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    The Idea of God as Affected by Modern Knowledge
    The Idea of God as Affected by Modern Knowledge
    The Idea of God as Affected by Modern Knowledge
    Ebook123 pages1 hour

    The Idea of God as Affected by Modern Knowledge

    By John Fiske

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    About this ebook

    John Fiske in the book "The Idea of God as Affected by Modern Knowledge" discusses the influence modern knowledge, predominantly science, has on the idea of God within society today. The author, John Fiske, is an American philosopher and historian, and he shared his knowledge about the idea of God, the view of society about the topic, as well as various conceptions about the philosophy. This book talks about one of the most important concepts or phenomena in the world today.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDigiCat
    Release dateJun 3, 2022
    ISBN8596547043300
    The Idea of God as Affected by Modern Knowledge

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      Book preview

      The Idea of God as Affected by Modern Knowledge - John Fiske

      John Fiske

      The Idea of God as Affected by Modern Knowledge

      EAN 8596547043300

      DigiCat, 2022

      Contact: [email protected]

      Table of Contents

      PREFACE.

      I.

      II.

      III.

      IV.

      V.

      VI.

      VII.

      VIII.

      IX.

      X.

      XI.

      XII.

      XIII.

      XIV.

      PREFACE.

      Table of Contents

      When

      asked to give a second address before the Concord School of Philosophy, I gladly accepted the invitation, as affording a proper occasion for saying certain things which I had for some time wished to say about theism. My address was designed to introduce the discussion of the question whether pantheism is the legitimate outcome of modern science. It seemed to me that the object might best be attained by passing in review the various modifications which the idea of God has undergone in the past, and pointing out the shape in which it is likely to survive the rapid growth of modern knowledge, and especially the establishment of that great doctrine of evolution which is fast obliging us to revise our opinions upon all subjects whatsoever. Having thus in the text outlined the idea of God most likely to be conceived by minds trained in the doctrine of evolution, I left it for further discussion to decide whether the term pantheism can properly be applied to such a conception. While much enlightenment may be got from carefully describing the substance of a philosophic doctrine, very little can be gained by merely affixing to it a label; and I could not but feel that my argument would be simply encumbered by the introduction of any question of nomenclature involving such a vague and uninstructive epithet as pantheism. Such epithets are often regarded with favour and freely used, as seeming to obviate the necessity for that kind of labour to which most people are most averse,—the labour of sustained and accurate thinking. People are too apt to make such general terms do duty in place of a careful examination of facts, and are thus sometimes led to strange conclusions. When, for example, they have heard somebody called an agnostic, they at once think they know all about him; whereas they have very likely learned nothing that is of the slightest value in characterizing his opinions or his mental attitude. A term that can be applied at once to a Comte, a Mansel, and a Huxley is obviously of little use in the matter of definition. But, it may be asked, in spite of their world-wide differences, do not these three thinkers agree in holding that nothing can be known about the nature of God? Perhaps so,—one cannot answer even this plain question with an unqualified yes; but, granting that they fully agree in this assertion of ignorance, nevertheless, in their philosophic attitudes with regard to this ignorance, in the use they severally make of the assertion, in the way it determines their inferences about all manner of other things, the differences are so vast that nothing but mental confusion can come from a terminology which would content itself by applying to all three the common epithet agnostic. The case is similar with such a word as pantheism, which has been familiarly applied to so many utterly diverse systems of thought that it is very hard to tell just what it means. It has been equally applied to the doctrine of the Hindu philosophers of the orthodox Brahmanical schools, who hold that all finite existence is an illusion, and life mere vexation and mistake, a blunder or sorry jest of the Absolute; and to the doctrine of the Stoics, who went to the other extreme, and held that the universe was the product of perfect reason and in an absolute sense good. (Pollock's Spinoza, p. 356.) In recent times it has been commonly used as a vituperative epithet, and hurled indiscriminately at such unpopular opinions as do not seem to call for so heavy a missile as the more cruel term atheism. The writer who sets forth in plain scientific language a physical theory of the universe is liable to be scowled at and called an atheist; but, when the very same ideas are presented in the form of oracular apophthegm or poetic rhapsody, the author is more gently described as tinctured with pantheism.

