causation

• Father freed us from absolute dependence on

5:6.8Hav­ing thus pro­vided for the growth of the im­mor­tal soul and hav­ing lib­er­ated man’s in­ner self from the fet­ters of ab­so­lute de­pen­dence on an­te­ced­ent cau­sa­tion, the Fa­ther stands aside. Now, man hav­ing thus been lib­er­ated from the fet­ters of cau­sa­tion re­sponse, at least as per­tains to eter­nal des­tiny, and pro­vi­sion hav­ing been made for the growth of the im­mor­tal self, the soul, it re­mains for man him­self to will the cre­ation or to in­hibit the cre­ation of this sur­viv­ing and eter­nal self which is his for the choos­ing. No other be­ing, force, cre­ator, or agency in all the wide uni­verse of uni­verses can in­ter­fere to any de­gree with the ab­so­lute sov­er­eignty of the mor­tal free will, as it op­er­ates within the realms of choice, re­gard­ing the eter­nal des­tiny of the per­son­al­ity of the choos­ing mor­tal. As per­tains to eter­nal sur­vival, God has de­creed the sov­er­eignty of the ma­te­rial and mor­tal will, and that de­cree is ab­so­lute.

5:6.9The be­stowal of crea­ture per­son­al­ity con­fers rel­a­tive lib­er­a­tion from slav­ish re­sponse to an­te­ced­ent cau­sa­tion, and the per­son­al­i­ties of all such moral be­ings, evo­lu­tion­ary or oth­er­wise, are cen­tered in the per­son­al­ity of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther. They are ever drawn to­wards his Par­a­dise pres­ence by that kin­ship of be­ing which con­sti­tutes the vast and uni­ver­sal fam­ily cir­cle and fra­ter­nal cir­cuit of the eter­nal God. There is a kin­ship of di­vine spon­tane­ity in all per­son­al­ity.

• only justice provided by nature

70:10.1Nat­u­ral jus­tice is a man-made the­ory; it is not a re­al­ity. In na­ture, jus­tice is purely the­o­retic, wholly a fic­tion. Na­ture pro­vides but one kind of jus­tice—in­ev­i­ta­ble con­for­mity of re­sults to causes.

• effects produced by definite causes

86:2.5But to con­tinue to as­cribe things dif­fi­cult of com­pre­hen­sion to super­nat­u­ral causes is noth­ing less than a lazy and con­ve­nient way of avoid­ing all forms of in­tel­lec­tual hard work. Luck is merely a term coined to cover the in­ex­pli­ca­ble in any age of hu­man ex­is­tence; it des­ig­nates those phe­nom­ena which men are un­able or un­will­ing to pen­e­trate. Chance is a word which sig­ni­fies that man is too ig­no­rant or too in­do­lent to de­ter­mine causes. Men re­gard a nat­u­ral oc­cur­rence as an ac­ci­dent or as bad luck only when they are des­ti­tute of cu­rios­ity and imag­i­na­tion, when the races lack ini­tia­tive and ad­ven­ture. Ex­plo­ration of the phe­nom­ena of life sooner or later de­stroys man’s be­lief in chance, luck, and so-called ac­ci­dents, sub­sti­tut­ing there­for a uni­verse of law and or­der wherein all ef­fects are pre­ceded by def­i­nite causes. Thus is the fear of ex­is­tence re­placed by the joy of liv­ing.

• material response of effect to antecedent action

101:10.3The ma­te­rial level of law pro­vides for causal­ity con­ti­nu­ity, the un­end­ing re­sponse of ef­fect to an­te­ced­ent ac­tion; the mind level sug­gests the per­pet­u­a­tion of ide­a­tional con­ti­nu­ity, the un­ceas­ing flow of con­cep­tual po­ten­tial­ity from pre-ex­is­tent con­cep­tions. But nei­ther of these lev­els of the uni­verse dis­closes to the in­quir­ing mor­tal an av­enue of es­cape from par­tial­ity of sta­tus and from the in­tol­er­a­ble sus­pense of be­ing a tran­sient re­al­ity in the uni­verse, a tem­po­ral per­son­al­ity doomed to be ex­tin­guished upon the ex­haus­tion of the lim­ited life en­er­gies.

101:2.3Rea­son, through the study of sci­ence, may lead back through na­ture to a First Cause, but it re­quires re­li­gious faith to trans­form the First Cause of sci­ence into a God of sal­va­tion; and rev­e­la­tion is fur­ther re­quired for the val­i­da­tion of such a faith, such spir­i­tual in­sight.

