golden age

68:1.7The mod­ern phrase, “back to na­ture,” is a delu­sion of ig­no­rance, a be­lief in the re­al­ity of the one­time fic­ti­tious “golden age.” The only ba­sis for the leg­end of the golden age is the his­toric fact of Dala­ma­tia and Eden. But these im­proved so­ci­eties were far from the re­al­iza­tion of utopian dreams.

74:8.13The Chris­tian teach­ers per­pet­u­ated the be­lief in the fiat cre­ation of the hu­man race, and all this led di­rectly to the for­ma­tion of the hy­poth­e­sis of a one­time golden age of utopian bliss and the the­ory of the fall of man or super­man which ac­counted for the nonu­topian con­di­tion of so­ci­ety. These out­looks on life and man’s place in the uni­verse were at best dis­cour­ag­ing since they were pred­i­cated upon a be­lief in ret­ro­gres­sion rather than pro­gres­sion, as well as im­ply­ing a venge­ful De­ity, who had vented wrath upon the hu­man race in ret­ri­bu­tion for the er­rors of cer­tain one­time plan­e­tary ad­min­is­tra­tors.

74:8.14The “golden age” is a myth, but Eden was a fact, and the Gar­den civ­i­liza­tion was ac­tu­ally over­thrown. Adam and Eve car­ried on in the Gar­den for one hun­dred and sev­en­teen years when, through the im­pa­tience of Eve and the er­rors of judg­ment of Adam, they pre­sumed to turn aside from the or­dained way, speed­ily bring­ing dis­as­ter upon them­selves and ru­inous re­tar­da­tion upon the de­vel­op­men­tal pro­gres­sion of all Uran­tia.

81:5.4So­cial as­so­ci­a­tion is a form of sur­vival in­sur­ance which hu­man be­ings have learned is prof­itable; there­fore are most in­di­vid­u­als will­ing to pay those pre­mi­ums of self-sac­ri­fice and per­sonal-lib­erty cur­tail­ment which so­ci­ety ex­acts from its mem­bers in re­turn for this en­hanced group pro­tec­tion. In short, the pres­ent-day so­cial mech­a­nism is a trial-and-er­ror in­sur­ance plan de­signed to af­ford some de­gree of as­sur­ance and pro­tec­tion against a re­turn to the ter­ri­ble and an­ti­so­cial con­di­tions which char­ac­ter­ized the early ex­pe­ri­ences of the hu­man race.

63:6.9Al­though both An­don and Fonta had re­ceived Thought Ad­justers, as had many of their de­scen­dants, it was not un­til the days of On­a­gar that the Ad­justers and guard­ian ser­a­phim came in great num­bers to Uran­tia. This was, in­deed, the golden age of prim­i­tive man.

89:2.3Sin was rit­ual, not ra­tio­nal; an act, not a thought. And this en­tire con­cept of sin was fos­tered by the lin­ger­ing tra­di­tions of Dil­mun and the days of a lit­tle par­a­dise on earth. The tra­di­tion of Adam and the Gar­den of Eden also lent sub­stance to the dream of a one­time “golden age” of the dawn of the races. And all this con­firmed the ideas later ex­pressed in the be­lief that man had his ori­gin in a spe­cial cre­ation, that he started his ca­reer in per­fec­tion, and that trans­gres­sion of the taboos—sin—brought him down to his later sorry plight.