© 1991 Matt Neibaur
© 1991 ANZURA, Australia & New Zealand Urantia Association
By Matt Neibaur
“No holy Bible offered to the Western world in the past few centuries is thicker, heavier, or stranger than The Urantia Book. This 2,097 page, 4.3 lb. volume purports to be written entirely by extra-terrestrials and channelled through an unknown earthling. To members of the Urantia Brotherhood, a quietly growing cult headquartered in Chicago, the book supposedly contains the earth’s fifth revelation from God, superior to mainline Christianity and destined to transform the world.”
“Nothing could persuade me to read every line of this monstrous mishmash of claptrap interspersed with puddles of pious platitudes, but I have perused it carefully enough to get the drift of its wild science-fiction, themes. In a way, the book is more amusing than the Book of Mormon, translated from hieroglyphics by Joseph Smith with the aid of a pair of magic spectacles called the Urim and the Thummim. It is almost as funny as the ravings of L. Ron Hubbard or Sun Moon, the channelled fiddlefaddle of Jane Roberts or J. Zebra Knight, or the work of such earlier mountebanks as Mary Baker Eddy and Madame Blavatsky. Indeed it may be the largest, most fantastic chunk of channelled moonshine ever to be bound in one volume.”
So says Martin Gardner in “The Great Urantia Mystery”, Sceptical Inquirer magazine, Winter 1990.
How is it possible that Gardner’s view and my own diverse so radically? Why did I have a religious experience, and he didn’t? Was I too gullible or was he too sceptical — cynical. Of course, I cannot answer this question unbiasedly. I can only state unequivocally, my own experience has left me changed.
There are two extremes of thought represented by the sceptic and the gullible believer. And there are problems with taking either position without a careful balance. I gave a talk to a group of believers in paranormal psychology not too long ago. I was struck at how anything that was presented was immediately accepted. On the other hand, there are the sceptics who become so dogmatic in their position that they close their mind to the realm of new possibilities. Their close mindedness borders on absurdity. The gullible believer assumes that since anything is possible, anything is likely. The sceptic assumes that since nothing is possible, nothing is likely. Both assumptions, in the extreme are false. In fact, the sceptic has a duty to enlighten the religious community by destroying the mythology and superstition surrounding religion. The religionist has the obligation to elevate society by instilling a moral conscience into its members — including sceptics in the sciences.
Perhaps the most exciting aspect of The URANTIA Book is the integration of science and religion. At no point are we asked to accept any of it on blind faith. In fact, just the opposite is true:
“Faith has falsified its trust when it presumes to deny realities and to confer upon its devotees’ assumed knowledge. Faith is a traitor when it fosters betrayal of intellectual integrity and belittles loyalty to supreme values and divine ideals.” (UB 101:8.3)
“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 recognise that they are on trial before the bar of human need. They must eschew all welfare 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).
“What both developing science and religion need is more searching and fearless self-criticism, a greater awareness of incompleteness in evolutionary status. The teachers of both science and religion are often too self-confident and dogmatic. Science and religion can only be self-critical of their facts. The moment departure is made from the stage of facts, reason abdicates or else rapidly degenerates into a consort of false logic.” (UB 103:7.7)
After my experience, I felt like Tolstoy, “I want to understand, so that any instance of the incomprehensible occurs as a necessity of reason and not as an obligation to believe.” I realised that at the centre of the experience was a mystery that I could not touch. But I wanted to know all else. Validate it in my own experience, accept on faith only that which can be known in no other way.
(Extract from a paper by Dr Matt Neibaur that presents scientific material supportive of the Book’s claim to be revelatory.)