Bernard Shaw's Remarkable Religion: A Faith That Fits the Facts

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224 Bernard Shaw’s Remarkable Religion universe is really constructed from a single type of building block, it must have characteristics that can give rise to what we understand both of body and mind. Toward the end of their long debate, the Devil chides Don Juan for imagining a Life Force is necessary: “You think, because you have a purpose, Nature must have one,” and Don Juan replies: “I, my friend, am as much a part of Nature as my own finger is a part of me” (Man and Superman 2:684). Don Juan’s answer implies a pertinent question: how can purpose arise in a purposeless universe? Purpose entails desire, consciousness, and choice. If reductionism is true and a single set of rules governs everything in existence, those rules must provide for the three elements of purpose, or purpose cannot exist. Common sense says it must, but if every event in the universe is determined by the mindless, pointless laws of science, there is no room for choice. If my desires do not have the power, through my awareness of the world, to change events, both desire and consciousness are without point. Purpose is an illusion. The issue is clear and momentous. If the mechanists are right, then all religion and morality are delusions. Shaw’s entire philosophy must necessarily collapse: it is a house without a foundation. If Shaw is right, then will has the power to supersede mechanical causation, and the scientific view of the world is profoundly incomplete. If epiphenomenalism is true, and physical events cause mental events but mental events never cause physical ones, then the mechanical causal sequence of physics would be unaffected. True, we would still need new rules to derive the mental from the physical, but the laws of physics would still apply unchanged to the physical world. This is shown in the diagram below, where the sequence of mental events (a, b, c, . . .) is produced by the sequence of physical events (A, B, C, . . .). The sequence of physical events is exactly as it would have been if the mental events never occurred. But if mental events do cause physical events—if my desire for a sandwich and knowledge of the contents of my refrigerator influences subsequent events involving bread, lettuce, and cheese—then something radically different occurs:
The Marriage of Science and Religion 225 Here, mental event “β” produces a series of physical events (γ, δ, . . .) quite different from the one above. Bertrand Russell said that “modern physics . . . reduces matter to a set of events which proceed outward from a centre. If there is something further in the centre itself, we cannot know about it, and it is irrelevant to physics” (Outline 163). That is not quite true. If there is something “inside” that changes the behavior of those events, physics would need new theories to account for such behavior. In any case, we do know something of the “insides” of things: our own minds. We also have reason to believe that it changes things. That suggests that science is incomplete in a fundamental way. Science would correctly, as Russell implies, refrain from speculating about the “insides” of the “centres” that physics concerns itself with so long as such speculation explains nothing about what can be known in a simpler, more economical way. But science does posit theories about things it cannot know directly if those theories can explain observable phenomena. No one has seen a lepton or hadron, but their existence is inferred as an explanation for events that can be seen. If a simpler, more parsimonious theory comes along, they will disappear just as phlogiston disappeared with the advent of the chemical theory of fire. The epiphenominalists might still argue that mental properties that appear to be the causes of our intentional, purposeful behavior are really just “tacked on” to purely physical processes that are as yet not understood, but the burden of proof would be on them to show how that could be possible. To the argument that merely asserting that organisms tend to seek pleasure and avoid pain is an assertion of mental causation that cannot be accounted for physically, the epiphenomenalists could answer that pain and pleasure could simply be “mental” manifestations of physical forces, possibly even physical forces we already understand: we are already familiar with forces that repel and those that attract. But desire acts through the complex of our united conscious awareness, which is an extraordinarily complicated occurrence. It is not enough to be hungry; we must also be able to recognize food and know how to obtain it. It is possible to program a robot to “recognize” images (although it is proving very dif-
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Bernard Shaw’s Remarkable Religio
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Bernard Shaw’s Remarkable Religio
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For Jalma, who made it possible.
