William James quote about God from The Varieties of Religious Experience - 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.
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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.
 William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902). copy citation

Context

“The books of natural theology which satisfied the intellects of our grandfathers seem to us quite grotesque,332 representing, [pg 493] as they did, a God who conformed the largest things of nature to the paltriest of our private wants. The [pg 494] 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 [pg 495] convenience of individuals. The bubbles on the foam which coats a stormy sea are floating episodes, made and unmade by the forces of the wind and water. Our private selves are like those bubbles,—epiphenomena, as Clifford, I believe, ingeniously called them; their destinies weigh nothing and determine nothing in the world's irremediable currents of events.” source

Meaning and analysis

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