logic

86:5.3Early mor­tals usu­ally failed to dif­fer­en­ti­ate the con­cepts of an in­dwelling spirit and a soul of evo­lu­tion­ary na­ture. The sav­age was much con­fused as to whether the ghost soul was na­tive to the body or was an ex­ter­nal agency in pos­ses­sion of the body. The ab­sence of rea­soned thought in the pres­ence of per­plex­ity ex­plains the gross in­con­sis­ten­cies of the sav­age view of souls, ghosts, and spir­its.

8:1.11It is enough of a reach of the ma­te­rial mind of the chil­dren of time to con­ceive of the Fa­ther in eter­nity. We know that any child can best re­late him­self to re­al­ity by first mas­ter­ing the re­la­tion­ships of the child-par­ent sit­u­a­tion and then by en­larg­ing this con­cept to em­brace the fam­ily as a whole. Sub­se­quently the grow­ing mind of the child will be able to ad­just to the con­cept of fam­ily re­la­tions, to re­la­tion­ships of the com­mu­nity, the race, and the world, and then to those of the uni­verse, the super­uni­verse, even the uni­verse of uni­verses.

103:7.13Rea­son is the act of rec­og­niz­ing the con­clu­sions of con­scious­ness with re­gard to the ex­pe­ri­ence in and with the phys­i­cal world of en­ergy and mat­ter. Faith is the act of rec­og­niz­ing the va­lid­ity of spir­i­tual con­scious­ness—some­thing which is in­ca­pable of other mor­tal proof. Logic is the syn­thetic truth-seek­ing pro­gres­sion of the unity of faith and rea­son and is founded on the con­sti­tu­tive mind en­dow­ments of mor­tal be­ings, the in­nate rec­og­ni­tion of things, mean­ings, and val­ues.

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.

• cannot prove existence of God

1:2.7The ex­is­tence of God can never be proved by sci­en­tific ex­per­i­ment or by the pure rea­son of log­i­cal de­duc­tion. God can be re­al­ized only in the realms of hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence; nev­er­the­less, the true con­cept of the re­al­ity of God is rea­son­able to logic, plau­si­ble to phi­los­o­phy, es­sen­tial to re­li­gion, and in­dis­pens­able to any hope of per­son­al­ity sur­vival.

• can never validate religious experience

1:6.6The more com­pletely man un­der­stands him­self and ap­pre­ci­ates the per­son­al­ity val­ues of his fel­lows, the more he will crave to know the Orig­i­nal Per­son­al­ity, and the more earnestly such a God-know­ing hu­man will strive to be­come like the Orig­i­nal Per­son­al­ity. You can ar­gue over opin­ions about God, but ex­pe­ri­ence with him and in him ex­ists above and be­yond all hu­man con­tro­versy and mere in­tel­lec­tual logic. The God-know­ing man de­scribes his spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ences, not to con­vince un­be­liev­ers, but for the ed­i­fi­ca­tion and mu­tual sat­is­fac­tion of be­liev­ers.

• without knowledge one cannot successfully reason

13:2.5You might as­sume that Cre­ator Sons, be­ing of Fa­ther-Son ori­gin, would re­gard Vicegering­ton as their home, but such is not the case in this uni­verse age of the func­tion of God the Sev­en­fold. And there are many sim­i­lar prob­lems that will per­plex you, for you are sure to en­counter many dif­fi­cul­ties as you at­tempt to un­der­stand these things which are so near Par­a­dise. Nor can you suc­cess­fully rea­son out these ques­tions; you know so lit­tle. And if you knew more about the Fa­ther’s worlds, you would sim­ply en­counter more dif­fi­cul­ties un­til you knew all about them. Sta­tus on any of these se­cret worlds is ac­quired by ser­vice as well as by na­ture of ori­gin, and the suc­ces­sive uni­verse ages may and do re­dis­tribute cer­tain of these per­son­al­ity group­ings.

• error of approaching higher from lower

19:1.5For ex­am­ple: The hu­man mind would or­di­nar­ily crave to ap­proach the cos­mic phi­los­o­phy por­trayed in these rev­e­la­tions by pro­ceed­ing from the sim­ple and the fi­nite to the com­plex and the in­fi­nite, from hu­man ori­gins to di­vine des­tinies. But that path does not lead to spir­i­tual wis­dom. Such a pro­ce­dure is the eas­i­est path to a cer­tain form of ge­netic knowl­edge, but at best it can only re­veal man’s ori­gin; it re­veals lit­tle or noth­ing about his di­vine des­tiny.

