Not Guilty: A Defence of the Bottom Dog. Robert Blatchford
of reasoning is that it begs the question. For I do not say that God cannot give to man any power He chooses; but that God is responsible, and man is not responsible, for the nature and the acts of any power by God bestowed.
If man did not invent, nor create himself; if man did not create "the power" bestowed upon him by God; if man did not bestow that power upon himself, how can man be responsible for the power or for its acts?
God not only created man; He created the material of which man was made, and the laws of the universe into which man was introduced.
God is the "First Great Cause": He created all things: the evil and the good. How can God blame man for the effects of which God is the cause?
For the defeat of all Christian apologists it is not necessary for me to add another word; the argument is invincible as it stands. But for the reader's sake it may be as well to deal rather more fully with what may be to him a new and startling idea. Let us then return to Mr. Chesterton's plea.
God is said to give to man a "power": a power which, Mr. Chesterton says, God "made out of Himself." And this power will create thoughts, will create actions as God creates stars.
But we see that man cannot create the thoughts nor cause the actions until God gives him the "power." Then it is the "power" that creates the thoughts or acts. Then it is not man, but the "power" – the power God made out of Himself and bestowed upon man – that creates the thoughts or acts. Then the "power" is a kind of lord or ruler made by God, and put by God over man, as a rider is placed upon a horse, or a pilot on a ship. Then man is no more responsible for the acts or the thoughts of this ruling power than a horse is responsible for the acts of a jockey, or a ship for the acts of a pilot.
In fact, the "power" given by God to man is only another name for the "will of God," or the "power of God"; and if man's acts are ruled, or created, by the will or power of God, how can God justly punish man for those acts?
If God created man as well as this imaginary "power" which God is said to give to man, God is responsible for the acts of both.
It is claimed by others that man is responsible to God for his acts because God gave him "reason," or because God gave him a "conscience," or because God gave him a "will" to choose.
But these words, "conscience," "reason," and "will," are only other names for Mr. Chesterton's imaginary "power."
Let us be careful to keep our thoughts quite clear and unentangled. If we speak of "will," or "power," or "reason," as a thing "given to man," we imply that "will," or "power," is a thing outside of man, and not a part of him.
Having failed to saddle man with responsibility for himself, our opponents would now make him responsible for some "power" outside himself. The simple answer is that man made neither himself nor his powers, and that God made man and the power given to man; therefore God and not man is responsible. Conscience and reason and the "power" are rulers or guides given to man by God. God made these guides or rulers.
These guides must be true guides, or false guides: they must be good or bad.
God is all-knowing, as well as all-powerful. Not only has He power to create at will a true guide or a false guide, but He knows when He creates a guide, and when He bestows that guide upon man, whether it will be a true or a false guide. Therefore, when God created the reason or the conscience and gave it to man, He knew whether the reason or the conscience would guide man right or wrong. If the power made and bestowed by God leads man wrongly, it is leading man as God willed and knew it would lead him. How, then, can God justly blame man for the acts that reason or power "creates"?
God creates a number of good propensities, and a number of evil propensities, packs them up in a bundle and calls them "man." Is the skinful of propensities created and put together by God responsible for the proportion of good and evil powers it comprises?
But then Mr. Chesterton suggests that God puts over the bundle a "power" of control. That power controls man for evil: as God must have known it would. Is the bundle of God's making responsible for the failure of the power God made and sent to manage it? God must have known when He created and put the "power" in control that it would fail.
Tell me now, some wise philosopher, or great divine, or learned logician, which is the man? Is it the good propensities, or the evil propensities, or the power of control? And tell me how can any one or all of these be responsible to the God who invented them, who created them, who joined them together; who made and united them, knowing they would fail?
Here is a grand conception of an "all-wise," "all-powerful," perfectly "just" God, who creates a man whom He knows must do evil, gives him a guide who cannot make him do well, issues commands for him to act as God has made it impossible for him to act, and finally punishes him for failing to do what God knew from the first he was incapable of doing.
And the world is paying millions of money, and bestowing honours and rewards in profusion upon the learned and wise and spiritual leaders who teach it to believe such illogical nonsense as the above.
When we turn from the old idea of instantaneous creation to the new idea of evolution, the theories about "God's mercy" and "God's wrath" are still more impossible and absurd.
For now we are to believe that God, the "First Great Cause," "in the beginning" created not man and beast, and forest and sea, and hill and plain, but "matter," and "force," and "law."
Out of the matter and force God made, working to the law God made, there slowly developed the nebulæ, the suns, the planets.
Out of the same matter and force, changed in form by the working of God's laws, there slowly developed the single-celled jelly-like creature from which, by the working of God's laws, all other forms of life have since evolved.
Out of matter and force, working to God's laws, man has been evolved.
Is there any step in the long march of evolution from the first creation of matter and force to the evolution of man, when the jelly speck, or the polyp, or the fish, or the reptile, or the beast, or the ape, or the man, had power to change, or to assist, or to resist the working of the laws God made?
Is there any step in the long march of evolution, any link in the long chain of cause and effect, when any one of the things or beings evolved by law working on matter and force could by act or will of their own have developed otherwise than as they did?
Is it not plain that man has developed into that which he is by slow evolution of matter and force, through the operation of divine laws over which he had no more control than he now has over the revolution of the suns in their orbits?
How, then, can we believe that man is to blame for being that which he is?
Is there any quality of body or of mind that has not been inevitably evolved in man by the working of God's laws?
You are not going to tell me that I am answerable or blame-able for the nature of matter and force, nor for the operations of God's laws, are you?
You will not suggest that I am responsible for the creation: so long ago, and I so new, so weak, so small!
God, when He created matter and force and law, knew the nature of matter and force, and the power and purpose of law. He knew that they must work as He had made and meant them to work. He knew that we must be as His agents must make us.
Will He punish or reward us, then, for the acts of His agents: the agents He made and controlled? Absurd.
But, it may be urged, "man has a soul." So! He got that soul from God. God made the soul and fixed its powers for good and evil.
It is the soul, then, that is responsible, is it? But the soul did not create itself, and can only act as God has ordained that it shall and must act.
If man is not to blame for his own acts he is not to blame for the acts of his soul; and for the same reason.
"Soul," or "man," "reason," or "conscience," responsibility lies with the causer, and not with the thing caused.
And God is "The First Great Cause," and how then can God justly punish any of His creatures for being as He created them?
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