Evolution Implies Atheism

WHAT a book a devil's chaplain might write on the clumsy, wasteful, blundering, low, and horribly cruel, works of nature.
-- Charles Darwin

MAN, the highest form of evolutionary development is contesting his very existence against a world of deadly bacteria. Evolution produced the microbe as well as man. What intelligence is there in that? Would the reader use his intelligence to produce the cholera germ? And would he employ it to the point of turning out these filthy germs by the trillions?

Man plans. He would not, if he wished to make a human head, consume millions of years experimenting on the skulls of fishes. But that is how evolution works. Dr. W.K. Gregory of the American Museum of Natural History traces the evolution of the human face "from fish to man." It is a long drawn out, round-about process that no intelligent being would adopt. Time means nothing in evolution -- nor the result. There are, in the United States alone, a quarter of a million insane persons in public and private institutions. That is mental evolution after untold ages of cosmic evolution. Any man, if he had his way, could do better than that. Surely he would not, to demonstrate his goodness and wisdom, work overtime on infantile paralysis germs. Only forces blind to immediate and ultimate results could evolve such beings. Evolution means Atheism.

And man -- what of his evolution? Geologic ages spent in trees! An anthropoid ape walking on all fours, with ape brain and ape behavior and time as nothing in the long-drawn stretch of human evolution!

Human intelligence makes oxcarts before it makes automobiles, but it does not keep on making oxcarts after it has learned to make automobiles. Evolution is still busy turning out apes and billions of creatures far less lovely than the apes -- and doesn't know why. Priests in pulpits and monkeys in tree-tops still chatter nonsense after billions of years of evolution. No wonder Winwood Reade calls man's historic struggle upward "the martyrdom of man".

Piously-minded scientists who assure us that there is no conflict between religion and science are talking foolishness. If man is descended from an ape, he is not descended from Adam. There never was a first man any more than there was a first horse, a first cow, or a first stringbean. By slow stages our present forms of life have evolved from lower forms. Every biologist is aware than man's ancestry goes back to primitive apes and fishes. He was not made after the manner of the Bible fairy-tale. The cultured Chinese gentleman of today knows he is not descended from an original pair of Jewish parents.

Man did not come into the world ready-made; and his ancestral line must extend back by necessity to the lowest and most simple form of life. There can be no break in evolution, even in thought. It is impossible to imagine a point in man's evolution where one can say: "Man started here." The stages through which he passed have been long and varied and his own identity as a human individual must be imperceptibly blended in the ape form from which he emerged. As is scientifically known, man needlessly repeats in his embryonic development the successive stages of his animal descent. Sire Arthur Keith very forcibly remarks: 'What should we think of a builder who in the erection of a palace insisted on 'recapitulating' all the evolutionary stages which lie between a hut and a palace? A Builder behind evolution would be a stupid anarchist.

If mind is the highest development of life, and reason the highest expression of mind, there is little to be proud of. The substantial thinking of the world is done by less than one per cent of the population. Man, is spite of education, in spite of opportunities, in spite of progress, is chained to the past. The human brain is still dominated by the impressions of the cave and the jungle.

Most of us, mentally, are still living in the trees, even if we do walk upright. Beneath the veneer of "civilization," there is a solid, sordid mass of primitive psychology. We continue, in the name of justice, to break necks on the gallows and to fight like wolves. We settle our international differences by the methods of the gangster. That's evolution, with all its backward-dragging, disgusting hangovers from primitive culture. There are vestigial thoughts as well as vestigial organs. Man shares them all, because there is no supervising "intelligence" to eradicate them. Evolution spells Atheism -- a godless universe.

Evolution knows no moral feeling. The earth is a gory battle ground, where the weakest animals go to the wall in a pitiless struggle of tooth and claw. Evolution, century after century, repeats its own follies, by bringing into existence billions of the lowest types of life when it might produce only the highest; continues the production of useless and harmful organs; turns out beings, some of which live for only a day or an hour, or sometimes for only a few seconds. It is a ruthless, blundering, non-moral process, without a glimmer of guidance behind it.

"We must get rid of the great moral governor, or head director. He is a fiction of our brains." So wrote the American naturalist, John Burroughs. He had studied close to nature and knew there is no Kindly Eye, no Heavenly Father, back of the universe. "All the forces of nature are going their own way; man avails himself of them, or catches a ride as best he can. If he keeps his seat, he prospers; if he misses his hold and falls he is crushed."

