The god whom science recognizes must be a God of universal laws exclusively, a God who does a wholesale, not a retail business. He cannot accommodate his processes to the convenience of individuals.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that science understands God as a being that operates through universal laws rather than individual interests.
William James highlights the nature of God from a scientific perspective, asserting that God embodies universal laws that govern the cosmos, rather than intervening in personal matters. This perspective emphasizes the impersonal, systematic nature of the divine, reflecting the limitations of human desires in the vast realm of existence.
In practice
In a discussion about the compatibility of science and faith during a seminar.
Many persons nowadays seem to think that any conclusion must be very scientific if the arguments in favor of it are derived from twitching of frogs' legs (especially if the frogs are decapitated) and that, on the other hand, any doctrine chiefly vouched for by the feelings of human beings (with heads on their shoulders) must be benighted and superstitious.
The man who knows governments most completely is he who troubles himself least about a definition which shall give their essence. Enjoying an intimate acquaintance with all their particularities in turn, he would naturally regard an abstract conception in which these were unified as a thing more misleading than enlightening.
All the higher, more penetrating ideals are revolutionary. They present themselves far less in the guise of effects of past experience than in that of probable causes of future experience, factors to which the environment and the lessons it has so far taught us must learn to bend.
The lunatic's visions of horror are all drawn from the material of daily fact. Our civilization is founded on the shambles, and every individual existence goes out in a lonely spasm of helpless agony.
It is astonishing how many mental operations we can explain when we have once grasped the principles of association
As there is no worse lie than a truth misunderstood by those who hear it, so reasonable arguments, challenges to magnanimity, and appeals to sympathy or justice, are folly when we are dealing with human crocodiles and boa-constrictors.
Then Morgoth stretching out his long arm towards Dor-lomin cursed Hurin and Morwen and their offspring, saying: 'Behold! The shadow of my thought shall lie upon them wherever they go, and my hate shall pursue them to the ends of the world.
And of the Witch? In the life of a Witch, there is no "after", in the "ever after" of a Witch there is no "happily"; in the story of a Witch, there is no afterword. Of that part that is beyond the life story, beyond the story of the life, there is-alas, or perhaps thank mercy-no telling. She was dead, dead, and gone, and all that was left of her was the carapace of her reputation for malice.
Consult: To seek approval for a course of action already decided upon.
God is represented as infinite, eternal, incomprehensible; he is contained under every predicate in non that the logic of ignorance could fabricate.
Surely a long life must be somewhat tedious, since we are forced to call in so many trifling things to help rid us of our time, which will never return.
If I thought that everything I did was determined by my circumstancse and my psychological condition, I woudl feel trapped.
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