How many fierce quarrels have raged on the formula of baptism among those loving brothers in Christ who believe he died for them! How strange an idea that, though God has been crucified to redeem mankind, it yet needs the font of water to wash away the lingering stain of Adam's crime.
One minister of the Church of England, occupying the presidential chair of a well-known training college for church clergymen in the north of England, seriously declared, in the presence of a large auditory and of several church dignitaries, that the sin of Adam was so potent in its effect that if a man had never been born, he would yet have been damned for sin! That is, he declared that man existed before birth, and that he committed sin before he was born; and if never born, would, notwithstanding, deserve to suffer eternal torment for that sin!
It is almost impossible to discuss seriously a doctrine so monstrously absurd, and yet it is not one whit more ridiculous than the ordinary orthodox and terrible doctrine that God, the undying, in his infinite love, killed himself under the form of his son to appease the cruel vengeance of God, the just and merciful, who, without this, would have been ever vengeful, unjust and merciless. The atonement theory, as presented to us by the bible, is in effect as follows: God creates man, surrounded by such circumstances as the divine mind chose, in the selection of which man had no voice, and the effects of which on man were all foreknown and predestined by Deity. The result is man's fall on the very first temptation, so frail the nature with which he was endowed, or so powerful the temptation to which he was subjected. For this fall not only does the All-merciful punish Adam, but also his posterity; and this punishment went on for many centuries, until God, the immutable, changed his purpose of continual condemnation of men for sins they had no share in, and was wearied with his long series of unjust judgments on those whom he created in order that he might judge them. That, then, God sent his son, who was himself and was also his own father, and who was immortal, to die upon the cross, and, by this sacrifice, to atone for the sin which God himself had caused Adam to commit, and thus to appease the merciless vengeance of the All-merciful, which would otherwise have been continued against men yet unborn for an offense they could not have been concerned in or accessory to. Whether those who had died before Christ's coming are redeemed the bible does not clearly tell us. Those born after are redeemed only on condition of their faith in the efficacy of the sacrifice offered, and in the truth of the history of Jesus's life. The doctrine of salvation by sacrifice of human life is the doctrine of a barbarous and superstitous age; the outgrowth of a brutal and depraved era. The God who accepts the bloody offering of an innocent victim in lieu of punishing the guilty culprit shows no mercy in sparing the offender: he has already satiated his lust for vengeance on the first object presented to him.
Yet sacrifice is an early and prominent, and, with slight exception, an abiding feature in the Hebrew record—sacrifice of life finds appreciative acceptance from the Jewish Deity. Cain's offering of fruits is ineffective but Abel's altar, bearing the firstlings of his flock, and the fat thereof, finds respect in the sight of the Lord. While the face of the earth was disfigured by the rotting dead, after God in his infinite mercy had deluged the world, then it was that the ascending smoke from Noah's burnt sacrifice of bird and beast produced pleasure in heaven, and God himself smelled a sweet savor from the roasted meats. To reach atonement for the past by sacrifice is worse than folly—it is crime. The past can never be recalled, and the only reference to it should be that, by marking its events, we may avoid its evil deeds and improve upon its good ones. For Jesus himself—can man believe in him? —in his history contained in anonymous pamphlets uncorroborated by contemporary testimony?—this history, in which, in order to fulfill a prophecy which does not relate to him, his descent from David is demonstrated by tracing through two self-contradictory genealogies the descent of Joseph who was not his father—this history, in which the infinite God grows, from babyhood and hus cradle through childhood to manhood, as though he were not God at all—this history, full of absurd wonders, devils, magicians, and evil spirits, rather fit for an Arabian Night's legend than the word of God to his people—this history, with its miraculous raisings of the dead to life, disbelieved and contradicted by the people among whom they are alleged to have been performed; but, nevertheless, to be accepted by us to-day with all humility—this history, with the Man-God subject to human passions and infirmities, who comes to die, and who prays to his heavenly father (that is, to himself) that he will spare him the bitter cup of death—who is betrayed, having himself, ere he laid the foundations of the world, predestined Judas to betray him, and who dies, being God immortal crying with his almost dying breath, "My God! my God! why hast thou forsaken me?"
This question, Were Adam and Eve our first parents? is indeed one of most grave importance. If the answer be a negative one, it is, in fact, a denial of the whole scheme of Christianity. The Christian theory is that Adam, the common father of the whole human race, sinned, and that by his sin he dragged down all his posterity to a state from which redemption was needed; and that Jesus is, and was, the Redeemer, by whom all mankind are and were saved from the consequences of the fall of Adam. If Adam, therefore, be proved not to be the first man—if it be shown that it is not to Adam the various races of mankind are indebted for their origin, then the whole hypothesis of fall and redemption is dissipated.
In a pamphlet like the present it is impossible to give any statement and analysis of the various hypotheses as to the origin of the human race. I frankly admit that my only wish and intent is, to compel people to examine the bible record for themselves, instead of making it their fetich, bowing down before it without thought. I am inclined to the opinion that the doctrine of a plurality of sources for the various types of the human race is a correct one; that wherever the conditions for life have been found, there also has been the degree of life resultant on those conditions. My purpose in this essay is not to demonstrate the correctness of my own thinking, but rather to illustrate the incorrectness of the Geneiacal teaching. Were Adam and Eve our first parents? On the one hand an answer in the affirmative to this question can be obtained from the bible, which asserts Adam and Eve to be the first man and woman made by God, and fixes the date of their making about 6,000 years, little more or less, from the present time. On the other hand, it seems to me that science emphatically declares man to have existed on the earth for a far more extended period; affirms that, as far as we can trace man, we find him in isolated groups, diverse in type, till we lose him in the ante-historic period; and, with nearly equal distinctness, denies that the various existing races find their common parentage in one pair. It is only on the first point that I attack the bible chronology of man's existence. I am aware that compilations based upon the authorized version of the Old Testament Scriptures are open to objection, and that while from the Hebrew 1,656 years represent the period from Adam to the Deluge generally acknowledged, the Samaritan Pentateuch only yields for the same period 1,307 years, while the Septuagint version furnishes 2,242 years; there is, I am also informed, on the authority of a most erudite Egyptologist, a fatal objection to the Septuagint chronology—i. e., that it makes Methusaleh outlive the flood.*
The deluge occurred, according to the Septuagint, in the year of the world 2,242, and, by adding up the generations previous to Methusaleh's—
—we shall find that he was born in the year of the world 1,287. He lived 969 years, and therefore died in 2,256. But this is fourteen years after the deluge.
