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The 5th Epochal Revelation
-The Urantia Papers
PAPER 92
THE LATER EVOLUTION OF RELIGION
92:0.1
MAN possessed a religion of natural origin as a part of
his evolutionary experience long before any systematic
revelations were made on Urantia. But this religion of
natural
origin was, in itself, the product of man's superanimal
endowments. Evolutionary religion arose slowly
throughout the millenniums of mankind's experiential
career through the ministry of the following influences
operating within, and impinging upon, savage, barbarian,
and civilized man:
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1. The adjutant
of worship -- the appearance in animal consciousness
of superanimal potentials for reality perception. This
might be termed the primordial human instinct for Deity.
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2. The adjutant
of wisdom -- the manifestation in a worshipful mind
of the tendency to direct its adoration in higher
channels of expression and toward ever-expanding
concepts of Deity reality.
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3. The Holy
Spirit -- this is the initial supermind bestowal,
and it unfailingly appears in all bona fide human
personalities. This ministry to a worship-craving and
wisdom-desiring mind creates the capacity to
self-realize the postulate of human survival, both in
theologic concept and as an actual and factual
personality experience.
92:0.5
The co-ordinate functioning of these three divine
ministrations is quite sufficient to initiate and
prosecute the growth of evolutionary religion. These
influences are later augmented by Thought Adjusters,
seraphim, and the Spirit of Truth, all of which
accelerate the rate of religious development. These
agencies have long functioned on Urantia, and they will
continue here as long as this planet remains an
inhabited sphere. Much of the potential of these divine
agencies has never yet had opportunity for expression;
much will be revealed in the ages to come as mortal
religion ascends, level by level, toward the supernal
heights of morontia value and spirit truth.
1. THE EVOLUTIONARY NATURE OF RELIGION
92:1.1
The evolution of religion has been traced from early
fear and ghosts down through many successive stages of
development, including those efforts first to coerce and
then to cajole the spirits. Tribal fetishes grew into
totems and tribal gods; magic formulas became modern
prayers. Circumcision, at first a sacrifice, became a
hygienic procedure.
92:1.2
Religion progressed from nature worship up through ghost
worship to fetishism throughout the savage childhood of
the races. With the dawn of civilization the human race
espoused the more mystic and symbolic beliefs, while
now, with approaching maturity, mankind is ripening for
the appreciation of real religion, even a beginning of
the revelation of truth itself.
92:1.3
Religion arises as a biologic reaction of mind to
spiritual beliefs and the environment; it is the last
thing to perish or change in a race. Religion is
society's adjustment, in any age, to that which is
mysterious. As a social institution it embraces rites,
symbols, cults, scriptures, altars, shrines, and
temples. Holy water, relics, fetishes, charms,
vestments, bells, drums, and priesthoods are common to
all religions. And it is impossible entirely to divorce
purely evolved religion from either magic or sorcery.
92:1.4
Mystery and power have always stimulated religious
feelings and fears, while emotion has ever functioned as
a powerful conditioning factor in their development.
Fear has always been the basic religious stimulus. Fear
fashions the gods of evolutionary religion and motivates
the religious ritual of the primitive believers. As
civilization advances, fear becomes modified by
reverence, admiration, respect, and sympathy and is then
further conditioned by remorse and repentance.
92:1.5
One Asiatic people taught that "God is a great fear";
that is the outgrowth of purely evolutionary religion.
Jesus, the revelation of the highest type of religious
living, proclaimed that "God is love."
2. RELIGION AND THE MORES
92:2.1
Religion is the most rigid and unyielding of all human
institutions, but it does tardily adjust to changing
society. Eventually, evolutionary religion does reflect
the changing mores, which, in turn, may have been
affected by revealed religion. Slowly, surely, but
grudgingly, does religion (worship) follow in the wake
of wisdom -- knowledge directed by experiential reason
and illuminated by divine revelation.
92:2.2
Religion clings to the mores; that which
was is
ancient and supposedly sacred. For this reason and no
other, stone implements persisted long into the age of
bronze and iron. This statement is of record: "And if
you will make me an altar of stone, you shall not build
it of hewn stone, for, if you use your tools in making
it, you have polluted it." Even today, the Hindus kindle
their altar fires by using a primitive fire drill. In
the course of evolutionary religion, novelty has always
been regarded as sacrilege. The sacrament must consist,
not of new and manufactured food, but of the most
primitive of viands: "The flesh roasted with fire and
unleavened bread served with bitter herbs." All types of
social usage and even legal procedures cling to the old
forms.
