06. Reasoning from Effect to Cause
Reasoning from Effect to Cause
Then looking at it from another angle, think of the conclusions at which we are compelled to arrive, when we start to reason back from effect to cause.
Man is an effect. That is self-evident. Every effect must have an adequate cause. That is, every cause must contain in essence within itself in some form, everything that is found in the effect. For if there was ever an effect that was not first in the cause, something would be coming from nothing, and there would be an effect without a cause, which is of course impossible. The Ultimate Cause behind man must therefore have at least all that is found in man, the effect.
Man finds himself possessed of intellect, emotion, and will. These capacities being found in the effect, the Cause must therefore have these same capacities.
Now intellect, emotion and will constitute what is called personality. Therefore if man, the effect, has capacities which constitute him a personality, the First Cause must also have these same capacities, and thus must Himself be a Personality. The next obvious step grows out of the universal human intuition, from which no one in full possession of his faculties can possibly escape, that in our relations, both with one another and with the unseen First Cause, we have an inescapable and unchangeable sense of oughtness. That is, we have a feeling from which no one can free himself, that some things ought to be, and are therefore right, and that other things ought not to be, and so are wrong. This we define as a moral capacity. The First Cause must therefore have this same capacity, since He gave it to man. So the possession of such a moral capacity would not only constitute Him also a moral Personality, but would make it inevitable that His relations with all His moral creatures should be expressed in the terms of that which ought to be, and that man’s relations with Him should therefore be defined in the same terms.
We are not left, however, to depend wholly on this and similar lines of reasoning for the light we need on the First Cause. For in complete contradiction of Spencer and those who agree with him, God has revealed Himself to man so clearly that it is impossible to escape the knowledge that comes through this revelation, except by willful refusal to believe and receive it.
He has displayed the invisible facts of His “power and Deity”—His omnipotence and Godhead, in the things that we see in creation on every side. “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth his handiwork” (Psalms 19:1). This is God’s original and universal Bible, open to all and easily read by any who do not deliberately choose to close their eyes to it. The simple fact is that no man, surrounded by nature and following nothing but his own intuitions, can possibly deny the existence of God. Man in his primitive state has never been an atheist. The demands of reason in the man who lives near to nature will not permit him to be an atheist, “Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God has manifested it unto them. For the invisible things of him since the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and deity; so that they are without excuse” (Romans 1:19-20). Every atheist has been tampered with by wilfully sinful human influences to make him reach irrational conclusions that are beyond all excuse.