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The underlying reason for morality is always the same, and we are compelled to hark back to it for justification. And no rejection of religion can alter the basis upon which morality rests. The proposition that Atheist, Agnostic, and Theist breathe the same atmosphere and are affected by the same influences is, therefore, one that is two-edged.
Before proceeding to establish this position, we shall consider the usual reply of the theist to the great argument of the atheist. “The greatest love which a ruler can show for virtue,” says Bayle, “is to cause it, if he can, to be always practised without any mixture of vice.
Shelley so separated the good and evil in the world, that he was presently vexed as acutely as any theist with the problem of accounting for evil. Paine felt no difficulty in his sharp, positive mind.
The person who believes in a transcendental theology alone, is termed a deist; he who acknowledges the possibility of a natural theology also, a theist.
Darwin, although himself a theist," maintains that "the contrivances manifested in the organs of plants and animals . . . are not due to the continued cooperation and control of the divine mind, nor to the original purpose of God in the constitution of the universe." As to the negative statement, it might suffice to recall Dr.
Lest it should be thought that I am doing injustice to the views of this illustrious theist, I here quote his own words: "We have the ideas of matter and thinking, but possibly shall never be able to know whether any mere material being thinks or no, it being impossible for us, by the contemplation of our own ideas, without revelation, to discover whether omnipotency has not given to some systems of matter fitly disposed a power to perceive and think, or else joined and fixed to matter so disposed a thinking immaterial substance; it being, in respect of our notions, not much more remote from our comprehension to conceive that God can, if He pleases, superadd to matter a faculty of thinking, than that He should superadd to it another substance with a faculty of thinking; since we know not wherein thinking consists, nor to what sort of substance the Almighty has been pleased to give that power, which cannot be in any created being, but merely by the good pleasure and bounty of the Creator.
In that remarkable conversation, held toward the close of his life, he indicates clearly enough that his faith was neither that of the ordinary theist, the atheist, nor the pantheist, but that his religious theory of the universe was identical with that suggested by Spinoza, adopted by Goethe, and recently elaborated in the first part of the "First Principles" of Mr. Herbert Spencer.
"It strikes me," he said, "as the supreme one." They came at length to Mr. Bentley's door, flung open in its usual wide hospitality by Sam. Whatever theist fortunes, they would always be welcome here . . . . But it turned out, in answer to their question, that their friend was not at home.
You cannot have an infinite personality any more than you can have a six-sided octagon, nor can you posit an infinite personality without divesting the terms of all meaning. It may also be noted in passing that both the theist and the Agnostic actually do deny the existence of particular gods without the least hesitation.
If the theist claims that a supreme intelligence issued laws for his own pleasure and without any reason, then he must admit that there is something which is not subject to law and the train of natural law is interrupted.
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