101:2.7Sci­ence ends its rea­son-search in the hy­poth­e­sis of a First Cause. Re­li­gion does not stop in its flight of faith un­til it is sure of a God of sal­va­tion. The dis­crim­i­nat­ing study of sci­ence log­i­cally sug­gests the re­al­ity and ex­is­tence of an Ab­so­lute. Re­li­gion be­lieves un­re­servedly in the ex­is­tence and re­al­ity of a God who fos­ters per­son­al­ity sur­vival. What meta­physics fails ut­terly in do­ing, and what even phi­los­o­phy fails par­tially in do­ing, rev­e­la­tion does; that is, af­firms that this First Cause of sci­ence and re­li­gion’s God of sal­va­tion are one and the same De­ity.

195:6.5Sci­ence is a quan­ti­ta­tive ex­pe­ri­ence, re­li­gion a qual­i­ta­tive ex­pe­ri­ence, as re­gards man’s life on earth. Sci­ence deals with phe­nom­ena; re­li­gion, with ori­gins, val­ues, and goals. To as­sign causes as an ex­pla­na­tion of phys­i­cal phe­nom­ena is to con­fess ig­no­rance of ul­ti­mates and in the end only leads the sci­en­tist straight back to the first great cause—the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther of Par­a­dise.

81:2.9When asked where fire came from, the sim­ple story of An­don and the flint was soon re­placed by the leg­end of how some Prometheus stole it from heaven. The an­cients sought a super­nat­u­ral ex­pla­na­tion for all nat­u­ral phe­nom­ena not within the range of their per­sonal com­pre­hen­sion; and many mod­erns con­tinue to do this. The de­per­son­al­iza­tion of so-called nat­u­ral phe­nom­ena has re­quired ages, and it is not yet com­pleted. But the frank, hon­est, and fear­less search for true causes gave birth to mod­ern sci­ence: It turned as­trol­ogy into as­tron­omy, alchemy into chem­istry, and magic into med­i­cine.

165:3.6“Say what you will about the Son of Man, and it shall be for­given you; but he who pre­sumes to blas­pheme against God shall hardly find for­give­ness. When men go so far as know­ingly to as­cribe the do­ings of God to the forces of evil, such de­lib­er­ate rebels will hardly seek for­give­ness for their sins.

3:1.2“‘I am a God at hand as well as afar off,’ says the Lord. ‘Do not I fill heaven and earth?’” The Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther is all the time pres­ent in all parts and in all hearts of his far-flung cre­ation. He is “the full­ness of him who fills all and in all,” and “who works all in all,” and fur­ther, the con­cept of his per­son­al­ity is such that “the heaven (uni­verse) and heaven of heav­ens (uni­verse of uni­verses) can­not con­tain him.” It is lit­er­ally true that God is all and in all. But even that is not all of God. The In­fi­nite can be fi­nally re­vealed only in in­fin­ity; the cause can never be fully com­pre­hended by an anal­y­sis of ef­fects; the liv­ing God is im­mea­sur­ably greater than the sum to­tal of cre­ation that has come into be­ing as a re­sult of the cre­ative acts of his un­fet­tered free will. God is re­vealed through­out the cos­mos, but the cos­mos can never con­tain or en­com­pass the en­tirety of the in­fin­ity of God.

3:6.3All re­li­gious phi­los­o­phy, sooner or later, ar­rives at the con­cept of uni­fied uni­verse rule, of one God. Uni­verse causes can­not be lower than uni­verse ef­fects. The source of the streams of uni­verse life and of the cos­mic mind must be above the lev­els of their man­i­fes­ta­tion. The hu­man mind can­not be con­sis­tently ex­plained in terms of the lower or­ders of ex­is­tence. Man’s mind can be truly com­pre­hended only by rec­og­niz­ing the re­al­ity of higher or­ders of thought and pur­po­sive will. Man as a moral be­ing is in­ex­pli­ca­ble un­less the re­al­ity of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther is ac­knowl­edged.

16:6.61. Cau­sa­tion—the re­al­ity do­main of the phys­i­cal senses, the sci­en­tific realms of log­i­cal uni­for­mity, the dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion of the fac­tual and the non­fac­tual, re­flec­tive con­clu­sions based on cos­mic re­sponse. This is the math­e­mat­i­cal form of the cos­mic dis­crim­i­na­tion.

16:6.5The cos­mic mind un­fail­ingly re­sponds (rec­og­nizes re­sponse) on three lev­els of uni­verse re­al­ity. These re­sponses are self-ev­i­dent to clear-rea­son­ing and deep-think­ing minds. These lev­els of re­al­ity are:

19:1.114. His­tory alone fails ad­e­quately to re­veal fu­ture de­vel­op­ment—des­tiny. Fi­nite ori­gins are help­ful, but only di­vine causes re­veal fi­nal ef­fects. Eter­nal ends are not shown in time be­gin­nings. The pres­ent can be truly in­ter­preted only in the light of the cor­re­lated past and fu­ture.

