Superstition Unveiled by Charles Southwell
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Charles Southwell >> Superstition Unveiled
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Theists of every class would do well to calmly and fully consider this
rule of philosophising, for it involves nothing less than the
destruction of belief in the supernatural. The Jupiter of Mythologic
History, the Allah of Alkoran, and the Jehovah of 'Holy Scripture,' if
entities at all, are assuredly entities that baffle human conception. To
'frame clear and distinct ideas of them' is impossible. In respect to
the attribute of _unknown ability_ all Gods are alike.
Books have been written to exhibit the difficulties of (what priests
choose to call) Infidelity, and without doubt unbelief has its
difficulties. But, according to a universally recognised rule of
philosophising, of two difficulties we are in all cases to choose the
least. From a rule so palpably just no one can reasonably depart, and
the Universalist, while freely admitting a great difficulty on his own
side, is satisfied there can be demonstrated an infinitely greater
difficulty on the side of his opponents. The Universalist labours to
convince mankind they are not warranted by the general course of Nature
in assigning to it a Cause; inasmuch as it is more in accordance with
experience to suppose Nature the uncaused cause, than to imagine, as
errorists do, that there is an uncaused cause of Nature.
Theologians ask, who created Nature? without adducing satisfactory
evidence that Nature _was_ created, and without reflecting that if it is
difficult to believe Nature self-existent, it is much more difficult to
believe some self-existent Super-nature, capable of producing it. In
their anxiety to get rid of a natural difficulty, they invent a
supernatural one, and accuse Universalists of 'wilful blindness,' and
'obstinate deafness,' for not choosing so unphilosophic a mode of
explaining universal mystery.
The rule of philosophising just adverted to--that rule which forbids us,
in any case, to chose the greater of two difficulties--is of immense
importance, and should be carefully considered by every one anxious to
arrive at correct conclusions with respect to theology. For if believers
in God do depart from that rule--if their belief necessarily involve its
violation--to persist in such belief is to persist in what is clearly
opposed to pure reason. Now, it has been demonstrated, so far as words
can demonstrate any truth whatever, that the difficulty of him who
believes Nature never had an author, is infinitely less than the
difficulty of him who believes it had a cause itself uncaused.
In the 'Elements of Materialism,' an unequal, but still admirable work
by Dr. Knowlton, a well-known American writer, this question of
comparative difficulty is well handled.
'The sentiment,' says the Doctor, 'that a being exists which never
commenced existence, or what is the same thing, that a being exists
which has existed from all eternity, appears to us to favour Atheism,
for if one Being exist which never commenced existence--why not
another--why not the universe? It weighs nothing, says the Atheist, in
the eye of reason, to say the universe appears to man as though it were
organised by an Almighty Designer, for the maker of a thing must be
superior to the thing made; and if there be a maker of the universe
there can be no doubt, but that if such maker were minutely examined by
man, man would discover such indications of wisdom and design that it
would be more difficult for him to admit that such maker was not caused
or constructed by a pre-existing Designer, than to admit that the
universe was not caused or constructed by a Designer. But no one will
contend for an infinite series of Makers; and if, continues the Atheist,
what would, if viewed, be indications of design, are no proofs of a
designer in the one case, they are not in the other; and as such
indications are the only evidence we have of the existence of a Designer
of the universe, we, as rational beings, contend there is no God. We do
not suppose the existence of any being, of which there is no evidence,
when such supposition, it admitted, so far from diminishing would only
increase a difficulty, which, at best, is sufficiently great. Surely, if
a superior being may have existed from all eternity, an inferior may
have existed from all eternity; if a great God sufficiently mighty to
make a world may have existed from all eternity, of course without
beginning and without cause, such world may have existed from all
eternity, without beginning, and without cause.' [23:1]
These are 'strong reasons' for Universalism. They prove that Theists set
at nought the rule of philosophising which forbids us to choose the
greater of two difficulties. Their system compels them to do so; for
having no other groundwork than the strange hypotheses that time was
when there was no time--something existed when there was nothing, which
something created everything; its advocates would be tongue-tied and
lost if reduced to the hard necessity of appealing to facts, or rigidly
regarding rules of philosophising which have only their reasonableness
to recommend them. They profess ability to account for Nature, and are
of course exceeding eager to justify a profession so presumptuous. This
eagerness betrays them into courses, of which no one bent on rejecting
whatever is either opposed to, or unsanctioned by, experience, can
possibly approve. It is plain that of the God they tell us to believe
'created the worlds,' no man has any experience. This granted, it
follows that worship of such fancied Being is mere superstition. Until
it be shown by reference to the general course of things, that things
had an author, Himself uncreated or unauthorized, religious philosophers
have no right to expect Universalists to abandon their Universalism. The
duty of priests is to reconcile religion with reason, _if they can_, and
admit their inability to do so, _if they cannot_.
