Urantia Book Commentary and Articles

2008-10-08T08:25:00.000-07:00

Contact: Lorraine Chan
lorraine.chan@ubc.ca
604-822-3213
University of British Columbia
Religion makes people helpful and generous -- under certain conditions: UBC researchers

Belief in God encourages people to be helpful, honest and generous, but only under certain psychological conditions, according to University of British Columbia researchers who analyzed the past three decades of social science research.

Religious people are more likely than the non-religious to engage in prosocial behaviour – acts that benefit others at a personal cost – when it enhances the individual's reputation or when religious thoughts are freshly activated in the person's mind, say UBC social psychologists Ara Norenzayan and Azim Shariff

Their paper "The Origin and Evolution of Religious Prosociality" appears in the October 3, 2008 issue of the journal Science.

The two-part paper first reviews data from anthropology, sociology, psychology and economics. Norenzayan and Shariff then go on to explore how religion, by encouraging cooperation, became a factor in making possible the rise of large and stable societies made of genetically unrelated individuals.

To date, says Norenzayan, the public debate whether religion fosters cooperation and trust has largely been driven by opinion and anecdote.

"We wanted to look at the hard scientific evidence," says Norenzayan, an associate professor in the Dept. of Psychology.

The investigators found complementary results across the disciplines:

* Empirical data within anthropology suggests there is more cooperation among religious societies than the non-religious, especially when group survival is under threat
* Economic experiments indicate that religiosity increases levels of trust among participants
* Psychology experiments show that thoughts of an omniscient, morally concerned God reduce levels of cheating and selfish behaviour

"This type of religiously-motivated 'virtuous' behaviour has likely played a vital social role throughout history," says Shariff, a Psychology PhD student.

Shariff adds, "One reason we now have large, cooperative societies may be that some aspects of religion – such as outsourcing costly social policing duties to all-powerful Gods – made societies work more cooperatively in the past."

Across cultures and through time, observe the authors, the notion of an all-powerful, morally concerned "Big God" usually begat "Big groups" –large-scale, stable societies that successfully passed on their cultural beliefs.

The study also points out that in today's world religion has no monopoly on kind and generous behaviour. In many findings, non-believers acted as prosocially as believers. The last several hundred years has seen the rise of non-religious institutional mechanisms that include effective policing, courts and social surveillance.

"Some of the most cooperative modern societies are also the most secular," says Norenzayan. "People have found other ways to be cooperative – without God."

God, science and other dark thoughts

2008-09-29T09:03:00.000-07:00

Miranda Devine
September 27, 2008

This is the first of a two-page article. As you may know, John Templeton, for whom this lecture is named, was a champion and supporter of the effort to harmonize science and religion. Again, this is an article which shows how the revolutionary new discoveries in space science and physics are slowly but surely helping scientists look even further for the Truth of creation. The truth of The Urantia Book's revelations are slowly becoming known...

Please click on "external source" for the complete article.

In a lecture theatre on the second floor of the Physics Building at Sydney University on Wednesday, an American professor in jeans and sandshoes bounced around the seven blackboards, scribbling formulas, talking of quarks, gluons and multiverses, drawing chalk pictures of expanding galaxies and workshopping a few little mysteries of the universe.

What caused the Big Bang? What is dark energy? Does God exist?

Known as the "rock star of physics" for his lucid language and peppy style, Lawrence Krauss, 54, a theoretical physicist and best-selling author from Arizona State University, was briefly in town to present the Templeton Lecture at Sydney University and a small workshop for students the next day.

In the past decade a series of discoveries about the universe has prompted a revolution in scientific thinking, of which the average person is probably blissfully unaware.

Krauss is one of those scientists at the forefront of this new cosmological understanding - and of a corresponding renewed battle between science and religion. "The last 10 years have changed everything," he said in an interview after Wednesday's workshop. "Our ideas of what the universe is made of have changed … That's why physicists have gone so crazy."

For instance, we now know that the universe is flat (although we don't know if it has an edge). And we have discovered that 70 per cent of the energy of the universe is in empty space. But we don't know how that can be.

"The dominant part of the universe is dark energy - the energy associated with empty space. That implies something," he says. "Why is the universe driven by the energy of nothing?"

What's more, dark energy is "gravitationally repulsive", so it acts to push the universe apart. "The expansion of the universe is speeding up, but dark energy is constant … That is the biggest mystery in the universe."

Why is the energy density of all matter in the universe almost exactly equal to the density of dark energy today?

It is the great cosmic coincidence: we humans exist at the precise point in the life of the universe when those two numbers coincide. Physicists call it the "coincidence problem".

"The fact we happen to be close to the time when the two values are the same is absurd," says Krauss. "It's absurd. It drives me crazy."

The accepted explanation for how the universe began is the Big Bang theory, first proposed in 1927 by the Belgian mathematician and priest Georges Lemaitre, which holds that the universe expanded 13.7 billion years ago from a single dense point and has been expanding ever since. More recently came the discovery that the rate at which the universe is expanding is speeding up.

Why The Large Hadron Collider Is Already On The Fritz

2008-09-29T08:59:00.000-07:00

By Eben Harrell
Monday, Sep. 22, 2008

Anyone who has struggled to change a fuse in their home should pity the scientists at the CERN laboratory in Geneva. Last Friday, just nine days after celebrating the successful test run of the largest particle accelerator ever constructed, a tiny electrical connection between two magnets overheated and caused a minor meltdown.

Although a final evaluation is yet to be completed, scientists believe the fault caused the machine to lose the near absolute-zero temperature it must maintain to operate. For now, however, repair work can't begin because the machine is still too cold; it will take about a month to warm up the area to a temperature at which replacement parts can be inserted. It will take another month to cool it back down, and given that CERN has pledged not to run its giant machine — which requires as much power as the entire city of Geneva — during winter months when Europe's energy needs are highest, Friday's breakdown could delay the actual smashing of atoms until early next year.

CERN spokesman James Gillies called the fault a "teething problem" and said that previous accelerators that used superconductivity — i.e., low temperatures that allow metals to conduct electricity without resistance — also faced early problems before "running pretty smoothly after they were sorted out." Even so, "it's certainly a disappointment," he added.

When it is fully operational, the $6 billion LHC will send beams of protons careening around a 17-mile underground ring, crash them into one another to re-create the immediate aftereffects of the Big Bang, and then monitor the debris in the hopes of learning more about the origins and workings of the universe.

Scientists are relying on the experiment to unlock several of the universe's mysteries (for example, how matter in the universe acquires mass) by providing hard data on subatomic matter from which cosmologists and theoretical physicists can extrapolate. But they have less exalted reasons to hope for the LHC's success: After a glut of funding for particle physics in the '80s promised the building of several particle accelerators of equivalent power to the LHC, recent funding cuts mean the CERN experiment is now the only game in town. If it fails to provide results, physicists worry they will have to struggle to justify new, even more powerful machines, not to mention the salaries of thousands of scientists needed to build and operate them. Already, the LHC has been delayed several years and is significantly over budget.

Gillies says last week's functional hiccup was not surprising. A massive machine designed to study miniscule particles will inevitably face problems. The LHC's intricacy is indeed breathtaking: One of the particle detectors on the 17-mile ring (there are four) is connected to enough cable and wiring to wrap around the earth nearly seven times. Scientists had to take into account the gravitational pull of the tides when constructing it.

The sheer size of the LHC — watching scientists work on its gargantuan components brings to mind a colony of frantic Lilliputians — and the complexity of the science behind it have resulted in bouts of eschatological fear of its destructive potential, with websites and even two lawsuits claiming the LHC will create black holes that will swallow up the earth. (The cover images of this week's issues of the Economist and TIME would suggest that black-hole anxiety has in fact bubbled up into the public consciousness.) But while such scenarios have been ruled out, the machine does pose a small threat to the scientists overseeing it: There's a constant risk of a helium leak, high concentrations of which quickly depletes the tunnels of oxygen.

Gillies says that Friday's breakdown released a "large amount" of helium into the tunnel but that CERN's safety protocols ensured there was no risk to staff. Scientists are not allowed into the tunnel when the machine is running, he says, and first responders after the fault all wore respiratory equipment. All scientists working in the underground ring also carry portable respirators, which they are instructed to use within seconds of a helium leak.

CERN's clerisy of PhDs and Nobel Prize–winners tire pretty quickly of the public's near-erotic obsession with the destructive power of a machine they consider a harmless tool. But, there's no underestimating the thrill of the risk. Earlier this year, when I visited CERN, my tour group included a father and his slouching, intensely apathetic teenage son. It wasn't until the tour guide mentioned that a helium leak could fell a man on the spot that the youngster's eyes lit up, practically dancing with visions of white-coated scientists crumpling to the floor like unstrung marionettes. "So, this thing could just kill us all," he said. "So, it's a death ray!" The father murmured, "Well, I'm not sure that's correct—" Too late. The son said, "Cool!"

Atom-smasher may prove 'God particle'

2008-09-08T08:16:00.000-07:00

Deborah Smith Science Editor
September 9, 2008

IT HAS been heralded as a monumental creation that will reveal the fundamental nature of the universe, but also as a doomsday machine that could destroy the planet.

The world's biggest instrument - a $9 billion atom-smasher that will recreate conditions not seen since a split second after the big bang 14 billion years ago - will be switched on tomorrow.

Holding their breath will be Australian scientists who have helped design and construct one of the huge detectors in the device that will search for an elusive subatomic particle, dubbed the "God particle".

A physicist from the University of Sydney, Kevin Varvell, said he was excited that after 20years of planning, the instrument - called the large hadron collider - would begin operation to expore the nature of matter.

"At last we can test some of our ideas about what we are made of. It will help answer some big and deep questions," he said.

Built 100 metres below the Swiss countryside by CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, the collider will fire two beams of particles in opposite directions around a 27-kilometre ring at almost the speed of light.

When the beams collide head on, they will create fireballs and showers of subatomic debris never witnessed before.

Dr Varvell said the impacts could produce man-made mini black holes, reveal that the universe has extra dimensions that are normally curled up, and throw light on the nature of the mysterious dark matter which makes up most of the cosmos.

It should also reveal whether the Higgs boson, or God particle, exists or not.

According to the standard theory of matter, the boson gives everything its mass, and the Australian team helped design the 7000-tonne ATLAS detector in one of the cathedral-sized caverns that will look for it.

Dr Varvell said if the boson was not spotted,"that would tell us something very profound as well".

New theories about the underlying physics of the universe would have to be developed, he said.

Dr Varvell will give a lecture on the collider with Dr Karl Kruszelnicki at the University of Sydney on Wednesday.

Large Hadron Collider: Particle accelerator to recreate birth of universe

2008-09-08T08:02:00.000-07:00

Martin Rees
08/09/2008

This experiment may be of interest to Urantia Book students, as it will attempt to actually re-create the dawn of creation. Just as with the Human Genome Project and the Hubble Telescope, there may emerge new understanding and new insights into God's creation, and there may even be more corroboration with the revelation of The Urantia Book. It will certainly be interesting to follow the results and conclusions drawn from such an ambitious project.

NB: Page 1 of 3 - Please click on "external link" at the bottom to access the entire article.

On Wednesday, physicists turn on the multibillion-pound machine that will recreate the birth of the universe. Martin Rees applauds the greatest experiment in history

Einstein famously said that "the most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible". The universe isn't anarchic: it's full of patterns and structures.

The same physical laws apply in distant galaxies as in the lab. Our brains evolved to cope with life on the African savannah, but they can make sense of things far beyond our ancestors' experience - from subatomic particles, far too small to be imaged by any microscope, to galaxies billions of light years away.

As the centuries have passed, we have progressed remarkably in our understanding of the world around us. We know that the essence of all substances - their colour, texture, hardness and so forth - is set by the atoms of which they are made, and by how those atoms are linked together.

We know that in every cell of every living creature, atoms are configured into proteins and tangled strings of DNA. We know, even, that these atoms were all synthesised from pristine hydrogen by processes deep inside stars that died before our solar system came into being. We are literally the ashes of ancient stars - the "nuclear waste" from the fuel that made them shine.

We know, also, what forces acted on those stars, and act on our bodies. Isaac Newton showed that the force that makes apples fall is the same thing that holds the planets in their orbits and that controls the trajectory of spacecraft and satellites.

Michael Faraday achieved a further unification by showing that electric and magnetic forces were linked - an insight that led to electric motors and dynamos, and radio waves.

Nearly 100 years ago, Ernest Rutherford, then working in Manchester, inferred that an atom contained a nucleus, surrounded by a "cloud" of electrons. These developments have led to lasers, nuclear energy and much else.

But there are still gaps in our knowledge. In particular, we still can't link the forces uncovered by Faraday and Newton to the so-called "nuclear" force that actually holds the nuclei of atoms together - and without this force there would be no carbon, no oxygen and no life.

Nor can we make our theories about the universe work without adopting some very strange assumptions indeed: there seems, for instance, to be a mysterious force, latent in space itself, that is pushing everything apart and speeding up its expansion.

These profound questions can't be solved just by armchair theorists. In terms of innate brainpower, we're no wiser than Aristotle was; without successive generations of experiments, we would still believe, like him, in the four elements of earth, air, fire and water.

Science demands experimentation - and some scientific challenges are so great that they demand a massive enterprise, in which thousands of researchers combine their efforts to achieve a common goal.

This happened in astronomy with the Hubble Telescope, and in biology with the human genome project. And now it is happening in physics. The Large Hadron Collider, which will begin operations on Wednesday, will be the largest experiment in human history.

Constructed at a cost of £4.4 billion, shared among all participating nations, it is the latest in a series of successively more powerful particle accelerators that have been built at the CERN laboratory in Geneva.

CERN was set up in 1955 by European scientists who had won the ear of government through their nuclear work during the Second World War, and who recognised that progress in their subject would require equipment too expensive for any single European country to fund. But what started as a European project is now in effect a machine that belongs to the world.

An even more ambitious American project was cancelled owing to cost overruns, so the LHC is likely to be the world's premier accelerator for at least the next 15 years, home to scientists from America, Russia, Japan and everywhere else. Protons, after all, are the same from China to Peru - and indeed throughout the cosmos.

