Book of Mormon and the Bible resemble each other in that they take for granted, "He lives!" Handbooks on theology generally begin by stating the philosophical arguments supposed to prove that there is a Supreme Being, but God's books do not argue the question. "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth," is the sublime opening statement of the Bible. One of the first incidents told in the Book of Mormon is that of a vision of the Prophet Lehi, in which he saw "God sitting upon his throne, surrounded by numerous concourses of angels in the attitude of singing and praising their God." (1 Ne. 1:8) There is no attempt at argument; no appeal to the reasoning faculty of man, only a plain statement of a sublime fact, in the simplest possible language: God Is.
And yet, when the inspired writer has occasion to rebuke atheism, he applies the cosmological argument with the greatest possible force. He says:
"If there be no God, we are not, for there could have been no creation." (2 Ne. 11:7)
That argument is unanswerable.
Philosophers have, indeed, asserted that God is not needed to account for the existence of worlds. Matter itself, they argue, possesses all the potency necessary to account for all established facts. In this conclusion, vast numbers of our superficial age concur and, at least pretend to, find satisfaction. Many are banded together, and with increasing numbers both among learned and unlearned, seek to spread their faith destroying opinions throughout every field of human endeavor. Their aims are freely stated: Do away with chaplains in Congress, legislatures, and in the army and navy. Recognize no religious festivals. Stop "bootlegging" Bible and religion in the schools. Use no Bibles to take an oath on. Do away with Christian morality. Take "In God We Trust" off the coins. The program they have adopted has been espoused by an ever-growing fraternity.
Against the ignorant, blasphemous, arrogant atheism which is fostered, the writers of the Book of Mormon stand up, as if it were from their graves, in righteous rebuke. They say, in substance: You atheists, you materialists, you monists, you do not go far enough in your negation. You deny the existence of God, but, in order to be consistent, you must also deny the existence of the land in which you live, and the mountains, the islands of the sea, the sun, the stars, and, above all, your own existence, and say that the whole Creation is only a figment of the imagination. To admit the reality of the Creation, and then deny the existence of the Creator thereof, is an inconsistency, a self-contradiction, impossible in the reasoning of any intelligent being.
The Book of Mormon testifies to the existence of God in this and other passages ( 11:7; Mor. 9:19) against all forms of atheism, and gives as complete a picture of the Godhead as we, in our mortal state, can perceive.