ABSURDITY OF "NOTHINGNESS."

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue LXVIII, 23 September 1914, Page 2

ABSURDITY OF "NOTHINGNESS."

Harper's Magazine gives prominence to an article by Mr James T. Bixby, Ph.D., in which he reviews modern scientific thought on the question whether it is reasonable to believe that there is life after death. In the light of "new knowledge," he says, it is found that many of the chief laws of Nature strongly oppose the ..-view that death ends all:— . ~ '■'■'

"If the difficulty in "harmonising the conception of life after death with scientific principles be good ground for rejecting it, it is a still greater objection to that end of life which is the alternative —nothingness, or a miserable collapse into disintegrated, unconscious, and valueless dust. That great law of modern science, evolution, emphatically protests against this, for it would rob the cosmic evolution of all meaning, and reduce its grand ti-iumphs to an irrational conclusion. . . Our planet, says the scientific experts, will inevitably, at a date already calculable, become a frozen and waterless waste, and • the earthly succession of men and living creatures cease. Unless there is a continued life after death for souls the vital evolution upon our globe will have been a senseless fiasco. To suppose that the only net results of its age-long development, reaching its consummation in priceless galaxies of wonderful* thinkers, noble heroes, and beneficent saints, is to have turned a host of living bodies into corpses, leaving no memory nor permt^nent good behind them —this is to make the grand evolutional progress appear to be what in a man would be called a lunatic proceeding; one only to be likened to that of the.crazy sculptor who, after he had finished by a lifetime of I toil a magnificent masterpiece, broke it into fragments. It is an incredible i anti-climax."

If reminded that this is all mere unverified speculation, Dr. Bixby replies: "It is only, on reasoned probability that all the great scientific laws rest."