The Rev. Dr. Lightfoot, who wrote about 1,644, fixes the month of the creation at September, 5,572 years preceding the date of his book, and says that Adam was expelled from Eden on the day in which he was created.* In the London Ethnological Journal, for which I am indebted to the kindness of its Editor, an able ethnologist and careful thinker, the reader will find a chronology of Genesis ably and elaborately examined. At present, for our immediate purpose, we will take the ordinary. English bible, which gives the following result:
4004 From Adam to Abraham the dates are certain, if we take the bible statement, and there is certainly no portion of the orthodox text, except the period of the Judges, which will admit any considerable extension of the ordinary Oxford chronology.
The book of Judges is not a book of history. Everything in it is recounted without chronological order. It will suffice to say, that the ciphers which we find in the book of Judges, and in the first book of Samuel, yield us, from the death of Joshua to the commencement of the reign of Saul, the sum total of 500 years, which would make, since the exode from Egypt, 565 years; whereas the first book of Kings counts but 480 years, from the going out of Egypt down to the foundation of the temple under Solomon. According to this we must suppose that several of the Judges governed simultaneously.*
In reading Alfred Maury's profound essay on the classification of tongues, I was much struck with the fact that he, in his philological researches, traces back some of the ancient Greek mythologies to a Sanscrit source. He has the following remark, worthy of earnest attention: "The God of Heaven, or the sky, is called by the Greeks Zeus Pater; and let us here notice that the pronunciation of Z resembles very much that of D, inasmuch as the word Zeus becomes in the genitive Dios. The Latins termed the same God Dies-piter, or Jupiter Now in the Veda the God of Heaven is called Dyash-pitai." What is this but the original of our own Christian God, the father, the [———] (Jeue) pater of the Old Testament? I introduce this remark for the purpose of shaking a very commonly entertained opinion that the Hebrew Records, whether or not God-inspired, are at any rate the most antique, and are written in a primitive tongue. Neither is it true that Hebrew mythology is the most ancient, nor the Hebrew language the most primitive; on the contrary, the mythology is clearly derived, and the language in a secondary or tertiary state.
What is the value of this book of Genesis, which is the sole authority for the hypothesis that Adam and Eve, about 5,865 years ago, were the sole founders of the peoples now living on the face of the earth? Written we know not by whom, we know not when, and we know not in what language. If we respect the book, it must be from its internal merits; its author is to us unknown. Eusebius, Chrysostom, and Clemens Alexandrinus alike agree that the name of Moses should not stand at the head of Genesis as the author of the book. As to its internal merit Origen did not hesitate to declare the contents of the first and second chapters of Genesis to be purely figurative. Our translation of it has been severely criticised by the learned and pious Bellamy, and by the more learned and less pious Sir William Drummond. Errors almost innumerable have been pointed out, the correctness of the Hebrew text itself questioned, and yet this book is an unerring guide to the students of ethnology. They may do anything, everything, except stray out of the beaten track. We have, therefore, on the one hand, an anonymous book, which indeed does not take you back so much as 6,000 years, for at least 1,600 years must be deducted for the Noachian deluge, when the world's inhabitants were again reduced to one family, one race, one type. On the other hand, we have now existing Eskimo men, of the Arctic realm; Chinamen, of the Asiatic realm; Englishmen, of the European realm; Sahara negroes, of the African realm; Fuegians, of the American realm; New Zealanders, of the Polynesian realm; the Malay, representative of the realm which bears his name; the Tasmanian, of the Australian realm, with other families of each realm too numerous for mention here; dark and fair, black-skinned and white-skinned, woolly-haired and straight-haired; low forehead, high forehead; Hottentot limb, Negro limb, Caucasian limb. Do all these different and differing structures and colors trace their origin to one pair? To Adam and Eve, or rather to Noah and his family? Or are they (the various races) indigenous to their nature, soils, and climates? And are these various types naturally resultant, with all their differences, from the differing conditions for life persistent to and consistent with them?
The question, then, really is this: Have the different races of men all found their common parent in Noah, about 4,300 years ago? Assuming the unity of the races or species of men now existing, there are but three suppositions on which the diversity now seen can be accounted for:
"1. A miracle, or direct act of the Almighty, in changing one type into another.
"2. The gradual action of physical causes, such as climate, food, mode of life, etc.
"3. Congenital or accidental varieties."*
We may fairly dismiss entirely from our minds the question of miracle. Such a miracle is nowhere recorded in the bible, and it lies upon any one hardy enough to assert that the present diversity has a miraculous origin to show some kind of reasons for his faith, some kind of evidence for our conviction, and until this is done we have no reason to dwell on the first hypothesis.