There is not a third-rate intelligence on earth that could not, after ten minutes' contemplation, devise a better scheme of things. Man's life is largely consumed in improving his surroundings and adjusting the blunders of nature. Daily, hourly, he must employ his wits to untangle the snares of unthinking nature. It would take an intelligence below the level of a moron to carry on evolutionary processes as commonly observed. It has taken evolution, unguided by intelligence, countless ages to develop the simple, unattractive flower known as the wild rose. Evolution, with man's intelligence behind it, has, in a relatively short period of time, changed this simple flower, by artificial selection, into the glorious, multi-petalled American Beauty. That was intelligence behind evolution. Man has not only produced new species of flowers from wayside weeds, but given scent to odorless lilies and eliminated the thorns from raspberry and blackberry bushes. He has been able to evolve a spineless cactus, which, breeding true, now furnishes the desert with food for cattle. He has, by applying his intelligence to evolution, done in a short period of time that which evolution might have accomplished only after millions of years - or never at all. He has speeded up those processes which, under natural evolution, drag along hopelessly or reach an ultimate utility only after thousands of failures and unfavorable adaptations.

To be sure, there are countless facts in nature which imply Atheism independent of evolution and regardless of whether one creature or structure has evolved from another. The "cruelty" of the cat, the spider, or the tiger would be just as "cruel" -- and would imply Atheism -- even if these creatures had always been exactly what they are now. But there are other fats based upon an understanding of evolution that supplement ordinary observation of natural phenomena. Without the slightest knowledge of evolution, one might wonder at the ease and rapidity with which our "Heavenly Father," by means of an earthquake in Lisbon, wiped out 60,000 of his children in six minutes; but when this same Intelligence, in a burst of infinite wisdom, takes 3,000,000 years to change a four-toed extremity into a hoof (as in the evolution of the horse's foot) we are led to marvel, not so much at the Deity's stupidity as at the asininity of the pious dolts who teach the existence of a god.

The God idea cannot be reconciled with our knowledge of evolution. Belief in a Ghost directing the universe must be discarded along with the belief in witchcraft, the sanctity of the snake-dance, and the rituals of voodooism.

Atheism of Astronomy: A Reply to Critics

SINCE "The Atheism of Astronomy" was published many letters of comment and criticism have reached the Truth Seeker. Some of these were printed in the paper, and I am extremely grateful to Editor Smith, as well as to the various contributions who have helped to widen the scope of the discussion.

Some of the letters which have reached me privately express a deep interest in the subject of astronomy. Some are very illuminating on the behavior patterns of mankind--and some very religious. One, from an exotic female, I am told, can only be construed as a burning love letter, proposing that I accept Jesus, through her. I had no idea that a simple work of mine, defending "gross'' materialism and a godless universe, should have caused such a "spiritual" awakening and religious fervor in one of my readers. Others, as pathetic as this, seem more interested in the salvation of my soul than the facts I discussed. Still another, hopeless of my future, has already consigned me to regions close to the core of the earth. Communications like these have been conveniently filed in the wastebasket for future consideration.

Rabbi Ahron Opher, of the Hebrew Tabernacle, Washington Heights, New York City, who wrote me concerning "The Atheism of Astronomy," calls attention to the theories of "Keppler," "Genes," and "Ettington" as likely to refute its arguments. The way these learned doctors of Judaism toss the names of scientific men about. (and misspell them) is enough to make a freshman groan.

Rabbis of today get their wisdom from the ancient Jews, whose knowledge of the world was below that of the not very over-bright Egyptians. Says the historian Buckle: "Science properly so called, the Egyptians had none; and as to their wisdom, it was considerable enough to distinguish them from the barbarous nations like the old Hebrews, but it was inferior to that of the Greeks, and it was of course immeasurably below that of modern Europe."

Kosher knowledge today is canned ignorance from the past.

I propose here to consider some of the more recent issues raised by several of my critics. Among these is the question as to whether or not there are likely to be other worlds inhabited like the earth.

