Louisville Process Theology Network

The Agnosticism of Clarence Darrow -- Part I

Dec 16, 2008

From Clarence Darrow?’s famous essay ?“Why I am Agnostic?” (1926):


?“I am an agnostic as to the question of God. I think that it is impossible for the human mind to believe in an object or thing unless it can form a mental picture of such an object or thing.

Since man ceased to worship openly an anthropomorphic God and talked vaguely and not intelligently about the same force of the universe, higher than man, that is responsible for the existence of man and the universe, he cannot said to believe in God. One cannot believe in a force, excepting as a force that pervades matter, and is not an individual entity. To believe a thing, an image of the thing must be stamped on the mind.

If one is asked if he believes in such an animal as a camel, there immediately arises in his mind an image of a camel. This image has come from experience or knowledge of the animal gathered in some way or other. No such image comes, or can come, with the idea of a God who is described as a force...

To say that God made the universe gives us no explanation of the beginnings of things. If we are told that God made the universe, the question immediately arises: ?‘Who made God? Did he always exist, or was there some power back of that? Did he create matter out of nothing, or is his existence coextensive with matter??’

The problem is still there. What is the origin of it all?

If, on the other hand, one says that the universe was not made by God, that it has always existed, he has the same difficulty to confront. To say that the universe was here last year, or millions of years ago, does not explain its origin. This is still a mystery. As to the question of the origin of things, man can only wonder and doubt and guess...

As to the existence of the soul, all people may either believe or disbelieve. Everyone knows the origin of the human being. They know that it came from a single cell in the body of the mother, and that the cell was one out of ten thousand in the mother?’s body. Before gestation, the cell must have been fertilized by a spermatozoon for the body of the father. When the cell is fertilized, the chemical process begins.

The cell divides and multiplies and increases into millions of cells and finally a child is born. Cells die and are born during the life of the individual until they finally drop apart and this is death.

If there is a soul, what is it, where did it come from, and where does it go? Can anyone who is guided by his reason possibly imagine a soul independent of a body, or the place of residence, or the character of it, or anything concerning it? If man is justified in any belief or disbelief on any subject, he is warranted in the disbelief in a soul. Not one scrap of evidence exists to prove any such an impossible thing...

The truth is that the origin of what we call civilization is not due to religion but to skepticism. So long as men accepted miracles without question, so long as they believed in original sin and the road to salvation, so long as they believed in hell where man would be kept for eternity on account of Eve, there was no reason whatever for civilization.

Life was short, and eternity was long, and the business of life was preparation for eternity.

When every event was a miracle, when there was no order or system or law, there was no occasion for studying any subject, or being interested in anything excepting a religion which took care of the soul.

As man doubted the primitive conceptions about religion, and no longer accepted the literal, miraculous teachings of ancient books, he set himself to understand nature. We no longer cure disease by casting out devils.

Since that time, men have studied the human body; have built hospitals and treated illness in a scientific way. Science is responsible for the building of railroads and bridges, of steamships, of telegraph lines, of cities, towns, large buildings and small, plumbing and sanitation, of the food supply, and countless thousands of useful things that we now deem necessary to life. Without skepticism and doubt, none of these things could have been given to the world.?”