p. 186 | Can God Organize Matter to Think?

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Jun 19, 1879

Can God Organize Matter to Think?

By Dudley Marvin Canright

Is not God almighty? Is anything too hard for him? Some virtually deny the power of God when they claim that matter cannot be organized by the Almighty so as to be able to think and reason. They take up a stone, and weigh it, measure it, and divide it, and then ask if that thing can think. Of course not. Examine that piece of wood. Can it think? Take a handful of the dust of the ground, from which all things grow. Is there anything here able to think? They analyze a dead body, and find that it is made up chiefly of water, nitrogen, a little sulphur, a little phosphorus, and some lime, with a few other earthy materials. Go farther, and analyze a man's brains. They are found to be composed of eight-tenths water, with a little albumen, a little fat, phosphorus, sulphur, &c. Then they ask us if these elements can think. Can sulphur reason? Can water think? Can oxygen love or hate? No. Hence they immediately jump to the conclusion that no matter, in whatever form or organization, can be made to think. And, therefore, all intelligences, whether man, angels, or Deity, must be immaterial.

So Heaven is fancied to be a vast region entirely void of all matter. God who dwells there has no body, no form, no visible parts, but is a mere essence pervading all space. The angels are the same in essence, having no bodies, being nothing that can be felt, or handled, or seen. The souls of men are the same also in kind,—bodiless, intangible essences. All matter is unthinking, and all intelligence proceeds from immateriality.

One more assumption, and the hard labored conclusion is triumphantly reached; viz., Whatever is immaterial is indestructible and therefore immortal. Hence the thinking part of man is immortal.

But let us examine this baseless fabric. If God is without body, parts, or shape, a mere essence filling all space, and if angels and the souls of men are the same, only smaller, then how can either be a person, or have a separate existence from the other? But waiving this, where is the proof that an immaterial being cannot be destroyed? Has God said so? No. Do they know it by experience? No. Then it is a mere groundless assumption. This theory of the immateriality of the soul is a modern invention, to sustain the tottering notion of the soul's immortality. But the most noted theologians now confess that immateriality does not prove immortality. That which has a beginning can have an end. What God has made he can destroy.

But to the question: Can God organize matter so that it can think? We answer, Yes. But our opponents say, “A stone, a stick, dust, water, iron,—these are material. They cannot think. True, matter in these particular forms cannot reason; but it does not follow that it cannot in a different form, or when differently organized. Here is a ball of snow, very white and very cold. It is material. Shall I therefore conclude that all matter must be white and cold? Here is a piece of coal just as material as the snow-ball; but it is very black, just opposite in color from the snow. Look again. That coal is all on fire, very hot, just the opposite of the cold snow. Lift that block of lead. How very heavy? Now handle those feathers. How light? They seem to be just the opposite of each other, yet both are matter. One form of matter is very sour, as a lemon; and another is very sweet, as sugar.

Indeed, the various combinations of matter may be said to be almost infinite. Yet it only takes a few very original or primary elements to make all these. “The number of the elements, or simple substances, with which we are at present acquainted, is sixty-four. These substances are not all equally distributed over the surface of the earth; most of them are exceedingly rare, and only known to chemists. Some ten or twelve only make the great bulk, or mass, of all the objects we see around us.”—Wel's Natural Philosophy, pp. 11, 12. But God has so variously arranged and organized these few elements that many forms seem the very opposite of others, as we have mentioned; as heat and cold, white and black, light and heavy, sour and sweet.

