Answer From a Philosophical Unbeliever
It is the general fashion to believe in a God, the maker of all things, or at least to pretend to such a belief, to define the nature of this existing Deity by the attributes which are given to him, to place the foundation of morality on this belief, and in idea at least, to connect the welfare of civil society with the acknowledgement of such a Being. Few however are those, who being questioned can give any tolerable grounds for their assertions upon this subject, and hardly any two among the learned agree in their manner of proving what each will separately hold to be indisputably clear. The attributes of a Deity are more generally agreed upon, though less the subject of proof, than his existence. As to morality, those very people who are moral will not deny, they would be so though there were not a God, and there never yet has been a civil lawgiver, who left crimes to be punished by the author of the universe; not even the profanation of oaths upon the sacredness of which so much is built in society, and which yet is said to be a more immediate offence against the Deity than any other that can be named.
The method which Dr. Priestley has taken to prove the existence of a God, is by arguing from effect to cause. He explodes that other pretended proof a priori which has so much raised the fame of Dr. Clarke among other theologians. As to the attributes of the Deity, Dr. Priestley is not quite so confident in his proofs there; and the most amiable one, the most by mortals to be wished for, the benevolence of God he almost gives up, or owns at least there is not so much proof of it as of his other attributes. His observations are divided into several Letters, this is one answer given to the whole; for it would be to no purpose to reply to topics upon which the writers are agreed. What therefore is not contradicted here, Dr. Priestley may in general take to be allowed; but to obviate doubts and to allow his argument every force, it may be fairer perhaps to recite at full length what in this answer is allowed to be true, what is denied as false, what meant to be exposed as absurd, and what rejected as assertions without proof, inadmissible or inconclusive. The conclusion will contain some observations upon the whole.
Truisms
1. “Effects have their adequate causes.”
2. “Nothing begins to exist without a cause foreign to itself.”
3. “No being could make himself, for that would imply that he existed and did not exist at the same time.”
4. If one horse, or one tree, had a cause, all had.”
5. Something must have existed from all eternity.
6. “Atoms cannot be arranged, in a manner expressive of the most exquisite design, without competent intelligence having existed somewhere.”
7. “The idea of a supreme author is more pleasing to a virtuous mind, than that of a blind fate and fatherless deserted world.”
8. “The condition of mankind is in a state of melioration, as far as misery arises from ignorance, for as the world grows older it must grow wiser, if wisdom arises from experience.”
9. “All moral virtue is only a modification of benevolence.”
10. “Virtue gives a better chance for happiness than vice.”
11. “No instance of any revival.”
12. “Atheists are not to think themselves quite secure with respect to a future life.”
13. “Thought might as well depend upon the construction of the brain, as upon any invisible substance extraneous to the brain.”
14. “If the works of God had a beginning, there must have been a time when he was inactive.”
15. “Where happiness is wanting in the creation I would rather conclude the author had mist of his design than that he wanted benevolence.”
False Assertions
1. “A cause needs not be prior to an effect.”
2. “If the species of man had no beginning, it would not follow that it had no cause.”
3. “A cause may be cotemporary with the effect.”
4. “An atheist must believe he was introduced into the world without design.”
Absurdities
1. “A general mass of sensation consisting of various elements borrowed from the past and the future.”
2. “Since sensation is made up of past, present, and future, the infant feeling for the moment only, the man recollecting what is past and anticipating the future, and as the present sensation must therefore in time bear a less proportion to the general mass of sensation than it did, so at last all temporary affections, whether of pain or pleasure become wholly inconsiderable.”
3. “The great book of nature and the book of revelation both lie open before us.”
4. “A conclusion above our comprehension.”
5. “A whole eternity already past.”
6. “Since a finite Being cannot be infinitely happy, because he must then be infinite in knowledge and power; and as all limitation of happiness must consist in degree of happiness or mixture of misery, the Deity can alone determine which mode of limitation is best.”
7. “We have reason to be thankful for our pains and distress.”
8. “If the divine Being had made man at first as happy as he can be after all the feelings and ideas of a painful and laborious life, it must have been in violation of all general laws and by a constant and momentary interference of the Deity.”
9. “It is better the divine agency should not be very conspicuous.”
10. “If good prevails on the whole, creation being infinite, happiness must be infinite, and God comprehending the whole, will only perceive the balance of good, and that will be happiness unmixed with misery.”
