Meredith Sprunger's Synopsis of The Urantia Book
Synopsis of Paper 102
THE FOUNDATIONS OF RELIGIOUS FAITH
1. To the unbelieving materialist, man is simply an evolutionary accident. His hopes of survival are strung on a figment of mortal imagination ...The devotional labors and inspirational genius of the best of men are doomed to be extinguished by death, the long and lonely night of eternal oblivion and soul extinction.
2. But such is not man's end and eternal destiny; such a vision is but the cry of despair uttered by some wandering soul who has become lost in spiritual darkness, and who bravely struggles on in the face of the mechanistic sophistries of a material philosophy blinded by the confusion and distortion of a complex learning. And all this doom of darkness and all this destiny of despair are forever dispelled by one brave stretch of faith on the part of the most humble and unlearned of God's children on earth.
3. The work of the Thought Adjuster constitutes the explanation of the translation of man's primitive and evolutionary sense of duty into that higher and more certain faith in the eternal realities of revelation...If any man chooses to do the divine will, he shall know the way of truth.
4. Truth remains unchanged from generation to generation, but the associated teachings about the physical world vary from day to day and from year to year. Eternal truth should not be slighted because it chances to be found in company with obsolete ideas regarding the material world. The more of science you know, the less sure you can be; the more of religion you have, the more certain you are.
5. The certainties of science proceed entirely from the intellect; the certitudes of religion spring from the very foundations of the entire personality. Science appeals to the understanding of the mind; religion appeals to the loyalty and devotion of the body, mind, and spirit, even to the whole personality.
6. The hungry soul of man refuses to be satisfied with anything less than the personal realization of the living God. Whatever more God may be than a high and perfect moral personality, he cannot, in our hungry and finite concept, be anything less.
7. Believers react to this temporal life as if immortality already were within their grasp. In the lives of such mortals there is a valid originality and. a spontaneity of expression that forever segregate them from those of their fellows who have imbibed only the wisdom of the world ...they exhibit a stabilization of personality and a tranquility of character not explained by the laws of physiology, psychology, and sociology.
8. In knowledge alone there can never be absolute certainty, only increasing probability of approximation; but the religious soul of spiritual illumination knows, and. knows now.
9. Mind is unity...But mind can never succeed in this unification of the diversity of reality unless such mind is firmly aware of material things, intellectual meanings, and spiritual values; only in the harmony of the triunity of functional reality is there unity...Unity is best found in human experience through philosophy.
10. There is no real religion apart from a highly active personality. Therefore do the more indolent of men...retreat to the false shelter of stereotyped religious doctrines and. dogmas. But true religion is alive. Intellectual crystallization of religious concepts is the equivalent of spiritual death. You cannot conceive of religion without ideas, but when religion once becomes reduced only to an idea, it is no longer religion.
11. True religion must act...Aberrations of religious conviction have led to bloody persecutions, but always and ever religion does something; it is dynamic!
12. Religion must continually labor under a paradoxical necessity: the necessity of making effective use of thought while at the same time discounting the spiritual serviceableness of all thinking. Religious speculation is inevitable but always detrimental; speculation invariably falsifies its object...it indirectly causes religion to appear as a function of the temporal world, the very world. with which it should everlastingly stand in contrast.
13. Science seeks to identify, analyze, and classify the segmented parts of the limitless cosmos. Religion grasps the idea‑of‑the‑whole, the entire cosmos. Philosophy attempts the identification of the material segments of science with the spiritual‑insight concept of the whole.
14. In science, the idea precedes the expression of its realization; in religion, the experience of realization precedes the expression of the idea. There is a vast difference between the evolutionary will‑to‑believe and the product of enlightened reason, religious insight, and revelation—the will that believes.
15. The eternal real is the good of the universe and not the time illusions of space evil. In the spiritual experience of all personalities, always is it true that the real is the good. and the good is the real.
16. Because of the presence in your minds of the Thought Adjuster, it is no more of a mystery for you to know the mind of God than for you to be sure of the consciousness of knowing any other mind, human or superhuman. Religion and social consciousness have this in common: They are predicated on the consciousness of other‑mindness.