We utterly deny the distinction between matter and spirit which is claimed. We believe that everything is material, and that these diversities are only different forms of matter. No living man can successfully deny this. The wisest and most scientific men freely admit that they know but little about matter. The more they study, the deeper they search into it, the more they are convinced that its different attributes and capabilities have been but partially understood. Because a certain fact is true of matter in one condition, is it argued that it must be true of matter always and everywhere? But this is illogical and false, for matter is capable of the greatest diversity. Matter in one form may even seem to be directly the opposite of the same matter in another form. For instance, I have before me a piece of ice. I put my hand upon it; it is exceedingly cold. It is a square chunk; I can cut it with a knife, or saw it with a saw into blocks. It is solid. But I put this ice in a vessel and warm it. It soon becomes water, a liquid. It now looks very different from that piece of ice which I held in my hands a few minutes before. I closely confine this water in a tight vessel, and heat it very hot. It now becomes steam, a vapor, and is invisible. Says Mr. Wells, “Steam, which is the vapor of boiling water, is invisible, but when it comes in contact with air, which is cooler, it becomes condensed into small drops, and is thus rendered visible.”—Natural Philosophy, p. 238. It is so hot it would scald your hand in a moment. It can neither be cut, nor poured from vessel to vessel. It now seems to be precisely opposite from that piece of ice, and yet everybody knows that it is the very same material, only in another condition.

If no man had seen ice thus converted into steam, we should all pronounce such a change impossible. Let him look at that piece of ice, put his hands upon it, examine it; and then let him examine steam in its most heated condition; let him try it with his hand, then tell him that they are both the same material, and he would pronounce it the greatest absurdity imaginable. Yet we all know by actual observation that ice, and water, and steam are only different conditions of the same material.

There is as great a difference between steam and ice as is claimed to exist between spirit and matter. We claim, therefore, that it cannot be shown that a spirit is not one form of matter. The Bible nowhere says it is not. On the other hand, it plainly shows that it is.

So because matter in one form does not reason, is no evidence that it cannot when organized in some other way. Look at that coarse, filthy mud in the road. That is matter. Shall we now conclude that all matter is like that? How foolish! for its side lies a beautiful gold watch, measuring off the seconds, minutes, and hours in exact time! The watch is as material as the mud, but oh, how different! Again, there is a piece of black charcoal, hardly worth picking up. Here is a diamond of priceless value, one as large as a thimble being worth millions. Two small diamond ear rings sold for $75,000. One owned by Napoleon was worth $1,000,000. The king of Portugal has one worth $28,000,000. Now, that charcoal and that diamond are not only both material, but, wonderful to tell, they are both of exactly the same material, only differently organized. The contrast between senseless matter and thinking matter would not be greater.

How presumptuous for puny man, with his narrow range of vision and almost utter ignorance of the ways and means of the Almighty, to say what God can do with matter and what he cannot! Though for six thousand years men have been using matter, handling matter, eating it, drinking it, wearing it, surrounded on every side by matter, and they themselves are made of it; yet how little do they know about it! The most profound philosophers, the sharpest chemists, acknowledge their profound ignorance of the simplest forms and operations of matter. Bishop Clark makes this confession: “If it is asked what is meant by matter, or what matter we must confess that we know not what constitutes its essence. In this respect its ontology is beyond our reach; and the only advance we find it possible to make is to point out some of the properties of matter, as discerned by our senses, and to exhibit some of the laws by which it is governed.”—Man all Immortal, p. 21.

Yes, that all of them can do is to tell a few of the laws and properties of matter. Here they are stranded on the shore. The great ocean lies beyond them, all unknown. So said Sir Isaac Newton, the prince of philosophers. Another learned author says, “All the great forces, or agents in nature, those which produce, or are the cause of all the changes which take place in matter, may be enumerated as follows: Internal, or molecular forces, the attraction of gravitation, heat, light, the attraction and repulsive forces of magnetism and electricity, and, finally, a force or power which only exists in living animals and plants, which is called vital force. Concerning the real nature of these forces, we are entirely ignorant. . . . In the present state of science, it is impossible to know whether they are merely properties of matter, or whether they are forms of matter itself.”—Wells' Natural Philosophy, p. 21.

When scientific men make such confessions of their ignorance of matter, others had better be more modest in their statements. And all confess that they know as little about what spirit is as about what matter is.

D. M. CANRIGHT.