© 2022 Gard Jameson
© 2022 The Urantia Book Fellowship
by Gard Jameson
(TUB) “It was with Angamon, the leader of the Stoics, that Jesus had an all -night talk early during his sojourn in Rome. This man subsequently became a great friend of Paul and proved to be one of the strong supporters of the Christian church at Rome. In substance, and restated in modern phraseology, Jesus taught Angamon:” [The Urantia Book UB 132:1.1]
“The standard of true values must be looked for in the spiritual world and on divine levels of eternal reality. To an ascending mortal all lower and material standards must be recognized as transient, partial, and inferior. The scientist, as such, is limited to the discovery of the relatedness of material facts. Technically, he has no right to assert that he is either materialist or idealist, for in so doing he has assumed to forsake the attitude of a true scientist since any and all such assertions of attitude are the very essence of philosophy.” [UB 132:1.2 ]
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(HS) “The field of scientific demonstration when understood, is limited then to ‘activities and relations’ rather than to essences, or at least to what can be learned about the essence of anything (fact) from its activity and relation. The scientist, indeed, has no more right to be a materialist than an idealist. Neither of the foregoing presuppositions is scientific; both are philosophical.” [Creative Personality (CP) 218]
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© This lesson on true values is a treasure trove. Again and again, The Urantia Book states that values represent our gateway to supreme reality, our best approach to the comprehension and realization of God, as well as the substance of the growth of our soul. Values are the window through which God is perceived; one of the two primary purposes of The Urantia Book is to enhance our spiritual perception of true values: truth, beauty, goodness, and love. To the agnostic or atheist, values may seem to be entirely relative and to exist insubstantially and independent of any notion of divinity. This passage states clearly that truth, beauty, and goodness cannot be divorced from the spiritual world—divine levels of eternal reality.
In their naïve approach to reality some would project and impose their own assumptions and methods, rather than explore the possibilities and the potential of accessible experience. Often cynicism and skepticism blind us to the possibility of alternative perspectives on reality and more transcendently delightful realms of personal experience.
As the “Discourse on Reality” suggests, it is our perspective on reality that will define and shape our existence and our destiny. The Urantia Book clearly articulates certain axiomatic assumptions about reality, including that there is a material dimension, a dimension of mind, and a spiritual dimension. Add to that the experiential assumption of personality and you have four out of seven great axioms of all reality, reaching from the lowest to the highest levels of absolute reality. Just as the scientist uses the experimental method to test the hypotheses associated with material reality, so too the religionist uses the experiential method of faith to test the hypotheses of spiritual reality. The Urantia Book discloses that in all of our thinking, whether acknowledged or not, we utilize conceptual frameworks based upon certain assumptions. It is incumbent upon each of us to examine closely our assumptions and our methods.
“Partial, incomplete, and evolving intellects would be helpless in the master universe, would be unable to form the first rational thought pattern, were it not for the innate ability of all mind, high or low, to form a universe frame in which to think.” [UB 115:1.1]
“Conceptual frames of the universe are only relatively true; they are serviceable scaffolding which must eventually give way before the expansions of enlarging cosmic comprehension. The understandings of truth, beauty, and goodness, morality, ethics, duty, love, divinity, origin, existence, purpose, destiny, time, space, even Deity, are only relatively true.” [UB 115:1.2]
The book challenges us to push the borders of our limited and myopic assumptions, to consider a more expansive array of assumptions that are all both reasonable and testable. An honest skeptic must at some point be skeptical of his/her skepticism. A sincere scientist must at some point challenge any lingering secular/materialistic assumptions and methods, to inquire whether their assumptions are sufficient, sustainable, and satisfactory.
Too often the brilliant scientist may lean on his scientific method to attempt to solve a spiritual question, always with a faulty result. Likewise, too often, unwittingly, the religionist may inadvertently utilize that same scientific method, not the method of faith, with the same deficient outcome. Once the attitudinal method of faith is employed a whole new dimension of experience reveals itself.
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(TUB) “Unless the moral insight and the spiritual attainment of mankind are proportionately augmented, the unlimited advancement of a purely materialistic culture may eventually become a menace to civilization. A purely materialist science harbors within itself the potential seed of the destruction of all scientific striving, for this very attitude presages the ultimate collapse of a civilization which has abandoned its sense of moral values and has repudiated its spiritual goal of attainment.” [UB 132:1.3]
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(HS) “Without the presence of moral insight the advance of science becomes the menace of humanity. Morally untempered, it promises only universal destruction to that fragile plant which we call human life and civilization. It is needless to point out that, though facts might remain after such devastation, science itself would be destroyed, if not forever, at least until the birth of a new race whose moral achievement should walk hand in hand with their scientific progress.” [CP 221]
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© As I write this, it is evident how a deep confusion around moral values has fostered a decline in the culture of civilization. Civilization is properly understood as the collective expression of true values, whether in science, art, or religion. When narcissism, lies, theft, and a moral vacuum are deemed tolerable within our political, economic, and religious institutions, it is no wonder that trust in those institutions is at an all-time low. Many centuries ago, Socrates warned against such moral relativism, untempered hedonism, and unspiritual aspirations suggesting that values lie at the heart of civilization.
