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Show , / Page 173 have baited each other for centuries over the nature of the mind. The question has always taken on theological overtones, since God has been generally conceived "necessary" only in idealistic terms. For materialists, there are no necessary beings, and this calls down the whole system upon which proofs of God are traditionally predicated. It is no wonder that Taylder, a Presbyterian divine, would bridle at the Mormon appropriation of the term "material" to describe God himself. Taylder is, however, quite mistaken about Orson's use of the vocabulary of materialism, the terms Orson employs in Kingdom of God - they are unfortunately imprecise, for they draw the discussion far afield. Although Orson's ideas do conform to some materialistic notions current in the 1840s, he certainly is no philosophical materialist. He purposed in his previous writings - as he does in Absurdities - to attack the God of the Creeds as an insubstantial, amorphous "nothing." Marshaling the terms and tools of materialism, he declares it absurd to worship a being without location, extension, divisibility or magnitude - in short, "NOTHING... the negative of space, of duration, and of matter; it is the zero of all existence." Those who believe in this concept of God he calls "Atheists, Immaterialists," who insist that God exists "Nowhere" and, as such, differ not at all from the infidel, who asserts that God "does not exist anywhere... the Immaterialist, whose declared belief amounts to the same thing as the Atheist's,endeavors to hide his infidelity under the 23 shallow covering of a few words." As does Taylder and all of creedal Christianity. Although he makes use of the vocabulary of materialism, Orson does not allow himself to be lumped with that school. Acerbically, Orson denounces the monumental question-begging presumptions of creedal "immaterialism" - -~ „„«*-0 Tavlder. "Mind thinks, matter cannot.. .this thinking principle... |