Freida (@fredfredsonaire)

The Question Box THE EXISTENCE AND NATURE OF GOD. Can you prove the existence of God from reason alone? If so, why do so many people persist in denying it? Why do Catholics believe in a Personal God? Do you not fashion God after your own image? Is not your idea of God a mere abstraction? Is not God identical with the universe? The Catholic idea of the essence and knowability of God is thus set forth by the Vatican Council: “The Catholic Church believes that there is one true and living God, the Creator and Lord of heaven and earth, Almighty, Eternal, Immense, Incomprehensible, Infinite in intellect and will and in all perfection; who, being One, Individual, altogether simple and unchangeable Substance, must be asserted to be really and essentially distinct from the world, most happy in Himself, and ineffably exalted above everything that exists or can be conceived.” Holy Mother Church does hold and teach that God, the Beginning and End of all things, can certainly be known from created things by the natural light of reason; “for the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made” (Rom. i. 20). Our idea of God is acquired spontaneously at the very dawn of reason. Our certainty of His existence is not necessarily the result of scientific reasoning. But the mind of man, as we are assured by Wisdom (xiii.) and by St. Paul (Rom. i.), naturally rises from nature to nature’s Origin and Source; from things caused and contingent to a First Necessary Cause, on which all things depend. The universe points clearly to a One, True and Living God, from whom all existence comes, and without whom life and all its development would be impossible. Man feels instinctively that he is dependent and limited in his thought and activity; he feels within himself needs and necessities which call imperatively for complete satisfaction. Only a Supreme Being, All-Powerful and All-Loving, can satisfy the aspirations and longings of his inmost soul. The many proofs that Christian thinkers offer for the existence of God merely deepen and confirm the solid conviction of His Personality already abiding in our hearts. They are cumulative in force, and must be studied as a whole, if we are to realize perfectly their full value. They reveal God to us as the First Cause, the Necessary Being, the Prime Mover, the One and Perfect Being, the Designer and Orderer of the universe, the Origin of Life, the Supreme Lawgiver, and the Ultimate Good. Space forbids our developing these proofs in detail; they may be studied in the pages of any manual of natural theology (Boedder, Natural Theology; Joyce, The Principles of Natural Theology). I think it good, however, to outline in the briefest manner possible the two arguments which, to my mind, make the most persuasive appeal to the man in the street—the argument from design and the argument from conscience. The argument from design may be thus stated. The adaptation of means to ends is an evident proof of an intelligent cause. It is clear that nature affords us thousands of instances of such adaptation. Nature, therefore, is the result of an Intelligent Cause, God. Our minds cannot help recognizing purpose and finality in nature’s operations. Mere chance, for example, cannot account for the complex arrangement of the countless parts that combine to form the retina of the human eye, or for the marvelous make-up of a bird’s wing (Joyce, The Principles of Natural Theology, 125). Not only is order everywhere present in nature, but beauty meets us on every side, whether in the sky, upon the earth, or in the ocean’s depths. We observe it in the gorgeous coloring of the sunset and in the bright plumage of the humming bird; in the daintiness of the tiniest fern and in the massive strength of the giant redwood of the California forests; in the grace of the fleet-footed antelope and in the litheness of the tiger of the Indian jungle; in the creations of man’s imagination—in the inspired lyric, in the ordered symphony, and in the world’s masterpieces of painting and sculpture. Nowhere is this purposive finality so striking as in man, who possesses characteristics in common with all the lower forms of nature, inanimate, vegetable and animal. Distinct from them, however, he lives a rational life, his intellect ever asking the why and the wherefore of things. He recognizes the laws and principles that govern his intellectual and moral judgments; he sees that they are not arbitrary and purposeless, but ordered and ruled for definite and established ends.