92:2.3
When modern man wonders at the presentation of so much
in the scriptures of different religions that may be
regarded as obscene, he should pause to consider that
passing generations have feared to eliminate what their
ancestors deemed to be holy and sacred. A great deal
that one generation might look upon as obscene,
preceding generations have considered a part of their
accepted mores, even as approved religious rituals. A
considerable amount of religious controversy has been
occasioned by the never-ending attempts to reconcile
olden but reprehensible practices with newly advanced
reason, to find plausible theories in justification of
creedal perpetuation of ancient and outworn customs.
92:2.4
But it is only foolish to attempt the too sudden
acceleration of religious growth. A race or nation can
only assimilate from any advanced religion that which is
reasonably consistent and compatible with its current
evolutionary status, plus its genius for adaptation.
Social, climatic, political, and economic conditions are
all influential in determining the course and progress
of religious evolution. Social morality is not
determined by religion, that is, by evolutionary
religion; rather are the forms of religion dictated by
the racial morality.
92:2.5
Races of men only superficially accept a strange and new
religion; they actually adjust it to their mores and old
ways of believing. This is well illustrated by the
example of a certain New Zealand tribe whose priests,
after nominally accepting Christianity, professed to
have received direct revelations from Gabriel to the
effect that this selfsame tribe had become the chosen
people of God and directing that they be permitted
freely to indulge in loose sex relations and numerous
other of their olden and reprehensible customs. And
immediately all of the new-made Christians went over to
this new and less exacting version of Christianity.
92:2.6
Religion has at one time or another sanctioned all sorts
of contrary and inconsistent behavior, has at some time
approved of practically all that is now regarded as
immoral or sinful. Conscience, untaught by experience
and unaided by reason, never has been, and never can be,
a safe and unerring guide to human conduct. Conscience
is not a divine voice speaking to the human soul. It is
merely the sum total of the moral and ethical content of
the mores of any current stage of existence; it simply
represents the humanly conceived ideal of reaction in
any given set of circumstances.
3. THE NATURE OF EVOLUTIONARY RELIGION
92:3.1
The study of human religion is the examination of the
fossil-bearing social strata of past ages. The mores of
the anthropomorphic gods are a truthful reflection of
the morals of the men who first conceived such deities.
Ancient religions and mythology faithfully portray the
beliefs and traditions of peoples long since lost in
obscurity. These olden cult practices persist alongside
newer economic customs and social evolutions and, of
course, appear grossly inconsistent. The remnants of the
cult present a true picture of the racial religions of
the past. Always remember, the cults are formed, not to
discover truth, but rather to promulgate their creeds.
92:3.2
Religion has always been largely a matter of rites,
rituals, observances, ceremonies, and dogmas. It has
usually become tainted with that persistently
mischief-making error, the chosen-people delusion. The
cardinal religious ideas of incantation, inspiration,
revelation, propitiation, repentance, atonement,
intercession, sacrifice, prayer, confession, worship,
survival after death, sacrament, ritual, ransom,
salvation, redemption, covenant, uncleanness,
purification, prophecy, original sin -- they all go back
to the early times of primordial ghost fear.
92:3.3
Primitive religion is nothing more nor less than the
struggle for material existence extended to embrace
existence beyond the grave. The observances of such a
creed represented the extension of the self-maintenance
struggle into the domain of an imagined ghost-spirit
world. But when tempted to criticize evolutionary
religion, be careful. Remember, that is
what happened;
it is a historical fact. And further recall that the
power of any idea lies, not in its certainty or truth,
but rather in the vividness of its human appeal.
92:3.4
Evolutionary religion makes no provision for change or
revision; unlike science, it does not provide for its
own progressive correction. Evolved religion commands
respect because its followers believe it is
The Truth;
"the faith once delivered to the saints" must, in
theory, be both final and infallible. The cult resists
development because real progress is certain to modify
or destroy the cult itself; therefore must revision
always be forced upon it.
92:3.5
Only two influences can modify and uplift the dogmas of
natural religion: the pressure of the slowly advancing
mores and the periodic illumination of epochal
revelation. And it is not strange that progress was
slow; in ancient days, to be progressive or inventive
meant to be killed as a sorcerer. The cult advances
slowly in generation epochs and agelong cycles. But it
does move forward. Evolutionary belief in ghosts laid
the foundation for a philosophy of revealed religion
which will eventually destroy the superstition of its
origin.
