The Later Evolution of Religion

92:7.1Re­li­gion 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.

92:7.2New 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.

92:7.3The 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.

92:7.4All 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.

92:7.5Prim­i­tive 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.

92:7.6The qual­ity of a re­li­gion is in­di­cated by:

92:7.71. Level of val­ues—loy­al­ties.

92:7.82. Depth of mean­ings—the sen­si­ti­za­tion of the in­di­vid­ual to the ide­al­is­tic ap­pre­ci­a­tion of these high­est val­ues.

92:7.93. Con­se­cra­tion in­ten­sity—the de­gree of de­vo­tion to these di­vine val­ues.

92:7.104. 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.

92:7.11Re­li­gious 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.

92:7.12These 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.

92:7.13Mod­ern 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.

92:7.14Mod­ern 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.

92:7.15True re­li­gion must ever be, at one and the same time, the eter­nal foun­da­tion and the guid­ing star of all en­dur­ing civ­i­liza­tions.

92:7.16[Pre­sented by a Mel­chiz­e­dek of Neb­a­don.]