Continued

Book Review: Supercontinent, Ten Billion Years in the Life of Our Planet

2008-08-26T08:11:00.000-07:00

This book is all about continental drift, and plate tectonics, a phenomenon that The Urantia Book presents as fact long before the common acceptance of the theory

The Upper Crust

by Ted Nield

Supercontinent, Ten Billion Years in the Life of Our Planet
Ted Nield
Harvard Univ. Press, 2007
288 pp., $29.95

In Supercontinent: Ten Billion Years in the Life of Our Planet, author Ted Nield writes that the long and convoluted history of continental drift is actually three stories. The first story is about the scientific work that led to the modern geological paradigm of plate tectonics. Nield is keen to make this a story about people, including some of the most colorful scientists and explorers of the 20th century. The second thread is the story of earth history, with its changing geography, climate, and ecology.1 The third thread might be the most interesting to many readers, as Nield explores how Pangaea belongs to the company of "lost continents" that have captured imaginations, even fueled religious convictions, from Aristotle's Atlantis to the new age Mu. Nield weaves a thorough history of plate tectonics for popular audiences, drawing from historians of science (including Naomi Oreskes) and his personal relationships with contemporary workers at the cutting edge of research and discovery. As editor of Geoscientist, the magazine for Fellows of the Geological Society of London, Nield knows the material intimately and communicates it in a compelling manner.

The theory of plate tectonics is one of the major scientific achievements of the 20th century. Most geology textbooks tell the story as if it involved only two or three scientists, but Nield celebrates the wider cast of characters. Every student of geology learns about Alfred Wegener (1880-1930), the German atmospheric scientist who showed that rocks, fossils, and mountain belts match exactly where the continents can be fitted together. As a specialist on climates, Wegener was particularly interested in the distribution of glacial deposits from the Permian geologic period found on all the southern continents. He argued that if the continents at that time were in their present positions, an ice sheet would have implausibly extended from the South Pole to the equator, covering wide expanses of open ocean. The first edition of Wegener's Origin of Continents and Oceans was published in 1915, but his ideas were not adopted in his lifetime. Wegener perished in Greenland attempting to measure the movement of that particular icy landmass from Western Europe.

Nield resurrects the memory of forgotten and courageous 19th-century European geologists who mapped rocks in India, South Africa, and Australia, work that contributed to Wegener's synthesis. Preceding Pangaea, continents with names like Lemuria and Gonwanaland were proposed to explain distributions of organisms on southern continents that would seem to have required connections by land (so-called land bridges). But scientists eventually abandoned those hypothetical terrains as new evidence emerged.

While geologists were mapping the continents and comparing notes, geophysicists were learning about heat in the earth and developing models for how mountains rise and fall, leading to a comprehensive understanding of how the earth works. The synthesis of continental and marine geology with the geophysics of the inner earth came after World War II. Maps of the seafloor revealed the submarine boundaries of lithospheric plates that merged with mountain belts and fault zones on the continents. It turned out that continents are like lunch trays on a conveyor belt. Magnetic properties of the ocean crust revealed patterns of seafloor spreading away from mid-ocean ridges (where the conveyor belt begins). Mountain ranges, explosive volcanoes, and deep earthquakes mark the locations of plate convergence, even creating deep ocean trenches where ocean crust is pushed back into the earth (where the conveyor belt ends). You get Pangaea at the cafeteria when trays approaching the dishwasher collide into a mangled mess.

Nield explores sociological factors in the gradual acceptance of plate tectonics, suggesting that science is a kind of supercontinent. Just as plates are slowly shifted by a variety of forces, paradigm shifts in science can be preceded by decades of give and take between scientists. Wegener's idea was accepted earlier and more widely in Europe than in America. Frankly, American scientists were put off by Wegener's rather bombastic pronouncements (or at least the tone employed by his English translator). Nield suggests that European science was driven by inductive methods (allowing explanations to emerge from the data set), while American scientists practiced a democratic form of deduction called "multiple working hypotheses" (collection of data to deliberately test or reject numerous possible explanations). By American standards, Wegener and his cohort were jumping the gun. Also, Nield explains that scientific advances can stall or get sidetracked if scientific models become confused with reality. U.S. geographic surveyors were committed to a model of crust properties that was useful for correcting local gravity variations but carried the assumption that rocks do not flow over long periods of time. Europeans embraced a more dynamic model of the inner earth, making the idea of moving continents quite tenable. (While Nield doesn't disparage or completely neglect the role of U.S. scientists in the development of plate tectonics, I feel he ignores some important contributions from the New World to the emerging synthesis after World War II.)

The final third of the book is devoted to discoveries and theories about the earth before Pangaea. Nield uses the analogy of palimpsest texts to describe how geologists use ingenious geochemical methods to unravel the history of the earth's oldest rocks. The work has led to the "discovery" of supercontinents that preceded Pangaea: Ur some three billion years ago and Rodinia about one billion years ago. The influence of these Precambrian tectonic revolutions on the history of life is emerging from the supercontinent of science. Ur—with its marginal shallow seas—was a template for cyanobacteria growing layer upon slimy layer on the seafloor, converting carbon dioxide in the atmosphere into oxygen. Rodinia was an equatorial supercontinent, whose position and fragmentation may have promoted global cooling to the point of converting earth into a temporary snowball (or slushball, depending on the scientist). The appearance of multicellular life with three-layer bodies during the time of Rodinia's icy fragmentation about 650 million years ago implies some connection. "On the supercontinent of science, everything must fit together," the author reflects.aea

Nield considers how sometimes, in order to advance cultural or religious agendas, "scientific ideas about possible lost worlds have escaped the domain of science and taken on new life as myth." First there was the case of Lemuria,2 which was legitimized by Friedrich Engels and H. G. Wells as the missing nursery of humankind. Tamil religious scholars reasoned that Lemuria must be their mythic homeland Kumarikkanam. Spiritualist and Theosophy founder Helena Blavastsky claimed Lemuria as the paradise of pre-human ancestors who lived there with dinosaurs, before moving the whole kit and caboodle to another lost continent, Mu, in the south Pacific. Mu was promoted by a cottage industry of late 19th-century spiritualists on the basis of some wishful mistranslations of Mayan inscriptions. The account of ancient earth in the New Age Urantia Book refers to a supercontinent from which life originated one billion years ago, in embarrassing near-agreement with the scientific Rodinia.

Nield's commitment to philosophical naturalism is quite obvious throughout the book. He concludes on a blustering note, rejoicing in science's triumph over religion and mythology. Human hubris—the kind that inevitably follows from faith in an absolute creator, he contends—hinders the advance of knowledge, because "science tells us there is no absolute knowledge of any kind." Nield doesn't explain how scientific ancestors such as Isaac Newton, Robert Boyle, and (first Cambridge professor of geology) Adam Sedgwick—devout Christians all—managed somehow to overcome this handicap, not to mention the thousands of Christians and followers of other religious traditions in the sciences today. Nield compares the Tamil scholars' use of Lemuria to support their mythology with Christian creationists who, "By insisting on the literal truth of the creation myth told in the Old Testament and by vainly looking for evidence of the supernatural among the things of this world … espouse … both bad science and bad religion, demonstrating nothing more than ignorance on the one hand and lack of faith on the other." Ouch, he has a point there.

Given his concern over Young Earth creationism, Nield could have explored how this movement adopted plate tectonics. The founding document of modern creationism, The Genesis Flood by John Whitcomb and Henry Morris, was published in 1961, when many mainstream geologists still rejected continental drift. The authors could pretty much ignore the idea. But by the 1990s, Young Earthers were ready to incorporate plate tectonics into flood geology and their abbreviated view of geologic time. They simply sped up the film. The author of a creationist book popular with Christian homeschoolers proposes the "hydroplate" version, in which drift was lubricated by the release of water from a subcrustal layer via the "fountains of the deep" at the beginning of the Genesis Flood. Considering the temperature of water that is expelled from volcanoes (let alone the depths imagined by this scenario), the only safe place for Noah would have been in orbit. A more sophisticated proposal is the "catastrophic plate tectonics" model of Los Alamos geophysicist J. R. Baumgardner, who has a well-deserved international reputation on the modeling of earth-mantle convection (the process that most geoscientists believe drives continental drift). In presentations to the International Conference on Creationism, he cites experimental data on rock physics that indicate extreme weakening of material strength at mantle temperatures (though it appears he ignores other factors, such as pressure). Plugging these variables into a supercomputer, he can make continents drift at rates of meters per second, not centimeters per year (as they are moving now and geoscientists believe they have moved in the past). Here, Nield's warning about confusing scientific models with reality in nature is appropriate. When Baumgardner offers observational support for his model, he completely ignores the geology of the ocean floor (which does not support the predictions of his model) and instead chases fossil red herrings in sedimentary rocks deposited on continental crust.

While Nield's concerns over how creationists abuse science to justify their particular understanding of Scripture are legitimate, his contempt for religion is unjustified by the history of science. Indeed, Nield and too many other contemporary scientist-authors misuse science to justify their naturalism. Let's dispose of that silly idea about religion being bad for science. History shows that good ideas eventually win over bad ideas, exemplified by Wegener's Pangaea. If science is the supercontinent, why can't religion be the ocean?

1. Why ten billion years if the age of the earth is estimated to be roughly 4.5 billion years? Because Nield considers how the geography of the planet might change if it is around for another five billion years.

2. For more on Lemuria, see Philip Jenkins, "Continental Drift," Books & Culture, May/June 2005, p. 24, a review of Sumathi Ramaswamy, The Lost Land of Lemuria: Fabulous Geographies, Catastrophic Histories (Univ. of California Press, 2004). www.ctlibrary.com/ bc/2005/mayjun/20.24.html.

Stephen O. Moshier is associate professor of geology at Wheaton College.

"Words of Christ II" - listen FREE at Truthbook.com

2008-08-15T12:21:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends,

Pato Banton, internationally known Reggae artist, and devoted Urantia Book lover, has created a new sublime and inspiring CD, called The Words of Christ II. You can listen to the entire album at Truthbook.com.

Please click on "external link" at the bottom of this article to access the CD.

You may be familiar with Pato's original effort - The Words of Christ - which has been thrilling visitors to Truthbook.com for a couple of years now. Pato's soothing and unique voice narrating Jesus' words, accompanied by the amazing music of Clyde JJ Forde, combine to give the listener an incredibly inspiring new way to grasp the teachings of the Master.

In this new CD, Pato has chosen another thrilling collection of the Master's talks, discourses and sermons. As well as the matchless music and narration, the text of each selection can also be read while listening, giving you a total sight-and-sound-and-mind experience of absorbing these soul-satisfying lessons on life.

Click here to go to The Words of Christ II page at Truthbook.

We know that you will enjoy this wonderful new CD. Each selection can be emailed, so that your Christian and truth-seeking friends and family can share them with you, and we hope that you will feel free to take this opportunity to help spread the good news.

With Love and Affectionate Regard,
The Truthbook Team

Pato dedicates this lovingly produced CD with these words:

I would like to dedicate this labor of love to all genuine Truth Seekers.

For far too long people have focused their attention on the personality and appearance of Christ, when the true focus should be on his life and teachings.

What was hidden from the wise and prudent is now revealed to the babes and suckling in these words which have been taken from The Urantia Book. ~ Pato Banton

1. First Sermon In The Synagogue
2. Discourse On The Water Of Life & The Discourse On Assurance
3. Jesus' Teaching At Tyre
4. On Counting The Cost
5. The Discourse On True Religion
6. Why Do The Heathen Rage
7. The Sermon At Gerasa
8. Teaching About Accidents
9. The Talk About Angels
10. Teachings About Wealth
11. The Enquiring Greeks
12 Evil, Sin & Iniquity
13. Enmity Of The World
14. Sermon On The Good Shepherd
Pato Banton - Words of Christ II

Questions about Chromosome Count

2008-08-12T08:37:00.000-07:00

This is a question and answer recently published in the FAQ section of Truthbook.com regarding the number of chromosomes in human cells, vs the number of "trait determiners," and just what this seeming discrepancy of Urantia Book revelation with known science can mean.

At the end of this Q+A, there is a link to another site wherein author Kermit Anderson discusses these Urantia Book concepts as well.

Q: On page 397:11, The Urantia Book states that there are 48 units of pattern control in the sex cells of human reproduction. I believe this refers to chromosomes... if not, what could it mean? Our science counts 46 chromosomes. Prior to this discovery, it was thought there were 48, but that was in chimps.

I think this is fundamental to the truth of The Urantia Book, as it is stated as fact in the Origin of the Human Race, and all development is based on that assumed fact. This makes all so-called truths suspect. I wish this were not so, for I am a seeker.

A: Yes, The Urantia Book does state that there are 48 units of pattern control. The general assumption always tends to be that this is a reference to chromosomes and since it's incorrect then those looking for disputable facts will simply say, "see, The Urantia Book doesn't know what it's talking about." If the revelators had meant chromosomes they would have used that word since they did use it in one other place.

"On Urantia there are forty-eight units of pattern control--trait determiners--in the sex cells of human reproduction."(36:2.4)

This statement about "forty-eight units of pattern control"--forty-eight units of trait determiners (genes)--is in the context of the "design" of Urantia will creatures. The Life Carriers designed us with twenty-four chromosomes, twenty-two autosomes and two sex chromosomes. In the process of protein synthesis, the single-stranded messenger RNA (mRNA) is the "pattern". Each strand of the double-stranded DNA is a unit of "pattern control". The integrity of the pattern in each strand is controlled, because the DNA strands are a complementary pair. Therefore, each DNA strand serves as a control for the transcription of RNA patterns; and twenty-four chromosomes implies forty-eight units of pattern control, two for each chromosome.

The revelators point to "the sex cells of human reproduction", rather than to somatic cells, in an attempt to keep us from misinterpreting the statement. At the time of the revelation, scientists mistakenly thought that there were forty-eight chromosomes in a somatic cell; and even with the correct number of chromosomes (forty-six), the revelators are trying to help us avoid the confusion of the homologous pairs of autosomes in a somatic cell. A germ cell has twenty-three chromosomes, and "the sex cells" collectively are the two different implementation subsets of the full design set of twenty-four chromosomes.

The Hubble Deep Field: The Most Important Image Ever Taken

2008-06-25T13:46:00.000-07:00

In 2003, the Hubble Space Telescope took the image of a millenium, an image that shows our place in the universe. Anyone who understands what this image represents, is forever changed by it.

Urantia Book readers will not be surprised, but cheered and comforted, knowing that what our beloved Revelation reveals about God's incredible creation is more accurate than ever.

A trio of super-Earths

2008-06-19T09:53:00.000-07:00

An interesting article inviting thought and speculation regarding whether these new discoveries may harbor life...and further evidence that science is beginning to discover what we believe from reading The Urantia Book

Astronomers have found a triple system of super-Earths around the star HD 40307.

June 16, 2008

Today, at an international conference, a team of European astronomers announced a remarkable breakthrough in the field of extra-solar planets. Using the HARPS instrument at the ESO La Silla Observatory, they have found a triple system of super-Earths around the star HD 40307. Moreover, looking at their entire sample studied with HARPS, the astronomers count a total of 45 candidate planets with a mass below 30 Earth masses and an orbital period shorter than 50 days. This implies that one solar-like star out of three harbours such planets.

