Note 33 — Chapter VI · THE FAILURE OF THEISTIC ARGUMENTS

The very existence of the God of our hearts depends upon the proof of His morality. The argument from moral order seems at first sight a strong one. Morality, even adopting the naturalist’s explanation that it is only a social instinct, can be regarded as the result of a divine spark. Its beneficial influence on the happiness of the individual and the well-being of the race cannot be too strongly insisted upon as a well-ascertained fact. “Virtue is self-rewarding, and vice is self-punishing.”33 But the Rationalist asks: “Why design man’s nature so that he is more likely to go wrong, when he gets the chance, than to go right; and this in despite of the moral or social instinct?” The usual answer of the religionist is that, if we could not do wrong, we should be mere machines. “No doubt,” says the author of Pro Fide, “if God had made us what Mr. Huxley says we are, conscious automata, we should have been incapable of sin; but it is better to be men, with all the glorious possibilities of freedom and virtue, than to be machines, however excellent.” Now, do we allow our children to choose for themselves when we know they will choose wrongly? Do we not guard them against the inglorious possibilities—the slavery of vice? If we fail in our duty to them and they fall, should we add to our guilt by perpetrating on them unimaginable cruelties? Again, do we not prefer the fellowship of the good-natured? Yet these, according to the religionist, are the veriest automata compared with those who have inherited vicious or disagreeable characteristics, and do their best to fight against them. Be this as it may, the fact remains that the less fortunately endowed are seldom able to raise themselves up to the level of the more fortunately endowed—environment may, of course, elevate the one, as it may also degrade the other—and there is no doubt whose society we prefer. Why should it be better for men to be capable of—or, rather, may we not say prone to—sin? Why should their Maker grant them “glorious possibilities” which He has denied to Himself? Why should He alone be a machine that cannot go wrong? Surely there is something amiss in an argument that furnishes such inadequate excuses in order to explain why the Designer gave us natures infinitely inferior to His own.