Theism says that God is the primary cause of all things and things that are done within that creation are secondary causes. That is how it avoids saying that if an apple falls from a tree that God made it fall or that if we murder that he murdered.
The atheist would hold that primary and secondary causes are real - it is just that the atheist does not involve a God.
There are believers who suspect or affirm that "God primarily causes all things. A secondary cause only describes something's position from our point of view - and says nothing about how deeply God is involved. Literally speaking, as God is the being on which all depends, he cannot be anything but deeply involved. It is deeper than anything we can comprehend."
That forces them to consider this reasoning:
Primary Cause - God - and secondary causes - eg nature - simply make a distinction without a difference and are useful in language, and that is all.
Religion uses this cover to pretend that science and religion are different, but rather than contradicting each other, are friends. Science cannot function if water does not cause a seed to grow, and we should say it is God, meaning the water is only a technicality.
Key Terms and Definitions
Primary Cause: God as the ultimate source and sustainer of all that exists. Nothing happens or continues without God’s creative power.
Secondary Cause: A created thing or agent that appears to bring about effects in the world (for example, fire burning wood or a doctor healing a patient). In theology, these causes act only because God enables and sustains them.
Direct Cause: An action or effect that comes straight from a cause without any intermediate steps.
Indirect Cause: An action or effect that happens through something else — a chain of causes or agents.
Dependence on God: The belief that everything, from existence itself to every event, relies entirely on God’s will and creative act.
Divine Involvement: God’s continuous presence and activity in all things, whether visible or hidden.
Evil: A lack or distortion of good — not an independent force but a falling short of what should be.
Permission (in theology): A way of saying God allows something (such as evil) to happen without directly causing it, while still sustaining the being that acts.
Pantheism: The belief that God and the universe are the same reality — everything is God.
Theism (Classical): The belief that God is distinct from the universe but sustains and is present in all things.
Causation (in philosophy and theology): The relation between an agent (what acts) and its effect (what happens). In this discussion, it concerns how God’s creative act relates to the world’s processes.
THE METAPHORS ONLY ADD TO THE CONFUSION
Many of the common metaphors used to defend primary and secondary causation don’t actually hold up under scrutiny if you’re arguing that everything depends completely on God.
Let’s look at the most common ones — the sun and shadows, and the sculptor and chisel. The others are just variations of those two. And see why they fail or at least weaken the traditional position. The position is unworthy of taking seriously if it cannot make sense - it needs metaphors for that. And also, if it demands metaphors that engage in trickery, deceit.
Problems with the Common Metaphors
1. The Sun and Shadows
The usual metaphor says: God is like the sun — his light gives being to all things, but the shadows represent evil or the limits of created being. However, this image collapses under the weight of the claim that all being utterly depends on God. The sun does not create the things it shines on; it only illuminates them. But if God truly causes everything to exist from nothing, then there are no independent “things” waiting to receive his light. A shadow exists only because something blocks the sun’s rays. In creation, however, there is nothing outside God to block or resist him — everything that is, depends on him. So, the metaphor wrongly implies something outside of or independent from God that limits him. In short: if all depends completely on God, then nothing can cast a “shadow” without his total involvement.
The metaphor tries to preserve both divine power and creaturely freedom, but it ends up describing a system that could not logically exist.
2. The Sculptor and the Chisel
This is another favourite metaphor: God is like a sculptor, and creation or human agency is like the chisel he uses to shape the world. This also breaks down if you take divine dependence seriously.
The sculptor and chisel are separate physical objects, each existing independently before and after the act. God and creation are not like that — creation exists only because God causes it to. The chisel does not depend moment to moment on the sculptor for its being. But if creation does, then God must sustain both the chisel and the motion. In that case, the chisel does nothing by itself; God moves both the chisel and the marble. The “secondary cause” becomes purely decorative — a way of talking, not a real causal agent. Therefore, the metaphor hides the very dependence it tries to illustrate. If all things, including the chisel, depend on God’s creative act at every instant, then the chisel’s “causality” is entirely God’s own activity, not something distinct.
3. Why These Metaphors Fail
Both metaphors — the sun and shadow, the sculptor and chisel — fail for the same reason: They assume two levels of existence that can be separated — one divine, one created — and that God can act through the second without wholly determining it. But if creation is nothing without God’s constant act of being, then secondary causes cannot act independently in any real sense. They exist and move only as God’s expression. So, these images, rather than defending the distinction between primary and secondary causes, actually support the opposite view: that all causation ultimately collapses into God’s direct creative activity, and that the distinction exists only in the way we perceive or describe it.
The Arguments for Secondary Causes Are Inconclusive
All the traditional defences of primary and secondary causation rest on the idea that creatures, especially humans, possess genuine freedom and agency. However, there is no decisive evidence that free will exists in the strong sense these arguments require. If free will is uncertain or illusory, then the claim that creatures are genuine secondary causes loses much of its force. The whole distinction depends on the assumption that created agents can originate their own actions within God’s sustaining power.
Yet:
Neuroscience and psychology show that many decisions are determined by prior causes, conditioning, and brain processes.
Philosophical analysis has never resolved how a self or will could act independently of causation without becoming random or meaningless.
Theology itself admits that all creaturely power, existence, and motion depend entirely on God.
Therefore, the distinction between primary and secondary causes may only express our perception of acting freely, rather than any real independence. It could simply be a conceptual or linguistic convenience that makes divine involvement seem less total and less uncomfortable.
GOD AS SPIRIT
Theism claims that God is a pure spirit, who makes all things exist. He is not a material being. It admits that it only has impressions and glimpses at what God is like. If it knows so little, then it does not know how God can be primary cause and apples falling and our sins are secondary. Or to what extent, if any, they overlap. They could be so close that it is wasting time trying to treat them as separate. It is only giving opinions. To base a system of religion and theistic philosophy on mere opinions is overdoing it. Opinions do not deserve that amount of commitment. Ideology is shaping there!
SO:
If it cannot be proven that God belief entails such a position, then the belief is dangerous for it cannot be disproven either. It is too serious and potentially harmful to demand anything other than a strong case. And there is no such case.