms in which, and by means of which, it is page 7 manifested, what is this but the identification of one with the other? The supernatural force, if any, must be the only really operative one; any of the natural objects which it moves being no more than as a tool in the hand of a man; and the supernaturalist is clearly bound, in logical consistency, to maintain his theory of supernatural causation intact, if at all. The supernatural cause must be universally, particularly, and solely active, to the exclusion of all efficacy in any natural cause whatsoever; any admission of operative natural causation being entirely fatal to the supernatural theory. We shall soon see the logical consequences involved in this established position.

Though thus the argument appears to be concentrated on the single point of the nature of causation, it may be readily apprehended how much more is involved in it. For upon the decision hangs not only the efficacy of prayer, but also the whole theory of a special, or of any Providence. All is involved in the question of the nature of causation.

All possible theories of causation may be exhaustively classified as follows:

1st. God, as Force operating solely, continually and universally, in eternal necessarily existent matter (Pantheism).

2nd. God, as creator of matter, and as Providence or Force, operating therein solely, continually, and universally (Pantheistic).

3d. God, as creator of matter, and of Force active therein, but not interfering with the operation of that Force after its creation (Creatorial).

4th. God, as creator of matter, and of force active therein, and continually governing and guiding that page 8 force after its creation (Creatorial and Providential.)

5th. God, as Providence guiding Force, that Force consisting of necessary intrinsic properties of eternal uncreated matter (Anthropomorphic).

6th. Eternal Matter: and Force, or the intrinsic active properties of matter (Scientific and Causational).

In the first class, the Deity being supposed the only operator, man, like everything else, must act, perhaps blindly, but in any case compulsorily. In God all action, and therefore all responsibility are at once centered. Religion is impossible, for prayer and adoration are thus the action of their object; man, like anything else, being merely used as a tool or instrument, conscious by sensation of his acts, but utterly unconscious of their true cause.

The second is essentially the same as the first, the single new feature of the creation of matter directly involving, of course, more entire responsibility for all its intractability. But the first supposition involves that matter had originally no intrinsic properties whatever, and, consequently, no intractability. If, however, to lessen the responsibility for evil, the intractability of matter be still imagined, omnipotence is at once sacrificed, and the theory is so far anthropomorphic. But to suppose matter as existent without properties is clearly not only eminently unscientific, but absurd.

The third is merely a nominal concession to the undeniability of the intrinsically sequential character of the operation of natural forces. If God created matter and force, and left them to themselves, the result must be to us the same in effect as if they were uncreated, and acted by intrinsic necessity. For past and present cosmical facts are, and are page 9 supposed, the same. Only in the one case an origin by fiat is imagined; in the other, evolution from all eternity. But although a continuous guiding Providence is thus abandoned, still, entire responsibility in the Creator is maintained, whether the creation be supposed to have been accomplished in ignorance, or with knowledge, of all possible consequences.

The fourth is like the third, but it involves a virtual denial that miracles are less common now than ever before; all action being supernatural and none natural, all is miraculous; or more accurately speaking, no action was ever more miraculous at any one period than at any other. The responsibility for all action whatever, cosmical or human, is, if anything, even more directly fixed upon the creator in this than in the preceding theory. Yet this is unquestionably the most popular hypothesis.

The fifth is a further concession to the inchoate idea of the eternity of matter, and the intrinsic nature of its properties and laws. It reduces the Deity to much the same position as a magnified man. Matter and Force arc to him at best only partially tractable, and it is impossible to say how much or how little. Science, or the knowledge of nature, is constantly taking from the exceptional and arbitrary, to add to the uniform and necessary, and the application of this process is extending so rapidly as to threaten to become speedily universal.

The sixth is simply Nature as expounded by Science. In this theory, Deity has simply hitherto held, but with questionable utility, the place of .x, the sign representative of the unknown quantity in page 10 an algebraic equation, pending the solution of the great problem by Science. When this is known the sign may be discarded. Matter is judged, upon the evidence of all experience, to be eternal, and constant in quantity; uncreatable and indestructible. Force is the activity of the intrinsic properties of matter itself, being like matter constant in total quantity, though infinitely variable in its forms of manifestation; so that, when expended in one, it is always to be traced in another, into which it is diverted in the process.

Though we have enumerated six theories of causation, it is clear that the first and sixth are really the antithetic alternatives, of which the others are but nominal, untenable compromises, logically inconsistent and impossible; and a theory of causation can scarcely be proposed which may not legitimately be classed under one of these six beads, and therefore resolved, by consistent analysis and reasoning, into the first or last.

