6. _Elimination of the Idea of Design or its Acknowledgment and Theism._

In the whole preceding course of our investigation as to the position of
religion and theism regarding the different scientific and
naturo-philosophic theories, theism could quietly keep the position of a
friendly and peaceful spectator. The degrees of our sympathy with the
theories which have successively passed before our eyes, were on scientific
grounds very unequal; but on religious grounds, and in the interest of a
theistic view of the world, we found ourselves nowhere induced to take
sides for or against a theory. But the position of religion and theism
becomes quite different in reference to the assertion that the existence of
ends and designs in nature is refuted by the evolution theory or by any
other hypothetical or real results of science. With this assertion, the
existence of a living and personal God, of a Creator and Lord of the world,
is denied; and every religion which claims objective truth for its basis is
eliminated. It is true, man can under this supposition still speak of a
religion in the sense of subjective religiousness; but the life-nerve is
also cut off from this subjective religiousness. We have repeatedly had
occasion to prove this in our historical review, and also in the section in
which we pointed out the plan of our own analysis.

But still, where we have had to represent this anti-teleological view of
the world, we have happily convinced ourselves of the fact that an
existence of ends and designs in nature is not only _reconcilable_ with the
conformity to law and the causal mechanism of its processes, but is {285}
also _postulated_ by scientific contemplation of nature, as soon as the
latter observes that in these processes, acting with lawful necessity,
something in general is attained, and, moreover, when out of them comes
forth something so infinitely rich and beautifully arranged, such a rising
series of higher and higher developments, as the world. On the other hand,
combatting the striving towards an end in nature leads to such scientific
monstrosities, destroys so thoroughly the idea of God and also all ideas of
value in the world, even all spiritual and ethical acquisitions of mankind,
that we can explain the origin of such a doctrine only by the determined
purpose of getting rid, at any cost, of the dependence on a living God:
again a proof of the fact that faith, or want of faith, in its final
causes, is n