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Contents Foreword by R. F. Dietrich
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Foreword “I believe because it is
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Preface Foreword xi The seed of thi
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Preface xiii hope to reach some of
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Introduction Preface xv Here we hav
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Introduction xvii the facts asked i
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o I Foundations of Faith
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Unity 1 A Creed for Living A Faith
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A Creed for Living 5 ticism toward
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A Creed for Living 7 posed to the i
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A Creed for Living 9 ally—at the
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A Creed for Living 11 tions of deat
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A Creed for Living 13 For many the
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A Creed for Living 15 fying faith.
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A Creed for Living 17 We have inesc
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Realism 19 Thus, I blush to add, yo
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Realism 21 evenhanded. Tyndall pres
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Realism 23 no scoundrels. A similar
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Realism 25 sage and confuse and dis
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Realism 27 tific materialism is utt
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Realism 29 of his fellows) is natur
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Realism 31 to be tied down to textb
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Realism 33 as they do not denote an
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Realism 35 women who disparage home
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Realism 37 woven out of words and i
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Consistency 3 The Will and Its Resp
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The Will and Its Responsibilities 4
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II o A Guide to Art and Life
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Dramatic Realism 4 A Playwright’s
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Illusionism Is Not Realism A Playwr
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Contradictions in Scientific Realis
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A Playwright’s Progress 79 view,
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A Playwright’s Progress 81 horror
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A Playwright’s Progress 83 My pla
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A Playwright’s Progress 85 disast
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A Playwright’s Progress 87 Shaw i
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A Playwright’s Progress 89 jectiv
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A Playwright’s Progress 91 suprem
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A Playwright’s Progress 93 certai
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A Playwright’s Progress 95 In cal
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A Playwright’s Progress 97 pishly
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A Playwright’s Progress 99 too
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A Playwright’s Progress 101 woman
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A Playwright’s Progress 103 focus
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A Playwright’s Progress 105 Candi
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A Playwright’s Progress 107 Shaw
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A Playwright’s Progress 109 strug
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A Playwright’s Progress 111 Not t
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A Playwright’s Progress 113 Amiab
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A Playwright’s Progress 115 find
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A Playwright’s Progress 117 sexua
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A Playwright’s Progress 119 culti
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A Playwright’s Progress 121 ing t
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The Organic and the Didactic 5 Majo
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Major Barbara 125 fundamental confl
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Major Barbara 127 picture, but Majo
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Major Barbara 129 acters in a play,
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Major Barbara 131 goes his own way,
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Major Barbara 133 have you ever sav
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Major Barbara 135 gibbet, while Chr
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Major Barbara 137 Moral responsibil
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Major Barbara 139 motto is “Unash
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Major Barbara 141 (this is explicit
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Major Barbara 143 eryone else in th
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Major Barbara 145 which he himself
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Ethics 6 Ethics, Economics, and Gov
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Ethics, Economics, and Government 1
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Page 191 and 192: Ethics, Economics, and Government 1
Page 201 and 202: III o God and Science The Marriage
Page 203 and 204: 7 The Marriage of Science and Relig
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Page 225 and 226: Can Science Be Purged of Materialis
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Page 251 and 252: IV o A Peroration
Page 253 and 254: 8 Catching Up with Shaw Shaw procla
Page 255 and 256: Catching Up with Shaw 237 would pre
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Page 259 and 260: Catching Up with Shaw 241 rialists
Page 261 and 262: Catching Up with Shaw 243 Such goal
Page 263 and 264: Notes Chapter 1. A Creed for Living
Page 265 and 266: Notes 247 difficult to obtain, but
Page 267 and 268: Notes 249 turbing, these attitudes
Page 269 and 270: Works by Shaw Works Cited Notes 251
Page 271 and 272: Works Cited 253 Shaw and Ibsen: Ber
Page 273 and 274: Works Cited 255 ———. Introduc
Page 275 and 276: Works Cited 257 McRory, Desmond J.
Page 277 and 278: Works Cited 259 Weismann, August. E
Page 279 and 280: Aquinas, Thomas, 52 Archer, William
Page 281 and 282: Saussure, Ferdinand de, 74 Schopenh
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