Need to Identify Proofs of God's Existence in the General Laws of Nature

The Laws Governing Motion’s Conservation, Distribution, and Destruction are Based on the Attributes of a Supreme Intelligence

We should not seek the supreme Being in little details.

Rather, we should seek Him in universal phenomena that allow no exception and whose simplicity is entirely exposed to our view.

Until now, the goals of mathematics have rarely gone beyond coarse needs of the body and useless speculations of the spirit.

The truths that it has uncovered are mostly those relating to dimensions and numbers. One should not be deceived by philosophical works that pretend to be mathematical, but are merely dubious and murky metaphysics.

Just because a philosopher can recite the words lemma, theorem and corollary doesn’t mean that his work has the certainty of mathematics.

That certainty comes from the utter simiplicity of the objects considered by mathematics.

Mathematical arguments for God’s existence would have the obvious certainty characteristic of geometrical truths.

• Those who doubt metaphysical reasoning would believe a mathematical argument more readily.
• Whereas those exposed to the usual arguments would find mathematical arguments more elevating and precise.

The supreme Being is everywhere.

But He is not equally visible everywhere.

I could have started from mathematical laws that are confirmed by experience, and tried to show how they reflect the wisdom and power of the supreme Being.

But those laws can be uncertain since they are often not based on rigorous proofs or purely geometrical hypotheses.

So I deduce mathematical laws from the attributes of an all-powerful and all-wise Being.

If those derived laws are actually found in the universe, then the proof that this Being exists (and created those laws) is more certain.

But, one might object, what if the laws of motion and equilibrium are a necessary consequence of the nature of matter, and contain no arbitrariness?

Wouldn’t it be wrong to ascribe to Providence something that is absolutely necessary?

The laws of motion and equilibrium are absolutely necessary consequences of the nature of matter, that proves all the more the perfection of the supreme Being.

Everything is so arranged that the blind logic of mathematics executes the will of the most enlightened and free Mind.

Certain philosophers of antiquity held that movement does not exist.

An overly subtle use of their minds denied the evidence of their own senses.

The difficulties they had in conceiving how a body could move, made them deny that bodies moved or even could move.

We can only deny motion by denying the reality of external objects.

• This would reduce the universe to us, and all phenomena to our perceptions.

We know motion only through our senses.

But how many things do we know otherwise?

The motive force is the ability of a moving body to move other bodies. This is just terminology filling in for understanding and has no meaning beyond the results of phenomena.

It is only mental habit that prevents us from realizing how miraculous it is that motion can be passed from one body to another.

Once our eyes have opened, nothing is so striking. For those who have never thought about it, it doesn’t seem mysterious.

By contrast, those who have meditated on it may despair of ever understanding it.

Imagine someone who had never touched a body and had never seen them collide. His only experience is with mixing colors.

He then sees a blue body moving towards a yellow body.

We ask him what would happen when the two bodies collide?

He might say that the blue body would turn green when it hit the yellow body.

He would not think that:

• the 2 bodies would move togther
• or that one body would transfer part of its motion to the other
• or that it would be reflected in the opposite direction