© 1996 Ken Glasziou
© 1996 The Brotherhood of Man Library
| Why did Jesus come to Urantia? | Volume 3 - No. 4 — Index | Steady State, Big Bang, or Architects of the Master Universe |
“Morality has its origin in the reason of self- consciousness, it is superanimal but wholly evolutionary. Human evolution embraces in its unfolding all endowments antecedent to the bestowal of the Adjusters and the Spirit of Truth.” (UB 5:5.1)
“Altruism was as yet unborn in the human heart, notwithstanding that all of the emotions essential to the birth of religion were already present in these Urantia aborigines.” (UB 63:4.3)
“Though the Adjusters volunteer for service as soon as the personality forecasts have been relayed to Divinington, they are not actually assigned until the human subjects make their first moral personality decision.” (UB 108:2.1)
Generations that have grown up in the age of electronic information technology coupled to the personal computer (PC) must find it almost impossible to appreciate the difficulties faced by their forebears when retrieving and indexing information needed for any complex task.
Writing The Urantia Book was indeed a very complex task. Its 2097 pages contain a wealth of detailed information about many obscure subjects. Hence, if its authors intended that it be taken seriously, maintaining internal consistency was an imperative.
For an author, armed with and writing about facts, consistency flows naturally. However, it would appear to verge on the impossible if writing 2000-odd pages of a fictitious account of a supposedly factual cosmology covering the interrelationships and activities of a hierarchy of personalities ranging from God himself to lowly human beings, and including history, archaeology, anthropology, science, philosophy, theology, plus an integrated account of the bestowal life of Jesus on Urantia. Surely such a prodigious task would daunt even a group of skilled scholars fully equipped with modern information technology.
One might ask why any sane person or persons would attempt to write The Urantia Book if it really is a work of fiction—and be at a total loss to provide a sensible answer. To attribute this undertaking to a group of unqualified amateurs with no apparent motive and no promise of reward, financial or otherwise, ranks with the incredible. But that is just what Martin Gardner, in his book, Urantia; The Great Cult Mystery, has done.
In the last issue of Innerface International (Vol. 3, No. 3) we printed a letter from Matthew Block outlining his vision for a structured comparison of scientific material in The Urantia Book with modern scientific opinion as it has developed from the mid-thirties onwards. We believe that such a comparison will be a necessity if the book is to gain credibility among scholars not only in the sciences but also in philosophy and theology, as well as to combat the jaundiced opinions of such as Martin Gardner. Could a similar study on the consistency of the book be helpful?
The three references cited above present a view consistent with the notion that the emergence of morality is coded in the genes. They are but one small example of the kind of consistency to be discovered in the book.
The first reference informs us that morality is both evolutionary and superanimal—hence coded in the genes and expressed only above the purely animal level. The second, almost 700 pages further on, refers to altruism, which is defined in the book as “service to our fellows,” and for which morality is mostly a constitutive component. But in these early Andonic aborigines, the emotions (such as morality) that engender altruism and religion, though present, tended to be still unexpressed, still latent in their genes. The third reference, coming more than 1000 pages after the first, acknowledges that the potential for making a moral decision is antecedent to the bestowal of the Thought Adjuster—an admission consistent with it being both evolutionary and superanimal, as stated in the p. 68 quotation.
To these three internally consistent references we now add a fourth, one that came to mind only after completing the review of the others. Quite contrary to Darwinian theory, it states a view consistent with new DNA evidence that keeps popping up:
“The original life plasm of an evolutionary world must contain the full potential for all future developmental variations and for all subsequent evolutionary changes and modifications.” (UB 36:2.17)
Because of the computerized facilities that enable us to search the text of The Urantia Book word by word or phrase by phrase, the opportunity now exists to examine it closely for its internal consistency. The occurrence in the text of obscure terms like “the Consummator of Universe Destiny” can be readily located and examined for consistency of use and meaning.
At the Australian office of Innerface International, we will be pleased to receive examples of consistency that readers send to us in order to incorporate them into a data base that will eventually be published. Meanwhile we will pleased to print interesting examples in Innerface. Our thanks go out in eager anticipation.
The best way to win an argument is to begin by being right.
Jill Ruckelhaus
If you tell the truth you don’t have to remember anything.
Mark Twain
| Why did Jesus come to Urantia? | Volume 3 - No. 4 — Index | Steady State, Big Bang, or Architects of the Master Universe |