Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural LawsBuchanan, James
Religion
Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws
Buchanan, James
Atheism
But if he mistakes the general nature and conditions of the argument
when he speaks of it as if it were a mere argument from analogy, his
_extension of the analogy_, and the reasonings founded on it, are
equally unjustifiable and inconclusive. He forgets that analogy proceeds
on a partial resemblance in _some respects_, between things which differ
_in other respects_, and that even induction itself requires a perfect
resemblance only _in those respects_ on which the inference depends.
There may be such a resemblance between the marks of design in nature
and in art as to warrant the inference of a contriver in both; and yet
_in other respects_ there may be a dissimilarity which cannot in the
least affect the validity or the certainty of that inference. It is only
when we _extend the analogy_ beyond the inductive point, that the
conclusion becomes, in some cases, merely probable, in others altogether
doubtful. If we advance a step further than we are warranted to go by
obvious and certain analogies, our conclusions must be purely
conjectural, and cannot be accepted as inductive inferences. From what
we know of this world, and of God's design in it to make Himself known
to His intelligent creatures, we may infer, with some measure of
probability, that other worlds may also be inhabited by beings capable,
like ourselves, of admiring His works, and adoring His infinite
perfections; but if we go further, and infer either that all these
worlds must _now_ be inhabited, or that the inhabitants must be _in all
respects_ constituted as we are, we pass far beyond the point to which
our knowledge extends, and enter on the region of mere conjecture. And
so when Mr. Holyoake extends the analogy, so as to include not only the
marks of design, on which the inductive inference rests, but also the
forms of organization, with which in the case of man, intelligence is at
presented associated, although not identified, he goes beyond the point
at which analogy and induction combine to give a _certain_ conclusion,
and introduces a conjectural element, which may well render his own
inferences extremely doubtful, but which can have no effect in weakening
the grounds of our confidence in the fundamental law, which demands an
adequate cause for the marks of design in nature.
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