materialism

• errors of › corporeality error

1:5.11Prim­i­tive re­li­gion had many per­sonal gods, and they were fash­ioned in the im­age of man. Rev­e­la­tion af­firms the va­lid­ity of the per­son­al­ity con­cept of God which is merely pos­si­ble in the sci­en­tific pos­tu­late of a First Cause and is only pro­vi­sion­ally sug­gested in the philo­sophic idea of Uni­ver­sal Unity. Only by per­son­al­ity ap­proach can any per­son be­gin to com­pre­hend the unity of God. To deny the per­son­al­ity of the First Source and Cen­ter leaves one only the choice of two philo­sophic dilem­mas: ma­te­ri­al­ism or pan­the­ism.

1:5.12In the con­tem­pla­tion of De­ity, the con­cept of per­son­al­ity must be di­vested of the idea of cor­po­re­al­ity. A ma­te­rial body is not in­dis­pens­able to per­son­al­ity in ei­ther man or God. The cor­po­re­al­ity er­ror is shown in both ex­tremes of hu­man phi­los­o­phy. In ma­te­ri­al­ism, since man loses his body at death, he ceases to ex­ist as a per­son­al­ity; in pan­the­ism, since God has no body, he is not, there­fore, a per­son. The super­hu­man type of pro­gress­ing per­son­al­ity func­tions in a union of mind and spirit.

• effect › false science of m. makes man outcast

2:7.4The false sci­ence of ma­te­ri­al­ism would sen­tence mor­tal man to be­come an out­cast in the uni­verse. Such par­tial knowl­edge is po­ten­tially evil; it is knowl­edge com­posed of both good and evil. Truth is beau­ti­ful be­cause it is both re­plete and sym­met­ri­cal. When man searches for truth, he pur­sues the di­vinely real.

• errors of › views mind and spirit as postulates rooted in matter

8:2.3It is al­to­gether proper to de­nom­i­nate the Third Per­son of De­ity the In­fi­nite Spirit, for God is spirit. But ma­te­rial crea­tures who tend to­wards the er­ror of view­ing mat­ter as ba­sic re­al­ity and mind, to­gether with spirit, as pos­tu­lates rooted in mat­ter, would bet­ter com­pre­hend the Third Source and Cen­ter if he were called the In­fi­nite Re­al­ity, the Uni­ver­sal Or­ga­nizer, or the Per­son­al­ity Co-or­di­na­tor.

• errors of › understanding of water molecule disproves

12:9.3Math­e­mat­ics, ma­te­rial sci­ence, is in­dis­pens­able to the in­tel­li­gent dis­cus­sion of the ma­te­rial as­pects of the uni­verse, but such knowl­edge is not nec­es­sar­ily a part of the higher re­al­iza­tion of truth or of the per­sonal ap­pre­ci­a­tion of spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties. Not only in the realms of life but even in the world of phys­i­cal en­ergy, the sum of two or more things is very of­ten some­thing more than, or some­thing dif­fer­ent from, the pre­dictable ad­di­tive con­se­quences of such unions. The en­tire sci­ence of math­e­mat­ics, the whole do­main of phi­los­o­phy, the high­est physics or chem­istry, could not pre­dict or know that the union of two gaseous hy­dro­gen atoms with one gaseous oxy­gen atom would re­sult in a new and qual­i­ta­tively super­ad­di­tive sub­stance—liq­uid wa­ter. The un­der­stand­ing knowl­edge of this one phys­io­chem­i­cal phe­nom­e­non should have pre­vented the de­vel­op­ment of ma­te­ri­al­is­tic phi­los­o­phy and mech­a­nis­tic cos­mol­ogy.

12:9.4Tech­ni­cal anal­y­sis does not re­veal what a per­son or a thing can do. For ex­am­ple: Wa­ter is used ef­fec­tively to ex­tin­guish fire. That wa­ter will put out fire is a fact of ev­ery­day ex­pe­ri­ence, but no anal­y­sis of wa­ter could ever be made to dis­close such a prop­erty. Anal­y­sis de­ter­mines that wa­ter is com­posed of hy­dro­gen and oxy­gen; a fur­ther study of these el­e­ments dis­closes that oxy­gen is the real sup­porter of com­bus­tion and that hy­dro­gen will it­self freely burn.