Since the discovery in 1995 of a planet around the star 51 Pegasi by Mayor and Didier Queloz, more than 270 exoplanets have been found, mostly around solar-like stars. Most of these planets are giants, such as Jupiter or Saturn, and current statistics show that about 1 out of
14 stars harbours this kind of planet.

"With the advent of much more precise instruments such as the HARPS spectrograph on ESO's 3.6-m telescope at La Silla, we can now discover smaller planets, with masses between 2 and 10 times the Earth's mass,"
says Stephane Udry, one of Mayor's colleagues. Such planets are called super-Earths, as they are more massive than the Earth but less massive than Uranus and Neptune (about 15 Earth masses).

The group of astronomers have now discovered a system of three super-Earths around a rather normal star, which is slightly less massive than our Sun, and is located 42 light-years away towards the southern Doradus and Pictor constellations.

"We have made very precise measurements of the velocity of the star HD
40307 over the last five years, which clearly reveal the presence of three planets," says Mayor.

The planets, having 4.2, 6.7, and 9.4 times the mass of the Earth, orbit the star with periods of 4.3, 9.6, and 20.4 days, respectively.

"The perturbations induced by the planets are really tiny - the mass of the smallest planets is one hundred thousand times smaller than that of the star - and only the high sensitivity of HARPS made it possible to detect them," says co-author Francois Bouchy, from the Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris, France.

Indeed, each planet induces a motion of the star of only a few metres per second.

At the same conference, the team of astronomers announced the discovery of two other planetary systems, also with the HARPS spectrograph. In one, a super-Earth (7.5 Earth masses) orbits the star HD 181433 in 9.5 days. This star also hosts a Jupiter-like planet with a period close to 3 years. The second system contains a 22 Earth-mass planet having a period of 4 days and a Saturn-like planet with a 3-year period as well.

"Clearly these planets are only the tip of the iceberg," says Mayor.
"The analysis of all the stars studied with HARPS shows that about one third of all solar-like stars have either super-Earth or Neptune-like planets with orbital periods shorter than 50 days."

A planet in a tight, short-period orbit is indeed easier to find than one in a wide, long-period orbit.

"It is most probable that there are many other planets present: not only super-Earth and Neptune-like planets with longer periods, but also Earth-like planets that we cannot detect yet. Add to it the Jupiter-like planets already known, and you may well arrive at the conclusion that planets are ubiquitous," concludes Udry.

Won't Do War No More

2008-06-13T17:13:00.000-07:00

War, huh, good God y’all, what is it good for – absolutely nothing.

This is a song from my childhood – and because it was in a recent movie my kids walk around the house singing it. Things get much weirder as we get older.

They think the song is funny, because the movie was a comedy, but for me it brings up memories of Vietnam and the era of war protesters. Since I was a kid I have vague memories of those days; protests on TV, images of the war, Nixon resigning, arguments at school (I was a loyal Republican in 5th grade). Today I have a better understanding of what went on. Several people I have met over the years served in Vietnam. Russ talked about terrifying helicopter rides, midnight rocket attacks and endless rain. The thing that impressed me the most from Russ was his powerful hatred of the Vietnamese. Twenty years removed and he still called them gooks. He was unashamed in his disgust for an entire people. If this is the result of war then I think that the song is true – what is it good for – absolutely nothing.

The Urantia Book says that war is part of the normal development of all worlds like ours. Nations form and seek security (576.8) and self preservation. I think that the writers of the book would defend the necessity of going to war as the United States did after attacked in 1941. However, the necessity of the current Iraq war is less clear and therefore it has raised questions concerning the legitimacy of this fight and the legitimacy of war altogether.

What is clear within The Urantia Book is the idea that war will disappear from the planet sometime in the future (630.1). In fact war must be abandoned if our civilization is to continue to advance (785.14). And so even though war is a necessary part of our planet’s development, humanity needs to find ways to eliminate it in order to advance to higher levels of civilization. War may not be good for nothing, but it will hold us back as we strive to develop a world culture that is more in line with the vision our Father in Heaven has for us.

That vision includes peace on earth, good will towards men. Does the book give us an idea as to how we can help bring this about? It sure does, and I think we readers can help these ideas work themselves into mainstream society. The Urantia Book says that the ideas that support the need for war need to be replaced by less violent strategies for resolving national conflicts (786.10). A recent example of this is economic boycotts. Though they too cause suffering, the damage to the innocent citizens of a country is not as great as all out warfare. In my mind lobbying for economic means for conflict resolution over military means is a step in the right direction. But The Urantia Book argues for a more radical development that readers should think seriously about promoting.

Universal government is the future of our world. The Urantia book says that war will not end until “unlimited national sovereignty” ends (1487.9). Individual states under a single world wide government is the key to bringing peace to our troubled world. The book uses the example of the formation of the United States. The original government of the independent thirteen colonies was a confederation which had little or no power to control the local states. This system was quickly abandoned as the thirteen states formed a strong national government while keeping the identity of the local states intact. The Urantia Book argues that this example can be expanded to the whole world (1489.4). I feel that readers of the book should be lobbying to change the minds of the people around us in an effort to make this a reality. We can be part of a small but crucial process of bringing peace to our troubled world.

Bringing peace will not be quick or easy (597.3). I don’t think I will live to see a peaceful world. The book says that the following steps also need to occur and it sounds like a daunting challenge: globalization of contacts, a common language and interracial living (597.4); increased knowledge of all cultures (597.5); growth of morals of ethics (597.6); political wisdom (598.1); continued spiritual growth (598.2). I don’t have any illusions that I will wake up one morning and everyone will be transformed. But I do believe that all of this will happen one day and that I can play a small part in God’s wonderful plan for our world.

What continues to amaze me is the repeated message that changing ourselves and our world for the better is in our hands. God has given us the responsibility, the opportunity and the resources to make miracles happen. God is certainly helping us with a cosmos of spiritual forces at work furthering the development of all people. And yet, God has placed the crucial elements of social and spiritual growth with you and me. God has ordained that we have the ability to change our world. And so I can do something to bring peace on earth – I can talk to the people around me about the concepts that The Urantia Book promotes. And slowly, person by person, with God’s help, things will change and the nations won’t make war no more.

God bless you,

William Whitehead

© 2006 All Rights Reserved

Stars, Galaxies, Superuniverses and The Urantia Book

2008-05-21T07:32:00.000-07:00

STARS,
GALAXIES,
SUPERUNIVERSES
and
THE URANTIA BOOK

by Frederick L. Beckner

Please click on "external source article" for the complete article, including space images.

INTRODUCTION

In the past several years, since the advent of the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), there has been an explosion of astronomical information relating to our Milky Way galaxy, our Local Group of galaxies, and myriads of galaxies unknown at the time the Urantia Book was written. The HST has even allowed us a glimpse at galaxies believed to be near the edge of the universe itself. Figure 1 shows a portion of the Deep Field South image showing galaxies at distances out to 12 billion light years.

The Urantia Book contains a description of the universe which one might describe as "Urantian cosmology." This cosmological information, written prior to 1941 by celestial beings, was derived from revelation, not human astronomical science. It is therefore of interest to examine the Urantian cosmology, some 60 years later, to see how this revelation squares with current astronomical knowledge.

Much information of cosmological interest can be obtained by analysis of selected portions of the Urantia Book text. For example, the number of suns in the Master Universe, being all of material creation, is said to be equal to the number of glasses of water in the oceans of our planet. This paper describes a procedure for calculating this number given current readily-available information, arriving at a figure of 4.5 billion trillion suns. I will show that this number is in reasonable agreement with current knowledge.

Given this number and other astronomical information now available we are able to compute the average number of stars per galaxy. Given the identification of our Milky Way galaxy as the inhabitable portion of the superuniverse of Orvonton, we can estimate the number of inhabitable planets per star. It is even possible to determine, within limits, the size of the Grand Universe, our superuniverse, and our local universe of Nebadon.

After performing these calculations and comparing the results with current astronomical knowledge where possible, one finds that the Urantian cosmology is not generally inconsistent with our present knowledge of the universe. This is in spite of the fact that the Urantia Book states that it’s cosmology is not divinely inspired and may require revision in the future.

"The cosmology of these revelations is not inspired. It is limited by our permission for the co-ordination and sorting of present-day knowledge." (UB1109:3)

Urantian Cosmology

An overview of Urantian cosmology is given on the first page of the Urantia Book.

"Your world, Urantia, is one of many similar inhabited planets which comprise the local universe of Nebadon. This universe, together with similar creations, makes up the superuniverse of Orvonton, from whose capital, Uversa, our commission hails. Orvonton is one of the seven evolutionary superuniverses of time and space which circle the never-beginning, never-ending creation of divine perfection—the central universe of Havona. At the heart of this eternal and central universe is the stationary Isle of Paradise, the geographic center of infinity and the dwelling place of the eternal God.

The seven evolving superuniverses in association with the central and divine universe, we commonly refer to as the grand universe; these are the now organized and inhabited creations. They are all a part of the master universe, which also embraces the uninhabited but mobilizing universes of outer space." (UB1:5-6)

We thus live in the grand universe, which includes the presently-inhabited portion of the much larger master universe. The grand universe is subdivided into seven superuniverses, or collections of galaxies, one for each of the seven possible Master Spirits, or personality associations of the three triune manifestations of God. The seventh Master Spirit, being the association of the Universal Father, Eternal Son, and Infinite Spirit supervises our superuniverse of Orvonton. We will show that the Milky Way galaxy lies entirely within Orvonton, and is the greatest part of the inhabited portion of Orvonton. The capital of our superuniverse is called Uversa and will be shown to be located outside the Milky Way galaxy.

"Satania has a headquarters world called Jerusem, and it is system number twenty-four in the constellation of Norlatiadek. Your constellation, Norlatiadek, consists of one hundred local systems and has a headquarters world called Edentia. Norlatiadek is number seventy in the universe of Nebadon. The local universe of Nebadon consists of one hundred constellations and has a capital known as Salvington. " (UB182:5)

We also live in a star system called Satania, presumably named after Satan, a lieutenant and associate of Lucifer, a former ruler of Satania, who led a rebellion against God, which resulted in the isolation of our planet, Urantia, from the rest of the universe. Jerusem is said to be an architectural sphere, or artificial world, and thus is nonluminous and is not visible by telescopic means from Urantia. It is of special interest because it is on a subsatellite of a satellite of Jerusem that we are resurrected after death. This is the location of the mansion worlds mentioned by Jesus.

Our star system of Satania is one of approximately 10,000 such systems in our local universe of Nebadon. This local universe was created by a Creator Son of God, Michael, who incarnated on Urantia to live the life of one of His mortal creatures and to reveal the nature of God the Father to the inhabitants of His local universe. Michael is better known on Urantia as His mortal incarnation, Jesus of Nazareth. The Urantia Book specifically says that our local universe of Nebadon is not a physical star system, but that its capital, Salvington, is within such a system. We will show that our local universe is approximately 4000 light years in diameter.

With this brief overview of Urantian cosmology, we are now prepared to examine specific teachings of the Urantia Book and to compare them with current astronomical knowledge.

The Master Universe

Size of the Master Universe

The Urantia Book does not explicitly give a size for the master universe. It does imply that the master universe is finite and is expanding.

"Even if the master universe eventually expands to infinity…" (UB92:6)

Current scientific estimates of the size of the master universe are generally based on the theory of the "big bang" where the universe came into being at an instant of time about 14 billion years ago, and has expanded outwards from this point at the speed of light ever since. A good discussion of three techniques for determining this age is given at http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/age.html. Under these assumptions, it is thus a sphere having a radius of about 14 billion light years.

The Urantia Book implicitly denies the big bang theory, for it implies that the master universe was already in existence 875 billion years ago. It was at this time the Andronover nebula was initiated which resulted in our local universe of Nebadon.

"875,000,000,000 years ago the enormous Andronover nebula number 876,926 was duly initiated." (UB652:2)

Number of Stars in the Master Universe

The Urantia Book contains the following statement about the number of stars in the master universe.

“But in the master universe there are as many suns as there are glasses of water in the oceans of your world.” (UB173:0)

The volume of the oceans of Urantia can be found on the United States Geological Survey web site, www.usgs.gov/edu/waterdistribution.html, as 317 million cubic miles. Knowing this, and that one cubic mile is equivalent to 4.167 x 109 cubic meters, one finds that the volume of water on Urantia is 1.321 x 1018 m3 or 1.321 x 1024 cm3.

Another source states that the oceans cover 70 percent of the earth’s surface and have an average depth of 2 miles. The area of the earth’s surface is 4 pi times the square of the earth’s radius of 6,350 km. Given this, one can calculate that the volume of this water is 1.14 x 1024 cm3, which is in substantial agreement with the volume given by the USGS.

To compute the number of stars in the master universe we need a number for the volume of a glass of water. A small juice glass in my kitchen has a volume of 200 cm3. A typical drinking glass that I use daily has a volume of 300 cm3, and the volume of the largest glass I have is 500 cm3. Thus, taking the volume to be 300 cm3 will give results accurate to within about +/- 40%, a figure sufficient for our purposes. Given that the volume of a typical glass of water is about 300 cm3, one can calculate that the number of glasses of water in the oceans of Urantia is about 4.4 x 1021. Thus, according to the Urantia Book, the number of suns in the master universe must be on the order of 4.4 x 1021. The web site, Atlas of the Universe (http://anzwers.org/free/universe/universe.html), states that there are 2.0 x 1021 stars in the visible universe.

To put this number in perspective consider that a cubic rock salt crystal 0.92 cm (0.36 inches) on an edge will contain the same number of molecules. This can be calculated given that rock salt is a cubic crystal with a lattice constant of 5.64 x 10-8 cm. We can conclude that the number of atoms in the human body is much greater than the number of stars in the universe.

The Mass of the Master Universe
Given the number of stars in the master universe it is possible to estimate its mass. Given that the sun is an average star, and the mass of the sun is 1.989 x 1033 g (grams), then the mass of all the stars in the master universe would be 4.4 x 1021 * 1.989 x 1033 = 9 x 1054 g. Currently astronomers believe that more than 90% of the mass of the universe is tied up in “dark matter.” Thus the mass of the universe would be about ten times the mass of all the visible stars, or about 9 x 1055 g.

Eddington, in his book, Fundamental Theory (1946, p 105), computes the mass of the universe from general relativistic theory as 1.98 x 1055 g which is within a factor of 4.5 of the value inferred from UB statements. Thus these estimates agree within an order of magnitude, although we have no proof that either Eddington’s value or the UB value is correct. Eddington also computes the number of protons in the universe to be 3/2 * 2256 * 136 = 2.36 x 1079 (p283).

