An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles by Charles Southwell
page 61 of 129 (47%)
page 61 of 129 (47%)
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so soundly.
We observe that motion is caused by body, and apart from body no one can conceive the idea of motion. Local motion may, but general motion cannot be accounted for. The Shepherd contends there is nothing more mysterious than motion. There he is right; and had he said nothing is _less_ mysterious than motion he would have been equally so. For telling these unpalatable truths the Atheist is bitterly detested. 'The Shepherd' is a most unorthodox kind of Pantheist; yet even he does not scruple to swell the senseless cry against 'Godless infidels,' whom he calls an almost infinite variety of bad names, and among other shocking crimes accuses them of propounding a 'dead philosophy.' Yet the difference between his Pantheism and our Atheism is only perceptible to the microscopic eye of super-sublimated spiritualism. The subjoined is offered to the reader's notice as a sample of Pantheism so closely resembling Atheism, that, like the two Sosias in the play, to distinguish them is difficult: 'What Coleridge meant by the motto (all Theology depends on mastering the term nature) concerns us not. We appropriate the motto, but we do not profess to appropriate it in the same sense as Coleridge appropriated it. Every man must appropriate it for himself. Coleridge perceived what every thinking mind has perceived--the difficulty of believing in two self-determining powers, viz., God and Nature, as also the consequences of regarding them as identical. If Nature be one power and God another power, and if God be not responsible for what Nature does, then Nature is a self-subsisting God. If God and Nature be esteemed one universal existence, this is Pantheism, which is denominated an accursed doctrine by the disciples of Sectarianism, and |
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