certainty

• unattainable in mortal state › extends only as far as one’s personal experience

2:7.2Phys­i­cal facts are fairly uni­form, but truth is a liv­ing and flex­i­ble fac­tor in the phi­los­o­phy of the uni­verse. Evolv­ing per­son­al­i­ties are only par­tially wise and rel­a­tively true in their com­mu­ni­ca­tions. They can be cer­tain only as far as their per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence ex­tends. That which ap­par­ently may be wholly true in one place may be only rel­a­tively true in an­other seg­ment of cre­ation.

• God more real than our fellows

16:9.4Hu­man self-con­scious­ness im­plies the rec­og­ni­tion of the re­al­ity of selves other than the con­scious self and fur­ther im­plies that such aware­ness is mu­tual; that the self is known as it knows. This is shown in a purely hu­man man­ner in man’s so­cial life. But you can­not be­come so ab­so­lutely cer­tain of a fel­low be­ing’s re­al­ity as you can of the re­al­ity of the pres­ence of God that lives within you. The so­cial con­scious­ness is not in­alien­able like the God-con­scious­ness; it is a cul­tural de­vel­op­ment and is de­pen­dent on knowl­edge, sym­bols, and the con­tri­bu­tions of the con­sti­tu­tive en­dow­ments of man—sci­ence, moral­ity, and re­li­gion. And these cos­mic gifts, so­cial­ized, con­sti­tute civ­i­liza­tion.

• let pressure develop c.

48:6.35From them you will learn to let pres­sure de­velop sta­bil­ity and cer­tainty; to be faith­ful and earnest and, withal, cheer­ful; to ac­cept chal­lenges with­out com­plaint and to face dif­fi­cul­ties and un­cer­tain­ties with­out fear. They will ask: If you fail, will you rise in­domitably to try anew? If you suc­ceed, will you main­tain a well-bal­anced poise—a sta­bi­lized and spir­i­tu­al­ized at­ti­tude—through­out ev­ery ef­fort in the long strug­gle to break the fet­ters of ma­te­rial in­er­tia, to at­tain the free­dom of spirit ex­is­tence?

• fetishmen believed to be infallible

88:1.10Many peo­ple looked upon ge­niuses as fe­tish per­son­al­i­ties pos­sessed by a wise spirit. And these tal­ented hu­mans soon learned to re­sort to fraud and trick­ery for the ad­vance­ment of their self­ish in­ter­ests. A fe­tish man was thought to be more than hu­man; he was di­vine, even in­fal­li­ble. Thus did chiefs, kings, priests, proph­ets, and church rulers even­tu­ally wield great power and ex­er­cise un­bounded au­thor­ity.

• some religionists believe they have the infallible Truth

92:3.4Evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion makes no pro­vi­sion for change or re­vi­sion; un­like sci­ence, it does not pro­vide for its own pro­gres­sive cor­rec­tion. Evolved re­li­gion com­mands re­spect be­cause its fol­low­ers be­lieve it is The Truth; “the faith once de­liv­ered to the saints” must, in the­ory, be both fi­nal and in­fal­li­ble. The cult re­sists de­vel­op­ment be­cause real prog­ress is cer­tain to mod­ify or de­stroy the cult it­self; there­fore must re­vi­sion al­ways be forced upon it.

• unattainable in mortal state › none in knowledge, only increasing probability

102:2.4Time is an in­vari­able el­e­ment in the at­tain­ment of knowl­edge; re­li­gion makes its en­dow­ments im­me­di­ately avail­able, al­beit there is the im­por­tant fac­tor of growth in grace, def­i­nite ad­vance­ment in all phases of re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence. Knowl­edge is an eter­nal quest; al­ways are you learn­ing, but never are you able to ar­rive at the full knowl­edge of ab­so­lute truth. In knowl­edge alone there can never be ab­so­lute cer­tainty, only in­creas­ing prob­a­bil­ity of ap­prox­i­ma­tion; but the re­li­gious soul of spir­i­tual il­lu­mi­na­tion knows, and knows now. And yet this pro­found and pos­i­tive cer­ti­tude does not lead such a sound-minded re­li­gion­ist to take any less in­ter­est in the ups and downs of the prog­ress of hu­man wis­dom, which is bound up on its ma­te­rial end with the de­vel­op­ments of slow-mov­ing sci­ence.

