© 1988 Ken Glasziou
© 1988 ANZURA, Australia & New Zealand Urantia Association
The possibility that The URANTIA Book may contain serious misinformation came to me as I reflected on some of its statements about material aspects of matter and on historical events that may be shown to be untrue. Let me first affirm that I have total faith that The URANTIA Book is what it claims to be, a revelation originating from divinely authorised sources.
The problem associated with belief in miracles and miraculous healing have always intrigued me. The effects of the mind on the health and healing of the body as well as the reality of the placebo effect in the healing process have become well recognized in modern medicine. The URANTIA Book tells us that some of the healings associated with the ministry of Jesus were true miracles, but that many healings were due to the interaction of mind and faith with the body’s own natural healing processes.
In recent times many cases of apparent miracles have been documented and vouched for by well qualified medical practitioners and many of these were associated with an act of religious faith. But with virtually all of this type of event the hardened sceptic will always find some alternative explanation other than divinely mediated healing.
What kind of healing could there be that would force sceptics to acknowledge divine intervention? Assume a man with no eyes (eyeballs physically absent) walked into a healing ministry meeting and, following a declaration of faith, instantly grew a new set of seeing eyes. Or that someone with no legs grew two new legs. Are such people less deserving than cancer sufferers, many of whom have received healing? I know of no adequately verified accounts that anyone ever grew new eyeballs or new legs. If as an immediate response to a declaration of faith in God such an event occurred, would we not be forced to acknowledge it as irrefutable evidence for the existence of God? Why then does it not happen? Why are we always left with the possibility to doubt?
The URANTIA Book describes Lucifer before his fall, as a brilliant individual. Yet despite his attributes, the circumstances of his existence, and the advantages of his environment, Lucifer took the step of renouncing God the Father as a fake, the invention of his superiors to keep him in servitude. From this we must conclude that positive, irrefutable evidence for the existence of God the Father was not available, even to a finite being at the level of the Lanonandeks sons. Why? Perhaps such proof is incompatible with the degree of free will choice that God the Father wills for us and other finite beings at least to the level of the Lanonandeks. For example if there is a God whose nature is love, and our survival is dependent on honouring His will, then our will is constrained in that if we do not love one another as God loves us, our survival is not assured. To voluntarily show love purely as an act of free will without constraint, we must also be free not to believe in the existence of a God whose nature is love.
If Lucifer had the free will to doubt the existence of God the Father, then surely we must also have that free will? This is why nobody grows new eyeballs or new legs, this is why unnatural miracles do not occur, and also the reason why The URANTIA Book must leave us with room for doubt. Now if all the statements in the book on subjects such as the red shift, continental drift, the timing and the course of evolution, etc., etc., turned out to be exactly correct, there would be little room for scientists with minds similar to my own to doubt the rest of the content of the book. But just one mistake makes that doubt possible and perhaps leaves us with the degree of free will choice we were meant to have. I will not be surprised if there are such errors. This does not imply that God has told us lies, that would of course be utterly impossible, It would simply mean that those who authorised the book, permitted certain harmless errors in matters of science and history to go uncorrected.
In granting us uncertainty, God also gives us the opportunity to make the ultimate freewill decision, and that is to choose to believe in and to do the will of the God Jesus called Father, even though he may not exist. A God who loves us must give us that choice.
Ken Glasziou, Maleny, Qld.