Early Evolution of Religion

86:7.1The sav­age felt the need of in­sur­ance, and he there­fore will­ingly paid his bur­den­some pre­mi­ums of fear, su­per­sti­tion, dread, and priest gifts to­ward his pol­icy of magic in­sur­ance against ill luck. Prim­i­tive re­li­gion was sim­ply the pay­ment of pre­mi­ums on in­sur­ance against the per­ils of the forests; civ­i­lized man pays ma­te­rial pre­mi­ums against the ac­ci­dents of in­dus­try and the ex­i­gen­cies of mod­ern modes of liv­ing.

86:7.2Mod­ern so­ci­ety is re­mov­ing the busi­ness of in­sur­ance from the realm of priests and re­li­gion, plac­ing it in the do­main of eco­nomics. Re­li­gion is con­cern­ing it­self in­creas­ingly with the in­sur­ance of life be­yond the grave. Mod­ern men, at least those who think, no longer pay waste­ful pre­mi­ums to con­trol luck. Re­li­gion is slowly as­cend­ing to higher philo­sophic lev­els in con­trast with its for­mer func­tion as a scheme of in­sur­ance against bad luck.

86:7.3But these an­cient ideas of re­li­gion pre­vented men from be­com­ing fa­tal­is­tic and hope­lessly pes­simistic; they be­lieved they could at least do some­thing to in­flu­ence fate. The re­li­gion of ghost fear im­pressed upon men that they must reg­u­late their con­duct, that there was a super­ma­te­rial world which was in con­trol of hu­man des­tiny.

86:7.4Mod­ern civ­i­lized races are just emerg­ing from ghost fear as an ex­pla­na­tion of luck and the com­mon­place in­equal­i­ties of ex­is­tence. Man­kind is achiev­ing eman­ci­pa­tion from the bond­age of the ghost-spirit ex­pla­na­tion of ill luck. But while men are giv­ing up the er­ro­neous doc­trine of a spirit cause of the vi­cis­si­tudes of life, they ex­hibit a sur­pris­ing will­ing­ness to ac­cept an al­most equally fal­la­cious teach­ing which bids them at­trib­ute all hu­man in­equal­i­ties to po­lit­i­cal mis­adap­ta­tion, so­cial in­jus­tice, and in­dus­trial com­pe­ti­tion. But new leg­is­la­tion, in­creas­ing phi­lan­thropy, and more in­dus­trial re­or­ga­ni­za­tion, how­ever good in and of them­selves, will not rem­edy the facts of birth and the ac­ci­dents of liv­ing. Only com­pre­hen­sion of facts and wise ma­nip­u­la­tion within the laws of na­ture will en­able man to get what he wants and to avoid what he does not want. Sci­en­tific knowl­edge, lead­ing to sci­en­tific ac­tion, is the only an­ti­dote for so-called ac­ci­den­tal ills.

86:7.5In­dus­try, war, slav­ery, and civil gov­ern­ment arose in re­sponse to the so­cial evo­lu­tion of man in his nat­u­ral en­vi­ron­ment; re­li­gion sim­i­larly arose as his re­sponse to the il­lu­sory en­vi­ron­ment of the imag­i­nary ghost world. Re­li­gion was an evo­lu­tion­ary de­vel­op­ment of self-main­te­nance, and it has worked, not­with­stand­ing that it was orig­i­nally er­ro­neous in con­cept and ut­terly il­log­i­cal.

86:7.6Prim­i­tive re­li­gion pre­pared the soil of the hu­man mind, by the pow­er­ful and awe­some force of false fear, for the be­stowal of a bona fide spir­i­tual force of super­nat­u­ral ori­gin, the Thought Ad­juster. And the di­vine Ad­justers have ever since la­bored to trans­mute God-fear into God-love. Evo­lu­tion may be slow, but it is unerringly ef­fec­tive.

86:7.7[Pre­sented by an Evening Star of Neb­a­don.]