Day 48 – cause and effect in the “backyard”
The actual theory of atheism…entails at the close of the argument a manifest absurdity. –ALPHONSE GRATY
Another way to see the truth of the Argument from Human Characteristics is to imagine walking through a backyard littered with apples. With apples everywhere at your feet, you don't have to look up to know that an apple tree is nearby. You know that apples come from apple trees, that an effect must be able to be explained by a cause.
What if you also encountered a few oranges in the same yard? Would you assume these to have come from the apple tree, too? No, you would immediately surmise that they came from somewhere else, specifically from an orange tree. To say that the apple tree could produce oranges would be laughable and indefensible.
But this is just what the atheist is asserting. He first claims the entire universe to be irrational, amoral, and without purpose. Then, as he walks through the universe's “backyard” and sees at his feet human “fruits” like reason, morality, and purpose, he still denies the existence of any "tree" other than nature. He asks us to believe that nature can produce “fruit” incompatible with itself, that it is irrational but can produce rational humans, that it is amoral but can produce moral humans, that it is without purpose but can produce purposeful humans. What he asks us to believe does not make sense. If nature does not possess these characteristics and we do, we all know that there must be a “tree” other than nature in the “backyard.” In addition to nature, there must be a reality that is rational and moral and purposeful. We know a supernatural source must exist when we see these “fruit” within us, for the same reason we know an orange tree must exist when we see oranges at our feet.
Daily Quotation
Quoted in J. P. Moreland and Kai Nelson, Does God Exist? (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1990), 35.
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