An essay in refutation of atheism

Contents

Page.

Introduction 1

Theism in Possession 4

Preface

TO

AH ESSAY 1 REFUTATION OF ATHEISM.

It is not without some misgiving that I present the following essay to the public; not, indeed, because I have any lack of confidence in the soundness of its principles, or the combined analytical and synthetic processes by which I attempt to demonstrate the existence of God, the fact of creation, providence, the moral law, and the ground of man's moral obligation to worship God; but from a consciousness of my inability to do justice to the great thesis I have undertaken to defend, and my distrust of the disposition of the public to receive and read with patience what is most likely to be treated as a metaphysical disquisition, and therefore as worthless. Nobody now reads metaphysical works, or any works that pertain to the higher philosophy, and especially such as attempt to vindicate theology as the science of sciences.

All I can say is, that my essay is not metaphysical in the ordinary acceptation of the term, does not attempt to construct a science of abstractions, which are null, and deals only with concretes, with realities. Some of the problems, and the analyses by which I attempt to solve them, may be regarded as abstruse, difficult, and foreign from the ordinary current of thought, as all such discussions must necessarily be; but I have done my best to make my statements and reasonings clear and distinct, plain and intelligible to men of ordinary understanding and intellectual culture.

vi

PREFACE.

The greatest difficulty the reader will find arises from the fact that I have not followed the more common methods of proving the existence of God, and that while I have broached no new system of philosophy, I have adopted an unfamiliar method of demonstration, though in my judgment rendered necessary by the logic of the case. I follow neither the ontological method, nor the psychological method, and adopt neither the argument a priori, nor the argument a posteriori, and while I maintain that the principles of all the real and the knowable are intuitively given I deny that we know that being or God is by intuition.

I have borrowed from Plato and Aristotle, St. Augustine and St. Thomas, from Cousin and Gioberti, heathen and Christian, orthodox and heterodox what I found to my purpose, but I follow no one any further than he follows what I hold to be demonstrable or undeniable truth. I have freely criticized and rejected the teachings of eminent authors, for some of whom I have a profound reverence, but I think my criticisms carry their own justification with them. I have adopted the Ideal formula, Ens creat exisientias, asserted by Gioberti; but not till I have by my own analysis of thought, the objective element of thought, and the ideal element of the object, been forced to accept it; and whether I explain and apply it or not in Ms sense, I certainly take it in none of the senses that, to my knowledge, have been objected to by his critics. I am not a follower of Gioberti; he is not my master; but I cannot reject a truth because he has defended it ; and to refuse to name him, and give him credit where credit is honestly his due, because he is in bad odor with a portion of the public, would be an act of meanness and cowardice of which I trust I am incapable.

My essay ought to be acceptable to all who profess to be Christians. What my religion is all the world knows that knows me at all. I am an uncompromising Catholic, and on all proper occasions I glory in avowing my adherence to the See of Rome, and in defending the Catholic faith, and the Roman Pontiff now gloriously reigning, the Vicar of Christ, and Supreme Head and infallible teacher of the Universal Church. Such being the fact, there would be a want of good taste as well as

PREFACE.

vii manliness in seeking to disguise or to conceal it. But in this work I have had no occasion to discuss any question on which there are any differences among those who profess to be Christians, and I have only defended, not the faith, but the preamble to faith, as St. Thomas calls it, against the common enemy of God and man.

I have embodied in this comparatively brief essay the results of my reading and reflections during a long life on the grounds of science, religion, and ethics; they may not be worth much, but I give them to the public for what they are worth. They do not solve all the questions that the ingenious and the subtile critic may raise, and fairly respond to all the objections that sophists and cavillers may adduce; but I think the work indicates a method which will be useful to many minds, and, if it converts no atheist, will at least tend to confirm Christians in the fundamental article of their faith, and to put them on their guard against the seductions of a satanic philosophy and a false, but arrogant science to which they are everywhere exposed. I have written to save the cause of truth and sound philosophy, and, in all humility, I submit what I have written to the protection of Him whose honor and glory I have wished to serve, and to the infallible judgment of his Vicar on earth.