17. The element of error present in human religious experience is directly proportional to the content of materialism which contaminates the spiritual concept of the Universal Father.
18. Prayer in indeed a part of religious experience, but it has been wrongly emphasized by modern religions, much to the neglect of the more essential communion of worship. The reflective powers of the mind are deepened and broadened by worship. Prayer may enrich the life, but worship illuminates destiny.
19. Revealed religion is the unifying element of human existence. Revelation unifies history, co‑ordinates geology, astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology, sociology, and psychology. Spiritual experience is the real soul of man's cosmos.
20. In the time universes, potential is always supreme over the actual. In the evolving cosmos the potential is what is to be, and what is to be is the unfolding of the purposive mandates of Deity.
21. Religion is to morality as love is to duty, as sonship is to servitude, as essence is to substance.
22. The philosophic elimination of religious fear and the steady progress of science add greatly to the mortality of false gods; and even though these casualties of man‑made deities may momentarily befog the spiritual vision, they eventually destroy that ignorance and superstition which so long obscured the living God of eternal love...Love is the essence of religion and the wellspring of superior civilization.
23. Convictions about God may be arrived at through wise reasoning, but the individual becomes God‑knowing only by faith, through personal experience. .The God‑knowing soul dares to say, "I know."
24. God is the first truth and the last fact; therefore does all truth take origin in him, while all facts exist relative to him. God is absolute truth. As truth one may know God, but to understand—to explain—God., one must explore the fact of the universe of universes.
25. The positive always has the advantage over the negative, truth over error, experience over theory, spiritual realities over the isolated facts of time and space.
26. Organic evolution is a fact; purposive or progressive evolution is a truth which makes consistent the otherwise contradictory phenomena of the ever‑ascending achievements of evolution. The higher any scientist progresses in his chosen science, the more will he abandon the theories of materialistic fact in favor of the cosmic truth of the dominance of the Supreme Mind.
27. The Universal Father, being self‑existent, is also self‑explanatory; he actually lives in every rational mortal. But you cannot be sure about God unless you know him ...God is the one and only self‑caused fact in the universe. He is the secret of the order, plan, and purpose of the whole creation of things and beings….Of God, the most inescapable of all presences, the most real of all facts, the most living of all truths, the most loving of all friends, and the most divine of all values, we have the right to be the most certain of all universe experiences
28. But it is true that many who are inwardly sure about God fear to assert such feelings of certainty because of the multiplicity and cleverness of those who assemble objections and magnify difficulties about believing in God. It requires no great depth of intellect to pick flaws, ask questions, or raise objections. But it does require brilliance of mind to answer these questions and solve these difficulties.
29. The highest evidence of the reality and efficacy of religion consists in the fact of human experience.
30. Many of the world's most notable religious teachers have been virtually unlettered. The wisdom of the world is not necessary to an exercise of saving faith in eternal realities.
31. While personal religion precedes the evolution of human morals, it is regretfully recorded that institutional religion has invariably lagged behind the slowly changing mores of the human races ...The prophets have usually led the people in religious development; the theologians have usually held them back.
32. But religion is never enhanced by an appeal to the so‑called miraculous. The quest for miracles is a harking back to the primitive religions of magic. True religion has nothing to do with alleged miracles, and never does revealed religion point to miracles as proof of authority. Religion is ever and always rooted and grounded in personal experience. And your highest religion, the life of Jesus, was just such a personal experience: man, mortal man, seeking God and finding him to the fullness during one short life in the flesh.
Discussion Questions
1. How do we explain the fact that religious people “exhibit a stabilization of personality and tranquility of character not explainable by the laws of physiology, psychology, and sociology?”
2. What is the difference between a living religion and the belief in doctrines and dogmas?
3. How do we achieve a balanced knowledge of facts, meanings, and values?
4. How do we tell whether our actions are motivated by religion or some other source?
5. How do we recognize the necessity of thought while at the same time discounting the spiritual serviceableness of all thinking?
6. Does religious speculation tend to translate religion into something material or humanistic rather than unselfish acts of social service?
7. Why has institutional religion and theologians usually held back religious development and prophets led spiritual growth?
A Service of
The Urantia Book Fellowship