So far this statement of the case appears impregnable, together with that of the inevitable and startling consequence; not only that all causation must be due to one of two sources, either natural or supernatural, but that either alternative is irreconcileable with and excludes the other. There remains absolutely no logical alternative between on the one hand a Pantheism which, by identifying Deity with the intrinsic properties of matter, makes it, as the sole mover, exclusively responsible for every accident, offence, and crime perpetrated in our world—a conclusion at which consistent piety must stand aghast—and on the other an inviolable universal causation; which, utterly blind to and page 11 regardless of particular consequences, makes every isolated circumstance the necessary and absolute product of the conditions under which it may be evolved. To what does this commit the man of science? To our theory of causation expressed in the law of the conservation and persistence of Force, so lucidly propounded by Professor Tyndall in the paper before mentioned. That law, it appears, cannot be held consistently with a belief in the efficacy of prayer, or even in a special Providence. It involves the necessity of all causation, and that every event is the inevitable result of its concatenated antecedents.* It involves that the nature of the causation of human actions is essentially identical in kind with that by which two and two make four, which Omnipotence cannot be supposed competent to alter. Still, man's actions are his own; and their consequences prove to him every hour his inevasible responsibility.

The man of science finds that the operation of natural causes is strictly in conformity with mathematical and physical laws, and, therefore, may philosophically be deemed as undeviating and non-contingent as mathematical and physical processes. Obedience to such laws is simply "movement in the direction of least resistance." Were a single case to occur in which the observed movement was not in the direction of least resistance, or not in accordance with, but in opposition to, mathematical or physical necessity, there would then be ground for inferring the operation of a supernatural cause, and relinquishing all idea of any efficacy in natural

* See articles by Professor Tyndall in the Fortnightly Review for 1st of December, 1865, and 1st of June, 1867, in which this is amply proved.

page 12 forces. But no such anomaly has yet appeared; and until such an instance occurs, the man of science feels not only justified in rejecting such an unphilosophical supposition, but compelled to reject it.

Above all, is this argument applicable to the solar system, the optic organ, the apiarian cell, &c., &c., the commonly cited examples of supernatural action. In each of these it is found that the phenomena conform strictly to mathematical laws, by which we learn to comprehend them; if we are not rather conducted to those laws by them. And it would be strange indeed if the substantial manifestations of those mathematical principles were to be less certain and inevitable in fulfilment, than the abstract processes themselves; which are but the signs of the material things, and of their actual relations. Is it possible that any even supernatural power should be competent to change the course of the phenomena, without producing a corresponding aberration of the mathematical laws which merely express them; by which we ascertain and understand them; and which may be called simply the description of them as physical facts?

Applied to the phenomena of organic continuity; the wonder should not be that hens breed chickens, dogs puppies, sheep lambs, and men children; or that the same food eaten by sheep should form mutton, by pigs pork, and by oxen beef; but the wonder would be if the results were different. Thus, a cow has never been known to produce a cat, nor a hen a monkey; nor does, nor can, the grass eaten and digested by a horse, produce the same results as if eaten by a sheep or a kangaroo. Yet there is scarcely less evident continuity or page 13 persistence of force in these instances than in the necessary persistent identity of any physical object. We are not surprised that what was a stone yesterday should continue to be a stone to-day and to-morrow, instead of becoming a tree, or a living organism, &c., from hour to hour; and, as experience convinces us that the identity of any substance or object must persist or endure in time and space until adequate physical causes produce the dissolution of the arrangement of its parts; and as, in accordance with the first Newtonian law of motion, a body impelled in any direction in space, must continue its course in that direction until some external force deflect, retard, or accelerate its motion; so it seems that any kind of motion, including assimilation and' reproduction, must, in like manner, persist or continue in time, until adequate causes compel its cessation, or conversion into some other form of force. The pabulum appropriated by organisms, thus undergoes changes determined by the special media of assimilation. By the tremendous solvent powers of the digestive apparatus, it is perfectly disintegrated and chemically decomposed, until it loses all the special characteristics by which it was before distinguished. Thus prepared to receive those which alone it is in a position to acquire, nothing whatever appears to be necessary to identify it with the substance of the organism itself into which it may have been introduced, but rapid and constant circulation through every part and corner of the structure, whence it is subsequently expelled when effete by peripheral excretion. But such a stringent process appears to be indispensable to effect any rapid page 14 change in the outward constitution of substance, the actual chemical bases of which remain constant in quantity throughout. Different results from those which Ave observe are simply impossible, and would be motion in the direction of greater resistance. We cannot really believe that even supernatural power could effect different results; and Ave necessarily and instinctively attribute absolute efficacy and continuity to natural causes, which we are convinced and feel, produce the effects we observe. And our confidence is never deceived.

What, however, is the position of the super naturalist? When once it is recognised and understood that he cannot consistently admit the efficacy of any natural causes, but must regard them, if he recognise them at all, as mere supposititious puppets in the hand of an over-ruling Providence; then nature and man must be supposed alike irresistibly subjected to a power of which they form but passive instruments—irresponsible machines. And if man's natural organic functions, such as digestion, and his involuntary animal action, including sensation, require the intervention of a supernatural force, surely it cannot be reasonably contended that his intellectual operations, thought, speech, and reason, require a less supernatural or potent cause.

