That the knowledge of God's existence answers the third criterion of logical independence and priority, may be shown as follows:
A. It is presupposed in all other knowledge as its logical condition and foundation. The validity of the simplest mental acts, such as sense-perception, self-consciousness, and memory, depends upon the assumption that a God exists who has so constituted our minds that they give us knowledge of things as they are.
Pfleiderer, Philos. of Religion, 1:88—“The ground of science and of cognition generally is to be found neither in the subject nor in the object per se, but only in the divine thinking that combines the two, which, as the common ground of the forms of thinking in all finite minds, and of the forms of being in all things, makes possible the correspondence or agreement between the former and the latter, or in a word makes knowledge of truth possible.” 91—“Religious belief is presupposed in all scientific knowledge as the basis of its possibility.” This is the thought of Psalm 36:10—“In thy light shall we see light.” A. J. Balfour, Foundations of Belief, 303—“The uniformity of nature cannot be proved from experience, for it is what makes proof from experience possible.... Assume it, and we shall find that facts conform to it.... 309—The uniformity of nature can be established only by the aid of that principle itself, and is necessarily involved in all attempts to prove it.... There must be a God, to justify our confidence in innate ideas.”
Bowne, Theory of Thought and Knowledge, 276—“Reflection shows that the community of individual intelligences is possible only through an all-embracing Intelligence, the source and creator of finite minds.” Science rests upon the postulate of a world-order. Huxley: “The object of science is the discovery of the rational order which pervades the universe.” This rational order presupposes a rational Author. Dubois, in New Englander, Nov. 1890:468—“We assume uniformity and continuity, or we can have no science. An intelligent Creative Will is a genuine scientific hypothesis [postulate?], suggested by analogy and confirmed by experience, not contradicting the fundamental law of uniformity but accounting for it.” Ritchie, Darwin and Hegel, 18—“That nature is a system, is the assumption underlying the earliest mythologies: to fill up this conception is the aim of the latest science.” Royce, Relig. Aspect of Philosophy, 435—“There is such a thing as error; but error is inconceivable unless there be such a thing as truth; and truth is inconceivable unless there be a seat of truth, an infinite all-including Thought or Mind; therefore such a Mind exists.”
B. The more complex processes of the mind, such as induction and deduction, can be relied on only by presupposing a thinking Deity who has made the various parts of the universe and the various aspects of truth to correspond to each other and to the investigating faculties of man.
We argue from one apple to the others on the tree. Newton argued from the fall of an apple to gravitation in the moon and throughout the solar system. Rowland argued from the chemistry of our world to that of Sirius. In all such argument there is assumed a unifying thought and a thinking Deity. This is Tyndall's “scientific use of the imagination.” “Nourished,” he says, “by knowledge partially won, and bounded by coöperant reason, imagination is the mightiest instrument of the physical discoverer.” What Tyndall calls “imagination”, is really insight into the thoughts of God, the great Thinker. It prepares the way for logical reasoning,—it is not the product of mere reasoning. For this reason Goethe called imagination “die Vorschule des Denkens,” or “thought's preparatory school.”
Peabody, Christianity the Religion of Nature, 23—“Induction is syllogism, with the immutable attributes of God for a constant term.” Porter, Hum. Intellect, 492—“Induction rests upon the assumption, as it demands for its ground, that a personal or thinking Deity exists”; 658—“It has no meaning or validity unless we assume that the universe is constituted in such a way as to presuppose an absolute and unconditioned originator of its forces and laws”; 662—“We analyze the several processes of knowledge into their underlying assumptions, and we find that the assumption which underlies them all is that of a self-existent Intelligence who not only can be known by man, but must be known by man in order that man may know anything besides”; see also pages 486, 508, 509, 518, 519, 585, 616. Harris, Philos. Basis of Theism, 81—“The processes of reflective thought imply that the universe is grounded in, and is the manifestation of, reason”; 560—“The existence of a personal God is a necessary datum of scientific knowledge.” So also, Fisher, Essays on Supernat. Origin of Christianity, 564, and in Journ. Christ. Philos., Jan. 1883:129, 130.
C. Our primitive belief in final cause, or, in other words, our conviction that all things have their ends, that design pervades the universe, involves a belief in God's existence. In assuming that there is a universe, that the universe is a rational whole, a system of thought-relations, we assume the existence of an absolute Thinker, of whose thought the universe is an expression.
Pfleiderer, Philos. of Religion, 1:81—“The real can only be thinkable if it is realized thought, a thought previously thought, which our thinking has only to think again. Therefore the real, in order to be thinkable for us, must be the realized thought of the creative thinking of an eternal divine Reason which is presented to our cognitive thinking.” Royce, World and Individual, 2:41—“Universal teleology constitutes the essence of all facts.” A. H. Bradford, The Age of Faith, 142—“Suffering and sorrow are universal. Either God could prevent them and would not, and therefore he is neither beneficent nor loving; or else he cannot prevent them and therefore something is greater than God, and therefore there is no God? But here is the use of reason in [pg 061]the individual reasoning. Reasoning in the individual necessitates the absolute or universal reason. If there is the absolute reason, then the universe and history are ordered and administered in harmony with reason; then suffering and sorrow can be neither meaningless nor final, since that would be the contradiction of reason. That cannot be possible in the universal and absolute which contradicts reason in man.”
D. Our primitive belief in moral obligation, or, in other words, our conviction that right has universal authority, involves the belief in God's existence. In assuming that the universe is a moral whole, we assume the existence of an absolute Will, of whose righteousness the universe is an expression.