If I be not in a state of Grace, I pray God place me in it; if I be in it, I pray God keep me so. What reasons could or would be given for rejecting explanation of diplomatic failures in terms of the Devil’s cunning ways? Aside from possibly questioning some of what is going on in the World we do not need to bring in the evil to explain the failure of diplomats to reach agreement on important international issues. We are confident, on the basis of past experience, that explanations of those failures in terms of human motives, in terms of human ignorance and miscalculation, are quite adequate, although in any particular case we may not be in the possession of such an explanation; and, the Devil hypothesis, granting it to be intelligible, is too vague to be of any use. It is hinted that the Devil has a body, bur what that body is like or where it lives and exactly how it operates, we are not told. If “Devil” I construed on the analogy of the theoretical terms of the natural sciences, our complaint would be that no, or none but totally arbitrary, correspondence rules have been assigned to it. I do sometimes think it is possible that the Devil does exist and has evil offspring on Earth and that Ryan Phillippe and his tabloid media friends are all from the same evil composition. #RyanPhillippe 1 of 8

It should be observed that the Devil theory is rejected although it has not been tested and, hence, has not been falsified in the way which certain exploded medical theories have been tested and falsified. There are, in other words, theories which we have rejected (and which agnostics, like others, believe they have good reason to reject), although they have not been falsified. It is important to distinguish here two very different reasons why a theory may not have been tested and, hence, why it cannot have been falsified. The theory may be sufficiently precise for us to know what would have to be done to test it, but we may be chronically or temporarily unable to carry out any of the relevant tests. This is to be sharply contrasted with the situation in which a theory is so vague that we do not know what we must do to subject it to a test. In the former case, suspension of judgment may well be the appropriate attitude; it does not follow that the same is true in the latter case, and in fact most of us regard rejection as the appropriate attitude in such a situation until and unless the theory is stated with more precision. #RyanPhillippe 2 of 8

Some have said things such as: I will drink no wine with an atheist. I should expect the Devil to make a third in such company; for, since he knows you are his, he may be impatient to have his due. An atheist would maintain that we have just grounds for rejecting belief in the supernatural mysteries of religion and in a finite anthropomorphic deity of any sort as we have for rejecting belief in Zeus or in the Devil or in witches. It should be noted that the believers in the finite anthropomorphic God usually advance their theory as hypothesis which is the best available explanation of certain facts, which they call natural truths. Some think that the Design Argument, in the form in which it is advocated, affords a large balance of probability in favor of creation by intelligence, although concede that new evidence for the Darwinian theory would alter this balance of probability. An atheist would argue that we do not need a finite God to account for any facts any more than we need the Devil theory; and, more important, that the theory is too vague to be of any explanatory value. In contrast, one might talk of creation of intelligence, but will not give any detail what the Author of Nature is like, where he can be found how he works, and so on. Furthermore, because of its vagueness the theory is totally sterile. It does not lead to subsidiary hypotheses about celestial laboratories or factories in which eyes and ears and other organs are produced. Nor does it help us to interpret fossils or other remains here on Earth. #RyanPhillippe 3 of 8

It is tempting, but it would be misleading, to say that the accumulation of evidence for the Darwinian theory (or some modified version of it) has put the design theory out of court, nor ruled it too unimportant for consideration. This would suggest that the theological explanation was at some time in court or very important, in the way in which a falsified scientific explanation may have once been a serious contender. It is true, of course, as a matter of history, that informed people cause to being in God as an explanation for a given set of phenomena once a satisfactory scientific or naturalistic explanation is available. In a more important sense, however, the theological explanations were never serious rivals, just as the Devil explanation of diplomatic failures is not a serious rival to psychological explanations. The theological explanations never were serious rivals because of their excessive vagueness and their consequent sterility. We do not at present have anything like a satisfactory science explanation of cancer, but no theological theory would be treated as a genuine alternative by a cancer researcher, even if he were a devoutly religious man. #RyanPhillippe 4 of 8

