PROOFS OF GOD’S EXISTENCE

The universe must have had a beginning. Therefore it must have got its beginning from a Being who Himself had no beginning.

Let us endeavor to bring out the force of this reasoning.

First, as regards the material universe, things have come to their present condition by a series of changes. These changes are still observable on the largest scale. We see them in the processes of growth and decay. We notice, too, that one thing produces another, and that other a third; and there is evidence that such has been the case for ages. Hence a series—or rather many series—of causes and effects coming down from a remote past. Now my reason tells me that such a chain of causation must have had a beginning. Such a series of causes and effects with out a beginning is inconceivable. There must have been one first cause, and therefore one not caused by another but subsisting in and through itself. Let us throw a little light upon this conclusion by an illustration. My eyes are at this moment resting upon an oak-tree. Let us designate it by the letter A. Now A is the offspring of another oak, B, which in turn owes its origin to C, and so on, back to D, E, and the rest. Is the series infinite, that is to say, endless? Or is it composed of a finite number—one that can be counted?

We assert that it can not be infinite—it must have had a beginning. And our reasons for the assertion are these : If it were infinite the series would never have come down to A (There would have been no beginning.) Therefore the series was not infinite—there must have been a first oak, not produced by any other.

The reader will remember that we are dealing with the genealogy of oaks only as an illustration of a principle; and the principle is that : no chain of causes and effects is possible unless there be a first cause—one not produced by another. But if this principle is once fairly established the conclusion is irresistible that if we trace the numerous series of causes and effects that have made the world what it is to-day back to their beginning, we must arrive at a first cause, which has not been produced by another.

And now, having arrived at a first cause of things, we must evolve the idea of a first cause and exhibit what is logically contained in it. We shall see ultimately that the First Cause is identical with the sovereign God whose existence it is our purpose to prove. The First Cause was not produced by another. How, then, are we to account for its existence ? Did it produce itself ? Or did it start out of nothingness of itself? Both questions are too absurd to be considered. If, therefore, the First Cause was not produced either by itself or by anything else, we must conclude that it was not produced at all. Its existence is due to no manner of causation whatever ; and hence we are forced to the further conclusion that it must have its reason for existing in its very nature. Its nature requires it to exist. But if its nature requires it to exist it can not be conceived as non-existent. In other words, it is ETERNAL. This, by the way, is an answer to Darwin’s feeble question,  “Whence came the First Cause, and how did it arise?”

( Rev. M. P. Hill S. J. , The Catholic’s Ready Answer)