• we have right to be most certain about God

102:7.10Of God, the most in­es­cap­able of all pres­ences, the most real of all facts, the most liv­ing of all truths, the most lov­ing of all friends, and the most di­vine of all val­ues, we have the right to be the most cer­tain of all uni­verse ex­pe­ri­ences.

• on spiritual level, need for proof vanishes before experience with reality
• unattainable in mortal state

103:7.10In the mor­tal state, noth­ing can be ab­so­lutely proved; both sci­ence and re­li­gion are pred­i­cated on as­sump­tions. On the mor­ontia level, the pos­tu­lates of both sci­ence and re­li­gion are ca­pa­ble of par­tial proof by mota logic. On the spir­i­tual level of max­i­mum sta­tus, the need for fi­nite proof grad­u­ally van­ishes be­fore the ac­tual ex­pe­ri­ence of and with re­al­ity; but even then there is much be­yond the fi­nite that re­mains un­proved.

• of the God-knowing religionist

103:8.5The cer­tainty of the God-know­ing re­li­gion­ist should not be dis­turbed by the un­cer­tainty of the doubt­ing ma­te­ri­al­ist; rather should the un­cer­tainty of the un­be­liever be might­ily chal­lenged by the pro­found faith and un­shak­able cer­tainty of the ex­pe­ri­en­tial be­liever.

• convictions of religious experience are unassailable

103:9.12There is a re­al­ity in re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence that is pro­por­tional to the spir­i­tual con­tent, and such a re­al­ity is tran­scen­dent to rea­son, sci­ence, phi­los­o­phy, wis­dom, and all other hu­man achieve­ments. The con­vic­tions of such an ex­pe­ri­ence are unas­sail­able; the logic of re­li­gious liv­ing is in­con­tro­vert­ible; the cer­tainty of such knowl­edge is super­hu­man; the sat­is­fac­tions are su­perbly di­vine, the cour­age in­domitable, the de­vo­tions un­ques­tion­ing, the loy­al­ties su­preme, and the des­tinies fi­nal—eter­nal, ul­ti­mate, and uni­ver­sal.

• does not fear outward analysis

146:3.2The apos­tles were a bit dis­con­certed by the open man­ner of Je­sus’ as­sent to many of the Greek’s propo­si­tions, but Je­sus af­ter­ward pri­vately said to them: “My chil­dren, mar­vel not that I was tol­er­ant of the Greek’s phi­los­o­phy. True and gen­uine in­ward cer­tainty does not in the least fear out­ward anal­y­sis, nor does truth re­sent hon­est crit­i­cism. You should never for­get that in­tol­er­ance is the mask cov­er­ing up the en­ter­tain­ment of se­cret doubts as to the true­ness of one’s be­lief. No man is at any time dis­turbed by his neigh­bor’s at­ti­tude when he has per­fect con­fi­dence in the truth of that which he whole­heart­edly be­lieves. Cour­age is the con­fi­dence of thor­ough­go­ing hon­esty about those things which one pro­fesses to be­lieve. Sin­cere men are un­afraid of the crit­i­cal ex­am­i­na­tion of their true con­vic­tions and no­ble ide­als.”

• unattainable in mortal state › nothing which human nature touches is infallible

159:4.8“Mark you well my words, Na­than­iel, noth­ing which hu­man na­ture has touched can be re­garded as in­fal­li­ble. Through the mind of man di­vine truth may in­deed shine forth, but al­ways of rel­a­tive pu­rity and par­tial di­vin­ity. The crea­ture may crave in­fal­li­bil­ity, but only the Cre­ators pos­sess it.

• in science, philosophy, and religious experience

196:3.5Phys­i­cal cer­tainty con­sists in the logic of sci­ence; moral cer­tainty, in the wis­dom of phi­los­o­phy; spir­i­tual cer­tainty, in the truth of gen­uine re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence.