What is Evolutionary Religion & Religious Experience?

I think the course of human history on all material, evolutionary worlds is shaped by 3 forces over time: evolutionary religion, evolutionary science, and the evolutionary work of the agents/agencies of the creators (those including angels, midwayers, Reservists, the Supreme, the Most Highs, the Planetary Prince and Staff, the Material Sons and Daughters, the Avonal and Teacher Sons, etc.). The UB describes each world being transformed over time through 14 Epochs of Time....7 prior to Light and Life and 7 during Light and Life.....considered two sets of 7 epochs and not 14 really...the sets are acutely divided and different from one another!!

These epochs take place sequentially with long time frames of overlapping transitional borders. Some worlds, and Urantia is such a world, suffers from certain dislocations and disruptions that have resulted in lots of transitional borders and overlaps of multiple "epochs" at the same time. While I am confident our planetary rulers know what's what and have our progress well in hand, nonetheless a study of our own epochal progress is a little confusing compared to others I think and difficult to predict what comes next or when!

Science and religion are both very evolutionary and experiential and both seek the same end - the origin of the material reality and the spirit reality we dual natured beings know as our experiential reality of being. Both have the same origin and creator. There is both mechanism and organism to both sets of reality and there is also order, management, structure, relationship, function, potential, responses and reactions and repercussions or the physics of interaction...in both material science and spirit religious experience. The interaction with material/science experience and with spirit/religious experience are both personal and relational but also extend to the relational or aggregated experience of the population.

The material world and the spiritual world are ones of personal interaction with social/group results. Those group results are not immediate or universal but over time the ALL is affected by the experiences of the Each...and conversely, the Each is affected by the shared experiences of the All. The each and the all are connected, not only by experience but also by the spirit and mind ministries and networks and gravity circuits operational throughout time and space. In this way does science and religion change the world and the people in it...one person at a time and all people over time, one generation after another. This is evolutionary progress.

We've already considered why only progress? Or primarily progress? At least over long time frames. The good is retained as reality based while the bad fades over time as temporal based. But to preserve prior progress and perpetuate potential progress, our creators and rulers must engage and insert spirit forces at critical intersections of progress or decline to maintain the epochal progression of the worlds based on local results. As an example, let us consider 5 real life examples - the rebellion and the default and Melchizidek and Pentecost. After the rebellion, the world regressed scientifically and spiritually - significantly - and so much progress was lost except by a few representative mortal tribes and traditions. The same happened after Adam and Eve's failure.

Then 4 big things happened....boom, boom, boom, and BOOM!! First Mel's missionaries went East and West to proclaim the One God igniting an incredible era/epoch of religious consciousness and vitality. That era exploded some 1400 years later inexplicably by the intensification and popularization/socialization of great religious movements in the East and West. And then did Michael's bestowal deliver the paternal nature of God and the loving, nurturing, and mercy attributes of the One God and then the planetary gift of the Spirit of Truth upon Michael's own resurrection from the tomb...all as public spectacles and wonderments which ignited a planetary torch of spiritual light that burns brighter with each passing generation - and the flood of God Fragments to all humanity in the child's mind!

Each of these booms was a giant leap forward and part of the Most High's Plan B responses to prior failures and delays and each was a progressive step depending upon prior steps. We are assured it cannot happen but that if the God Fragments were to retreat from a world that it would soon revert to primitive, superstitious barbarity. Each step of progress cements prior progress and adds to the foundation and superstructure of the next aspects of influence and progress. Our rulers are managing a process that has a certain outcome, if not a certain sequence and timing of results.

What is evolutionary religion and how does it contribute to a world's epochal progress? This teaching is completely unique, I believe, to the UB as a religious teaching. It is a revelational teaching that the worlds of time inevitably and inexorably progress through planned epochs to attain the glory of the future, the Age of Light and Life. Evolutionary religions, or those I am familiar with, teach that the world will end some day in doom and disappointment and defeat, and the few believers will be saved while the many will be destroyed or left behind to suffer in their defeat. Many believe and teach that there is a true war between good and evil where the outcome is in doubt for many and the future of the world is likely to get only worse and worse. For such armageddonists, bad news is good (the end is nearer - hooray) and good news is bad (the end is nearer - arggghhhh) and life is a perpetual fear-fest of doom and gloom and there is a need to assess blame and guilt and determine who has done what and who is not doing enough and who should do what and not do which. Oh it is indeed tiresome...we even have such ones among us here. So sad.

The Urantia Papers teach us to see the light and to focus on the progress and the potential and to seize upon reality and gain the perspective of not merely hope but that of the certainty and inevitable success of our creators, rulers, and administrators to deliver our world through the Epochs of Time to the certain day to come of Glorious Light and Life. Long after we are gone from here, to our own glorious adventures in the Mansion Worlds and educational spheres of the universe of universes!! Those who worry and doubt and focus on blame and disappointment in others and feel called to exhort others to do this or that and not do this or thus have certainly not embraced the Light, Hope, Truth, and Peace of the Urantia Revelation. They are mighty poor voices to follow or believe and offer no hope or assurance when that is the very point and purpose of the UB.