Number of Galaxies in the Master Universe
“In the not-distant future, new telescopes will reveal to the wondering gaze of Urantian astronomers no less than 375 million new galaxies in the remote stretches of outer space.” (UB130:5)

The Urantia Book is probably referring here to the Hale (Mt Palomar) telescope, which went into operation in 1948. The figure 375 million thus refers to the additional new galaxies observable when the Hale telescope was put into operation, not the number of galaxies in the master universe. Recently the Hubble Space Telescope made two deep field images, in the region of the North Pole, and another in the region of the South Pole (see Figure 1), these regions being those which could be continuously observed for long periods of time without interruption by occultation by the Earth. Exposure times of 10 days were used. From the north deep field image astronomers estimate that there are 80 billion galaxies in the universe. From the southern image they estimate that there are 125 billion galaxies in the universe. For the purposes of this paper we will assume that there are at least 100 billion galaxies in the master universe.

Number of Stars Per Galaxy

Given this number of galaxies and the total number of stars in the master universe, one can calculate that the average number of stars per galaxy is 4.4 x 1021 stars divided by 1.0 x 1011 galaxies or 4.4 x 1010 stars per galaxy (44 billion). The number of stars in our Milky Way galaxy is estimated to be around 200 to 400 billion. This is pretty good agreement with our average number since our galaxy is the second largest in our local cluster of about 30 galaxies, and thus may be considered to be an exceptionally large galaxy. There are many more small galaxies of the elliptical or globular types than there are of the spiral type such as our Milky Way. The information on the number of stars in the Milky Way was obtained from the University of Arizona at http://seds.lpl.arizona.edu/messier/more/mw.html.

Density of Stars in the Master Universe

If there are 4.4 x 1021 stars in the master universe and if the radius of the master universe is 14 billion light years, then the average density of stars in the master universe is 3.8 x 10-10 stars per cubic light year. If the stars were uniformly distributed throughout the master universe the minimum distance between stars would be about 1,400 light years. Actually, the stars cluster into globular clusters, galaxies, clusters of galaxies, and galactic superclusters where the stellar density is significantly greater than the average density, and leaving great voids in which the stellar density is much less than average. Given knowledge of the density of stars in a given region, it is possible to estimate the volume of the sphere necessary to contain a given number of stars, and from this to determine the approximate radius of this sphere. This technique will be used later to compute radii for the grand universe, our superuniverse, and our local universe.

The Grand Universe and Orvonton

Size of the Grand Universe

The size of the grand universe can be estimated from the number of stars it contains and an estimate of the average star density on that scale. The Urantia Book says there are ten trillion stars in our superuniverse (UB172:7). If we assume that all seven superuniverses are of approximately the same size, then there would be 70 trillion stars in the grand universe.

If the grand universe contains seventy trillion stars, and if these stars are in galaxies which are approximately uniformly distributed throughout the master universe, then the volume of space occupied by the grand universe will be a fraction 70 x 1012/4.4 x 1021 = 1.59 x 10-8 of the volume of the master universe. The current estimate of the radius of the master universe is about 14 billion light years. Since the volume is proportional to the radius cubed, the radius of the grand universe would be of the order of (1.59 x 10-8)0.333 = 2.5 x 10-3 times the radius of the master universe, or about 35 million light years. This assumes that the star density in the Grand Universe is the same as in the Master Universe.

There is good reason to believe that the actual star density within our local part of the universe is considerably higher than the average density throughout the master universe. This is because the stars are grouped into galaxies, clusters of galaxies, and even larger superclusters of galaxies leaving other areas with voids containing relatively few galaxies. We may estimate the average density of stars in our local group of galaxies in the following manner.

One source, the Atlas of the Universe, http://anzwers.org/free/universe/localgr.html, states that there are about 700 x 109 stars within 5 million light years of Earth. The density of stars in this volume is thus about 1.3 x 10-9 per cubic light year, or about 3.3 times the average density of the master universe. The same source gives the density in a sphere of about 1 billion light years as 1.19 x 10-10 per cubic light year. Thus this source estimates that the star density in our local area is about 10 times greater than that in a volume much greater than the volume of any supercluster. Given this, we must reduce our estimate of the size of the grand universe by a factor of the cube root of ten (10.333 = 2.15) to allow for the higher local density of stars. Our corrected estimate of the radius of the grand universe is then 35/2.15 = 16 million light years.

Since Havona is at the center of the grand universe, the distance from Earth to Havona would be about 16 million light years. If there are seven superuniverses distributed equally in angle about Havona, then the distance to the nearest superuniverse outside Orvonton would be about 14 million light years.

Another clue to the size of the grand universe is given in the following passage:

“Long before the presence of life on Urantia the [Solitary] messenger now associated with me was assigned on a mission out of Uversa to the central universe—was absent from the roll calls of Orvonton for almost a million years but returned in due time with the desired information.” (UB259:2)

The time given in this passage is most likely given in Uversa years, since the writers of the book seem to be quite explicit when they refer to Urantia years, calling such times either “Urantia years” or “years of Urantia time” 23 times throughout the book. Since the Solitary Messengers can travel at the rate of 4.52 million light years per Urantian year (UB267:1) and assuming the time given is in Uversa years (8.2 Urantia years, see UB174:2) the distance traveled by the Solitary Messenger would be less than 37 trillion light years. The distance to Havona would then be less than 18.5 trillion light years. This would be in good agreement with the value derived above from the number of stars in Orvonton if the Solitary Messenger had been absent only one Uversa year rather than one million years.

Number of Stars in Orvonton

The Urantia Book specifically gives the number of suns within Orvonton.

“The superuniverse of Orvonton is illuminated and warmed by more than ten trillion blazing suns.” (UB172:7)

This number of suns is indicative that Orvonton is composed of more than one galaxy, since the Milky Way, the second largest galaxy within the Local Group, is currently thought to contain about 200 to 400 billion stars. It would take at least 25 Milky Way or about 110 average galaxies to contain ten trillion stars. It is thus clear that our superuniverse of Orvonton is significantly bigger than our local group of about 30 galaxies and is much bigger than the Milky Way galaxy.

The Size of Orvonton

The Urantia Book gives at least seven different clues as to the size of our superuniverse, Orvonton.

"Although the unaided human eye can see only two or three nebulae outside the borders of the superuniverse of Orvonton, your telescopes literally reveal millions upon millions of these physical universes in process of formation." (UB130:4)

The galaxy M81, shown in Figure 2, is visible to the unaided eye under very good viewing conditions. This 6.9 magnitude galaxy is 12 million light years distant and is probably not within Orvonton. It is a candidate for being another of the seven superuniverses.

This passage clearly delineates the spatial extension of Orvonton, since is says that the unaided human eye can see nebulae outside Orvonton. This means that the many galaxies visible by means of the telescope are not within Orvonton. This passage continues saying

“Most of the starry realms visually exposed to the search of your present-day telescopes are in Orvonton, but with photographic technique the larger telescopes penetrate far beyond the borders of the grand universe into the domains of outer space, where untold universes are in process of organization.” (UB130:4)

This sentence says that most the stars visible by eye through large telescopes are within Orvonton. This is one of the primary distinguishing characteristics of the galaxies within the Local Group; that they contain individual stars which are visible by aid of a telescope. An implication of this sentence is that some of these starry realms are outside of Orvonton. Thus some of the Local Group galaxies are outside of Orvonton. For more information on the Local Group refer to the web page of the University of Arizona Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, http://seds.lpl.arizona.edu/messier/more/local.html.

The upper limit on the radius of the grand universe of 16 million light years also implies an upper limit on the size of our superuniverse, Orvonton. If the seven superuniverses are spherical, equal in size, do not overlap, and are evenly distributed in a circle of radius equal to 16 million light years, then the radius of each superuniverse must be smaller than about 8 million light years. This must be considered to be an extreme upper limit to the size of Orvonton.

Another estimate of the size of Orvonton can be obtained in the same manner as our estimate of the size of the grand universe. If Orvonton contains 10 trillion stars, and if there are 4.4 x 1021 stars evenly distributed in the master universe, then a volume of space with a radius of 15.5 million light years would be required to hold this number of stars. Making the same correction for the difference between the local star density and that of the average density in the universe gives a radius of Orvonton of 15.6/2.15 = 7.2 million light years.

The statement that the Divine Counselor can reach any part of the superuniverse in less than one year implies that the radius of the superuniverse must be less than 4.5 million light years. Assuming that Urantia and Jerusem are in the relative close proximity of 2000 light years, then the radius of Orvonton must be less than 3.35 times 1.35 million light years, or 4.5 million light years.

Another limit to the size of Orvonton can be derived from a passage concerning the physical-energy circuits.

“The power centers and physical controllers of the superuniverses assume direction and partial control of the thirty energy systems which comprise the gravita domain. The physical-energy circuits administered by the power centers of Uversa require a little over 968 million years to complete the encirclement of the superuniverse.” (UB175:5)

This passage seems to indicate that the circumference of the superuniverse is 968 million light years. This would indicate that the radius of the superuniverse is 154 million light years. This value is inconsistent with our previously derived information about the size of the superuniverse. The value of 968 million years could be the sum of the travel times from the center of the superuniverse to the outer circumference, around the circumference, and back to the center, for all 30 energy systems. Assuming this, and if these circuits all travel at the velocity of light, then the radius of the superuniverse would be about 3.9 million light years. This value is consistent with our other information.

The size of Orvonton can be estimated from the passage that implies that no less than 4% of the volume of Orvonton is inhabited (UB121:5). From this, and assuming that Orvonton is roughly spherical we may infer that the ratio of the radius of Orvonton to that of the inhabited portion of Orvonton is no less than 2.92. Given that the radius of the inhabited portion of Orvonton is 250,000 light years (UB359:8), then the radius of Orvonton is not less than 730,000 light years.

Another indication of the size of Orvonton comes from the information given in the UB on the Andromeda galaxy. If Andromeda is within Orvonton as indicated by the UB, and if the distance to Andromeda is 1 million light years, then the radius of Orvonton must be at least 500 thousand light years.

Given the above considerations, one may conclude that the radius of Orvonton is greater than 730,000 and less than 4 million light years, possibly about 3 million light years. This would include the large Andromeda and Triangulum galaxies as well as a great number of other smaller galaxies necessary to give the stated number of stars.

The Milky Way Galaxy is within Orvonton

The Urantia Book indicates that our Milky Way galaxy is within the superuniverse of Orvonton.

“Practically all of the starry realms visible to the naked eye on Urantia belong to the seventh section of the grand universe, the superuniverse of Orvonton. The vast Milky Way starry system represents the central nucleus of Orvonton, being largely beyond the borders of your local universe. This great aggregation of suns, dark islands of space, double stars, globular clusters, star clouds, spiral and other nebulae, together with myriads of individual planets, forms a watchlike, elongated-circular grouping of about one seventh of the inhabited evolutionary universes.” (UB167:3)

One-seventh of the inhabited evolutionary universes (I take this to mean local universes) may very well mean that the Milky Way contains nearly the entire inhabited portion of Orvonton, which is one-seventh of the superuniverses in the grand universe.

The idea that the Milky Way galaxy is within the superuniverse of Orvonton is made even more specific in the following passage.

“They [the short space rays] emanate in the largest quantities from the densest plane of the superuniverse, the Milky Way, which is also the densest plane of the outer universes.” (UB475:1)

This passage can also be read to imply that the other outer universes (the other six superuniverses) lie in the plane of the Milky Way galaxy. It can also be read as implying that the Milky Way galaxy is the superuniverse of Orvonton, but this interpretation is inconsistent with the statement that Orvonton contains ten trillion stars, which is much larger than the 200 to 400 billion stars in the Milky Way.

We may infer that other nebulae (galaxies) outside the Milky Way belong to Orvonton from the passage

“some of the nebulae which Urantian astronomers regard as extragalactic are actually on the fringe of Orvonton and are traveling along with us.” (UB131:0)

The Andromeda and Triangulum galaxies and the Large and Small Magellanic clouds are examples of such nebulae which are extragalactic (outside the Milky Way galaxy) but which are part of Orvonton.

The following passage indicates that there are at least seven galaxies in Orvonton.

“Of the ten major divisions of Orvonton, eight have been roughly identified by Urantian astronomers. The other two are difficult of separate recognition because you are obliged to view these phenomena from the inside. If you could look upon the superuniverse of Orvonton from a position far-distant in space, you would immediately recognize the ten major sectors of the seventh galaxy.” (UB167:8)

One can presume that they are talking about the Milky Way galaxy as the seventh galaxy in Orvonton. These ten major sectors also presumably refer to ten arms of our spiral galaxy. In one visualization of the spiral arms of the Milky Way (see http://casswww.ucsd.edu/public/tutorial/MW.html) I can count only eight arms. The Atlas of the Universe site gives the names of six arms of our galaxy: the Cygnas, Perseus, Orion, Sagittarius, Scutum-Crux, and Norma arms. At this time we cannot exclude the possibility of their being ten arms, since much of the structure of our galaxy is hidden from us by dust clouds, radio observations being the only practical way to observe behind these clouds.

The Small and Large Magellanic Clouds are within Orvonton
Two nearby extragalactic nebula which were known before the invention of the telescope are the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, which were noted by Magellan in 1519 during his voyages in the southern oceans. The Small Magellanic Cloud, shown in Figure 3, is at a distance of about 210,000 light years, while the Large Magellanic Cloud is only 179,000 light years away. Being at a distance of less than 250,000 light years from the center of the Milky Way puts them within the inhabited portion of Orvonton.

Uversa, the Capital of Orvonton, is not within the Milky Way
The Urantia Book gives the distance from our system capital of Jerusem to the center of the superuniverse of Orvonton. This distance corresponds to the distance to the Small Magellanic Cloud. Thus it is possible, although not likely as we will show later, that Uversa is within the SMC.

“The Satania system of inhabited worlds is far removed from Uversa and that great sun cluster which functions as the physical or astronomic center of the seventh superuniverse. From Jerusem, the headquarters of Satania, it is over two hundred thousand light-years to the physical center of the superuniverse of Orvonton, far, far away in the dense diameter of the Milky Way. Satania is on the periphery of the local universe, and Nebadon is now well out towards the edge of Orvonton. From the outermost system of inhabited worlds to the center of the superuniverse is a trifle less than two hundred and fifty thousand light-years. “ (UB359:8)

Being at a distance of 210,000 light years from the center of the Milky Way, the Small Magellanic Cloud is certainly “over two hundred thousand light-years” from Jerusem, and thus might be a candidate for the location of Uversa. The Small Magellanic Cloud does not, however, seem to be centrally located with respect to the three largest nearby galaxies, the Milky Way, Andromeda (M31), and Triangulum (M33). One must read “far, far away in the dense diameter of the Milky Way” as indicating a direction relative to Jerusem, rather than a position. This would be consistent with accepted astronomical usage of the word “in”, as meaning in the same direction. Thus a planet is said to be “in” Aquarius, etc. To specifically locate the center of the superuniverse at the center of the Milky Way galaxy, one would use the words “at the center of” rather than “in.”