One writer argues that since millions of stars can be seen merely as tiny points of light, there may be planets, unseen through the telescope, circling about them. He is entitled to his "may". We know enough, however, of our planets close at hand, the peculiarity of their origin, and their requirements for the sustentation of life, to accept a conclusion other than that planetary existence is a minor occurrence, and that life, as we know it here, is as nothing at all in the stellar depths. Those who believe in a "well-populated" universe will have to "populate" billions upon billions of "white hot" stars.

Some find it difficult to believe that life is a rare occurrence in the universe and that the earth is probably the only inhabited planet of our system. It is their contention that such a "unique" situation is counter to the "expectancy" one would look for among so many worlds. They seem to think that physical and chemical forces, operative everywhere, must necessarily bring into existence things very much alike through to the universe, and that we should always find duplications. This is definitely not so.

One does not have to look far into space to confirm this. Nature can be as sparing and restricted in some of its activities as lavish in others. There are many "rare" occurences in nature. Such as the evolution of a Darwin or a Shakespeare out of so much human scum. Since our earth began there has been only one age of Reptiles. The dinosaur was "unique" among all forms of life. Among the multitudinous species of plants and flowers, "Dionaea muscipula," a distinctive type, is found only in one tiny corner of the globe. The kangaroo is a native of Australia -- and nowhere else.

The manatee is restricted to a few tropical waters, the gorilla to small areas in Africa. The rarity of planets and the scarcity of life in space are in no way startling to one who takes a long range view of things. It is a view which is definitely warranted by the findings of astronomy, which show that what happens at one point in space does not have to be duplicated elsewhere. The sun is an exceptional star, and its planets are an exceptional "birth."

As to the question, Whence comes intelligence?, it will be found answered in any good text-book on organic evolution. Intelligence, both in the race and in the individual, gradually develops with the brain and the nervous system. It is a physiological activity which manifests itself in a large part of the biological world, including man. It is not a mysterious subject at all, except to those who like to indulge in a "tyranny of words." And it is readily comprehensible, I believe, to any individual who is not too deeply absorbed in contemplating Plymouth Rock and in asking why, if matter really thinks, rocks cannot "acquire knowledge?

Psychology, true to its ancient heritage, is still dominated by a vast amount of Hottentot ignorance. Psychologists of the mystic school still talk of the mind as a ghost. What cannot be picked up and weighed on a butcher's scale must be a "spirit". They cannot seem to grasp that a motion of matter in the skull, or a vibration in the nerveganglia of the brain cannot be taken out of one's head and tossed on scales. They are as obsessed with a belief in spirit possession as the "benighted" savage, who, seeing a watch for the first time, concludes there is a ghost inside. The savage sees a "spirit" in the watch case, the mystic sees a "spirit" in his head.

The spirit mongers can no more comprehend the mechanistic character of the brain and its material functioning than they can comprehend the implications of materialism in their broader aspects. Life, they think, must be a dreary, meaningless affair without a recognition of "spirit." Being muddled on the one hand, they are sure to be muddled on the other. They are as quickly disturbed over a godless universe as a ghostless brain.

One critic marvels how a materialist, facing the "dismal" picture I have drawn, should "so shuffle the faculties of his mind" as to preserve his "poise" and "equanimity." I have seen, perhaps, a fair share of the grim side of life. But I see no reason why any man, unless his nerves are shattered or he faces some unbearable afffiction, should jump off a dock or turn on the gas. No one need become panic stricken merely because there is no paternal intelligence in the sky. Life can be made an interesting adventure in solving human problems and mastering the art of living. That art consists, in part, of cultivating one's intelligence and helping others to rise from the slough of ignorance and superstition.

If any one should be dejected and disheartened by the evils of the world, it is he who, having accepted belief in a guiding "intelligence," is compelled to witness the cruel behavior and callous indifference of his "Heavenly Father." It is the Christian who, praying to be relieved from an excruciating cancer, gets nothing in return but a celestial slap in the face, who should feel his despondency most. It is the theist, not the atheist, who should be tempted to slit his own throat. That is something our pedagogical theists and blackboard "psychologists" will never understand.

Certainly nothing I have put into words could offer a more "melancholy" picture of things as they are than that presented in the mass hysteria caused by our recent "invasion" by monsters from Mars. The radio broadcasters simply over-estimated, as I have done myself too often, the average intelligence of the race. It was the "spiritually-minded," who are said to derive "poise" and "equanimity" from their convictions, who were most easily demoralized, and who fled to their churches like flocks of frightened geese. If had they known more about Mars and less about "spiritual" matters, they would have probably enjoyed the radio entertainment.