Romanists will have nothing to do with reason whenever it appears at
issue with their faith. All sects, as sects, play fast and loose with
reason. Many members of all sects are forward enough to boast about
being able to give a reason for the faith that is in them; but an
overwhelming majority love to exalt faith above reason. Philosophy they
call 'vain,' and some have been found so filled with contempt for it, as
to openly maintain that what is theologically true, is philosophically
false; or, in other terms, that the truths of religion and the truths of
philosophy have nothing in common. According to them, religious truths
are independent of, and superior to, all other truths. Our faith, say
they, if not agreeable to _mere_ reason is infinitely superior to it.
Priests are 'at one' on the point. Dissenting and Protestant, as well as
Romanising priests, find it convenient to abuse reason and extol faith.
As priests, they can scarcely be expected to do otherwise; for reason is
a stern and upright judge whose decrees have hitherto been unfavourable
to superstition. Its professors, who appeal to that judge, play a part
most inconsistent and dangerous, as is evident in the case of Origen
Bachelor, who more zealous and candid than prudent, declared the real
and only question between Atheism and Theism a question of fact;
reducing it to these terms--'Is there reason, all things considered, for
believing that there is a God, an intelligent cause of things, infinite
and perfect in all his attributes and moral qualities?' [24:1]
Now, the reader has seen that the hypothesis of 'an intelligent cause of
things' involves difficulties, greater, infinitely greater than the one
difficulty involved in the hypothesis that things always existed. He has
seen the folly of explaining natural, by the invention of supernatural
mystery, because it manifestly violates a rule of philosophising, the
justness of which it would be ridiculous to dispute. Having clearly
perceived thus much, he will perhaps think it rather 'too bad' as well
as absurd, to call Universalists 'madmen' for lacking faith in the
monstrous dogma that Nature was caused by 'something amounting to
nothing' itself uncaused.
There is something. That truth admits not of being evidenced. It is,
nevertheless, accepted. It is accepted by men of all religious opinions,
equally with men of no religious opinions. If any truth be self-evident
and eternal, here is that truth. To call it in question would be worse
than idle. We may doubt the reality of an external world, we may be
sceptical as to the reality of our own bodies, but we cannot doubt that
there is something. The proposition falls not within the domain of
scepticism. It must be true. To suppose it false is literally
impossible. Its falsehood would involve contradiction, and all
contradiction involves Impossibility. But, if proof of this were needed,
we have it in the fact that no man, sage or simple, ever pretended to
deny there is something. Whatever men could doubt or deny they have
doubted or denied, but in no country of the world, in no age, has the
dogma--there is something--been denied or even treated as doubtful. Here
then Universalists, Theists, and Polytheists agree. They agree of
necessity. There is no escape from the conclusion that something is,
except we adopt the unintelligible dogma--there is nothing--which no
human being can, as nothing amounts to nothing, and of what amounts to
nothing no one can have an idea. To define the word something by any
other word would be labour in vain. There is no other word in any
language whoso meaning is better understood, and they who do not
understand what it means, if such persons there be, are not likely to
understand the meaning of any word or words whatever. Ideas of nothing
none have. That there is something, we repeat, must be true, all dogmas
or propositions being necessarily true whose denial involves an
impossibility. What the nature of that something may be is a secondary
question, and however determined cannot affect the primary dogma--things
are things whatever may be their individual or their aggregate nature.