One of the most vivid pictures of the Jewish Bible is that of the prophet Amos standing in the midst of Israel holding a plumb line (a tool by which builders find the true vertical). In other words, the law of morality is just as fixed as the law of gravity. Goodness is not a sentimental human emotion; it is a value which governs the universe itself. Amos dared to say before the people of Israel that they had lost their way; the plumb line of morality revealed that their moral compass was amiss.
If you go about returning evil for evil, and injury for injury, breaking agreements, lying and disrespecting those you serve, then whether you are the police, a senator or the president, you shall discover a day of reckoning. The moral laws of the invisible world will treat you as an offender, just as surely as the laws of gravity will pull you down.
The skeptic among us will continue to deny. But the evidence lies in the consequences of our choices. Every choice carries within its walls the inevitable consequence of that choice, which can be beneficial or harmful to the highest degree. The moral consequence of choice is as unvarying as the law of gravitation, as the swing of the planets around the sun. The appearances of success that bring coveted results are poor substitutes for real character. The world with its inadequate assessment may approve a person who seems to reach its imagined goals, but triumph carries a steep cost when it is at the expense of the soul. Character is destiny.
The Urantia Book provides a deep appreciation of the nature of personality that is unlike the understanding of much contemporary psychological thought. At the heart of that appreciation is the realization that personality is three dimensional, vertical, breadth, and length dimensions. [Cf. UB 112:1.5] The vertical dimension invites the spiritual goal of attainment while the breadth dimension invites the experiential realization of moral values. Together, spiritual attainment and moral insight, a combination theme repeated throughout the revelation, brings coherence and harmony with the will of God in the life of the individual, the length dimension of personality. In finding the will of God lies our greatest joy!
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(TUB) “The materialistic scientist and the extreme idealist are destined always to be at loggerheads. This is not true of those scientists and idealists who are in possession of a common standard of high moral values and spiritual test levels. In every age scientists and religionists must recognize that they are on trial before the bar of human need. They must eschew all warfare between themselves while they strive valiantly to justify their continued survival by enhanced devotion to the service of human progress. If the so-called science or religion of any age is false, then must it either purify its activities or pass away before the emergence of a material science or spiritual religion of a truer and more worthy order.” [UB 132:1.4]
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(HS) “Science, like religion, must be forever on trial, and must justify itself by its contribution to the common welfare.” [CP 211, 222]
“A science and a religion which make life more worth living will abide forever, and if either science or religion, falsely so called, does not stand this test, they must pass away under the exigencies of life itself. [CP 222]
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© In the modern period of our history, scientists have sometimes sought to replace/ displace religion as the institution of value. Each institution has its legitimate area of inquiry, each has its methodology, each has an altogether different result. The focus of science is the realm of facts; the focus of religion is the realm of values. The methodology of science is reason, experimental reason. The methodology of religion is faith, an experiential attitude of humility, wonder, patience, sincerity before the expansive fabric of value: truth, beauty, goodness, and love. The hoped-for result of science is knowledge, practical beneficial knowledge of how the facts of nature might bring a blessing. The hoped-for result of religion is realization, the practical benefit of incorporating spiritual values into one’s character and daily life, the life of the community, and, ultimately, into the life of the planet. Both are complementary and are necessary in navigating the shoals of life.
In a piece of wisdom provided to the apostle Thomas Didymus who was regarded as “a true scientist,” [UB 139:8.12] Jesus said:
“Dedicate your life to the great work of showing how the critical material mind of man can triumph over the inertia of intellectual doubting when faced by the demonstration of the manifestation of living truth as it operates in the experience of spirit-born men and women who yield the fruits of the spirit in their lives, and who love one another, even as I have loved you.” [UB 181:2.26]
The final thought with respect to this reflection is to encourage the reader to see how the thoughts of the human authors were weaved into the words of the midwayers, revealed in the text. Three thoughts emerge. First, the acknowledgement of personal or auto revelation in the life of a truth seeking mortal, like Ralph Tyler Flewelling, Chair of Philosophy at the University of Southern California for decades. His work on personality was groundbreaking; he was a student of Borden Parker Bowne, the father of the philosophic school of Personalism. Flewelling’s book, Creative Personality, was popular in its day, and was utilized in many of the discourses associated with Jesus’ travels to Rome. Revelation is not always from on high; it sits before our very eyes. Second, the way in which the revelators used Flewelling’s insights is similar to how they utilized all other human authors and is worth examination; the metaphors and illustrations help to capture the human imagination. Third, as brilliant as the revelatory insights of Flewelling were, the actual text of the revelation is stunning in its revelatory insight and its exquisitely beautiful, almost poetic, prose expression.