12:9.5Your re­li­gion is be­com­ing real be­cause it is emerg­ing from the slav­ery of fear and the bond­age of su­per­sti­tion. Your phi­los­o­phy strug­gles for eman­ci­pa­tion from dogma and tra­di­tion. Your sci­ence is en­gaged in the age­long con­test be­tween truth and er­ror while it fights for de­liv­er­ance from the bond­age of ab­strac­tion, the slav­ery of math­e­mat­ics, and the rel­a­tive blind­ness of mech­a­nis­tic ma­te­ri­al­ism.

• maximation of ugliness

56:10.4Hence ma­te­ri­al­ism, athe­ism, is the max­i­ma­tion of ug­li­ness, the cli­max of the fi­nite an­tithe­sis of the beau­ti­ful. High­est beauty con­sists in the pan­o­rama of the uni­fi­ca­tion of the vari­a­tions which have been born of pre-ex­is­tent har­mo­nious re­al­ity.

• errors of › 50,000 facts of physics and chemistry incompatible with accidental creation

58:2.2The earth’s at­mo­sphere is all but opaque to much of the so­lar ra­di­a­tion at the ex­treme ul­tra­vi­o­let end of the spec­trum. Most of these short wave lengths are ab­sorbed by a layer of ozone which ex­ists through­out a level about ten miles above the sur­face of the earth, and which ex­tends space­ward for an­other ten miles. The ozone per­me­at­ing this re­gion, at con­di­tions pre­vail­ing on the earth’s sur­face, would make a layer only one tenth of an inch thick; nev­er­the­less, this rel­a­tively small and ap­par­ently in­signif­i­cant amount of ozone pro­tects Uran­tia in­hab­i­tants from the ex­cess of these dan­ger­ous and de­struc­tive ul­tra­vi­o­let ra­di­a­tions pres­ent in sun­light. But were this ozone layer just a tri­fle thicker, you would be de­prived of the highly im­por­tant and health-giv­ing ul­tra­vi­o­let rays which now reach the earth’s sur­face, and which are an­ces­tral to one of the most es­sen­tial of your vi­ta­mins.

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.

58:2.5Were it not for the “blan­ket­ing” ef­fect of the at­mo­sphere at night, heat would be lost by ra­di­a­tion so rapidly that life would be im­pos­si­ble of main­te­nance ex­cept by ar­ti­fi­cial pro­vi­sion.

• asserts man is an evolutionary accident

102:0.1To the un­be­liev­ing ma­te­ri­al­ist, man is sim­ply an evo­lu­tion­ary ac­ci­dent. His hopes of sur­vival are strung on a fig­ment of mor­tal imag­i­na­tion; his fears, loves, long­ings, and be­liefs are but the re­ac­tion of the in­ci­den­tal jux­ta­po­si­tion of cer­tain life­less atoms of mat­ter. No dis­play of en­ergy nor ex­pres­sion of trust can carry him be­yond the grave. The de­vo­tional labors and in­spi­ra­tional ge­nius of the best of men are doomed to be ex­tin­guished by death, the long and lonely night of eter­nal obliv­ion and soul ex­tinc­tion. Name­less de­spair is man’s only re­ward for liv­ing and toil­ing un­der the tem­po­ral sun of mor­tal ex­is­tence. Each day of life slowly and surely tight­ens the grasp of a piti­less doom which a hos­tile and re­lent­less uni­verse of mat­ter has de­creed shall be the crown­ing in­sult to ev­ery­thing in hu­man de­sire which is beau­ti­ful, no­ble, lofty, and good.