      But out of the chaos of vagueness in which this unhappy word has been immersed it is perhaps still possible to extract something like a definite meaning. In the broadest sense there are three possible ways in which we may contemplate the universe.

      First, we may regard the world of phenomena as sufficient unto itself, and deny that it needs to be referred to any underlying and all-comprehensive unity. Nothing has an ultimate origin or destiny; there is no dramatic tendency in the succession of events, nor any ultimate law to which everything must be referred; there is no reasonableness in the universe save that with which human fancy unwarrantably endows it; the events of the world have no orderly progression like the scenes of a well-constructed plot, but in the manner of their coming and going they constitute simply what Chauncey Wright so aptly called cosmical weather; they drift and eddy about in an utterly blind and irrational manner, though now and then evolving, as if by accident, temporary combinations which have to us a rational appearance. This is Atheism, pure and unqualified. It recognizes no Omnipresent Energy.

      Secondly, we may hold that the world of phenomena is utterly unintelligible unless referred to an underlying and all-comprehensive unity. All things are manifestations of an Omnipresent Energy which cannot be in any imaginable sense personal or anthropomorphic; out from this eternal source of phenomena all individualities proceed, and into it they must all ultimately return and be absorbed; the events of the world have an orderly progression, but not toward any goal recognizable by us; in the process of evolution there is nothing that from any point of view can be called teleological; the beginning and end of things—that which is Alpha and Omega—is merely an inscrutable essence, a formless void. Such a view as this may properly be called Pantheism. It recognizes an Omnipresent Energy, but virtually identifies it with the totality of things.

      Thirdly, we may hold that the world of phenomena is intelligible only when regarded as the multiform manifestation of an Omnipresent Energy that is in some way—albeit in a way quite above our finite comprehension—anthropomorphic or quasi-personal. There is a true objective reasonableness in the universe; its events have an orderly progression, and, so far as those events are brought sufficiently within our ken for us to generalize them exhaustively, their progression is toward a goal that is recognizable by human intelligence; the process of evolution is itself the working out of a mighty Teleology of which our finite understandings can fathom but the scantiest rudiments (Cosmic Philosophy, vol. ii. p. 406); it is indeed but imperfectly that we can describe the dramatic tendency in the succession of events, but we can see enough to assure us of the fundamental fact that there is such a tendency; and this tendency is the objective aspect of that which, when regarded on its subjective side, we call Purpose. Such a theory of things is Theism. It recognizes an Omnipresent Energy, which is none other than the living God.

      It is this theistic doctrine which I hold myself, and which in the present essay I have sought to exhibit as the legitimate outcome of modern scientific thought. I was glad to have such an excellent occasion for returning to the subject as the invitation from Concord gave me, because in a former attempt to expound the same doctrine I do not seem to have succeeded in making myself understood. In my Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy, published in 1874, I endeavoured to set forth a theory of theism identical with that which is set forth in the present essay. But an acute and learned friend, writing under the pseudonym of Physicus, in his Candid Examination of Theism (London, 1878), thus criticizes my theory: In it, he says, while I am able to discern the elements which I think may properly be regarded as common to Theism and to Atheism, I am not able to discern any single element that is specifically distinctive of Theism (p. 145). The reason for the inability of Physicus to discern any such specifically distinctive element is that he misunderstands me as proposing to divest the theistic idea of every shred of anthropomorphism, while still calling it a theistic idea. This, he thinks, would be an utterly illegitimate proceeding, and I quite agree with him. In similar wise my friend Mr. Frederick Pollock, in his admirable work on Spinoza (London, 1880), observes

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