Pragmatism

The God, if there, has been doing just what atoms could do — appearing in the character of atoms, so to speak — and earning such gratitude as is due to atoms, and no more. If his presence lends no different turn or issue to the performance, it surely can lend it no increase of dignity. Nor would indignity come to it were he absent, and did the atoms remain the only actors on the stage. When a play is once over, and the curtain down, you really make it no better by claiming an illustrious genius for its author, just as you make it no worse by calling him a common hack. Thus if no future detail of experience or conduct is to be deduced from our hypothesis, the debate between materialism and theism becomes quite idle and insignificant. Matter and God in that event mean exactly the same thing — the power, namely, neither more nor less, that could make just this completed world — and the wise man is he who in such a case would turn his back on such a supererogatory discussion.