“I am an agnostic as to the question of God.”
Why I Am An Agnostic (1929)
Context: I am an agnostic as to the question of God. I think that it is impossible for the human mind to believe in an object or thing unless it can form a mental picture of such object or thing. Since man ceased to worship openly an anthropomorphic God and talked vaguely and not intelligently about some force in the universe, higher than man, that is responsible for the existence of man and the universe, he cannot be said to believe in God. One cannot believe in a force excepting as a force that pervades matter and is not an individual entity. To believe in a thing, an image of the thing must be stamped on the mind. If one is asked if he believes in such an animal as a camel, there immediately arises in his mind an image of the camel. This image has come from experience or knowledge of the animal gathered in some way or other. No such image comes, or can come, with the idea of a God who is described as a force.
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Clarence Darrow 70
American lawyer and leading member of the American Civil Li… 1857–1938Related quotes
As quoted in a eulogy for Darrow by Emanuel Haldeman-Julius (1938)
as quoted by Olgierd Budrewicz in The melting-pot revisited: twenty well-known Americans of Polish background http://books.google.com/books?ei=jntPUNaTMafZ0QHMloGQBQ&id=pc51AAAAMAAJ&dq=Olgierd+Budrewicz%7C&q=Sometimes+I+muse#search_anchor, publish by Interpress, page 36, 1977.
God and the Astronomers (1978), Ch. 1 : In the Beginning.
47 : The Question and its Answer, p. 78.
The Everything and the Nothing (1963)
"Proof of God"
1940s, Am I An Atheist Or An Agnostic? http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/russell8.htm (1947)
Source: Love, Sexuality and Matriarchy: About Gender
Section 15 (p. 72; Dr. Auberson, then HARLIE)
When HARLIE Was One (1972)