Nor is it of the least consequence what name or names we may see fit to
give things, so that each word has its fixed and true meaning. Whether,
for example, we use for the sign of that something which is, the word
Universe, or God, or Substance, or Spirit, or Matter, or the letter X,
is of no importance, if we understand the word or letter used to be
merely the sign of that something. Words are seldom useful except when
they are the sign of true ideas; evidently therefore, their legitimate
function is to convey such ideas; and words which convey no ideas at
all, or what is worse, only those which are false, should at once be
expunged from the vocabularies of nations. Something is. The
Universalist calls it matter. Other persons may choose to call it other
names: let them. He chooses to call it this one--and no other.
There ever has been something. Here, again, is a point of unity. All are
equally assured there ever has been something. Something is, something
must always have been, cry the religious, and the cry is echoed by the
irreligious. This last dogma, like the first, admits not of being
evidenced. As nothing is inconceivable, we cannot even imagine a time
when there was nothing. Universalists say, something ever was, which
something is matter. Theists say, something has been from all eternity,
which something is not matter but God. They boldly affirm that matter
began to be. They affirm its creation from nothing, by a something,
which was before the universe. Indeed, the notion of universal creation
involves first, that of universal annihilation, and secondly, that of
something prior to everything. What creates everything must be before
everything, in the same way that he who manufactures a watch must exist
before the watch. As already remarked, Universalists agree with Theists,
that something ever has been, but the point of difference lies here. The
Universalist says, matter is the eternal something, and asks proof of
its beginning to be. The Theist insists that matter is not the eternal
something, but that God is; and when pushed for an account of what he
means by God, he coolly answers, a Being, having nothing in common with
anything, who nevertheless, by his Almighty will, created everything. It
may without injustice be affirmed, that the sincerest and strongest
believers in this mysterious Deity are often tormented by doubts, and,
if candid, must own they believe in the existence of many things with a
feeling much closer allied to certainty than they do in the reality of
their 'Great First Cause, least understood.' No man's faith in the
inconceivable is ever half so strong as his belief in the visible and
tangible.
But few among professional mystifiers will admit this, obviously true as
it is. Some have done so. Baxter, of pious memory, to wit, who said, _I
am not so foolish as to pretend my certainty be greater than it is,
because it is dishonour to be less certain; nor will I by shame be kept
from confessing those infirmities which those have as much as I, who
hypocritically reproach with them._ MY CERTAINTY THAT I AM A MAN IS
BEFORE MY CERTAINTY THAT THERE IS A GOD.
So candid was Richard Baxter, and so candid are _not_ the most part of
our priests, who would fain have us think them altogether _un_sceptical.
Nevertheless, they write abundance of books to convince us 'God is,'
though they never penned a line in order to convince us, we actually
are, and that to disbelieve we are is a 'deadly sin.'
Could God be known, could his existence be made 'palpable to feeling as
to sight,' as unquestionably is the existence of matter, there would be
no need of 'Demonstrations of the existence of God', no need of
arguments _a priori_ or _a posteriori_ to establish that existence.
Saint John was right; 'No man hath seen God at any time', to which 'open
confession' he might truly have added, 'none ever will,' for the unreal
is alway unseeable. Yet have 'mystery men' with shameless and most
insolent pertinacity asserted the existence of God while denying the
existence of matter.
_The incomprehensible is not to be defined._ It is difficult to give
_intelligible_ account of an Immense Being confessedly mysterious and
about whom his worshippers admit they only know, they know nothing,
except that
'He is good,
And that themselves are blind.'
Spinoza said, _of things which have nothing in common, one cannot be the
cause of the other_; and to me it seems eminently unphilosophic to
believe a Being having nothing in common with anything, capable of
creating or causing everything. 'Only matter can be touched or touch;'
and as the Christian's God is not material, his adorers are fairly open
to the charge of superstition. An unknown Deity, without body, parts or
passions, is of all idols the least tangible; and they who pretend to
know and reverence him, are deceived or deceivers.