Those who talk of: the dreariness and drabness of existence for the materialist, deceive themselves. Such jargon as that we must search for understanding in the depths of infinite reality" belongs to the age of priests. The materialist can be, and generally is, the highest cultivator of the finer things of life. He is better able to appreciate the cultural and esthetic values of life precisely because his eyes are open and he can think more clearly. In the fine arts and, in science, in music and drama, he generally excels. Lucretius, the greatest of didactic poets, was a materialist. So, too, was Holbach, whose home, indeed, was "one of the chief social centers of culture in Europe." Haeckel, who believed in neither God nor immortality, was an artist of high rank, whose hundreds of drawings of marine life in color would have made him famous independent of his accomplishments in the biological field. Buchner, whose "Force and Matter" rocked the religious world took time off from scientific pursuits to write exquisite verse. Vogt so lived that he, was "a brilliant man, of exceptional culture" whose "standard of conduct was rigorous'' and "humanitarian zeal intense." It was the teaching of Diderot, says Bury, "that man's energies should be devoted to making the earth pleasant." Girard, the philanthropist, put this into practice by founding a university and giving away millions to the poor. In brief, the zest for life and the cultivation of character will not be dulled because, of the discovery that there is no one in the clouds interested in our welfare.

Those who look for a moral crack-up under materialism, or for an era of gloom, should turn again to the pages of history. Under "spiritual" influences men became morbid, sour, and cruel. And it was precisely the most "spiritual" ages which contributed most to the destruction of man's happiness. Buckle, writing of the Scotch Kirk and its influence, says:
"Cheerfulness, especially when it rose to laughter, was to be guarded against. . . . Smiling, provided it stopped short of laughter, might occasionally be allowed; still, being a carnal pastime, it was a sin to smile on Sunday. Even on weekdays, those who were most imbued with religious principles hardly ever smiled, but sighed, groaned and wept.... A Christian had no business with love or sympathy. He had his own soul to attend to, and that was enough for him. Let him look to himself. On Sunday, in particular, he must never think of benefiting others and the Scotch clergy did not hesitate to teach the people that on that day it was sinful to save a vessel in distress, and that it was a proof of religion to leave ship and crew to perish."

Of what significance, therefore, are fulminations against materialism? The plea that we acknowledge a "spirit" within and accept an "intelligence" in the clouds is Sunday school prattle. Man has progressed morally, and grown culturally, in proportion as he has abandoned these ideas. The closer we stick to matter the more we understand the workings of the universe. Culture has been advanced by ditching the ghosts.

What has "spirituality" to offer? The age of "spirituality" and ghost worship marks the most degrading and bloody period of man's existence. Those who sought culture in the "depths of infinite reality" by glorifying "spirit" and degrading matter usually ended up by burning one another at the stake. It was a sordid age, when pious scoundrelism prevailed and fanaticism ran amuck. No tragedy has equaled the dark ages of religion, when "spirituality" triumphed and materialism was crushed.

These things will never come again if men learn to think.

Muddlers of Science

MR. BREWSTER will have to be more precise as to what part of the "new physics" he accepts and what part he rejects, before we can determine just what our discussion is about. As pointed out in my previous paper, there are large slices of the "new physics" that are not science at all. "Matterless energy" is one, the "annihilation of matter" is another. These are not scientific doctrines, but hopeless fictions. I should like to know just how Mr. Brewster stands on these two phrases.

There is nothing wrong, of course, with the science of physics itself. Our knowledge of the workings of matter is more solidly grounded today than ever before. And it is materialistic throughout. The fault lies in the teachings of a mystical clique in science, whose occultism and visionary ideas are brandished about as a legitimate part of "modern physics."

"Science now knows," says Mr. Brewster, "... that there are quite common forms of energy that are completely dissociated from any sort of matter, forms which, in theory at least, once created, may last a million years completely out of contact with any material thing.' Permit me to state that "science" knows nothing of the sort. Some of our dream-world physicists have talked about such an "energy," just as some of them have talked about "haunted houses," ghostly visitations, and table levitations, but the laboratory worker has discovered no such animal. In dealing with "energy," he knows of it only in terms of the material, or as an activity of matter. All "energy" is found, handled, and tabulated under the materialistic label.

