Scientific Sophisms: a review of current theories concerning atoms, apes, and men
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| Scientific Sophisms |
" GOD created man "? No such thing! The monads developed him. "The heavens declare the glory of God "? Far from it: "They declare only the glory of the astronomer !"
" We have now no need of the hypothesis of God." These utterances, and such as these, startling alike to reverence and to faith, are the merest commonplaces of modern agnosticism.
Instead of being, as once they were regarded, the terminus ad quern, the ultimate goal, to which unbelief was tending, they have long since been left behind as a mere terminus a quo, a temporary station for a new point of departure. The scepticism which doubted has given place to the dogmatism which denies it.
" Honest doubt" has been supplanted by the clamour of positive self-assertion. The positivism of which Comte knew nothing has usurped the authority, while renouncing the functions, of scientific enquiry. 26 Scientific Sophisms.
In a word, Agnosticism is no more, and Gnostcism reigns in its stead. Agnosticism made a candid confession of its ignorance. Gnosticism parades its pretensions to knowledge. The former did not know: the latter is quite sure. The Divine existence is now declared to be not only unnecessary; it is absolutely unreal.
God has no existence, even hypothetically, except as a creature of the human imagination. The hand may well tremble that writes it, and the ears may tingle that hear, yet it has been both written and said in modes that demand more attention than they have hitherto received There is no God except such as man has made.
" The dim and shadowy outlines of the superhuman deity fade slowly away from before us; and as the mist of his presence floats aside, we perceive with greater and greater clearness the shape of a yet grander and nobler figure of Him who made all gods and shall unmake them."
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