(36) For example, if a
stone falls from a roof on to some one's head and kills him, they will
demonstrate by their new method, that the stone fell in order to kill
the man; for, if it had not by God's will fallen with that object, how
could so many circumstances (and there are often many concurrent
circumstances) have all happened together by chance? (AP:37) Perhaps
you will answer that the event is due to the facts that the wind was
blowing, and the man was walking that way. (38) "But why," they will
insist, "was the wind blowing, and why was the man at that very time
walking that way?" (38a) If you again answer, that the wind had then sprung
up because the sea had begun to be agitated the day before, the weather
being previously calm, and that the man had been invited by a friend,
they will again insist: "But why was the sea agitated, and why was the
man invited at that time?" (39) So they will pursue their questions from
cause to cause, till at last you take refuge in the will of God - in other
words, the sanctuary of ignorance. (40) So, again, when they survey the
frame of the human body, they are amazed; and being ignorant of the causes
of so great a work of art conclude that it has been fashioned, not
mechanically, but by divine and supernatural skill, and has been so put
together that one part shall not hurt another.
(AP:41) Hence anyone who seeks for the true causes of miracles, and strives
to understand natural phenomena as an intelligent being, and not to gaze at
them like a fool, is set down and denounced as an impious heretic by those,
whom the masses adore as the interpreters of nature and the gods.
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