412 READINGS IN BIOLOGICAL SCIENCE 



pose. If teleologists assert that evil is mixed with the good to make it all 

 better, critics reply that neither the observable suffering nor the coming 

 promise of eternal punishment warrant such optimism. If one has to choose 

 between believing that the world has no purpose and believing that the 

 world has a predominately evil purpose, surely the former would be more 

 desirable. 



Progress. "Progress is possible. And progress means development toward 

 something better or more good, toward some goal or end, toward some 

 purpose. If there were no purpose, there could be no progress. But there 

 is progress, therefore there must be purpose." 



Critics may admit that progress is possible. But so is regress. Life can 

 get better, and life can get worse. "The best laid schemes of mice and men 

 gang aft agley and leave us nought but grief and pain for promised joy." 

 Who can tell whether our present optimism about a more glorious future 

 is justified? In the end all values may be destroyed. In the end there may 

 be an end to both good will and evil. Those who continue to be in torment 

 and anguish say, "Let it come quickly." "Ashes to ashes and dust to dust," 

 and between the two a period of pleasure and pain which while we have 

 it we should enjoy and hope happily, but when it is ended ends all for us. 

 Purpose there may be, but progress and regress do not prove it. 



Cause. "The world was created. If the world has not been created for a 

 purpose, it would not have been created. For to be created or to be caused 

 means to be caused for some reason. If there were no reason for a thing 

 coming into being, it could not come into being. 'Reason for being' is just 

 another name for 'cause.' But 'reason for being' also means 'purpose.' There- 

 fore, to be caused means to be purposed." 



Objection may be raised that the assumption that the world was created 

 is highly dubious. For, it is possible that the world always existed, that it 

 had no beginning, that it has been eternally. Or, if it did not exist eternally 

 then whatever caused it to exist either existed eternally or was caused by 

 something which existed eternally, and so on. Thus, either the premise, "the 

 world was created," is false, and thus the conclusion does not follow, or the 

 difficulties which one seeks to avoid by postulating creation are simply 

 pushed back to that which did the creating. If the latter be granted, that 

 is, that the world was created, then was that which created the world itself 

 created? If not, then it had no creator and thus no reason for being. Thus 

 there would be an uncaused and unpurposed creator of the world. But if 

 so, the creator of the world must, by the same argument, have been created 

 for a purpose; and the creator of this creator either must have been created 

 for a purpose or have existed eternally unpurposed. Thus purpose must 

 have arisen somehow without purpose. And even if there were an endless 

 series of creative purposes, one might still ask, "Was the series as a whole 

 purposed?" 



Definition of "cause" as meaning the same as "reason for being" begs a 



