All composite objects of the world, formed by the combination of atoms (e.g. mountains, seas, etc.), must have a cause because they are of the nature of effects, like a pot.
That all such objects of the world are effects follows first from their being made up of parts (savayava) and secondly, from their possessing an intermediate magnitude (avantaramahattva).
Space, time, ether and self are not effects, because these are infinite substances, not made up of parts. Atoms of earth, water, light and air, and the mind are not the effects of any cause, because they are simple, indivisible and infinitesimal substances.
All other composite objects of the world, like mountains and seas, the sun and the moon, the stars and the planets must be the effects of some cause, since they are both made up of parts and possess limited dimensions.
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These objects are what they are because of the concurrence of a number of material causes. Therefore, there must be an intelligent cause (karta), for all these effects.
Without the guidance of an intelligent cause the material causes of these things cannot attain just that order, direction and co-ordination which enable them to produce these definite effects.
This intelligent cause must have a direct knowledge of the material causes (the atoms) as means, a desire to attain some end, and the power of will to accomplish or realise the end (jnana-cikirsa- krti).
He must also be omniscient (sarvajna), since only an omniscient being can have direct knowledge of such absolutely simple and infinitely small entities as atoms and the like. That is, He must be God and none but God.
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The first argument of the Naiyayikas, it will be observed, resembles the causal argument for God’s existence as explained by some Western thinkers like Paul Janet Hermann Lotze and James Martineau.
According to them, the world of finite objects requires an intelligent cause which gives order and coordination to their concurrent physical causes.
Thus Janet lays it down as a principle that all co-ordination between divergent phenomena implies a final cause or an intelligent agent who effects the complex combination of such separate phenomena.
So also, both Lotze and Martineau start from the fact of physical causation in the world and rise up to the conception of an intelligent principle as its ultimate ground and reason.
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Indeed, the Naiyayika view of an efficient cause as an intelligent agent strikingly anticipates Martineau’s idea of cause as will directed to the realisadon of ends. There is, however, some difference between these theists and the Naiyayikas.
Western theists generally believe that God is not only the cause of the order and unity of things in the world, but also the creative energy that gives existence to the things of Nature.
For the Naiyayikas, however, God is only the cause of the order of Nature, and not of the existence of the ultimate constituents of it. Still the Nyaya conception of God cannot be called deistic.
According to deism, God creates the world at a certain point of time and then leaves it to itself.
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He has usually no concern with the affairs of the world, although he may occasionally interfere with them in case of grave emergency, as a clock-maker does when the clock made by him gets out of order.
On the Nyaya theory, however, God maintains a continuous relation with the world (being conceived as not only the creator, but also as its maintainer and destroyer).
This is the essence of theism as distinguished from deism and, as such, the Nyaya conception of God is rather theistic than deistic.