Does God Exist? The Argument from Wonder and Gratitude

Before we get back to logical or rational arguments for the existence of God, let's take a brief detour into an argument that is not so much an argument as an attempt to put a name to an intuition, an innate feeling or experience that we all seem to have and that occurs in us as naturally as a breath or a heartbeat.

There are certain moments in life that leave us speechless and breathless, our mouths gaped open but unable either to take in the profound experience before us nor to find the proper expression to mark the occasion. A pastel sunset over green fields and blue seas. The Hallelujah chorus from Handel's Messiah. The birth of your child. The sight of a sparkling, swirling galaxy, coupled with the knowledge that it's thousands of light-years across and millions of light-years away. Such moments stir up in us a sense of awe and wonder--"I didn't know life could be this good."

And when we're given something good, it's our natural inclination to say, "Thank you."

And when we say "Thank you," to whom are we speaking?

We are grateful when we are given something by someone who has chosen to bestow the gift upon us. Persons give gifts. Persons are thanked. Not forces or aggregates, but persons, who have willed our good and acted to achieve it.

We all know this, intuitively, instinctively, deep down in our bones. But some don't know to what or whom it should be attributed. I suggest it is the only one capable of giving sunsets and symphonies and everything in between. It's God.

Does God Exist? It All Must Start Somewhere

We said last time that we could know that God exists if we were able to identify some effects the cause of which could only be God. We use this sort of reasoning all the time. If I see smoke, I conclude there is fire. If I see a maple leaf, I conclude there is somewhere a maple tree. Only a maple tree can cause a maple leaf.

This is an important point, because it's double-edged: I know that in order for there to be a maple leaf, there needs to be something which can bring about the maple leaf and adequately explain its existence--that is, something to cause the maple leaf; likewise, I know that a maple leaf cannot be the cause of itself, that maple leaves "just happen," any more than people or planets or platypuses do. Each needs a cause sufficient to explain its existence. I know that everything needs a cause, and I know that nothing is the cause of itself.

So, what's the cause of the maple leaf? A maple tree. But what's the cause of the maple tree? Another maple tree, I suppose; and sunlight, and water, and nutrients from the soil, and so forth. But what is the cause of the sunlight and water and nutrients and soil? Well, they're all made from elementary particles, if that's what you're asking. But what is the cause of those particles? If we keep going backward with these questions and addressing them in a scientific way, drilling down into increasingly smaller components of matter, we will eventually hit a question that is not scientific, but philosophical: why do they exist at all?

This is a philosophical question rather than a scientific one because it deals not with empirical observation but with logical necessity--we float along in the boat of our empirical observations until we come upon the hard ground of logical questions, and the boat can't carry us anymore. Logically, there is nothing about the nature of anything we observe in reality that says the existence of that thing is necessary. The maple leaf does not necessarily need to exist, evidenced by the fact that at one time it didn't exist. If its existence were logically necessary, it would always have existed. What we find in reality, then, is a series of beings the existence of which is not necessary, might-not-have-been, always lingering on the brink of nothingness; such beings are called contingent beings.

When we try to explain the existence of one contingent being by the causal power of another contingent being--that is, when we say one thing exists because of another thing's bringing it about--we find that we still must explain the existence of that other contingent being by the existence of yet another contingent being that brought it about, and so on, and so forth... until we realize that trying to explain the existence of the universe by contingent beings traps us on a train going backward infinitely, forever, with no stopping... and, in this case, no beginning. No starting point. No source. No explanation.

What is required, then, to stop this infinite regress, this never-ending recession from one insufficient cause to another, is a being that is not contingent, but is necessary. What is needed is a being that absolutely must exist, by its nature, and therefore always has existed. A being whose essence is to exist. Only such a being would be able to bring anything else into being out of nothing, to start from scratch, to make the first link in the chain. An eternal, necessary being that brings everything else into existence--what does that sound like? Who does that sound like?