Taking the center of the superuniverse at the center of the Milky Way galaxy would be inconsistent with current knowledge in that the disk of the Milky Way is about 120,000 light years in diameter, and that Urantia (and presumably Satania) is about 26,000 light years from the center of the galaxy. Thus the distance from Satania to the center of the superuniverse would likely be slightly less than 26,000 light years, and not over 200,000 light years as stated. We thus conclude that the center of the superuniverse of Orvonton is not within the Milky Way galaxy.

Uversa Is Not Near the Center of the Milky Way

A Divine Counselor of Uversa states that he required 109 days to travel from Uversa to Urantia. He also says that his velocity is less than that of a Solitary Messenger. This allows one to place a lower limit on the distance from Urantia to Uversa.

“Trinity-origin beings possess prerogatives of transit which make them independent of transport personalities, such as seraphim. We all possess the power of moving about freely and quickly in the universe of universes. Excepting the Inspired Trinity Spirits, we cannot attain the almost unbelievable velocity of the Solitary Messengers, but we are able so to utilize the sum total of the transport facilities in space that we can reach any point in a superuniverse, from its headquarters [Uversa], in less than one year of Urantia time. It required 109 days of your time for me to journey from Uversa to Urantia.” (UB222:6)

This passage also allows one to compute the ratio of the distance from Uversa to the outermost point of Orvonton, basically the radius of Orvonton to the distance from Uversa to Urantia. This ratio is that of one year to 109 days or 365.25/109 = 3.35. Since we know that the radius of the inhabited portion of Orvonton is greater than 250,000 light years, then the distance from Urantia to Uversa must be greater than 74,600 light years. Since the distance from Urantia to the center of the Milky Way galaxy is about 26,000 light years, one can conclude that Uversa is not near the center of the Milky Way.

Another passage of the Urantia Book supports the notion that Uversa is not located at the center of the Milky Way.

“Uversa is favorably situated for the work of this [astronomy] colony, not only because of its central location, but also because there are no gigantic living or dead suns near at hand to disturb the energy currents.” (UB338:4)

It is known that there is a black hole at the center of the Milky Way which should be even more effective at disturbing the energy currents than living or dead suns. Due to dust clouds, dark nebulae, and a very high density of stars, the center of the galaxy would be a most unfavorable location for an astronomy colony.

Uversa is at the Astronomic Center of Orvonton

The following passages indicate that the various components of Orvonton rotate about Uversa, and thus Uversa is the astronomic center of Orvonton.

“The Sagittarius sector and all other sectors and divisions of Orvonton are in rotation around Uversa, … “ (UB168:3)

“6. The whirl of the ten major sectors, the so-called star drifts, about the Uversa headquarters of Orvonton.” (UB168:3)

This rotation about Uversa is presumably not due to the gravitational attraction of Uversa since it is an architectural world and this would be of relatively insignificant mass.

“10. Architectural Worlds. These are the worlds which are built according to plans and specifications for some special purpose, such as Salvington, the headquarters of your local universe, and Uversa, the seat of government of our superuniverse.” (UB172:1)

The statement that

“The Satania system of inhabited worlds is far removed from Uversa and that great sun cluster which functions as the physical or astronomic center of the seventh superuniverse.” (UB359:8)

also supports the notion that Uversa is at the physical center of Orvonton, and that it is at a great distance from Urantia.

An Upper Limit on the Distance to Uversa

The velocity of a Solitary Messenger as given in the passage below can be shown to be equivalent to 4.52 million light years per year of Urantia time.

“Their velocity in traversing space is variable, depending on a great variety of interfering influences, but the record shows that on the journey to fulfill this mission my associate messenger proceeded at the rate of 841,621,642,000 of your miles per second of your time.” (UB261:1)

Since the speed of light is 1.862809 x 105 miles/sec, the speed of the Solitary Messenger is 8.41621642 x 1011 miles per second divided by 1.862809 x 105 = 4.518 x 106 light years/ year. This is warp 4.5 million!

Given this speed, the travel time of 109 days stated above, and the location of Jerusem within 4000 light years of Urantia implies that the distance from Urantia to Uversa must be less than 1.35 million light years

Fraction of Orvonton which is Inhabited.

The UB implies that only a small fraction, between one and four percent, of Orvonton is currently inhabited.

“That portion of Paradise which has been designated for the use of the existing universes is occupied only from one to four per cent, while the area assigned to these activities is at least one million times that actually required for such purposes. Paradise is large enough to accommodate the activities of an almost infinite creation.” (UB121:5)

This implies that the inhabited portion of each superuniverse occupies between one and four percent of the inhabitable planets of that superuniverse. Thus Orvonton contains 10 trillion stars, 40 trillion planets, 1 trillion inhabitable planets, and the inhabited portion of Orvonton contains between 10 and 40 billion inhabited planets, and must contain between 100 and 400 billion stars. The Milky Way galaxy has been estimated to contain between 200 and 500 billion stars. Thus it appears that the Milky Way galaxy contains most of the inhabited portion of Orvonton.

The ratio of the number of stars in the mostly uninhabited master universe to that of the grand universe is 4.4 x 1021/7 x 1013 = 6.3 x 107 (63 million). Could this be the reason that this portion of Paradise is over one million times greater than that actually required at present?

The Size of the Inhabited Portion of Orvonton

The Urantia Book gives a fairly precise indication of the size of the inhabited portion of Orvonton.

“From the outermost system of inhabited worlds to the center of the superuniverse is a trifle less than two hundred and fifty thousand light-years.” (UB359:8)

The radius of the Milky Way galaxy is about 65,000 light years. If the Milky Way contains the “central nucleus”, or inhabited portion, of Orvonton, then all of the Milky Way would likely be within the inhabited portion of Orvonton as we concluded above. This also establishes that the radius of Orvonton must be significantly greater than 250,000 light years.

Andromeda not within Inhabited Portion of Orvonton

The Urantia Book explicitly denies that the Andromeda galaxy, shown in Figure 4, is within the inhabited portion of Orvonton, our superuniverse.

“There are not many sun-forming nebulae active in Orvonton at the present time, though Andromeda, which is outside the inhabited superuniverse, is very active.” (UB170:1)

This passage implies that Andromeda is, however, within Orvonton. Notice that the UB is here making explicit the distinction between the inhabited and the uninhabited portions of the superuniverse.

The Distance to the Andromeda Galaxy

Speaking of the Andromeda galaxy (M31), the Urantia Book says

“This far-distant nebula [Andromeda] is visible to the naked eye, and when you view it, pause to consider that the light you behold left those distant suns almost one million years ago.” (UB170:1)

This contradicts current astronomical knowledge, which gives the distance to Andromeda as 2.39 +/- 0.09 million light years based on an average of 5 different types of determinations as discussed at http://www.earth.uni.edu/astro/cosmos/part6.html. This distance to Andromeda is not inferred from its red shift (Andromeda is actually blue shifted) but is obtained from a knowledge of the absolute brightness of certain Cephid variable stars which can be seen in Andromeda. The distance obtained by these methods could be in error by a factor of 2.667 (2.39/0.9) if the light we received from Andromeda were 86% absorbed by matter in the optical path, allowing only 14% to reach our telescopes. This might be due to the postulated “dark matter” surrounding our galaxy, but there is no evidence that this is the case. Such a severe light absorption would have to be exceedingly spatially uniform or its presence would be detectable as a patterning in the images obtained by our telescopes.

Upper Limit on the Distance to Andromeda

Given that Andromeda is within our superuniverse, there is an upper limit on the distance from Urantia to the Andromeda galaxy which would be consistent with other information given in the Urantia Book. This upper limit would be the distance from Urantia to Uversa plus the distance from Uversa to the edge of the superuniverse. In this limiting case Uversa would be directly between Urantia and Andromeda.

Knowing that the ratio of the distance from Uversa to the edge of the superuniverse to the distance from Uversa to Urantia is 3.35, then the maximum possible distance to the Andromeda galaxy is 4.35 (1 + 3.35) times the distance from Urantia to Uversa. Since Urantia is within the inhabited portion of Orvonton, then the distance from Urantia to Uversa is less than 250,000 light years, and so the maximum distance from Urantia to Andromeda is 4.35 x 250,000 = 1,087,500 light years.

This is consistent with the distance given in the Urantia Book as less than one million light years, but inconsistent with the current scientific value of this distance of about 2.4 million light years. In order to bring the Urantia Book cosmology into conformance with current science, the distance given in the UB from Uversa to the edge of the inhabited portion of the superuniverse would have to be scaled up by a factor of at least 2.4/1.0875 = 2.2.

Globular Clusters near the Edge of Orvonton

The Urantia Book states that

“The globular type of star clusters predominates near the outer margins of Orvonton.” (UB 170:2)

The existence and location of globular star clusters in a halo around the Milky Way was well known at the time the Urantia Book was written. A discussion of this subject can be found in The Universe Around Us by Sir James Jeans (1929, pp 60-62). This book also contains a description of the distribution of these globular clusters as

“… lying on both sides of the Milky Way, its greatest diameter of about 250,000 light years lying in this plane, …”(p 62)

Given that the UB implies that the radius of the inhabited portion of Orvonton is 250,000 light years (UB359:8) and thus the radius of Orvonton itself must be significantly greater, it seems inconsistent to identify the star clusters mentioned in the UB with the globular clusters described by Jeans which have a maximum radius of 125,000 light years from the galactic center.

They may be speaking of the eleven dwarf spheroidal (or elliptical) galaxies that closely circle the Milky Way. More information on these can be found in an interesting paper by George Lake of the University of Washington. This paper can be found at the URL http://wwwhpcc.astro.washington.edu/papers/localgroup/lg.html. An image of the dwarf spheroidal galaxy Leo I, located about 830,000 light years away, can be seen at http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap960519.html. I suspect that these dwarf galaxies are within Orvonton.

Orvonton Rotates about the Isle of Paradise and Havona

The Urantia Book states that our superuniverse of Orvonton circles the Isle of Paradise and the central universe of Havona.

“Orvonton is one of the seven evolutionary superuniverses of time and space which circle the never-beginning, never-ending creation of divine perfection—the central universe of Havona. At the heart of this eternal and central universe is the stationary Isle of Paradise, the geographic center of infinity and the dwelling place of the eternal God.” (UB1:5)

Location of Havona

The Urantia Book states that the location of Havona is in the direction of the center of the Milky Way galaxy. Of course it is not in the Milky Way at all, but is about 16 million light years distant.

“When the angle of observation is propitious, gazing through the main body of this realm of maximum density, you are looking toward the residential universe [Havona] and the center of all things.” (UB167:5)

The Period of Rotation of Orvonton about Havona

The Urantia Book gives a clue to the period of rotation of Orvonton about Havona.

“Today, the solar system to which Urantia belongs is a few billion years past the swing around the southern curvature so that you are just now advancing beyond the southeastern bend and are moving swiftly through the long and comparatively straightaway northern path.” (UB165:4)

If it took a few billion years to move from the southern curvature to just past the southeastern bend, a distance of one eighth of a complete revolution, then the period of rotation of Orvonton about Havona must be 8 times a few billion years. Assuming the word “few” indicates the number 3 gives a value of 24 billion years for the period of rotation of Orvonton about Havona. This is twice the current estimated age of the Universe and implies that Orvonton has not yet made one revolution about Havona.

The Orbital Velocity of Orvonton around Havona

The velocity of Orvonton in its orbit is the circumference of the orbit, 2 pi times the radius of the orbit, divided by the period of the orbit (24 billion years). Given that the period is 7.57 x 1017 s, and assuming a radius of 16 million light years, one finds that the velocity of Orvonton in its orbit around Havona is 1.25 x 106 m/s or 5.6 million miles per hour.

This velocity is of the order of magnitude of the currently estimated velocity of the Local Group of 400 km/s in the direction of the Virgo galactic cluster.

The Mass of Havona and the Isle of Paradise

Knowing the period of rotation of Orvonton about Havona to be about 24 billion years, and knowing the distance from Orvonton to Havona to be about 16 million light years, we can calculate an estimate of the mass of Havona. By equating the gravitational pull of Havona necessary to balance the centrifugal force of Orvonton in its orbit about Havona, one finds the mass of Havona to be given by

M = R V2/G

Where R is the radius of Orvonton’s orbit, V is the velocity of Orvonton in its orbit, and G is the universal gravitational constant (6.673 x 10-11 m3 kg-1 s-2). Knowing that 1 light year is 9.46 x 1015 m, the radius of Orvonton’s orbit is 1.51 x 1023 m. The velocity is 1.25 x 106 m/s as found above.

Substituting the appropriate values into the equation above gives the mass of Havona to be 3.5 x 1045 kg. Given that the mass of the sun is 1.989 x 1030 kg, this is equivalent to 1.9 x 1015 solar masses. This is also equivalent to about 900 Milky Way galaxies.

The UB says this about the mass of Havona and the Isle of Paradise:

“Owing to the enormous encircling masses of the dark gravity bodies about the fringe of the central universe, the mass content of this central creation is far in excess of the total known mass of all seven sectors of the grand universe.” (UB:129:2)

The Urantia Book states that Orvonton contains about 1013 solar masses. The seven sectors of the grand universe thus must contain about 7 x 1013 solar masses. Our calculated value of the mass of Havona and the Isle of Paradise is thus about 27 times that of the seven sectors of the grand universe, in agreement with the UB statement.

Possible Other Galaxies within the Grand Universe

Given that the radius of the grand universe is about 16 million light years, one can compile a list of the galaxies, or groups of galaxies, which could be possible locations of the other six superuniverses. If these superuniverses are in a circular orbit around Havona with radius of 16 million light years, we would expect to find two at a distance of 31 Mly, at +/- 0.86H (0.86 hours = 12.9 deg) galactic azimuth, two at 25 Mly distance at +/- 2.6H azimuth, and two at 14 Mly at +/- 4.3 H azimuth. This is because Havona is said to be in the direction of the center of the Milky Way galaxy (0 H galactic azimuth). Such candidates would also be found near the plane of our galaxy, that is, having small values of galactic elevation, Such a list will include:

After looking through lists of the many galaxies in the vicinity of Urantia, one finds that there are at least 192 galaxies within 32 Mly, and over 1000 galaxies within 100 Mly. It becomes clear that the local universe structure is more complex than the concept of seven superuniverses revolving about Havona presented in the Urantia Book. The concept of the seven superuniverses must be considered as referring to seven inhabited regions of space, and that it must be considered that there are many other uninhabited galaxies within the grand universe, besides Andromeda, not mentioned in the Urantia Book.