As for Mr. Brewster's contention that matter "may be absolutely wiped out, cease to be matter of any sort, disappear completely from the universe," this occurs only in books. Such "matter" as this is wholly unknown in any physical laboratory. It is quite as fictitious as Mrs. Guppy's flight.

Mr. Brewster's remark that materialism is a system that "explains everything in terms of something that nobody knows anything about" would be an effective reply if true. While we have no "direct experience" of electrons and protons as we have of marbles or apples, and know nothing of what they "are really like" in appearance, they are not so ghostly nor even as invisible as mystics believe. We can trace their tracks on photographic plates. That is more than can be said for the "matterless energy" and ''spiritualized universe" of the Munchausen school. And, essentially important, they are material particles, the proton weighing the eleven-octillionth of an ounce and the electron having a mass about 1/1800 of that of a proton. Here is a material "atom," something that does not belong in a metaphysical world.

Where stands materialism in the light of the "indeterminable" electron? asks Mr. Brewster. Precisely where it stood before, when the electron was unknown. It still stands as the doctrine that all that is, is matter in motion. And the intricacies and complexities of "motions" far down in the atom do not in any way disturb our predictions as to what matter will do under given circumstances. We can still "predict" larger mass movements with certainty.

Every chemical formula is based on definite knowledge of what matter will do. The chemist who compounds nitro-glycerin knows exactly how it will act. The astronomer who predicts an eclipse of the sun or the return of a comet knows how matter will move. The biologist can foretell just what will occur under the Mendelian raw. We know precisely what water will do when brought to the boiling point, it will change into steam. We can predict, in a hundred thousand ways, how groups of protons and electrons will behave. We can send messages and music through the air; Mr. Brewster can talk to me through a copper wire extending from Andover to New York, or even without any wire at all. I myself have addressed "over the air" thousands of listeners I have never seen. And all this was "predictable" independent of the "unpredictable" movement of protons and electrons far down in the atom.

Physics and materialism are essentially the same: each deals with matter in motion. "Without matter there can be no motion, no movement, no phenomena, no "energy" no radiation, no anything -- not even a Mr. Brewster. Or does Mr. Brewster' think otherwise ? If he does, he is eligible for membership in the Old Order of Oriental Occultists.

When our mystical physicists can walk into a non-material laboratory, experiment with matterless apparatus, and convert some nothing into something and something into nothing, it will be time enough to celebrate the collapse of materialism. Every laboratory experiment involves a handling of matter. And that matter, in all its diversified activities, is as much with us today as it ever was.

And the activities of this matter, expressed in terms of "energy", are with us also. "Energy" loses nothing of itself or of its indestructible character through its manifold transformations. "All the life of the universe," writes Jeans, 1 "may be regarded as manifestations of energy masquerading in various forms, and all the changes in the universe as energy running about from one of these forms to the other, but always without altering its total amount. Such is the great law of conservation of energy." If there is a Humpty Dumpty in the picture, it is the smashed egg of mysticism, which all the king's horses and all the king's men can't put together again.
1. The Universe Around Us, p. 97.

In a letter accompanying his article to The Truth Seeker, Mr. Brewster objects to my use of the term "infinitely small" as applied to tiny bodies. All bodies are "finite," he insists -- which is true. Permit me to say, however, that my use of this term has dictionary sanction. I turn to Funk and Wagnall's Practical Standard Dictionary, and read: "Infinitely small: so small as to be incalculable and insignificant for all practical purposes." This is an exact description of sub-atomic particles and the sense in which the term was used.

It is my personal opinion that our mystical scientists have sold Mr. Brewster metaphysical jargon. They have sold it quite as impressively, quite as successfully as Crookes and Lodge and Lombroso sold Spiritualism to the credulous a few decades ago. It is but a short step from séance apparitions and mediumistic claptrap to the mathematical physicists of today, who divide matter (on paper) until it ceases to exist, or who see in sub-atomic exploration the path to a spiritual world.

