"Man is God's highest present development. He is the latest thing in God"
About this Quote
Butler lands the punch by borrowing the language of Victorian progress and then quietly committing heresy with it. Calling man "God's highest present development" treats the deity less like an eternal sovereign and more like a work-in-progress inventor, shipping updates. The clincher is "the latest thing in God": an almost fashion-magazine phrasing that makes the divine sound trend-driven, subject to novelty. It is both funny and corrosive. Butler isn’t simply elevating humanity; he’s demoting the traditional idea of God, turning omnipotence into a timeline.
The intent is double-edged. On one side, it flatters human self-regard in the age of Darwin, when people wanted a story where evolution didn’t dissolve meaning. On the other, it exposes that flattery as a kind of theological consumerism: if God is read through the logic of progress, then God becomes whatever the current apex species happens to be. That’s not faith; it’s anthropology dressed up as doctrine.
Context matters: Butler wrote in a Britain rattled by evolutionary theory, industrial acceleration, and anxious attempts to reconcile scientific change with religious continuity. His larger project often skewers systems that pretend to be timeless while smuggling in contemporary assumptions. Here, he smuggles them in on purpose, so you can see the seams. The subtext is a dare: if you insist on a modern, developmental God, accept the implication that God evolves with us - and that tomorrow’s "latest thing" might replace the human just as casually as humans replaced whatever came before.
The intent is double-edged. On one side, it flatters human self-regard in the age of Darwin, when people wanted a story where evolution didn’t dissolve meaning. On the other, it exposes that flattery as a kind of theological consumerism: if God is read through the logic of progress, then God becomes whatever the current apex species happens to be. That’s not faith; it’s anthropology dressed up as doctrine.
Context matters: Butler wrote in a Britain rattled by evolutionary theory, industrial acceleration, and anxious attempts to reconcile scientific change with religious continuity. His larger project often skewers systems that pretend to be timeless while smuggling in contemporary assumptions. Here, he smuggles them in on purpose, so you can see the seams. The subtext is a dare: if you insist on a modern, developmental God, accept the implication that God evolves with us - and that tomorrow’s "latest thing" might replace the human just as casually as humans replaced whatever came before.
Quote Details
| Topic | God |
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