Book Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1903 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XVII THE ELECTRICAL THEORY OF CREATION WILL SAVE MODERN SCIENCE FROM PANTHEISM It is marvelous the number of scientists who question the fact as to whether there is a personal God, and who look upon the universe and its laws and operations as the manifestation of a universal intelligence that has no existence except as it is infused as an invisible force through all nature. In other words, pantheism, or belief in a world-God, has been taking the place of the materialism of the past century. And a vast array of distinguished agnostics, so-called, from Darwin, Spinoza, Huxley and Haeckel to Ingersoll, were really believers in pantheism. Haeckel says he adheres to the Monism of Spinoza which, he says, is "matter, or infinitely extended substance; and spirit or energy, which is sensitive and thinking substance. These are the two fundamental attributes or principal properties of the all-embracing, divine essence of the world--the universal substance." What is this but pantheism of the rankest old, obsolete, pagan kind? What is "the all-embracing divine essence of the world--the universal substance," but a substitute for God, --a God which is simply the substance of the world--a world-God. According to this, all the elements of the universe are parts of Deity. The crystalline rocks and metals of the earth, the dust we kick from our feet, the manure of the stable, and the odor of decaying vegetation are all a part of the body of God. And this, they claim, is the God of the universe, and the only God there is. This is a fair analysis of pantheism, of Haeckelism, Darwin and Huxleyism, Ingersoll and agnosticism. What a shame on human reason! Yet these great thinkers, seeing the intelligibility of nature, its uniformity of laws and...