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Show 258. existence." Because he did not think of himself as either a pantheist or an atheist, he finally insisted on a fundamental antithesis between "spirit and matter, or mind and brain, or God and Nature." He disassociated the two sides of himself, separating the inner, spiritual person from the scientist. The first acted as if God were personal, and the second acted as if God were immanent in Nature, while denying the pantheistic implications. Thus he argued, The only rational view is to accept both immanence and personality, even though we cannot clearly reconcile them, i.e., immanence without pantheism, and personality without anthropomorphism. No wonder Muir was evasive on the confrontation between pantheistic faith and scientific skepticism. He neither wished to split his consciousness, nor deny that there was some organic principle within Nature. Late in life, he spoke of evolution in an interview, criticizing the theory if it meant that the harmonious processes of Nature were understood as only "the blind product of an unthinking abstraction." "No, somewhere before evolution was, was an Intelligence," he insisted, "You may call that intelligence what you please; I cannot see why so many people object to call it God." Muir's instincts in this argument seem essentially correct. He would not involve himself in a debate about ideas abstracted from Nature; when they were abstracted they were dead. In the same interview, he insisted that creation was not an act, but a process, a process which men needed to witness. No amount of theorizing |