• error in religion proportional to content of

102:4.4The el­e­ment of er­ror pres­ent in hu­man re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence is di­rectly pro­por­tional to the con­tent of ma­te­ri­al­ism which con­tam­i­nates the spir­i­tual con­cept of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther. Man’s pre­spirit pro­gres­sion in the uni­verse con­sists in the ex­pe­ri­ence of di­vest­ing him­self of these er­ro­neous ideas of the na­ture of God and of the re­al­ity of pure and true spirit. De­ity is more than spirit, but the spir­i­tual ap­proach is the only one pos­si­ble to as­cend­ing man.

• errors of › refunds objections by referring higher back to lower

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.

• effect › cheapens human life

102:6.10Or­ganic evo­lu­tion is a fact; pur­po­sive or pro­gres­sive evo­lu­tion is a truth which makes con­sis­tent the oth­er­wise con­tra­dic­tory phe­nom­ena of the ever-as­cend­ing achieve­ments of evo­lu­tion. The higher any sci­en­tist pro­gresses in his cho­sen sci­ence, the more will he aban­don the the­o­ries of ma­te­ri­al­is­tic fact in fa­vor of the cos­mic truth of the dom­i­nance of the Su­preme Mind. Ma­te­ri­al­ism cheap­ens hu­man life; the gospel of Je­sus tremen­dously en­hances and su­per­nally ex­alts ev­ery mor­tal. Mor­tal ex­is­tence must be vi­su­al­ized as con­sist­ing in the in­trigu­ing and fas­ci­nat­ing ex­pe­ri­ence of the re­al­iza­tion of the re­al­ity of the meet­ing of the hu­man up­reach and the di­vine and sav­ing down­reach.

• errors of › ignores fact that things material are conceived in consciousness

112:2.9The pos­ses­sion of per­son­al­ity iden­ti­fies man as a spir­i­tual be­ing since the unity of self­hood and the self-con­scious­ness of per­son­al­ity are en­dow­ments of the super­ma­te­rial world. The very fact that a mor­tal ma­te­ri­al­ist can deny the ex­is­tence of super­ma­te­rial re­al­i­ties in and of it­self demon­strates the pres­ence, and in­di­cates the work­ing, of spirit syn­the­sis and cos­mic con­scious­ness in his hu­man mind.

• errors of › ignores fact that things material are conceived in consciousness

112:2.12In sci­ence the hu­man self ob­serves the ma­te­rial world; phi­los­o­phy is the ob­ser­va­tion of this ob­ser­va­tion of the ma­te­rial world; re­li­gion, true spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence, is the ex­pe­ri­en­tial re­al­iza­tion of the cos­mic re­al­ity of the ob­ser­va­tion of the ob­ser­va­tion of all this rel­a­tive syn­the­sis of the en­ergy ma­te­ri­als of time and space. To build a phi­los­o­phy of the uni­verse on an ex­clu­sive ma­te­ri­al­ism is to ig­nore the fact that all things ma­te­rial are ini­tially con­ceived as real in the ex­pe­ri­ence of hu­man con­scious­ness. The ob­server can­not be the thing ob­served; eval­u­a­tion de­mands some de­gree of tran­scen­dence of the thing which is eval­u­ated.

195:6.1Sci­en­tists have un­in­ten­tion­ally pre­cip­i­tated man­kind into a ma­te­ri­al­is­tic panic; they have started an un­think­ing run on the moral bank of the ages, but this bank of hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence has vast spir­i­tual re­sources; it can stand the de­mands be­ing made upon it. Only un­think­ing men be­come pan­icky about the spir­i­tual as­sets of the hu­man race. When the ma­te­ri­al­is­tic-sec­u­lar panic is over, the re­li­gion of Je­sus will not be found bankrupt. The spir­i­tual bank of the king­dom of heaven will be pay­ing out faith, hope, and moral se­cu­rity to all who draw upon it “in His name.”

