This is not my work, but rather the words of H.L. Mencken in
1924. The reason I am posting it here is because with satire, Mencken makes a
simple point that should be evident, but is not. Namely, that we should try to
explain things using logic and common sense or not all; and certainly not by
inventing explanations with no basis in any other experience of reality we
have.
But, since humanity seems bent on needing to “know” things
rather than admit uncertainty, we are left with bizarre explanations that are
nothing more than an exercise in fantastical intellectual gymnastics. To wit, people coming
up with nonsensical explanations for the anatomical imperfections of man.
Read Mencken’s own account of this state of affairs below,
and ask why his explanation is less believable than the supposed conventional
rationale? I’d argue that it’s better, even if still non-demonstrable and only
slightly less absurd.
“HINT TO THEOLOGIANS
The argument by design, once the bulwark of Christian
apologetics, is so full of holes that it is no wonder that it has been
abandoned. The more, indeed, the theologian seeks to prove the acumen and
omnipotence of God by His works, the more he is dashed by evidences of divine
incompetence and irresolution. The world is not actually well run; it is very
badly run, and no Huxley was needed to point out the obvious fact. The human
body, magnificently designed in some details, is a frightful botch in other
details; every first-year student of anatomy sees a hundred ways to improve it.
How are we to reconcile this mixture of infinite finesse and clumsy blundering
with the concept of a single omnipotent Designer, to whom all problems are
equally easy? If He could contrive so efficient and durable a machine as the
human hand, then how did He come to make such dreadful botches as the tonsils,
the gall-bladder, the uterus and the prostate gland? If He could perfect the
hip joint and the ear, then why did He boggle the teeth?
Having never encountered a satisfactory—or even a
remotely plausible—answer to such questions, I have had to go to the labor of
devising one myself. It is, at all events, quite simple, and in strict accord
with all the known facts. In brief, it is this: that the theory that the
universe is run by a single God must be abandoned, and that in place of it we
must set up the theory that it is actually run by a board of gods, all of equal
puissance and authority. Once this concept is grasped all the difficulties that
have vexed theologians vanish. Human experience instantly lights up the whole
dark scene. We observe in everyday life what happens when authority is divided,
and great decisions are reached by consultation and compromise. We know that
the effects, at times, particularly when one of the consultants runs away with
the others, are very good, but we also know that they are usually extremely
bad. Such a mixture of good and bad is on display in the cosmos. It presents a
series of brilliant successes in the midst of an infinity of bungling failures.
I contend that my theory is the only one ever put forward
that completely accounts for the clinical picture. Every other theory, facing
such facts as sin, disease and disaster, is forced to admit the supposition
that Omnipotence, after all, may not be omnipotent—a plain absurdity. I need
toy with no such nonsense. I may assume that every god belonging to the council
which rules the universe is infinitely wise and infinitely powerful, and yet
not evade the plain fact that most of the acts of that council are ignorant and
foolish. In truth, my assumption that a council exists is tantamount to an a
priori assumption that its joint acts are ignorant and foolish, for no act of
any conceivable council can be otherwise. Is the human hand perfect, or, at all
events, practicable and praiseworthy? Then I account for it on the ground that
it was designed by some single member of the council—that the business was
handed over to him by inadvertence or as a result of an irreconcilable
difference of opinion. Had more than one member participated actively in its
design it would have been measurably less meritorious than it is, for the
sketch offered by the original designer would have been forced to run a
gauntlet of criticisms and suggestions from all the other councillors, and
human experience teaches us that most of these criticisms and suggestions would
have been inferior to the original idea—that many of them, in fact, would have
had nothing in them save a petty desire to maul and spoil the original idea.
But do I here accuse the high gods of harboring
discreditable human weaknesses? If I do, then my excuse is that it is
impossible to imagine them doing the work universally ascribed to them without
admitting their possession of such weaknesses. One cannot imagine a god spending
weeks and months, and maybe whole geological epochs, laboring over the design
of the human kidney without assuming him to be moved by a powerful impulse to
express himself vividly, to marshal and publish his ideas, to win public credit
among his fellows—in brief, without assuming him to be egoistic. And one cannot
assume him to be egoistic without assuming him to prefer the adoption of his
own ideas to the adoption of any other god’s. I defy anyone to make the
contrary assumption without plunging instantly into clouds of mysticism. Ruling
it out, one comes inevitably to the conclusion that the inept management of the
universe must be ascribed to clashes of egos, i.e., petty revenges and
back-bitings among the gods, for any one of them alone, since we must assume
him to be infinitely wise and infinitely powerful, could run it perfectly. We
suffer from bad stomachs simply because the god who first proposed making a
stomach aroused thereby the ill-nature of those who had not thought of it, and
because they proceeded instantly to wreak that ill-nature upon him by
improving, i.e., botching, his work. Every right-thinking man admires his own
heart, at least until it begins to break down; it seems an admirable machine.
But think how much better it would be if the original design had not been
butchered by a board of rival designers!”
http://epubbookonline.com/b/2892/h-l-mencken/h-l-mencken-on-religion/13
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