92:3.6
Religion has handicapped social development in many
ways, but without religion there would have been no
enduring morality nor ethics, no worth-while
civilization. Religion enmothered much nonreligious
culture: Sculpture originated in idol making,
architecture in temple building, poetry in incantations,
music in worship chants, drama in the acting for spirit
guidance, and dancing in the seasonal worship festivals.
92:3.7
But while calling attention to the fact that religion
was essential to the development and preservation of
civilization, it should be recorded that natural
religion has also done much to cripple and handicap the
very civilization which it otherwise fostered and
maintained. Religion has hampered industrial activities
and economic development; it has been wasteful of labor
and has squandered capital; it has not always been
helpful to the family; it has not adequately fostered
peace and good will; it has sometimes neglected
education and retarded science; it has unduly
impoverished life for the pretended enrichment of death.
Evolutionary religion, human religion, has indeed been
guilty of all these and many more mistakes, errors, and
blunders; nevertheless, it did maintain cultural ethics,
civilized morality, and social coherence, and made it
possible for later revealed religion to compensate for
these many evolutionary shortcomings.
92:3.8
Evolutionary religion has been man's most expensive but
incomparably effective institution. Human religion can
be justified only in the light of evolutionary
civilization. If man were not the ascendant product of
animal evolution, then would such a course of religious
development stand without justification.
92:3.9
Religion facilitated the accumulation of capital; it
fostered work of certain kinds; the leisure of the
priests promoted art and knowledge; the race, in the
end, gained much as a result of all these early errors
in ethical technique. The shamans, honest and dishonest,
were terribly expensive, but they were worth all they
cost. The learned professions and science itself emerged
from the parasitical priesthoods. Religion fostered
civilization and provided societal continuity; it has
been the moral police force of all time. Religion
provided that human discipline and self-control which
made wisdom possible. Religion is the efficient scourge
of evolution which ruthlessly drives indolent and
suffering humanity from its natural state of
intellectual inertia forward and upward to the higher
levels of reason and wisdom.
92:3.10
And this sacred heritage of animal ascent, evolutionary
religion, must ever continue to be refined and ennobled
by the continuous censorship of revealed religion and by
the fiery furnace of genuine science.
4. THE GIFT OF REVELATION
92:4.1
Revelation is evolutionary but always progressive. Down
through the ages of a world's history, the revelations
of religion are ever-expanding and successively more
enlightening. It is the mission of revelation to sort
and censor the successive religions of evolution. But if
revelation is to exalt and upstep the religions of
evolution, then must such divine visitations portray
teachings which are not too far removed from the thought
and reactions of the age in which they are presented.
Thus must and does revelation always keep in touch with
evolution. Always must the religion of revelation be
limited by man's capacity of receptivity.
92:4.2
But regardless of apparent connection or derivation, the
religions of revelation are always characterized by a
belief in some Deity of final value and in some concept
of the survival of personality identity after death.
92:4.3
Evolutionary religion is sentimental, not logical. It is
man's reaction to belief in a hypothetical ghost-spirit
world -- the human belief-reflex, excited by the
realization and fear of the unknown. Revelatory religion
is propounded by the real spiritual world; it is the
response of the superintellectual cosmos to the mortal
hunger to believe in, and depend upon, the universal
Deities. Evolutionary religion pictures the circuitous
gropings of humanity in quest of truth; revelatory
religion is that very truth.
92:4.4
There have been many events of religious revelation but
only five of epochal significance. These were as
follows:
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1. The Dalamatian
teachings. The true concept of the First Source and
Center was first promulgated on Urantia by the one
hundred corporeal members of Prince Caligastia's staff.
This expanding revelation of Deity went on for more than
three hundred thousand years until it was suddenly
terminated by the planetary secession and the disruption
of the teaching regime. Except for the work of Van, the
influence of the Dalamatian revelation was practically
lost to the whole world. Even the Nodites had forgotten
this truth by the time of Adam's arrival. Of all who
received the teachings of the one hundred, the red men
held them longest, but the idea of the Great Spirit was
but a hazy concept in Amerindian religion when contact
with Christianity greatly clarified and strengthened it.
