© 1959 William S. Sadler
March 17 1959
My dear Rev. Adams,
I was very happy to get your letter of March 9, and I think this is the first really valid criticism I have ever had from of several the last year, but it was evident that the critics had never even superficially read the Urantia Book.
If minor discrepancies were to be found in the Urantia Book I have always suspected that they would probably be found in Part IV because that is the part of the Book that was prepared by the midwayers. The midwayers’ mind level is but a trifle above that of the human mind.
My own preoccupation with the Urantia Book has been along two lines. First, I was concerned as to whether or not this was some fraudulent psychic phenomenon or possibly a case of subconscious disassociation on the part of the subject such as I was familiar with in the fields of automatic writing, trance mediums, etc. I was the last of my family to accept the Urantia Papers. I finally decided that the whole thing was beyond my ability to understand.
My next concern had to do with the consistency of the Papers. I finally decided that a fraud could not go on the witness stand for twentyfive years, to be examined and cross-examined by 230, and to give more than a million words of testimony and never once contradict himself. I decided that this subject must be telling the truth in order to discuss such a wide range of topics and not once slip into a contradiction.
You ask about others who have critically examined the Urantia Book. From a standpoint of general science I think the studies of the late Sir Hubert Wilkins were perhaps the most extended and exhaustive. For more than 20 years he periodically spent time in Chicago going over the Papers. He would work weeks at a time, ten hours a day, and his final conclusion was that the Papers were consistent with the known facts of modern science.
Since the Book was published, a young physicist in Philadelphia has been a very careful student of the physics of the Urantia Papers. About a year ago he wrote a paper, with many diagrams, for the Gravitational Society, in which he advocated that the cosmology of the Urantia Book was the only one that was possible from the gravitational standpoint.
I was very interested in your criticism as proposed in your letter to Dr. Douglass. I would offer the following comments on these criticisms:
I was indeed cheered to get such an encouraging estimate of the worth of the Book from one who has made such a careful study of it.
I am taking the liberty of sending you a copy of an outline which I gave to a dozen ministers who came to meet with me about six months ago. I told them that while I was unable to explain to them about how we had got the Book I was able to explain to them how we had NOT got the Book.
I do hope that we will have the pleasure of seeing you and Mrs. Adams one of these days. I am sure, if you have the occasion to come back East, you will not fail to let us have a visit with you.
With all best wishes, I am
Sincerely yours,
William S. Sadler