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Urantia Book Paper 92 The Later Evolution Of Religion
SPIRITWEB ORG, PROMOTING SPIRITUAL CONSCIOUSNESS ON THE INTERNET.
Subjects Archive The Urantia Book Urantia Book PART III: The History of Urantia
: The Origin Of Urantia Life Establishment On Urantia The Marine-life Era On
Urantia Urantia During The Early Land-life Era The Mammalian Era On Urantia The
Dawn Races Of Early Man The First Human Family The Evolutionary Races Of Color
The Overcontrol Of Evolution The Planetary Prince Of Urantia The Planetary
Rebellion The Dawn Of Civilization Primitive Human Institutions The Evolution
Of Human Government Development Of The State Government On A Neighboring Planet
The Garden Of Eden Adam And Eve The Default Of Adam And Eve The Second Garden
The Midway Creatures The Violet Race After The Days Of Adam Andite Expansion In
The Orient Andite Expansion In The Occident Development Of Modern Civilization
The Evolution Of Marriage The Marriage Institution Marriage And Family Life The
Origins Of Worship Early Evolution Of Religion The Ghost Cults Fetishes,
Charms, And Magic Sin, Sacrifice, And Atonement Shamanism--medicine Men And
Priests The Evolution Of Prayer The Later Evolution Of Religion Machiventa
Melchizedek The Melchizedek Teachings In The Orient The Melchizedek Teachings
In The Levant Yahweh--god Of The Hebrews Evolution Of The God Concept Among The
Hebrews The Melchizedek Teachings In The Occident The Social Problems Of
Religion Religion In Human Experience The Real Nature Of Religion The
Foundations Of Religious Faith The Reality Of Religious Experience Growth Of
The Trinity Concept Deity And Reality Universe Levels Of Reality Origin And
Nature Of Thought Adjusters Mission And Ministry Of Thought Adjusters Relation
Of Adjusters To Universe Creatures Relation Of Adjusters To Individual Mortals
...
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Paper 92 The Later Evolution Of Religion
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Introduction
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:
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
Religion progressed from nature worship up through ghost worship to fetishism
throughout the savage childhood of the races. With the dawn of civilization
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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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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4. THE GIFT OF REVELATION
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.
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.
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.
There have been many events of religious revelation but only five of epochal
significance. These were as follows:
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.
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.
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 re-
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ligions and finally developed into those theologic systems present on Urantia
at the opening of the first millennium after Christ.
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.
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
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.
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.
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 Onamonalon-
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ton; 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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
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
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
On Urantia, evolutionary and revelatory religion are progressing side by side
while they blend and coalesce into the diversified theologic systems found
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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.
The most advanced religions of ancient times were Judaism and Hinduism, 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 evolu
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tionary minds to accept advanced revealed truth. Man is an evolutionary
creature and in the main must get his religion by evolutionary techniques.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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The quality of a religion is indicated by:
1. Level 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
True religion must ever be, at one and the same time, the eternal foundation
and the guiding star of all enduring civilizations.
[Presented by a Melchizedek of Nebadon.]
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Subjects Archive The Urantia Book Urantia Book PART III: The History of Urantia
: The Origin Of Urantia Life Establishment On Urantia The Marine-life Era On
Urantia Urantia During The Early Land-life Era The Mammalian Era On Urantia The
Dawn Races Of Early Man The First Human Family The Evolutionary Races Of Color
The Overcontrol Of Evolution The Planetary Prince Of Urantia The Planetary
Rebellion The Dawn Of Civilization Primitive Human Institutions The Evolution
Of Human Government Development Of The State Government On A Neighboring Planet
The Garden Of Eden Adam And Eve The Default Of Adam And Eve The Second Garden
The Midway Creatures The Violet Race After The Days Of Adam Andite Expansion In
The Orient Andite Expansion In The Occident Development Of Modern Civilization
The Evolution Of Marriage The Marriage Institution Marriage And Family Life The
Origins Of Worship Early Evolution Of Religion The Ghost Cults Fetishes,
Charms, And Magic Sin, Sacrifice, And Atonement Shamanism--medicine Men And
Priests The Evolution Of Prayer The Later Evolution Of Religion Machiventa
Melchizedek The Melchizedek Teachings In The Orient The Melchizedek Teachings
In The Levant Yahweh--god Of The Hebrews Evolution Of The God Concept Among The
Hebrews The Melchizedek Teachings In The Occident The Social Problems Of
Religion Religion In Human Experience The Real Nature Of Religion The
Foundations Of Religious Faith The Reality Of Religious Experience Growth Of
The Trinity Concept Deity And Reality Universe Levels Of Reality Origin And
Nature Of Thought Adjusters Mission And Ministry Of Thought Adjusters Relation
Of Adjusters To Universe Creatures Relation Of Adjusters To Individual Mortals
The Adjuster And The Soul Personality Survival Seraphic Guardians Of Destiny
Seraphic Planetary Government The Supreme Being The Almighty Supreme God The
Supreme Supreme And Ultimate--time And Space The Bestowals Of Christ Michael
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