The Christian Faith Under Modern Searchlights Part 3

II

The Christian Faith and Modern Science

A discussion of the present relations between science and the Christian Faith must be very largely a discussion of the theory of evolution. Our age has been called evolution-mad; we can scarcely speak or even think except in biological terms and under biological categories. The evolution theory has influenced every department of thought and even the science of thought itself, and it is often a.s.sumed that everything pre-Darwinian must be thrown to the intellectual sc.r.a.p-heap.

Half a century ago the time was ripe for a new generalization in science which should include the organic world. Newton had extended the reign of mechanism in s.p.a.ce, and Lyell, by subst.i.tuting the uniformitarian for the catastrophic theory of the formation of the earth's crust, had effected the same extension in time. Men's minds had become familiar with the thought of immense reaches of s.p.a.ce and of vast periods of time, and with the idea in both spheres of the reign of natural law instead of immediate divine intervention. The Darwinian hypothesis of Natural Selection came as the culmination of this movement of a progressive subst.i.tution of a natural for a supernatural explanation of things. The motions of planets and heavenly bodies, the formation of the strata of the earth's crust, and now the kingdom of organic life were brought within the domain of natural and general law.

It is not necessary to describe in detail the ferment in religious thought which followed the publication of the "Origin of Species," 1859; but we may notice briefly the extreme inferences which were drawn unfavourable to religion, and then the inevitable reaction. On the one hand there were loud claims at first that the death-knell of religion had been sounded. A cause other than creation had been discovered for the origin of species and by a.n.a.logy for other origins formerly a.s.signed to the Creator. Chance, not only blind but apparently cruel, was enthroned in the place of design in the production of the various forms of life. The higher was evolved from the lower, but in a way that gave to the higher the quality of the lower. Man was no longer the child of G.o.d, not even the prodigal child. He was the progeny of the brute and shared his destiny. The obligation to be moral, or even decent, had no higher sanction than the fierce struggle for existence. Theism was derived from animal-or ancestor-worship, and had no higher authority or credibility. Man, no longer made in the divine image, could lay no claim to a divine inheritance; not fallen, but rising out of his brute inheritance, he had no need for the divine mercy.

Renan in France, Haeckel in Germany, and Grant Allen in England agreed that religion was doomed.[51] Religious beliefs, according to the last named, were destined "to be entirely discredited as grotesque, fungoid growths which had cl.u.s.tered around the thread of primitive ancestor-worship." Renan inferred as one result of Darwinism the gradual dying out of religion; while the fundamental postulates of religion, G.o.d, Freedom and Immortality, were, according to Haeckel, all given the _coup de grace_. The life of man, entangled by descent with lower orders of being, seemed divorced from the wisdom and purpose of G.o.d, and an all-engulfing mechanism threatened to swallow up the hopes and aspirations of mankind. The situation ill.u.s.trated the statement of Emerson: "The very hopes of man, the thoughts of his heart, the religion of nations, the manners and morals of mankind, are all at the mercy of a new generalization."

51: See Benjamin Kidd in article, "Darwinism," in "Hastings'

Dictionary of Religion and Ethics," Vol. IV, p. 404.

From this extreme position there was an inevitable reaction. Evolution was seen to present a face not so unfavourable to religion. Origin and destiny were two questions; the higher might be evolved from the lower, but not in such a way as to deprive the higher of its proper quality. If nature and man were so closely related, our idea of the worth of nature could be exalted without depriving man of his dignity. "A man's a man for a' that," whether sprung from the dust of the earth, as had been always held, or derived from organic material below him. An orthodox evolutionist developed a new and powerful argument for immortality; if man had gone so far, why not farther? The meaning of the whole evolutionary process, of the long travail of nature, was obviously, if it had a meaning (and why deny this to our intellectual confusion?), the production of man with his endowments, aspirations and hopes. Descent may become ascent, and the meaning of evolution may well be the development of freedom, and immortality but evolution at the end of its journey. A new and grander teleology was discernible in nature, not seen in the details of its products so much as in the great tendencies and lines of its development and the outworking of its laws. Most impressive of all, it was found that devout Christians, like Charles Kingsley, could become evolutionists without losing their faith; and that evolutionists like Romanes (who had spoken, during his eclipse of faith, of the evolutionary theory as a deluge, "uprooting our most cherished hopes, engulfing our most precious creed, and burying our highest life in mindless destruction"[52]) could become Christians, or regain their faith, without affecting their scientific views.

52: "A Candid Examination of Theism," p. 51.

With all the problems which evolution has set for religious thought, it should be noticed that it has distinctly relieved the pressure of one difficulty which has been felt, though now much less acutely than formerly, since the time of Copernicus. In the words of Aubrey De Vere:

This sphere is not G.o.d's ocean, but one drop Showered from its spray. Came G.o.d from heaven for that?

Life, and life upon the earth, is the centre of attention in the thought of the day. With the physicist who sees the promise and potency of all terrestrial life in the primitive star-dust, with the biologist who speaks of the fitness of the environment to sustain life, or with the philosopher who sees in the vital impulse the most important thing in the history of the universe, the viewpoint is necessarily biocentric.

