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| Raymond Verne McCullough |
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| Raymond Verne McCullough |
In 1928, at the age of 36, he gave an address on KSL Radio, called "Is There A God?"
Forty-one years later, President Harold B. Lee sent a letter to R. Verne McCullough's wife, referring to this address:
THE COUNCIL OF THE TWELVE
47 E. SOUTH TEMPLE STREET
SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH 84111
May 29, 1969
Mrs. R. Verne McCullough 304 East 1st South Salt Lake City, Utah
Dear Irene:
First, may I thank you for permitting me to have a visit with Verne, This radio address reminded me of a series of talks that he gave on the radio in a kind of running debate with one of the young ministers whose name has escaped me. Verne was a great "defender" of the faith with his brilliant legalistic mind. He seemed to revel in projecting the doctrines of the Church and pointing out the errors and weaknesses which were foreign to true doctrine.
This address is one which would make an appeal to scholars like the Princeton University professors. It is well documented with statements from recognized scholars as 'well as his own personal witness which he speaks of as "heart-knowledge" which means in the language of another, things the heart understands beyond what the mind knows.
I would think this would be something you might wish to give to your own children and grandchildren to remember Verne, and possibly to hand out to the sophisticated doubters in our day of great challenge and upheaval.
I would certainly encourage you to send it along as requested by the Princeton University Library. I would find nothing to criticize and much to commend.
May the Lord continue to bless you during these days when memories such as these will recall the tremendous capacity which your husband manifested in so many ways.
Please accept my commendation for this privilege you have granted and be assured always of our deep affection for you and Verne and your family.
Sincerely yours,
Harold B. Lee
I have typed up the radio address here for Verne's posterity to read and treasure as President Harold B Lee suggested. (If you would like a PDF copy of this address, just e-mail me at marie.familyhistory@gmail.com)
IS THERE A GOD?
(An address delivered by R. Verne McCullough over
Radio Station KSL in 1928)
“He
that cometh to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of them
that diligently seek Him,” spake Paul the Apostle to the Hebrew saints.
The wave of indifference, infidelity
and atheism, which is sweeping the centers of higher learning with its baneful
influences on the uncultured as well as the cultured minds of America and Great Britain
No
longer are we justified in lulling ourselves into security of God’s existence
under the cloak of the time-worn declaration that the existence of God does not
admit of being proved; nor are we justified in deriding the attempts of
thinking students to curb the ever-growing tendency to infidelity. One thoughtful writer has said:
“Proofs for the existence of God
coincide with the grounds for the belief in God; they are simply the real
grounds for the belief established and expounded in a scientific manner. If there be no such proofs, there are also no
such grounds; and a belief which has no ground, if possible at all, can be no
proper belief, but an arbitrary self-made, subjective opinion.”
If
we would advance in religion, it must be, not by getting rid of our belief in
God, but by getting deeper and wider views of His character and operations, and
by conforming our hearts and lives more sincerely and faithfully to our
knowledge.
To
reinforce our convictions of God’s existence, and to arrest the insidious inroads
of modern infidelity in the minds of the younger generation, I address myself
to the subject, “Does God exist?”
The
Bible does not offer arguments to prove the existence of Deity, but it gives us
a picture of the world with God at work in it, which devout religious folk
appreciate and instinctively recognize as true.
May I suggest, however, that the whole need no physician, but to
doubting minds, comparable to my own, this treatise is offered.
There
are two methods of investigating a problem.
The first method is that used by orthodox religious individual, who
begins his research with certain well-defined conclusions, and then searches
for facts to support them. The second
method is that employed by the careful scientific thinker who, like a little
child, untrammeled by pre-conceptions, follows where the facts lead him,
irrespective of previously wrought out opinions or beliefs. To those friends listening on the air
tonight, who have nothing in common with revealed religion, I ask you in all
candidness to forget whatever bias or prejudice you may have, and investigate
this problem with a scientific untrammeled mind.
We
will first consider the issue in relation to man’s understanding, and then its
message in relation to his deeper feelings and emotions. Time will only permit the setting up of a few
guide posts pertaining to this all important question.
One
of the oldest and yet basic evidences of God’s reality is the general consent
of mankind to His existence. The
conception of God and its kindred ideas of religion seem to have been
intricately interwoven into the thought and action of all races of men.
Plutarch
summed up the argument in this wise:
“If you search the world, you may
find cities without walls, without letters, without kings, without money; but
no one ever saw a city without a Deity, without a temple, or without prayers.”
This
universal idea of God’s existence is aptly stated by Aristotle:
“What seems true to some wise men is
somewhat probable; what seems true to most or all wise men is very probable;
what most men, both wise and unwise, assent to, still more resembles truth; but
what men generally consent in has the highest probability, and approaches so
near to demonstrated truth, that it may pass for ridiculous arrogance and self-conceitedness,
or for intolerable obstinacy and perverseness to decry it.”
The
whole world, it is urged, must surely be right.