92:4.6
2. The Edenic
teachings. Adam and Eve again portrayed the concept
of the Father of all to the evolutionary peoples. The
disruption of the first Eden halted the course of the
Adamic revelation before it had ever fully started. But
the aborted teachings of Adam were carried on by the
Sethite priests, and some of these truths have never
been entirely lost to the world. The entire trend of
Levantine religious evolution was modified by the
teachings of the Sethites. But by 2500 B.C. mankind had
largely lost sight of the revelation sponsored in the
days of Eden.
92:4.7
3. Melchizedek of
Salem. This emergency Son of Nebadon inaugurated the
third revelation of truth on Urantia. The cardinal
precepts of his teachings were
trust and
faith. He
taught trust in the omnipotent beneficence of God and
proclaimed that faith was the act by which men earned
God's favor. His teachings gradually commingled with the
beliefs and practices of various evolutionary religions
and finally developed into those theologic systems
present on Urantia at the opening of the first
millennium after Christ.
92:4.8
4. Jesus of
Nazareth. Christ Michael presented for the fourth
time to Urantia the concept of God as the Universal
Father, and this teaching has generally persisted ever
since. The essence of his teaching was
love and
service, the
loving worship which a creature son voluntarily gives in
recognition of, and response to, the loving ministry of
God his Father; the freewill service which such creature
sons bestow upon their brethren in the joyous
realization that in this service they are likewise
serving God the Father.
92:4.9
5. The Urantia
Papers. The papers, of which this is one, constitute
the most recent presentation of truth to the mortals of
Urantia. These papers differ from all previous
revelations, for they are not the work of a single
universe personality but a composite presentation by
many beings. But no revelation short of the attainment
of the Universal Father can ever be complete. All other
celestial ministrations are no more than partial,
transient, and practically adapted to local conditions
in time and space. While such admissions as this may
possibly detract from the immediate force and authority
of all revelations, the time has arrived on Urantia when
it is advisable to make such frank statements, even at
the risk of weakening the future influence and authority
of this, the most recent of the revelations of truth to
the mortal races of Urantia.
5. THE GREAT RELIGIOUS LEADERS
92:5.1
In evolutionary religion, the gods are conceived to
exist in the likeness of man's image; in revelatory
religion, men are taught that they are God's sons --
even fashioned in the finite image of divinity; in the
synthesized beliefs compounded from the teachings of
revelation and the products of evolution, the God
concept is a blend of:
1. The pre-existent ideas of the evolutionary cults.
2. The sublime ideals of revealed religion.
3. The personal viewpoints of the great religious
leaders, the prophets and teachers of mankind.
92:5.2
Most great religious epochs have been inaugurated by the
life and teachings of some outstanding personality;
leadership has originated a majority of the worth-while
moral movements of history. And men have always tended
to venerate the leader, even at the expense of his
teachings; to revere his personality, even though losing
sight of the truths which he proclaimed. And this is not
without reason; there is an instinctive longing in the
heart of evolutionary man for help from above and
beyond. This craving is designed to anticipate the
appearance on earth of the Planetary Prince and the
later Material Sons. On Urantia man has been deprived of
these superhuman leaders and rulers, and therefore does
he constantly seek to make good this loss by enshrouding
his human leaders with legends pertaining to
supernatural origins and miraculous careers.
92:5.3
Many races have conceived of their leaders as being born
of virgins; their careers are liberally sprinkled with
miraculous episodes, and their return is always expected
by their respective groups. In central Asia the
tribesmen still look for the return of Genghis Khan; in
Tibet, China, and India it is Buddha; in Islam it is
Mohammed; among the Amerinds it was Hesunanin
Onamonalonton; with the Hebrews it was, in general,
Adam's return as a material ruler. In Babylon the god
Marduk was a perpetuation of the Adam legend, the
son-of-God idea, the connecting link between man and
God. Following the appearance of Adam on earth,
so-called sons of God were common among the world races.
92:5.4
But regardless of the superstitious awe in which they
were often held, it remains a fact that these teachers
were the temporal personality fulcrums on which the
levers of revealed truth depended for the advancement of
the morality, philosophy, and religion of mankind.