It is within the memory of many men living that Crookes walked arm-in-arm with a ghost, that Lodge wrote "Raymond" and talked of "spiritual" whiskey-and-sodas, and that Lombroso told stories of shoes that walked:by themselves! Even Zoliner "proved" the "fourth dimension" by means of a spook. That was "modern physics" then; today our transcendental scientists hand us a vacuous universe composed of symbols and equations! In the words of Eddington, "matter and all else that is in the physical world have been reduced to a shadowy symbolism." 2
2. Science and the Unseen World, p 22.

"Modern physicists" have all but lost their last glint of humor. They solemnly assure us now, not only that matter is out of fashion, but that they can count the protons. The "elusive"' protons are not "elusive" to them : they actually tell us how many there are in the universe! If that isn't a "pontifical" bluff, I fail to know the meaning of the term.

If anybody were to presume to tell Mr. Brewster how many grains of sand there are on the beach at Atlantic City, he would be put down at once as a little bit flighty in the head. If Mr. Brewster's best friend were to inform him how many grains of dust are floating about in Grand Central Terminal, he would begin to fear for his friend's mental health. Yet when Sir Arthur Eddington tells us there are 15,747,724,136,275,002,577,605,653,961,181,555,468,044,717,914-,527,116,709,366,231,425,076,185,631,031,296 protons in the universe, we are expected to drop our jaws in amazement in the presence of "modern physics." The oracle of transcendental physics has spoken!

Flubdub like this is not new with the metaphysical school. Eddington himself is essentially a hopeless mystic, whose superstitious utterances in matters of religion are as brilliant as a Kentucky mountaineer's, refined, in part, only by his cultural contacts in the field of science. Men such as Eddington have gummed up more problems in physical science than they have ever solved. I cite him merely as an outstanding type of the occult brood.

As to the question, "how does any Materialist know that thought is not precisely the energy constituent of the atom, and as such, at least potentially, eternal?" the answer is simple: Function cannot survive the organ. Thinking, as a mode of motion, depends on the functioning of the brain and nervous system. No amount of academic tall-talk can refute the argument of the priest Meslier, who in his later years, turned from Catholicism to materialism. "We ridicule,'' writes he, "the simplicity of some nations whose fashion is to bury provisions with the dead --- under the idea that this food might be useful and necessary to them in another life. Is it more ridiculous or more absurd to believe that men will eat after death than to imagine that they will think; that they will have agreeable or disagreeable ideas; that they will enjoy; that they will suffer; that they will be conscious of sorrow or joy when the organs which produce sensations or ideas are dissolved and reduced to dust?"

He who thinks he can prove the indestructibility of thought from the conservation of energy might just as well try to prove that our brains are indestructible because matter is eternal. Matter and energy are both indestructible, but brains and thinking may both be destroyed, the latter even during the life-time of the individual. A blow or a blood-clot will blot out the most brilliant thought in the world, and a man may lie in a coma for days at a time before drawing his last breath.

Mr. Brewster will have to watch his step if he does not wish to be baptized in the hog-wash of "modern physics."

Mysticism In Modern Physics

MATERIALISM has triumphed over every attempt to discredit it on the ground of new discoveries in physics.
-JOSEPH McCABE, The Triumph of Materialism, p. 25.

MY able friend, Edwin Tenney Brewster, raises a pertinent question concerning the present status of materialism. Briefly, he puts the question: "Has materialism been discredited by the new physics?"

The answer, of course, very much depends on what one understands by the "new physics". Today almost anything goes, in a world of four dimensions and "curved" space. Ever since the Einsteinian vogue for verbal quackery arose we have been victimized by words. To the Waldemar Kaempfferts of modern "physics," lump of iron is no longer an aggregation of compact particles but "congealed energy"; to some of our rationalists and freethinkers abroad, calling themselves materialists, matter is "a cluster of behaviors".

How "behaviors" can ''cluster" or otherwise behave so as to become matter, or "energy" can be come "congealed" into an ax-head or a crowbar, is left to the imagination. The tyranny of words still plays havoc with clear thinking.

Actually the "new physics" is not essentially new, nor is it all physics. A good part of it is not even sane or intelligible. On the whole, it is a conglomeration of yoga mysticism and highly diluted science with a generous sprinkling of Berleian metaphysics. Our transcendental physicists do not deal with moving particles of substance in the manner of 19th century materialists, but with a "dematerialized", fast fading universe rapidly being absorbed by a spiritual world. To them, matter is obliterated or is suffering an eternal black-out. In a word, the material universe has been shot from under us.

