Christian doctrine teaches that God is the creator of all things and sustains their existence. This raises a question: if God is the source of everything, are all actions, even human choices, directly his? Some say yes; others distinguish primary causes (God giving existence and sustaining being) from secondary causes (created beings acting through the powers God grants them).
This distinction is meant to preserve creaturely agency, but it raises questions. If God creates all actions, including evil, can secondary causes truly act independently? And if our understanding of causation is a human framework, the same may be true for claims that morality depends on God. This paper examines whether the distinction between primary and secondary causation is meaningful or merely a conceptual tool.
[NOTE: Even if God grants free will through secondary causes, this does not imply that an apple’s fall from the tree is random or independent of His direct governance. In other words, free will - assuming it is possible - could be the only example of secondary causation. If we want to believe in free will then fine. But do we want it to be that internal, that psychological? No. We like the feeling of freedom - the godlike aspect. While we are told to believe it is a gift from God to be directed to his service, we don't really want to.]
CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE
Christians hold that God makes all things completely. In other words, all things come from him and nothing else. Without him there would not be anything. Does this mean that all actions in the universe, even the nurse giving you water, are God's? Some say no. The idea is that God supports you to make your own choices. This is the difference between:
I walk, and I think I move my legs, but it is God who is moving them, so God walks.
God gives me the power to walk myself. I really do move my legs, but with his power.
In one, God does the work, and in the other, God does the support.
Either way, you do not own your walking. It is not your power. The power is on loan.
Your experience says your walking is yours, but this says you are really a passive thing and only moving, for God is using his power to create to move you.
I SAY
What if there is no meaningful or large difference? Then we are simply talking about the same thing in two ways. It is a practical matter. It is a language construct.
When I walk, I say I walk, though it is true that God is behind it all 100%. If you are a pantheist, who says nature and God are the same entity, then God walks when I walk. But if you are something else, then you modify this to “God as good as walks when I walk.”
CATHOLIC DOCTRINE REPLIES:
In Catholic doctrine, as God makes all things and holds them in being, there is no such thing as anything being at a distance from him. Though God can cure a heart attack (primary cause), he may use doctors (secondary cause) instead. These are described as primary and secondary causes. They are not direct and indirect causes. They are simply two different ways in which he acts as direct cause.
“The truth that God is at work in all the actions of his creatures is inseparable from faith in God the Creator. God is the first cause who operates in and through secondary causes” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 308).
The Bible frequently ascribes “actions to God without mentioning any secondary causes. This is not a ‘primitive mode of speech,’ but a profound way of recalling God’s primacy and absolute lordship over history and the world” (CCC 304).
I SAY THAT THE INCOHERENCE OF SAYING GOD MAKES ALL AND EVIL STILL HAPPENS REFUTES THAT
The main, best and one essential "proof" that we should distinguish between God as primary cause and evil as being dependent on secondary, we are told, is the reality of evil in God's universe.
Theism, and Catholic doctrine, say that good is real - it is a substance. They say that evil is a distortion of good and is a lack of good. It is not a substance.
But they cannot give evidence or proof that evil is just a lack.
And many hold that some evil is a substance at work and other forms of evil are mere lacks.
Evil looks abhorrent when it is direct and shameless - it invites its extermination. It would be too weak. So it goes down a less direct route instead which is worse. It will look less evil then. It will last better and do more damage than direct evil.
Evil gets its power from disguising itself and being helped to do that which is why those who say it is a lack, that it is useless and cannot last, can be seen as its useful idiots.
Religion is trying to build faith on how we make excuses for bad people when their evil seems a bit distant from them.
THE LOOP
How you see evil and if you see it, evil gets in. That is because your brain makes information part of you. Your consciousness is aware by how it takes information in and personalises it.
Douglas R. Hofstadter, *I Am a Strange Loop (2007)
He argues that the “I” or self arises from a strange loop — a self‑referential feedback structure in which a symbolic self‑model reflects on and influences the system that produced it.
Example quote: “What I mean by ‘strange loop’ … is … an abstract loop … where … one winds up … exactly where one had started out.”
This gives a formal model of consciousness as a loop incorporating information about itself and the world.
Liane Gabora, “Amplifying Phenomenal Information: Toward a Fundamental Theory of Consciousness” (1999)
She proposes that an entity is conscious to the extent it amplifies information, by trapping and integrating it through closure.
This is quite close to the idea of “absorbing information” into the system of consciousness.
Daegene Song, “Semantics of Information” (2016)
Argues that consciousness involves a self‑referential cyclic (loop) model: “choice … may be expressed as the initial part of the self‑referencing loop, while the conscious awareness of the experience is the other part of the loop.”
This again gives a loop model of consciousness tied to information processing.
The nonsense about evil that religion preaches then does harm. We have to suffer because some people want to believe in God as primary cause and evil and other things as secondary causes.
FINALLY
The primary and secondary cause reasoning is window dressing to hide the absurdity of God.
We conclude there is no proof that God can be the primary cause and evil secondary. People look at evil and base those assumptions on it. And in doing so they risk succumbing to it. We need convincing that they are right - their claims are too major and potentially harmful.
APPENDIX
And what about science? If God is the real cause, and science only looks at how things fit together and how A causes B, then science is no more science than a forensic investigation that acts as if fingerprinting was never invented. Science is investigation, and this is not investigating.