Of the permanence of type under its own climatic conditions—that is, in the country to which it is indigenous—we have overwhelming proof in the statue of an ancient Egyptian scribe, taken from a tomb of the fifth dynasty, 5,000 years old, and precisely corresponding to the Fellah of the present day.**
The sand had preserved the color of the statuette, which, from its portrait-like beauty, marks a long era of art-progress preceding its production. It antedates the orthodox era of the flood, carries us back to a time when, if the bible were true, Adam was yet alive, and still we find before it kings reigning and ruling in mighty Egypt. Can the reader wonder that these facts are held to impeach the orthodox faith?
On the second point Dr. Nott writes: "It is a commonly received error that the influence of a hot climate is gradually exerted on successive generations, until one species of mankind is completely changed into another.... This idea is proven to be false.... A sunburnt cheek is never handed down to succeeding generations. The exposed parts of the body are alone tanned by the sun, and the children of the white-skinned Europeans in New Orleans, Mobile, and the West Indies are born as fair as their ancestors, and would remain so if carried back to a colder climate."*
Pure negroes and negresses, transported from Central Africa to England, and marrying among themselves, would never acquire the characteristics of the Caucasian races; nor would pure Englishmen and Englishwomen, emigrating to Central Africa, and in like manner intermarrying, ever become negroes or negresses. The fact is, that while you don't bleach the color of the dark-skinned African by placing him in London, you bleach the life out of him; and vice versa with the Englishman.**
For a long time there has been ascribed to man the faculty of adapting himself to every climate. The following facts will show the ascription a most erroneous one: "In Egypt the austral negroes are, and the Caucasian Memlooks were, unable to raise up even a third generation; in Corsica French families vanish beneath Italian summers. Where are the descendants of the Romans, the Vandals, or the Greeks in Africa? In Modern Arabia, 1830 years after Mahomed Ali had got clear of the Morea war, 18,000 Arnaots (Albanians) were soon reduced to some 400 men. At Gibraltar, in 1817, a negro regiment was almost annihilated by consumption. In 1841, during the three weeks on the Niger, 130 Europeans out of 145 caught African fever, and 40 died; out of 158 negro sailors only eleven were affected, and not one died. In 1809 the British Expedition to Walchereen failed in the Netherlands through marsh fever. About the same time, in St. Domingo, about 15,000 French soldiers died from malaria. Of 30,000 Frenchmen, only 8,000 survived exposure to that Antillian island; while the Dominicanized African negro, Tous-saint L'Overture, retransported to Europe, was perishing from the chill of his prison in France."
On the third point we again quote Dr. Nott: "The only argument left, then, is that of congenital varieties or peculiarities, which are said to spring up and be transmitted from parent to child, so as to form new races. Let us pause for a moment to illustrate this fanciful idea. The negroes of Africa, for example, are admitted not to be offsets from some other race which have been gradually blackened and changed in a moral and physical type by the action of climate, but it is asserted that 'once, in the flight of ages,' some genuine little negro, or rather many such, were born of Caucasian, Mongol, or other light-skinned parents, and then have turned about and changed the type of the inhabitants of a whole continent. So, in America, the countless aborigines found on this continent, which we have reason to believe were building mounds before the time of Abraham, are the offspring of a race changed by accidental or congenital varieties. Thus, too, old China, India, Australia, Oceana, etc., all owe their types, physical and mental, to congenital and accidental varieties, and are descended from Adam and Eve! Can human credulity go further, or human ingenuity invent any argument more absurd?"
But even supposing these objections to the second and third suppositions set aside, there are two other propositions which, if affirmed, as I believe they may be, entirely overthrow the orthodox assertion "that Adam and Eve, six thousand years ago, were the first pair; and that all diversities now existing must find their common source in Noah—less than four thousand three hundred years from the present time." These two are as follows.
1. That man may be traced back on the earth long prior to the alleged Adamic era.
2. That there are diversities traceable as existing among the human race four thousand five hundred years ago as marked as in the present day.
To illustrate the position that man may be traced back to a period long prior to the Adamic era, we refer our readers to the chronology of the late Baron Bunsen, who, while allowing about 22,000 years for man's existence on earth, fixes the following dates, after a patient examination of the Nilotic antiquities:
The assertion of such an antiquity for Egypt is no modern hypothesis. Plato puts language into the mouth of an Egyptian first claiming in that day an antecedent 10,000 years for painting and sculpture in Egypt. This has long been regarded as fabulous because it was contrary to the Hebrew chronology.
If this be the result of the researches into Egyptian archæology, the reader will scarcely be surprised to find me endeavoring from other sources to get corroborative evidence of a still more astonishing character.