But has it?

Materialism is defined in the Encyclopedia Britannica as "the theory which regards all the facts of the universe as explainable in terms of matter and motion, and in particular explains all psychical processes by physical and chemical changes in the nervous system."

The early materialists taught a material world, composed of tiny moving particles called "atoms". These were the indestructible bricks of the universe. "The conception that matter is made up of particles or atoms, and that these particles are in a state of ceaseless motion, is to be met with in Hindu and Phoenician philosophy," writes Sir Edward Thorpe. 1 "It was taught by Anaxagoras, Leukippos and Demokritos to the Greeks, and by Lucretius to the Romans."
1. History of Chemistry, p. 20.

The early concept of the atom was that of a hard, impenetrable, bullet-like particle. So far as we know, this may be a perfect description of the ultimate atom, far down. It is not our present idea of what we call the atom in laboratory work. Our present "atom" is a solar system itself, composed tiny material particles revolving around a central mass.

Of what, then, does the present atom consist? "The normal atom", says Jeans, 2 "consists of protons, electrons, and energy, each of which contributes something to its weight". Each part of the atom is material. The "energy" released from the atom in the form of radiation carries weight. All radiation is material. Even A- and B- rays are "material particles", says Jeans.3
2. The Universe Around Us, p. 118.
3. Ibid, p 119.

NO one has improved on Maxwell's concept of "energy". "Energy", says he, 4 "cannot exist except in connection with matter. . . . It has no individual existence, such as that which we attribute to particular portions of matter."
4. Matter and Motion, pp; 165-166.

"Energy" is merely a blanket term or convenient expression for matter at work. Yet it is loosely argued that since matter is reducible in terms of "energy", matter can thereby be destroyed or replaced by "energy". But every erg of "energy" is always identified by mass and weight. These are physical properties. We never find "energy" running around loose like a ghost nor apart from matter. "An erg of energy, in any form", says Eddington, 5 "has a mass of 1.1.10-21 grammes". Wherever we find "energy" we find matter.
5. Stars and Atoms, p. 97

A good deal of verbiage has wrapped itself around the "new physics". Words and phrases are used with little or no regard for their accepted meanings. Some of this is deliberately done to distort the facts. We still hear the "splitting" of the atom, referred to as if it meant the "annihilation" of matter. It means, of course, nothing of the kind.

What is "splitting" the atom? Briefly, separating the positive and negative charges of electricity called protons and electrons, of which the atom is composed. These were isolated by "bombarding" the atom with high power radioactive particles bearing a positive charge. Some of these "bullets", in hitting the nucleus, or positive charge of the atom, were repelled or deflected from their paths. The positive and negative particles of the atom were thereby exposed. The atom had been "split".

The sub-atomic world is material throughout. Our mystical physicists cannot name a single ingredient of the "split" atom that is not material. An electron, says Jeans, 6 is "a plain material particle". The electron has definite mass and weight so has the proton, which, is 1,855 times heavier than the electron. Nor can the mystic escape by saying that since everything is "electricity" We can dispense with matter. "Electricity is material", says Millikan. 7 Wherever we turn, we are confronted by matter.
6. The Universe Around Us, p. 130.
7. The Electron, p 186.

The "splitting" of the atom has in no way discredited the doctrine of materialism. On the contrary, it has strikingly confirmed what materialists have all along maintained, namely, that the ultimate unit of matter would probably be found very far down and that matter is subject to further division. That which passed for the "indivisible" atom in the laboratory would be broken down or found to consist of finer units.

The ancient Greek materialists held these views, which later were ardently championed by the great Roman materialist, Lucretius. Buchner, whose famous "Force and Matter" is a classic of materialism, taught that we must expect a finer division of matter before we reach the indestructible unit, or real atom. Years before Sir J. J. Thomson "split" the atom near the end of the last century, Buchner wrote: 8 "It has also become very probable through recent investigations that the substances heretofore regarded by us as elements or original bodies are nothing of the kind, but are themselves compounds, and that the so-called atoms therefore consist of units of a higher grade, as the molecule does of atoms". In a word, the "splitting" of the atom was here foreseen by a "gross" materialist of the 19th century.
8. Force and Matter, p. 38.