The lack of candidate galaxies having the characteristics stated above may be due to the fact that it is difficult to observe galaxies which lie in the plane of the Milky Way, and which are on the opposite side of the Milky Way from Urantia. Recently, some radio observations have revealed galaxies which are otherwise hidden by the obscuring matter of the Milky Way. Undoubtedly there are many unknown galaxies in this region that might be suitable candidates for the location of the other superuniverses.

Our Local Universe

Size of Our Local Universe, Nebadon

Nebadon is said to have about 10 million inhabitable planets. This implies that Nebadon contains about 100 million stars, assuming that on average one star in ten has an inhabitable planet. If the local stellar density is about one star per 240 cubic light years (there are 30 stars within a radius of 12 light years from Urantia), then the volume of space required to hold 100 million stars would be 2.4 x 1010 cubic light years. If this volume were approximately spherical, then the radius of this sphere would be about 1,800 light years. One might conclude that our local universe is about this size, or about 3000 to 4,000 light years in diameter. Thus is is clear that our local universe of Nebadon is not the same as our Local Group of galaxies, which is much bigger, on the order of several million light years in diameter.

The Location of Salvington

The UB makes the following statement concerning the location of Salvington, the capital of our local universe.

“Salvington, the headquarters of Nebadon, is situated at the exact energy-mass center of the local universe. But your local universe is not a single astronomic system, though a large system does exist at its physical center.” (UB359:1)

We can also guess that Salvington, the capital of our local universe is perhaps about 2000 light years from Urantia in the direction of the center of the Milky Way, since the book says that we are on the outer fringe of Nebadon. This would be near the location of M6, the Butterfly star cluster shown in Figure 7.

It is also likely that the majority of Nebadon is within the Orion arm of the Milky Way galaxy.

Planets, Inhabited and Inhabitable

Fraction of Planets in Orvonton which are Inhabitable
The Urantia Book gives information on the fraction of planets that are inhabitable. One reads:

“In your superuniverse not one cool planet in forty is habitable by beings of your order. And, of course, the superheated suns and the frigid outlying worlds are unfit to harbor higher life. In your solar system only three planets are at present suited to harbor life.” (UB173:5)

Thus the upper limit on the fraction of planets which are inhabitable by human beings is 1 in 40 (0.025). This statement concerns our superuniverse of Orvonton, but since I assume the laws of nature are the same in all superuniverses I will assume this number is applicable to the other superuniverses as well.

The Number of Inhabitable Planets in Orvonton

The number of inhabitable planets in Orvonton is specifically given in the UB.

“Seven superuniverses make up the present organized grand universe, consisting of approximately seven trillion inhabitable worlds plus the architectural spheres and the one billion inhabited spheres of Havona.” (UB166:8)

Given this, one can conclude that our superuniverse of Orvonton contains about one trillion inhabitable worlds. Notice that the UB is careful to distinguish between inhabitable planets and inhabited planets. We will show later that most of these one trillion inhabitable worlds are currently uninhabited.

Fraction of Stars in Orvonton Containing an Inhabitable Planet

Given that there are one trillion inhabitable worlds in Orvonton, and 10 trillion stars in Orvonton, one must conclude that if stars had no multiple inhabitable planets, then one star in ten has an inhabitable planet. If, as is indicated in the section on the distribution of inhabited planets in Satania below, stellar systems tend to have only one inhabitable planet, then generally only one star in about ten would have any inhabitable planets.

A recent survey of 800 nearby stars using the Doppler method, has shown that about one star in twenty has at least a Jupiter-sized planet. That one star in ten has an inhabitable planet therefore seems not improbable.

Average Number of Planets per Star in Orvonton

If there are 0.1 inhabitable planets per star, and 0.025 inhabitable planets per planet then on the average there must be 0.1/0.025 = 4 planets per star in Orvonton. This would indicate that planets are a common occurrence. This is verified by current astronomical science which, although it can detect only large planets approximately the size of Jupiter, has shown such planets to be relatively common.

Number of Inhabitable Planets in our Solar System

“In your solar system only three planets are at present suited to harbor life.” (UB173:5)

Because of the wide diversity of life forms in the Universe, many planets which we would consider uninhabitable for man, may be perfectly habitable for some of the radically-different other life forms. Our solar system having three inhabitable planets is a rare occurrence since as we show below, only 0.7% of solar systems with inhabitable planets have three.

Distribution of Inhabited Planets in Satania

The UB gives the distribution of inhabited planets in Satania among the physical systems (solar systems) containing such planets.

“Satania is not a uniform physical system, a single astronomic unit or organization. Its 619 inhabited worlds are located in over five hundred different physical systems. Only five have more than two inhabited worlds, and of these only one has four peopled planets, while there are forty-six having two inhabited worlds.” (UB359: 7)

Thus there are 511 solar systems with one, 46 with two, 4 with 3, and only 1 with 4 inhabited planets. There are thus 511 + 46 + 4 + 1 = 562 solar systems with inhabited planets in the Satania system.

Average Number of Inhabited Planets per Star in Satania

The Urantia Book gives the number of stars in our system, Satania, which allows computing the average number of inhabited planets per star.

“There are upward of two thousand brilliant suns pouring forth light and energy in Satania, and your own sun is an average blazing orb.” (UB458:1)

Since there are 619 inhabited planets and 2000 stars in Satania, then there are on the average 0.31 inhabited planets per star, or equivalently, approximately one inhabited planet for every 3 stars. Given that there are 562 solar systems with an inhabited planet, then one star out of every 3.6 in Satania has an inhabited planet.

Given that one star in ten in Orvonton has an inhabitable planet, the fact that in Satania one star in 3.6 has an inhabited planet indicates that the Satania star system is an especially favorable environment for life. Current science accepts that only certain zones within a galaxy are favorable for supporting human life.

Fraction of Satania Presently Inhabited

According to a Table given in the Urantia Book (UB167:1), a system contains about 1000 inhabitable planets, therefore the Satania system containing 619 inhabited planets makes it about 62% inhabited. This is much higher than the fraction of Orvonton that is presently inhabited (around 1 to 4%).

The Size of Satania

Given the number of stars in Satania, one can estimate its size under the assumptions that the star density in Satania is uniform and the same as our local star density (one star per 240 cubic light years). Assuming this, one finds that a sphere of radius 48.5 light years is required to contain the 2000 stars said to comprise Satania.

Urantian Cosmology which may Require Future Revision

The Urantia Book states that its cosmology is not necessarily inspired, and that it may require revision in the future. In this article to this point we have been focusing on positive correspondences between Urantian cosmology and current knowledge. In truth, there are some aspects of this cosmology which are not validated by current science and which are likely to require revision.

For instance, the Urantia Book says

“The Uversa star students observe that the grand universe is surrounded by the ancestors of a series of starry and planetary clusters which completely encircle the present inhabited creation as concentric rings of outer universes upon universes.” (UB131:1)

In the past decade there has become available on the Internet a number of 3-dimensional visualizations of the universe. Studying these visualizations, one is struck by the fact that there is no evidence of a structure that can be described as “concentric rings of outer universes.” In fact, the universe appears to consist of large superclusters of galaxies, which are distributed in a more or less random manner.

In another instance the Urantia Book describes the “space zones” beyond the grand universe as

“Between the energy circuits of the seven superuniverses and this gigantic outer belt of force activity, there is a space zone of comparative quiet, which varies in width but averages about four hundred thousand light-years. These space zones are free from star dust—cosmic fog. Our students of these phenomena are in doubt as to the exact status of the space-forces existing in this zone of relative quiet which encircles the seven superuniverses. But about one-half million light-years beyond the periphery of the present grand universe we observe the beginnings of a zone of an unbelievable energy action which increases in volume and intensity for over twenty-five million light-years.” (UB130:0)

Again, there is no evidence of spherical zones of empty space surrounding any structure which might be the grand universe. Given the relatively small size of these space zones compared to the size of the grand universe and the distances between galaxies, this statement cannot be reconciled with known universe structure.

The idealized picture of seven superuniverses circling Havona in approximately the plane of our galaxy ignores the fact that assuming this cosmology is true, the space containing these universes also contains numerous other galaxy clusters outside the plane of our galaxy. There is no evidence of any organization of nearby galaxies resulting in a preferential localization near the plane of the Milky Way galaxy.

In another apparent disagreement with current scientific thought, the Urantia Book specifically denies the reality of the expansion of the universe, that the apparent recession of galaxies is linked to their distance by means of the Hubble constant. The UB says:

“Many influences interpose to make it appear that the recessional velocity of the external universes increases at the rate of more than one hundred miles a second for every million light-years increase in distance. By this method of reckoning, subsequent to the perfection of more powerful telescopes, it will appear that these far-distant systems are in flight from this part of the universe at the unbelievable rate of more than thirty thousand miles a second. But this apparent speed of recession is not real; it results from numerous factors of error embracing angles of observation and other time-space distortions.” (UB134:3)

Current science regards this Hubble effect as real. In fact, all the current 3-dimensional representations of the universe largely rely on this effect to establish the distance to the galaxies, Andromeda being an exception. If the Hubble effect is not real, then all such current representations are invalid. At this time there is no scientific evidence that the Hubble effect is not real, and in fact, there is significant evidence that it is real.

The Urantia Book states that only a very small portion of the observable universe contains life.

“As far as we know, no material beings on the order of humans, no angels or other spirit creatures, exist in this outer ring of nebulae, suns, and planets. This distant domain is beyond the jurisdiction and administration of the superuniverse governments.” (UB131:2)

Current scientific opinion is that life formed by a chance combination of chemicals and evolved into the complex life forms known today. It would be deemed as most unlikely that life was concentrated on only a few clusters of galaxies as implied by this UB statement. Of course, we have at present no way to know if this is true or not.

One of the most serious disagreements between current astronomical science and the Urantia Book cosmology concerns the size of Orvonton, The radius of Orvonton can be inferred to be about 3.35 times between 200,000 and 250,000 light years or about 770,000 light years as indicated by UB222:6 and UB359:8. This assumes that Jerusem, the capital of our star system, Satania, is relatively near (within 50 light years) to Urantia and is thus within the Milky Way. Such a small radius would exclude both the Andromeda and Triangulum galaxies from the uninhabited portion of Orvonton and it seems impossible that there are 10 trillion stars (UB172:7) within such a small volume.

One possible explanation for this inconsistency and also for that involving the distance to the Andromeda galaxy is to postulate that the authors of the Urantia Book presented a cosmology that was scaled to fit the astronomic knowledge of the time when the book was written. The value of one million light years for the distance to Andromeda was the current astronomical knowledge during the period of 1923 to 1953. The Urantia papers were written within this time period. If the authors scaled the true distance to the Andromeda galaxy down by a factor of about 3 to prevent the disclosure of unearned knowledge, to be maximally self-consistent they may have also scaled down the other two distances which they directly give. These distances are the 200,000 light years from Uversa to Jerusem, and the 250,000 light years corresponding to the radius of the inhabited portion of Orvonton.

If this hypothesis is true, then the true distances can be found by multiplying the values given in the UB by a factor of about 3. This makes the distance to the Andromeda galaxy agree with current knowledge. It makes the distance from Jerusem to Uversa to be greater than 600,000 light years, and the radius of the inhabited portion of Orvonton to be less than 750,000 light years. The overall radius of Orvonton would then be greater than 3.35 times 600,000 or 2.0 million light years. It would be less than 750,000/0.34 or 2.2 million light years. This places both the Andromeda and Triangulum galaxies within the uninhabited portion of Orvonton. It also makes the UB statement that Orvonton contains ten trillion stars much more plausible.

Such a scaling would not be inconsistent with the statement that the Divine Counselor can reach any part in Orvonton in one Urantia year. If the distance from Uversa to the edge of Orvonton is about 2.1 million light years, then the velocity of the Divine Counselor would be 2.1/4.51 = 0.47 times that of the Solitary Messengers, or consistent with his statement that he could not attain the speed of a Solitary Messenger. Apparently a Solitary Messenger travels at about twice the speed of a Divine Counselor. Any scaling factor greater than about 6 would be inconsistent with the stated speed of the Divine Counselor.

Could it be that the revision of the Urantian cosmology which the UB authors state may be required in the future is this scaling upwards of the stated distances by a factor of 3? This is probably one of the simplest possible revisions, which could be imagined.

Another discrepancy in UB cosmology concerns the time required for a Solitary Messenger to travel to the central universe (Havona) and back. The Urantia Book states that a Solitary Messenger can travel at a speed of

“841,621,642,000 of your miles per second of your time.” (UB261:1)

Since the speed of light is 186,281 miles per second, the speed of the Solitary Messenger is 4,512,000 times the speed of light.

The Urantia Book also says the following about a Solitary Messenger:

“Long before the presence of life on Urantia the [Solitary] messenger now associated with me was assigned on a mission out of Uversa to the central universe—was absent from the roll calls of Orvonton for almost a million years but returned in due time with the desired information.” (UB259:2)

In a million Urantia years a Solitary Messenger can travel a distance of 2,256 billion light years and back. The age of the universe is thought to be only 14 billion years, so the radius of the universe is no greater than 14 billion light years. It would take a Solitary Messenger only 6,200 years to travel to the edge of the known universe and back.

There is good reason, based on the number of stars in the grand universe, to believe that the distance from Uversa to the central universe is only about 16 million light years. A Solitary Messenger can travel this distance and back in only seven Urantia years. If this distance is correct the Solitary Messenger had 999,993 years to spend in the central Universe before he had to return.

There is also good reason to believe that the speed given for the Solitary Messenger is correct. This is based on the ability of a Divine Counselor, travelling at a lesser speed, to reach any part of Orvonton in one Urantia year, and the apparent size of Orvonton based on the number of stars in Orvonton. If this is so, it appears that he could have made the trip to the central universe and back in less than one Uversa year, or 8.2 Urantia years and still have had 1.2 Urantia years to conduct his business.

Thus it appears that the statement given in UB259:2 is grossly inconsistent with the other cosmology given in the UB. Perhaps it should have read that the Solitary Messenger was gone only one (Uversa) year?

Conclusions
These results show that the major aspects of Urantia Book cosmology are, in most part, in reasonable agreement with our present cosmological understanding. The major conflicts with current astronomical knowledge can be resolved if the three absolute distances given in the book are scaled up by a factor of about 3 to make the distance to the Andromeda galaxy conform approximately to current estimates.