There are few who now pretend that the whole creation (?) took place 6,000 years ago, although if it be true that God made all in six days, and man on the sixth, then the universe would only be more ancient than Adam by some five days. To state the age of the earth at 6,000 years is simply preposterous, when we ascertain that it would require about 4,000,000 of years for the formation of the fossiliferous rocks alone, and that 15,000,000 of years have been stated as a moderate estimate for the antiquity of our globe. The deltas of the great rivers afford corroboration to our position as to man's duration. The delta of the Nile, formed by immense quantities of sedimentary matter, which in like manner is still carried down and deposited, has not perceptibly increased during the last 3,000 years. "In the days of the earliest Pharaohs, the delta, as it now exists, was covered with ancient cities and filled with a dense population, whose civilization must have required a period going back far beyond any date that has yet been assigned to the deluge of Noah, or even to the creation of the world."*
From borings which have been made at New Orleans to the depth of 600 feet, from excavations for public works, and from examinations in parts of Louisiana, where the range between high and low water is much greater than it is at New Orleans, no less than ten distinct cypress forests divided from each other by eras of aquatic plants, etc., have been traced, arranged vertically above each other; and from these and other data it is estimated by Dr. Benet Dowler that the age of the delta is at least 158,000 years; and in the excavations above referred to human remains have been found below the further forest level, making it appear that the human race existed in the delta of the Mississippi more than 57,000 years ago.**
It is further urged, by the same competent writer, that human bones discovered on the coast of Brazil near Santas, and on the borders of a lake called Lagoa Santa, by Captain Elliott and Dr. Lund, thoroughly incorporated with a very hard breccia, every one in a fossil state, demonstrate that aboriginal man in America antedates the Mississippi alluvia, and that he can even boast a geological antiquity, because numerous species of animals have become extinct since American humanity's first appearance.***
With reference to the second point, as to the possibility of tracing back the diversities of the Human Race to an antediluvian date, it is simply sufficient to point on the one side to the remains of the American Indian disentombed from the Mississippi forests, and on the other to the Egyptian monuments, tombs, pyramids, and stuccoes, revealing to us Caucasian men, and Negro men, their diversities as marked as in the present day. Sir William Jones, in his day, claimed for Sanscrit literature a vast antiquity, and asserted the existence of the religions of Egypt, Greece, India, and Italy, prior to the Mosaic era. So far as Egypt is concerned the researches of Lepsius, Bunsen, Champollion, Lenormant, Gliddon, and others, have fully verified the position of the learned president of the Asiatic Society.
We have Egyptian statues of the third dynasty, going back far beyond the 4,300 years, which would give the orthodox era of the deluge, and taking us over the 4,500 years fixed by our second proposition. The fourth dynasty is rich in pyramids, tombs, and statues; and, according to Lepsius, this dynasty commenced 3,426 B. C, or about 5,287 years from the present date.
In reading a modern work on the orthodox side,* I have been much pained by the constant assumption that the long chronologists must be in error, because their views do not coincide with orthodox teachings. Orthodox authors treat their heterodox brethren as unworthy of credit, because of their heterodoxy. The writer asserts** that the earliest reference to the Negro tribes is in the era of the 12th dynasty. Supposing for a moment this to be correct, I ask what even then will be the state of the argument? The 12th dynasty, according to Lepsius, ends about 4,000 years ago. The orthodox chronology fixes the deluge about 300 years earlier. Will any sane man argue that there was sufficient lapse of time in three centuries for the development of Caucasian and Negro man from one family?
The fact is that we trace back the various types of man now known, not to one center, not to one country, not to one family, not to one pair, but we trace them to different centers, to distinct countries, to separate families, probably to many pairs. Wherever the conditions for life are found, there are living beings also. The conditions of climate, soil, etc., of Central Africa, differ from those of Europe. The indigenous races of Central Africa differ from those of Europe.
Without pretending, in the present limited essay, to do more than index some of the most prominent features of the case, I yet hope that enough is here stated to interest my readers in the prosecution of future inquiry upon the important question which serves as the title to these pages. I put forward no knowledge from myself, but am ready to listen to the teachings of wiser men; and while I shrink from the ordinary orthodox assertion of Adamic unity of origin, accompanied as it is by threats of pains and penalties if rejected, I am yet ready to receive it, if it can be presented to me associated with facts, and divested of those future hell-fire torments and present societarian persecutions which now form its chief, if not sole, supports.
The rejection of the bible account of the peopling of the world involves also the rejection, as has been already remarked, of the entire scheme of Christianity. According to the orthodox rendering of both New and Old Testament teaching, all men are involved in the curse which followed Adam's sin. But if the account of the Fall be mythical, not historical; if Adam and Eve—supposing them to have ever existed—were preceded on the earth by many nations and empires, what becomes of the doctrine that Jesus came to redeem mankind from a sin committed by one who was not the common father of all humanity?
Reject Adam, and you can not accept Jesus. Refuse to believe Genesis, and you can not give credence to Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and Paul. The Old and New Testaments are so connected together that to dissolve the union is to destroy the system. The account of the Creation and Fall of Man is the foundation-stone of the Christian Church. If this stone be rotten, the superstructure can not be stable. It is therefore most important that those who profess a faith in Christianity should consider facts which so vitally and materially affect the creed they hold.
Gillespie says that "an Atheist propagandist seems a nondescript monster created by Nature in a moment of madness." Despite this opinion, it is as the propagandist of Atheism that I pen the following lines, in the hope that I may succeed in removing some few of the many prejudices which have been created against not only the actual holders of Atheistic opinions, but also against those wrongfully suspected of entertaining such ideas. Men who have been famous for depth of thought, for excellent wit, or great genius, have been recklessly assailed as Atheists by those who lacked the high qualifications against which the spleen of the calumniators was directed. Thus, not only has Voltaire been without ground accused of Atheism, but Bacon, Locke, and Bishop Berkeley himself, have, among others, been denounced by thoughtless or unscrupulous pietists as inclining to Atheism, the ground for the accusation being that they manifested an inclination to improve human thought.
It is too often the fashion with persons of pious reputation to speak in unmeasured language of Atheism as favoring immorality, and of Atheists as men whose conduct is necessarily vicious, and who have adopted atheistic views as a disparate defiance against a Deity justly offended by the badness of their lives. Such persons urge that among the proximate causes of Atheism are vicious training, immoral and profligate companions, licentious living, and the like. Dr. John Pye Smith, in his "Instructions on Christian Theology," goes so far as to declare that "nearly all the Atheists upon record have been men of extremely debauched and vile conduct." Such language from the Christian advocate is not surprising, but there are others who, professing great desire for the spread of Freethought, and with pretensions to rank among acute and liberal thinkers, declare Atheism impracticable, and its teachings cold, barren, and negative. In this brief essay I shall except to each of the above allegations, and shall endeavor to demonstrate that Atheism affords greater possibility for human happiness than any system yet based on Theism, or possible to be founded thereon, and that the lives of true Atheists must be more virtuous, because more human, than those of the believers in Deity, the humanity of the devout believer often finding itself neutralized by a faith with which it is necessarily in constant collision. The devotee piling the faggots at the auto de fe of a heretic, and that heretic his son, might, notwithstanding, be a good father in every respect but this. Heresy, in the eyes of the believer, is highest criminality, and outweighs all claims of family or affection.
