Atheism and Theism JJ Haldane - Common Sense Atheism

Atheism and Theism 129
existence de dicto (the existence of the thing under the identifying description
‘a stone’).
Thus it is with the causal proofs of the existence of God. They aim to
establish the existence of a Transcendent Cause of being, change and order and
so on, from its effects in the world. They do not claim to show more than
what is implied by this. It is not in general an objection, therefore, to argue
that they fail as theistic proofs in not demonstrating the existence of God
as-He-is-conceived-of-by-Christian-doctrine, say. Oversimplifying, one might
observe that they attempt to prove the thatness and not the whatness of
God. Of course, if I can show that some cause exists, and if it is the case that
this cause has the property F, then there is a sense in which I have proved
the existence of an F. Admittedly, the fact that it is an F may fall outside the
scope of my demonstration. Nonetheless, we can see that someone goes
wrong if they claim that my conclusion is erroneous inasmuch as what it
proves is other than what is the case. If I conclude that there is a blockage,
what I infer is the case, even though I have not shown that the blockage is
a stone.
Moreover, it is not as if in demonstration quia one says nothing about
what is shown to exist other than it exists. Indeed it is difficult to imagine
what an argument of this bare sort might be like – one whose conclusion was
simply ‘It exists’. The term ‘it’ usually serves as a pronoun referring back to
some identifying name or description occurring earlier in the dialogue or
narrative. At other times, however, it may occur as a pure demonstrative as
when one asks in seemingly total ignorance ‘What is it?’ In this latter use one
may not be able to provide some other identifying description, though it is
arguable that a broad classification is presupposed by the circumstance in
which the question is raised, and part of this might be made explicit by asking
the speaker about its shape, colour, texture, movement, and so on. In the
causal proofs there is something analogous to contextual presuppositions, for
the conclusion ‘and it (or this) we call “God”’ is reached by way of considering
certain events, states and other existents and asking about their causes.
When the trail of dependency reaches a source we can then affirm of it – the
originating cause – that it is an agent of this or that sort, the sort in question
being specified initially by the observed effects.
Reflection on the character of the effects may also allow us to understand
more about the nature of the first cause. For example, if we reason that
transitions require an ultimate source of change we may then see that this
source cannot itself be subject to change and that its impassibility must go
along with perfection and simplicity. If that which initiates change itself
underwent modifications then it would fall within the scope of the question
‘what causes this change?’ and thus would be just another case of that which
it was our aim to explain. To this someone might respond that while a first