The reader may question why the revelators chose to present a false value for the scale of the cosmology given in the UB. I believe that this choice actually demonstrates the wisdom of the revelators. Given that the currently-accepted value of the distance to the Andromeda galaxy was 900,000 light years at the time the book was written (Jeans, op.cit. p66), the revelators were faced with several conflicting choices. At the time, the distance to the Andromeda galaxy was the only extra-galactic distance known with any belief of certainty. I believe they chose to give this distance to provide an absolute scale to the size of our superuniverse because it was the largest distance determined by Urantian science of that time. Given this, they were faced with two choices: revealing the true distance or presenting a distance in agreement with accepted knowledge. Given the fact that the Urantian science was inaccurate at the time, any statement made would inevitably be at odds with current opinion, either before or after the truth was known. Revealing the true distance would immediately create disbelief in the revelation among the science-minded audience at which the revelation is directed, and would impart unearned scientific knowledge, prohibited by the mandate of revelation, which would shortly be acquired unaided by Urantian scientists in any event. In giving the then-accepted value, they avoided any controversy during the early stages of the acceptance of the revelation. The impact of the later inconsistency with Urantian astronomy they defused by explicitly admitting that the cosmology presented was not divinely inspired and would require revision in the future. Scaling all distances down by the same factor would create the minimum possible distortion to the presented cosmology, and would allow recovery of the true distances in the future when the true distance to the Andromeda galaxy was known.

The Urantia Book expressly condones not revealing facts when it might inhibit spiritual advancement. Speaking of the seraphic recorders it says,

“Some day they will teach you to seek truth as well as fact, to expand your soul as well as your mind. … But sometimes error is so great that its rectification by revelation would be fatal to those slowly emerging truths which are essential to its experiential overthrow. When children have their ideals, do not dislodge them; let them grow.” (UB554:6)

Did the revelators decide that correcting the factual error concerning the distance to Andromeda might inhibit the spread of the spiritual truths they were trying to implant?

The apparent inconsistency in the time taken by the Solitary Messenger in his trip to the central universe and back is not convincing evidence of the inaccuracy of UB cosmology. It may be that the Solitary Messenger spent the vast majority of the time during his trip in collecting the desired information, or it may be that the value “one million” was inserted by a human editor who could not believe that such a trip would take only one year.

It appears unlikely that the other disagreement with Urantian science, that of the purposeful implantation of life in the seven superuniverses, or galaxy clusters, versus the random spontaneous self-assembly of life from inert matter, will be resolved anytime within the foreseeable future. It does seem possible to verify the presence of life in the near vicinity of our solar system, which the UB states is a relatively common occurrence. This should be encouraging to those engaged in the present SETI efforts.

"But who say you that I am?"

2008-04-09T08:27:00.000-07:00

An address to the 1991 Intensive Summer Seminar
Lake Forest, Illinois
L. Dan Massey, Jr.
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"Even in the study of man's biologic evolution on Urantia, there are grave objections to the exclusive historic approach to his present-day status and his current problems. The true perspective of any reality problem--human or divine, terrestrial or cosmic--can be had only by the full and unprejudiced study and correlation of three phases of universe reality: origin, history, and destiny. The proper understanding of these three experiential realities affords the basis for a wise estimate of the current status." (215:3)

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The Christian Church has long focused great attention on the events surrounding Simon Peter's epochal assertion of faith, "You are the Deliverer, the Son of the living God." In Christian mythology, as understood by a layman, it is from this occasion that the origins of the church are traced, and it is from Jesus' actions in delivering the "Keys of the Kingdom" to the apostles that the supposed authority of the church derives. The momentous events in Michael's bestowal ministry which had led up to this critical moment are chronicled in the first half of Part IV of The Urantia Book.

We know from the book that Jesus had carefully prepared the Apostles for a change in the direction of his ministry after the final, fatal rejection at Capernaum, but the new direction that emerges at the time of Peter's Confession seems at first strange, surprising, and, from the viewpoint of two thousand years of hindsight, to have led the affairs of the Kingdom in some rather queer directions.

This paper examines this critical nexus in planetary affairs, reviews some of the results of this change in direction, and reinterprets the events leading up to this occasion in the light of the many things learned from all parts of The Urantia Book about the nature and purposes of Deity and the specific mission of Michael in his bestowal. This process eventuates in a substantial deconstruction of the Christian myth and opens up a more objective and truthful perspective on the recent past and the near future of religious evolution on Urantia.

One of the major problems in examining an occasion of this kind is the sense of sacredness which has grown up around the events with the passage of time. There has been a persistent human tendency to consider all matters pertaining to Michael's bestowal as having sacred significance. In fact, Jesus repeatedly warned his Apostles of the danger in treating purely secular matters as sacred.

"But as religion becomes institutionalized, its power for good is curtailed, while the possibilities for evil are greatly multiplied. The dangers of formalized religion are: fixation of beliefs and crystallization of sentiments; accumulation of vested interests with increase of secularization; tendency to standardize and fossilize truth; diversion of religion from the service of God to the service of the church; inclination of leaders to become administrators instead of ministers; tendency to form sects and competitive divisions; establishment of oppressive ecclesiastical authority; creation of the aristocratic "chosen-people" attitude; fostering of false and exaggerated ideas of sacredness; the routinizing of religion and the petrifaction of worship; tendency to venerate the past while ignoring present demands; failure to make up-to-date interpretations of religion; entanglement with functions of secular institutions; it creates the evil discrimination of religious castes; it be comes an intolerant judge of orthodoxy; it fails to hold the interest of adventurous youth and gradually loses the saving message of the gospel of eternal salvation." (1092; 3)

One of the great lessons of this sojourn at Caesarea, where Peter's confession occurred, had to do with the origin of religious traditions, with the grave danger of allowing a sense of sacredness to become attached to non-sacred things, common ideas, or everyday events. From one conference they emerged with the teaching that true religion was man's heartfelt loyalty to his highest and truest convictions.

But the greatest error of the teaching about the Scriptures is the doctrine of there being sealed books of mystery and wisdom which only the wise minds of the nation dare to interpret. The revelations of divine truth are not sealed except by human ignorance, bigotry, and narrow-minded intolerance. The light of the Scriptures is only dimmed by prejudice and darkened by superstition. A false fear of sacredness has prevented religion from being safeguarded by common sense. The fear of the authority of the sacred writings of the past effectively prevents the honest souls of today from accepting the new light of the gospel, the light which these very God-knowing men of another generation so intensely longed to see.

Even today mankind labors under these misapprehensions of sacredness. Not all matters, even those pertaining to the actions of incarnated Deity, are sacred in the human sense, and it is only by stripping away the tradition-encrusted layers of false sacredness that mankind has attached to these events that we may penetrate to the deeper significance enclosed therein.

This paper seeks to ignore the imputed sacredness of millennia of human misunderstanding and tries to explore these events from the celestial viewpoint of the Creator Son himself. In so doing, we will be guided by certain principles, the most important of which is this -- that Michael of Nebadon is at least as intelligent as the average Urantia mortal, that he had full understanding of the social, religious, and political situation into which he would incarnate, and that he commenced his bestowal with full appreciation of the likelihood of various possible outcomes, both desirable and undesirable. In addition, once incarnate as Joshua Ben Joseph, and once in full possession of his Deity mind faculties, the mortal mind of Jesus of Nazareth suffered from no superstitious illusions about the significance of his actions for the planetary cultural economy.

I believe that the Apostles had almost no comprehension of what was really going on at this time, and that the sacred myth of the origins of the church is, in fact, a product of their own egocentric interpretation of events to which they attached a false sense of sacredness. I further claim that Jesus, as both man and God, was aware that they would do this and intended this to be the result of his actions if they persisted in their materialistic view of his teachings. This result, therefore, was also intended by Jesus as the best way of dealing with a difficult, if not actually undesirable situation. When we have fully explored these events with the benefit of two thousand years of hindsight, we will, at last, be able to perceive the broad outline of a small but astoundingly clever part of the Divine plan for Urantia.

In examining Jesus' decisions and actions from the perspective of Michael of Nebadon I will set aside the more obvious concerns of the bestowal mission, such as his commitment to doing the Father's will, his need for the physical vehicle of his incarnation to survive infancy and childhood, and the events and decisions leading up to his full achievement of personality integration at the time of his baptism. These matters are not unimportant. Rather, they are matters of such importance that a natural preoccupation with them tends to cloud our ability to perceive and to analyze the more subtle features of Jesus' life work Let me simply say this--Creator Sons do not fail to achieve the purposes of their bestowal incarnations by the methods approved for their use. Even though the actual life circumstances of the incarnate son are, from the human perspective, subject to personal, spiritual, psychic, and physical risks, the celestial purposes are always addressed and always achieved.

Instead of these major factors, we must examine those areas of Michael's bestowal in which no such force of destiny provides a teleological override of the direction of finite events. We shall examine those occasions on which the fully creative potentials of Deity are expressed through free will choice, as separated from the cases in which the mortal mind of the incarnate god exercises the relatively free human will. Only in this way will we discover the actions of creative Deity disclosed in planetary history and destiny.

In viewing the planetary situation on Urantia from the Salvington perspective, Michael wished to provide the maximum uplift to human minds and spirits to prepare them to benefit from the bestowal of the Spirit of Truth, an event which would turn psychic reality on Urantia upside-down. The better the mortals of Urantia could anticipate and work with the Spirit of Truth, the more quickly the secular institutions of life could be improved and refined and the greater would be the benefit, on all levels of reality, to the greater number of Michael's mortal children.

To accomplish this, it might have been helpful for Michael to leave behind on Urantia some token of his bestowal more substantial than the Spirit of Truth to provide a path of entry for the mortal mind to more sublime realities. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, he was prohibited from leaving behind offspring, images, writings, or other things that might become an object of superstitious veneration. In addition, since his bestowal life was to benefit not only Urantia, but planetary societies throughout all Nebadon, nothing physical could ever serve the purpose.

We can imagine Michael considering whether he might simply fix things on Urantia, so everybody would be put out of their misery. But this would never really be acceptable. Simply fixing Things would be too much like a human child playing war with tin soldiers. Creation of this order is, at best, an aid to fantasy, but ultimately boring. The very hosts of heaven would sing out, "BO-RING."

There are two problems. First, and most obvious to our limited, human insight, a broken planet must want to be fixed. This was clearly not the case with Urantia, as was proven by many events of the bestowal. Second, and more subtle, a broken planet must learn to fix itself. Otherwise, it would constantly need fixing and become an eternal dependent on divine omnificence. It is clear from The Urantia Book that personally taking care of every detail of running a universe is not the job Michael signed up for when he started his creative exercise. Even worse, other planets throughout Nebadon would be thus deprived of the opportunity to observe the mortal process of planetary recreation and maintenance. It was equally important for the other planets to observe how this is done and learn to do it for themselves.

The Spirit of Truth would, of course, provide the major motive force for planetary re-creation; however, the bestowal offered a window of opportunity in which Deity could interact directly with and directly instruct humanity in the proper way. For this, though, there would need to be a clear message that could be communicated unambiguously to a critical core of humans who would be so convinced of its truth and so motivated to its dissemination that it would spread throughout the planetary culture and provide the psychic substrate on which the Spirit of Truth could more readily activate the human will to perfection. The problem for Michael was, of course, what this teaching, this revelation, would be and how he would fix it so firmly into the thought streams of humanity that the essential saving message at its core would never be lost.

I suggest that he would have most desired to give a clear teaching of truth to all humanity. Such a teaching would be embraced by a homogeneous social institution which would be well prepared to carry forward its worldwide dissemination and application. Such would have been the course of the bestowal on a normal planet, and such a bestowal would have ended in a physically as well as spiritually dignified manner, as befits the incarnation of a Paradise Son.

We know, however, that, on Urantia, the rebellion of the original Planetary Prince and the subsequent default of Adam and Eve had made the emergence of such a worldwide institution of enlightenment impossible and had resulted in the persistence of wildly fragmented races and religious and cultural sects for tens of thousands of years, right down to the times of Michael's appearance. There was no way a single human being, even one who incarnated the person of Deity, could create such an organization in the space of a single mortal lifetime without recourse to a vast amount of superhuman intervention in planetary affairs.

The only possibility that would be open to the incarnate Michael would be to work with the existing and highly fragmented human institutions. Unfortunately, there was not even consistency or coherence of purpose among these groups. Some of the Greeks had made great progress in philosophy and refining the art of clear thinking. The Romans, as a society, had learned many of the arts of government. The Hebrews had developed a profound intellectual and literal commitment to their humanly evolved idea of righteousness. Behind it all lurked some of the ideas and teachings of Melchizedek, which had helped foster and stabilize the light of truth, but nowhere was there either a literal or a psychic basis for opening a dialogue, much less making a quick move to coherence and unification.

In the city of Memphis, near Alexandria in the Nile delta, there flickered a faint light of actual truth. Here, in the precincts of the ancient temple of the Aten, a small, almost unknown, nearly secretive group kept alive the knowledge and traditions of Egypt from the times when the young Pharaoh, Ikhnaton, under the tutelage of his mother, the Great Empress Tiye, had made bold to reform the whole of his nation to the worship of The One True God. Although Ikhnaton's vision had failed his nation, and the great city of god at Akhetaten had long since crumbled to dust, this brief but spectacular effort had deflected the course of cultural history in the Levant and made possible the persistence of the teachings of Melchizedek and the Salemite missionaries down to the times of Moses and the emergence of the Hebrew peoples.

Except for a few isolated individual visionaries scattered here and there, this group of communicants of the Aten in Memphis was the only group of humans on Urantia that possessed, at least in their traditions, a reasonably accurate understanding of the broader meaning and purpose of Michael's bestowal. Had Ikhnaton's reforms succeeded, Michael would have probably incarnated in Egypt, and Urantia would be a very different place today. But the small group of believers that actually persisted in the Aten cult was too small and inward-directed ever to make a short-term useful impact on human society. An analysis of the prospects of this devoted group of followers would show that, although they possessed an understanding of the facts of the bestowal, their destiny would be to have known the truth, to have been more cosmically aware than the rest of the planet, but to have been unable to act effectively to take advantage of this fact.

As Michael surveyed Urantia from Salvington, he must have thought that, given the limitations of the Aten cult, the next-best venue for his ministry would be the Hebrews, who held the essential truths of his teachings buried deep within their complex theology and legalistic religion. They were especially well-organized and, if they could be won in large numbers to the truth, it might be possible to reform the Jerusalem-centered ecclesiastical bureaucracy into a useful tool. On the other hand, the actual practice of their religion had degenerated into sacrificial rituals that were awesome in their embrace of materialism.

