God and Reason: Some Theses from Natural Theology |
Common terms and phrases
absolutely action adaptation adversaries animals argument from design assertion Atheists belief blood called carbon dioxide chance combination conceived concept conclusion consent of mankind cosmological argument Creator deny derived divine effect efficient cause enthymeme evidence evil Evolution existence of God experience explain fact faith false Father final cause finite forces God's existence Hence human idea impossible infinite innumerable intellect judgment Kant knowledge man's ment Monism Monotheism moral motion Natural Theology neces necessarily necessary object Ontological Ontological argument order of finality oxygen Pantheist perfect person philosophy physical Polytheism Polytheist possible Prehistoric Religion prenotes primitive proof prove the existence race reality reject religion religious result revelation SCHOLION self-existing self-possessed sense singular spirit Subd substance sufficient reason supreme syllogism teleological argument testimony Theism Theistic thesis things produced Tiele tion Totemism true truth unicity universe unproduced cause unproduced first cause world-order worship
Popular passages
Page 101 - 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 124 - We see that things which lack intelligence, such as natural bodies, act for an end, and this is evident from their acting always, or nearly always, in the same way, so as to obtain the best result.
Page 41 - All that the facts require is that the power should be both other and larger than our conscious selves. Anything larger will do, if only it be large enough to trust for the next step. It need not be infinite, it need not be solitary. It might conceivably even be only a larger and more godlike self...
Page 3 - If we look on man's whole mental life as it exists, on the life of men that lies in them apart from their learning and science, and that they inwardly and privately follow, we have to confess that the part of it of which rationalism can give an account is relatively superficial.
Page 7 - Not God, but life, more life, a larger, richer, more satisfying life, is, in the last analysis, the end of religion. The love of life, at any and every level of development, is the religious impulse.
Page 23 - I had therefore to remove knowledge, in order to make room for belief. For the dogmatism of metaphysic, that is, the presumption that it is possible to achieve anything in metaphysic without a previous criticism of pure reason, is the source of all that unbelief, which is always very dogmatical, and wars against all morality.
Page 124 - ... by the archer. Therefore some intelligent being exists by whom all natural things are directed to their end; and this being we call God.
Page 34 - The object of science, they say, is the reality of the knowable; the object of faith, on the contrary, is the reality of the unknowable. Now, what makes the unknowable unknowable is...
Page 6 - ... and in God conceived as the perfect embodiment of all the values discovered on earth, fail to realize the inherent disadvantages of these beliefs. The evils they breed may be called by the general name of 'otherworldliness.
Page 3 - ... impulses, your faiths, your needs, your divinations, have prepared the premises, of which your consciousness now feels the weight of the result; and something in you absolutely knows that that result must be truer than any logic-chopping rationalistic talk, however clever, that may contradict it. This inferiority of the rationalistic level in founding belief is just as manifest when rationalism argues for religion as when it argues against it.