The Creator, and what we may know of the method of creationDallinger, W. H. (William Henry)
Religion
The Creator, and what we may know of the method of creation
Dallinger, W. H. (William Henry)
Creation; Evolution; God; Religion and science
Matter and motion, these are the all; no suggestion of aught besides.
Then, if on that formula the philosophy is built, the rhythmic
vicissitudes through which matter has passed during limitless
millenniums of time, are supposed to be able to change matter’s
unconsciousness into self-perception and thought; to cause extended
and gravitating mass to pass into an unextended realization of its own
being, unyoked to gravity; to emerge from space relations involving
motion produced by outside forces, to an absolute independence of space
relations which makes motion impossible. If we make our _knowledge_
of phenomena and the processes and methods of Nature the basis of our
judgment, is it not manifest, that such a change is incapable of being
thought?
The unknown _y_, that is, matter, must, by sheer physical vicissitudes,
actually abnegate its own qualities, and emerge, no longer _itself_,
_y_, but another entity, infinitely unlike itself, that is, _x_!
If mind and matter are divergent from each other by infinite unlikeness
of quality, the mind refuses assent, that any process, based on the
foundation of accurate human knowledge, would sanction the emergence
of mind by physical processes from matter. Mind is the antithesis, and
cannot be a function, of matter.
The mind is intimately linked with cerebral action. We do not know mind
apart from brain; but there is no discovered correlation between the
_work_ of the brain, and consciousness. Dr. Tyndall, whose keen and
instructed intellect has addressed itself to this deep problem from
the position of a physicist, says, amongst many similar utterances:
‘But when we endeavour to pass ... from the phenomena of physics to
those of thought, we meet a problem which transcends any conceivable
expansion of the powers which we now possess. We may think over the
subject again and again, but it eludes all intellectual presentation.
We stand at length face to face with the incomprehensible. The
territory of physics is wide, but it has its limits, from which we look
with vacant gaze into the region beyond, ... and thus it will ever
loom, compelling the philosophies of successive ages to confess that—
“We are such stuff
As dreams are made of, and our life
Is rounded by a sleep.”’[24]
[Footnote 24: _Fragments of Science_, vol. ii. pp. 393, 394.]
The same thinker asks, ‘What is the causal connexion ... between
molecular motions and states of consciousness?’ And he answers that
neither he nor any other can know; and adds: ‘It is no explanation
to say that the objective and subjective are two sides of one and
the same phenomenon. Why should the phenomenon have two sides? This
is the very core of the difficulty. There are plenty of molecular
motions which do not exhibit this two-sidedness. Does water think or
feel when it runs into frost ferns upon a window pane? If not, why
should the molecular motion of the brain be yoked to this mysterious
companion—consciousness?’[25]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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