History and God

"Does history support a belief in God? If by God we mean not the creative vitality of nature but a supreme being intelligent and benevolent, the answer must be a reluctant negative. Like other departments of biology, history remains at bottom a natural selection of the fittest individuals and groups in a struggle wherein goodness receives no favors, misfortunes abound, and the final test is the ability to survive. As to the crimes, wars, and cruelties of man, the earthquakes, storms, tornadoes, pestilences, tidal waves, and other "acts of God" that periodically desolate human and animal life, and the total evidence suggests either a blind or an impartial fatality, with incidental order, splendor, beauty, or sublimity. If history supports any theology this would be a dualism like the Zoroastrian or Manichean: a good spirit and an evil spirit battling for control of the universe and men's souls. These faiths and Christianity (which is essentially Manichean) assured their followers that the good spirit would win in the end; but of this consummation history offers no guarantee. Nature and history do not agree with our concepts of good and bad; they define good as that which survives, and bad as that which goes under; and the universe has no prejudice in favor of Christ as against Genghis Khan." - Will and Ariel Durant The Lessons of History.