The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 12, December, 1880Various
Religion
The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 12, December, 1880
Various
Religion and science -- Periodicals
The invisible world of substance is undoubtedly eternal. But those men
who try to make this fact an argument against the existence of God are
guilty of the most stupid nonsense and impudence, for, having allowed
eternity not only to substance, but to _material_ substance, they have
no right in logic to deny eternity to life and mind; because it is as
easy, and as rational, to conceive of the eternity of one thing known to
exist as of another. But the idea that the visible world is eternal is
in direct conflict with the facts of science, which establish beyond
contradiction the mutable nature of all organized bodies. Aristotle,
though a believer in the existence of God, did affirm the world's
eternity, and therefore held that there never was any first male or
female in the history of any animals whatsoever, but affirmed, on the
contrary that one begat another infinitely, without any beginning. This
thought was so repugnant to common sense that Aristotle himself seemed
to be skeptical about it, admitting it to be a disputable thing. After
affirming his notion he added, "If the world had a beginning, and if men
were once earth-born, then must they have been, in all probability,
either generated as worms, out of putrefaction, or else out of eggs."
But the question comes up for an answer, From whence came the eggs?
Old Epicurus, after Aristotle, fancied that the first men and animals
were formed in certain wombs or bags growing out of the earth, by a
fortuitous concourse of dead atoms. Here we have the last _home stretch_
of all physicists in their efforts to get rid of the Christian idea of
creation; beyond it no modern infidel has traveled in his speculations,
nor ever will.
But if men were formed from eggs growing out of the earth, or from bags,
or from wombs created by a fortuitous concourse of dead atoms, by
chance, why, the motion of atoms being as brisk and vigorous as ever,
should we not expect the same thing to occur occasionally throughout all
the ages?
Anaximander, however, concluded that men, because they require longer
time than other animals to be hatched up, were at first generated in the
bellies of fishes, and there nourished till they were able to defend and
shift for themselves, and were then disgorged and cast upon dry land. So
we are driven to the conclusion that there is nothing in the world too
absurd for those men, both ancient and modern, to swallow down in their
efforts to get rid of the notion of an intelligent creation by the hand
of an intelligent creator.
ESTOPPELS; OR, FOSSILIZATION.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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