The following text was taken from the religion textbook “Catholic Apologetics”, written by the American priest John Laux, pages 4-10. The book was first published in 1928 and subsequently republished in the 1990s and later. Special formatting from the book was removed.
The cathedral in Kassa (Košice) in Eastern Slovakia, formerly part of Hungary. Image by Maros M r a z, CC-BY-SA 3.0, here
1. We are all familiar with the ideas conveyed by the words order and plan. They are so closely related to each other that we can call them correlative ideas. Wherever there is order, there is plan. For wherever there is an arrangement of means to attain an end, we say that order exists; and the arrangement of means to attain an end is precisely what is meant by the word plan.
Our reason tells us that wherever there is order and plan, an intelligent being has been or is at work.—This is true of the simplest household utensil as well as of the most complicated industrial machinery. And the more complicated the plan, the greater is the intelligence that it supposes, because every effect must have a proportionate cause. The plan exists first in the mind of the artist or the engineer, who then communicates it to, or, we might say, impresses it upon, the raw-material.
This necessary connection between order and plan, between design and designer, is the basis of the teleological argument for the existence of God.
We have only to look around us to see that the universe is full of natural works of art which in beauty, variety, grandeur, and perfection far surpass the highest achievements of human craftsmanship.
From these facts we can draw only one conclusion: the universe is the work of a Supreme Intelligence, a Master-Artist, whom we call God.
2. The facts on which our argument rests are countless. — Every new discovery in the field of the natural sciences—in astronomy, in physics and mechanics, in chemistry and biology, in botany and zoology—furnishes us with new wonders of Divine Workmanship. The laws of nature are nothing but the order existing among things and perceived by the mind of man. Organic nature, above all, reveals itself to us as a vast kingdom in which order and design reign supreme.
3. Space prevents us from entering into details; any work on general science will supply them. But we must say a word in regard to the beauty of the universe, which simply cannot be explained except as the work of an ordering intelligence.
“Beauty is present everywhere in nature. Whether we look at the sky above us, or at the earth below, or at the wide expanse of waters, all manifest it. They display it in all their parts and under all their aspects. It is seen in the smallest flower, no less than in the forest as a whole: in the icebound regions of the pole, and in the sandy deserts, as in the glories of the tropics. Nor is it color alone that is in question. The forms of nature possess the same quality. The outlines of the different kinds of trees, the configuration of their leaves, the varied curves of their branches are as perfect in their way as is the coloring of the flowers. Of the innumerable species of animals which people earth and air and sea there is hardly one which does not arouse our wondering admiration, some by their grace, some, like the lion-and the elephant, by their grandeur. Moreover, the sense of hearing, no less than that of sight, acknowledges the perfection of nature’s handiwork. The song of the birds, the music of the waters, the sound of the breeze among the trees attract and delight us. We recognize beauty as the authentic note of nature in all its works” (Joyce, Principles of Natural Theology, p. 127).
4. The Teleological Argument has been challenged by unbelievers since the days of the Greek philosopher Epicurus and the Latin poet Lucretius. Epicurus (d. 270 B.C.) attributed the order and purpose everywhere observable in the universe to the accidental coming together of atoms; in other words, he made Blind Chance the Designer of the universe. Cicero answered him: “If anyone supposes that this most beautiful and glorious world was made by the accidental coming together of atoms, I do not understand why he should not suppose that the Annals of Ennius might be produced by pouring out on the earth the twenty-one letters of the alphabet in countless profusion.”
The French philosopher Diderot thought that this was possible. He maintained that if a case of type were emptied out a sufficient number of times, the letters might at last so fall as to give the text of the Iliad. Of course such an idea is absurd. Order cannot result from disorder. Where there is order, whether in the Iliad of Homer or in the movements of the heavenly bodies, that order must have a sufficient reason; and blind chance is not such a sufficient reason. The atoms of Epicurus could whirl around in space for billions of years without ever producing an oak tree, much less a human eye or ear or heart.
5. Blind Chance, discredited for centuries by all thinking men as a possible Organizer of the universe, was raised on the throne once more by Charles Darwin and his school. Darwin contended that what we regard as standing proofs of the creative skill of a Supreme Intelligence could be accounted for by the sole operation of physical causes. “Inconceivably long periods of time,”’ “Natural Selection,” “Survival of the Fittest,” “Struggle for Life” were the magic phrases invented to support his theory. According to this theory, nature’s causes operate blindly: “there is not in them any inherent determination guiding them in one direction rather than another.” Thus, we see that Darwinism harks back to the Blind Chance of Epicurus ; and we may add that it is as dead today as the old Greek philosopher’s theory of the “accidental coming together of atoms.” Natural Selection does not explain the origin of species nor the origin of anything else.
“Only a madman,” writes Dr. A. V. Hill, a Nobel prize man in medicine, “would attribute a telephone system purely to laws of chance and the principles of Natural Selection, and only ignorance or fanaticism could attribute a living cell to the same laws of chance and the principles of Natural Selection” (Living Machinery).
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7. Again, it is objected: The prodigality of nature, the constant enormous waste in the vegetable world, the presence of vermin and harmful insects, of disease-carrying flies, mosquitoes, and bacteria, the sufferings of animals and men, seem to argue against the wisdom of the Designer of the universe. This is a favorite argument of the materialists of all times.
