It stands there indefeasibly: a gift which can't be
taken back. Calling matter the cause of it retracts no single one of
the items that have made it up, nor does calling God the cause
augment them. They are the God or the atoms, respectively, of just
that and no other world. The God, if there, has been doing just what
atoms could do--appearing in the character of atoms, so to speak--
and earning such gratitude as is due to atoms, and no more. If his
presence lends no different turn or issue to the performance, it
surely can lend it no increase of dignity. Nor would indignity come
to it were he absent, and did the atoms remain the only actors on
the stage. When a play is once over, and the curtain down, you
really make it no better by claiming an illustrious genius for its
author, just as you make it no worse by calling him a common hack.
Thus if no future detail of experience or conduct is to be deduced
from our hypothesis, the debate between materialism and theism
becomes quite idle and insignificant. Matter and God in that event
mean exactly the same thing--the power, namely, neither more nor
less, that could make just this completed world--and the wise man is
he who in such a case would turn his back on such a supererogatory
discussion.
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