I received this on another list serve. I think that this essay shows the
failure of a natural theology. It is unable to deal adequately with issues
of theodicy ("problem of evil"). It is significant, I think that it was
over just this issue that Darwin stumbled.
Keith
>Thoughts of God
>
>by Mark Twain
>from Fables of Man
>Mark Twain Papers Series
>University of California Press
>
>HOW OFTEN we are moved to admit the intelligence exhibited in both
>the designing and the execution of some of His works. Take the fly,
>for instance. The planning of the fly was an application of pure
>intelligence, morals not being concerned. Not one of us could have
>planned the fly, not one of us could have constructed him; and no one
>would have considered it wise to try, except under an assumed name.
>It is believed by some that the fly was introduced to meet a
>long-felt want. In the course of ages, for some reason or other,
>there have been millions of these persons, but out of this vast
>multitude there has not been one who has been willing to explain what
>the want was. At least satisfactorily. A few have explained that
>there was need of a creature to remove disease-breeding garbage; but
>these being then asked to explain what long-felt want the
>disease-breeding garbage was introduced to supply, they have not been
>willing to undertake the contract.
>
>There is much inconsistency concerning the fly. In all the ages he
>has not had a friend, there has never been a person in the earth who
>could have been persuaded to intervene between him and extermination;
>yet billions of persons have excused the Hand that made him -- and
>this without a blush. Would they have excused a Man in the same
>circumstances, a man positively known to have invented the fly? On
>the contrary. For the credit of the race let us believe it would have
>been all day with that man. Would persons consider it just to
>reprobate in a child, with its undeveloped morals, a scandal which
>they would overlook in the Pope?
>
>When we reflect that the fly was as not invented for pastime, but in
>the way of business; that he was not flung off in a heedless moment
>and with no object in view but to pass the time, but was the fruit of
>long and pains-taking labor and calculation, and with a definite and
>far-reaching, purpose in view; that his character and conduct were
>planned out with cold deliberation, that his career was foreseen and
>fore-ordered, and that there was no want which he could supply, we
>are hopelessly puzzled, we cannot understand the moral lapse that was
>able to render possible the conceiving and the consummation of this
>squalid and malevolent creature.
>
>Let us try to think the unthinkable: let us try to imagine a Man of a
>sort willing to invent the fly; that is to say, a man destitute of
>feeling; a man willing to wantonly torture and harass and persecute
>myriads of creatures who had never done him any harm and could not if
>they wanted to, and -- the majority of them -- poor dumb things not
>even aware of his existence. In a word, let us try to imagine a man
>with so singular and so lumbering a code of morals as this: that it
>is fair and right to send afflictions upon the just -- upon the
>unoffending as well as upon the offending, without discrimination.
>
>If we can imagine such a man, that is the man that could invent the
>fly, and send him out on his mission and furnish him his orders:
>"Depart into the uttermost corners of the earth, and diligently do
>your appointed work. Persecute the sick child; settle upon its eyes,
>its face, its hands, and gnaw and pester and sting; worry and fret
>and madden the worn and tired mother who watches by the child, and
>who humbly prays for mercy and relief with the pathetic faith of the
>deceived and the unteachable. Settle upon the soldier's festering
>wounds in field and hospital and drive him frantic while he also
>prays, and betweentimes curses, with none to listen but you, Fly, who
>get all the petting and all the protection, without even praying for
>it. Harry and persecute the forlorn and forsaken wretch who is
>perishing of the plague, and in his terror and despair praying; bite,
>sting, feed upon his ulcers, dabble your feet in his rotten blood,
>gum them thick with plague-germs -- feet cunningly designed and
>perfected for this function ages ago in the beginning -- carry this
>freight to a hundred tables, among the just and the unjust. the high
>and the low, and walk over the food and gaum it with filth and death.
>Visit all; allow no man peace till he get it in the grave; visit and
>afflict the hard-worked and unoffending horse, mule, ox, ass, pester
>the patient cow, and all the kindly animals that labor without fair
>reward here and perish without hope of it hereafter; spare no
>creature, wild or tame; but wheresoever you find one, make his life a
>misery, treat him as the innocent deserve; and so please Me and
>increase My glory Who made the fly.
>
>We hear much about His patience and forbearance and long-suffering;
>we hear nothing about our own, which much exceeds it. We hear much
>about His mercy and kindness and goodness -- in words -- the words of
>His Book and of His pulpit -- and the meek multitude is content with
>this evidence, such as it is, seeking no further; but whoso searcheth
>after a concreted sample of it will in time acquire fatigue. There
>being no instances of it. For what are gilded as mercies are not in
>any recorded case more than mere common justices, and due -- due
>without thanks or compliment. To rescue without personal risk a
>cripple from a burning house is not a mercy, it is a mere commonplace
>duty; anybody would do it that could. And not by proxy, either --
>delegating the work but confiscating the credit for it. If men
>neglected "God's poor" and "God's stricken and helpless ones" as He
>does, what would become of them? The answer is to be found in those
>dark lands where man follows His example and turns his indifferent
>back upon them: they get no help at all; they cry, and plead and pray
>in vain, they linger and suffer, and miserably die. If you will look
>at the matter rationally and without prejudice, the proper place to
>hunt for the facts of His mercy, is not where man does the mercies
>and He collects the praise, but in those regions where He has the
>field to Himself.
>
>It is plain that there is one moral law for heaven and another for
>the earth. The pulpit assures us that wherever we see suffering and
>sorrow which we can relieve and do not do it, we sin, heavily. There
>was never yet a case of suffering or sorrow which God could not
>relieve. Does He sin, then? If He is the Source of Morals He does --
>certainly nothing can be plainer than that, you will admit. Surely
>the Source of law cannot violate law and stand unsmirched; surely the
>judge upon the bench cannot forbid crime and then revel in it himself
>unreproached. Nevertheless we have this curious spectacle: daily the
>trained parrot in the pulpit gravely delivers himself of these
>ironies, which he has acquired at second-hand and adopted without
>examination, to a trained congregation which accepts them without
>examination, and neither the speaker nor the hearer laughs at
>himself. It does seem as if we ought to be humble when we are at a
>bench-show, and not put on airs of intellectual superiority there.
Keith B. Miller
Department of Geology
Kansas State University
Manhattan, KS 66506
kbmill@ksu.edu
http://www-personal.ksu.edu/~kbmill/
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