Latest / Theism or Atheism, The Great Alternative / 016 - Atheism Inevitable

Transcript

016 - Atheism Inevitable · Theism or Atheism, The Great Alternative

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Chapter fifteen of Theism or Atheism, The Great Alternative by
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Chapman Cohen. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain.
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: Atheism inevitable. Between theism and atheism, the logical mind may halt,
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: but it cannot rest for long, and in the end
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: the logic of fact works its way. Compromise, while it
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: may delay the end without preventing its inevitability, is quite
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: out of place in matters of the intellect. In the
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: world of practice, compromise is often unavoidable, but in that
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: of ideas, the sole concern should be for truth. When
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: Weightly said that the man who commenced by loving Christianity
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: more than truth, would continue by loving his own sect
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: more than any other, and end by loving himself more
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: than all, he placed his finger on the great moral
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: danger of compromise. Where opinion is concerned, it begins ostensibly
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: by considering the respect due to an opponent's case, in
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: use by sacrificing the respect that is due one's own,
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: and it ends by giving a new sense of value
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: to the very opinion it aims at destroying. No quarter
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: is the only sound rule in intellectual warfare, where to
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: take prisoners is only one degree less dishonoring than to
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: be taken captive oneself. And the value of an opinion
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: is never wholly in the opinion itself. No small part
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: of its worth is derived from the way in which
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: it is held and the importance which is placed upon it.
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: When Professor Tyler said that the deepest of all divisions
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: in the history of human thought was that which divided
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: animism from materialism, he was saying what I have been
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: endeavoring to say in another manner in the foregoing pages.
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: Atheism and supernaturalism are fundamental divisions in human thought, and
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: divisions that connote an irreconcilable antagonism. The terms not only
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: mark a division, they are the badges of a movement,
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: the indication of a pilgrimage. Doctor Tyler's own work and
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: the work of his fellow laborers tell the story in detail,
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: and although no one is in a position to write
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: finis to it, there is no doubt as to what
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: its end will be, and the manner of the pilgrimage
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: is quite plain. The starting point is the creation, by
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: the befogged ignorance of primitive man, of what welter of
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: ghosts and gods, which makes so much of early existence
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: a veritable nightmare. The journey commences in a world in
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: which the supernatural is omnipresent, in which man's chief endeavors
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: is given to win the good will or avert the
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: anger of the ghosts and gods to whom he has
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: himself given being. In the end, the last stage of
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: the pilgrimage is a world in which mechanical operations take
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: the place of disembodied intelligences or of supernatural powers. From
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: a world in which the gods are everything and do everything,
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: to a world in which the gods are nothing and
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: do nothing. The story of that transition is the record
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: of one of the greatest revolutions that has happened in
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: the history of mankind. Its real greatness and far reaching
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: significance is not always adequately recognized, even by those who
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: welcome it gladly. Indeed, the narrower interests that suffer from
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: this revolution are more keenly alive to its importance than
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: those who benefit from its consummation. That is perhaps what
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: one ought to expect from the known course of human history,
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: for history would not be what it is, nor would
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: reforms be so difficult of accomplishment were it not possible
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: to persuade the slave that his servitude guards him from
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: the very evils it perpetuates. Incidentally, the nature of that
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: revolution has been indicated in the preceding pages, but a
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: more connected view will form a fitting close to this work.
