The Creation of God - Jacob Hartmann (readict TXT) 📗
- Author: Jacob Hartmann
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Or the creatures inhabiting these planets may be in a condition like that of creatures many, many ages past upon earth—may have no knowledge of gods or God, but are undergoing the necessary evolutionary changes that will ultimately bring them to that happy elysium, when they will be capable to produce their God or gods, as we have done on this earth.
Why is it not possible that a higher order of beings inhabiting Saturn are at this moment employing instruments in order to ascertain the constitution and condition of this terrestrial globe, speculating on the probability whether this earth is inhabited or not? They may have positive knowledge that this planet has an atmosphere several hundred miles in depth. They may know its size, diameter, its distance from the sun, and that this planet revolves in an ellipse as the planet Saturn does. They may also know that the elements are of the same nature; and that there are mountains, seas, an equator, a north and a south pole, but only one moon. Looking at this planet as a star of this solar system, of perhaps the third or the fourth magnitude, nothing compared with their own, either in size, moons, belts, or other important features, these higher organized beings on Saturn may be able to behold worlds beyond themselves far more vast than their own, and regard this planet, Venus, Mercury, etc., as very insignificant affairs.
Why may they not have appliances, modes of travel or communication, as far removed in intelligence from our highest order of beings, as the difference between a frog and the pope?
We have no reason to exclude any supposition, however wild and extravagant, as to the conditions of other planets. It is not entirely imaginary. Inferences may be drawn from what we know, and deductions made from our practical experience. This problem is safer to speculate on, having a solid basis to start with. Those who believe in the actuality of an existing God have not a thing to base his existence on, except the natural functions of the brain.
But if we concede that this earth has a God, what right have we to assume that each other planet has not a god of its own? We have no evidence to the contrary. Who dares to state positively that they have not a god? Why should this insignificant terrestrial planet God presume, or persons for him, that he controls and governs planetary bodies hundreds of times larger, and perhaps far more important, than this small solar system?
How do we know that the inhabitants of other planets have not had angels, saints, and saviors? How do we know that they have not had beings who pretended to know all about their god, and were as brutal, as savage, and as demented as some of the persons figuring in scripture, or the tyrannical, bloody papists of the Dark Ages?
The imagination of man supplied us with Gods or a God on earth; the imagination is justified in supplying other planets with a god or gods. The god of Jupiter, Mars, or Saturn, etc., may with as much force and propriety say, “I am that I am; I am the great I am, the creator of all things. You, Planet Earth, may be a little older, riper, more solidified, have a solid crust, yet remember our god is just as good as yours, and better. You have only one moon—a fossil world, a mere cinder. And, moreover, our god is fourteen hundred times larger than yours, because our globe is that much larger. Our globe has a diameter of ninety thousand miles. And we have four satellites, or moons. Our largest is as big as your whole earth. Therefore, it is ridiculous for you to claim superiority. As to my neighbor Saturn, with his eight moons and belts, his god smiles at your presumption. I, the god of Jupiter, agree with the great god of Saturn and others, that your terrestrial affected greatness is too ridiculous to be worthy of our serious consideration. In fact, it is absurd for your earthly godship to claim to have made the sun that great luminary that gives us all heat, light, and life.”
Let us go but one step farther into space to show the fallacy of the assumption that this terrestrial God created all planets, stars, etc. At the present time it is considered that the star Alpha (α) Centauri in the southern hemisphere is the nearest to the earth. Its distance is more than 200,000 times that of the earth from the sun, or twenty trillions of miles. Light would require about four and a half years to travel this enormous distance. The stars which we see at such immense distances are suns. The vast distance at which the stars are known to be, precludes the thought of their shining, like the planets or the moon, by reflecting back the light of our sun. They must be self-luminous, and are doubtless each a center of a system of planets and satellites.
Our sun is but a star. As we see only the suns of these distant systems, so their inhabitants see only the sun of our system, and that as a small star.
Arrogant, conceited humanity, with an unbounded assurance and self-confidence, mixed with profound ignorance, have the impudence to claim that their terrestrial God created all the stars, suns, and planetary systems that are so far away in space that the eye of man cannot behold them—no, not even with the strongest instrument yet made.
