See Dissecting Deism Past and Present
Existence of Deity-God
I think that
every Christian sect gives a great handle to
atheism by their general dogma, that without
a revelation. there would not be sufficient
proof of the being of a God.
Now, one-sixth
of mankind only are supposed to be Christian;
the other five-sixths, then who do not
believe in the Jewish and Christian revelation.
are without knowledge of the existence of
a am this gives completely a gain de cause
to the disciples of Ocelllus
Spinoza Diderot and D'Holbach.
The argument which they rest on as triumphant and
unanswerable is, that every hypothesis of
cosmology, you must admit an eternal preexistence
of something; and according to the
rule of sound philosophy, you are never to
employ two principles to solve a difficulty
when only will suffice.
They say then that it is more simple to believe
at once an the eternal pre-existence of the world.
as it is now going
on, and may forever go on by the principle of
reproduction which we see and witness than
to believe in the eternal pre-existence of an
ulterior cause, or Creator of the world, a
Being whom we see not and know not, of
whose form, substance and mode, or place of
existence, or of action, no sense informs us,
no power of the mind enables us to delineate
or comprehend.
On the contrary. I hold
(without appeal to revelation) that when we
take a view of the universe, in all its parts,
general or particular, it is impossible for the
human mind not to perceive and feel a conviction
of design consummate skill, and indefinite
power in every atom of its composition.
The movements of the heavenly
bodies so exactly held in their course by
the balance of centrifugal and centripetal
force, the structure of our earth itself, with
its distribution of lands. water and atmosphere;
animal and vegetable bodies, examined
in all their minutest particles; insects. mere
atoms of life, yet as perfectly organized as
man or mammoth; the mineral substances.
their generation and uses; it is impossible I
say, for the human mind not to believe
that there is in all this design, cause and
effect up to an ultimate cause, a fabricator of
all things from matter and motion, their preserver
and regulator while permitted to exist
in their present forms, and their regeneration
into new and other forms. We see, too evident
proofs of the necessity of a superintending
power to maintain the universe in its
course and order.
Stars well known. have disappeared, new ones have come into view ;
comets in their incalculable courses. may run
foul of suns and planets. and require renovation
under other laws; certain races of
animals become extinct and were there
no restoring power, all existences might extinguish
successively, one by one. Until all
should be reduced to a shapeless chaos. So
irresistible are these evidences of an intelligent
and powerful agent that of the infinite
numbers of men who have existed through
all time they have believed, in the proportion
at least to a unit, in the hypothesis
of an eternal pre-existence of a
Creator rather than in that of a self-existent
universe.
Surely this unanimous sentiment
renders this more probable than that of the
few in the other hypothesis. Some early
Christians, indeed have believed in the co-eternal
pre-existence of both the Creator and
the world, without changing their relation of
cause and effect That was to opinion
of St. Thomas we are informal by cardinal
Toleta.
To JOHN ADAMS vii 281 1823
Jefferson Cyclopedia, Foley 1900
- Islam Versus Deism
- Left vs Right, Montesquieu, Corporatism
- Eastern Roman Empire and Islam
- Philosophies of Islam, Greece, and the West by Turgut Ozal
- Example of Islam and science.
- Maimonides Versus Aristotle and the Jews of Spain, Thirteen Rules
- Handbook on the History of Modern Science
- Pelagius and why he was right
- Islam Versus Judaism and Christianity
- Islam to Deism: Why I became a Deist
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