The Foundations of Religious Faith

102:5.1Al­though the es­tab­lish­ment of the fact of be­lief is not equiv­a­lent to es­tab­lish­ing the fact of that which is be­lieved, nev­er­the­less, the evo­lu­tion­ary pro­gres­sion of sim­ple life to the sta­tus of per­son­al­ity does demon­strate the fact of the ex­is­tence of the po­ten­tial of per­son­al­ity to start with. And in the time uni­verses, po­ten­tial is al­ways su­preme over the ac­tual. In the evolv­ing cos­mos the po­ten­tial is what is to be, and what is to be is the un­fold­ing of the pur­po­sive man­dates of De­ity.

102:5.2This same pur­po­sive su­prem­acy is shown in the evo­lu­tion of mind ide­a­tion when prim­i­tive an­i­mal fear is trans­muted into the con­stantly deep­en­ing rev­er­ence for God and into in­creas­ing awe of the uni­verse. Prim­i­tive man had more re­li­gious fear than faith, and the su­prem­acy of spirit po­ten­tials over mind ac­tu­als is demon­strated when this craven fear is trans­lated into liv­ing faith in spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties.

102:5.3You can psy­chol­o­gize evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion but not the per­sonal-ex­pe­ri­ence re­li­gion of spir­i­tual ori­gin. Hu­man moral­ity may rec­og­nize val­ues, but only re­li­gion can con­serve, ex­alt, and spir­i­tu­al­ize such val­ues. But not­with­stand­ing such ac­tions, re­li­gion is some­thing more than emo­tion­al­ized moral­ity. Re­li­gion is to moral­ity as love is to duty, as son­ship is to servi­tude, as essence is to sub­stance. Moral­ity dis­closes an al­mighty Con­trol­ler, a De­ity to be served; re­li­gion dis­closes an all-lov­ing Fa­ther, a God to be wor­shiped and loved. And again this is be­cause the spir­i­tual po­ten­tial­ity of re­li­gion is dom­i­nant over the duty ac­tu­al­ity of the moral­ity of evo­lu­tion.