The Philosophy of Natural Theology: An Essay in confutation of the scepticism of the present dayJackson, William
Religion
The Philosophy of Natural Theology: An Essay in confutation of the scepticism of the present day
Jackson, William
Natural theology; Religion -- Philosophy; Religion and science
Eubulus. "When I contemplate the evidence of intention and design which
present themselves everywhere around us, but which, to our limited
comprehensions, is more especially manifested in the vegetable and
animal creations, I cannot avoid attributing the construction and order
of the universe to an intelligent being, whose power and knowledge are
such that it is impossible for me to form any adequate conception of
them, any more than I can avoid referring the motions of the planets
and stars to the same law of gravitation as that which directs the
motions of our own globe. But no one, I apprehend, will maintain that
the mind of the Deity depends on a certain construction of brain and
nerves; and Dr. Priestley, the most philosophical of the advocates of
the system of materialism, ventures no further than to say that we
have no knowledge on the subject. But, to use the words of Sir Isaac
Newton, 'This powerful ever-living agent being in all places, is more
able to move the bodies within his boundless uniform sensorium, and
thereby to form and reform the parts of the universe, than we are,
by our will, to move the parts of our own bodies.' The remainder of
the passage from which I have made this quotation, is not without
interest, as indicating the view which Newton took of the matter in
question:--'And yet we are not to consider the world as the body of
God, or the several parts thereof as the parts of God. He is an uniform
being, void of organs, members, or parts, and they are his creatures,
subordinate to him, and subservient to him, and he is no more the soul
of them than the soul of man is the soul of the species carried through
the organs of sense into the place of its sensation, where it perceives
them by its immediate presence, without the intervention of any third
thing. The organs of sense are not for enabling the soul to perceive
the species of things in its sensorium, but only for conveying them
thither; and God has no need of any such organs, he being everywhere
present to the things themselves.'"
Ergates. "I entirely agree with you in the opinion that we must admit
the existence of the Deity as a fact as well established as that of the
law of gravitation, and that in doing so we must further admit that
mind may and does exist, independently of bodily organization. Be it
also remembered that _mind_, in its humblest form, is still _mind_,
and that, immeasurable as the distance between them may be, it must
nevertheless be regarded as being of the same essence with that of the
Deity himself. For my own part I find no difficulty in conceiving the
existence of mind independently of corporeal organs." (p. 39, seq.)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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