We answer: No believer in God maintains that he knows all the purposes of the Creator. As our knowledge of nature’s laws increases we see purpose and design at work where our forefathers looked for them in vain. The so-called defects in the work of the Designer are not due to the imperfect character of His design, but to our imperfect understanding of it.
a) The presence of vermin of every kind must not be judged by the amount of molestation it causes us. That is evidently not its purpose. The sucking organ of the bedbug is a contrivance of marvelous design, just as the human body. The seeds, the life-germs, so prodigally scattered about by nature are not all destined for reproduction, but also to a very large extent for the nourishment of men and animals. The lavish “‘waste” of fern spores buried in the ground ages ago has given us coal, to which so much of our material civilization is due.
b) The existence of pain and suffering in the world is the greatest problem that faces us when we reflect on God and His relation to the world. Let us deal first with the sufferings of animals.
We cannot form any accurate notion of what these sufferings are. We ‘have no means of estimating to what extent animals feel. One thing seems to be certain: the degree of their suffering is very different from our own. “Brutes feel far less than man, because they cannot reflect on what they feel; they have no advertence or direct consciousness of their sufferings. And, hence, as their other feelings, so their feeling of pain is but faint and dull in spite of their outward manifestations of it. It is the intellectual comprehension of pain as a whole, diffused through successive moments, which gives it its special power and keenness, and it is the intellectual soul only, which the brute has not, which is capable of that comprehension” (Newman). Since animals do suffer to some extent, it is detestable to add unnecessarily to their sufferings; but the sentimentalism that treats animal pain as an evil as great as human suffering is unreasonable and ridiculous. Animals do prey on one another, a cat does play with the mouse before devouring it, and the big fishes live on the little fishes ; animal life is, in fact, as the poet says, a record of rapine and slaughter. But is there anything in the nature of the brute animal, as far as we can see, that points to the conclusion that it has any other destiny than to serve as food for other animals or for man?
Death has not the same sting for the animal as for man. The animal lacks that which makes death so dreadful for man—the foreknowledge of it. Someone has well said that a sudden and violent death is better for the animal than a slow death through old age, because there is nothing in the animal nature to make old age either beautiful or desirable.
We sometimes speak of the cruelty of animals. But this is not true. Man is cruel, not the animal. Man often tortures his fellow-man and gloats over his sufferings. Not so the beast or bird of prey; nature has given it weapons and instruments to bring death to its victim quickly and surely.
But why is there pain and suffering at all in the world?
Could not an Almighty Creator have made His creatures immune to pain? We answer by asking another question: Could corporeal beings with bodily organs capable of sensation feel pleasure if they could not feel pain? They could not, unless God worked a perpetual miracle to keep pain away from them—they would have to be sentient at one moment in order to be able to feel pleasure, and not sentient the next moment in order not to feel pain. Since it is clear that the pleasure of animal existence far exceeds the pain, it is not incompatible with God’s wisdom and goodness to permit the one for the sake of the other.
When we come to man, the problem of physical evil assumes larger proportions. Man suffers incalculably more than the lower animals, and physical evil is aggravated and intensified by moral evil, or sin. We must not, however, forget that, in the case of men, suffering is raised into the domain of the spiritual and the moral; in him it loses the transitoriness that characterizes it in the animal kingdom. Pain and suffering are factors that contribute largely to the moral edifice of humanity. Untold blessings spring from sacrifice, and moral good is worth all the sacrifices that can be made for it. Pain becomes a stimulus and a helper. God makes use of physical evil to punish and to refine individuals and nations, as gold is refined by fire. “Sanabiles fecit nationes’—“He made the nations of the earth healable” (Wis. 1,14). What appears to us shortsighted mortals a hindrance and a check is in reality a lever in the hand of God to raise us to unimagined heights of moral goodness. The most glorious revelations of God’s justice and love as well as the most heroic virtues of His creatures presuppose the existence of physical and moral evil, of sin and suffering. The heroism of duty, the overpowering splendor of unselfish deeds, loyalty to God even unto the sacrifice of life itself, in a word, all that is great and noble and lovable in saints and heroes, presupposes the conflict between good and evil. It needed a Nero, and such as he, to call forth the heroic virtue displayed by the martyrs. The worst deed of the Jewish people, the murder of the Messias, resulted in the greatest blessing for mankind.
Si tollis hostem, tollis et pugnam;
Si tollis pugnam, tollis et coronam;
Si tollis libertatem, tollis et dignitatem.
St. Columban.
“Without an adversary there is no conflict, and without a conflict there is no crown; without freedom no honor.”
“We cannot raise the question: How can there be evil if God exists? without raising the second, How can there be good if He exist not?” (Boethius.)
Natural reason can never adequately “justify the ways of God to man”; the existence of physical and moral evil in the world will always remain the greatest of the world’s mysteries. Christianity alone offers a satisfying explanation. “It tells us of the fall of man and its consequences, and of the Redemption through Christ. It tells us of the glorious promise that all nature shall one day be transfigured. It guides struggling and suffering humanity to Him who cast the wood of the cross into the bitter waters of tribulation in order to sweeten them; to Him whose ‘instrument of torture and death is raised up before the world as the sign of salvation from sin, and sorrow, and death”; to Him who showed that “the problems of sin and suffering are really one, for sin can be healed by suffering, and sorrow itself can be turned into joy.”