Atheism, properly understood, is in nowise a cold, barren negative; it is, on the contrary, a hearty, fruitful affirmation of all truth, and involves the positive assertion and action of highest humanity.
Let Atheism be fairly examined, and neither condemned—its defense unheard—on the ex parte slanders of the professional preachers of fashionable orthodoxy, whose courage is bold enough while the pulpit protects the sermon, but whose valor becomes tempered with discretion when a free platform is afforded and discussion claimed; nor misjudged because it has been the custom to regard Atheism as so unpopular as to render its advocacy impolitic. The best policy against all prejudice is to assert firmly the verity. The Atheist does not say "There is no God," but he says, "I know not what you mean by God: I am without idea of God; the word 'God' is to me a sound conveying no clear or distinct affirmation. I do not deny God, because I can not deny that of which I have no conception, and the conception of which by its affirmer is so imperfect that he is unable to define it to me." If you speak to the Atheist of God as a creator, he answers that the conception of creation is impossible. We are utterly unable to construe it in thought as possible that the complement of existence has been either increased or diminished, much less can we conceive an absolute origination of substance. We can not conceive either, on the one hand, nothing becoming something, or on the other, something becoming nothing. The Theist who speaks of God creating the universe, must either suppose that Deity evolved it out of himself, or that he produced it from nothing. But the Theist can not regard the universe as evolution of Deity, because this would identify Universe and Deity, and be Pantheism rather than Theism. There would be no distinction of substance—in fact, no creation. Nor can the Theist regard the universe as created out of nothing, because Deity is, according to him, necessarily eternal and infinite. His existence being eternal and infinite, precludes the possibility of the conception of vacuum to be filled by the universe if created. No one can even think of any point of existence in extent or duration and say here is the point of separation between the creator and the created. Indeed, it is not possible for the Theist to imagine a beginning to the universe. It is not possible to conceive either an absolute commencement, or an absolute termination of existence; that is, it is impossible to conceive a beginning before which you have a period when the universe has yet to be: or to conceive an end, after which the universe, having been, no longer exists. It is impossible in thought to originate or annihilate the universe. The Atheist affirms that he cognizes to-day effects, that these are at the same time causes and effects—causes to the effects they precede, effects to the causes they follow. Cause is simply everything without which the effect would not result, and with which it must result. Cause is the means to an end, consummating itself in that end. The Theist who argues for creation must assert a point of time, that is, of duration, when the created did not yet exist. At this point of time either something existed or nothing; but something must have existed, for out of nothing nothing can come. Something must have existed, because the point fixed upon is that of the duration of something. This something must have been either finite or infinite; if finite, it could not have been God; and if the something were infinite, then creation was impossible, as it is impossible to add to infinite existence.
If you leave the question of creation and deal with the government of the universe, the difficulties of Theism are by no means lessened. The existence of evil is then a terrible stumbling-block to the Theist. Pain, misery, crime, poverty, confront the advocate of eternal goodness, and challenge with unanswerable potency his declaration of Deity as all-good, all-wise, and all-powerful. Evil is either caused by God, or exists independently; but it can not be caused by God, as in that case he would not be all-good; nor can it exist independently, as in that case he would not be all-powerful. Evil must either have had a beginning, or it must be eternal; but, according to the Theist, it can not be eternal, because God alone is eternal. Nor can it have had a beginning, for if it had it must either have originated in God, or outside of God; but, according to the Theist, it can not have originated in God, for he is all-good, and out of all-goodness evil can not originate; nor can evil have originated outside of God, for, according to the Theist, God is infinite, and it is impossible to go outside of or beyond infinity.
To the Atheist this question of evil assumes an entirely different aspect. He declares that evil is a result, but not a result from God or Devil. He affirms that by conduct founded on knowledge of the laws of existence it is possible to ameliorate and avoid present evil, and, as our knowledge increases, to prevent its future recurrence.
Some declare that the belief in God is necessary as a check to crime. They allege that the Atheist may commit murder, lie, or steal, without fear of any consequences. To try the actual value of this argument, it is not unfair to ask, Do Theists ever steal? If yes, then in each such theft, the belief in God and his power to punish has been inefficient as a preventive of the crime. Do Theists ever lie or murder? If yes, the same remark has farther force—hell-fire failing against the lesser as against the greater crime. The fact is that these who use such an argument overlook a great truth—i.e., that all men seek happiness, though in very diverse fashions. Ignorant and miseducated men often mistake the true path to happiness, and commit crime in the endeavor to obtain it. Atheists hold that by teaching mankind the real road to human happiness, it is possible to keep them from the by-ways of criminality and error. Atheists would teach men to be moral now, not because God offers as an inducement reward by and by, but because in the virtuous act itself immediate good is insured to the doer and the circle surrounding him. Atheism would preserve man from lying, stealing, murdering now, not from fear of an eternal agony after death, but because these crimes make this life itself a course of misery.
