chance

86:1.1Aside from the nat­u­ral wor­ship urge, early evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion had its roots of ori­gin in the hu­man ex­pe­ri­ences of chance—so-called luck, com­mon­place hap­pen­ings. Prim­i­tive man was a food hunter. The re­sults of hunt­ing must ever vary, and this gives cer­tain ori­gin to those ex­pe­ri­ences which man in­ter­prets as good luck and bad luck. Mis­chance was a great fac­tor in the lives of men and women who lived con­stantly on the ragged edge of a pre­car­i­ous and ha­rassed ex­is­tence.

86:1.2The lim­ited in­tel­lec­tual hori­zon of the sav­age so con­cen­trates the at­ten­tion upon chance that luck be­comes a con­stant fac­tor in his life. Prim­i­tive Uran­tians strug­gled for ex­is­tence, not for a stan­dard of liv­ing; they lived lives of peril in which chance played an im­por­tant role. The con­stant dread of un­known and un­seen calamity hung over these sav­ages as a cloud of de­spair which ef­fec­tively ec­lipsed ev­ery plea­sure; they lived in con­stant dread of do­ing some­thing that would bring bad luck. Su­per­sti­tious sav­ages al­ways feared a run of good luck; they viewed such good for­tune as a cer­tain har­bin­ger of calamity.

86:1.3This ever-pres­ent dread of bad luck was par­a­lyz­ing. Why work hard and reap bad luck—noth­ing for some­thing—when one might drift along and en­counter good luck—some­thing for noth­ing? Un­think­ing men for­get good luck—take it for granted—but they painfully re­mem­ber bad luck.

86:1.4Early man lived in un­cer­tainty and in con­stant fear of chance—bad luck. Life was an ex­cit­ing game of chance; ex­is­tence was a gam­ble. It is no won­der that par­tially civ­i­lized peo­ple still be­lieve in chance and evince lin­ger­ing pre­dis­po­si­tions to gam­bling. Prim­i­tive man al­ter­nated be­tween two po­tent in­ter­ests: the pas­sion of get­ting some­thing for noth­ing and the fear of get­ting noth­ing for some­thing. And this gam­ble of ex­is­tence was the main in­ter­est and the su­preme fas­ci­na­tion of the early sav­age mind.

86:1.5The later herders held the same views of chance and luck, while the still later agri­cul­tur­ists were in­creas­ingly con­scious that crops were im­me­di­ately in­flu­enced by many things over which man had lit­tle or no con­trol. The farmer found him­self the vic­tim of drought, floods, hail, storms, pests, and plant dis­eases, as well as heat and cold. And as all of these nat­u­ral in­flu­ences af­fected in­di­vid­ual pros­per­ity, they were re­garded as good luck or bad luck.

86:1.6This no­tion of chance and luck strongly per­vaded the phi­los­o­phy of all an­cient peo­ples. Even in re­cent times in the Wis­dom of Sol­o­mon it is said: “I re­turned and saw that the race is not to the swift, nor the bat­tle to the strong, nei­ther bread to the wise, nor riches to men of un­der­stand­ing, nor fa­vor to men of skill; but fate and chance be­fall them all. For man knows not his fate; as fishes are taken in an evil net, and as birds are caught in a snare, so are the sons of men snared in an evil time when it falls sud­denly upon them.”

58:2.3And yet some of the less imag­i­na­tive of your mor­tal mech­a­nists in­sist on view­ing ma­te­rial cre­ation and hu­man evo­lu­tion as an ac­ci­dent. The Uran­tia mid­way­ers have as­sem­bled over fifty thou­sand facts of physics and chem­istry which they deem to be in­com­pat­i­ble with the laws of ac­ci­den­tal chance, and which they con­tend un­mis­tak­ably demon­strate the pres­ence of in­tel­li­gent pur­pose in the ma­te­rial cre­ation. And all of this takes no ac­count of their cat­a­logue of more than one hun­dred thou­sand find­ings out­side the do­main of physics and chem­istry which they main­tain prove the pres­ence of mind in the plan­ning, cre­ation, and main­te­nance of the ma­te­rial cos­mos.

