Note 40 — Chapter VI · THE FAILURE OF THEISTIC ARGUMENTS

The Determinism of science and the Freewill of metaphysics are essentially antagonistic. Determinism is completely subversive of Christian teaching. It is directly opposed to the Thirty-nine Articles of religion. Not only does it imply that man is not to blame for his actions, but that, if there be a God, He, and He alone, is to blame. Christian theologists are therefore its strenuous opponents. In their apologetic efforts one finds the strangest misconceptions of what is meant in a broad sense by heredity and environment. The best apology I have seen so far is by the Rev. P. N. Waggett, in a tractate called Science and Conduct.40 Father Waggett seems to realise better than most of his fellow-clerics the enormous influence of heredity and environment. Still he comes to the conclusion that “when, under given circumstances,” a man “does what, under those circumstances, and with his given constitution, he usually does not do,” he is exercising “some inward spring.” The fallacy in this argument is the common one. The effect of environment up to the moment of action has not been considered. The obscurity of the expression “given constitution” is doubtless unintentional, but it is none the less misleading. Father Waggett would be the first to admit that something must have occurred meanwhile to account for the new frame of mind. It is for him to show that an alteration in environment is not all that has occurred, and that there is room for this “inward spring.”