The Universalist. [volume] (Chicago [Ill.]) 1884-1897, 1896-02-15
AN ATHEISTS ARGUMENT.
BY REV. ]. B. SAKE.

SSSSSSSsSSsSSSSsSsSSs9SSSSO
ONE of my neighbors is professed
atheist, and subscriber of the Bos-
ton Investigator. I used to see that
paper occasionally, many years ago,
perhaps fifty-and was acquainted
with some who read it regularly. 1
remember reading in it a 80 called
argument, which those of that school
of alleged thinkers" seemed to con-
slider very smart, as they frequently
repeated it to me in conversation. 1t
was this, directed against the truth
of the first verse of the Bible: eff God
created the heavens and the earth,
what did he make them out ofa If a
man builds a house, he builds or
makes it out of some material, and
without the material he could not
make it. Did God make the earth
out of nothing? How much nothing
does it take to make something? And
is there any more nothing left, out
of which worlds could be madeY On
looking over copy of the Investiga-
tor of recent date the other day, be-
hold "Monsieur Tonson had come
again!" The old saw had been re-
peated, verbatim, ct literatim, ct
punctuation, as though it was a bran
new coinage out of the mental mint
of the writer.
There are men of good practical
sense in ordinary matters who are so
utterly destitute of any creative men
tai faculty that they take such argu-
ments seriously. Because man can
not create matter, they cannot imag-
inc how an infinite God could do it.
My friend objected that if there was
an Almighty God he could make wa
ter run up hill, which was impossible,
and therefore there was no God. See?
Besides, he could make an orthodox
hell, and how did I know but he
would! Deacon Homespun was GER
tain the earth did not and could not
turn over, because if it did the water
would spill out of his mill pond. He
was not going to believe anything
opposed to ''reason"-not he. That
would be miracle, and miracles were
impossible. He stood onShis reason!
Fallstaff, though brave as lion, was
a coward on "instinct." Instinct, he
held, was "great matter" But
these men scout instinct, or intuition,
or anything except what they term
treason" What they cannot fully
comprehend or understand, they re-
ject; therefore their creeds are short.
But they hold to them with SO much
the more tenacity on that account,
and are apt to be just little bigoted
in their opinions, although they
loudly assert their liberality. They
are ''liberals," par excellence, what
ever that means.
Now as to the creation of matter
let us think moment. What is mat
ter? Does anybody know? It has
certain properties, such as weight,
extension, inertia and the rest. That
is about all we absolutely know of it.
Philosophers have puzzled them
selves to define it, or tell exactly what
it is. Some have thought it an objec-
tive reality, and others that it only
had subjective existence-that it
only existed as a phantasm of the
mind. The latest hypothesis -one
that is now received by leading scien-
tifc men as the most probable, though
not yet demonstrated-is that like
light, heat and electricity, it consists
simply of vibrations of the ether;
and that apart from this it has no
existence. 1t was formerly held that
the SUMS rays consisted of certain
forms of matter, projected in straight
lines in every direction from that
great luminous center. Now they are
held to be but vibrating waves of the
ether, an elastic fluid, or something
of that nature, which is conjectured
to fill infinite space; just as sound
consists only of the vibrations of the
atmospheric air. The color of the
light, and whether the ray consists
of light, or heat. or chemical ener-
gy = depends upon the velocity
of the vibrations, which scien-
fists have assumed to measure: one
color having so many vibrations in a
second, reckoned in millions; another
color a different velocity, etc. The
solar rays travel in this way nearly
100000 miles in a second of time, and
are about eight minutes in coming
from the sun here, a distance of more
than 10000, 900 of miles. We know
of No limit tn the distance fhav NOV