Let us Exuberate by this Good News!! Next we will begin to examine the fact and function of evolutionary religion and how it leads to planetary progress as well as personal and generational progression. It begins with the feeling and growing certainty of the "other within". There is me in here...but I am not alone in here either. The I AM speaks in a whisper....at first. There is a "presence" and it brings a comfort "to" and a confirmation "of" me. An assurance arrives. Also, the material world is filled effects which are the results of cause....the first causes are less scientific and physics oriented leading to confidence in the hand and finger of unseen beings who create and cause all that happens to us - and doesn't happen to us! The inner life of the first people...and children. The beginning of the evolutionary religious experience is the beginning of the discovery of reality - two realities in our perception only which become the one, unified and integrated and actual reality.... eventually, once we have acquired sufficient experiential wisdom and spiritual progress.

PS - Standard disclaimer here: any words posted that are not text quoted is but my own understanding and recall and opinions of the contents of the UB and subject to disagreement, correction, and bias.

Individually, I believe evolutionary religion tends to become secondary to the emergence of revelatory religion. Once the Adjuster is endowed within mind and in ministry to mind, then personal revelation by the Adjuster and by the Son's Spirit of Truth begins a more direct and personalized communication of truth and truth assurance which is also an evolutionary and progressive step beyond the faith experience of evolutionary religion as facilitated by the higher adjutants and the Holy Spirit - these are progressive layers of religious experience.

But on a planetary basis, this additional form of religious experience by personal revelation is still a element of "evolutionary religion". All personal religious experience contributes to the evolution of planetary progress and the evolved religions of humanity which tend toward organization, doctrines, creeds, community/congregational beliefs and practices. And this is one of the primary topics of this subject and examination - how religion progresses socially through the mortal epochs of time and the profound effects on culture and planetary progress that socialized, evolutionary religion has on our progress as a whole population. This form of evolutionary religion includes personal revelation AND epochal revelation - the entirety of all Spirit ministries to deliver religious experience in the individual acts also to effect the religious experience of the entire population through the Mortal Epochs. Religion evolves socially. During this evolutionary process, human religions and their development deliver profound influences and effects on the socialization of human beings. This is not accidental or haphazard or without intentional results.

Secular culture and science can only progress as much as and as fast as evolutionary religion allows. Interestingly, I believe that progressive secular culture and science likewise only allows evolutionary religion a limited range of progress. These associated limits are not so functional in individuals I do not think as they are in the shared, social experience of planetary progress. The smaller the group or numbers of people considered, the more the cultural or scientific or religious experience may outpace and outdistance one from the other...but as a whole, these three aspects of progress stay more bundled and bunched up than in any individual experience.

This allows for individual believers to religiously transcend their own or their cultural and social limitations of secular or scientific progress. Our individual religious experience is not limited by our intelligence or technology or social standing or cultural progressiveness...and neither is it necessarily enhanced, individually, by planetary secular/scientific progress. Individually, we can attain all the fruits of the Spirit and eternal bliss and peace of mind and faith/truth assurance and sufficient Spiritual progress to actually fuse, even on a world where such a thing is rare or unusual. Or the full range of first circlers to seventh circlers co-exist with the same secular and scientific realities or someone with a very advanced secular/scientific life is very retarded spiritually while someone who lives a primitive existence related to culture and science can become very spiritized.

But as a world, the culture and science and religious progress are more intertwined and each helps define and limit the progress potential of the others I think. Papers 68-92 tell the story of how these 3 causes AND the integrated effects of these causes have delivered our own world from the trees to the caves to the huts to the towns to the cities to the globalizing of culture of our own history...from first words to world wide digital instant communication and stone tools to laser robotics, evolutionary religion has driven humanity forward in our quest to know, understand, explain, create, manipulate, improve, transform, and transcend all prior limits and limitations of our science and culture. It is our connection to the Spirit within that delivers the future....personally and collectively....and connects us to reality and to potential and to source and to destiny. There is no life, no life at all, without religious experience and the connection we have to Spirit. Religious realities deliver all other realities and all meanings and all value. Religious experience is the key that unlocks the truth of the universe and the only reality that delivers happiness and validates our very existence....or so I think!!

3. The Nature of Evolutionary Religion

92:3.1 (1005.3) The study of human religion is the examination of the fossil-bearing social strata of past ages. The mores of the anthropomorphic gods are a truthful reflection of the morals of the men who first conceived such deities. Ancient religions and mythology faithfully portray the beliefs and traditions of peoples long since lost in obscurity. These olden cult practices persist alongside newer economic customs and social evolutions and, of course, appear grossly inconsistent. The remnants of the cult present a true picture of the racial religions of the past. Always remember, the cults are formed, not to discover truth, but rather to promulgate their creeds.