In this Christian country, where men are expected to believe and called
'Infidel' if they _cannot_ believe in a 'crucified Saviour,' it seems
strange so much fuss should be made about his immateriality. All but
Unitarian Christians hold as an essential article of faith, that in him
dwelt the fulness of the Godhead bodily; in other words, that our
Redeemer and our Creator, though two persons, are but one God. It is
true that Divines of our 'Reformed Protestant Church,' call everything
but gentlemen those who lay claim to the equivocal privilege of feasting
periodically upon the body and blood of Omnipotence. The pains taken by
Protestants to show from Scripture, Reason and Nature, that Priests
cannot change lumps of dough into the body, and bumpers of wine into the
blood, of their God, are well known and appreciated. But the Roman
Catholics are neither to be argued nor laughed out of their 'awful
doctrine' of the real presence, to which they cling with desperate
earnestness.
Locke wrote rather disparagingly of 'many among us,' who will be found
upon Inquiry, to fancy God in the shape of a man fitting in heaven, and
have other absurd and unfit conceptions of him.' As though it were
possible to think of shapeless Being, or as though it were criminal in
the superstitious to believe 'God made man after his own image.'
That Christians as well as Turks 'really have had whole sects earnestly
contending that the Deity was corporeal and of human shape', is a fact,
so firmly established as to defy contradiction. And though every sincere
subscriber to the Thirty Nine Articles must believe, or at least must
believe he believes in Deity without body, parts, or passions, it is
well known that 'whole sects' of Christians do even now 'fancy God in
the shape of a man sitting in heaven, and entertain other absurd and
unfit conceptions of him.'
Mr. Collibeer, who is considered by Christian writers 'a most ingenious
gentleman', has told the world in his Treatise entitled 'The Knowledge
of God,' that Deity must have some form, and intimates it may probably
be the spherical; an intimation which has grievously offended many
learned Theists who considered going so far an abuse of reason, and warn
us that 'its extension beyond the assigned boundaries, has proved an
ample source of error.' But what the 'assigned boundaries' of reason
are, they don't state, nor by whom 'assigned.' That if there is a God he
must have _some_ form is self-evident and why Mr. Collibeer should be
ostracized by his less daringly imaginative brethren, for preferring a
spherical to a square or otherwise shaped Deity, is to my understanding
what God's grace is to their's.
But admitting the unfitness, and absurdity, and 'blasphemy' of such
conceptions, it is by no means clear that any other conceptions of the
'inconceiveable' would be an improvement upon them. Undoubtedly, the
matter-God-system has its difficulties, but they are trifles in
comparison with those by which the spirit-God system is encompassed;
for, one obvious consequence of faith in bodiless Divinity is an utter
confusion of ideas in those who preach it, as regards possibilities and
impossibilities.
The universe is an uncaused existence, or it was caused by something
before it. By universe we mean matter, the sum total of things, whence
all proceeds, and whither all returns. No truth is more obviously true
than the truth that matter, or something not matter, exists of itself,
and consequently is not an effect, but an uncaused cause of all effects.
From such conviction, repugnant though it be to vulgar ideas, there is
no rational way of escape; for however much we may desire, however much
we may struggle to believe there was a time when there was nothing, we
cannot so believe. Human nature is constituted intuitively or
instinctively to feel the eternity of something. To rid oneself of that
feeling is impossible. Nature or something not Nature must ever have
been, is a conclusion to which what poets call Fate--
Leads the willing and drags the unwilling.
But does this undeniable truth make against Universalism? Far from
it--so far, indeed, as to make for it. The reason is no mystery. Of
matter we have ideas clear, precise, and indispensable, whereas of
something not matter we cannot have any idea whatever, good, bad, or
indifferent. The Universe is extraordinary, no doubt, but so much of it
as acts upon us is perfectly conceivable, whereas, any thing within,
without, or apart from the Universe, is perfectly inconceivably.
The notion of necessarily existing matter seems fatal to belief in God;
that is, if by the word God be understood something not matter, for 'tis
precisely because priests were unable to reconcile such belief with the
idea of matter's self-existence or eternity, that they took to imagining
a 'First cause.'
In the 'forlorn hope' of vanquishing the difficulty of necessarily
existing _Matter_, they assent to a necessarily existing _Spirit_, and
when the nature of spirit is demanded from these assertors of its
existence, they are constrained to avow that it is material or nothing.
