Cause and effect. It’s a universally accepted reality, rather people would care to admit it or not. One could not possibly get through the day without believing in it. When there’s an effect, there’s a cause: everybody knows this. Now, why am I emphasizing this? Because, we live in a day and age where people simply refuse to believe in objective reality. People are beginning to think that truth is relative, and that is simply not true. Truth is true for all people, all places and at all times. Some may object and give examples. Like taste, for example. Isn’t it relative that some people like vanilla and other people like chocolate? Well, not quite. If you personally prefer vanilla, that is an objective truth. It is true that you prefer vanilla: for all people, all places and all times. So even in that example truth is objective.
So, what exactly is the power of cause and effect? I’ll tell you. It is one of the building blocks of understanding reality. I call it a building block because, yes, it is true that we cannot know or grasp all of truth. Surely even after an eternity of eternities we would still have barely only reached the foothills of reality. Even then, however, we may never understand calculus, for example. But we can know the basics, that 1+1=2. Something like that we can know with absolute certainty. And cause and effect is one such building block.
So, what does this have to do with anything? Well, cause and effect is a very important clue to understanding not only “that” God exists, but also “why” God exists. I mean, look around you. You’ve existed only for a very short time in light of eternity and you won’t be here for very much longer. So, what could all of this mean? Do you really think all of what you can see is just an accident?
A concept like cause and effect begs to differ. For instance, the universe came to existence because of the Big Bang. But, the Big Bang is an effect. So what is the cause? I get that it happened because of molecules causing an explosion of sorts. But if allow yourself to dig a little deeper, where exactly did those molecules come from? What was their cause? Energy? What is the cause of energy? Allow yourself to keep going backwards in time.
Some may object by saying that going backwards is unnecessary because energy is eternal; that it always existed. And yet, you would have to consider the Second Law of Thermodynamics before reaching that conclusion. Why? Because it acknowledges entropy; that energy becomes unusable over time. So that even though energy cannot be created or destroyed according to the First Law of Thermodynamics, according to the second, it eventually becomes dormant.
So whatever caused energy to exist would itself have to be separate from energy and its laws; and would itself have to be eternal. Are you starting to realize how God fits in the picture? God is eternal, and therefore perfectly capable of being the first cause. Some may object and ask what caused God. And yet, by definition something or someone would have to be an uncaused first cause. Because, if you kept going backwards forever and asked yourself, “What caused that?” Eventually you would reach a point that there would have to be a first cause.
And that first cause would indeed have to be supernatural. Something not only above the laws but also the creator of those laws. What else would be capable of existing forever unless it was somehow supernatural? Something that could go above and beyond the established laws of reality?
And this first cause would also have to be personal. Why personal? Because every living thing is conscious, and something that was impersonal or unconscious would not be able to cause something that it itself didn’t have. Therefore, whatever caused consciousness would itself also have to be conscious.
So you see the power of cause and effect? I was able to make an entire argument for God’s existence from a single building block of reality. When certain things are undeniable, it could lead to all sorts of implications. And maybe that’s why so many people want to insist that truth is relative: because they don’t like the implications. And yet, that opinion would not erase reality nor would it make it go away.
Living out relative truth is impossible. Try going to a bank and demanding a million dollars from the teller that you don’t have and getting it simply because you tell him that it’s your truth. Or try speeding past a red light and not experiencing the consequences simply because your truth was that the light was green. People may like the idea of relative truth, but who has ever been able to consistently like that out? The answer is: no one.