This is where atheism and agnosticism join forces against religion, but first we must
consider the alternatives again. Either you believe that life, reproduction, adaptation
and innovation and all their associated processes came about by chance – a belief that
requires an act of blind, irrational faith – or you believe that they were designed,
which represents an equally blind and irrational faith in a designer. There is no middle
way here. Natural selection came later, after life began and after every adaptation and
mutation. Dawkins states categorically that attributing life to a designer is a “total
abdication of the responsibility to find an explanation” (p. 155), and believes that
through natural selection “we can now safely say that the illusion of design in living
creatures is just that – an illusion” (p. 158). His attribution of the multiple
complexities of life to luck and statistics is clearly a far more satisfying and
"responsible" explanation for him. But if, on the other hand, you opt for a designer,
you open yourself up to all kinds of additional problems, quite apart from Dawkins’
unanswerable (though in relation to our understanding of life on Earth, also irrelevant)
one of who designed him/her/it/them. What is its nature? Why did it create our world?
Where is it now? (I shall use “it” in order to avoid unwanted associations.)
Some religions past (Greek and Roman) and present (especially Hinduism) have
opted for a multiplicity of deities, and some for just one, but the same questions apply.
The answers can, of course, only be speculative, but the advantage of agnosticism is
that the speculation can remain free from all the intellectual paraphernalia that
encumbers the established religions. An agnostic can look at the work of art and draw
conclusions about the artist. An adherent of any religion will tend to start with the
artist. This is why theologians have tied themselves in knots trying to explain the
origin of evil and to reconcile it with their belief that their god is all-powerful, allknowing,
and all-good.
It is always dangerous to assume that a work of art (let us continue the analogy for a
moment or two) reflects the artist directly. Who would have thought that the Ode to
Joy with which Beethoven’s 9th Symphony reaches its triumphant climax was written
by a sad and lonely, relatively old man? Or that the writer of King Lear could also pen
A Midsummer Night’s Dream? But what we can assume is that no artist can create
something totally unknown to him. Even the most fantastic creatures of science
fiction and fairy tales have some features that make them into recognizable living
beings. What, then, do we learn from the world about the possible world-maker?
At this stage, I should like to change the image, or at least extend it. The artist is, or
was, also a scientist. We're not talking here about big bangs or primordial soups, but
we’re not talking about supernatural powers either. For a designer to have created life,
it would have needed the right conditions, so it found the Earth, or maybe it created
the Earth. Once the conditions were right, it set about devising the mechanisms that
eventually led to us. The astonishing variety that has arisen out of those mechanisms
is ample evidence of the designer’s ingenuity; the beauty is evidence of its aesthetic
sense; the love and self-sacrifice (not just human – we shall talk about animals later)
is evidence of its goodness; the chaos, violence, cruelty are evidence of its darker
side. Evil could not have come into being without its knowledge of evil. Man’s sense
of humour, though, is a great comforter, and that too can only have sprung from a
corresponding trait in the designer. Even the most ardent believer in the literal truth of
the Bible can hardly ignore the all-important line in Genesis I: “So God created man
in his own image, in the image of God created he him.” If we are in God’s image,
then he is also in ours, and at a stroke we can do away with all the twists and turns of
casuistry.
That doesn’t mean, however, that the designer is an old man with a white beard. It
may be such, of course, because the mechanism it created, once set in motion, could
have populated the world over time. On the other hand, it may be something as vast as
a planetary system, and capable of holding the Earth in the palm of its hand (or the
unearthly equivalent of its hand). The latter would be helpful if we wanted to explain
some of the cataclysms that have struck the Earth in its history. Once the designer had
decided to take drastic steps to change the physical Earth, it would have had to use
physical means. But instead of using the hand, maybe it could have created tornadoes,
earthquakes, floods – all through science, of course, not mere magic. When scholars
find natural explanations for historical or mythical phenomena, like the parting of the
Red Sea, they are not disproving the interference of the designer. If it wanted to part
the Red Sea, it would have devised a physical method to do so.
The atheist will complain that we are entering the realms of fantasy, but is this any
more fantastic than the idea that inanimate, unconscious matter can become animate,
reproduce itself, and develop new organs by chance? Remember, we are now
considering the alternative to the atheist’s fantasy, and we are speculating. If there
is/was a designer, it will be beyond our comprehension and perception, but it will in
some ways mirror what it designed. So let us talk of microcosms and macrocosms.
Within our own world there are many parallels between cells and the universe,
between individual and society, between the body of man and the body of the Earth –
so perhaps it is the same between us and our designer. Perhaps the cells that
microreflect the body that microreflects society that microreflects the Earth that
microreflects the universe are also a microreflection of the designer. The designer
may even be the universe, which may even be a body, within which the galaxies are
limbs, and our solar system a mere cell.
What we have, then, is the artist/scientist creating the mechanism of life. Now we
must ask why. Why does an artist paint a picture, write a book, compose a symphony?
Why does a scientist invent a machine, devise a technique, conduct experiments?
Why do we sing, play games, gossip? Because that’s what we humans do. And so our
designer did what designers do. That may not seem very helpful, but it sets us off on
an interesting track. Why did it take so long for the design to evolve into human
beings capable of questioning, investigating, even denying the existence of the
designer? Why all the mindless organisms, the monsters, the creatures incapable of
acknowledging it?