92:5.5
There have been hundreds upon hundreds of religious
leaders in the million-year human history of Urantia
from Onagar to Guru Nanak. During this time there have
been many ebbs and flows of the tide of religious truth
and spiritual faith, and each renaissance of Urantian
religion has, in the past, been identified with the life
and teachings of some religious leader. In considering
the teachers of recent times, it may prove helpful to
group them into the seven major religious epochs of
post-Adamic Urantia:
92:5.6
1. The Sethite
period. The Sethite priests, as regenerated under
the leadership of Amosad, became the great post-Adamic
teachers. They functioned throughout the lands of the
Andites, and their influence persisted longest among the
Greeks, Sumerians, and Hindus. Among the latter they
have continued to the present time as the Brahmans of
the Hindu faith. The Sethites and their followers never
entirely lost the Trinity concept revealed by Adam.
92:5.7
2. Era of the
Melchizedek missionaries. Urantia religion was in no
small measure regenerated by the efforts of those
teachers who were commissioned by Machiventa Melchizedek
when he lived and taught at Salem almost two thousand
years before Christ. These missionaries proclaimed faith
as the price of favor with God, and their teachings,
though unproductive of any immediately appearing
religions, nevertheless formed the foundations on which
later teachers of truth were to build the religions of
Urantia.
92:5.8
3. The
post-Melchizedek era. Though Amenemope and Ikhnaton
both taught in this period, the outstanding religious
genius of the post-Melchizedek era was the leader of a
group of Levantine Bedouins and the founder of the
Hebrew religion -- Moses. Moses taught monotheism. Said
he: "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one God." "The
Lord he is God. There is none beside him." He
persistently sought to uproot the remnants of the ghost
cult among his people, even prescribing the death
penalty for its practitioners. The monotheism of Moses
was adulterated by his successors, but in later times
they did return to many of his teachings. The greatness
of Moses lies in his wisdom and sagacity. Other men have
had greater concepts of God, but no one man was ever so
successful in inducing large numbers of people to adopt
such advanced beliefs.
92:5.9
4. The sixth
century before Christ. Many men arose to proclaim
truth in this, one of the greatest centuries of
religious awakening ever witnessed on Urantia. Among
these should be recorded Gautama, Confucius, Lao-tse,
Zoroaster, and the Jainist teachers. The teachings of
Gautama have become widespread in Asia, and he is
revered as the Buddha by millions. Confucius was to
Chinese morality what Plato was to Greek philosophy, and
while there were religious repercussions to the
teachings of both, strictly speaking, neither was a
religious teacher; Lao-tse envisioned more of God in Tao
than did Confucius in humanity or Plato in idealism.
Zoroaster, while much affected by the prevalent concept
of dual spiritism, the good and the bad, at the same
time definitely exalted the idea of one eternal Deity
and of the ultimate victory of light over darkness.
92:5.10
5. The first
century after Christ. As a religious teacher, Jesus
of Nazareth started out with the cult which had been
established by John the Baptist and progressed as far as
he could away from fasts and forms. Aside from Jesus,
Paul of Tarsus and Philo of Alexandria were the greatest
teachers of this era. Their concepts of religion have
played a dominant part in the evolution of that faith
which bears the name of Christ.
92:5.11
6. The sixth
century after Christ. Mohammed founded a religion
which was superior to many of the creeds of his time.
His was a protest against the social demands of the
faiths of foreigners and against the incoherence of the
religious life of his own people.
92:5.12
7. The fifteenth
century after Christ. This period witnessed two
religious movements: the disruption of the unity of
Christianity in the Occident and the synthesis of a new
religion in the Orient. In Europe institutionalized
Christianity had attained that degree of inelasticity
which rendered further growth incompatible with unity.
In the Orient the combined teachings of Islam, Hinduism,
and Buddhism were synthesized by Nanak and his followers
into Sikhism, one of the most advanced religions of
Asia.
92:5.13
The future of Urantia will doubtless be characterized by
the appearance of teachers of religious truth -- the
Fatherhood of God and the fraternity of all creatures.
But it is to be hoped that the ardent and sincere
efforts of these future prophets will be directed less
toward the strengthening of interreligious barriers and
more toward the augmentation of the religious
brotherhood of spiritual worship among the many
followers of the differing intellectual theologies which
so characterize Urantia of Satania.