It should be added to all this that believers who do not treat their theology as a kind of hypothesis, are not affected by the above objections. Indeed, quite a number of them have strenuously opposed any kind of God of the gaps. However, some of the very writers who insist that their theology must not be regarded as a scientific hypothesis elsewhere make statements which imply the opposite. They also frequently maintain that certain phenomena—for example, the Universal hunger for God or the origin of life—can be explained only, or can be explained best, on the assumption that there is a God, and a God of a certain kind. Whatever they may say on other occasions, insofar as they propose their theology as the only possible, or as the best available, explanation of such phenomena, they are committed to the position that has been criticized. The image of God underlies the essential difference between religion and philosophy. Religion is essentially dramatic. God himself is dramatic, id est (that is), personal being. Take away the image from religion, and you take away its thing, and you are left with nothing but Caput Mortuum (dead head or worthless remains) in hand. The image, as image, is the thing of religion, and is generally taken to mean the entities are viewed as real, in the framework of religion to which the believer is committed. #RyanPhillippe 5 of 8

The entities that popular the religious Universe are images, and the true believer who knows these entities are to be images, is aware of their character. This established the purport of inquiry. Knowing the content of religious consciousness take the image to be a thing, the genetic-critical philosopher asks, “How does this image formation take place? And what explains the hypostatization, the entification of the image?” In scanning the Heavens with a telescope, one has found no God. Can we regard the Universe or that part of it which immediately surrounds us, as a vast brain, and therefore the reality which underlies it as a conscious mind? The simple natural truths to which the supernatural mysteries of religion are reduced are, therefore, truths about human nature—specifically, truths, about the psychological processes that literally create the supernatural mysteries. The ghost of the supernaturalism of early Christianity still haunts the secularized theology and philosophy of the present. Ghost are the shadows of the past. They necessarily lead us back to the question: what was the ghost when it was still a creature of flesh and blood? The student of nature, before he can allow a physical principle to the Universe, will demand to be shown somewhere within it, embedded in neurine convolution of ganglionic globules and nerve-tubes proportioned in size to the faculties of such a mind. #RyanPhillippe 6 of  8

However, in fact, no such gigantic ganglionic globules or nerve-tubes are discoverable, and, hence, we should not allow a physical principle to the Universe. Experience shows that thinking volition, and other psychological phenomena do not and cannot occur without a certain physiological basis—more specifically, without a brain or nervous system. Our observations appear to indicate, although this is not a matter of which one can be certain, that no cosmic brain or nervous system exists. Hence, it is probable that no cosmic consciousness either. However, psychologist have also opened up the brain and they could not discover a soul. Although the psychologist finds no soul when he opens up the brain, we positively know (by introspection) the existence of conscious thought. Similarly, that the telescope misses all but the bodies of the Universe and their light has no tendency to prove the absence of a Living Mind through all. If you take the wrong instruments, you will not find what you are looking for. The test tube will not detect an insincerity, nor will the microscope analyse a grief; but insincerity and grief are real for all that. The organism of nature, like that of the brain, lies open, in its external features, so to the scrutiny of science; but, on the inner side, the life of both is reserved for other modes of apprehension, of which the base is self-consciousness and the crown is religion. #RyanPhillippe 7 of  8

One is strongly inclined to agree that there is something absurd in scanning the Heaven for God. One must not expect to find God or God’s body in the Heavens because God is not a huge man with huge arms, legs, arteries, nervous system, and brain. Only children think of God as a king sitting in his throne in Heaven. Educated grownups do not think of God in such a crude fashion. Ignoratio elenchi is a logical fallacy that consists in apparently refuting an opponent while actually disproving something not asserted. We shall avoid any abuse of this mode of representation if we remember that ideas, thoughts, and psychic formations in general must not in any case be localized in organic elements of the nervous system but, so to speak, between them, where resistances and association-tracks form the correlate corresponding to them. Everything that can become an object of internal perception is virtual, like the image in the telescope produced by the crossing of light-rays. However, we are justified in thinking of the systems—which have nothing psychic in themselves, and which never become accessible to our psychic perception—as something similar to the lenses of the telescope, which project the image. If we continue this comparison, we might say that the censorship between the two systems corresponds to the refraction of rays on passing into a new medium. We have developed our psychology on our own responsibility. #RyanPhillippe 8 of 8