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: Nothing more than the barest outlines can be attempted, But
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: such as it is, it may serve to illustrate the
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: truth that atheist is more than the speculative philosophy of
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: a few, that it is, in sober truth, the logical
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: outcome of mental growth. So far as any phase of
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: human life can be called inevitable, atheism may lay claim
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: to being inescapable. All mental growth can be seen leading
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: to it, just as we can see one stage of
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: social development giving a logical starting point for another stage,
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: and which would have been foretold had our knowledge of
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: older forces in operation been precise enough. Atheism is, so
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: to speak, implicit in the growth of knowledge. Its complete
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: expression is the consummation of a process that began with
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: the first questionings of religion, and the completion of the
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: process means the death of supernaturalism in all its forms. Religion,
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: it has already been said, is something that is acquired,
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: and although that sounds little better than a commonplace. Yet
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: reflection proves it to contain an important truth. For it
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: is in the nature of the acquisition that its significance,
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: laws whatever, be the earliest stages of religion. It is
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: at all events clear that its earliest form is in
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: the nature of a hypothesis, even though only of the
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: semi conscious kind that exists when man is brought into
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: touch with some new and overpowering experience. Religious ideas are
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: put forth in explanation of something. But all explanation, whether
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: by savage or civilized man, must be in terms of
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: existing knowledge. No other method is possible. We must explain
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: the unknown in terms of the known, and our explanation
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: will be the more elaborate and the nearer the truth,
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: as our knowledge of the nature of the forces are
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: the more exact and extensive. A knowledge of the laws
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: of condensation and evaporation enables a modern to give an
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: explanation of the meaning of a shower of rain that
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: is simply impossible to man in an earlier stage of culture.
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: In every case, the fact are the same, and in
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: each case the explanation given depends upon the knowledge acquired. Now,
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: one radical distinction between in early and a modern explanation
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: of the world is that, whereas the former moves from
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: within outward, the latter moves from without inward. Uncivilized man
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: explains the world by himself. Civilized man explains himself by
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: the world. The savage describes the world in terms of
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: his own feelings and passions. The scientist regards human qualities
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: as resulting from the relation which man holds to the
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: forces around him. The process, while presenting a radical difference
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: in form, is yet fundamentally one in essence, ignorant of
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: all that we connote by such an expression as natural forces.
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: Whatever explanation is offered by the savage is necessarily in
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: terms of the only force with which he is acquainted.
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: But it happens that the only forces which he then
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: fancies he understands are those represented by his own organization.
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: What he is conscious of doing is prompted by his
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: own will and intelligence. He hurts when he is angry,
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: he rewards when he is pleased, and he makes the
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: same assumption regarding the things around him. So far as
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: he explains nature, he vitalizes it. Vital force becomes the
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: symbol of all force, and this result expresses a mental
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: law that is universally operative. The civilized mind differs from
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: the savage mind, not because the brain functions differently in
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: the two cases, but solely in consequence of the wider
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: and truer knowledge of the causes of natural phenomena which
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: civilized man possesses. We arrive at different conclusions because we
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: start from different premises inevitably. Therefore, the first attempt of
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: man to deal with nature takes the form of assuming
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: the operation of a number of personal intelligences. Natural object
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: are alive, and everything that happens to man from the
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: cradle to the grave is thought of as being either
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: alive or controlled by living beings. The world is filled
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: with a crowd of ghostly beings exercising more or less
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: discordant functions. Against this riot of gods, the conception of
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: natural law develops, but slowly, quite apart from the natural
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: inertia of the human mind. The fact of questioning the
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: power of these assumed beings involves to the primitive mind
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: an element of grave danger. All sorts of things may
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: happen if the gods are offended, and in self defense,
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: the tribe feels bound to suppress the critic of religion
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: and of religious ideas. But once the step is taken,
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: the area over which the God's rule is to that
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: extent restricted, and with that step atheism may be said
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: to be born. What Lang said in the opening sentences
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: of his Classic History of Materialism, that quote materialism is
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: as old as philosophy, but not older, may be said
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: with equal truth of atheism, that too is as old
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: as philosophy, since it begins with man's attempts to break
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: away from that primitive interpretation of nature, which sees in
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: all phenomena the action of personal intelligences. It is of
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: no importance in which branch of knowledge the departure was made.
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: Whichever department one takes, the process can be seen at work.
