Theism or Atheism: The Great AlternativeCohen, Chapman
Religion
Theism or Atheism: The Great Alternative
Cohen, Chapman
Atheism; Theism
Only one other word need be said on this point. It may be urged that
educated believers mean by "God" not the anthropomorphic deity of the
theologies, but a personal intelligence controlling things. But this is
really not less anthropomorphic than the form in which the god idea
meets us in the popular theologies. Its anthropomorphism is only, to
unobservant minds, less apparent. The conception of an intelligent,
personal being controlling nature is not fundamentally less
objectionable than the frankly man-like being of the early theologies.
Intelligence, as we know it (and to talk of an intelligence that is
unlike the intelligence we know is absurd) is as much a characteristic
of human, or animal, organisation, as arms and legs are. Mind, after
all, is only known to us as a function of an organism. That it is more
than this, or other than this, is a pure assumption. And to divest "God"
of all physical parts, while retaining his functions, is sheer nonsense.
There is the personal intelligence of Smith, or Brown, or Robinson, but
it is absurd to wipe out all the particular Smiths, and Browns, and
Robinsons, and then talk as though their qualities continue in
existence. So with God. If we reject all the gods of the theologies one
after another, what god have we left to talk about? All we have left is
the memory of a delusion.
It is equally fallacious to talk of "God" as an equivalent of force in
the abstract, or as the equivalent of some non-intelligent force. This
is not what people ever meant, or mean, by god. What religious folk
believe in, what they pray to, is a person who can hear them, and who
can do things. A god only dimly apprehended may be tolerated, but for
how long will faith continue to worship an existence that can neither do
nor hear nor sympathise? There is a limit to even religious folly. And
even a savage only worships "sticks and stones" _after_ he endows them
with life and intelligence.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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