Deism: Ancient & Modern (1)
Once upon a time it became fashionable to believe that
humans evolved out of non-living materials and inch by painful inch they
moved through protoplasm to organisms to sea creatures to amphibians to
land mammals to full-blown humans. At first scientists rejected the
idea but then (with a little help from stupid and insolent religious
leaders) the notion took off. The theory of evolution—the transmutation
of species—prevailed; but there were those who thought that God somehow
guided the process upward. But as time went by that wasn’t received well
in scientific quarters because there was nothing of a scientific nature
that could prove it. The non-theists insisted that as far as science was concerned there wasn’t a God in sight.
You understand, they weren’t saying there was no God, only
that if there was, there was no scientific reason to believe he was
acting in the evolutionary process. As far as they could tell it was
happening on its own. Scientists had begun to explain that the most
amazing things were nothing more than "the way things worked". They
spoke of "natural laws" and they were able to explain about orbits and
magnetic fields, geological formations and the paths of comets, what
infection was and the astonishing nature of "white" light. The
persuasive power of their explanations increased when they were able to
predict things (how did they know when Haley’s Comet would appear in the
sky?) and they were able to demonstrate other things before your very
eyes. They modestly insisted that they were only uncovering the truth
about how things worked. They were demonstrating that physical reality
included things too small to be seen with the eye but with it all they
were demonstrating that you didn’t need God to sustain or guide the
physical universe. The physical "laws" do quite well without his
supernatural interference. Believers would say, flowers can’t make
themselves and non-theist scientists would reply that that was the only thing they saw. Flowers kept making themselves.
Some very influential religious leaders took that seriously and then
argued that it made perfectly good sense. The universe was like a giant
clock and God was the clockmaker. A good clockmaker doesn’t have to keep
messing with his clock to make it run right—he makes it, steps back and
lets it tick away and it functions perfectly well without him. This
became the view of many leading thinkers and it had real advantages. For
example, your religion and your belief that God exists never came under
threat. No one that owned a splendid grandfather clock expected to wake
in the night to find that the clockmaker had sneaked into the owner’s
house to adjust it. Just so, no one should expect God to sneak into his
clock universe to tinker with it. No need to worry then that we couldn’t
find proofs of his existence in the physical universe. It was all very
simple and satisfying. Well...not quite!
That view of God put a real strain on the notion of prayer.
Exactly how would that work if God does absolutely nothing in the world?
What’s the point of praying if the clockmaker never "interfered" or
adjusted things or related to the praying one?
It certainly put a strain on the notion of "miracles". If God created
the raw material (including its "laws" which are part of raw material)
and had nothing further to do with its operation, then he certainly
didn’t come around tinkering with it, a miracle here, a supernatural
nudge there, or a suspension or transcending of "natural law" elsewhere.
He didn’t do that, so miracles had to go! Ooooh, but what of the
Incarnation, the Virgin Birth, the resurrection, exaltation and coming
again of the Christ? They all had to go!
And what of the Bible? Did God write that through humans? No, that
idea had to go as well because that would be divine interference. And
why not get rid of that notion, it was a troublesome matter anyway. More
than that, given the clockmaker religion, it made good sense that the
doctrine of divine inspiration should be dumped. Look, if man evolved
then his intellect, views, culture, religion and values all must have
evolved with him. The Hebrew-Christian Bible is the product of evolving
humans and we can hardly expect those ancients to speak with the
knowledge of Enlightenment scientists and thinkers. The Bible is
pre-scientific and its religious claims and proposals reflect man’s
general ignorance as well as his growth. So we can't depend on the
Bible. When it tells us of a divinely guided history (say, from the
election of Abraham through Israel’s election and on up to Jesus Christ)
we have to recognise it for what it is—the beliefs of a pre-critical
age that sometimes (not always!) talked nonsense. The cosmic clockmaker
doesn’t do anything in the world so all talk about divinely guided
history or divinely inspired Bibles is just so much ignorance.
And the claims that God produced floods, earthquakes, destroying
winds, droughts and famines are all nonsense. Everyone now knew that God
in his sovereignty (whatever that meant exactly) didn’t do such things.
These were random events, just mindless happenings, they simply happened; no one caused them—least of all God.
Besides, as if more proof were needed, take a look at some of the
claims the Bible makes. God ordered the slaughter of innocent children
and their grandmothers? Who can believe that? What kind of God would
take away a child’s grandmother—its favourite babysitter and playmate?
Who would order the slaughter of witches and homosexuals and adulterers?
What kind of God would claim he was raising up a fierce warrior nation
to slaughter his (allegedly) elect people because they had grown tired
of him and wanted to worship someone else? No, the Bible had to go and
that was that.
For pity’s sake, we have to dump the Bible? Well...that was a hard
pill for most people to swallow but what could they do? They wanted to
hold on to Jesus Christ (or Moses) but there was nothing for it but to
shape him in light of the established truth of religion and science. He
became merely the finest man, a lovely human that cared for the
oppressed and promoted gentleness and self-sacrifice even to the point
of patiently enduring an unjust execution. And, of course, he's still
dead. But his teaching was glorious—he taught us all to be nicer to each
other and he confirmed what every gentle-woman or man knew in his/her
bones was right and good—and knew it without divine revelation.
But as far as the dogmas about him went, well they had to go. His
astonishing claims, his insistence that only through him can the world
have life, that he would judge the world—all that sort of stuff—that’s
what his ignorant disciples claimed. He probably didn't make those
claims; the disciples made them up.
So our clockwork religious leaders took from the Bible what they
approved of and dumped the rest. The Bible wasn’t the judge of their
views, they became the judges of the Bible. Of course they said the
Bible was still the massive and throbbing centre of
everything—especially since it was there that they came across Jesus
Christ.
But when you insist on taking only what you think is worthwhile, people soon recognise who you really think is the massive and throbbing centre of everything.
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