19:1.6Even in the study of man’s bi­o­logic evo­lu­tion on Uran­tia, there are grave ob­jec­tions to the ex­clu­sive his­toric ap­proach to his pres­ent-day sta­tus and his cur­rent prob­lems. The true per­spec­tive of any re­al­ity prob­lem—hu­man or di­vine, ter­res­trial or cos­mic—can be had only by the full and un­prej­u­diced study and cor­re­la­tion of three phases of uni­verse re­al­ity: ori­gin, his­tory, and des­tiny. The proper un­der­stand­ing of these three ex­pe­ri­en­tial re­al­i­ties af­fords the ba­sis for a wise es­ti­mate of the cur­rent sta­tus.

19:1.7When the hu­man mind un­der­takes to fol­low the philo­sophic tech­nique of start­ing from the lower to ap­proach the higher, whether in bi­ol­ogy or the­ol­ogy, it is al­ways in dan­ger of com­mit­ting four er­rors of rea­son­ing:

19:1.81. It may ut­terly fail to per­ceive the fi­nal and com­pleted evo­lu­tion­ary goal of ei­ther per­sonal at­tain­ment or cos­mic des­tiny.

19:1.92. It may com­mit the su­preme phil­o­soph­i­cal blun­der by over­sim­pli­fy­ing cos­mic evo­lu­tion­ary (ex­pe­ri­en­tial) re­al­ity, thus lead­ing to the dis­tor­tion of facts, to the per­ver­sion of truth, and to the mis­con­cep­tion of des­tinies.

19:1.103. The study of cau­sa­tion is the pe­rusal of his­tory. But the knowl­edge of how a be­ing be­comes does not nec­es­sar­ily pro­vide an in­tel­li­gent un­der­stand­ing of the pres­ent sta­tus and true char­ac­ter of such a be­ing.

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.

19:1.12There­fore, be­cause of these and for still other rea­sons, do we em­ploy the tech­nique of ap­proach­ing man and his plan­e­tary prob­lems by em­barka­tion on the time-space jour­ney from the in­fi­nite, eter­nal, and di­vine Par­a­dise Source and Cen­ter of all per­son­al­ity re­al­ity and all cos­mic ex­is­tence.

• error of approaching higher from lower

40:0.10These pre­sen­ta­tions be­gan with a de­scrip­tion of the De­i­ties, and group by group, the nar­ra­tive has de­scended the uni­ver­sal scale of liv­ing be­ings un­til it has reached the low­est or­der of life en­dowed with the po­ten­tial of im­mor­tal­ity; and now am I dis­patched from Sal­ving­ton—one­time a mor­tal of ori­gin on an evo­lu­tion­ary world of space—to elab­o­rate and con­tinue the recital of the eter­nal pur­pose of the Gods re­spect­ing the as­cend­ing or­ders of son­ship, more par­tic­u­larly with re­gard to the mor­tal crea­tures of time and space.

• cannot prove existence of God

42:1.3There is in­nate in mat­ter and pres­ent in uni­ver­sal space a form of en­ergy not known on Uran­tia. When this dis­cov­ery is fi­nally made, then will physi­cists feel that they have solved, al­most at least, the mys­tery of mat­ter. And so will they have ap­proached one step nearer the Cre­ator; so will they have mas­tered one more phase of the di­vine tech­nique; but in no sense will they have found God, nei­ther will they have es­tab­lished the ex­is­tence of mat­ter or the op­er­a­tion of nat­u­ral laws apart from the cos­mic tech­nique of Par­a­dise and the mo­ti­vat­ing pur­pose of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther.

• largely obscured by self-interest

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.