195:6.2No mat­ter what the ap­par­ent con­flict be­tween ma­te­ri­al­ism and the teach­ings of Je­sus may be, you can rest as­sured that, in the ages to come, the teach­ings of the Mas­ter will fully tri­umph. In re­al­ity, true re­li­gion can­not be­come in­volved in any con­tro­versy with sci­ence; it is in no way con­cerned with ma­te­rial things. Re­li­gion is sim­ply in­dif­fer­ent to, but sym­pa­thetic with, sci­ence, while it su­premely con­cerns it­self with the sci­en­tist.

195:6.3The pur­suit of mere knowl­edge, with­out the at­ten­dant in­ter­pre­ta­tion of wis­dom and the spir­i­tual in­sight of re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence, even­tu­ally leads to pes­simism and hu­man de­spair. A lit­tle knowl­edge is truly dis­con­cert­ing.

195:6.4At the time of this writ­ing the worst of the ma­te­ri­al­is­tic age is over; the day of a bet­ter un­der­stand­ing is al­ready be­gin­ning to dawn. The higher minds of the sci­en­tific world are no longer wholly ma­te­ri­al­is­tic in their phi­los­o­phy, but the rank and file of the peo­ple still lean in that di­rec­tion as a re­sult of for­mer teach­ings. But this age of phys­i­cal re­al­ism is only a pass­ing episode in man’s life on earth. Mod­ern sci­ence has left true re­li­gion—the teach­ings of Je­sus as trans­lated in the lives of his be­liev­ers—un­touched. All sci­ence has done is to de­stroy the child­like il­lu­sions of the mis­in­ter­pre­ta­tions of life.

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.

• asserts universe is a purposeless energy phenomenon

195:6.6The vi­o­lent swing from an age of mir­a­cles to an age of ma­chines has proved al­to­gether up­set­ting to man. The clev­er­ness and dex­ter­ity of the false philoso­phies of mech­a­nism be­lie their very mech­a­nis­tic con­tentions. The fa­tal­is­tic agility of the mind of a ma­te­ri­al­ist for­ever dis­proves his as­ser­tions that the uni­verse is a blind and pur­pose­less en­ergy phe­nom­e­non.

195:6.7The mech­a­nis­tic nat­u­ral­ism of some sup­pos­edly ed­u­cated men and the thought­less sec­u­lar­ism of the man in the street are both ex­clu­sively con­cerned with things; they are bar­ren of all real val­ues, sanc­tions, and sat­is­fac­tions of a spir­i­tual na­ture, as well as be­ing de­void of faith, hope, and eter­nal as­sur­ances. One of the great trou­bles with mod­ern life is that man thinks he is too busy to find time for spir­i­tual med­i­ta­tion and re­li­gious de­vo­tion.

• asserts universe is a purposeless energy phenomenon

195:6.8Ma­te­ri­al­ism re­duces man to a soul­less au­toma­ton and con­sti­tutes him merely an arith­meti­cal sym­bol find­ing a help­less place in the math­e­mat­i­cal for­mula of an un­ro­man­tic and mech­a­nis­tic uni­verse. But whence comes all this vast uni­verse of math­e­mat­ics with­out a Mas­ter Math­e­mati­cian? Sci­ence may ex­pa­ti­ate on the con­ser­va­tion of mat­ter, but re­li­gion val­i­dates the con­ser­va­tion of men’s souls—it con­cerns their ex­pe­ri­ence with spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties and eter­nal val­ues.

195:6.9The ma­te­ri­al­is­tic so­ci­ol­o­gist of to­day sur­veys a com­mu­nity, makes a re­port thereon, and leaves the peo­ple as he found them. Nine­teen hun­dred years ago, un­learned Galileans sur­veyed Je­sus giv­ing his life as a spir­i­tual con­tri­bu­tion to man’s in­ner ex­pe­ri­ence and then went out and turned the whole Ro­man Em­pire up­side down.