92:3.2 (1005.4) Religion has always been largely a matter of rites, rituals, observances, ceremonies, and dogmas. It has usually become tainted with that persistently mischief-making error, the chosen-people delusion. The cardinal religious ideas of incantation, inspiration, revelation, propitiation, repentance, atonement, intercession, sacrifice, prayer, confession, worship, survival after death, sacrament, ritual, ransom, salvation, redemption, covenant, uncleanness, purification, prophecy, original sin—they all go back to the early times of primordial ghost fear.

92:3.3 (1005.5) Primitive religion is nothing more nor less than the struggle for material existence extended to embrace existence beyond the grave. The observances of such a creed represented the extension of the self-maintenance struggle into the domain of an imagined ghost-spirit world. But when tempted to criticize evolutionary religion, be careful. Remember, that is what happened; it is a historical fact. And further recall that the power of any idea lies, not in its certainty or truth, but rather in the vividness of its human appeal.

92:3.4 (1006.1) Evolutionary religion makes no provision for change or revision; unlike science, it does not provide for its own progressive correction. Evolved religion commands respect because its followers believe it is The Truth; “the faith once delivered to the saints” must, in theory, be both final and infallible. The cult resists development because real progress is certain to modify or destroy the cult itself; therefore must revision always be forced upon it.

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.

92:3.6 (1006.3) Religion has handicapped social development in many ways, but without religion there would have been no enduring morality nor ethics, no worth-while civilization. Religion enmothered much nonreligious culture: Sculpture originated in idol making, architecture in temple building, poetry in incantations, music in worship chants, drama in the acting for spirit guidance, and dancing in the seasonal worship festivals.

92:3.7 (1006.4) But while calling attention to the fact that religion was essential to the development and preservation of civilization, it should be recorded that natural religion has also done much to cripple and handicap the very civilization which it otherwise fostered and maintained. Religion has hampered industrial activities and economic development; it has been wasteful of labor and has squandered capital; it has not always been helpful to the family; it has not adequately fostered peace and good will; it has sometimes neglected education and retarded science; it has unduly impoverished life for the pretended enrichment of death. Evolutionary religion, human religion, has indeed been guilty of all these and many more mistakes, errors, and blunders; nevertheless, it did maintain cultural ethics, civilized morality, and social coherence, and made it possible for later revealed religion to compensate for these many evolutionary shortcomings.

92:3.8 (1006.5) Evolutionary religion has been man’s most expensive but incomparably effective institution. Human religion can be justified only in the light of evolutionary civilization. If man were not the ascendant product of animal evolution, then would such a course of religious development stand without justification.

92:3.9 (1006.6) Religion facilitated the accumulation of capital; it fostered work of certain kinds; the leisure of the priests promoted art and knowledge; the race, in the end, gained much as a result of all these early errors in ethical technique. The shamans, honest and dishonest, were terribly expensive, but they were worth all they cost. The learned professions and science itself emerged from the parasitical priesthoods. Religion fostered civilization and provided societal continuity; it has been the moral police force of all time. Religion provided that human discipline and self-control which made wisdom possible. Religion is the efficient scourge of evolution which ruthlessly drives indolent and suffering humanity from its natural state of intellectual inertia forward and upward to the higher levels of reason and wisdom.

92:3.10 (1006.7) And this sacred heritage of animal ascent, evolutionary religion, must ever continue to be refined and ennobled by the continuous censorship of revealed religion and by the fiery furnace of genuine science.

4. The Gift of Revelation

92:4.1 (1007.1) Revelation is evolutionary but always progressive. Down through the ages of a world’s history, the revelations of religion are ever-expanding and successively more enlightening. It is the mission of revelation to sort and censor the successive religions of evolution. But if revelation is to exalt and upstep the religions of evolution, then must such divine visitations portray teachings which are not too far removed from the thought and reactions of the age in which they are presented. Thus must and does revelation always keep in touch with evolution. Always must the religion of revelation be limited by man’s capacity of receptivity.

92:4.2 (1007.2) But regardless of apparent connection or derivation, the religions of revelation are always characterized by a belief in some Deity of final value and in some concept of the survival of personality identity after death.

92:4.3 (1007.3) Evolutionary religion is sentimental, not logical. It is man’s reaction to belief in a hypothetical ghost-spirit world—the human belief-reflex, excited by the realization and fear of the unknown. Revelatory religion is propounded by the real spiritual world; it is the response of the superintellectual cosmos to the mortal hunger to believe in, and depend upon, the universal Deities. Evolutionary religion pictures the circuitous gropings of humanity in quest of truth; revelatory religion is that very truth.

Me here: Remember - The Gift of Revelation came with the first people on our world in the same generation as the forces of Evolutionary Religion. We must be cautious when attempting to extricate their influences from the planetary progress through the Mortal Epochs of Time.

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