6. THE COMPOSITE RELIGIONS
92:6.1
Twentieth-century Urantia religions present an
interesting study of the social evolution of man's
worship impulse. Many faiths have progressed very little
since the days of the ghost cult. The Pygmies of Africa
have no religious reactions as a class, although some of
them believe slightly in a spirit environment. They are
today just where primitive man was when the evolution of
religion began. The basic belief of primitive religion
was survival after death. The idea of worshiping a
personal God indicates advanced evolutionary
development, even the first stage of revelation. The
Dyaks have evolved only the most primitive religious
practices. The comparatively recent Eskimos and Amerinds
had very meager concepts of God; they believed in ghosts
and had an indefinite idea of survival of some sort
after death. Present-day native Australians have only a
ghost fear, dread of the dark, and a crude ancestor
veneration. The Zulus are just evolving a religion of
ghost fear and sacrifice. Many African tribes, except
through missionary work of Christians and Mohammedans,
are not yet beyond the fetish stage of religious
evolution. But some groups have long held to the idea of
monotheism, like the onetime Thracians, who also
believed in immortality.
92:6.2
On Urantia, evolutionary and revelatory religion are
progressing side by side while they blend and coalesce
into the diversified theologic systems found in the
world in the times of the inditement of these papers.
These religions, the religions of twentieth-century
Urantia, may be enumerated as follows:
1. Hinduism -- the most ancient.
2. The Hebrew religion.
3. Buddhism.
4. The Confucian teachings.
5. The Taoist beliefs.
6. Zoroastrianism.
7. Shinto.
8. Jainism.
9. Christianity.
10. Islam.
11. Sikhism -- the most recent.
92:6.3
The most advanced religions of ancient times were
Hinduism and Judaism, and each respectively has greatly
influenced the course of religious development in Orient
and Occident. Both Hindus and Hebrews believed that
their religions were inspired and revealed, and they
believed all others to be decadent forms of the one true
faith.
92:6.4
India is divided among Hindu, Sikh, Mohammedan, and
Jain, each picturing God, man, and the universe as these
are variously conceived. China follows the Taoist and
the Confucian teachings; Shinto is revered in Japan.
92:6.5
The great international, interracial faiths are the
Hebraic, Buddhist, Christian, and Islamic. Buddhism
stretches from Ceylon and Burma through Tibet and China
to Japan. It has shown an adaptability to the mores of
many peoples that has been equaled only by Christianity.
92:6.6
The Hebrew religion encompasses the philosophic
transition from polytheism to monotheism; it is an
evolutionary link between the religions of evolution and
the religions of revelation. The Hebrews were the only
western people to follow their early evolutionary gods
straight through to the God of revelation. But this
truth never became widely accepted until the days of
Isaiah, who once again taught the blended idea of a
racial deity combined with a Universal Creator: "O Lord
of Hosts, God of Israel, you are God, even you alone;
you have made heaven and earth." At one time the hope of
the survival of Occidental civilization lay in the
sublime Hebraic concepts of goodness and the advanced
Hellenic concepts of beauty.
92:6.7
The Christian religion is the religion about the life
and teachings of Christ based upon the theology of
Judaism, modified further through the assimilation of
certain Zoroastrian teachings and Greek philosophy, and
formulated primarily by three individuals: Philo, Peter,
and Paul. It has passed through many phases of evolution
since the time of Paul and has become so thoroughly
Occidentalized that many non-European peoples very
naturally look upon Christianity as a strange revelation
of a strange God and for strangers.
92:6.8
Islam is the religio-cultural connective of North
Africa, the Levant, and southeastern Asia. It was Jewish
theology in connection with the later Christian
teachings that made Islam monotheistic. The followers of
Mohammed stumbled at the advanced teachings of the
Trinity; they could not comprehend the doctrine of three
divine personalities and one Deity. It is always
difficult to induce evolutionary minds
suddenly to
accept advanced revealed truth. Man is an evolutionary
creature and in the main must get his religion by
evolutionary techniques.
92:6.9
Ancestor worship onetime constituted a decided advance
in religious evolution, but it is both amazing and
regrettable that this primitive concept persists in
China, Japan, and India amidst so much that is
relatively more advanced, such as Buddhism and Hinduism.
In the Occident, ancestor worship developed into the
veneration of national gods and respect for racial
heroes. In the twentieth century this hero-venerating
nationalistic religion makes its appearance in the
various radical and nationalistic secularisms which
characterize many races and nations of the Occident.
