A Candid Examination of TheismRomanes, George John
Religion
A Candid Examination of Theism
Romanes, George John
Theism
As a final step in our analysis, therefore, we altogether quitted the
region of experience, and ignoring even the very foundations of science,
and so all the most certain of relative truths, we carried the discussion
into the transcendental region of purely formal considerations. And here we
laid down the canon, "that the value of any probability, in its last
analysis, is determined by the number, the importance, and the definiteness
of the relations known, as compared with those of the relations unknown;"
and, consequently, that in cases where the unknown relations are more
numerous, more important, or more indefinite than are the known relations,
the value of our inference varies inversely as the difference in these
respects between the relations compared. From which canon it followed, that
as the problem of Theism is the most ultimate of all problems, and so
contains in its unknown relations all that is to man unknown and
unknowable, these relations must be pronounced the most indefinite of all
relations that it is possible for man to contemplate; and, consequently,
that although we have here the entire range of experience from which to
argue, we are unable to estimate the real value of any argument whatsoever.
The unknown relations in our attempted induction being wholly indefinite,
both in respect of their number and importance, as compared with the known
relations, it is impossible for us to determine any definite probability
either for or against the being of a God. Therefore, although it is true
that, so far as human science can penetrate or human thought infer, we can
perceive no evidence of God, yet we have no right on this account to
conclude that there is no God. The probability, therefore, that nature is
devoid of Deity, while it is of the strongest kind if regarded
scientifically--amounting, in fact, to a scientific demonstration,--is
nevertheless wholly worthless if regarded logically. Notwithstanding it is
as true as is the fundamental basis of all science and of all experience
that, if there is a God, his existence, considered as a cause of the
universe, is superfluous, it may nevertheless be true that, if there had
never been a God, the universe could never have existed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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