195:6.10But re­li­gious lead­ers are mak­ing a great mis­take when they try to call mod­ern man to spir­i­tual bat­tle with the trum­pet blasts of the Mid­dle Ages. Re­li­gion must pro­vide it­self with new and up-to-date slo­gans. Nei­ther democ­racy nor any other po­lit­i­cal panacea will take the place of spir­i­tual prog­ress. False re­li­gions may rep­re­sent an eva­sion of re­al­ity, but Je­sus in his gospel in­tro­duced mor­tal man to the very en­trance upon an eter­nal re­al­ity of spir­i­tual pro­gres­sion.

195:6.11To say that mind “emerged” from mat­ter ex­plains noth­ing. If the uni­verse were merely a mech­a­nism and mind were un­a­part from mat­ter, we would never have two dif­fer­ing in­ter­pre­ta­tions of any ob­served phe­nom­e­non. The con­cepts of truth, beauty, and good­ness are not in­her­ent in ei­ther physics or chem­istry. A ma­chine can­not know, much less know truth, hunger for righ­teous­ness, and cher­ish good­ness.

195:6.12Sci­ence may be phys­i­cal, but the mind of the truth-dis­cern­ing sci­en­tist is at once super­ma­te­rial. Mat­ter knows not truth, nei­ther can it love mercy nor de­light in spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties. Moral con­vic­tions based on spir­i­tual en­light­en­ment and rooted in hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence are just as real and cer­tain as math­e­mat­i­cal de­duc­tions based on phys­i­cal ob­ser­va­tions, but on an­other and higher level.

195:6.13If men were only ma­chines, they would re­act more or less uni­formly to a ma­te­rial uni­verse. In­di­vid­u­al­ity, much less per­son­al­ity, would be nonex­is­tent.

• there, but not exclusive

195:6.14The fact of the ab­so­lute mech­a­nism of Par­a­dise at the cen­ter of the uni­verse of uni­verses, in the pres­ence of the un­qual­i­fied vo­li­tion of the Sec­ond Source and Cen­ter, makes for­ever cer­tain that de­ter­min­ers are not the ex­clu­sive law of the cos­mos. Ma­te­ri­al­ism is there, but it is not ex­clu­sive; mech­a­nism is there, but it is not un­qual­i­fied; de­ter­min­ism is there, but it is not alone.

195:6.15The fi­nite uni­verse of mat­ter would even­tu­ally be­come uni­form and de­ter­min­is­tic but for the com­bined pres­ence of mind and spirit. The in­flu­ence of the cos­mic mind con­stantly in­jects spon­tane­ity into even the ma­te­rial worlds.

195:6.16Free­dom or ini­tia­tive in any realm of ex­is­tence is di­rectly pro­por­tional to the de­gree of spir­i­tual in­flu­ence and cos­mic-mind con­trol; that is, in hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence, the de­gree of the ac­tu­al­ity of do­ing “the Fa­ther’s will.” And so, when you once start out to find God, that is the con­clu­sive proof that God has al­ready found you.

195:6.17The sin­cere pur­suit of good­ness, beauty, and truth leads to God. And ev­ery sci­en­tific dis­cov­ery demon­strates the ex­is­tence of both free­dom and uni­for­mity in the uni­verse. The dis­cov­erer was free to make the dis­cov­ery. The thing dis­cov­ered is real and ap­par­ently uni­form, or else it could not have be­come known as a thing.

195:7.1How fool­ish it is for ma­te­rial-minded man to al­low such vul­ner­a­ble the­o­ries as those of a mech­a­nis­tic uni­verse to de­prive him of the vast spir­i­tual re­sources of the per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence of true re­li­gion. Facts never quar­rel with real spir­i­tual faith; the­o­ries may. Bet­ter that sci­ence should be de­voted to the de­struc­tion of su­per­sti­tion rather than at­tempt­ing the over­throw of re­li­gious faith—hu­man be­lief in spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties and di­vine val­ues.