We cannot answer these questions, of course, but we can go on speculating. Here
are some ideas: 1) the designer set the whole process in motion and then sat back to
see what would evolve; 2) the designer carried on experimenting (occasionally
destroying whole swathes of its creation, having got fed up with those particular
species); 3) the designer didn’t know what it wanted, but kept fiddling till it got us
(human-centred interpretation); 4) the designer lost interest, gave up and walked
away, leaving the process to look after itself; 5) the designer is still there watching.
These are not meant to be alternatives; they may be phases. But on the analogy of the
designer being in man’s image, we might assume that it gave us and all the other
creatures the freedom to do what we wanted to do, because automata would have been
dull.
Let us not, however, ignore the churches, the mosques, the synagogues. Worship is
central to most religions, and who is to say that the designer doesn’t/didn’t want to be
worshipped? That too would be an understandable analogy: the artist hopes to be
praised for his masterpiece, the scientist for his invention. Since this is natural to man,
why not to his image? But if so, it does seem like an afterthought, bearing in mind the
lateness of our appearance on the planet. It certainly cannot have been the prime
motive, unless the designer simply couldn’t come up with the goods first, second, or
umpteenth time around. Entertainment seems a more likely candidate, with all the
different creatures evolving, surviving, killing, dying, being born.…
Microcosm, macrocosm: we watch the world fall to pieces, and our designer
watches us watching the world fall to pieces. Step by step. Natural disasters: just that.
Part of the unpredictable scenario. We watch gruesome disaster movies for our
entertainment. We are a disaster movie for the designer’s entertainment. But this is not fiction. A conscious being creates situations in which children die in excruciating pain, and their parents must witness their agony, unable to do anything about it. Just
as the theologians tie themselves in knots to explain evil, they fall over backwards to excuse their creator for allowing the guiltless to suffer. When all else fails, they offer
hope of consolation in the next life (of which more anon), but what consolation can there be for a mother who has watched her child screaming in agony before the pain finally ends, cutting short a life that has barely begun? I’m referring to disease, accident, natural catastrophe, and you can extend the range of suffering in any
direction you want. What sort of inventor invents the slaughter of the innocents?
While on the subject, we may as well deal with an extraordinary piece of paininfliction.
Christians believe that Christ died his agonizing death on the cross in order
to redeem them, whatever that means. What sort of father allows his son to suffer
such pain in the first place? And what precisely is the point and process of this
“redemption”? If we are good, we will be rewarded; if we are bad, we will be
punished. So where does Christ’s agony fit in? Couldn’t the designer have
“redeemed” us without Christ’s blood? Of all the verses in the story of Jesus, there is
none so resonant and chilling as Matthew 27, 46: “And about the ninth hour Jesus
cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? That is to say, My God,
my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”
Christians may argue that Christ's suffering is an example to all of us: so long as we
have faith and behave ourselves, we will be rewarded for our pain. It is the same
message as that given in the story of Job (see "Religion"), but why inflict such
suffering? Christ and Job were presumably both "perfect and upright", so they should
have been saved anyway. And I, who am not "perfect and upright", will not be made
so by Christ's crucifixion or by Job's losses, since it is clear that I too must have faith
in God (or Christ, which - mysteriously - amounts to the same thing thanks to the
doctrine of the Holy Trinity) and obey his commandments, or I shall be condemned.
We are told by John, in his first epistle general, that if we walk in God's light, "the
blood of Jesus Christ his [God's] son cleanseth us from all sin." But if I already walk
in God's light, what need is there for Christ's blood? Will I obey the commandments
simply because Christ died an agonizing death? And could I not have had faith in him
anyway without such a death?
The fact is, I am no closer to "redemption" after Christ's death than I was before it.
This is not to deny that he may have been a great teacher, and many of his principles
set out a good moral and social basis for living (most religions do). It is simply a
comment on the senselessness of the sacrifice. The nature of the "Creator" as it
emerges from this story is very much in tune with a haunting line from a Madonna
song: “Only the one that hurts you can make you feel better.” God hurt Job and
Christ, then made them feel better, but that won't help the rest of us, unless we can
live up to their noble standards - and even that is no guarantee of favour.
What about love, then? If we are to follow our parallels, might not the artist love his
own work? Might not the playwright take pity on his characters? Of course he might.
If the great spectator takes a liking to you, why shouldn’t he offer you special terms?
Once you are free from the scientific faith of atheism and the dogma of religion, you
can pick any scenario you like, because they are all equally possible/impossible. If I
cannot discount the possibility of life etc. through random miracles, I most certainly
cannot discount the possibility of a conscious designer taking note of little me and
putting its metaphorical thumb up or down. We may shift the parallel here from the
playwright to the great dictator: if The Father of the Nation likes me, he’ll be nice to
me; if he hates me, he’ll make me suffer. It is not a comforting thought, but it is just
as likely/unlikely as any other of our scenarios.
At the beginning of this chapter, I asked three questions about the possible designer:
What is its nature? Why did it create the world? Where is it now? On the assumption
that the design reflects the designer, I have suggested that it is fair enough to ascribe
all the good and all the bad qualities of life on Earth to the being that created it; this
leads to the possibility that the act of creation was a sort of pastime, maybe for
entertainment; and this in turn brings us to the third question. Is it still watching? But
in order to speculate on that, we need to return to a different aspect of the first
question.