© 2011 David Carrera and Olga López
© 2011 Urantia Association of Spain
| The questions | Luz y Vida — No. 25 — June 2011 — Index | Presentation of The Urantia Book at the Seville Book Fair |
After sharing the answers to the questions in each of the documents, there was a free debate on the issues raised in those questions, as well as on other issues, whether or not they were directly related to them.
In the debate corresponding to document 92, and in reference to question number 3 (in what place should it be, or what consideration does our own conscience deserve?), it was pointed out that document 16 also alludes to the issue of conscience. More specifically in section 9, “The reality of human consciousness”, where, among other things, the following is said:
Unselfish social consciousness must be, at bottom, a religious consciousness; that is, if it is objective; otherwise it is a purely subjective philosophic abstraction and therefore devoid of love. Only a God-knowing individual can love another person as he loves himself. (UB 16:9.8)
We also debated around this question: Does genetics influence spiritual disposition? From here we compare the influence exerted by genetics and that exerted by the environment. Finally we come to the conclusion that genetics determines, and depends on it, whether we have more or less effort to overcome the limitations it imposes. The evolutionary part has an upper limit, both in the physical part and in our predisposition towards religion. In this sense, the UB represents a qualitative leap in the current evolutionary religion.
It also turned again to the comparison between evolutionary religion and revealed religion. Evolutionary religion is a ramp, revealed religion is a step. Both make us grow in our understanding and relationship with the Creator, the first gradually and the second suddenly.
We can say that all spiritual information can be divided into two types:
- The one that we can access by ourselves.
- The one that we cannot access by ourselves.
The first type refers to evolutionary religion and the second to revealed religion.
Since knowledge is true information and wisdom is worthwhile knowledge, we can say:
The first type of spiritual wisdom refers to the one that develops in evolutionary religion and has the obvious top of accumulated misconceptions.
The second type of spiritual wisdom refers to that which is presented in revealed religion and only has the limit imposed by human capacities at that time, referring not only to spiritual capacity but also to biological one.
Why is the latter said? Well, because the great advantage of revealed religion is that it not only aims to expand existing knowledge, but also makes a valuable sieve. Revealed religion is capable of separating the wisdom that we had been accumulating correctly from the erroneous ideas that prevented us from moving forward.
When the answers to document 99 were finished exposing, we expanded on question number 4 (What do you think should have been or should be the attitude of social or religious groups towards the social groups of the helpless and unhappy? ) and social consideration towards degenerates. Our reflections were oriented towards these questions:
To do? What not to do? What could be done? What should not be tried?
Someone stated that “you can’t tell a person the number of children they can have.” And that is perhaps one of the serious problems that our society has, since it can cause what we know as “time bombs” in the long term.
In all aspects of life there is a crucial relationship that must always be balanced, which is the balance between freedom and responsibility. There will be people who are aware that they carry a biological lineage that will cause a particularly undesirable disease and with this they will decide to have fewer offspring than the average (disclosure of responsibility), but there will also be people whose heritable deterioration affects precisely the intellectual plane and who, therefore, cannot be aware of the damage that excessive reproduction of the lineage it carries would cause in society, and in these cases, since the responsibility is low, society should consequently adjust the freedom it had to reproduce.
We are speaking in any case of heritable aspects. What is heritable and what is not heritable is managed differently.
When talking about people who carry undesirable lineages, there was unanimity in stating that said person must be protected, but the lineage must be limited. Precisely because it is something unwanted.
They talked about diseases or specific biological states. Before any characteristic that is expressed in the human being and that is an undesirable characteristic; Is that feature related to heredity? Then it will be necessary to be careful that the individual does not come to feel any guilt, and be careful to limit that characteristic by limiting the heredity.
If this is not the case, inheritance is allowed without limit, and what is limited is the individual, since what is talked about and that is undesirable will be something that the individual has already freely chosen.
Can our genes change with our will? The genetic blueprint of an individual is a material substrate, just as our brain is a material substrate. We use a small part of our brain’s potential, just as we routinely use only a part of our genetic potential.
Through our will - through decisions at a deep level that will have repercussions at all other levels - we can expand the potential of our brain or similarly we can get more genes involved, others that will be different, but that does not mean that we are capable of improving our own genes with our will alone.
