Religion, Transition
And Oikoumene

World History 
And The Eonic Effect
Civilization, Darwinism, and Theories of Evolution
2nd. Edition
The Book
By  John Landon

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 3. Idea For A Universal History 
      3.1 A Short History of the World
             3.1.1 Stream and Sequence: A Frequency Hypothesis 
             3.1.2 Notes Toward an Eonic Model  
             3.1.3 A Certain Strangeness: Beyond Space and Time?
      3.2 Transition and Divide: A New Model of the Modern 
             3.2.1 The Discrete Freedom Sequence  
             3.2.2 The Old Testament as Eonic Data
             3.2.3 Religion, Transition and Oikoumene 
             3.2.4 The Economic Interpretation of History  
             3.2.5 Sequential Dependency and The Evolution of Theory   
      3.3 Kant’s Challenge  
            3.3.1 Kant’s Question  
            3.3.2 Intermezzo
Endnotes.  
      3.4 Critique of Historical Reason 
             3.4.1 Fisher’s Lament    
             3.4.2 A Science of History? The Third Antinomy             
             3.4.3 ‘Nature’s Secret Plan’ and Sociobiology    

 As the last section shows, our transitions seem to be about seeding oikoumenes, and are adept at packaging literatures in a hurry. One of the problems of a secular age is that the loss of the sense of the community of man realized in the great religions. Darwinism threatens to fritter away this legacy in the injection of egregious and dangerous myths of natural selection applied to the human family. These religions are themselves partly to blame with their obsession over metaphysical issues, and the loss of their own integrity. Here again we must see the difference of potential and realization, to see that the Axial period created and insisted upon a greater unity of man. We have seen that our eonic sequence is selective, even as it moves to include the whole. A good example is the case of the Axial religions, Buddhist, and monotheist. These emerge in transitions, in embryonic form, then move to attempt to encompass a greater environment. So our tiny hotspots are really about a holistic strategy of the part in relation to a whole. In general our eonic transitions are seeds to create new oikoumenes. That means there is an explicit evolutionary process tending toward group and community creation, something completely absent in Darwinian theories, where conflict theory reigns.

Looking at the Axial Age and then its mideonic oikoumenes thence generated, we have the most obvious picture all at once of the ‘evolution of religion’, in one cycle of the eonic effect. Our view might be secular, but this is a priceless dataset, and right under our noses. We see two world religions emerge, and of very different character. And there could hardly be a more gripping portrait of the ‘eonic evolutionary’ process than this timing of two major religions (relative transforms, we should note, of material latent in their areas, the stream entering the sequence). In both cases they do what transitional entities do, which is select local strains of culture, rev them up, and let them diffuse from their source toward globalization, cultural integration, and oikoumene creation. We are so preoccupied with the metaphysics of religion that we forget the more obvious feature of their overall effect, which is to assist the evolution of the whole sourcing in the part, with especial attention to the development of man’s consciousness, ethical or otherwise.

Thus we see that the relative transformation of religion as evolution is an explicit functionality of eonic history, and not something left to chance at all. The survival of the fittest scenarios of Darwinism are completely off the mark in this respect. They have become entranced by the economic view of history that they can’t account for religion at all, with its direct momentum toward community creation, not competition. The real problem is that these religions served a purpose for a world in antiquity. Modernity promptly starts moving once again in a new direction. But a secular viewpoint is a complex issue, and the real outcome of this motion against these ancient religions remains a question of the future.