While Theism, asserting God as the creator and governor of the universe, hinders and checks man's efforts by declaring God's will to be the sole directing and controlling power, Atheism, by declaring all events to be in accordance with natural laws—that is, happening in certain ascertainable sequences—stimulates man to discover the best conditions of life, and offers him the most powerful inducements to morality. While the Theist provides future happiness for a scoundrel repentant on his death bed, Atheism affirms present and certain happiness for the man who does his best to live here so well as to have little cause for repenting hereafter.
Theism declares that God dispenses health and inflicts disease, and sickness and illness are regarded by the Theist as visitations from an angered Deity, to be borne with meekness and content. Atheism declares that physiological knowledge may preserve us from disease by preventing our infringing the law of health, and that sickness results not as the ordinance of offended Deity, but from ill-ventilated dwellings and workshops, bad and insufficient food, excessive toil, mental suffering, exposure to inclement weather, and the like—all these finding root in poverty, the chief source of crime and disease; that prayers and piety afford no protection against fever, and that if the human being be kept without food he will starve as quickly whether he be Theist or Atheist, theology being no substitute for bread.
When the Theist ventures to affirm that his God is an existence other than and separate from the so-called material universe, and when he invests this separate, hypothetical existence with the several attributes of omniscence, omnipresence, omnipotence, eternity, infinity, immutability, and perfect goodness, then the Atheist, in reply says, "I deny the existence of such a being."
It becomes very important, in order that injustice may not be done to the Theistic argument, that we should have—in lieu of a clear definition, which it seems useless to ask for—the best possible clue to the meaning intended to be conveyed by the word God. If it were not that the word is an arbitrary term, invented for the ignorant, and the notions suggested by which are vague and entirely contingent upon individual fancies, such a clue could be probably most easily and satisfactorily obtained by tracing back the word "God," and ascertaining the sense in which it was used by the uneducated worshipers who have gone before us; collating this with the more modern Theism, qualified as it is by the superior knowledge of to-day. Dupuis says: "The word God appears intended to express the force universal, and eternally active, which endows all nature with motion according to the laws of a constant and admirable harmony; which develops itself in the diverse forms of organized matter, which mingles with all, gives life to all; which seems to be one through all its infinitely varied modifications, and inheres in itself alone."
In the "Bon Sens" of Cure Meslier, it is asked, "Qu'est ce que Dieu?" and the answer is: "It is an abstract word coined to designate the hidden force of Nature, or rather it is a mathematical point having neither length, breadth, nor thickness."
The orthodox fringe of the Theism of to-day is Hebraistic in its origion—that is, it finds its root in the superstition and ignorance of a petty and barbarous people nearly destitute of literature, poor in language, and almost entirely wanting in high conceptions of humanity. It might, as Judaism is the foundation of Christianity, be fairly expected that the ancient Jewish Records would aid us in our search after the meaning to be attached to the word "God." the most prominent words in Hebrew rendered God or Lord in English are [———] Jeue, and [———] Aleim. The first word, Jeue, called by our orthodox Jehovah, is equivalent to "that which exists," and indeed embodies in itself the only possible trinity in unity—i. e. past, present, and future. There is nothing in this Hebrew word to help you to any such definition as is required for the sustenance of modern Theism. The most you can make of it by any stretch of imagination is equivalent to the declaration "I am, I have been, I shall be." The word [——] is hardly ever spoken by religious Jews, who actually in reading substitute for it, Adonai, an entirely different word. Dr. Wall notices the close resemblance in sound between the word Yehowa or Yeue, or Jehovah, and Jove. In fact [————], Jupiter and Jeue, pater, (God the father) present still closer resemblance in sound. Jove is also [——] or [——] or [——], whence the word Deus and our Deity. The Greek mythology, far more ancient than that of the Hebrews, has probably found for Christianity many other and more important features of coincidence than that of a similarly sounding name. The word [——] traced back affords us no help beyond that it identifies Deity with the universe. Plato says that the early Greeks thought that the only Gods were the sun, moon, earth, stars and heaven. The word Aleim, assists us still less in defining the word God, for Parkhurst translates it as a plural noun signifying "the curser," deriving it from the verb to curse. Finding that philology aids us but little, we must endeavor to arrive at the meaning of the word "God" by another rule. It is utterly impossible to fix the period of the rise of Theism among any particular people, but it is, notwithstanding, comparatively easy, if not to trace out the development of Theistic ideas, at any rate to point to their probable course of growth among all peoples.
Keightley, in his "Origin of Mythology," says: "Supposing, for the sake of hypothesis, a race of men in a state of total or partial ignorance of Deity, their belief in many gods may have thus commenced. They saw around them various changes brought about by human agency, and hence they knew the power of intelligence to produce effects. When they beheld other and greater effects, they ascribed them to some unseen being, similar but superior to man." They associated particular events with special unknown beings (gods), to each of whom they ascribed either a peculiarity of power, or a sphere of action not common to other gods. Thus one was god of the sea, anothor god of war, another god of love, another ruled the thunder and lightning; and thus through the various elements of the universe and passions of humankind, so far as they were then known.
This mythology became modified with the advancement of human knowledge. The ability to think has proved itself oppugnant to and destructive of the desire to worship. Science has razed altar after altar heretofore erected to the unknown gods, and pulled down deity after deity from the pedestals on which ignorance and superstition had erected them. The priest who had formerly spoken as the oracle of God lost his sway, just in proportion as the scientific teacher succeeded in impressing mankind with a knowledge of the facts around them. The ignorant who had hitherto listened unquestioning during centuries of abject submission to their spiritual preceptors, at last commenced to search and examine for themselves, and were guided by experience rather than by church doctrine. To-day it is that advancing intellect which challenges the reserve guard of the old armies of superstition, and compels a conflict which humankind, must in the end have great gain by the forced enunciation of the truth.
