Science & Materialism Vs. A Religion About Jesus & The Weakness of Both, Part 3

This week we continue our study of Urantia Paper 195 - After Pentecost, which is a succinct summation of the spread of Christianity as a religion about Jesus and some of the problems that has created. We invited back some of our favorite guests, Charles Olivea and Chuck Thurston. Last week we covered Sections 1 and 2 on the influence of the Greeks and the Romans. This week we'll cover the Roman Empire and the European Dark Ages.

This paper reveals the struggle that Christianity faces, one more difficult than any it has known throughout history. The rise of science and materialism challenges religion. The higher a civilization evolves, the more it needs the stability of spiritual reality. Society without a morality based on spiritual reality cannot survive.

True science has no conflict with true religion; but the change from an age of miracles to an age of machines has been upsetting to modern man. Religious leaders are mistaken when they try to lure people to spiritual practice with methods used in the middle ages and they must find new methods.

Modern secularism sprang from two influences: atheistic science and the protest against the domination of western civilization by the medieval Christian church. For centuries Western thinking has been progressively secularized. Secularism is barren of spiritual values and satisfactions. It freed humankind from ecclesiastical slavery only to lead them into political and economic slavery.

Christianity stands in need of the teachings of Jesus. Our world "is now quivering on the very brink of one of its most amazing and enthralling epochs of social readjustment, moral quickening, and spiritual enlightenment." Religion needs new leaders who will depend solely on Jesus and his teachings. The world must see Jesus living again in the experience of spirit-born mortals who reveal the Master to all people.

Please join us more great study of this remarkable paper!