58:2.4Your sun pours forth a ver­i­ta­ble flood of death-deal­ing rays, and your pleas­ant life on Uran­tia is due to the “for­tu­itous” in­flu­ence of more than two-score ap­par­ently ac­ci­den­tal pro­tec­tive op­er­a­tions sim­i­lar to the ac­tion of this unique ozone layer.

90:2.4The shamans were great be­liev­ers in the mis­sion of chance as rev­e­la­tory of the will of the spir­its; they fre­quently cast lots to ar­rive at de­ci­sions. Mod­ern sur­vivals of this pro­cliv­ity for cast­ing lots are il­lus­trated, not only in the many games of chance, but also in the well-known “count­ing-out” rhymes. Once, the per­son counted out must die; now, he is only it in some child­ish game. That which was se­ri­ous busi­ness to prim­i­tive man has sur­vived as a di­ver­sion of the mod­ern child.

86:2.1Anx­i­ety was a nat­u­ral state of the sav­age mind. When men and women fall vic­tims to ex­ces­sive anx­i­ety, they are sim­ply re­vert­ing to the nat­u­ral es­tate of their far-dis­tant an­ces­tors; and when anx­i­ety be­comes ac­tu­ally painful, it in­hibits ac­tiv­ity and un­fail­ingly in­sti­tutes evo­lu­tion­ary changes and bi­o­logic adap­ta­tions. Pain and suf­fer­ing are es­sen­tial to pro­gres­sive evo­lu­tion.

86:2.2The strug­gle for life is so painful that cer­tain back­ward tribes even yet howl and lament over each new sun­rise. Prim­i­tive man con­stantly asked, “Who is tor­ment­ing me?” Not find­ing a ma­te­rial source for his mis­eries, he set­tled upon a spirit ex­pla­na­tion. And so was re­li­gion born of the fear of the mys­te­ri­ous, the awe of the un­seen, and the dread of the un­known. Na­ture fear thus be­came a fac­tor in the strug­gle for ex­is­tence first be­cause of chance and then be­cause of mys­tery.

86:2.3The prim­i­tive mind was log­i­cal but con­tained few ideas for in­tel­li­gent as­so­ci­a­tion; the sav­age mind was un­e­d­u­cated, wholly un­so­phis­ti­cated. If one event fol­lowed an­other, the sav­age con­sid­ered them to be cause and ef­fect. What civ­i­lized man re­gards as su­per­sti­tion was just plain ig­no­rance in the sav­age. Man­kind has been slow to learn that there is not nec­es­sar­ily any re­la­tion­ship be­tween pur­poses and re­sults. Hu­man be­ings are only just be­gin­ning to re­al­ize that the re­ac­tions of ex­is­tence ap­pear be­tween acts and their con­se­quences. The sav­age strives to per­son­al­ize ev­ery­thing in­tan­gi­ble and ab­stract, and thus both na­ture and chance be­come per­son­al­ized as ghosts—spir­its—and later on as gods.

86:2.4Man nat­u­rally tends to be­lieve that which he deems best for him, that which is in his im­me­di­ate or re­mote in­ter­est; self-in­ter­est largely ob­scures logic. The dif­fer­ence be­tween the minds of sav­age and civ­i­lized men is more one of con­tent than of na­ture, of de­gree rather than of qual­ity.

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.

86:2.6The sav­age looked upon all na­ture as alive, as pos­sessed by some­thing. Civ­i­lized man still kicks and curses those inan­i­mate ob­jects which get in his way and bump him. Prim­i­tive man never re­garded any­thing as ac­ci­den­tal; al­ways was ev­ery­thing in­ten­tional. To prim­i­tive man the do­main of fate, the func­tion of luck, the spirit world, was just as un­or­ga­nized and hap­haz­ard as was prim­i­tive so­ci­ety. Luck was looked upon as the whim­si­cal and tem­per­a­men­tal re­ac­tion of the spirit world; later on, as the hu­mor of the gods.

86:2.7But all re­li­gions did not de­velop from an­i­mism. Other con­cepts of the super­nat­u­ral were con­tem­po­ra­ne­ous with an­i­mism, and these be­liefs also led to wor­ship. Nat­u­ral­ism is not a re­li­gion—it is the off­spring of re­li­gion.