From the word "God" the Theist derives no argument in his favor; it teaches nothing, defines nothing, demonstrates nothing, explains nothing. The Theist answers that this is no sufficient objection, that there are many words which are in common use to which the same objection applies. Even admitting that this were true, it does not answer the Atheist's objection. Alleging a difficulty on the one side is not a removal of the obstacle already pointed out on the other.
The Theist declares his God to be not only immutable, but also infinitely intelligent, and says: "Matter is either essentially intelligent, or essentially non-intelligent; if matter were essentially intelligent, no matter could be without intelligence; but matter can not be essentially intelligent, because some matter is not intelligent, therefore matter is essentially non-intelligent: but there is intelligence, therefore there must be a cause for the intelligence, independent of matter; this must be an intelligent being—i.e.., God." The Atheist answers, I do not know what is meant, in the mouth of the Atheist, by "matter." "Matter," "substance," "existence," are three words having the same signification in the Atheist's vocabulary. It is not certain that the Theist expresses any very clear idea when he uses the words "matter" and "intelligence." Reason and understanding are sometimes treated as separate faculties, yet it is not unfair to presume that the Theist would include them both under the word intelligence. Perception is the foundation of the intellect. The perceptive faculty, or perceptive faculties, differs or differ in each animal, yet in speaking of matter that Theist uses the word "intelligence" as though the same meaning were to be understood in every case. The recollection of the perceptions is the exercise of a different faculty from the perceptive faculty, and occasionally varies disproportionately; thus an individual may have great perceptive faculties, and very little memory, or the reverse, yet memory, as well as perception, is included in intelligence. So also the faculty of comparing between two or more perceptions; the faculty of judging and the faculty of reflecting—all these are subject to the same remarks, and all these and other faculties are included in the word intelligence. We answer, then, that "God" (whatever that word may mean) can not be intelligent. He can never perceive; the act of perception results in the obtaining a new idea, but if God be omniscient his ideas have been eternally the same. He has either been always and always will be perceiving, or he has never perceived at all. But God can not have been always perceiving, because if he had he would always have been obtaining fresh knowledge, in which case he must have some time had less knowledge than now; that is he would have been less perfect; that is, he would not have been God: he can never recollect or forget, he can never compare, reflect nor judge. There can not be perfect intelligence without understanding; but following Coleridge, "understanding is the faculty of judging according to sense." The faculty of whom? Of some person, judging according to that person's senses? But has "God" senses? Is there anything beyond "God" for "God" to sensate? There can not be perfect intelligence without reason. By reason we mean that faculty or aggregation of faculties which avails itself of past experience to predetermine, more or less accurately, experience in the future, and to affirm truths which sense perceives, experiment verifies, and experience confirms. To God there can be neither past nor future, therefore to him reason is impossible. There can not be perfect intelligence without will, but has God will? If God wills, the will of the all-powerful must be irresistible; the will of the infinite must exclude all other wills.
God can never perceive. Perception and sensation are identical. Every sensation is accompanied by pleasure or pain. But God, if immutable, can neither be pleased nor pained. Every fresh sensation involves a change in mental and perhaps in physical condition. God, if immutable, can not change. Sensation is the source of all ideas, but it is only objects external to the mind which can be sensated. If God be infinite there can be no objects external to him, and therefore sensation must be to him impossible. Yet without perception where is intelligence?
God can not have memory or reason—memory is of the past, reason for the future, but to God immutable there can be no past, no future. The words past, present, and future, imply change; they assert progression of duration. If God be immutable, to him change is impossible. Can you have intelligence destitute of perception, memory, and reason? God can not have the faculty of judgment—judgment implies in the act of judging a conjoining or disjoining of two or more thoughts, but this involves change of mental condition. To God, the immutable, change is impossible. Can you have intelligence, yet no perception, no memory, no reason, no judgment? God can not think. The law of the thinkable is that the thing thought must be separated from the thing which is not thought. To think otherwise would be to think of nothing—to have an impression with no distinguishing mark, would be to have no impression. Yet this separation implies change, and to God, immutable, change is impossible. Can you have intelligence without thought? If the Theist replies to this that he does not mean by infinite intelligence as an attribute of Deity an infinity of the intelligence found in a finite degree of humankind, then he is bound to explain, clearly and distinctly, what other "intelligence" he means, and until this be done the foregoing statements require answer.
The Atheist does not regard "substance" as either essentially intelligent or the reverse. Intelligence is the result of certain conditions of existence. Burnished steel is bright—that is, brightness is the necessity of a certain condition of existence. Alter the condition, and the characteristic of the condition no longer exists. The only essential of substance is its existence. Alter the wording of the Theist's objection. Matter is either essentially bright, or essentially non-bright. If matter were essentially bright, brightness should be the essence of all matter; but matter can not be essentially bright, because some matter is not bright, therefore matter is essentially non-bright; but there is brightness, therefore there must be a cause for this brightness independent of matter; that is, there must be an essentially bright being—i.e., God.
