Or is it a more likely speculation that these Old Testament ideas about God arose from a heart-felt belief, amounting almost to fury, that a “natural” explanation of the world was the biggest lie in Creation, and those who peddled it the biggest dupes? Certainly there is this much to be said for that view: that it is one of the crowning mercies of Creation, that the most intelligent people are often those prone to the most astonishing lapses of judgement.
Marshall Foch was an able soldier, and is regarded as an outstanding general in the First World War; but his theory that the offensive had the moral superiority, because the attacking soldiers would be likely to fire more bullets, has been described as mathematical abracadabra, and an example of how a rational man may become obsessed by an irrational theory. And it sent hundreds of thousands of French and British soldiers to their deaths. An amateur can understand what happens in War, particularly if as Clausewitz says his chosen profession has a good deal in common with war; but an amateur could not conceivably put his limited understanding into practice, because he lacks the detailed practical knowledge of what is possible and what is not, which alone would command authority with the men. Whereas a man of great authority and ability, like Foch, can talk rubbish and be obeyed, to everyone’s cost. Similarly I cannot seriously criticise the biologist’s account of the mechanism of Evolution. I can only point out that it is hopelessly inadequate, not just to explain human genius, but even to recognise how human genius changes the conditions under which we all labour, and so in solving one problem creates the next. Nor does a cheery determinism account for, still less explain, the emotions the Greeks attributed to the Furies.
How can genes or cumulative genetic change describe, let alone explain, how a few cruel words can destroy the cohesion of a family, not for hours but for years; and result in there descending on some members of the family a sadness and a desolation that few things can assuage? It is ludicrous to think it can; just as ludicrous as it is for Jung to say that the psyche or soul is unbelievably complex, but for clergymen never to suggest that it has any structure at all. To all intents and purposes Jung and the clergy live in different worlds; as different as the world of atomic particles is from the world of human phenomena, and the world of human phenomena is from the world of astronomical galaxies. Or as chemistry and genes differ from the world of relationships, and even that world from interpenetrating minds.
In science, theory is not primarily a matter of deduction, nor even of induction, but of inspiration which can be confirmed by experience. The rest is speculation; like theories of infinity. In advocacy, which is conflict, the technique of lying constantly improves, so you sink to a dreary level of uniformity where the plausible liar is usually believed in Court.