Yet it has been pointed out that the sum of organized matter "is but an atom in the ma.s.s of the solar system, it occupies but a moment in its duration; it has hardly a place in s.p.a.ce; it is but a temporary film on one of the smaller planets. It can exist only in a very small part of the scale of temperatures through which the spheres pa.s.s from their first to their last state. Set against the visible universe it is as near to nothing as we can well conceive anything to be."[53] A distinguished evolutionist has developed an argument to prove that the earth alone in the solar system or elsewhere fulfills the conditions of the existence of any high form of life.[54] It is not necessary to estimate the value of Wallace's argument in order to emphasize, from an evolutionary point of view, the importance of life and of man in the universe. If the standpoint of science to-day is frankly biocentric, in spite of the insignificant bulk of organized matter, religious thought need not be accused of provincialism because it is anthropocentric in its interest.

53: N. S. Shaler: "The Individual," 1910, p. 103.

54: A. R. Wallace: "Man's Place in the Universe."

In studying a little more closely the religious bearings of evolution, it will be convenient to notice, I. The Method of Evolution, or the biological discussion; II. The Meaning of Evolution, or the philosophical discussion; and III. Theism and Evolution, or the more directly religious aspects of the theory.

I. THE METHOD OF EVOLUTION

While there is general agreement among biologists that species have been derived from one another by natural causes, there is a wide diversity of opinion as to the method by which this result has been brought about.

Darwin's theory of natural selection has a struggle for existence of its own, a fight for life with other evolutionary theories. Emphatic protests are made from the side of experimental biology (de Vries), of paleontology (Osborn), and of philosophical evolution (Bergson) against the Darwinian hypothesis that the selection of minute fortuitous variations can account for the rise of new species or explain the great lines of development. It is only necessary to read the two volumes published in England and America[55] in honour of the hundredth anniversary of Darwin's birth and the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of the "Origin of Species" to see that scientific opinion upon the question of the method of evolution is widely divided.

55: "Darwin and Modern Science," Cambridge, 1909; "Fifty Years of Darwinism," New York, 1909.

In Biblical language, the question of the hour in biology is, Who (or what) made thee to differ? "It is the question," in the words of C. H.

Eigenmann, "of how the straight line of exact hereditary repet.i.tion may be caused to swerve in a definite direction to reach an adaptive point.

This is the question of the present generation, perhaps of the entire twentieth century."[56]

56: "Fifty Years of Darwinism," p. 191.

The Newton of biology, who will discover the laws of variation and heredity, has not, it is safe to say, yet appeared. Variation in a definite direction in virtue of an internal tendency in the organism (Nageli); variation in response to the specific stimulus of the environment (Eimer); variation due, at least in animals, to the conscious effort of the individual (Lamarck); variation inciting a corresponding strengthening of parts of the individual organism, until time should be given for hereditary strengthening of these parts (organic selection as taught by Baldwin, Osborn and Lloyd Morgan); variation due to the preservation and acc.u.mulation of minute fluctuations by natural selection (Darwinism in its usual form); variation from unknown causes suddenly and discontinuously (the mutationism of de Vries); variation due to a mystical vital impulse in organic life as a whole (the creative evolution of Bergson):--no one of these views, if we take scientific opinion as a whole, can be said to have torn aside the veil behind which nature carries on her creative works.

The most notable attempt to supplement and strengthen the theory of natural selection has been made by Weismann in his theory of Germinal Selection. In Weismann's hypothesis, which has furnished in a sense the philosophical basis for the popular Eugenics movement, the struggle for existence is transferred to a struggle among the const.i.tuents of the germ-plasm. The minute invisible "determinants" of the germ-plasm, which give rise to the variations in the organ, or cell, which they determine, are unequally nourished by the nutritive stream. A determinant at first favoured by chance may at length gain strength actively to nourish itself to the detriment of its fellow-determinants, and thus attain a permanent upward movement. With Weismann the fluctuations within the germ-plasm "are the real root of all hereditary variations, and the preliminary condition for the occurrence of the Darwin-Wallace factor of selection." The struggle for existence, or the struggle for possession of the mate in s.e.xual selection, practically goes back to "the struggle between the determinants within the germ-plasm"[57] for food and s.p.a.ce.

57: "Darwin and Modern Science": "The Selection Theory," p.49.

Let us see how this theory of determinants will apply to the famous case of the antlers of the elk or stag. The antlers would increase in size, in this case, only because the determinants, corresponding in the germ-plasm to the antlers in the adult organism, attracted nourishment to themselves, and withdrew it to a certain extent from their fellows.