Another Theistic proposition is thus stated: "Every effect must have a cause; the first cause universal must be eternal: ergo, the first cause universal must be God." This is equivalent to saying that "God" is "first cause." But what is to be understood by cause? Defined in the absolute, the word has no real value. "Cause," therefore, cannot be eternal. What can be understood by "first cause?" To us the two words convey no meaning greater than would be conveyed by the phrase "round triangle." Cause and effect are correlative terms—each cause is the effect of some precedent; each effect the cause of its consequent. It is impossible to conceive existence terminated by a primal or initial cause. The "beginning," as it is phrased, of the universe, is not thought out by the Theist, but conceded without thought. To adopt the language of Montaigne, "Men make themselves believe that they believe." The so-called belief in Creation is nothing more than the prostration of the intellect on the threshold of the unknown. We can only cognize the ever-succeeding phenomena of existence as a line in continuous and eternal evolution. This line has to us no beginning; we trace it back into the misty regions of the past but a little way; and however far we may be able to journey, there is still the great beyond Then what is meant by "universal cause?" Spinoza gives the following definition of cause, as used in its absolute signification: "By cause of itself I understand that, the essence of which involves existence, or that, the nature of which can only be considered as existent." That is, Spinoza treats "cause" absolute and "existence" as two words having the same meaning. If his mode of defining the word be contested, then it has no meaning other than its relative signification, of a means to an end. "Every effect must have a cause." Every effect implies the plurality of effects, and necessarily that each effect must be finite; but how is it possible from a finite effect to logically deduce a universal, i.e., infinite, cause?
There are two modes of argument presented by Theists, and by which, separately or combined, they seek to demonstrate the being of a God. These are familiarly known as the arguments a priori and a posteriori.
The a posteriori argument has been popularized in England by Paley, who has ably endeavored to bide the weakness of his demonstration under an abundance of irrelevant illustration. The reasoning of Paley is very deficient in the essential points where it most needed strength. It is utterly impossible to prove by it the eternity or infinity of Deity. As an argument founded on analogy, the design argument, at the best, could only entitle its propounder to infer the existence of a finite cause, or, rather, of a multitude of finite causes. It ought not to be forgotten that the illustrations of the eye, the watch, and the man, even if admitted as instances of design, or, rather, of adaptation, are instances of eyes, watches, and men, designed or adapted out of pre-existing substance, by a being of the same kind of substance, and afford, therefore, no demonstration in favor of a designer, alleged to have actually created substance out of nothing, and also alleged to have created a substance entirely different from himself. The a posteriori argument can never demonstrate infinity for Deity. Arguing from an effect finite in extent, the most it could afford would be a cause sufficient for that effect, such cause being possibly finite in extent and duration. And as the argument does not demonstrate God's infinity, neither can it, for the same reason, make out his omniscience, as it is clearly impossible to logically claim infinite wisdom for a God possibly only finite. God's omnipotence remains unproved for the same reason, and because it is clearly absurd to argue that God exercises power where he may not be. Nor can the a posteriori argument show God's absolute freedom, for, as it does nothing more than seek to prove a finite God, it is quite consistent with the argument that God's existence is limited and controlled in a thousand ways. Nor does this argument show that God always existed; at the best the proof is only that some cause, enough for the effect, existed before it, but there is no evidence that this cause differs from any other causes, which are often as transient as the effect itself. And as it does not demonstrate that God has always existed, neither does it demonstrate that he will always exist, or even that he now exists. It is perfectly in accordance with the arguement, and with the analagy of cause and effect that the effect may remain after the cause has ceased to exist. Nor does the argument from design demonstrate one God. It is quite consistent with this argument that a separate cause existed for each effect, or mark of design, discovered, or that several causes contributed to some or one of such effects. So that if the argument be true, it might result in a multitude of petty deities, limited in knowledge, extent, duration, and power; and, still worse, each one of this multitude of gods may have had a cause which would also be finite in extent and duration, and would require another, and so on, until the design argument loses the reasoner among an innumerable crowd of deities, none of whom can have the attributes claimed for God.
The design argument is defective as an argument from analogy, because it seeks to prove a Creator God who designed, but does not explain whether this God has been eternally designing, which would be absurd; or, if he at some time commenced to design, what then induced him so to commence. It is illogical, for it seeks to prove an immutable Deity by demonstrating a mutation on the part of Deity.
It is unnecessary to deal specially with each of the many writers who have used from different standpoints the a posteriori form of argument in order to prove the existence of Deity. The objections already stated apply to the whole class; and, although probably each illustration used by the theistic advocate is capable of an elucidation entirely at variance with his argument, the main features of objection are the same. The argument a posteriori is a method of proof in which the premises are composed of some position of existing facts, and the conclusion asserts a position antecedent to those facts. The argument is from given effects to their causes. It is one form of this argument which asserts that man has a moral nature, and from this seeks to deduce the existence of a moral governor. This form has the disadvantage that its premises are illusory. In alleging a moral nature for man, the Theist overlooks the fact that the moral nature of man differs somewhat in each individual, differs considerably in each nation, and differs entirely in some peoples. It is dependent on organization and education: these are influenced by climate, food, and mode of life. If the argument from man's nature could demonstrate anything, it would prove a murdering God for the murderer, a lascivious God for the licentious man, a dishonest God for the thief, and so through the various phases of human inclination. The a priori arguments are methods of proof in which the matter of the premises exists in the order of conception antecedently to that of the conclusion. The argument is from cause to effect. Among the prominent Theistic advocates relying upon the a priori argument in England are Dr. Samuel Clarke, the Rev. Moses Lowman, and William Gillespie. As this last gentleman condemns his predecessors for having utterly failed to demonstrate God's existence, and as his own treatise on the "Necessary Existence of God" comes to us certified by the praise of Lord Brougham and the approval of Sir William Hamilton, it is to Mr. William Gillespie that the reader shall be directed.
The propositions are first stated entirely, so that Mr. Gillespie may not complain of misrepresentation:
1. Infinity of extension is necessarily existing.
2. Infinity of extension is necessarily indivisible. Corollary.—Infinity of extension is necessarily immovable.
3. There is necessarily a being of infinity of extension.
4. The being of infinity of extension is necessarily of unity and simplicity.
Sub-proposition.—The material universe is finite in extension.
5. There is necessarily but one being of infinity of expansion.