Knowlton Biography, Chapter 35
Thirty-five: The Great Goliah
If I were ever startled at my own presumption—and certainly I have frequently had occasion to be,—it is now. A little mountain David, unexpectedly called from the charge of his diseased flock to meet the great Goliah of the Cross; and to accept of this call, is certainly one of the most presumptuous acts of a sober life.
In the years since the Knowltons had left Hawley, Charles had not been forgotten there. And when he returned to the area and began his practice in Ashfield, Charles included parts of the nearby town in his rounds through the countryside. The patients who had named children after him a few years earlier must have been pleased to have their favorite doctor back in the neighborhood. So Charles was probably not surprised when Hawley’s new pastor challenged him to a debate.
Reverend Tyler Thatcher was about the same age as Charles. Like Charles, Thatcher was the son of a Massachusetts farmer and Revolutionary War soldier. Thatcher had trained for the ministry at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. By the time he arrived in Hawley after ten years of preaching, Thatcher was well known for his ultra-conservative Calvinist outlook and for his interest in debate. Hawley’s previous minister, Jonathan Grout, was a good-natured man remembered in the town’s history for having advised Knowlton not to publish his book because it was illegal. When Charles told Grout he didn’t care about the law, Grout is said to have replied, “laws were made for people who didn’t care anything about them.”
Thatcher was much more argumentative than Grout, and he saw Knowlton as an ideal adversary. However, unlike Mason Grosvenor and the Ashfield church leaders, Thatcher was looking for a friendly debate on the issues that divided them. And since Charles had assured everyone in Ashfield that he had “no objections to argumentative discourses against the doctrines of Free Enquirers,” a challenge to fair debate from the Hawley preacher couldn’t be ignored.
“The challenge was accepted,” said the old History of Hawley,
and a great forensic battle was fought between the theism of the Puritan fathers and modern materialism, Dr. Knowlton taking his turn in occupying the pulpit in the old church, from which, up to that day, nothing had emanated but the pure unadulterated theism of the pilgrim fathers.
Hawley’s new minister didn’t face Charles alone, however. Thatcher brought in Origen Bacheler, a former preacher and editor of a Calvinist weekly called The Anti-universalist who had gone into the business of debating infidels. Charles compared Bacheler to “Goliah” and himself to the underdog, David. “It is the general opinion of the Free Enquirers within the United States,” Charles said at the opening of the event, “that the christian ranks cannot furnish a more ingenious, a more ready practised advocate, than him with whom I have the honor to debate on this occasion.”
Like Thatcher, Bacheler seems to have genuinely believed that reasonable argument was more honorable and effective than intimidation. Bacheler had debated Robert Dale Owen in the pages of the Free Enquirer a few years earlier. “Though a believer in the Christian religion myself,” he wrote in 1831,
I am nevertheless a friend to reason and free inquiry. Indeed, so far am I from thinking that men ought to admit Christianity, or anything else, without evidence, that I should be among the first to reprehend such blind faith. To me there is nothing terrific in the idea of free inquiry; for, without such inquiry, there cannot be a full and fair investigation of subjects. And the more free it is, the better for the cause of truth; for the more plainly will that be manifested.
Of course, Bacheler was a strong debater who felt confident he could hold his own against freethinkers. But as Knowlton had said to the people of Ashfield, in a world filled with different beliefs, tolerance and fair debate were the best policies. Who could “blame a man for endeavoring to maintain and disseminate the truth (what he believes, or his opinions) so long as in doing so he do not infringe upon the equal rights and privileges of others?...He is not only doing that which he has a perfect right to do, but that which he believes will be for the good of mankind.” Charles didn’t expect to change Thatcher’s or Bacheler’s minds, but he was keenly aware that unlike Mason Grosvenor’s bigots in Ashfield, they had given him an opportunity to stand at the pulpit in their church and make his case.
The question at hand, said Charles, was “Is there any being or agent in existence that is not material?” And the burden of proof, Charles claimed, was Bacheler’s. Since we have no direct, personal knowledge of a spiritual realm, he said, the other side should have to prove it. All Charles should need to do was prevent them from proving their claim.
But things weren’t really that simple, Charles admitted. “It would seem,” he said, “that I might sit down and rest until my opponent has apparently made out his case.—But you believe, and from your cradles you have believed, that his case is already made out; so there is yet work enough for me to do.” And, even though they were treating him with respect and politely giving him a chance to present his views, Charles reminded his listeners that a lifetime of social custom was working against him. Whether consciously or not, their culture’s respect for ministers and aversion to infidels was bound to affect his listeners’ reactions. So Charles asked his audience “not to hesitate to admit any position which I may advance unless you can give some other reason for not admitting it than that I advanced it.”
Charles presented the arguments he’d developed in prison, for his Boston lectures a few months earlier. He explained the scientific method, and reminded his listeners that a hypothesis that “does not remove one or more difficulties without giving rise to others equally as great…is pronounced a groundless hypothesis.” The idea that the universe had existed from eternity, he said, was as plausible a hypothesis as the idea that it had been created by a being that had existed from eternity. And it didn’t introduce the “greater difficulty” of accounting for that uncreated creator. So the idea of a creator was a groundless hypothesis.
Charles had his side of the debate published, but Origen Bacheler’s argument at this debate has not been preserved. However, since he debated freethinkers regularly, Bacheler had probably developed a standard set of arguments that he adapted to the specific topic of a debate. So he probably addressed many of the points he’d made in his earlier written debate with Owen. In a series of ten letters to the Free Enquirer, Bacheler had argued that either “there is, or there is not, a God,” and that there was equal reason for believing as for not believing. The rules of scientific logic did not apply, Bacheler said, because an omnipotent God could put the correct idea directly into people’s minds, so judgment wasn’t bound by experience.
Bacheler’s case for God was based on two arguments he used regularly. Charles responded to both in his published remarks. The first was the familiar argument from design. This position claims that the marvelous complexity and order of nature requires a creator, just as a watch requires a watchmaker. Charles disagreed:
Because a house must have had a builder it by no means follows that matter must have had a maker. Nor can I see any analogy between the construction of a watch, for instance, and the growing of an eye. In the case of the watch, the several parts are first made separately and then put together; but the eye grows, and even in its own parts, its own vessels, assists in the progress of its growth.
Bacheler’s second argument for God was that religion was the source of moral order. In his debates with Owen, Bacheler had repeatedly pointed to the excesses of the French Revolution as proof that infidelity led to chaos. Charles countered that it was “inconsistent with the object of our meeting to moralize on the consequences of opinions,” since the question at hand was the existence of God, not the consequences of belief. If they were going to talk about consequences, Charles said, “I might go on to state the overwhelming amount of misery that has arisen from the doctrine of spiritualism while my opponent or opponents might be equally eloquent in portraying the consequences which they imagine will arise from materialism when it becomes prevalent.” But neither argument would be relevant in the debate.
The History of Hawley proudly notes the tolerance and open-mindedness the town’s residents showed by holding this debate. The history reports that the event was well attended by “the friends of both sides,” and that the debate was a “brisk controversy.” When the evening was over, both Knowlton’s and Bacheler’s friends were happy with the performances of their champions. “Both sides claimed victory,” said the history. Charles had probably not shaken the faith of any true believers, but he may have changed some people’s minds about freethinkers. In a time when society was overwhelmingly biased toward unquestioning belief, the fact that an unbeliever had held his own in a church-sponsored debate was a victory in itself. Tyler Thatcher gave Charles an opportunity that his own neighbors hadn’t given him, and Charles made good use of it.