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Doubtless most well-informed readers will feel that the solitary basis thus provided for Theism is a very insecure one, while many such readers will at once conclude that if this is the only basis which reason can provide for Theism to stand upon, Theism is without any rational basis to stand upon at all.
It will be granted that the worship of the light-gods of Egyptian religion was fitted to lead the minds of the Egyptians to theism. In illustration of this statement extracts may be here given from hymns, which date as we have them from the eighteenth dynasty 1590 B.C., but which are probably much older.
In what has consisted that continuous purification of Theism which the history of thought shows to have been effected, from the grossest form of belief in supernatural agency as exhibited in Fetichism, through its more refined form as exhibited in Polytheism, to its still more refined form as exhibited in Monotheism? In nothing but in a continuous process of what Mr.
It has been said by Bishop Butler, that such an objection “concludes altogether as much against God’s whole original constitution of nature, and the whole daily course of divine providence, in the government of the world, i. e., against the whole scheme of theism and the whole notion of religion, as against Christianity.
But the Genesis narratives are distinguished by their freedom from the polytheistic ingredients which disfigure the corresponding narratives elsewhere. They are on the elevated plane of that pure theism which is the kernel of the Hebrew faith.
If what is usually understood by "theism" be once granted as a foundation, it is easy to raise thereon a superstructure of further religious beliefs by means of the argument drawn from their adaptability to the higher needs of mankind.
The "facts" of our moral nature, so far as honest reason can perceive, belie the hypothesis of Theism; and although the "faculties" of man may be forced by prejudice into an acceptance of contradictory propositions, the truth is obvious that only by the hypothesis of Evolution can that old-tied knot be cut the Origin of Evil. The form of Theism for which Dr.
The final reply to the arguments set forth on behalf of Theism is, not that they are inconclusive, but that they are absolutely irrelevant to the question at issue. We cannot remain undecided because there is nothing to remain undecided about. We know that the idea of god is pure myth, and was never anything but myth.
The impersonal pantheistic conception of the Deity may be passing into the theistic, and even into Christian theism; the doctrine of transmigration may be little more than the current orthodox explanation of the coming of misfortune; the doctrine of Maya or the illusory character of the phenomena of our consciousness, it may be impossible to utter in this new practical age; and Jesus Christ may be the object of the highest reverence; but still the instinctive thought of the educated Hindu is that there is a period of life for the world's work, and a later period for devotion to religion.
We have thus seen that the Theory of Cosmical Development is a mere hypothesis, incapable of experimental or historical proof; that the recent progress of scientific discovery has tended to disprove the fundamental assumption on which it rests; and that, even were it admitted as a possible, or, still more, as a plausible explanation of the origin of planets and astral systems, it would not serve to destroy, and scarcely, if at all, to diminish the evidence of Theism.
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