Two Models of Religion: Natural and Revealed

​Natural vs. Revealed Religion
 
In the previous post we suggested that religion should be seen as the product, rather than an enemy, of evolution – which is to say that religion owes its existence to the long process of the evolution of human consciousness. There are many ramifications of this naturalistic evolutionary understanding of religion, which we will explore in this and subsequent posts.

To begin, consider two very different models of the origin of religion, traditionally referred to as revealed religion and natural religion.

The revealed religion model views religion as being the product of a top-down act of revelation from a deity (usually male) to humanity, with that act occurring at a specific point or points in the distant past, leading to the creation of a sacred text which contains the content of that revelation. This is the understanding of religion that dominates the Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. In this model, religious knowledge and salvation are dependent on such a revelation.

The natural religion model views religion as the product of the evolved human capacity to know God or Spirit, and hence is not dependent on a specific revelation event. In this model, a revelation event is not necessarily denied, but neither is a revelation necessary for humans to sense the spiritual dimension of reality.

Clearly, on this site, which is addressed to contemporary persons who do not find traditional religion based solely on belief in an unverifiable past event to be a credible approach to faith, we are advocating for a contemporary, evolutionary version of natural religion.

As I have suggested elsewhere (Thinking About Religion in the 21st century, 7-9, 189-190), we can look at religion as simply a natural product of the long, slow evolutionary development of the Cosmos, from the Big Bang 14 billion years ago through the emergence of elementary particles to simple elements to complex compounds to molecules to simple life forms to complex life forms which, eventually, produced the species which we identify as human, a species with a sufficiently complex neurological system to allow the emergence of something quite remarkable: reflective consciousness. Part of human consciousness consists of the capacity to perceive and reflect on sensory experience (sight, touch, sound, etc.). But the most remarkable development in the evolution of human consciousness occurred with the appearance of the capacity to perceive super-sensory aspects of the Cosmos. Human consciousness, in other words, evolved to the point where it made possible the perception (admittedly vague, dim, and intermittent) of Something More than the sensory world, Something More than the realm of time, space, matter, and sensory experience. Human consciousness evolved to the point where humans acquired the capacity to perceive Spirit, by whatever name one might choose to call it. And religion, including sacred texts and accounts of revelatory events, can be seen as the product of humanity’s attempts to make sense of, harness, articulate, tame, tell stories about, and otherwise master that Spiritual dimension that the human consciousness had evolved the capacity to sense.

Or as put in Thinking About Religion:
“There is reason to believe, in other words, that humans have developed an innate capacity for spiritual experience, or an innate capacity to experience their connectedness to part of something larger than their individual embodied self. Some have suggested that this spiritual capacity is an evolving aspect of human perception, such that just as humans have slowly evolved the capacity to engage in increasingly complex rational calculations, so they also have slowly evolved the capacity to directly experience the spiritual nature of the unitive reality that is the essence of spiritual experience. If this is the case, one could postulate that religious experience of this sort will continue to become more and more common in the coming centuries. “(189-190)

From this perspective, religion is the natural product of the evolution of human consciousness. This does not in any way diminish the truth of the fundamental religious insight that Spirit/God/the Scared/Ultimacy/a Spiritual Dimension exists. To the contrary, this model provides support for such an insight, since it grounds that insight in empiricism and consciousness, albeit in a more expansive sense of empiricism and consciousness than traditional religion and science have been inclined to grant.
Not only does this model free religious belief from dependence on a sacred text and belief in a top-down revelation, but it also provides support for our position that religion is constantly (slowly) changing, and as such we should anticipate the continued evolution of consciousness and spiritual awareness into the future, leading to new expressions of religious belief and practice.
​
So for the 21st century citizen who is reluctant to identify as spiritual because of an unwillingness to accept the validity of a religious text grounded in supernatural revelatory events from centuries ago, another approach to the spiritual life is available: simply follow the natural path of the evolution of the Cosmos which has led to the emergence of beings (including you) with the intuitive capacity to sense the existence of Spirit.