357. I need to add that I have seen people in the spiritual world who, on the basis of their observations of the world, had decided in favor of nature to the point of becoming atheists. In spiritual light, their intelligence seemed to be open downward and closed upward because in thought they were looking down to the earth and not up to heaven. The upper surface of their sensory functioning, which is the lowest level of intelligence, seemed to have a kind of covering on it. For some people, it flashed with hellfire, for some it was black as soot, and for some it was leaden and corpselike. Beware of decisions in favor of nature, then. Decide for Divinity: there is no lack of material.

351. People who believe that Divinity is at work in the details of nature can prove the role of Divinity for themselves by a host of things they observe in nature--just as fully as and even more fully than people who decide in favor of nature. People who decide for Divinity pay attention to the miracles they see in the way both plants and animals reproduce. In the reproduction of plants, they see that a root goes forth from a tiny seed cast into the ground, with a stem from the root and then twigs, leaves, flowers, fruit, all the way to new seeds. It is exactly as though the seed knew the sequence or the process for its own renovation. What rational person could believe that the sun, which is nothing but fire, knows this, or that it can endow plants with the ability to accomplish this with its warmth and light, that it can work these miracles in plants with the intent to perform some useful function? Anyone whose rational abilities are lifted up, on seeing and pondering such things, can only think that they come from One who has infinite wisdom, from God.

People who acknowledge Divinity see this and think this way. People who do not acknowledge Divinity, though, do not see this or think this way because they do not want to. So they lower their rational abilities down to the sensory level that gets all its concepts from the light that envelops our physical senses. They then "prove" their fallacies by saying, "Can't you see the sun making this happen by its warmth and light? What is anything that you cannot see? Is it anything at all?"

People who decide in favor of Divinity pay attention to the miracles they see in the way animals reproduce. At this point I may mention only what happens in eggs. Hidden within the egg is the chick "in seed" or in potential, with everything it needs for coming to hatching and for the whole sequence after hatching until it becomes a bird, a flying creature in the image of its parents. If people pay close attention to the nature of the form involved and think deeply about it, they cannot fail to be stunned. They see, for example, that in the smallest creatures as in the largest, in the invisible ones as in the visible, there are sensory organs for sight, smell, taste, and touch; there are organs of motion called muscles--these creatures actually fly and walk; and they have organs around their hearts and lungs that are activated by their brains. We have been informed by people who have written about their anatomy that even lowly insects enjoy these gifts: see especially Swammerdam's Book of Nature.

People who attribute everything to nature do see these things, but they simply think that they happen and say that nature makes them happen; and they say this because they have diverted their minds from thinking about Divinity. If people have diverted their minds from thinking about Divinity, then when they see the miracles in nature they cannot think rationally, let alone spiritually. They think in terms of sensation and matter, and in so doing think about nature from within nature and not from above it. This is just what people in hell do. The sole difference between them and animals is that they have rational capacity; that is, they could understand and think differently if they wanted to.