Joined: Sun Mar 25, 2012 5:29 am +0000 Posts: 4679
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Paganism has nothing to do with godlessness or atheism or satanism or even polytheism. Pagan is a word believed to be originated by Roman Christians for describing non-Christians as "gentile" was used to describe non-Jews by Jewish people. "Us" and "not us". A term of differentiation.
It is my opinion that when the term "believer" is used in the UB it describes any and all who believe in Divinity...Deity that may be someone or anyone, singular or many, who create and manage the visible and invisible universes of reality, and that power/being that administers good luck and bad or reward and suffering. Whether that belief is general or specific, vague or well defined, singular monotheistic or multiple polytheism. With or without animal totems or nature representatives like sun, stars, moon, earth, wind, air, fire, rain, thunder, mountain, tree, etc.
To be a believer does not require agreement with any others or accuracy of beliefs relative to actual realities. Faith is not defined by such agreements or accuracy of beliefs either. Faith is the personal and expressive response to the whispering voice of the Spirit within each of us. Faith is more than simple belief. Faith shapes our behaviors and choices and priorities and our motives and philosophy of living that shape our very lives.
(1114.5) 101:8.1 Belief has attained the level of faith when it motivates life and shapes the mode of living. The acceptance of a teaching as true is not faith; that is mere belief. Neither is certainty nor conviction faith. A state of mind attains to faith levels only when it actually dominates the mode of living. Faith is a living attribute of genuine personal religious experience. One believes truth, admires beauty, and reverences goodness, but does not worship them; such an attitude of saving faith is centered on God alone, who is all of these personified and infinitely more.
(1114.6) 101:8.2 Belief is always limiting and binding; faith is expanding and releasing. Belief fixates, faith liberates. But living religious faith is more than the association of noble beliefs; it is more than an exalted system of philosophy; it is a living experience concerned with spiritual meanings, divine ideals, and supreme values; it is God-knowing and man-serving. Beliefs may become group possessions, but faith must be personal. Theologic beliefs can be suggested to a group, but faith can rise up only in the heart of the individual religionist.
Believers believe in the existence of God. They merely disagree on many facets and aspects of God's nature and character and function and plan and relationship with people. So...primitive minds are still very creative minds with great imagination and curiosity. All such beliefs are religious and comprise religion and each such believer has religious experience.
Papers 100-103 describe the personal religious experience, which does not depend upon the accuracy of one's beliefs for religious experience to be real, functional, fruitful, and faith based. Faith is the response to the personal connection to Spirit within mind. That connection is inherent and integral to all beings with the Divine gifts of personality and mind.
From wiki:
Paganism (from classical Latin pāgānus"rural, rustic," later "civilian") is a term first used in the fourth century by early Christiansfor people in the Roman Empire who practiced polytheism. This was either because they were increasingly rural and provincial relative to the Christian population, or because they were not milites Christi (soldiers of Christ).[1][2]Alternate terms in Christian texts for the same group were hellene, gentile, and heathen.[3]Ritual sacrifice was an integral part of ancient Graeco-Roman religion[4] and was regarded as an indication of whether a person was pagan or Christian.[4]
Paganism was originally a pejorative and derogatory term for polytheism, implying its inferiority.[3] Paganism has broadly connoted the "religion of the peasantry".[3][5] During and after the Middle Ages, the term paganism was applied to any unfamiliar religion, and the term presumed a belief in false god(s).[6][7]Most modern pagan religions existing today (Modern or Neopaganism[8][9]) express a world view that is pantheistic, polytheistic or animistic; but some are monotheistic.[10]
Ludwig Feuerbach defined the paganism of classical antiquity, which he termed Heidentum ('heathenry') as "the unity of religion and politics, of spirit and nature, of god and man",[43] qualified by the observation that man in the pagan view is always defined by ethnicity, i.e. Greek, Roman, Egyptian, Jew, etc., so that each pagan tradition is also a national tradition.
The developments in the religious thought of the far-flung Roman Empire during Late Antiquity need to be addressed separately, because this is the context in which Early Christianity itself developed as one of several monotheistic cults, and it was in this period that the concept of pagan developed in the first place. As Christianity emerged from Second Temple Judaism (or Hellenistic Judaism), it stood in competition with other religions advocating pagan monotheism, including the cults of Dionysus,[45]Neoplatonism, Mithraism, Gnosticism, and Manichaeanism.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paganism
Knowledge of reality (factually correct knowledge) is delivered to the people of each inhabited mortal world by the ministry and agents of the Most Highs who "rule" the kingdoms of the material worlds. These ministries are called Epochal Revelations in the Papers with the Urantia Papers being the 5th such universal or planetary Epochal Revelation in our world's history (but certainly not the last).
92:3.5 (1006.2) 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.
92:4.4 (1007.4) There have been many events of religious revelation but only five of epochal significance. These were as follows:
92:4.5 (1007.5) 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.
92:4.6 (1007.6) 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.
92:4.7 (1007.7) 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 religions and finally developed into those theologic systems present on Urantia at the opening of the first millennium after Christ.
92:4.8 (1008.1) 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.
92:4.9 (1008.2) 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.

(1109.4) 101:4.3 Truth is always a revelation: autorevelation when it emerges as a result of the work of the indwelling Adjuster; epochal revelation when it is presented by the function of some other celestial agency, group, or personality.
(1109.5) 101:4.4 In the last analysis, religion is to be judged by its fruits, according to the manner and the extent to which it exhibits its own inherent and divine excellence.
(1109.6) 101:4.5 Truth may be but relatively inspired, even though revelation is invariably a spiritual phenomenon. While statements with reference to cosmology are never inspired, such revelations are of immense value in that they at least transiently clarify knowledge by:
(1109.7) 101:4.6 1. The reduction of confusion by the authoritative elimination of error.
(1109. 101:4.7 2. The co-ordination of known or about-to-be-known facts and observations.
(1110.1) 101:4.8 3. The restoration of important bits of lost knowledge concerning epochal transactions in the distant past.
(1110.2) 101:4.9 4. The supplying of information which will fill in vital missing gaps in otherwise earned knowledge.
(1110.3) 101:4.10 5. Presenting cosmic data in such a manner as to illuminate the spiritual teachings contained in the accompanying revelation.
5. Religion Expanded by Revelation
(1110.4) 101:5.1 Revelation is a technique whereby ages upon ages of time are saved in the necessary work of sorting and sifting the errors of evolution from the truths of spirit acquirement.
(1110.5) 101:5.2 Science deals with facts; religion is concerned only with values. Through enlightened philosophy the mind endeavors to unite the meanings of both facts and values, thereby arriving at a concept of complete reality. Remember that science is the domain of knowledge, philosophy the realm of wisdom, and religion the sphere of the faith experience. But religion, nonetheless, presents two phases of manifestation:
(1110.6) 101:5.3 1. Evolutionary religion. The experience of primitive worship, the religion which is a mind derivative.
(1110.7) 101:5.4 2. Revealed religion. The universe attitude which is a spirit derivative; the assurance of, and belief in, the conservation of eternal realities, the survival of personality, and the eventual attainment of the cosmic Deity, whose purpose has made all this possible. It is a part of the plan of the universe that, sooner or later, evolutionary religion is destined to receive the spiritual expansion of revelation.
Last edited by fanofVan on Thu Apr 30, 2020 5:42 am +0000, edited 4 times in total.
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