Page Ten 



EVOLUTION 



September, 1928 



How The War On Fundamentalism 



Began 



By Harkv Elmer Barnes 



A MOST striking phase of cultural prog- 

 ress from 1500 to 1800 was the de- 

 velopment of natural science from Coper- 

 nicus to Newton and Lavoisier. This put 

 at man's disposal a vast new knowledge of 

 the physical universe, the nature and 

 processes involved in tlie life of man, 

 and the relationship between man and the 

 other animals. It also emphasized the new 

 scientific or inductive metliod of searching 

 for truth as opposed to the older religious 

 and metaphysical technique. At first this 

 scientific, approach was confined to the 

 physical and biological sciences, but its 

 success there made its ultimate application 

 to man and his social relationships inevita- 

 ble. By undermining the views of man 

 resting upon the religious outlook, it en- 

 couraged the study of man simply as a 

 human being in a secular setting. The 

 discoveries overseas helped this scientific 

 movement by stimulating the spirit of 

 curiosity and by bringing information 

 about the physical universe as observed 

 from new angles, the flora and fauna of 

 the world, new rocks and chemicals, geo- 

 graphic conditions, and. above all. the cus- 

 toms of man in all parts of the planet and 

 in all stages of cultural evolution. 



A group of English Rationalists were 

 the first to utilize this new knowledge for 

 the reconstruction of the prevailing view 

 of the world, God, man and society. Lord 

 Herbert of Cherbury (d. 1648) and Charles 

 Blount (d. 1693) formulated a new, Deistic. 

 religion based upon reason and alleged to 

 have been found in all essential phases 

 among all peoples at all times. This re- 

 ligion rested upon five fundamental tenets; 

 (1) the existence of God; (2) the worship 

 of God; (3) the view that the promotion of 

 better living was the chief end of wor- 

 ship; (4) the contention that better living 

 must be preceded by the repentance of 

 sins; and (5) the belief in a world to 

 come in which man would be dealt with 

 in accordance with his daily life here on 

 earth. It was justified with the assertion 

 that it was universal, while Christianity 

 had been defended upon the contention 

 that it was unique. 



.Alexander Pope in his Universal Prayer 

 11737) developed a conception of the phy- 

 sical universe and of God compatible with 

 the new astronomy and natural science. 

 The petty God of the ancient Hebrews 

 was manifestly not adequate to serve as 

 ruler of the new universe revealed by the 

 astronomers from Copernicus to Newton. 

 God had to be magnified to create a super- 

 natural being suitable to the new cosmic 

 perspective. Further, the Christian notion 

 of God had been one of arbitrariness. 

 God, to the Christian, was functioning 

 vividly only when leading nature to deviate 

 from her normal course in earthquakes, 

 volcanic eruptions, tidal waves, comets and 



the like. Pope and his associates were 

 impressed with the processes revealed by 

 natural science and came to regard God 

 as a law-making and law-abiding God. 

 He was especially manifest in the unend- 

 ing repetitions and orderly behavior of 

 nature. Natural law was identified with 

 divine law, God being regarded as the 

 source of all natural manifestations. 



The Third Earl of Shaftesbury made 

 another contribution to the reconstruction 

 of God. The Hebrew and Christian God 

 was arbitrary, jealous, inconsistent, cruel, 

 revengeful; as Mark Twain remarked, 

 guilty himself of all the sins and crimes 

 for which he punished mankind. The 

 gentle Shaftesbury was repelled by all 

 this. Montaigne had earlier protested 

 against the orthodox slanders of God, hold- 

 ing that God had more majestic and God- 

 like responsibilities than counting the hairs 

 on the head of each individual daily or 

 taking a census of the sparrows at night- 

 fall, and that divine activities were on a 

 divine level and of a divine character. 