This is a much less eloquent and less pithy version of the argument from contingency that St. Thomas Aquinas makes in question 2, article three of the first part of the Summa when he asks the question, "Does God exist?" (You can find it here about 5 paragraphs down, the one that starts with "The third way....") It is one of five ways that St. Thomas proposes to prove the existence of God, and all of them more or less cover this same sort of ground: we see motion, motion is caused by another, so for any motion to start, there must be an mover who is himself unmoved; we see causes, every cause is the effect of another cause, so for any cause-and-effect relation to start, there must be an uncaused cause; and so forth. And each proof ends with, "this we call God."

Notice there is no reference to or reliance on Scripture, or any special revelation, or any article of faith, or anything special or particular to a Christian or a person of faith. You can argue with the arguments if you like, but they present themselves on the bases of empirical observation and logical analysis--that is, on science and reason. These are arguments accessible to any person, no matter what their background.

Notice, too, that these arguments only get you so far. Such arguments will tell you that there is an eternal creator of the universe, and they'll tell you one other important thing about this creator, the rebuttal to a mistake commonly made by those who profess not to believe in God: God is not the biggest being in a universe of other beings more or less like him, different only in degree rather than in kind; no, God is the very ground of being itself. God is the cause of nature, and thus beyond nature. The usual objection to these sorts of arguments is, "If everything needs a cause, what caused God?" But surely you can see within the argument itself that this objection has missed the point. Every contingent, that is, non-necessary thing, needs a cause for its existence. But the point of the exercise is precisely that there must be something that exists that exists necessarily, that is the source of existence for everything else. God is not a thing among other things; rather, God is the root of all things, their source, their foundation. God is not the biggest object in the painting of reality, or even the whole painting itself; God is the artist, painting the picture.

But this won't tell you much else about God, that He's loving or wise or kind or has created you in His image and likeness with the intention that you should live forever with Him in perfect happiness and glory. But this sort of argument does at least have the potential to open up the possibility to the mind of the atheist or agnostic or skeptic that the existence of God as Christians understand Him is not irrational or silly or a fairy-tale, but rather, that it's quite reasonable to assent to the proposition that God exists. There are other arguments, though. On these, more next time.

Does God Exist? Two Important Prequel Questions

For the next several posts, I will roughly be following the lead of a rather clever fellow who's covered this ground before. He was Italian, of considerable physical stature, and had absolute chicken scratch for handwriting, but we'll let that pass. It's often a good idea to walk in the footsteps of St. Thomas Aquinas, one of the greatest minds of the history of thinking things, and this case is no exception.

First a brief explanation of St. Thomas' style. Academic texts from his time took the shape of the public debates, the disputatio, that the students and teachers would have on various topics. A question would be posed, objections to the position would be raised, and the master (teacher) would give his own view of the question and answer the objections. The questions were arranged within the texts in a logical, systematic scheme of organization, with general questions and sub-articles within each question. Now, you might expect the first question addressed in St. Thomas' Summa Theologica (Summary of Theology) to be "Does God exist?" But you'd be, as the French say, le wrong. The first question St. Thomas asks is on the nature of sacred doctrine--whether it's knowable, rational, etc. Only after establishing that theology is truly a science, an object of human knowing, does St. Thomas come to the most fundamental issue for theology: the existence of God.

And yet, the question "Does God exist?" is not even the first question asked here! It is preceded by two other questions, and once you've read through Question 1, articles 1 and 2 of Question 2 shouldn't surprise you: "Is the proposition 'God exists' self-evident?" and "Is it demonstrable?"

So, first, is it self-evident that God exists? Is it so obviously true that it is impossible to deny? This is a relevant question; if the answer is "yes," then we need not ask "Does God exist?" for the question would be as trivial as "Are circles round?" "A circle is round" is a self-evident proposition, because the predicate is contained in the subject; that is, it's part of the definition of a circle to be round, and if you know what a circle is, then you know it has to be round, and anyone who would say a circle isn't round clearly doesn't know either what a circle or roundness is (or maybe both).

If "God exists" were a self-evident proposition--that is, if it were obviously true--then the predicate would have to be contained in the subject--in this case, existence would have to be part of the definition of God, and anyone who would deny it either wouldn't know what existence is or wouldn't know what God is, that is, God's essence.