Yes, they are constrained to make directly or indirectly one or other of
these admissions; for, as between truth and falsehood, there is no
middle passage; so between something and nothing, there is no
intermediate existence. Hence the serious dilemma of Spiritualists, who
gravely tell us their God is a spirit, and that a spirit is not any
thing, which not any thing or nothing (for the life of us we cannot
distinguish between them) 'framed the worlds' nay, _created_ as well as
framed them.
If it be granted, for the mere purpose of explanation, that spirit is an
entity, we can frame 'clear distinct ideas of'--a real though not
material existence, surely no man will pretend to say an uncreated
Spirit, is less inexplicable than uncreated Matter. All could not have
been caused or created unless nothing can be a Cause, the very notion of
which involves the grossest of absurdities.
_Whatever is produced, without any cause, is produced by nothing; or, in
other words, has nothing for its cause. But nothing never can be a cause
no more than it can be something or equal to two right angles. By the
same intuition that we perceive nothing not to be equal to two right
angles, or not to be something, we perceive that it can never be a
cause, and consequently must perceive that every object has a real cause
of its existence. When we exclude all causes we really do exclude them,
and neither suppose nothing nor the object itself to be the causes of
the existence, and consequently can draw no argument from the absurdity
of these suppositions except to prove the absurdity of that exclusion.
If everything must have a cause, it follows that upon the exclusion of
other causes, we must accept of the object itself or nothing as causes.
But it is the very point in question whether everything must have a
cause or not, and therefore, according to all just reasoning ought not
to be taken for granted_. [29:1]
This reasoning amounts to logical demonstration (if logical
demonstration there can be) of a most essential truth, which in all ages
has been obstinately set at nought by dabblers in the supernatural. It
demonstrates that something never was, never can be, caused by nothing,
which can no more be a cause, properly so called, than it can be
something, or equal to two right angles; and therefore that everything
could not have had a cause, which, the reader has seen, is the very
point assumed by Theists--the very point on which as a pivot they so
merrily and successfully turn their fine metaphysical theories and
immaterial systems.
The universe, quoth they, must have had a cause, and that cause must
have been First Cause, or cause number one, because nothing can exist of
itself. Oh, most lame and impotent conclusion! How, in consistency, can
they declare nothing can exist without a cause in the teeth of their oft
repeated dogma that God is uncaused. If God never commenced to be, _He_
is an uncaused existence, that is to say, exists without a cause. [29:2]
The difference on this point between Theists and Universalists is very
palpable. The former say, Spirit can exist without a cause, the latter
say Matter can exist without a cause. Whole libraries of theologic dogma
would be dearly purchased by Hume's profound remark--_if everything must
have a cause, it follows that upon the exclusion of other causes we must
accept of the object itself or of nothing as causes._
Saint Augustine, more candid than modern theologians, said 'God is a
being whom we speak of but whom we cannot describe and who is superior
to all definitions.' Universalists, on the other hand, as candidly deny
there is any such being. To them it seems that the name God stands for
nothing, is the archetype of nothing, explains nothing, and contributes
to nothing but the perpetuation of human imbecility, ignorance and
error. To them it represents neither shadow nor substance, neither
phenomenon nor thing, neither what is ideal nor what is real; yet is it
the name without senseless faith in which there could be no
superstition.
If Nature is all, and all is Nature, nothing but itself could ever have
existed, and of course nothing but itself can be supposed ever to have
been capable of causing. To cause is to act, and though body without
notion is conceivable, action without body is not. Neither can two
Infinites be supposed to tenant one Universe. Only 'most religious
philosophers' can pretend to acknowledge the being of an infinite God
co-existent with an infinite Universe.
Universalists are frequently asked--What moves matter? to which question
_nothing_ is the true and sufficient answer. Matter moves matter. If
asked how we know it does, our answer is, because we see it do so, which
is more than mind imaginers can say of their 'prime mover.' They tell us
mind moves matter; but none save the _third sighted_ among them ever saw
mind, and if they never saw mind, they never could have seen matter
pushed about by it. They babble about mind, but nowhere does mind exist
save in their mind; that is to say, nowhere but nowhere. Ask these
broad-day dreamers where mind is _minus_ body? and very cutely they
answer, body is the mind, and mind is the body.
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