195:7.2Sci­ence should do for man ma­te­ri­ally what re­li­gion does for him spir­i­tu­ally: ex­tend the hori­zon of life and en­large his per­son­al­ity. True sci­ence can have no last­ing quar­rel with true re­li­gion. The “sci­en­tific method” is merely an in­tel­lec­tual yard­stick where­with to mea­sure ma­te­rial ad­ven­tures and phys­i­cal achieve­ments. But be­ing ma­te­rial and wholly in­tel­lec­tual, it is ut­terly use­less in the eval­u­a­tion of spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties and re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ences.

195:7.3The in­con­sis­tency of the mod­ern mech­a­nist is: If this were merely a ma­te­rial uni­verse and man only a ma­chine, such a man would be wholly un­able to rec­og­nize him­self as such a ma­chine, and like­wise would such a ma­chine-man be wholly un­con­scious of the fact of the ex­is­tence of such a ma­te­rial uni­verse. The ma­te­ri­al­is­tic dis­may and de­spair of a mech­a­nis­tic sci­ence has failed to rec­og­nize the fact of the spirit-in­dwelt mind of the sci­en­tist whose very super­ma­te­rial in­sight for­mu­lates these mis­taken and self-con­tra­dic­tory con­cepts of a ma­te­ri­al­is­tic uni­verse.

195:7.4Par­a­dise val­ues of eter­nity and in­fin­ity, of truth, beauty, and good­ness, are con­cealed within the facts of the phe­nom­ena of the uni­verses of time and space. But it re­quires the eye of faith in a spirit-born mor­tal to de­tect and dis­cern these spir­i­tual val­ues.

195:7.5The re­al­i­ties and val­ues of spir­i­tual prog­ress are not a “psy­cho­logic pro­jec­tion”—a mere glo­ri­fied day­dream of the ma­te­rial mind. Such things are the spir­i­tual fore­casts of the in­dwelling Ad­juster, the spirit of God liv­ing in the mind of man. And let not your dab­blings with the faintly glimpsed find­ings of “rel­a­tiv­ity” dis­turb your con­cepts of the eter­nity and in­fin­ity of God. And in all your so­lic­i­ta­tion con­cern­ing the ne­ces­sity for self-ex­pres­sion do not make the mis­take of fail­ing to pro­vide for Ad­juster-ex­pres­sion, the man­i­fes­ta­tion of your real and bet­ter self.

195:7.6If this were only a ma­te­rial uni­verse, ma­te­rial man would never be able to ar­rive at the con­cept of the mech­a­nis­tic char­ac­ter of such an ex­clu­sively ma­te­rial ex­is­tence. This very mech­a­nis­tic con­cept of the uni­verse is in it­self a non­ma­te­rial phe­nom­e­non of mind, and all mind is of non­ma­te­rial ori­gin, no mat­ter how thor­oughly it may ap­pear to be ma­te­ri­ally con­di­tioned and mech­a­nis­ti­cally con­trolled.

195:7.7The par­tially evolved men­tal mech­a­nism of mor­tal man is not ov­eren­dowed with con­sis­tency and wis­dom. Man’s con­ceit of­ten out­runs his rea­son and eludes his logic.

195:7.8The very pes­simism of the most pes­simistic ma­te­ri­al­ist is, in and of it­self, suf­fi­cient proof that the uni­verse of the pes­simist is not wholly ma­te­rial. Both op­ti­mism and pes­simism are con­cept re­ac­tions in a mind con­scious of val­ues as well as of facts. If the uni­verse were truly what the ma­te­ri­al­ist re­gards it to be, man as a hu­man ma­chine would then be de­void of all con­scious rec­og­ni­tion of that very fact. With­out the con­scious­ness of the con­cept of val­ues within the spirit-born mind, the fact of uni­verse ma­te­ri­al­ism and the mech­a­nis­tic phe­nom­ena of uni­verse op­er­a­tion would be wholly un­rec­og­nized by man. One ma­chine can­not be con­scious of the na­ture or value of an­other ma­chine.

