Yes, I mean just that.
Indeed, I argue that the knowable reality of God has become a major -- and needless -- conundrum in recent times as there is readily accessible and adequate reason to acknowledge the reality of God as knowable by ordinary, common people on adequate warrant, without need for abstruse "proofs." (Yes, I mean just that.)
Witness no 1 is conscience.
As, the Proverbs testify aptly:
As Paul of Tarsus elaborated:
Rom 2:14 For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. 15 They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them . . .
Conscience testifies to us, that we are under moral government and law, built into our nature. Yes, we have conflicting thoughts, desires and impulses, yes some have so dulled this voice or have so warped their moral senses that the voice is distorted or drowned out, but the reality is undeniable, manifest in our sense of justice denied and thirsted for (though, often we are not so quick to recognise ourselves as the unjust . . . hence, planks in our eyes). It is also self referential and a key part of our cognitive and affective life, so, we cannot play the now standard dismissive appeal to psycho-social conditioning without indicting our own selves of delusion, too. If conscience is generally, grandly delusional, that would so taint our minds that we would destroy the credibility of thought.
Instead, just as minds may err or be warped but mind is still a broadly reliable, trusted faculty, conscience is a key part of that, the candle within. So, yes, our conscience is a witness so that our inner, conflicting thoughts accuse or excuse us, foreshadowing . . . judgement to come under built-in, intelligible law.
Yes, Cicero, summarising the classical deposit, knew this a hundred years before Paul:
—Marcus [in de Legibus, introductory remarks,. C1 BC, being Cicero himself]: . . . we shall have to explain the true nature of moral justice, which is congenial and correspondent with the true nature of man [--> we are seeing the root vision of natural law, coeval with our humanity] . . . .
With respect to the true principle of justice, many learned men have maintained that it springs from Law. I hardly know if their opinion be not correct, at least, according to their own definition; for . “Law (say they) is the highest reason, implanted in nature, which prescribes those things which ought to be done, and forbids the contrary” . . . . They therefore conceive that the voice of conscience is a law, that moral prudence is a law [--> a key remark] , whose operation is to urge us to good actions, and restrain us from evil ones . . . .
According to the Greeks, therefore, the name of law implies an equitable distribution of goods: according to the Romans [--> esp. Cicero, speaking as a leading statesman], an equitable discrimination between good and evil. The true definition of law should, however, include both these characteristics. And this being granted as an almost self–evident proposition, the origin of justice is to be sought in the divine law of eternal and immutable morality. This indeed is the true energy of nature, the very soul and essence of wisdom, the test of virtue and vice.
[--> this of course points to the wellsprings of reality, the only place where is and ought can be bridged; bridged, through the inherently good utterly wise, maximally great necessary being, the creator God, which adequately answers the Euthyphro dilemma and Hume's guillotine argument's "surprise" on seeing reasoning is-is then suddenly a leap to ought-ought. IS and OUGHT are fused from the root of all reality]
This can be developed: we are duty-bound to truth, right reason, warrant (and wider prudence), sound conscience, neighbour, so too fairness and justice. Where, the one who tries to object will only manage to do so by appealing to these same principles of duty. That is, these are branch on which we sit, self evident first principles of responsible reason, indeed, first, built-in law. We may add an etc, to show that these can be extended, to build up a framework for morality/justice and for law and government. And we can see their force by contemplating how we respond to those who are habitually untruthful, irrational or warped in reasoning, are imprudent, have dulled conscience, disrespect neighbour, are unfair and are unjust.
Law points to lawgiver, and built in law to our Creator.
Of course, it is not just conscience, we live in a civilisation where for thousands of years, millions have met and been transformed through meeting God in the face of Christ, through the gospel. Where, the usual cynical resort to oh they are deluded hypocrites again comes back to haunt us as mass grand delusion discredits the mind. Nor, are the now common sneering dismissals of the historical facts at the root of the gospel, put on record c 55 AD but tracing to the mid 30's AD, particularly impressive (save as inadvertent self exposure of anger, narcissism and self serving cynicism).
Let us recall, for record:
1 Cor 15: 3 For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures [cf. Isa 52 - 53 esp.], 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. 6 Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep . . .
One who has met God in saving, life transforming power is simply not at the rhetorical mercy of the nearest cynical objector.
To illustrate, let me note on the wildly bestselling and widely celebrated Dan Brown, who announced that his novel's claims were based on facts. His claimed facts in The Da Vinci Code, however, fare poorly on basic inspection:
The fact of widespread celebration, therefore, tells us much about the state of the early C21 mind, none of it good or flattering.
We can also point to our world as a causal-temporal succession of stages, such as years. Such stepwise stages cannot have come down to us from a past infinity, as finite stage succession can never complete an infinite traverse. That is, we need a finitely remote world root, one that is of a different order of reality from the contingent beings we are all too familiar with. That is, the root of reality must be a necessary being with capability to cause a world with morally governed creatures such as we are. Where, necessary beings are part of the framework for any possible or actual world, e.g. try to imagine a distinct world in which two-ness does not exist or could begin or could cease from existing. Already, just to imagine a distinct world implies, two-ness.
The point is, God is manifestly a serious candidate, necessary being world root.
Once that is on the table, it shifts the frame of discussion decisively. For, such a necessary being candidate either is, or else is impossible of being as a square circle is: core characteristics are mutually inconsistent. Where, notoriously, since Plantinga's free will defence, the usual argument that God is a contradictory concept has collapsed, though desperate atheists and the like still try to trot it out. The result is, just to show that such skeptics have no good argument that God -- understood as
GOD: the inherently good, utterly wise creator and sustainer, a necessary and maximally great being worthy of respect, loyalty and the responsible reasonable service of doing the good that accords with our nature --
. . . is impossible of being.
Where, that means now they have an unmet burden of warrant, one they are unlikely ever to meet.
In other words, we can and do confidently know for good cause that God is, and is our creator, root of morality and is our worthy Liege Lord.
Which, of course, too many are busily pretending is not so. END