We may be compared to maggots on a big cheese, crawling over its surface; they may with equal propriety claim that their cheese is the only cheese ever created, and that it was made for their own special use, and that all other cheeses were made only for their benefit. Some of the maggots might equally claim that there was only one God—the man who made the cheese. That is, that man, the maggot’s god, made the cow that gave the milk that produced the cheese whereon the maggot dwelt.
Let every planet have its God,
And every God its planet.
Much mystery lies in the word,
You simply have to scan it.
Let every man his own God make,
God in man, pure and elect,
Let common sense and reason wake!
Knowledge, truth, makes man perfect.
Go search your God through depths of space
On suns and stars infinite.
The mind expands to every place.
To distance without limit.
If you don’t find the God you seek
Search within yourselves. Perchance,
You’ll find your God, quite good and meek,
But not in your ignorance.
Writers and thinkers with a strong theological bias, seem to fear that the world would go to pieces if the scriptural God or Gods were deposed. They seem to apprehend that the moral and political economy would seriously suffer, and the moral idea especially be destroyed.
When these gentlemen find it impossible to reconcile the difficulties that overshadow the personal and triple-headed deities—that somehow they cannot make them harmonize with the recent discoveries and the development in natural sciences—they attempt to mold them so as to fit the requirements of the occasion.
Thus, it was discovered that the prime essence of the world is God, or something that pervades all nature; that he is the first great cause, and that this implies some huge mountain of will power, and an immense ocean of intelligence; that he is the creator of all things—that out of him this world emerged and out of the world all the various activities and objects were developed by the life inherent in the substances, etc.
Then again they represent him as a great designer—declare that God designed all things and beings, and put everything in shipshape order; and after the design was finished he set the machinery in motion.
These, and interminable similar pet theories and excuses, are made for God to retain a foothold in the mind of man. Clever brains and prolific imaginations have succeeded in clothing God, or Gods, with all the attributes thus far discovered either in man, beast, planet, or space—extension, contraction, elasticity, etc.—modes, limitation, finite, infinite, absolute—everything, in fact, that has ever been printed in the largest encyclopedia known.
These gentlemen should have had memories that the original doubts in Abraham’s mind were the result of common sense and reason; that he still retained the sensual qualities of the Chaldean gods. The modifications and transitions of that first idea are very marked, as well as very numerous. By the time we reach Christ, he is not the same. It is to be regretted that we have no compliments to waste on this God—alias Jehova—because a more bloody, selfish, monstrous idea cannot be well portrayed, if the story in the Bible be true.
And certainly he, and his triple alliance, does not exhibit one redeeming quality during the centuries of Christianity, because a more hideous, outrageous, criminal monster cannot be constructed, except by human ingenuity and by human devices.
In another chapter we call the attention of the reader to some of the most barbarous abominations of the Roman Catholic church, and such a polluted set of butchering popes as words fail to give any adequate idea of.
All this goes to show that this imaginary idea of God may be made to fit any person or any purpose.
It is but reasonable to inquire, Does God create the Brain, or does the Brain create God? That is really the entire question in a nutshell.
We know, with absolute certainty, that God does not make brain, otherwise we should have it perhaps a little more uniform, and of a better quality. Besides, all other animals possessing brain would, of course, be entitled to the knowledge of this God in proportion to the size, quantity, and quality of the brain.
This, then, being impossible, we have no other means of arriving at the truth than by concluding that Brain created God. Every brain cannot create God; the great nervous centers may be insufficient, either in quantity or quality, to enable the brain to acquire qualifications that will give expression to more than the instinctive number of sensations and emotions.
Creatures generally are limited to the instinctive number of sensations and emotions; and act, move, and have their being in harmony with these. Animals of all classes belong to this category, and not infrequently man, too. By that is meant, man in an uncultured state, and even among them the degree of experience and the power of observation make the difference between one set of savages and another.
Intelligence, understanding, and reasoning power depend on some kind of experience. The repetition of experience constitutes, in some measure, the training of the senses, and through the senses and the cerebral hemispheres the intellect is thus formed and mind developed.
The intellectual acquirements may be limited by the ascendency of some predominating ideas or opinions that check progress. As for example, the absence of schools in communities, the forcible prevention of education, the prohibition of education by priestly authority of the church, and the suppression by ecclesiastics of all ideas except their own.
This we may term
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