195:7.9A mech­a­nis­tic phi­los­o­phy of life and the uni­verse can­not be sci­en­tific be­cause sci­ence rec­og­nizes and deals only with ma­te­ri­als and facts. Phi­los­o­phy is in­evitably super­sci­en­tific. Man is a ma­te­rial fact of na­ture, but his life is a phe­nom­e­non which tran­scends the ma­te­rial lev­els of na­ture in that it ex­hibits the con­trol at­tri­butes of mind and the cre­ative qual­i­ties of spirit.

195:7.10The sin­cere ef­fort of man to be­come a mech­a­nist rep­re­sents the tragic phe­nom­e­non of that man’s fu­tile ef­fort to com­mit in­tel­lec­tual and moral sui­cide. But he can­not do it.

195:7.11If the uni­verse were only ma­te­rial and man only a ma­chine, there would be no sci­ence to em­bolden the sci­en­tist to pos­tu­late this mech­a­niza­tion of the uni­verse. Ma­chines can­not mea­sure, clas­sify, nor eval­u­ate them­selves. Such a sci­en­tific piece of work could be ex­e­cuted only by some en­tity of super­ma­chine sta­tus.

195:7.12If uni­verse re­al­ity is only one vast ma­chine, then man must be out­side of the uni­verse and apart from it in or­der to rec­og­nize such a fact and be­come con­scious of the in­sight of such an eval­u­a­tion.

195:7.13If man is only a ma­chine, by what tech­nique does this man come to be­lieve or claim to know that he is only a ma­chine? The ex­pe­ri­ence of self-con­scious eval­u­a­tion of one’s self is never an at­tri­bute of a mere ma­chine. A self-con­scious and avowed mech­a­nist is the best pos­si­ble an­swer to mech­a­nism. If ma­te­ri­al­ism were a fact, there could be no self-con­scious mech­a­nist. It is also true that one must first be a moral per­son be­fore one can per­form im­moral acts.

195:7.14The very claim of ma­te­ri­al­ism im­plies a super­ma­te­rial con­scious­ness of the mind which pre­sumes to as­sert such dog­mas. A mech­a­nism might de­te­ri­o­rate, but it could never pro­gress. Ma­chines do not think, cre­ate, dream, as­pire, ide­al­ize, hunger for truth, or thirst for righ­teous­ness. They do not mo­ti­vate their lives with the pas­sion to serve other ma­chines and to choose as their goal of eter­nal pro­gres­sion the sub­lime task of find­ing God and striv­ing to be like him. Ma­chines are never in­tel­lec­tual, emo­tional, aes­thetic, eth­i­cal, moral, or spir­i­tual.

195:7.15Art proves that man is not mech­a­nis­tic, but it does not prove that he is spir­i­tu­ally im­mor­tal. Art is mor­tal mor­ontia, the in­ter­ven­ing field be­tween man, the ma­te­rial, and man, the spir­i­tual. Po­etry is an ef­fort to es­cape from ma­te­rial re­al­i­ties to spir­i­tual val­ues.

195:7.16In a high civ­i­liza­tion, art hu­man­izes sci­ence, while in turn it is spir­i­tu­al­ized by true re­li­gion—in­sight into spir­i­tual and eter­nal val­ues. Art rep­re­sents the hu­man and time-space eval­u­a­tion of re­al­ity. Re­li­gion is the di­vine em­brace of cos­mic val­ues and con­notes eter­nal pro­gres­sion in spir­i­tual as­cen­sion and ex­pan­sion. The art of time is dan­ger­ous only when it be­comes blind to the spirit stan­dards of the di­vine pat­terns which eter­nity re­flects as the re­al­ity shad­ows of time. True art is the ef­fec­tive ma­nip­u­la­tion of the ma­te­rial things of life; re­li­gion is the en­nobling trans­for­ma­tion of the ma­te­rial facts of life, and it never ceases in its spir­i­tual eval­u­a­tion of art.

195:7.17How fool­ish to pre­sume that an au­toma­ton could con­ceive a phi­los­o­phy of au­toma­tism, and how ridicu­lous that it should pre­sume to form such a con­cept of other and fel­low au­toma­tons!

