Note 35 — Chapter VII · FALLACIES IN POPULAR ARGUMENTS

Canon Liddon informs us that “man is ever feeling after God,” and that “the thought of God is always latent in the mind of man.” “Cicero’s statement that there is no nation so barbarous and wild as not to have believed in some divinity is still, notwithstanding certain apparent exceptions, true. A nation of pure Atheists has yet to be discovered.”35 Dr. Flint devotes the seventh of his Lectures on Anti-Theistic theories to the discussion of the question, “Are there tribes of Atheists?” and he comes to the conclusion that “an impartial examination of the relevant facts shows that religion is virtually universal.”36 The Bishop of London is of opinion that “man is a praying animal. He always has prayed throughout his history. It is a human instinct. This instinct of prayer points to the existence of God.”37 Dr. Warschauer affirms that the spiritual faculty—a consciousness of “the existence of spiritual realities, of a world beyond the senses”—“constitutes a universal human endowment.”38 Bishop Diggle bids us remember that “human nature is ineradicably religious.”39