Answer to Dr. Priestley's Letters to a Philosophical Unbeliever — John Shaqi
Answer to Dr. Priestley's Letters to a Philosophical UnbelieverTurner, Matthew
Religion
Answer to Dr. Priestley's Letters to a Philosophical Unbeliever
Turner, Matthew
Atheism; Free thought; Priestley, Joseph, 1733-1804. Letters to a philosophical unbeliever
12. "Although all things fall alike to all men and no distinction is
made between the righteous and the wicked, and even though the
wicked derive an advantage from their vices, yet this is consistent
with a state of moral government by a Being of infinite wisdom and
power."
13. "As ploughing is the means of having a harvest, though God has
predetermined whether there should be a harvest or not, so prayer is
the means of obtaining good from God, although that good is
predetermined upon; it is therefore no more absurd to pray than to
plough."
14. "Notwithstanding happiness is the necessary consequence of
health, yet man's happiness is more from intellectual than corporeal
feelings."
15. "Evil is necessarily connected with and subservient to good,
although in the next world there will be all good and no evil."
16. "By reason we can discover the necessary existence of a Deity,
yet to be a sceptic on that subject is the first step to be a
Christian, because reason not sufficiently proving it we fly to
revealed truth."
17. "The power, which a man has by the comprehensiveness of his mind
to enjoy the future, has no apparent limits."
18. "It is of no avail in the argument concerning the existence of a
Deity, that we have no conception of him, since it does not imply
impossibility of his existence that we have no idea at all upon the
subject."
INADMISSIBLE OR INCONCLUSIVE.
1. "The question of the existence of a Deity is important."
2. "A Theist has a higher sense of personal dignity than an
atheist."
3. "The conduct of an atheist must give concern to those who are not
so."
4. "An atheist believes himself to be, at his death, for ever
excluded from returning life."
5. "There are more atheists than unbelievers in revelation."
6. "Men of letters may have the same bias to incredulity as others
to credulity, because they are subject to a wrong association of
ideas, as well as other persons though in a less degree."
7. "Whoever first made a thing, for example a chair or a table, must
have had an adequate idea of it's nature and use."
8. "If a table had a designing cause, the tree from whence the wood
came, and the man who made the table must have had a designing
cause, which comprehended all the powers and properties of trees and
men."
9. "All the visible universe, as far as we can judge, bears the
marks of being one work, and therefore must have had a cause of
infinite power and intelligence."
10. "We might as well say a table had no cause, as that the world
had none."
11. "A Being originally and necessarily capable of comprehending
itself, it is not improper to call infinite, for we can have no idea
of any bounds to it's knowledge or power."
12. "A series of finite causes cannot possibly be carried back
_ad infinitum_."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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