John Locke Philosopher
...re solid ground than he thought others had. He attacked many traditional beliefs because he felt that they were based on principles that were contrary to reason. According to Locke, religious belief that rests merely on authority has an uncertain foundation. In Essay he attacks enthusiasm and emotional or impulsive belief that is not founded on reason nor divine revelation. Locke’s concern is for truth, and he does not hesitate to emphasize that people who seek the truth do not “entertain any proposition with greater assurance than the proofs it is built upon will warrant.” Locke is smart in that he examines all the religious doctrines as he would any other book. In The Reasonableness of Christianity he seeks to simplify the Christian religion, to rid it of superstition, dogma, and unintelligent propositions. Locke’s belief in the existence of God is rationalistic; he believes that reason will convince any intelligent person that God must exist as a first cause. In Essay he attempts to demonstrate this. “Though God has given us no innate ideas of himself” Locke takes God’s existence to be “the most obvious truth that reason discovers.” According to Locke the existence of God can be deduced from the intuitive knowledge or certainty that we have of our own existence: people know, “by an intuitive certainty, that bare nothing can no more produce any real being, than it can be equal to two right angles.” Locke believes that it is unlikely that the order in the universe occurred by chance. The designs that humans found in the universe demand Locke for an explanation. According to Locke, God must be a cognitive being, for “it is as impossible to conceive that . . . bare incogitative matter should produce a thinking intelligent being, as that nothing should have itself produce matter.” The principle assumed here is that a cause must contain at least as much reality or positive qualities as the effect it produces: “Whatsoever is first of all things must necessarily contain in it, and actually have, at least, all the perfections that can ever after exist”; it can never “give to another any perfection that it has not either actually in itself, or, at least, in a higher degree.” It follows, says Locke, that “the first eternal being cannot be matter.” This does not mean, however, that God cannot be a material, yet cognitive being. Locke proclaims ignorance concerning the full nature of God: “Though it be as clear as demonstration can ...