If it is the mind that dominates matter, and the spirit that dominates the mind, the different vital paths that we can choose will have repercussions at lower levels, but up to a certain limit; the top of what is already defined. The material stop is intrinsic to the body we inhabit and the intellectual stop is intrinsic to the mind that we also have.
Something to keep in mind would be this: if we could change our genes at will, what need would there be for Biological Enhancers?
It is necessary to include this debate in order to be able to clearly separate certain Urantia teachings with certain esoteric theories that are in vogue and that do not help in the management of our own biology. The problems of the spirit must be faced spiritually, the problems of the intellect are dealt with intellectually and the material problems are solved with pertinent actions in the material order.
It was also considered in this debate whether there should be spiritual leaders and, if so, what they should do, what they should do. It was also stressed that The Urantia Book is not to change society, but to change the individual.
In the debate that arose from document 100 (which, by the way, we already dealt with in a previous Meeting, the one held in 2008), the first question was delved a little deeper, which asked how religious education should be given to children.
It was said that parents can foster their children’s religious experience by instilling values, by word of mouth and especially by example. In the family home is where the mechanism and a harmonious environment must be provided. The most important thing is that the child has references that he can transfer to his own life.
And in schools? We believe that one day Urantia will be taught in schools. But, before that day comes, there will be times of transition. Before Urantia, basic spirituality will be taught - the presence of God himself within us, fact of the brotherhood of man as an inevitable consequence of the fatherhood of God, etc. accompanied by psychology so that the child learns to manage his own emotions in the most constructive way. possible.
And before “that” is taught, there will be another transition level in which there will be a subject such as “history of religions” with which the young person can glimpse a framework of values and theories espoused by the great institutionalized religions of the world and , with it, the framework of values in which the humanity of the moment believes as a block.
The simple comparison between religions already serves as criticism and intellectual challenge. The diverse references thus become tools with which the child or adolescent can begin to develop their personal religion, which we know is the one that counts, and, therefore, the one that later bears social fruit.
In the discussion corresponding to Paper 101, the question corresponding to the section “The Limits of Revelation” in UB 101:4.1 of The Urantia Book was expanded. One of the attendees raised the question: Can it be admitted that there is data in The Urantia Book that is inaccurate? Perhaps the answer to that question is another question that forces us to meditate and helps us understand the real underlying question, which is the following: Does current science have exact figures?
The answer to the first question is yes. The Revelators warn us clearly on the page that the book’s cosmology is uninspired. The answer to the second question is negative. Figures, measurements or entire theories are permanently refined over time and with the use of more precise instruments.
What is “exact”? Everything depends on our level of demand in the response, which will mark the margin of tolerance. Is the distance from the earth to the sun eight light minutes? Well no, because they are eight minutes and nineteen light seconds. But is it eight minutes and nineteen light seconds? Well, neither, because maybe it’s eight minutes, nineteen seconds and four tenths of a light second. Is that figure already accurate? It may work for us, but not for others, and they will also be right. In science, the question of figures is something relative.
For example, it is said indirectly in the Revelation that the distance between Andromeda and us is one million light years. But it turns out that the figure that current science gives is 2.5 million light years.
Why does the number that appears in the book appear? Well, because it was the most “accurate” number that existed among humans at the time of the Revelation. What was it given for? It may occur to us that it was to contextualize a document on science or to contextualize the paragraph of a section. Wouldn’t it have been better not to give it? Why not give it? It has helped many to get an idea, so they value it. We are not going to work with that figure and there is not much real probability that science will ever need to apply it.
It would be necessary to take into account if the distance of 2.5 million light years will continue to be the one that science takes as valid within another century. The fact that there is science in The Urantia Book, among other things, helps us to recognize that when religion is honest and science is honest, they can and do harmonize to form “the Great Cohesion.”
The Revelators did not claim that our faith in the veracity of the book depended on the fulfillment of a single scientific prediction. There are no categorical scientific predictions in The Urantia Book. Recall the case of nuclear fission and nuclear fusion. The Revelators hinted that we would have been much better off if we had focused our efforts on fusion rather than fission, but don’t they give us any formula for comfortably recreating nuclear fusion? They could have, but they didn’t. His mandate was clear and logical. They were not going to meddle with our own scientific advancement, especially when we are comparatively much more devoid of the spiritual than of the scientific. This imbalance in the balance really represents a future threat to our own civilization. This threat will disappear when our social standards of ethics and morality, as the foundation of humanity’s spiritual burden, are leveled with our standards of science and technology, which have long since surpassed our capacity to destroy several worlds like this one with a stroke of the pen.