Now, we would say that in fact it is God's essence to exist, that existence is part of what it means to be God, just as roundness is part of what it means to be a circle. But it wouldn't be obvious to you that a circle is round if you don't know what a circle is. Likewise, it wouldn't be obvious to you that God exists if you don't know who or what God is. It's possible to deny that God exists if you don't know God's essence; and, as St. Thomas says, we do not know God's essence directly, as we do the essences of circles and trees and squirrels and such, and thus we must come to know God by things that are more known to us. (We'll cover such ways of knowing in later posts.)

The second question St. Thomas asks is: "Is God's existence demonstrable?" That is, can we know through reason that God exists? If we can't, then there's not much point in continuing the intellectual exercise, is there? In answer to this, St. Thomas reminds us that there are two ways of demonstrating: you can either reason from the cause of something to its effect, or from the effect to its cause. If I see a fire, and I know that fires produce heat, I can reason from the presence of a fire that heat will result. Likewise, if I see a handprint in cement, and I know that handprints in cement are caused by hands, I can reason from the presence of the handprint that a hand was the cause of it. So, St. Thomas says, if God's existence is not self-evident to us, we can still reason to God's existence if we see effects for which only God could be the cause. That is, if we can observe effects that could only be caused by God, then we can know that God exists. More on this next time.

Does God Exist? A Prelude

The question "Does God exist?" is answered simply enough. There are three choices: "yes," "no," or "I don't know." Thus, no matter what your answers is, it immediately prompts the question "How could we know that God exists?" If your answer to the first question was "Yes," then of course the questioner will want some sort of proof or reasoning or sign. If your answer was "No," then the questioner may well respond, "What makes you sure?" If your answer was "I don't know," the questioner will ask, "How come?" The first question is never the last on this subject.

My answer, as you might guess, is yes. God does exist. Naturally, you will ask, "How do you know? What makes you say that? Can you prove it?"

Well, yes and no.

The question "Can you prove it?" always has an additional two words implied at the end: "Can you prove it to me?" This is a bit of a different task. Believing or not, assenting to an argument or not, is ultimately not an act of the intellect, but an act of the will: you can have all the evidence before you, you can have the proof laid out systematically in front of you, and you can still choose not to believe. As evidence of this phenomenon, I give you Holocaust deniers, moon landing hoaxers, and people who think Elvis is still alive. If we have some vested interest in maintaining a certain position, we can go to great mental lengths to hold our ground, even if that means keeping ourselves blind to the bleedin' obvious.

You may respond, "You're saying others might not believe in God because, for some reason, they don't want to. Well, couldn't we say the same of you? Maybe you believe in God because it suits you in some way."

Maybe. Maybe not. Let's see. Next time, we'll look at some of the evidence, arguments, and proofs for the existence of God.

Back to Basics

Please excuse my absence from this space over the last several weeks. My new job and my thesis research have taken up the bulk of my time. With my having so little free time, I thought I might have to give up blogging here for the foreseeable future. But I want to at least make an attempt to make the occasional appearance here with a word or two. I enjoy it, you enjoy it, and if I can post irregularly and briefly without enraging the masses, why put a stop to it?

Now, given those constraints and conditions, what should my subject matter be? When your time to speak is short, you get to the point. So, in future posts, expect less content on fine philosophical points or commentary on episcopal appointments, and more on the most basic--and most important--aspects of the Catholic faith: who is God? How do we know about God? What does God want of us? Who is Jesus? Why should we believe in Him? Hardly topics that lend themselves to cursory conversation, true, but if we break them up into small bites, I think we can chew through them without getting theological indigestion.

Of course, I am always happy to field questions from the readership, too. It's always best to write about what your readers want to read about. So please, feel free!

By Him We See Everything Else

I had a birthday recently (the epochal, defining, occasionally dreaded 30th), and in response to my telling my parents I could use some more decoration for my study/office/man-cave, they sent me a framed quotation from C.S. Lewis:

I believe in Christ like I believe in the sun... not because I can see it, but because by it I can see everything else.

As is typical of a product of Lewis' poetic and profound mind, this line is rich with meaning. It's worth digging into a bit.

Light has always been a symbol for God. God's first line in Scripture is, "Let there be light." Opposed to this light is the darkness of chaos and evil and ignorance; light is associated with order and goodness and rationality. With light you can see what you're doing and put things in their place. With light the good is given strength, for the wicked avoid the light to hide their evil deeds (John 3:20).