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: Astronomy appears to have been the branch of knowledge in
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: which the powers of the gods were earliest restricted, although
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: it was not until the discoveries of Copernicus, Galileo, Newton,
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: and Laplace were given to the world that God vanished
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: altogether from that region. Geology follows with the teaching that chemical, thermal,
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: and other known forces leave nothing for the gods to accomplish.
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: Biology and sociology dealing with more complex forces are much
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: later in the Fiel, but they tread the same path.
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: They provide a refuge for God for a while, but
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: it is evident that their complete dispossession is no more
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: than a question of time. And even though the very
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: complex character of the forces working in these latter departments
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: should prevent us ever acquiring the same degree of prevision
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: that exists in other classes, no difference will be made
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: to the general result. The principle will be fairly established,
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: and our ignorance of details will no longer be made
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: the ground for assertions, which, if made at all, should
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: rest upon the most exact knowledge. God will be left
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: with nothing to do, and man will not forever go
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: on worshiping a God whose sole recommendation is that he exists,
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: nor will the common sense of civilized people hold onto
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: a hypothesis when there is nothing left for that hypothesis
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: to explain. The single and outstanding characteristic of the conception
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: of God at all times and under all conditions is
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: that it is the equivalence of ignorance. In primitive times,
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: it is ignorance of the character of natural forces that
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: leads to the assumption of the existence of gods, And
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: in this respect. The God idea has remained true to
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: itself throughout even today. Whenever the principle of God is invoked,
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: a very slight examination is enough to show that the
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: only reason for this being done is our ignorance of
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: the subject before us. Why does anyone assume that we
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: must believe in God in order to explain the beginnings
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: of life? Why is God assumed to be responsible for
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: the order of nature? Why must we assume God to
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: explain mind? The answer to these and all similar questions
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: is that we do not know, in the sense that
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: we know the cause of planetary motions, how these things
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: came to be. It is not what we know about
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: them that leads to the assumption of God, but what
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: we do not know. And the converse of that is
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: that so soon as knowledge replaces ignorance, God will be
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: dispensed with. It is never a case of believing in
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: God because of the actual knowledge we possess, but always
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: the appeal to weakness and ignorance. From this point of view,
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: the colloquial God only knows expresses the appeal to ignorance
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: even more clearly than the elaborate argument of the sophisticated
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: apologist This aspect of the matter was well put by Spinoza.
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: Believers in the argument from design, he says, have a
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: method of argument that is reduction, not to the impossible,
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: but to ignorance. Thus, if a stone falls from a
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: roof onto someone's head and kills him, they will demonstrate
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: by their new method that the stone fell to kill
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: the man. For if it had not, by God's will
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: fallen with that object, how could so many circumstances, and
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: there are often many concurrent circumstances, have all happened together
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: by chance. Perhaps you will answer that the event is
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: due to the facts that the wind was blowing and
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: the man was walking that way. But why, they will
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: insist was the wind blowing? And why was the wind
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: at that very time blowing that way? If you again
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: answer that the wind had then sprung up because the
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: sea had begun to be agitated the day before, the
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: weather having been previously calm, and that the man had
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: been invited by a friend, they will again insist, but
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: why was the sea agitated and why was the man
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: invited at that time? So they will pursue their question
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: from cause to cause till at last you take refuge
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: in the will of God. In other words, the sanctuary
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: of ignorance. Appendix to Ethics, Part one. The sanctuary of
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: ignorance God has always been, and the sanctuary of ignorance
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: it will remain to the end. It has no other
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: function in life. A consciousness of this is shown by
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: the upholders of theism in the eagerness with which they
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: welcome every supposed demonstration of the impotence of science and
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: of the resistance everywhere offered to the development of scientific advance.
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: So far, then, as the progress of life makes for
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: the growth of knowledge, so far may we safely claim
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: that the development of thought makes for atheism, as we
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: have just said, and to do the religious world justice.
