How Can We Deny God?
by E. II. EDWARDS
IN ITS major premise that man should learn to dispense with the props and crutches of meaningless religious dogmas, W. T. Stace’s argument makes sense. But I should like to know wherein I err in believing that if man has progressed from a jungle ape rooting under stones for his food, then there must — religious fantasies aside—be a rather marked purposefulness in the universe.
How can Mr. Stace be sure that man, having made such amazing progress from rooting ape to his present status, may not, in the course of centuries, advance from his nuclear-physics present to a point where he will have solved the very meaning of life itself? Further to develop my theme, I should think that the astounding fact that scientists foretell with an accuracy of minutes the many-faceted phenomena of the skies — eclipses, comets, and so forth — many years in the future would indicate some purpose to this universe — a physical and a moral purpose, at present unknown to us and entirely independent of man’s puerile attempts to tie this in with his Pandora’s Box of gods and dogmas.
As fast as may be, I wish to rid my mind of its cluttering of cobwebby notions. I hesitate to go the whole hog with Mr. Stace, however. Not through fear, but because, since no proof can be advanced either for or against a directing God, it seems presumptuous to make a forthright denial. I lean to the agnostic view that nothing of heaven is known or ever can be known to mortal man. If I look around me and see all that man has made and I insist he has made it, then I feel equally bound, when faced with that which I know no man could have made, to decide forthrightly that it must have been made by a greater agency. Whence comes the breath of life — called, by most, the soul — and how account for death ?
Because I grant the possibility of a Divine guiding power— while refusing to identify it or to believe that it would ever interfere in the affairs of this earth — I remain uninhibited by problems of religious dogma and prayer and ritual. And, because I grant this possibility of a Supreme Being or Knowledge,
I am enabled to live in harmony with the millions who never will or can destroy their churches. I can attend all churches, understanding their main ambition, though not in hearty agreement with the forms.
It is the search for the ultimate truth that counts. What form men give it matters little to me. Man, in his extremities of pain, whether mental or physical, must and will everlastingly continue to search beyond himself for surcease. It is as sure as the mating instinct and as indestructible. Man handles his problems according to his need. Perhaps he takes them to his wife, or to his parents. A brother or sister may be the answer. The doctor often enough, or the lawyer. But, when all human means fail him; when, in the last desperate analysis, man is certain no human agency can help him, what is there left to him? When a loved one hovers between life and death, few can resign themselves to inaction mentally. Is it a sign of immaturity if men seek beyond mortal means lor solace? It this be true, then why is the instinct as unbreakable as the mating impulse itself? When you defy the logic of one instinct, can you justify the sense of another equally strong? Where do you draw the line?
The reasonable attitude would appear to be to accept, like Mr. Stace, the inevitability of life and its quirks but, instead of adopting the barren philosophy of denying the purposefulness of the universe, take the more moderate view that your God, by whatever name, will not reveal His purpose until that Final Day. In so doing, you throw yourself entirely upon your own resources, expecting nothing, but comfortably supporting your illusion of a Supreme Being, however aloof.
None of the foregoing solves mankind’s greatest problem, which is certainly not the matter of whether or not there is a purposefulness to this universe. Man’s major troubles arise from his desperate attempts to individualize God. If only men would learn that it is not what they think of God that matters, but very definitely what He thinks of them. Being good is such a simple matter, but man, in his devilish perversity, has made the simple art of being good damnably complicated.
In conclusion, which is the better man? The man who is good according to an involved and predetermined religious formula, hoping for a future reward and fearing eternal damnation, or a man who, admitting neither the one nor the other and satisfied to be good, merely for the feeling of well-being it gives him to be so, rests content to take whatever may be his ultimate destiny?