But we should like further to know how the “profound student” of advanced science will be able to rise to a “spiritualized” ideal of Divinity. The general drift of modern infidel science is towards materialism. It teaches that thought is secreted by the brain as water is by the kidneys, or, at least, that thought consists of molecular movements, and that the admission of a spiritual substance in the organism of man is quite unwarranted. How, then, can a science which rejects spiritual substances lead its “profound student” to a spiritualized ideal of Divinity? It is manifest, we think, that all this talk is mere jugglery, and the professor himself seems to have felt that it was; for he admits that the profound student of science may be “so oppressed with a consciousness of the Infinite as to refrain from all attempts to grasp and formulate and limit the nature of what is past finding out.” This last expression shows that Mr. Youmans has no ground for expecting that his profound student will rise to the ideal of the divine nature, as what is “past finding out” will never be found, and is not only “unspeakable,” as he declares, but also “unthinkable.” The profound student of science is therefore doomed, so far as Mr. Youmans may be relied on, to remain without any ideal of God. What is this but genuine atheism?
Mr. Youmans will reply that his profound student will not be an atheist, because he will feel “so oppressed with the consciousness of the Infinite.” But we should like to know how the profound student can have consciousness of what he cannot think of. And, in like manner, if the Infinite is unthinkable, how can the profound student know that it is infinite? These contradictions go far to prove that “ignorance” and “stupidity,” far from being the characteristics of Christianity, find a more congenial abode in the “developed intellects of the profound students of advanced science.”
As all errors are misrepresentations of truth, we cannot dismiss this point without saying a word about the truth here misrepresented. God is incomprehensible; such is the truth. God is unthinkable; this is the error. To argue that what is incomprehensible is also unthinkable, is a manifest fallacy. There are a very great number even of finite things which we know but cannot comprehend. For instance, we know gravitation, electricity, and magnetism, but our knowledge of them is quite inadequate. We know ancient history, though numberless facts have remained inaccessible to our research. We know the operations of our own faculties, but we are far from comprehending them. Comprehension is the perfect and adequate knowledge of the object comprehended. If the cognoscibility of the object is not exhausted, there is knowledge, but not comprehension; and as our finite intellect has no power of exhausting the cognoscibility of things, human knowledge is not comprehension, though no one will deny that it is true and real knowledge. In like manner, though we do not comprehend the infinite, yet we conceive it, and we know how to distinguish it from the finite. We know what we say when we affirm that the branches of the hyperbola extend to infinity, that the decimal division of ten by three leads to an infinite series of figures, that every line is infinitely divisible, that every genus extends infinitely more than any of its subordinate species, and the species infinitely more than the individual, etc. Thus the notion of the infinite is a familiar one among men; and when Mr. Youmans contends that the infinite is unthinkable, he commits a blunder, and every one of his readers has the right to tell him that such a blunder in inductive science is inexcusable.
Perhaps it may not be superfluous to point out, before we conclude, another fallacy of the “developed intellect” of the professor. He assumes that to form a conception of God is to limit the divine nature; for he declares that the profound student of science oppressed with the consciousness of Infinity ought reverently to refrain “from all attempts to grasp, and formulate, and limit the nature of that which is past finding out.” We would inform Mr. Youmans that the notion of a thing does not limit the thing, but simply expresses that the thing is what it is, whether it be limited or unlimited. In all essential definitions some notion is included, which expresses either perfection or imperfection. When we say that a being is irrational, we point out an imperfection, or a defect of further perfection; whereas when we say that a being is rational, we express a perfection of the being. Now, since all imperfection is a real limit, it follows that all denial of imperfection is a denial of some limit, and therefore the affirmation of every possible perfection is a total exclusion of limit. Thus omnipotence excludes all limit of power, eternity all limit of duration, omniscience all limit of knowledge, immensity all limit of space. We need not add that all the other attributes of God exclude limitation, as they are all infinite. It is evident, therefore, that we can “formulate” our notion of God without “limiting” the divine nature; and that those “profound students” of nature whose “developed intellect” is “oppressed with the consciousness of Infinity” strive in vain to palliate their atheism by “reverently (?) refraining from all attempts to grasp and formulate” the nature of the Supreme Cause.
We may be told that Prof. Youmans, though he rejects the “God of theology,” admits something equivalent—viz., Infinity, the consciousness of which he feels so oppressive. He also admits that “religious feelings may be awakened” in a mind so oppressed by the thought of Infinity, and insists that “religious teachers ought in these days to have liberality enough to recognize this serious fact, remembering that human nature is religiously progressive as well as progressive in its other capacities.” Would not this show that we cannot without injustice hold him up as a professor of atheism? We reply that the accusation of atheism preferred against the tendency of advanced science has been met by the professor in such a manner as to give it only more weight, according to the old proverb which says that
Causa patrocinio non bona pejor erit.
He does not believe in the God of theology. In what does he believe? In the “unthinkable”! This is sheer mockery. But the unthinkable is said to be infinite. This is sheer nonsense, as we have shown. Again, the unthinkable is said to awaken religious feelings. This is written for unthinkable persons. The professor, as we have already noticed, admires the grandeur of nature, and holds it to be “boundless,” and therefore infinite. This may lead one to suspect that the material universe—the sun, the planets, the stars, heat, light, electricity, gravity, and their laws—constitute the “Infinity” with the consciousness of which the professor is oppressed. If this could be surmised, we might regard him as a pantheist. This, of course, would not better his position, as pantheism is, after all, only another form of atheism. But if nature (or rather Nature, as he writes it) is his Deity, how can he affirm that such a nature is “unspeakable” and “unthinkable”? If nature is “unthinkable,” the science of nature is a dream; and if it is “unspeakable,” all the talk of the Popular Science Monthly is a fraud.
If Prof. Youmans wishes us to believe that “advanced” science does not tend to foster atheism, and that its foremost champions are not atheists, let him come forward like a man, and show that, after rejecting the God of theology and of philosophy, another God has been found, to whom “developed intellects” offer religious worship, and in whom their religious feelings are rationally satisfied. Let him give us, above all, his “scientific” reasons for abandoning the God of the Bible, in whom we “ignorant blockheads” have not ceased to believe; and let him state his “philosophic” reasons also, if he has any, that we may judge of the case according to its full merit. We need not be instructed about the “religious progressiveness” of mankind, or any other convenient invention of unbelievers; we want only to know the new God of “advanced” science, his nature and his claims. When Prof. Youmans shall have honestly complied with this suggestion, we shall see what answer can best meet his appeal to the “liberality” of religious teachers.