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: It has always been quick to realize this, and every
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: great scientific generalization, as well as many smaller ones, has
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: been resisted on the ground that they were atheistic in
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: character and tended to take the control of the world
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: out of God's hands. Present day theists are apt to
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: condemn this attitude of their predecessors, but it can hardly
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: be denied that the logic laws with the earlier representatives.
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: A God who does nothing might, for all practical purposes
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: as well be non existent, and a god who is
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: merely in the background of things, who may be responsible
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: for their origin, but having originated them, surrenders all control
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: over their operations. Is hardly more serviceable. The modern theist
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: saves his God only by leaving him a negligible quantity
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: in a universe he is supposed to sustain and govern.
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: And it cannot be too often emphasized that the whole
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: basis of exact or positive science is a theistic that is,
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: it is compelled to ignore even the possibility of the
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: existence of God. Every scientific generalization rests upon the constancy
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: of natural forces. On no other basis is it possible
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: to give a scientific interpretation to what has gone before,
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: or to anticipate what is to happen in the future.
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: Every scientific calculation assumes that in the world with which
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: it deals, causation is invariable and universal. But if we
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: are to assume the operations of a God at any
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: time or point, every scientific calculation would have to be
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: accompanied with the devi of a prayer meeting. To argue
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: from the past to the future would be futile. God
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: might have operated then, no one could be certain he
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: will operate now, or he might have operated in the
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: far past, but he might not in the future. In
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: either case, the assumption of a god would be fatal
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: to exact scientific calculations. Thus, in sheer self defense, in
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: order to preserve its character as science, science is compelled
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: to discard even the possibility of the existence of a
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: controlling intelligence. As one eminent theistic advocate admits, quote, science
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: has no need and indeed can make no use in
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: any particular instance of the theistic hypothesis Professor Ward, Naturalism
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: and Agnosticism, Volume one, page twenty three. It is only
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: when supernaturalism is partly excluded from him human thought that
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: science can be said to really commence its existence, and
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: in proportion as our conception of the universe becomes that
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: of an aggregate of non conscious forces, or of a
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: single force with many forms producing given results under given conditions,
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: only then does our view of the universe reach completion.
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: A study of the nature and tendency of human development
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: does therefore provide a very strong presumption in favor of atheism.
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: All growth here is in favor of atheism and away
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: from theism. In the beginning, we have the gods everywhere
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: and dominating everything. They do everything and control everything. God
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: is the one universal primitive hypothesis, and all subsequent development
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: is to its discrediting. There is no growth in the
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: idea of God. There is only an attenuation. The gods
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: grow fewer as the race approaches maturity. Their activities cease
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: as man becomes aware of the character of the forces
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: around him. And it may be further noted that this
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: decline of the belief in deity is brought about as
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: much by sheer pressure of experience as by pure reason.
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: The majority of people do not reason themselves out of
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: the belief in God. They outgrow it. People cease to
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: believe in the gods because they experience no compulsion to
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: believe in them. The logic of fact is ultimately more
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: powerful than the logic of theory. And as environmental forces
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: brought the gods into existence, so environmental forces carry them
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: out again. Now atheism does but make explicit in words
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: what has long been implicit in practice. It takes the
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: God idea, examines it, and explains it out of existence.
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: It admits the reality of gods as it admits the
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: reality of ghosts and fairies and witches. They are subjective,
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: not objective realities. Atheism takes the god idea explains its origin,
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: describes its subsequent development, and in so doing indicates its
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: ultimate fate. In this sense, atheism is, as I have said,
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: no more than the final stage of a long historical process.
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: The theistic phase of thought is an inevitable one in
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: human evolution, but it is no more a permanent one
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: than is the belief in hobgoblins. One might here paraphrase
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: Bacon and say, quote a little philosophy inclineth a man
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: to belief in the gods, but depth in philosophy leads
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: to their rejection as a false and useless hypothesis. It
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: is true that thinking brought the gods into the world.
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: It is also true that adequate thinking carries them out again.