• can never validate religious experience

101:10.6Never can there be ei­ther sci­en­tific or log­i­cal proofs of di­vin­ity. Rea­son alone can never val­i­date the val­ues and good­nesses of re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence. But it will al­ways re­main true: Whoso­ever wills to do the will of God shall com­pre­hend the va­lid­ity of spir­i­tual val­ues. This is the near­est ap­proach that can be made on the mor­tal level to of­fer­ing proofs of the re­al­ity of re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence. Such faith af­fords the only es­cape from the me­chan­i­cal clutch of the ma­te­rial world and from the er­ror dis­tor­tion of the in­com­plete­ness of the in­tel­lec­tual world; it is the only dis­cov­ered so­lu­tion to the im­passe in mor­tal think­ing re­gard­ing the con­tin­u­ing sur­vival of the in­di­vid­ual per­son­al­ity. It is the only pass­port to com­ple­tion of re­al­ity and to eter­nity of life in a uni­ver­sal cre­ation of love, law, unity, and pro­gres­sive De­ity at­tain­ment.

• not infallible when applied to life problems

133:5.5Logic is valid in the ma­te­rial world, and math­e­mat­ics is re­li­able when lim­ited in its ap­pli­ca­tion to phys­i­cal things; but nei­ther is to be re­garded as wholly de­pend­able or in­fal­li­ble when ap­plied to life prob­lems. Life em­braces phe­nom­ena which are not wholly ma­te­rial. Arith­metic says that, if one man could shear a sheep in ten min­utes, ten men could shear it in one minute. That is sound math­e­mat­ics, but it is not true, for the ten men could not so do it; they would get in one an­other’s way so badly that the work would be greatly de­layed.

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.

101:2.2Rea­son is the method of sci­ence; faith is the method of re­li­gion; logic is the at­tempted tech­nique of phi­los­o­phy. Rev­e­la­tion com­pen­sates for the ab­sence of the mor­ontia view­point by pro­vid­ing a tech­nique for achiev­ing unity in the com­pre­hen­sion of the re­al­ity and re­la­tion­ships of mat­ter and spirit by the me­di­a­tion of mind. And true rev­e­la­tion never ren­ders sci­ence un­nat­u­ral, re­li­gion un­rea­son­able, or phi­los­o­phy il­log­i­cal.

101:2.8Rea­son is the proof of sci­ence, faith the proof of re­li­gion, logic the proof of phi­los­o­phy, but rev­e­la­tion is val­i­dated only by hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence. Sci­ence yields knowl­edge; re­li­gion yields hap­pi­ness; phi­los­o­phy yields unity; rev­e­la­tion con­firms the ex­pe­ri­en­tial har­mony of this tri­une ap­proach to uni­ver­sal re­al­ity.

103:7.6Logic is the tech­nique of phi­los­o­phy, its method of ex­pres­sion. Within the do­main of true sci­ence, rea­son is al­ways amenable to gen­uine logic; within the do­main of true re­li­gion, faith is al­ways log­i­cal from the ba­sis of an in­ner view­point, even though such faith may ap­pear to be quite un­founded from the in­look­ing view­point of the sci­en­tific ap­proach. From out­ward, look­ing within, the uni­verse may ap­pear to be ma­te­rial; from within, look­ing out, the same uni­verse ap­pears to be wholly spir­i­tual. Rea­son grows out of ma­te­rial aware­ness, faith out of spir­i­tual aware­ness, but through the me­di­a­tion of a phi­los­o­phy strength­ened by rev­e­la­tion, logic may con­firm both the in­ward and the out­ward view, thereby ef­fect­ing the sta­bi­liza­tion of both sci­ence and re­li­gion. Thus, through com­mon con­tact with the logic of phi­los­o­phy, may both sci­ence and re­li­gion be­come in­creas­ingly tol­er­ant of each other, less and less skep­ti­cal.

102:6.9The facts of evo­lu­tion must not be ar­rayed against the truth of the re­al­ity of the cer­tainty of the spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence of the re­li­gious liv­ing of the God-know­ing mor­tal. In­tel­li­gent men should cease to rea­son like chil­dren and should at­tempt to use the con­sis­tent logic of adult­hood, logic which tol­er­ates the con­cept of truth along­side the ob­ser­va­tion of fact. Sci­en­tific ma­te­ri­al­ism has gone bankrupt when it per­sists, in the face of each re­cur­ring uni­verse phe­nom­e­non, in re­fund­ing its cur­rent ob­jec­tions by re­fer­ring what is ad­mit­tedly higher back into that which is ad­mit­tedly lower. Con­sis­tency de­mands the rec­og­ni­tion of the ac­tiv­i­ties of a pur­po­sive Cre­ator.