Should we be troubled by the awareness that The Urantia Book “isn’t” the Absolute Truth either? Of course not. First, the book warns that few truths exist absolutely until the moment of your final presence before God. The book brings you closer to the Truth in an unprecedented quantum leap, but in reality all revealed religions do and we will still meet many until we reach Paradise.
What happens if we read something in the book that might give us the feeling that it is not accurate? You have to pay attention to whether this data can be updated by our science —by us, the human race “alone”— or not. If it’s upgradeable, let’s give it a margin of error. If it’s upgradeable and it’s already been upgraded, let’s stick with the new one… accompanying it with the granting of a new margin of error. Before any updateable data always it is necessary to allow a margin of error.
Therefore, if one is honest, the possible concern that The Urantia Book generates when reading its part of science should be the same that generates the vision of infinity of data that current science offers today. Because? Because they continue to be upgradeable.
Finally, it is worth asking honestly: Does the distance between us and Andromeda be one million light years or two point five million much influence our lives and our personal progression? Can we really imagine any of the two numbers?
Contextualizing the specific data that appears in UB 15:4.7, it can be seen that the Revealers’ real intention is not to point out the exact distance between Andromeda and us, but to make us think that the light that reaches us right now reveals only the state of that nebula that had a million years ago.
Therefore: Is the message wrong, or is the objective fulfilled? Should they have told us, in order not to err in the eyes of some, “from long ago”? Would we have had the same idea?
Finally, a question that many of us have was raised. There is a shortlist of words that constantly appears in The Urantia Book which is the one that makes up the words Truth-Beauty-Goodness. They are words that do not represent special difficulty of interpretation. However, there is another recurring shortlist that is Facts - Meanings - Values. Representative examples were requested where said triplet could be visualized, if possible “at the same time”.
The first example of a shortlist he ventured was: Fact: a man kisses a child. Meaning: It is about his father. Value: love. We needed examples that had spiritual value behind them.
We are familiar with the facts. Since there are facts that do not imply a value behind it, it was deduced that the only good examples in which a triplet could appear would be those actions that were of a spiritual nature -spirituality manages values-, and that the trick to be able to clearly distinguish between the resulting meanings and values would be to see where those elements would fit. If the detected elements imply the intellectual level, it would be about meanings, and if the elements transcended the philosophical realm, we would talk about values.
Some of the values with which the audience agreed were those of love, altruism, faith, trust, persistence. Surely we could include fidelity, environmentalism, empathy, interest. Perhaps within generic values such as interest or respect we could break down and take each distinction as a different value; for example, respect for the opinions of others, respect for the environment, etc.
What did not seem so clear to list were the meanings, but you have to think about the following:
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We cannot let ourselves be enchanted by the limited human languages; there are countless facts whose meaning or meanings have to be elaborated using many words, but that does not mean that the meaning is several or many, respectively.
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Virtually any fact that we carry out has a meaning since it has an intention behind it, but when the Revealers talk to us about the shortlist, it is already implicit that it is about Facts and Meanings that are “worthwhile”. Never better said, that they have a “Value” behind them.
It was also inferred that the best place to find examples of the shortlist was in the teachings of Jesus. Jesus said for example: “God is my Father.” Where do we have the fact? It occurred at the time of Michael’s creation. The meaning is the one expressed by Jesus as it is, the concept of fatherhood that the listeners perceive. The spiritual values involved, on the part of Jesus, were at least the deepest certainty - the value of Truth - and the values involved on the part of the listeners were Faith.
Remembering the parables of Jesus, we recalled how, at the end of the parable, the apostles met to try to decipher the meaning it contained, some with more skill than others. Behind every parable of Jesus there was a great meaning, and on many occasions more than one. Meanings that, even belonging to the intellectual realm, pointed directly to the Kingdom of the Spirit.
¶ References
- Light and Life Magazine (all old issues): https://aue.urantia-association.org/numeros-antiguos-del-lyv/
| The questions | Luz y Vida — No. 25 — June 2011 — Index | Presentation of The Urantia Book at the Seville Book Fair |