Is not man thus, by the supernatural theory, deprived of action? and all his movements made simply the involuntary expression or effect of incomprehensible, untraceable, supernatural energy? Can anything be more demoralising than such blind, helpless, fatalistic Pantheism? The page 15 scientific theory admits of the action of rational man as a responsible* natural force; but by the supernatural theory his acts are not his own, but those of an arbitrary, irresistible, supernatural power, softening or hardening whom he will. And if it be alleged that the age of miracles is past, as is conceded to experience; if the former supernatural is now merged in natural causation; if a Providence is really as obsolete as miracles by the reduction of its action to what cannot be distinguished from undeviating, inexorable, physical necessity; what then remains of Deity to venerate or adore? Are all our hallowed traditions—all our religious proclivities to be subjugated and annihilated by a blind, inevitable causation? On the other hand are not all knowledge, all experience, and all science, absolutely based not only upon the uniformity, but also upon the necessity of causation? For that uniformity there must surely be a reason, a cause; and a single departure from the absolute uniformity of the results of given conditions, would, if we could believe it, falsify the knowledge and destroy the experience until then accumulated. Were it possible, or could we suspect, that, as regards the uniformity of causation, the future will not, nay must not be as the past, both experience and knowledge must inevitably be worthless—in short, impossible.

To the scientific man do these considerations make

* What a striking and suggestive analogy there is in the meaning of the words responsible and reflex!

See Fortnightly Review already quoted.

page 16 life less sweet, health less delightful, love less pure, the world less beautiful, knowledge less invaluable, morality less indispensable, or truth less true? Can they alter reality in the world or in himself? And if not, is it nothing to find his reasoning at last consistent with facts and with itself? Has the theologian this consolation in abiding by his traditional faith? May he also love this beautiful world which smiles so benignantly upon him? Can he touch what he regards as pitch and not be defiled?

Can he reap the benefit of the achievements of science in chemistry, mechanics, physics, and in all the wealth of worldly comfort and civilisation, remembering at the same time that he "cannot serve God and mammon?" Can he live in ease by forbidden usury, travel by steam on laud or water, enjoy the worldly pleasure and worldly advantage resulting from the cultivation of scientific knowledge and literature; can he attain to worldly wealth, social honour, and domestic felicity, and lay the flattering unction to his soul, that he shall never hear, "Woe to you! for you have received your consolation?"

For him, is consistency possible?

Should he not feel absolute despair rather than hope of that ultimate bliss, for which, according to his own principles, he must repudiate and despise the worldly blessings so exuberantly evolved around him? To secure it he knows that his principles require him to be more meritorious than all or nearly all his neighbours—for many are called but few chosen—yet those same principles bind him to repudiate all merit! Humility being an indispensable qualification, he should know that any confidence page 17 which he may feel in his salvation, must itself be entirely fatal to his pretensions. Thus should he be indeed of all men most miserable! In Christian theology it is asserted that the salvation of the vicious is achieved solely and righteously by the sufferings of the virtuous and innocent! Is not this to proclaim immunity to vice, and punishment to virtue? An inversion of the plainest moral principles! a theory of immorality! To hold the doctrine of the forgiveness of sin, and yet that a just and benevolent deity rather than forego or abate one jot of the penalty, exacts it, rather than from none, from the wrong and an innocent person, instead of from the guilty one, is obviously not only contradictory but impious. Yet it is not found to be absurd.

But even this contradiction is not more glaring and suicidal than another which has more direct relevance to our argument, and lies besides at the basis of all theology; namely, the assertion that because every event must have a cause, therefore there must have been a beginning and a first cause of all. For on the self-same principle the asserted beginning must have had a cause, that cause a prior one, and that again a prior, ad infinitum. To suppose a first cause, without an antecedent eternal precession of causes, is evidently to violate the principle and destroy the basis of the supposition itself.

We have stated this double dilemma as accurately as we can, doubtless with a strong and irresistible leaning in the same direction to which believers in science notoriously tend. The lovers, however distantly, of knowledge, must perforce follow where the leading pioneers have cleared the way. We have endeavoured to confine our statement to one page 18 principle, certainly a comprehensive one; the nature of causation. Patient analysis and strict logic form ample means for dissipating all the mystery in which traditional authority and sophistical equivocation have enveloped the subject. The essential difference between metaphysical mental gymnastics and consistent reasoning is maximised in the results.

We believe that we have herein—imperfectly, perhaps, but truly—represented the real positions of the contending parties, and the alternatives their systems offer, with reasons

That perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
A forlorn, [bewildered] brother,
Seeing may take heart again.

Let such a one remember that the absoluteness of causation is the essence of experience, which is itself the basis of knowledge; while consistency is the best available test of human reasoning. That "art is long and time is fleeting;" and, lastly, this: "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest." Ecclesiastes ix., 10.

R. Bell, Printer, 97 Little Collins Street East, Melbourne.