In order to constitute such a Being God, it must be
shown, as we have already seen, to be something more than a merely Causal
Agent which is absolute in the grotesquely restricted sense of being
independent of 'one petty race of creatures with an ephemeral experience of
what is going on in one tiny corner of the universe;' it must be shown to
be something more than absolute even in the wholly unrestricted sense of
being Unconditioned; it must be shown to possess such other attributes as
are distinctive of Deity. For I maintain that even Unconditioned Being,
_merely as such_, would only then have a right to the name of God when it
has been shown that the theory of Theism has a right to monopolise the
doctrine of Relativity.'
In thus endeavouring to "purify" the theory of Atheism, by divesting it of
all superfluous accessories, and laying bare what I conceive to be its
essential substance; it may be well to state that, even apart from their
irreligious character, I have no sympathy with the atheists of the past
century. I mean, that these men do not seem to me to deserve any credit for
advanced powers of speculation merely because they adopted a theory of
things which in its essential features now promises to be the most
enduring. For it is evident that the strength of this theory now lies in
its _simplicity_,--in its undertaking to explain, so far as explanation is
possible, the sum-total of phenomena by the single postulate of
self-existence.
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