The Later Evolution of Religion

92:5.1In 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:

92:5.21. The pre-ex­is­tent ideas of the evo­lu­tion­ary cults.

92:5.32. The sub­lime ide­als of re­vealed re­li­gion.

92:5.43. The per­sonal view­points of the great re­li­gious lead­ers, the proph­ets and teach­ers of man­kind.

92:5.5Most 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.

92:5.6Many 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.

92:5.7But 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.

92:5.8There 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:

92:5.91. 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.

92:5.102. 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.

92:5.113. 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.

92:5.124. 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.

92:5.135. 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.

92:5.146. 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.

92:5.157. 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.

92:5.16The 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.