No More Learning

The experience of others, which addresses itself to the former one,
occupies the lowest degree.

(A graduated scale, on which should be marked the capabilities of
propositions to approach to the test of the senses, would be a just
barometer of the belief which ought to be attached to them. )

Consequently no testimony can be admitted which is contrary to reason;
reason is founded on the evidence of our senses.

Every proof may be referred to one of these three divisions: it is to be
considered what arguments we receive from each of them, which should
convince us of the existence of a Deity.

1st, The evidence of the senses. If the Deity should appear to us, if He
should convince our senses of His existence, this revelation would
necessarily command belief. Those to whom the Deity has thus appeared
have the strongest possible conviction of His existence. But the God of
Theologians is incapable of local visibility.

2d, Reason. It is urged that man knows that whatever is must either have
had a beginning, or have existed from all eternity: he also knows that
whatever is not eternal must have had a cause. When this reasoning is
applied to the universe, it is necessary to prove that it was created:
until that is clearly demonstrated we may reasonably suppose that it has
endured from all eternity. We must prove design before we can infer a
designer. The only idea which we can form of causation is derivable from
the constant conjunction of objects, and the consequent inference of one
from the other. In a case where two propositions are diametrically
opposite, the mind believes that which is least incomprehensible;--it is
easier to suppose that the universe has existed from all eternity than
to conceive a being beyond its limits capable of creating it: if the
mind sinks beneath the weight of one, is it an alleviation to increase
the intolerability of the burthen?

The other argument, which is founded on a man's knowledge of his own
existence, stands thus.
A man knows not only that he now is, but that
once he was not; consequently there must have been a cause. But our idea
of causation is alone derivable from the constant conjunction of objects
and the consequent inference of one from the other; and, reasoning
experimentally, we can only infer from effects causes exactly adequate
to those effects. But there certainly is a generative power which is
effected by certain instruments: we cannot prove that it is inherent in
these instruments; nor is the contrary hypothesis capable of
demonstration: we admit that the generative power is incomprehensible;
but to suppose that the same effect is produced by an eternal,
omniscient, omnipotent being leaves the cause in the same obscurity, but
renders it more incomprehensible.

3d, Testimony. 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.