No More Learning

It is required that testimony should not be contrary to
reason. The testimony that the Deity convinces the senses of men of His
existence can only be admitted by us if our mind considers it less
probable that these men should have been deceived than that the Deity
should have appeared to them. Our reason can never admit the testimony
of men, who not only declare that they were eye-witnesses of miracles,
but that the Deity was irrational; for He commanded that He should be
believed, He proposed the highest rewards for faith, eternal punishments
for disbelief. We can only command voluntary actions; belief is not an
act of volition; the mind is even passive, or involuntarily active; from
this it is evident that we have no sufficient testimony, or rather that
testimony is insufficient to prove the being of a God. It has been
before shown that it cannot be deduced from reason. They alone, then,
who have been convinced by the evidence of the senses can believe it.

Hence it is evident that, having no proofs from either of the three
sources of conviction, the mind CANNOT believe the existence of a
creative God: it is also evident that, as belief is a passion of the
mind, no degree of criminality is attachable to disbelief; and that they
only are reprehensible who neglect to remove the false medium through
which their mind views any subject of discussion. Every reflecting mind
must acknowledge that there is no proof of the existence of a Deity.

God is an hypothesis, and, as such, stands in need of proof: the onus
probandi rests on the theist. Sir Isaac Newton says: Hypotheses non
fingo, quicquid enim ex phaenomenis non deducitur hypothesis vocanda
est, et hypothesis vel metaphysicae, vel physicae, vel qualitatum
occultarum, seu mechanicae, in philosophia locum non habent. To all
proofs of the existence of a creative God apply this valuable rule. We
see a variety of bodies possessing a variety of powers: we merely know
their effects; we are in a state of ignorance with respect to their
essences and causes. These Newton calls the phenomena of things; but the
pride of philosophy is unwilling to admit its ignorance of their causes.
From the phenomena, which are the objects of our senses, we attempt to
infer a cause, which we call God, and gratuitously endow it with all
negative and contradictory qualities. From this hypothesis we invent
this general name, to conceal our ignorance of causes and essences.
The
being called God by no means answers with the conditions prescribed by
Newton; it bears every mark of a veil woven by philosophical conceit, to
hide the ignorance of philosophers even from themselves. They borrow the
threads of its texture from the anthropomorphism of the vulgar. Words
have been used by sophists for the same purposes, from the occult
qualities of the peripatetics to the effluvium of Boyle and the
crinities or nebulae of Herschel. God is represented as infinite,
eternal, incomprehensible; He is contained under every predicate in non
that the logic of ignorance could fabricate. Even His worshippers allow
that it is impossible to form any idea of Him: they exclaim with the
French poet,

Pour dire ce qu'il est, il faut etre lui-meme.

Lord Bacon says that atheism leaves to man reason, philosophy, natural
piety, laws, reputation, and everything that can serve to conduct him to
virtue; but superstition destroys all these, and erects itself into a
tyranny over the understandings of men: hence atheism never disturbs the
government, but renders man more clear-sighted, since he seas nothing
beyond the boundaries of the present life. --Bacon's "Moral Essays".

La premiere theologie de l'homme lui fit d'abord craindre at adorer les
elements meme, des objets materiels at grossiers; il randit ensuite ses
hommages a des agents presidant aux elements, a des genies inferieurs, a
des heros, ou a des hommes doues de grandes qualites. A force de
reflechir il crut simplifier les choses en soumettant la nature entiere
a un seul agent, a un esprit, a una ame universelle, qui mettait cette
nature et ses parties en mouvement. En remontant de causes en causes,
les mortels ont fini par ne rien voir; at c'est dans cette obscurite
qu'ils ont place leur Dieu; c'est dans cat abime tenebreux que leur
imagination inquiete travaille toujours a se fabriquer des chimeres, qui
les affligeront jusqu'a ce que la connaissance da la nature les detrompe
des fantomes qu'ils ont toujours si vainement adores.

Si nous voulons nous rendre compte de nos idees sur la Divinite, nous
serons obliges de convanir que, par le mot "Dieu", les hommes n'ont
jamais pu designer que la cause la plus cachee, la plus eloignee, la
plus inconnue des effets qu'ils voyaient: ils ne font usage de ce mot,
que lorsque le jeu des causes naturelles at connues cesse d'etre visible
pour eux; des qu'ils perdent le fil de ces causes, on des que leur
esprit ne peut plus en suivre la chaine, ils tranchent leur difficulte,
at terminent leurs recherches en appellant Dieu la derniere des causes,
c'est-a-dire celle qui est au-dela de toutes les causes qu'ils
connaissent; ainsi ils ne font qu'assigner une denomination vague a une
cause ignoree, a laquelle leur paresse ou les bornes de leurs
connaissances les forcent de s'arreter. Toutes les fois qu'on nous dit
que Dieu est l'auteur de quelque phenomene, cela signifie qu'on ignore
comment un tel phenomene a pu s'operer par le secours des forces ou des
causes que nous connaissons dans la nature. C'est ainsi que le commun
des hommes, dont l'ignorance est la partage, attribue a la Divinite non
seulement les effets inusites qui las frappent, mais encore les
evenemens les plus simples, dont les causes sont les plus faciles a
connaitre pour quiconque a pu les mediter. En un mot, l'homme a toujours
respecte les causes inconnues des effets surprenans, que son ignorance
l'empechait de demeler. Ce fut sur les debris de la nature que les
hommes eleverent le colosse imaginaire de la Divinite.

Si l'ignorance de la nature donna la naissance aux dieux, la
connaissance de la nature est faite pour les detruire.