Instead, therefore, of a corresponding strengthening in the whole anterior half of the animal, which Weismann admits would be necessary,[58] we should have, with the increased weight of the antlers, a decrease in weight and strength of other parts of the body. The problem, instead of being solved, seems to be involved in deeper mystery, and there will be hesitation in accepting the statement that "thus in our time the great riddle has been solved--the riddle of the origin of what is suited to its purpose without the cooperation of purposive forces."[59] T. H. Morgan thinks it unfortunate that Weismann should seek to supply the deficiencies of Darwin's theory by new speculative matter skilfully removed from the field of verification.[60]

58: "Darwin and Modern Science": "The Selection Theory," p. 32.

59: "The Evolution Theory," II, p. 391.

60: "Evolution and Adaptation," pp. 165 f.

Biologists are generally agreed in holding the doctrine of "descent with modifications," but there is no agreement as to the method by which variations in species are brought about. Bateson even declares that "evolutionary orthodoxy developed too fast," and that "the time is not ripe for the discussion of the origin of species."[61] S. Herbert concludes: "In short, while natural selection can be looked upon as the efficient cause of the progress of evolutionary lines, their first beginnings must still be attributed to a still 'unknown factor in evolution.'"[62]

61: "Darwin and Modern Science," pp. 99, 101.

62: "First Principles of Evolution," 1913, p. 224.

The neo-Darwinian who sees in the acc.u.mulation of minute chance variations a sufficient explanation of the origin of species, cannot be said to hold the field in such a way as to call for the unquestioning acceptance of his views by the lay public; far less need the more remote philosophical inferences sometimes drawn from his premises be accepted without challenge as the teaching of science. While the central mystery, in the opinion of leading biologists, remains unsolved in the biological field, evolution or natural selection should be used with caution as the solvent of all the problems of the universe. The masterkey should first unlock the doors nearer home.

II. THE MEANING OF EVOLUTION

The more philosophical discussion of the Meaning of Evolution includes in its scope the questions of mechanism and design and of preformation and epigenesis.

1. Is the doctrine of evolution a foe to design, or does evolution make more teleology than it destroys? Let us a.s.sume for the present the neo-Darwinian position, and ask whether design can be excluded, first from the organic world without man, and then from the organic world including man. The whole system of things so ordered that through the operation of the laws of variability, struggle for existence, inheritance, elimination and selection, there should be worked out the myriad forms of life in ever increasing complexity, calls more loudly for the postulate of intelligence than do the special contrivances and adaptations in nature when viewed from the standpoint of their separate origin. If Paley's watch calls for a watchmaker, a system or arrangement of nature which has been likened, not to a simple watch, but rather to a watch (or a sundial) which makes all other watches, and these watches of a constantly improved quality and increased complexity, cannot permanently be regarded in any other than a teleological light. If the whole process should prove to be mechanical, the evidence for design is seen even more strikingly in the complex machinery itself than in the product.

Huxley says that "there is a wider teleology which is not touched by the doctrine of evolution, but is actually based upon the fundamental proposition of evolution."[63] When A. R. Wallace at first argued that many of the characteristic human qualities were not due to natural selection, because of no value in the struggle for existence,[64] his view incurred the ridicule of his critics, who interpreted it to mean that "our brains are made by G.o.d and our lungs by natural selection."

After forty years of reflection, Wallace now takes a broader view of the place of purpose in evolution, and says: "I now uphold the doctrine that not man alone, but the whole World of Life, in almost all its varied manifestations, leads us to the same conclusion--that to afford any rational explanation of its phenomena, we require to postulate the continuous action and guidance of higher intelligences; and further, that these have probably been working towards a single end, the development of intellectual, moral, and spiritual beings."[65] A distinguished biologist has said that "to believe that all the countless myriads of centres of cooperation and coordination which have been required for this cosmos could have been originated and maintained by unintelligent force acting fortuitously makes an immensely greater strain upon faith than the alternative hypothesis."[66]

63: "Darwiniana," p. 110.

64: "Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection," 1870.

65: "The World of Life," 1911, pp. 340 f.

66: A. Macalister, M. D., F. R. S., in _Expositor_, Vol. ix., 1910, p. 5.

The teleological argument has shown of late unusual vitality, and its renewed support has come, singularly enough, from the evolutionary quarter. Thus L. J. Henderson, inquiring into the biological significance of the properties of matter, concludes that "the process of cosmic (inorganic) evolution is indissolubly linked with the fundamental characteristics of the organism; that logically, in some obscure manner, cosmic and biological evolution are one."[67] The biologist, he thinks, "may now rightly regard the universe in its very essence as biocentric."[68] Wallace, in his "World of Life," draws the inference which Henderson suggests but, as a scientist, feels that he cannot adopt: "The remote but more fundamental cause [of the living world], which has been comparatively little attended to, is the existence of a special group of elements possessing such exceptional and altogether extraordinary properties as to render _possible_ the existence of vegetable and animal life-forms." These elements are like the fuel, iron and water in a steam-engine. "We may presume that the Mind which first caused these elements to exist, and built them up into such marvellous living, moving, self-supporting, and self-reproducing structures, must be many million times greater than those which conceived and executed the modern steam-engine."[69]

67: "The Fitness of the Environment," 1913, pp. 278 f.

68: _Ibid._, p. 312.

69: "The World of Life," p. 416.