Anti-theistic Theories: Being the Baird Lecture for 1877

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W. Blackwood and sons, 1879 - Atheism - 555 pages

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Page 160 - That gravity should be innate, inherent, and essential to matter, so that one body may act upon another at a distance through a vacuum, without the mediation of anything else, by and through which their action and force may be conveyed from one to. another, is to me so great an absurdity that I believe no man, who has iu philosophical matters a competent faculty of thinking, can ever fall into it.
Page 384 - Am I a God at hand, saith the Lord, and not a God afar off? Can any hide himself in secret places that I shall not see him ? saith the Lord. Do not I fill heaven and earth ? saith the Lord.
Page 172 - ... the passage from the current to the needle, if not demonstrable, is thinkable, and that we entertain no doubt as to the final mechanical solution of the problem. But the passage from the physics of the brain to the corresponding facts of consciousness is unthinkable. Granted that a definite thought, and a definite molecular action in the brain occur simultaneously ; we do not possess the intellectual organ, nor apparently any rudiment of the organ, which would enable us to pass, by a process...
Page 172 - ... following all their motions, all their groupings, all their electric discharges, if such there be ; and were we intimately acquainted with the corresponding states of thought and feeling, we should be as far as ever from the solution of the problem, " How are these physical processes connected with the facts of consciousness ? " The chasm between the two classes of phenomena would still remain intellectually impassable.
Page 76 - It is true, that a little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism ; but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion : for while the mind of man looketh upon second causes scattered, it may sometimes rest in them, and go no further ; but when it beholdeth the chain of them, confederate and linked together, it must needs fly to Providence and Deity.
Page 48 - While life remains, let a man live happily, let him feed on ghee, even though he runs in debt, When once the body becomes ashes, how can it ever return again...
Page 172 - Were our minds and senses so expanded, strengthened, and illuminated as to enable us to see and feel the very molecules of the brain ; were we capable of following all their motions, all their groupings...
Page 495 - I feel bound to make before you is that I prolong the vision backward across the boundary of the experimental evidence, and discern in that matter, which we in our ignorance, and notwithstanding our professed reverence for its Creator, have hitherto covered with opprobrium, the promise and potency of every form and quality of life.
Page 76 - I had rather believe all the fables in the Legend, and the Talmud, and the Alcoran, than that this universal frame is without a mind.
Page 301 - God, created he him, male and female, that they should have dominion over the fish of the sea, the fowl of the air, and the beast of the field, &c.

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