 Shaftesbury went further. He held that, 

 while the attributes of God probably far 

 transcended the human imagination, we 

 could at least credit God with the urban- 

 ity and decency possessed by a cultivated 

 English gentleman of the year 1700. He 

 is often described as the first man to dis- 

 cover that God is a gentleman. The net 

 result, then, of Deism and Rationalism 

 was greatly to magnify and dignify the 

 conception of God. Of course, the ortho- 

 dox of that age regarded these writers as 

 atheists. Most of them, however, includ- 

 ing Voltaire, believed in the new Deistic 

 God. 



David Hume suggested that religion be 

 studied in a realistic fashion by psycho- 

 logical methods as one would any other 

 phase of human behavior. Hobbes, Spi- 

 noza and Astruc laid the foundations for 

 biblical criticism. In this way orthodoxy 

 was directly undermined at its very source 

 and indirectly through the accumulation 

 of scientific knowledge that challenged the 

 scientific views embodied in the Bible. 

 Matthew Tindal, Thomas Chubb and Henry 

 St. John Bolingbroke drew a sharp con- 

 trast between "true" and "'historic" Chris- 

 tianity. True Christianity was made up 

 of the teachings of Jesus. Historic Chris- 

 tianity was the religion of the Catholics 

 and Protestants of the seventeenth and 

 eighteenth centuries, bearing only the most 

 remote resemblance to the teachings of 

 Jesus. These Deists accepted true Chris- 

 tianity as a valid religion according to the 

 five basic tests, but rejected historic Chris- 

 tianity. Conyers Middleton, in his Letter 

 from Rome (1729), pointed out the large 

 number of pagan elements in historical 

 Christianity. Gibbon explained the triumph 

 of early Christianity as the result of secu- 



lar historical causes rather than divine 

 intei-vention. Middleton pointed out the 

 unreliability of the Christian Fatbcrs as 

 historians. He showed that tlieirs was a 

 credulous age, given to forgery and mira- 

 cle-mongering, however high the motives 

 of the faithful. Woolston, Middleton and 

 Hume offered withering criticis:r>s of the 

 Christian belief in miracles. Hume's argu- ' 

 ments have probably never been surpassed 

 and may be regarded as the definite refu- 

 tation of miracle-working and its services 

 to the faithful. 



There were also important social impli- 

 cations of these views. Shaftesbury sug- 

 gested that the aesthetic basis of morality 

 was sounder than the theological, rejected 

 the orthodox notion that that was moral 

 which led one safely into the New Jeru- 

 salem, and contended that the true test of 

 the moral act was its contribution to the 

 true and the beautiful. He was a Greek 

 among the Puritans. Pope attacked the 

 conventional Christian tendency to degrade 

 man to a vile entity unworthy of study. 

 The Deists upheld man as the supreme 

 achievement of God's creative ingenuity 

 and contended that to depreciate man was 

 to insult God. 



By thus rehabilitating man in his mun- 

 dane setting, as he had n)t been since 

 Greek days, the Deists aided the rise of 

 the social sciences devoted to the study 

 of man's nature and social relationships. 

 Hitherto only theology had been legarded 

 as significant because only man's sv,ul was 

 important. Inevitably with increasing in- 

 terest in man as man came tno drsire to 

 increase human happiness bj' improving 

 social conditions and eliminating abuses 

 and oppression. Thus secularism immedi- 

 ately suggested reforms in institutions, of 

 no interest to a logical, orthodox. Chris- 

 tian, since he was chiefly concerned with 

 salvation and, in any event, expected ma- 

 terial things to pass away fairly soon. 

 This interest in reform was well expressed 

 by Helvetius. Condorcet and Bentham. 

 The whole Rationalist philosophy was best 

 summarized by Thomas Paine, organizer 

 and expositor of high order, and noble 

 crusader for truth and justice. 



While this Rationalist movement began 

 in England, it soon gained headway on 

 the continent. Voltaire visited England in 

 his earlier years and became the greatest 

 exponent of the philosophy of freedom and 

 enlightenment because of his versatility, 

 courage and zeal. Diderot and the Ency- 

 clopedists first systematized, classified and 

 rendered available to the readiijg public 

 the essentials of the new leaiTiing and 

 new Rationalist philosophy. 



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