The
design argument is one of the most ancient and yet convincing of all. Where there is a design there must be a
designer. In other words, the
architecture of Heaven denotes directing intelligence just as surely as the
contrivances of men. For what is meant
by design? Contrivance: the adaptation
of means to an end. “Such adaptation,”
says a thoughtful writer, “indicates contrivance for given purpose, and
contrivance is the evidence of intelligence, and intelligence is the attribute
of mind, and the intelligent mind that built the stupendous universe is God.”
Everywhere
in nature is the evidence of an intelligent designer. When rain falls on the soil of a field
adapted for vegetable growth, the filtration of rainwater through the soil does
not disturb one particle of all nutritive matter which it contains available
for vegetable growth, such as potash, silicic acid, ammonia, etc. The most intermittent rain is unable to
abstract from it (except by the mechanical action of floods) any of the chief
requisites for its fertility. The particle of mould not only firmly retains all
matter nutritive to vegetable growth, but also immediately absorbs such as are
contained in the rainwater. Did blind
chance bring about such a condition, or is there intelligent super vision over
the organic adaptations of nature?
The
evidences of a supreme designer crowd still more upon the vision when we come
to the human mind. “What can be more
absurd,” asks Montesquieu, “than to imagine that a blind fatalistic force has
produced human beings?”
Robert
Flint states:
“The complicated and refined
adjustments of the body to the mind, and of the mind to the body, are so
numerous and interesting that their study has now become the task of a special
class of scientific men. A very little
disorder in the organization of the brain, such as even microscopic postmortem
examination may fail to detect, suffices to cause hallucinations of the senses,
to shake intellect from the throne, to paralyze the will, and to corrupt the
sentiments and affections. How precise
and skillful must the adjustment be between the sound brain and the sane
mind. Who sufficiently realizes the
mystery of wisdom which lies in the familiar fact that the mind, by merely
willing to use the members of the body, sets in motion instantaneously and
unconsciously, without effort and without failure, cords, and pulleys and
levers, joints and muscles, of which it only vaguely, if at all, surmises the
existence? The laws of our various
appetencies, affections, and emotions, and their relation to their special ends
or objects, the nature of the several intellectual faculties and their
subservience to mental culture, and still more the general constitution of the
mind as a system consisting of a multitude of powers under the government of
reason and conscience, present to us vast fields filled with evidences of
Divine Wisdom.”
What
is this great creative director under whose supervision a thinking human
machine is made possible? Is it just hazard—chance—or is it more comforting to
call it nature? Voltaire, the great French thinker, in discussing this
question, took a watch from his pocket, and as he looked upon the same,
remarked that he could plainly see a means adapted to an end, denoting
contrivance, and that contrivance clearly established to his mind that there
was an intelligence behind the contrivance; that intelligence was the attribute
of mind, and the intelligent mind who manufactured the watch was the watchmaker;
and that man might just as well call the watch the watchmaker as to call nature
the universe maker.
Professor
Laurant of Ghent
“What is nature anyway—whence has it
this power, this foresight, this intelligence, which are so conspicuous in the
course of our destinies? If nature is matter, and nothing but matter, that too
is no answer. Who will believe that
matter acts with wisdom—with intelligence?
Where there is intelligent action there must be an intelligent being;
therefore nature leads us to God.
Finally, there are those who substitute for nature general laws. But do not laws suppose a legislator? And who can this legislator be, if not God?”
Robert
Flint expresses his idea by the following illustration:
“Throw letters together without
thought through all eternity, and you will never make the express thought. All the letters in the Iliad might have been tossed and jumbled together from morning to
night by the hands of the whole human race, from the beginning of the world
until now, and the first line of the Iliad
would have been still un-composed, had not the genius of Homer been inspired to
sing the wrath of Achilles and the war around Troy. But what is the Iliad to the hymn of creation, and the fame of providence? Were these glorious works composed by the
mere jumbling together of atoms, which were not even prepared beforehand to
form things, as letters are to form words, and which had to shake themselves
into order without the help of any hand?
Such would be nonsense.”
Some
immature students argue that science explains all through the application of
the law of cause and effect and therefore the ideas of God should be relegated
to the rubbish heap. Such reasoning is
unsound for the existence of God is entirely out of the domain of natural
science. Natural science deals with secondary causes and effects and in nowise
challenges the existence of a First Great Cause. To illustrate:
An
electric lamp shows a light, which light is produced by the passage of
electricity through the little thread of carbon, the latter offering a
resistance to the electricity—resistance causing the energy of the electricity
to be transformed into heat and light.
The electricity is produced from the dynamo, the power of which is
imparted by a steam engine. The steam
engine takes up motion from the energy in the coal, which energy is released by
combustion. The coal obtains its
chemical energy from the sun, which imparted it to the trees from which the
coal originated, or else, perhaps, from the energy inherent in its atoms. The sun or atoms obtained their energy from
the universal energy. So you see the
whole process is a chain of transformations, which transformations or secondary
causes and effects are the domain of natural science. Does it not follow that just as the
phenomenon of the electric lamp denotes a supervising intelligence, the
electrical engineer, directing the law of cause and effect in the contrivances
of men so that--
“In Nature’s most minute design,
The signature and stamp of power divine:
Contrivance intricate, expressed with ease,
Where unassisted sight no beauty sees,
The shapely limb and lubricated joint
Within the small dimensions of a point:
Muscle and nerve miraculously spun,
His might work, who speaks and it is done.