195:7.18Any sci­en­tific in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the ma­te­rial uni­verse is val­ue­less un­less it pro­vides due rec­og­ni­tion for the sci­en­tist. No ap­pre­ci­a­tion of art is gen­uine un­less it ac­cords rec­og­ni­tion to the artist. No eval­u­a­tion of morals is worth while un­less it in­cludes the moral­ist. No rec­og­ni­tion of phi­los­o­phy is ed­i­fy­ing if it ig­nores the philoso­pher, and re­li­gion can­not ex­ist with­out the real ex­pe­ri­ence of the re­li­gion­ist who, in and through this very ex­pe­ri­ence, is seek­ing to find God and to know him. Like­wise is the uni­verse of uni­verses with­out sig­nif­i­cance apart from the I AM, the in­fi­nite God who made it and un­ceas­ingly man­ages it.

195:7.19Mech­a­nists—hu­man­ists—tend to drift with the ma­te­rial cur­rents. Ide­al­ists and spiri­tists dare to use their oars with in­tel­li­gence and vigor in or­der to mod­ify the ap­par­ently purely ma­te­rial course of the en­ergy streams.

195:7.20Sci­ence lives by the math­e­mat­ics of the mind; mu­sic ex­presses the tempo of the emo­tions. Re­li­gion is the spir­i­tual rhythm of the soul in time-space har­mony with the higher and eter­nal mel­ody mea­sure­ments of In­fin­ity. Re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence is some­thing in hu­man life which is truly super­math­e­mat­i­cal.

195:7.21In lan­guage, an al­pha­bet rep­re­sents the mech­a­nism of ma­te­ri­al­ism, while the words ex­pres­sive of the mean­ing of a thou­sand thoughts, grand ideas, and no­ble ide­als—of love and hate, of cow­ardice and cour­age—rep­re­sent the per­for­mances of mind within the scope de­fined by both ma­te­rial and spir­i­tual law, di­rected by the as­ser­tion of the will of per­son­al­ity, and lim­ited by the in­her­ent sit­u­a­tional en­dow­ment.

195:7.22The uni­verse is not like the laws, mech­a­nisms, and the uni­for­mi­ties which the sci­en­tist dis­cov­ers, and which he comes to re­gard as sci­ence, but rather like the cu­ri­ous, think­ing, choos­ing, cre­ative, com­bin­ing, and dis­crim­i­nat­ing sci­en­tist who thus ob­serves uni­verse phe­nom­ena and clas­si­fies the math­e­mat­i­cal facts in­her­ent in the mech­a­nis­tic phases of the ma­te­rial side of cre­ation. Nei­ther is the uni­verse like the art of the artist, but rather like the striv­ing, dream­ing, as­pir­ing, and ad­vanc­ing artist who seeks to tran­scend the world of ma­te­rial things in an ef­fort to achieve a spir­i­tual goal.

195:7.23The sci­en­tist, not sci­ence, per­ceives the re­al­ity of an evolv­ing and ad­vanc­ing uni­verse of en­ergy and mat­ter. The artist, not art, demon­strates the ex­is­tence of the tran­sient mor­ontia world in­ter­ven­ing be­tween ma­te­rial ex­is­tence and spir­i­tual lib­erty. The re­li­gion­ist, not re­li­gion, proves the ex­is­tence of the spirit re­al­i­ties and di­vine val­ues which are to be en­coun­tered in the prog­ress of eter­nity.

• effect › terrible destruction of m. yet to come

195:8.13The com­plete sec­u­lar­iza­tion of sci­ence, ed­u­ca­tion, in­dus­try, and so­ci­ety can lead only to dis­as­ter. Dur­ing the first third of the twen­ti­eth cen­tury Uran­tians killed more hu­man be­ings than were killed dur­ing the whole of the Chris­tian dis­pen­sa­tion up to that time. And this is only the be­gin­ning of the dire har­vest of ma­te­ri­al­ism and sec­u­lar­ism; still more ter­ri­ble de­struc­tion is yet to come.