118:4.1Many of the the­o­logic dif­fi­cul­ties and the meta­phys­i­cal dilem­mas of mor­tal man are due to man’s mis­lo­ca­tion of De­ity per­son­al­ity and con­se­quent as­sign­ment of in­fi­nite and ab­so­lute at­tri­butes to sub­or­di­nate Di­vin­ity and to evo­lu­tion­ary De­ity. You must not for­get that, while there is in­deed a true First Cause, there are also a host of co-or­di­nate and sub­or­di­nate causes, both as­so­ciate and sec­ondary causes.

118:4.2The vi­tal dis­tinc­tion be­tween first causes and sec­ond causes is that first causes pro­duce orig­i­nal ef­fects which are free from in­her­i­tance of any fac­tor de­rived from any an­te­ced­ent cau­sa­tion. Sec­ondary causes yield ef­fects which in­vari­ably ex­hibit in­her­i­tance from other and pre­ced­ing cau­sa­tion.

118:4.3The purely static po­ten­tials in­her­ent in the Un­qual­i­fied Ab­so­lute are re­ac­tive to those cau­sa­tions of the De­ity Ab­so­lute which are pro­duced by the ac­tions of the Par­a­dise Trin­ity. In the pres­ence of the Uni­ver­sal Ab­so­lute these causative-im­preg­nated static po­ten­tials forth­with be­come ac­tive and re­spon­sive to the in­flu­ence of cer­tain tran­scen­den­tal agen­cies whose ac­tions re­sult in the trans­mu­ta­tion of these ac­ti­vated po­ten­tials to the sta­tus of true uni­verse pos­si­bil­i­ties for de­vel­op­ment, ac­tu­al­ized ca­pac­i­ties for growth. It is upon such ma­tured po­ten­tials that the cre­ators and con­trol­lers of the grand uni­verse en­act the never-end­ing drama of cos­mic evo­lu­tion.

118:4.4Cau­sa­tion, dis­re­gard­ing ex­is­ten­tials, is three­fold in its ba­sic con­sti­tu­tion. As it op­er­ates in this uni­verse age and con­cern­ing the fi­nite level of the seven super­uni­verses, it may be con­ceived as fol­lows:

118:4.51. Ac­ti­va­tion of static po­ten­tials. The es­tab­lish­ment of des­tiny in the Uni­ver­sal Ab­so­lute by the ac­tions of the De­ity Ab­so­lute, op­er­at­ing in and upon the Un­qual­i­fied Ab­so­lute and in con­se­quence of the vo­li­tional man­dates of the Par­a­dise Trin­ity.

118:4.62. Even­tu­a­tion of uni­verse ca­pac­i­ties. This in­volves the trans­for­ma­tion of un­dif­fer­en­ti­ated po­ten­tials into seg­re­gated and de­fined plans. This is the act of the Ul­ti­macy of De­ity and of the man­i­fold agen­cies of the tran­scen­den­tal level. Such acts are in per­fect an­tic­i­pa­tion of the fu­ture needs of the en­tire mas­ter uni­verse. It is in con­nec­tion with the seg­re­ga­tion of po­ten­tials that the Ar­chi­tects of the Mas­ter Uni­verse ex­ist as the ver­i­ta­ble em­bod­i­ments of the De­ity con­cept of the uni­verses. Their plans ap­pear to be ul­ti­mately space lim­ited in ex­tent by the con­cept pe­riph­ery of the mas­ter uni­verse, but as plans they are not oth­er­wise con­di­tioned by time or space.

118:4.73. Cre­ation and evo­lu­tion of uni­verse ac­tu­als. It is upon a cos­mos im­preg­nated by the ca­pac­ity-pro­duc­ing pres­ence of the Ul­ti­macy of De­ity that the Su­preme Cre­ators op­er­ate to ef­fect the time trans­mu­ta­tions of ma­tured po­ten­tials into ex­pe­ri­en­tial ac­tu­als. Within the mas­ter uni­verse all ac­tu­al­iza­tion of po­ten­tial re­al­ity is lim­ited by ul­ti­mate ca­pac­ity for de­vel­op­ment and is time-space con­di­tioned in the fi­nal stages of emer­gence. The Cre­ator Sons go­ing out from Par­a­dise are, in ac­tu­al­ity, trans­for­ma­tive cre­ators in the cos­mic sense. But this in no man­ner in­val­i­dates man’s con­cept of them as cre­ators; from the fi­nite view­point they cer­tainly can and do cre­ate.

70:10.3Prim­i­tive man as­signed all phe­nom­ena to a per­son. In case of death the sav­age asked, not what killed him, but who? Ac­ci­den­tal mur­der was not there­fore rec­og­nized, and in the pun­ish­ment of crime the mo­tive of the crim­i­nal was wholly dis­re­garded; judg­ment was ren­dered in ac­cor­dance with the in­jury done.