Clearly, then, the "splitting" of the atom has in no way ''exploded" the teaching of materialists. Matter is as indestructible as ever, and is so acknowledged in every text book on chemistry and physics. Not even the most mystical of modern physicists can deny this. Eddington, a leading exponent of transcendental physics, emphatically states: "We have no evidence that the annihilation of matter can occur in nature." 9
9. Stars and Atoms, p. 101

The whole plea for a metaphysical "physics" rests on the erroneous idea that since we cannot predict certain activities far down in the atom, materialism is ruled out. Our inability to register all movements in the sub-atomic world merely means that our implements of detection have not yet been brought to a proper state of precision. We are here dealing with rarefied forms of matter or infinitely small particles, whose complicated motions are beyond the range of our most sensitive instruments. We are facing a world of infinitesimal particles, moving about at terrific speeds and in variable orbits. How small these individual parts are may be visualized from the fact that the hydrogen atom alone weighs only 1.662x10-24 grammes, while the nucleus itself has a diameter of only a millionth of a millionth of an inch.

So far as the parts that make up the "split" atom are concerned, we know that they are material, the central portion, or nucleus bearing a positive charge of electricity, the electron (or electrons) bearing a negative charge. What their patterns or configurations are no one knows. "Neither you nor I", says Jeans, 10 "have any direct experience of either electrons or protons, and no one has so far any inkling of what they are really like." We can visualize their appearance and arrangement only by what occurs or by observing the behavior of the atom.
10. The Universe Around Us, p. 133.

Here lies an Elysian field far the metaphysician and the mystic and a crop of falsehoods. Matter, says the mystic, is becoming more "unpredictable", more "ghostly", more "uncertain", more "unreal", as we delve into its interior. Which is sheer rubbish.

The Heisenberg experiments are frequently cited as damaging to materialism since they are supposed to show there is no stability underlying the physical universe. We cannot depend on what the electrons will do next. This is ludicrous enough. If Heisenberg has knocked "predictability" out of the realm of microcosmic phenomena, he hasn't bothered our laboratory technicians. Real physicists today smile at our sub-atomic mystics and religious ghost chasers. In spite of highly complicated movements within the atom itself, steel girders still stick together, the Empire State Building is where it was before, and you can lease an office in the structure without fearing that it will disappear when your hack is turned. "Predictability" in physics and chemistry is a safe procedure for those who do not follow the rainbow chasers of "modern physics". Matter is still with us, regardless of the grasshopper antics and hopping around of tiny electrons. And it stays put. I myself own a chip of an Egyptian obelisk which is thirty-five centuries old. In spite of its "unpredictable" sub-atomic movements, I predict it will remain a piece of granite for ages to come.

At the World's Fair, General Electric generates 10,000,000 volts of electricity in its exhibit of artificial lightning. "Predictability" in every sense of the word! The charge is under complete control and is child's play in the hands of the operator. Here is physics for you, and no one is disturbed over Heisenberg's headaches as to what may happen next far down in the atom. All physics of a genuine character is based on "predictions" of what matter will do.

As Joseph McCabe wrote me not long ago, "there has been far too much nonsense written about a new physics and new astronomy favoring religion". I quite agree with him, and I lay the blame primarily on the muddlers of science who play up to the religious phantasies of popular credulity.

He who talks of art, and music, and other beautiful things of life as transcending the world of matter forgets that they are grounded in the very matter he affects to despise, and that even a rainbow is as physical as a bar of iron. A great drama, a wonderful painting, a superb statue cause reactions in the human organism as physical or materialistic as the drop of a hammer on our toes. "No one can doubt,"' says Bertrand Russell 11 "that the causes of our emotions when we read Shakespeare or hear Bach are purely physical. Thus we cannot escape the universality of physical causation."
11. The Analysis of Matter.

"Modern physics", writes Jacques Loeb,12 "is mechanistic." And he adds: "Since no discontinuity exists between the matter constituting living and nonliving bodies, biology must also be mechanistic." We must face the fact that all that is, is matter in motion.
12. Mechanistic Science and Metaphysical Romance (Yale Review.)

Real physics today has done something more than "split" the atom. It has blasted metaphysics sky-high and annihilated the pretensions of religion. It is crass mysticism and not "crude materialism" which is committed to the ash heap by modern Science. The doctrines of the mystics are as dry and dead as dinosaur dust.