O. A. BROWNSON.

Elizabeth, N. J., March, 1872.

ESSAY IN REFUTATION OF ATHEISM.

[From Brownson's Quarterly Review for 1873-4.] I. INTRODUCTION.

Tite age of heresy is virtually past. Ileresy, in its progressive developments, has successively arraigned and rejected every article in the creed, from " Patrem omnipotentem" down to " Yitam aeternam." Following its essential nature, that of arbitrary choice among revealed mysteries and dogmas, of what it will rejector retain, it has eliminated one after another, till it has nothing distinctively Christian remaining, or to distinguish it from pure, unmitigated rationalism and downright naturalism. It retains with the men and women of the advanced, or movement party, hardly a dim and fading reminiscence of the supernatural, and may be said to have exhausted itself, and gone so fax that it can go no further.

No new heresy is possible. The pressing, the living controversy of the day is not between orthodoxy and heterodoxy, which virtually ended with Bossuet's IJistoire des Variations du J J rotesta?Uisme, and the issue is now between Christianity and infidelity, faith and unbelief, religion and no religion, the worship of God the Creator, or the idolatry of man and nature — in a word between theism and atheism ;. for pantheism, so fearfully prevalent in modern philosophy, is only a form of atheism, and in substance differs not from what the fool says in ins heart, Non est Deus. Not all on either side, however, have as yet become aware that this is the real issue, or that the old controversy between the orthodox and the heterodox, or the church and the sects, is not still a living controversy ; but all on either side who have looked beneath the surface, and marked the tendencies of modern thought and of modern theories widely received, in their principles if not in their developments, are well aware that the exact question at issue is no longer the church, but back of it in the domain of science and philosophy, and is simply, God or no God ?

The scientific theories in vogue are all atheistic, or have at least an atheistic tendency ; for they all seek to explain,

Vol. n.— 1 man and the universe, or the cosmos, without the recognition of God as its first or its final cause. Even the philosophical systems that professedly combat atheism and materialism, fail to recognize the fact of creation from nothing, assume the production of the cosmos by way of emanation, formation, or evolution, which is only a form of atheism. Even philosophical theories which profess to demonstrate the existence of God, bind him fast or completely hedge him in by what they call " the laws of nature," deny him personality or the last complement of rational nature, and take from him his liberty or freedom of action, which is really to deny him, or, what is the same thing, to absorb him in the cosmos.

The ethical theories of our moral philosophers have equally an atheistical tendency. They all seek a basis for virtue without the recognition of God, the creative act, or the divine will. Some place the ethical principle in selfinterest, some in utility, some in instinct, some in what they call a moral sense, amoral sentiment, or in a subjective idea; others, in acting according to truth ; others, in acting according to the fitness of things, or in reference to universal order. Popular literature, written or inspired in no small part by women, places it in what it calls love, and in doing what love dictates. The love, however, is instinctive, carries its own reason and justification in itself, refuses to be morally bound, and shrinks from the very thought of duty or obligation — a love that moves and operates as one of the great elemental forces of nature, as attraction, gravitation, the wind, the storm, or the lightning. The Christian doctrine that makes virtue consist in voluntary obedience to the law of God as our sovereign, our final cause, and finds the basis of moral obligation in our relation to God as his creatures, created for him as their last end, is hardly entertained by any class of modern ethical philosophers, even when they profess to be Christians.

In politics, the same tendency to eliminate God from society and the state is unmistakable. The statesmen and political philosophers who base their politics oh principles derived from theology are exceptions to the rule, and are regarded as "behind the age." Political atheism, or' the assumption that the secular order is independent of the spiritual, and can and should exist and act without regard to it, is the popular doctrine throughout Europe and 'America, alike with monarchists and republicans, and is at the bot-