Page:Why I Do Not Believe in God.pdf/6

 in support of the existence of God, taking "God" to mean some undefined being other than and superior to the various forms of living and non-living things on this earth—or those forming part of the "material universe" in which we exist—and related to these as creator and controller. Now the existence of anything may be sensated or it may be inferred; the astronomer believed in the existence of Saturn because he saw it; but he also believed in the existence of the planet afterwards named Neptune before he saw it, attaining this belief by way of induction from the otherwise inexplicable behavior of Uranus. Can we then by the senses or by the reason find out God?

The most common, and to many the most satisfactory and convincing evidence, is that of the senses. A child born into the world has open to him these sense avenues of knowledge; he learns that something exists which is not he by the impressions made on his senses; he sees, he feels, he hears, he smells, he tastes, and thus he learns to know. As the child's past and present sensations increase in number, as he begins to remember them, to compare, to mark likenesses and unlikenesses, he gathers the materials for further mental elaboration. But this sensational basis of his knowledge is the limit of the area on which his intellectual edifice can be built; he may rear it upward as far as his powers will permit, but he can never widen his foundation, while his senses remain only what they are. All that the mind works on has reached it by these senses; it can dissociate and combine, it can break in pieces and build up, but no sensation no percept, and no percept no concept.

When this fundamental truth is securely grasped it will be seen of what tremendous import is the admitted fact that the senses wholly fail us when we seek for proof of the existence of God. Our belief in the existence of all things outside ourselves rests on the testimony of the senses. The "objective universe" is that which we sensate. When we reason and reflect, when we think of love, and fear, when we speak of truth and honor, we know that all these are not susceptible of being sensated, that is, that they have no objective existence; they belong to the Subject universe. Now if God cannot be sensated he also must belong to the Subject world; that is, he must