11. “If a man is happy in the whole he is infinitely happy in the whole of his existence.”
12. “Although all things fall alike to all men and no distinction is made between the righteous and the wicked, and even though the wicked derive an advantage from their vices, yet this is consistent with a state of moral government by a Being of infinite wisdom and power.”
13. “As ploughing is the means of having a harvest, though God has predetermined whether there should be a harvest or not, so prayer is the means of obtaining good from God, although that good is predetermined upon; it is therefore no more absurd to pray than to plough.”
14. “Notwithstanding happiness is the necessary consequence of health, yet man’s happiness is more from intellectual than corporeal feelings.”
15. “Evil is necessarily connected with and subservient to good, although in the next world there will be all good and no evil.”
16. “By reason we can discover the necessary existence of a Deity, yet to be a sceptic on that subject is the first step to be a Christian, because reason not sufficiently proving it we fly to revealed truth.”
17. “The power, which a man has by the comprehensiveness of his mind to enjoy the future, has no apparent limits.”
18. “It is of no avail in the argument concerning the existence of a Deity, that we have no conception of him, since it does not imply impossibility of his existence that we have no idea at all upon the subject.”
Inadmissible or Inconclusive
1. “The question of the existence of a Deity is important.”
2. “A Theist has a higher sense of personal dignity than an atheist.”
3. “The conduct of an atheist must give concern to those who are not
so.”
4. “An atheist believes himself to be, at his death, for ever excluded from returning life.”
5. “There are more atheists than unbelievers in revelation.”
6. “Men of letters may have the same bias to incredulity as others to credulity, because they are subject to a wrong association of ideas, as well as other persons though in a less degree.”
7. “Whoever first made a thing, for example a chair or a table, must have had an adequate idea of it’s nature and use.”
8. “If a table had a designing cause, the tree from whence the wood came, and the man who made the table must have had a designing cause, which comprehended all the powers and properties of trees and men.”
9. “All the visible universe, as far as we can judge, bears the marks of being one work, and therefore must have had a cause of infinite power and intelligence.”
10. “We might as well say a table had no cause, as that the world had none.”
11. “A Being originally and necessarily capable of comprehending itself, it is not improper to call infinite, for we can have no idea of any bounds to it’s knowledge or power.”
12. “A series of finite causes cannot possibly be carried back ad infinitum.”
13. “Our imagination revolts at the idea of an intellectual soul of the universe, that is, of an intelligence resulting from arrangement.”
14. “The actual existence of the universe compels us to come at last to an originally existent and intellectual Being, because if the immediate maker of the universe has not existed from all eternity, he must have derived his being and senses from one who has, and that being we call God.”
15. “God must be present to all his works, if we admit no power can act but where it is, he must therefore exist every where, because his works are every where.”
16. “As no being can unmake or materially change himself (at least none can annihilate himself) so God is unchangeable, for no Being God made can change him and no other Being can exist but what God made.”
17. “Two infinite intelligent beings of the same kind would coincide, therefore there can only be one God.”
18. “Nothing can be more evident, than that plants and animals could not have proceeded from each other from all eternity.”
19. “That happiness is the design of the creation because health is designed and sickness is only an exception, not a general rule is as evident as that the design of the Mill-wright must have been, that his machine should not be obstructed.”
20. “As a state of sickness is comparatively rare with a state of health, happiness the result of health, and the end of the creation happiness, so the end of the creation is already in a great measure answered.”
21. “Pleasure tends to continue and propagate itself, pain to check and exterminate itself.”
22. “As our knowledge and power in respect to shunning pains and procuring pleasures advance with our experience, nothing is wanting to enable us to exterminate all pains, but a continuance of being.
23. “Our enjoyments continually increase in real value from infancy to old age.”
24. “A future moral distribution is probable, because God is infinitely powerful and wise.”
25. “Since reverence, gratitude, obedience, confidence are duties to men, so they are to God; and as we pray to men, so we should pray to God.”
26. “Prescience, predetermination and infinite benevolence are no argument against prayer to the Deity.”
27. “A wish produced by nature is evidence of the thing wished for, but a future state is wished for, therefore there is evidence of a future state.”
28. “As we have no idea how we came originally to be produced, for what we know to the contrary our reproduction may be as much the course of nature as our original production..”
29. “A gloom and melancholy belong more to atheists than to devout people.”