Correspondence Week 2

CORRESPONDENCE WEEK 2

Every Faculty proves the existence of its object:
Therefore God

(R) Have you digested the argument I gave you last week?

(J) I have been chewing it: I cannot say I have digested it.

(R) You find it somewhat eatable, then; or at least not quite uneatable?

(J) There is force in it: great force I must confess.

(R) I feel certain you must find it conclusive. If purpose is proved, God is proved. The power of reproduction proves “purpose” as distinct from design.
Design, as usually conceived, is the present adaptation of a thing to a use, but the capacity of reproduction points to futurity, and therefore to purpose concerning it.

(J) You said there were many other proofs of God’s existence.

(R) Yes, many.

(J) Are they equal of force to the reproduction argument?

(R) I think so.
Here is one. Every faculty proves the existence of its object. The stomach proves the existence of food, even if food cannot be obtained. The ear proves the existence of sound, even though there may be dead silence. So the nose proves the existence of odour; the eye, the existence of light; the lungs, the existence of breath, and so on. These are what may be called gross illustrations of the argument, but they yield a principle having a powerful application to God.

(J) I do not see how you can apply it to God.

(R) The illustrations I have used have to do with bodily faculties and what you might call material things; but it applies to the desires and capacities of the mind, as well as to what we might call the appetites of the body. There is the power to observe, the power to reason, the power to calculate, the capacity to fear, to love, to hope: all these are innate in the human constitution, though their development is a question of exercise. Now, each of these proves the existence of its corresponding object, even if the person possessing these powers and capacities is cut off from access to all of those objects. Thus, the capacity to fear proves the existence of danger in the abstract; the capacity to love proves the other existence of other persons than ourselves; the capacity to calculate proves the existence of numbers; the power to observe and reason proves the existence of objects and events and laws exterior to the faculty of itself. We should reason correctly of the existence of these things from the possession of those powers, even if it were so cut off from the external world (perpetually immured in a dark dungeon, say) as to have no actual knowledge of their existence.

(J) How do you apply it to God?
(R) In this way. We have a group of faculties that all indicate Him as plainly as love indicates man. We have the capacity to venerate and adore the higher than ourselves; the tendency to place faith in that which is more able than ourselves; the power of infinite hope in a direction above and beyond ourselves; and the faculty to recognise obligation to higher authority than ourselves. Veneration, conscientiousness, faith, and hope are the highest and noblest features of the human mentality. Phrenologically, they are seated in the very centre and apex of the brain, highest in the being-looking away to heaven (as we might say), telling us of God, even if we had no evidence otherwise of his existence. They lead to devotion, prayer, worship, and moral heroism. They all point to God. They have no adequate object apart from Him. When applied to man, they wither and die. My argument, put into a sentence, would take this shape-That the higher faculties of the human brain prove the existence of God, as plainly as the human eye proves the existence of light.

(J) I do not think the facts are consistent with your argument.

(R) In what way are they inconsistent?

(J) Well, food, light, and other things of which you have spoken, are all accessible, and they are matters of experience with the common run of man. But God is not the experience of any.

(R) Wait a moment, my friend. Is light a matter of experience with the blind?

(J) No, I must admit it is not.

(R) Is food a matter of experience with the newborn babe thrown out to die of exposure? You must give the same answer. Yet the eye is there, proving the existence of light, though never seen; and the stomach is there, proving the existence of food, though never tasted. Now suppose all men were blind and starving, the fact would be no argument against the existence of light and food.

(J) But you see they are not all blind.

(R) No, but they might be. It is possible in the abstract; and you must admit the possibility, to see the bearing of the argument. Universal blindness would not disprove the light, which would be proved by the universal sightless eyeballs.
It has sadly to be granted that God is not a common experience with man; but we must not use this fact as a disproof of God, if it should appear that the cause lies in some special circumstance that is at war with the native constitution of things. My argument is, that mans latent capacity for God is a proof of God’s existence, even if we might not be able to explain why we are shut off from him, which the Bible enables us to do.

(J) My difficulty is about the “latent capacity.” I do not see much of this latent capacity in the bulk of people with whom I have any acquaintance. In 99 of cases out of 100 I see no capacity at all. The vast majority are content to be without God. Indeed it would be uncongenial to have God obtruded upon them in any way.

(R) No doubt what you say is true, but it does not affect the argument; because the argument does not require that every person has the superior faculties in an active state. If any, however few, have them in that state, it is enough to prove the existence of the object of those faculties. Disuse may sink a faculty almost out of being, as in the case of barbarians, who have no sense of right and wrong, no appreciation of the beautiful, no ear for music. The moral faculties have been in comparative disuse among all nations for ages, due to the revealed fact that God, having hid His face, has left them to themselves. As the result of disuse, the bulk of the population are in the state you describe, but there is “a remnant” with which it is different-in whom the moral faculties are in an active state. Consider their case fully, and you will find the argument fully sustained-that God’s existence is evident from the mental constitution of the human race when developed to the level of its normal type.