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: The cardinal truth is, of course, that the hypothesis of
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: mind in nature does not owe its existence to an
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: exact knowledge of things, but to its absence. Its origin
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: must be sought in a pre scientific age, and its
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: persistence in a number of extraneous circumstances which have perpetuated
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: a belief that would otherwise have inevitably disappeared. And it
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: would indeed be a matter for surprise if this belief
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: said by theists to be of all beliefs, the most
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: profound should be the one speculation on which savage thought
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: has justified itself. On no other question did the primitive
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: mind reach truth. Universally, its speculations concerning the world were
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: discovered to be wrong. On this one topic, we are
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: asked to believe that the savage was absolutely right. From
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: the age of fetishism, rightly called by Compe the creative age.
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: In theology, the history of the god idea has been
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: a history of a series of modifications and rejections. Scarce
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: an invention that has not slain a god, scarce a
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: discovery has not marked the burying place of a discarded deity.
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: Criticism reduced the gods in number and limited them in power.
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: Advancing knowledge pushed them back till nature rid of her
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: haughty lords. Is conceived as a huge mechanism, self acting,
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: self adjusting, and self repairing. Even in the mouths of religionists,
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: God today stands for little more than a force. We
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: must not describe him as personal, as intelligent, or as conscious,
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: And between this and the existence assumed by atheistic science,
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: it is impossible to detect any vital difference. Atheism then
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: takes its stand upon the observed trend of human history,
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: upon a scrutiny of the facts of nature, and upon
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: an examination of the origin and contents of the God idea.
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: And upon these grounds it may fairly claim to be
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: irrefutable and inevitable. Circumstances may obstruct its universal acceptance as
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: a reasoned mental attitude, but that merely delays it does
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: not destroy the certainty of its final triumph. With this
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: supposed direful consequences that would follow the triumph of atheism
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: I have not dealt with at length. These are the
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: bugbears which the designing normally employ in order to frighten
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: the timid and credulous. Mental Uprightness and moral integrity are
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: certainly not the property of one religion, nor can it
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: be said with truth that they belong to any. In
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: examining the histories of religion, it is a fair assumption that,
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: in whatever direction the world may suffer from the disappearance
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: of religion, there will be no moral catastrophe. Looking at
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: the whole course of human history, and noting how the
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: vilest and most ruinous practices have been ever associated with religion,
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: and have ever relied upon religion for support, The cause
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: for speculation is not what will happen to the world
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: when religion dies out, but how human society has managed
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: to flourish while the belief in the gods ruled. Fortunately
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: for human society, nature has not left the operation of
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: the fundamental virtues dependent upon the acceptance of this or
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: that theory of the world. The social and family instincts,
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: which are inseparable from our nature as men and women,
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: and which operate in ways of which we are largely unconscious,
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: are the grounds of all the higher and finer virtues,
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: And while a change in opinion may affect their operation
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: here and there, it can never alter their fundamental character. Conduct,
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: in short, comes from life. It is not the creation
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: of a theory to be dismissed by resolution or refashioned
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: by a vote. What atheism would mean in practice would
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: be an enormous concentration of energy upon purely human affairs
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: and a judgment of conduct in terms of human happiness
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: and prosperity, and that certainly furnishes no cause for alarm.
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: It is indeed our greatest need. We need an awakening
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: to the until appt power and possibilities of human nature.
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: If the gods die man, their creator, still lives, and
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: the creative energy which once covered the face of nature
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: with innumerable gods, which spent itself in the attempt to
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: win their favor, and which called forth a heaven in
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: the endeavor to redress the wrongs of earth, may, if
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: properly applied, yet cover the earth with homes in which
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: men and women, rendered purer by love and stronger by knowledge,
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: will rise superior to the fabled gods before whom they
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: once bowed in blind adoration. End of Chapter fifteen. End
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: of Theism or Atheism, The Great Alternative by Chapman Cohen