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Updated: June 24, 2025
Assail, in like manner, the Skeptical Atheist with the self-evident truth that, even on his own principles, he is not entitled to assume or to act upon the assumption, that there is no God, since the result of his reasonings is doubt merely, and such doubt as implies that there may be a Creator, Governor, and Judge, he will probably defer to it so far as to admit that this is the only logical result of his system, but will add that, where there is no conclusive evidence on either side, there can be no moral obligation to a religious life, and no guilt in living "without God in the world."
Sinking to his knees the atheist lifted his eyes to the heavens, and with his feeble voice and the fervor born of helplessness, prayed to the God that he denied. He begged for the life of the waif in his care for the safety of the mother, so needful to the little one and for courage and strength to do his part and bring them together.
Wardlaw Scott's flat earth would be the true territory for a comfortable atheist. Nor would the old Jews have any objection to being as much upside down as right way up. They had no foolish ideas about the dignity of man.
For groping however dimly and hesitatingly towards the idea of religious liberty, of general toleration, he was denounced as a Papist, an atheist, a traitor, a miscreant, by the fanatics for the sacerdotal and personal power. Yet it was a pity that he could never contemplate the possibility of his country's throwing off the swaddling clothes of provincialism which had wrapped its infancy.
Now, if the question were, Can you account for your own existence, or for the existence of the world around you, without having recourse to a supreme First Cause? we would answer, No: but if the question be, Can there be any Certitude prior to the idea of God, not deduced from it, and capable of existing without it? we would answer, Yes: the little child is certain of its mother's existence before it is capable of knowing God, and the veriest Atheist is certain of his own existence and that of his fellow-men, even when he professes to doubt or to disbelieve the existence of God.
And he it was told me the classic story of that presumptuous schoolboy who went to his Head Master and declared himself an atheist. There were no dialectics but a prompt horse-whipping. "In after life," said Mr. Siddons, with unctuous gratification, "he came to recognize that thrashing as the very best thing that had ever happened to him. The kindest thing."
Solomon himself, whose writings are called "the word of God," was such a freethinker, that if he were now alive, nothing but his building of churches could have kept our priests from calling him an atheist. The prophets of the Old Testament were generally freethinkers: you must understand, that their way of learning to prophesy was by music and drinking.
I persevered stoutly in denying it, as I knew no evidence could be produced against me; till, finding him irreconcilable, I betook myself to reviling him in my sermons, and on every other occasion, as an enemy to the church and good men, and as an infidel, a heretic, an atheist, a heathen, and an Arian.
Their great 'prophet' argued that if the tree is good the fruit will be good; but when their own religion is in question they give such argument the slip. The vices of the Atheist they ascribe to his creed. The vices of the Christian to anything but his creed. Let professors of Christianity be convicted of gross criminality, and lo its apologists say such professors are not Christians.
This assumption has been incautiously conceded to the atheist by his opponent, and hence his argument has not been clearly and fully refuted.
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