“If there is a revelation, it can not then contradict nature.”

—  Julien Offray de La Mettrie , book Man a Machine

p, 125
Man a Machine (1747)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "If there is a revelation, it can not then contradict nature." by Julien Offray de La Mettrie?
Julien Offray de La Mettrie photo
Julien Offray de La Mettrie 42
French physician and philosopher 1709–1751

Related quotes

Hermann Samuel Reimarus photo

“The unerring signs of truth and falsehood are clear, distinct consistency and contradiction. This is also the case with revelation, in so far as that it must, in common with other truths, be free from contradiction. And just as little as miracles can prove that twice two are five or that a triangle has four angles, can a contradiction lying in the history and dogmas of Christianity be removed by any number of miracles.”

Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694–1768) German philosopher

Source: Fragments from Reimarus: Consisting of Brief Critical Remarks on the Object of Jesus and His Disciples as Seen in the New Testament, p. 75

Thomas Paine photo

“It is a contradiction in terms and ideas to call anything a revelation that comes to us at second hand, either verbally or in writing.”

Thomas Paine book The Age of Reason

1790s, The Age of Reason, Part I (1794)
Context: It is a contradiction in terms and ideas to call anything a revelation that comes to us at second hand, either verbally or in writing. Revelation is necessarily limited to the first communication. After this, it is only an account of something which that person says was a revelation made to him; and though he may find himself obliged to believe it, it cannot be incumbent on me to believe it in the same manner, for it was not a revelation made to me, and I have only his word for it that it was made to him.

Julien Offray de La Mettrie photo

“[E]ither everything is illusion, nature as well as revelation, or experience alone can explain faith.”

Julien Offray de La Mettrie book Man a Machine

p, 125
Man a Machine (1747)

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach photo

“An apparent contradiction of a natural law is only the rarely occurring proof of another natural law.”

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach (1830–1916) Austrian writer

Ein scheinbarer Widerspruch gegen ein Naturgesetz ist nur die selten vorkommende Betätigung eines andern Naturgesetzes.
Source: Aphorisms (1880/1893), p. 36.

“There is no such thing as natural theology. God is either known by revelation - that is to say, by intuition - or not at all.”

Walter Terence Stace (1886–1967) British civil servant, educator and philosopher.

p. 151

Joseph Silk photo

“The beauty of science and the nature of scientific revelations constitute part of the modern theologian's perspective and toolbox.”

Joseph Silk (1942) British-American astronomer

Page 2.30
The Dark Side of the Universe, 2007

Harold Bloom photo

“Read deeply, not to believe, not to accept, not to contradict, but to learn to share in that one nature that writes and reads.”

Harold Bloom book How to Read and Why

Source: How to Read and Why

Mao Zedong photo

“Of the two contradictory aspects, one must be principal and the other secondary. The principal aspect is the one playing the leading role in the contradiction. The nature of a thing is determined mainly by the principal aspect of a contradiction, the aspect that has gained the dominant position. But this situation is not static; the principal and the non-principal aspects of a contradiction transform themselves into each other and the nature of the thing changes accordingly.”

Mao Zedong book On Contradiction

On Contradiction (1937)

Alan Watts photo

“It must be obvious… that there is a contradiction in wanting to be perfectly secure in a universe whose very nature is momentariness and fluidity.”

Alan Watts (1915–1973) British philosopher, writer and speaker

The Wisdom of Insecurity (1951)

Ellen G. White photo

“His words placed the teachings of nature as well as of the Bible in a new aspect, and made them a new revelation.”

Ellen G. White book Christ's Object Lessons

Source: Christ's Object Lessons (1900), Ch. 1, p. 19
Context: Not only the things of nature, but the sacrificial service and the Scriptures themselves — all given to reveal God — were so perverted that they became the means of concealing Him.
Christ sought to remove that which obscured the truth. The veil that sin has cast over the face of nature, He came to draw aside, bringing to view the spiritual glory that all things were created to reflect. His words placed the teachings of nature as well as of the Bible in a new aspect, and made them a new revelation.

Related topics