And with light we see and know the world better, and thus light has long been fittingly used as a symbol for understanding. You can see this in many an ancient writer; you can see it in modern terms like "the Enlightenment." You can see it in the jazz standard "I'm Beginning to See the Light." You can see it in every cartoon where a character has an idea and has a light bulb appear over his head. Since God is the source of this order and goodness and rationality, God is associated with light.

And as God, so Christ. The Gospel of John says that Christ is "the light that gives light to every man coming into the world." Christ is the Logos. He is reason and intelligibility. He is the reason for everything that is. He is the source and the means and the goal of all understanding. All true knowledge leads us eventually to the knowledge and love of God. It is by Him that we understand anything. He is the light by which we see everything else.

Man, that Lewis was economical in his words. It took me three paragraphs to say what he said in one line. He's good. Definitely worth reading.

Let's Not Fight, Let's Argue

Anyone who knows me knows that I love a good debate, a healthy discussion, a friendly intellectual exchange. I thoroughly enjoy exchanging views with others, especially when we disagree. During my time in seminary, I was told by my rector, "You can be very direct with people, almost challenging; but eventually people learn that you aren't attacking them--it's just the way you interact" (or something to that effect). No sense in beating around the bush, right, as long as you're respectful?

During my novitiate year, my classmates and I served once a week as volunteer chaplains at a local hospital, and at the end of the day we would have discussion sessions with our supervisor to talk about general issues related to being a chaplain. One day we were talking about conflict and dealing with difficult patients, and I said, "I think I'd be most uncomfortable being in a room with two people who are fighting with each other." One of my classmates said, "I find that surprising; you love a good argument."

Here I find a perfect example of a distinction which seems to be getting lost in our present-day discourse of tweets and posts and status updates, not to mention the more traditional modes of editorials and essays: there is a difference between an argument and a fight.

I like argument. To argue is to set out a connected series of propositions leading to a conclusion, and to engage the propositions and conclusion set out by another on the same topic, with each party analyzing the soundness of the other's argumentation: the definition of terms, the relation between the premises, and the relation between the premises and the conclusion. Each person implicitly agrees that these are the standards to be used, like two men in a duel who have agreed fight for first blood and not attempt any serious wounds, low blows, or dirty tricks.

If we were going to have an argument about, say, whether the death penalty should be abolished in this country, then we would discuss the relevant factors: the purpose of such a punishment, the nature of justice, whether the act is intrinsically evil or potentially moral depending on the circumstances, the question of necessity, and so on. That could be an enlightening and fruitful discussion.

I don't like fights. To fight is to leave the field of rational discourse where the weapons and the rules are agreed upon and honored, and descend to the level of a no-holds-barred broo-ha-ha. In a fight we have dropped our reason as a hockey player drops his gloves: at this point, we have exited the game with its rules and restrictions, and stepped into a moment where the only objective is to impose your will upon the other party, by whatever means necessary. You might knee him in the gut, or pull his jersey over his head, or grab his hair--whatever you need to do to get him down and get him out of your way.

So, if we were going to have a fight about whether the death penalty should be abolished, we wouldn't discuss the purpose of punishments or the nature of justice; instead, we'd call each other names like "bleeding heart" or "blood-lusting savage," and we'd accuse of each other of bad motives with terrible outcomes, like endangering our children or perpetuating the cycle of violence. We would seethe and boil and doubt each other's humanity, and in the end we would consider ourselves victorious if we had shouted the loudest or made the most scathing remark.

Just go to any message board or discussion forum or comments page on the Internet. It doesn't matter if we're talking about abortion or redefining marriage or whether Jack White is actually a good guitar player: within five posts, people are calling each other vile names, and comparing each other to dead dictators, and using language that would embarrass a longshoreman.

This is stupid. This is counter-productive. This doesn't get us anywhere. No, it does get us somewhere: it gets us farther apart than when we started. When we fight, we ignore what's really relevant to the situation. We put ourselves and our feelings first, and not the truth. Let's not do this anymore. Let's not fight. Can't we just argue?