The Invisible, in things scarce seen revealed,
To whom an atom is an ample field.”
The
moral law which reveals itself to conscience is certainly a witness for
God.
Robert
Flint, in his book entitled “Theism,”
whose writing I am deeply indebted to, declares:
“There is probably no living
practical belief in God which does not begin with the conscience. It is not reasoning on a first cause, nor
even admiration of the wisdom displayed in the universe, which makes the
thought of God habitually and efficaciously present to the mind. It is not any kind of thinking nor any kind
of feeling excited by the physical universe or by the contemplation of God’s
presence, and of His relationship to us.
It is only in and through an awakened and active conscience that we
realize our nearness to God—His interest in us, and our interest in Him. Without a moral nature of our own, we could
not recognize the moral character and moral government manifested by Him. We might tremble before His power, or we
might admire his skill, but His righteousness would be hidden from us, His
moral laws would be meaningless to us, and their sanctions would be merely a
series of physical advantages or physical disasters. But a God without righteousness is no true
God, and the worship which has no moral element in it is no true worship. As, then, it is only through the glass of
conscience that the righteousness of God can be discerned, and as that
attribute alone can call forth, in addition to the fear, wonder, and admiration
evoked by power and intelligence, the love, the sense of spiritual weakness and
want, and the adoring reverence, which are indispensable in true worship—such
worship as God ought to receive and man out to render—the significance of the
moral principle in the theistic argumentation is vast indeed.”
Without
further elaboration, the existence of conscience in every human being obviously
infers the existence of a supreme moral governor who will reward or punish us
according to our works—otherwise why conscience—if annihilation is our lot.
Were there no God, there ought to be no fear of God awakened even by crime; but
atheism itself cannot protect a criminal when alive to his guilt from being
haunted and appalled by fears of a judgment and a justice more terrible than
those of man.
The
heart-knowledge of the existence of Deity to each individual who has it, is
most convincing. I know there is God
because I know Him. I experience in
prayer, mediation and sorrow a conviction which comes from more tangible
evidences. The objector is open to say,
“You assert you have this feeling. I am
willing to admit your sincerity, but you may be the victim of an illusion. All I can say is that I have no such feeling
myself.” It might be adequate to reply
that my convictions are corroborated by thousands of thinking students who have
felt similar convictions, many of whom have been willing to seal their convictions
with their life’s blood.
Ralph
Waldo Emerson beautifully illustrates this heart knowledge of God in the last
verse of his poem “Goodbye, Proud World.”
“Oh when I am safe in my sylvan home,
I mock at the pride of Greece
and Rome
And when I am stretched beneath the pines,
Where the evening star so holy shines,
I laugh at the lore and the pride of man,
At the sophist schools, and the learned clan;
For what are they all in their high conceit,
When man in the bush with God may meet?”
The
supreme efforts of reason, science and philosophy have proved inadequate to
supply the all-convincing evidence of God’s existence. The heart-touching lamentation of the
brilliant agnostic, Robert G. Ingersoll, uttered at the grave of his brother,
is indicative of this fact. In this now
famous oration, Ingersoll states:
“Life is a narrow vale between the
cold and barren peaks of two eternities.
We strive in vain to look beyond the heights. We cry aloud and the only answer is the wail
of our echoing cry. From the voiceless
lips of the un-replying dead there comes no word.”
The
doleful conclusions of Dean Mansel are interesting in further pointing out the
inadequacy of human reasoning to satisfy the heart yearnings for
immortality. After a lifetime of study,
Mansel writes:
“The conception of the Absolute and
Infinite, from whatever side we view it, appears encompassed with
contradictions. There is a contradiction
in supposing such an object to exist, whether alone or in conjunction with
others; and there is a contradiction in supposing it not to exist. There is a contradiction in conceiving it as
one; and there is a contradiction in conceiving it as many. There is a contradiction in conceiving it as
personal; and there is a contradiction in conceiving it as impersonal. It cannot without contradiction, be
represented as active; nor, without equal contradiction, be represented as
inactive. It cannot be conceived as the
sum of all existence; nor can it be conceived as a part only of that sum.”
Natural
religion needs revealed religion to complete it. This revelation is focused in the divine
human figure of Jesus Christ, foretold and expected in the Old Testament,
present to teach and work in the New, and even in modern times appeared as a
glorious immortal God with His Father to the Prophet Joseph Smith.
The
truth that God exists and is really a Father, with all a Father’s love toward
the children of men, is my earnest and sober testimony.
(The foregoing is
an address delivered by R. Verne McCullough over Radio Station KSL in 1928)
(Typed by Marie Arnold 5-28-2014)
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