© 1997 Jean Royer
© 1997 French-speaking Association of Readers of the Urantia Book
| Metaphysical Thoughts of an Agnostic | Le Lien Urantien — Issue 5 — Autumn 1997 | The Spirit of Truth: Unifying Pole of Religions? |
Our Australian friends who publish the excellent magazine “Interface International” have a section that should interest many French speakers, it is called “consistency” and examines The Urantia Book from its logical or non-contradictional aspects. At first glance, one of the things that seems to have most impressed a certain number of readers is the logic of the book, but is it as solid as we want to believe? Are there not contradictions, real or apparent in these 2097 pages? The electronic version allows us to verify what would otherwise be almost impossible or at least very random. For me, it is a test, provided that we remember two things:
So I shamelessly borrow the first example from our Australian friends in the hope that it will spark research here:
Page UB 29:5.7 we read: “The Master Force Organizers withstand temperatures and operate under physical conditions that would be intolerable even to the power centers and physical controllers of Orvonton, whose abilities are so varied. The only other types of beings revealed to be capable of operating in these outer space realms are the Solitary Messengers and the Inspired Spirits of the Trinity.” Are these really the only ones? In UB 29:4.36 we can read: “They (the Frandalanks) operate interchangeably in the central universe, the superuniverses and the outer space domains.” Similarly, in UB 107:6.5 we can read: “It is perfectly possible that they (the Mystery Monitors) could even penetrate the outer space levels, they could certainly follow the gravitational presence of Paradise in these regions.” Is there a contradiction between these statements? It is up to you to think about it and find other problems of this type.
In fact, what is the search for coherence is part of a larger concept, of what our friend Antonio Moya Cerpa calls “the principle of elusiveness” which I have freely translated as principle of evanescence. In any study relating to a complex problem and which is not simply formal, what seems simple at the beginning always ends up showing a phase which refuses to fit the mold. We thought we had something and it escapes us.
John Royer
NB: the underlining, bold characters and parentheses are mine.
| Metaphysical Thoughts of an Agnostic | Le Lien Urantien — Issue 5 — Autumn 1997 | The Spirit of Truth: Unifying Pole of Religions? |