Quote of the Day

It is obvious that Agnosticism is the destruction of science. All the investigations and reasonings of science proceed on the foundation of axioms, - call them intuitions, rational postulates, or by any other name. But these, according to Agnostics, denote simply a certain stage at which the process of evolution has arrived. What is to hinder them from vanishing, or resolving themselves into another set of axioms, with the forward movement of this unresting process? What then will become of the doctrine of Agnosticism itself? It is plain that on this philosophy, all knowledge of realities, as distinct from transitory impressions, is a house built on the sand. All science is reduced to schein – mere semblance. It is impossible for the Agnostic to limit his knowledge to experience, and to reject as unverified the implications of experience, without abandoning nearly all that he holds true. If he sticks to his principle, his creed will be a short one. Consciousness is confined to the present moment. I am conscious of remembering an experience in the past. This consciousness as a present fact I cannot deny without a contradiction. But how do I know that the object of the recollection – be it a thought, or feeling or experience of any sort – ever had a reality? How do I know anything past, or that there is a past? Now, memory is necessary to the comparison of sensations, to reasoning, to our whole mental life. Yet to believe memory is to transcend experience. I have certain sensations which I attribute collectively to a cause named my “body.” Like sensations lead me to recognize the existence of other bodies like my own. But how do I know that there is consciousness within these bodies? How do I know that my fellow-men whom I see about me have minds like my own? The senses cannot perceive the intelligence of the friends about me. I infer that they are intelligent, but in this inference I transcend experience. Experience reduced to its exact terms, according to the methods of Agnosticism, is confined to the present feeling, - the feeling of the transient moment. When the Agnostic goes beyond this, when he infers that what is remembered was once presented in consciousness, that his fellow-men are thinking beings, and not mindless puppets, that any intelligent beings exist outside of himself, he transcends experience. If he were to predicate intelligence of God, he would be guilty of no graver assumption than when he ascribes intelligence to the fellow-men he sees moving about, and with whom he is conversing.

George Parker