Much of this same attitude is also found in the great
universities and the larger industrial communities of
the English-speaking peoples. Not very different from
these concepts is the idea that religion is but "a
shared quest of the good life." The "national religions"
are nothing more than a reversion to the early Roman
emperor worship and to Shinto -- worship of the state in
the imperial family.
7. THE FURTHER EVOLUTION OF RELIGION
92:7.1
Religion can never become a scientific fact. Philosophy
may, indeed, rest on a scientific basis, but religion
will ever remain either evolutionary or revelatory, or a
possible combination of both, as it is in the world
today.
92:7.2
New religions cannot be invented; they are either
evolved, or else they are
suddenly revealed.
All new evolutionary religions are merely advancing
expressions of the old beliefs, new adaptations and
adjustments. The old does not cease to exist; it is
merged with the new, even as Sikhism budded and
blossomed out of the soil and forms of Hinduism,
Buddhism, Islam, and other contemporary cults. Primitive
religion was very democratic; the savage was quick to
borrow or lend. Only with revealed religion did
autocratic and intolerant theologic egotism appear.
92:7.3
The many religions of Urantia are all good to the extent
that they bring man to God and bring the realization of
the Father to man. It is a fallacy for any group of
religionists to conceive of their creed as
The Truth;
such attitudes bespeak more of theological arrogance
than of certainty of faith. There is not a Urantia
religion that could not profitably study and assimilate
the best of the truths contained in every other faith,
for all contain truth. Religionists would do better to
borrow the best in their neighbors' living spiritual
faith rather than to denounce the worst in their
lingering superstitions and outworn rituals.
92:7.4
All these religions have arisen as a result of man's
variable intellectual response to his identical
spiritual leading. They can never hope to attain a
uniformity of creeds, dogmas, and rituals -- these are
intellectual; but they can, and some day will, realize a
unity in true worship of the Father of all, for this is
spiritual, and it is forever true, in the spirit all men
are equal.
92:7.5
Primitive religion was largely a material-value
consciousness, but civilization elevates religious
values, for true religion is the devotion of the self to
the service of meaningful and supreme values. As
religion evolves, ethics becomes the philosophy of
morals, and morality becomes the discipline of self by
the standards of highest meanings and supreme values --
divine and spiritual ideals. And thus religion becomes a
spontaneous and exquisite devotion, the living
experience of the loyalty of love.
92:7.6
The quality of a religion is indicated by:
1. Level of values -- loyalties.
2. Depth of meanings -- the sensitization of the
individual to the idealistic appreciation of these
highest values.
3. Consecration intensity -- the degree of devotion to
these divine values.
4. The unfettered progress of the personality in this
cosmic path of idealistic spiritual living, realization
of sonship with God and never-ending progressive
citizenship in the universe.
92:7.7
Religious meanings progress in self-consciousness when
the child transfers his ideas of omnipotence from his
parents to God. And the entire religious experience of
such a child is largely dependent on whether fear or
love has dominated the parent-child relationship. Slaves
have always experienced great difficulty in transferring
their master-fear into concepts of God-love.
Civilization, science, and advanced religions must
deliver mankind from those fears born of the dread of
natural phenomena. And so should greater enlightenment
deliver educated mortals from all dependence on
intermediaries in communion with Deity.
92:7.8
These intermediate stages of idolatrous hesitation in
the transfer of veneration from the human and the
visible to the divine and invisible are inevitable, but
they should be shortened by the consciousness of the
facilitating ministry of the indwelling divine spirit.
Nevertheless, man has been profoundly influenced, not
only by his concepts of Deity, but also by the character
of the heroes whom he has chosen to honor. It is most
unfortunate that those who have come to venerate the
divine and risen Christ should have overlooked the man
-- the valiant and courageous hero -- Joshua ben Joseph.
92:7.9
Modern man is adequately self-conscious of religion, but
his worshipful customs are confused and discredited by
his accelerated social metamorphosis and unprecedented
scientific developments. Thinking men and women want
religion redefined, and this demand will compel religion
to re-evaluate itself.
92:7.10
Modern man is confronted with the task of making more
readjustments of human values in one generation than
have been made in two thousand years. And this all
influences the social attitude toward religion, for
religion is a way of living as well as a technique of
thinking.
92:7.11
True religion must ever be, at one and the same time,
the eternal foundation and the guiding star of all
enduring civilizations.
92:7.12
Presented by a Melchizedek of Nebadon.
*
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