If He is omnipotent, it would have been just as easy to instill into the
minds of men only the strongest desire to believe in His reality; and
even that would not be necessary had He so arranged matters that by His
everlasting presence He would reveal Himself or His deeds to man in such
a conclusive manner that even the feeblest of intellects could not
doubt His existence.
If He is omniscient, as the parable asserts, that not a hair falls from
the head of man, not a sparrow dies without His knowledge, it must
therefore be apparent that He created man with the foreknowledge that
man would doubt His existence. This is a contradiction in itself.
The Martian notes that in the entire length of the work not a reference
is made to the time-worn theological defense, "the revelation" which the
Church has always claimed for its scriptures.
Appended as an afterthought, as an apology, as it were, for the
philosophical defense and not the theological, the Jesuit father reminds
the reader of its messiah, Jesus and the New Testament. The Jesuit
states, "The New Testament writings, considered merely as trustworthy
historical documents, inform us that--" but at this point the Martian
interrupted the speaker, for the audacity of any learned man terming the
New Testament writings "historical" was beyond his comprehension. It
brought forcibly to his attention the great change which the apologies
for the Church had undergone, and the new methods which they assumed.
The old theological defense of the deity was gone; not even philosophy
was deemed strong enough support for the present day. How the Church had
fallen! The Church which had persecuted, anathematized, burned, and
tortured the scientist, the geologist, the astronomer, the geographer,
the biologist, the chemist, and the physician; this same Church in its
last extremus, casts aside theology as its weapon and its appeal to the
minds of the sceptics whom they aim to convert. The Church casts aside
its own theology, having learned by bitter experience and recanting of
opinions, bulls, and infallible statements by infallible popes, and now
succumbs to the opinions it has formerly anathematized. In the present
age the Church calls science to its aid, and utterly disregards its
obsolete theology which it still practices, and attempts, by means of
the misinterpretation of scientific facts and statements of a few men
such as Eddington and Jeans, to force science into some illogical and
unscientific concordance with the conception of a supreme being.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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