The bearing of the evolutionary theory on the conception of God by Ukichi Kawaguchi
a study in contemporary interpretations of God in terms of the doctrine of evolution
The one far-reaching contribution of the nineteenth century is the empirically formulated concept of organic evolution. The object of this investigation is to ascertain the bearing of the evolutionary theory on the conception of God as it is worked out in typical recent philosophies of religion.
The method and scope of the study are as follows. In the introduction, we shall briefly consider certain typical a priori theories of evolution, showing reasons for not including these in our inquiry. In the first part of our main study, we shall survey the problems due to the attempt to bring the evolutionary theory into relation with the traditional conception of God, indicating the content and meaning of the inductive evolutionary theory and the essentials in the traditional conception of God.
We shall attempt, in the second part, which forms the main body of our work, to make a critical examination of the solutions to these problems given by typical recent philosophies of religion, namely, Royce's absolute idealism, Eucken's philosophy of life, Bowne's personal idealism, and James's pragmatism.
In our discussion of these regional philosophers, our treatment of them will be limited by the subject of our study. Hence reference will be made only to those of their works that are more or less directly related to our subject matter. In the third and the last part, we shall make a summary statement of the results and the implications of our discussion, with particular reference to the solutions examined in the second part. In this concluding part, we shall not endeavour to make an exhaustive treatment of the implications of our inquiry.
We shall simply attempt to set forth the general bearing of the evolutionary theory on certain elemental problems connected with the doctrine of God. In the preparation of this thesis, the writer wishes to acknowledge his indebtedness to those writers who are concerned with present theological- scientific problems. This indebtedness is indicated by the references made to their works in the following study. But he is under a special obligation to his teacher. Professor Gerald Blimey Smith, of the Uni- versity of Chicago, for his valuable criticisms and suggestions.
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