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