Worse yet, their concept of divine truth had degenerated into a religion of the book that focused heavily on a body of supposedly sacred texts which contained a little truth admixed with vast amounts of completely fictitious racial history. Across the centuries their scribes had dutifully copied the writings of ancient prophets, and, with each transcription, had updated the teachings to harmonize with the evolving racial and political consensus regarding the final emergence of a Jewish state with supreme authority conferred by God himself. The ethnocentric silliness of this belief was clearly not apparent to the Hebrews themselves, who found solace from the hard facts of Roman rule in such quaint fantasies.

As a result, there was virtually nothing in the pseudo-sacred texts of the Hebrews that Michael could expect to use effectively to affect the formal, organized thinking of a devout "people of the book." Aside from an appeal to the spiritual nature, the best concrete, textual reference was the prophecy of the "Son of Man" from the supposed writings of Enoch. This legend, only partly accredited, would have to be his vehicle for exerting direct leverage on the Hebrew attitudes. Then, perhaps, by illuminating the genuinely prophetic writings where fragments remained in the canon, enough spiritual pressure could be brought to bear to achieve some useful results.

The problem, of course, would be that, once the Jews found out that he was the "promised Messiah," they would want him to pay off on all the promises that had been made to the race in his name by generations of pseudo-religious social parasites who knew nothing of his real nature. That was clearly impossible. It would be a disservice to everyone on the planet, and would have worse results than just fixing up the mess by divine fiat, since the Hebrews suffered under primitive tribal standards of socialization in virtually every important respect.

Clearly, anything he did with the Jews would have to work into their organized programs in some way. Since being the wholly acceptable Messiah was definitely out, he would have to consider alternative approaches. The intensely significant and sanctified feast of the Passover might offer some possibilities for religious engineering.

I imagine the Salvington corps of bestowal analysts must have worked long and hard with Michael, sifting through the details of all branches of Urantian culture and religious thought in planning the bestowal. It must have been clear that the greatest hope for improving the planet would come from having a major, organized body of mortal culture wholeheartedly embrace his teachings. The prime candidate for such a transformation would have been the Hellenized culture of Rome, which had not only managed to grow and stabilize itself for many centuries, but had generally served to unify and harmonize (by force) the wildly divergent cultures of the Mediterranean basin. The problem, of course, was that the Greeks, who exerted substantial intellectual influence, didn't care much about real religion, and the Romans, who ultimately ran things, were even less interested than the Greeks.

I think the Salvington surveys must have turned up one additional ray of hope, besides the Hebrews, and this was among the devotees of the strange and remarkable father-god of ancient Persia, Mithra. As the tides of trade, government, and commerce had swept eastward from Greece and Rome into the Levant, so had complementary currents moved out of Egypt, India, and Persia, carrying with them the news of ancient gods and legends. These supermortal beings were no less believable in their attributes and aspects than were the happy go-lucky gods of Mount Olympus, ruled over by Zeus/Jupiter, a name which itself meant "God the Father" (dyaus p'ter) in the Indo-European root tongue. The very novelty and unfamiliarity of the new Eastern deities, and the continuing pressure of growing scientific knowledge, fostered syncretism and the emergence of new, more encompassing theologies.

Tarsus, the Roman capital of the province of Cilicia, and the birthplace of the Apostle Paul, was an ancient Hittite city which had been conquered in the ninth century B.C.E. by the Assyrians under Shalmaneser III, and in the sixth century by the Persians. The passage of Alexander in 333 B.C.E. led to cultural changes through which the city became sacred to the memory of the Greek hero and demi-god Perseus. The revised worship of Mithra, the ancient father-god of the Persians, had surely reached Tarsus, through its large Persian population, soon after the sixth century conquest. The later arriving Greeks introduced their belief in Perseus as the father of the Persian race, while laying the foundation for a major school of Stoic philosophy, and this heady mythic metaphysical brew became the formative solution for a new religion. The announcement of the discovery of the precession of the equinoxes by Hipparchus, in 128 B.C.E, may have provided the seed around which an exotic and complex secret doctrine would crystallize.

Perseus was one of the sons of Zeus by a mortal, named Danae. Apparently, in the way myths evolve, the early Hellenization of the Mithra cult resulted in the transplantation of the heroic exploits of Perseus, the son of Zeus by a mortal, onto the person of Mithras, the son of Mithra born miraculously from the Earth-mother. Meanwhile, the Stoic school at Tarsus, which had long sponsored an astral religion of personal salvation (in which Perseus seems to have functioned as the keeper of the gates on the pathway of souls to and from genesis), was shaken to its roots by the discovery of Hipparchus that the "fixed stars" were anything but "fixed" in the sky.

While the immediate effect of this discovery was to trigger an unfortunate renaissance of stoic interest in astrology, it seems that the more metaphysically minded Stoics recognized, in the precession, the hand of a deity who ultimately transcended all others recognized from antiquity, but especially the sun, moon, and planetary gods. Perhaps because of local bias and astrological considerations, this splinter group of Stoics fixed on Perseus/Mithras as this transcendent deity and began an elaborate and esoteric reification of the "old religion" along the lines of their own apocalyptic and eschatological beliefs. Because of this deep connection into the intelligensia of Cilicia, variants of these beliefs became established throughout all social strata, particularly during the reign of Mithridates VI Eupator, the king of Pontus who conquered most of Asia Minor around 88 B.C.E. By the time Mithridates was overcome by Pompey in 66 B.C.E., Mithraic rites were firmly established as the normative religion among the Cilician pirates (Mithridates' navy), and probably in his other armed forces as well.

By the time of Michael's final review of the Urantian situation, just before embarking on the bestowal, the Mithras cult had developed its own, unique character and was spreading rapidly throughout the Roman Empire. It had, in fact, become the dominant, though unofficial, religion of the Empire. The soldiers of the Roman army had adopted Mithraism from their former enemies, who entered imperial service after Pompey's victory. Their conquests became the fertile stream which carried the cult to the far corners of the empire. This situation can have hardly escaped the attention of the Salvington planners of the bestowal. Let us consider for a moment some of the beliefs of Mithraism, to the extent they may be inferred from archaeological evidence.

The origins of much of Mithraic ritual lay in conventional fertility-astrology myths. Mithras is the son of god. He is a heroic solar deity, and is associated with the Sun. According to the solar version of the heroic myth, the son (of the Sun), in his mission from heaven to earth, performs his great deed which re-fertilizes the soil for the next season of growth. Subsequently, he dies and, on the third day, arises from the dead and ascends to heaven. Therefore, the day most sacred to solar heroes is December 25th, for this is three days after the Winter Solstice, when the resurrection of the Sun from the slow death of Autumn is first apparent to the careful observer. Because Mithraism incorporates additional mythic features of deity transcendence, probably added by the Stoics, the god of the Sun is also the Son of God. Even so, he and his father are one, for his father is also the Sun.

The Salvington analysts of Urantian religions must have known of the bizarre twistings of parts of the Melchizedek teachings which had somehow migrated into this new religion of Rome. Although Mithraism had been strongly influenced by Zoroastrian teachings of a dualistic spiritual universe, the fact that, in Mithraic myth, Mithras triumphs redemptively over the universal forces of decay and death showed that good would eventually come out on top. If the supposed mythic facts concerning the sojourn of god on earth counted for anything, the Mithraic version was closer to the truth than the Hebrew concept of the Messiah, which was grounded in the primitive tribal idea that Yahweh, the volcano demon, was literally the absolute god of the universe. Although the Mithraic liturgy was somewhat unsavory in its reliance on astrological iconography, sacrificial blood, and purifying holy water, it was no more offensive than the temple services in Jerusalem.

Given this somewhat more detailed (and speculative) view of the circumstances of the bestowal than is presented in The Urantia Book, how did Michael decide to deal with his need to create for Urantia some vehicle for improving human welfare and responsiveness to the upheaval induced by the bestowal of the Spirit of Truth?

The story is familiar to us. He is born in Bethlehem as Joshua Ben Joseph. He is recognized by a few people who really have some idea of his divine purpose. Old Simeon and Anna in the temple at Jerusalem are the ones we know best for giving voice to the heartfelt longing of the Jewish people for a deliverer, although their recognition was prompted by Zacharias, the priest. The priests of Ur sought out the infant, again in response to knowledge acquired by direct revelation to one of their associates.

As we know, circumstances conspired so that the infant Jesus was taken to Alexandria. And here occurred the only direct recognition of his divinity from traditional human sources that would mark his entire life on Urantia. For here those priests of the Aten, privy to the sacred heritage of Egypt's brief golden age of the spirit, journeyed from Memphis to see Jesus and "...to some extent understood certain phases of his divine mission to Urantia." Although this visit fulfilled an ancient obligation, and allowed the communicants of the Aten to know the supreme joy of being right about otherwise unknowable matters of spiritual destiny, even when ignored by the world, there was no way Michael's purpose could be fulfilled within this community.

Most importantly, it could not be fulfilled here because it did not depend on direct access to the wealth of human commerce or the organization of human government. Rather, as a result of the well-understood religious patterns on Urantia, it depended on a successful takeover or redirection of one or more extensive, well-organized religions through affecting the hearts of its communicants. No direct assault through the powers of mind or money could achieve this in the way the Spirit of Truth could, as it activated the memory, the story of the bestowal life, the bread of life.

Jesus left Alexandria and returned with his family to Galilee, for this course had already been selected by the Salvington planners. There he grew to young manhood as Jesus of Nazareth, the child of as yet unfulfilled promise. During this time he mastered the intellectual content of the Hebrew religion and found the critical writing in the Book of Enoch which he had planned to make the starting point of his attempt to minister to the Jewish people. The liberal religious atmosphere of Galilee did not overwhelm or crush the human side of his spiritual development, so that his human mind was able to find the great truths within the scriptures and recognize the Enoch fragment when it came to him. Perhaps from an unrestrained position in Galilee he would actually be able to work his spiritual lever on the establishment at Jerusalem and shift the establishment onto a more productive path.

Eventually, he was able to travel from home, to see the civilized world, and even go to Rome. And here he made the second great connection of the mortal mind with the deity inevitability as he became fully acquainted with all the religions of the world, but most especially with the religion of destiny, Mithraism. Already Jesus had met with a Mithraic priest of Persian extraction at Carthage, and had delivered his memorable discourse on time and space. A central element of this discourse is an exposition of the difference between the human concepts of time and space and the perceptions of these realities held by lower (animal) and higher forms of consciousness. The focus of the discourse is on the nature and mechanism of conscious immortality, and the level of discussion is the most cosmologically advanced of any of Jesus' discourses reported in The Urantia Book. The ideas presented deal with Ultimacy as a reality apart both from the Absolute and the Finite, and mark this as an extraordinary revelation, considering the time and place. But more remarkable discussions were yet to occur.

With Nabon, the Greek Jew who served as a high priest of Mithras in Rome, Jesus held many meetings, of which the most significant was the discussion of truth and faith, presented on pages 1459 - 60 of The Urantia Book. Jesus' discourse went far beyond contemporary human understanding of these realities and permanently influenced Nabon's way of thinking about these things and their relationship to the attainment of personal immortality. Since the attainment of salvation was a major concern of the mystery cult, these discussions did much to uplift Nabon's concept of the truth embodied in the myths of Mithras. We are told, "These truths continued to burn within his heart, and he was of great assistance to the later arriving preachers of Jesus' gospel." And indeed he was.

In each of his encounters on the trip to Rome and the return to Nazareth, Jesus was selecting and preparing individual human truth seekers in many different schools of philosophy and theology to understand and to appreciate aspects of his revelation that would be particularly relevant and inspiring to the unique view point of their faith. Once this work was completed, once the fuel was laid for the religious conflagration that would sweep the Roman Empire, Jesus returned home to strike the match and ignite the kindling to start the process of religious transformation. After a period of personal preparation, he visited John and was baptized, completed the perfect and permanent alignment of his will with the will of the Father, and retired to Mount Hermon for forty days to complete the "cross-check" for his mission. It was during this time that the mortal and divine minds could fully intercommunicate and final decisions concerning the plans laid long ago on Salvington could be affirmed by the mortal mind based on the mortal life experience and acquired knowledge of life on Urantia.

Once he had fully affirmed and fine-tuned his plans, he returned from the mountain and began to select and to train the Apostles. He taught them, and the later evangelists, all the truth that they could bear, and then made them practice telling this truth to others. Appearing now among men as the Son of Man, Michael gradually extended his sphere of influence to bring his revelation of truth to hungry souls throughout Judea, Samaria, and the Decapolis, never competing with, but always complementing the work of John and his disciples. Finally, on January 13, 28 AD., three days after the death of John, Jesus arrived at Capernaum, in Galilee, to begin the next major phase of his public ministry. Up to this time he had taught the Apostles of truth and spiritual realities, but they had comprehended little. As always, they could not bring themselves fully to discard the racial delusions of the Jewish concept of the Messiah as a temporal ruler.

This obsession with the Messianic myth was so powerful that it kept Jesus from imparting a fuller understanding of his mission and purpose to the disciples and prevented them from properly understanding and acting on what he told them. Without the healing, helping ministry of the Spirit of Truth, the Apostles were unable to discriminate between their long, dearly held Messianic delusions and the cosmic truth which was exhibited daily before their eyes. At best, Jesus could hope that the teachings and the experiences would fill their minds with information consistent with cosmic truth, and inconsistent with their fondly held delusions, so that the eventual activation of these memories by the Spirit of Truth would enable them to begin to function on higher levels of faith. One senses, in reading this part of the book, the repeated disappointment which Jesus felt at the continuing incapacity of the Apostles to grasp and work with higher spiritual truths. In spite of this, the teaching work did make progress, and when, after the death of John, Jesus began not merely to teach but also to heal the sick and infirm, the news of his actions spread rapidly and attracted much attention.

It is clear that Jesus had made a conscious choice for the Son of Man to enter into a more demonstrative relationship towards the multitudes after John's death. He surely had planned to capitalize on the work done by John in preparing the way for his supposed Messianic role, and to accept that role to the extent it could be made to fit reality and to the extent the Jews would accept him in that role. It was unimportant that he could never really fulfill the total Jewish vision of Messiah. He would be what he was and show those who were willing to understand how his life and ministry transcended their highest ideals of Messiah. In addition, helping and healing people was both gratifying to his own deepest merciful impulses and evocative of increasing levels of popular attention and support for his ministry.

Unfortunately, his increasingly miraculous and attention-grabbing ministry worked against some of the more subtle aspects of his mission. The Messiah obsession of the multitudes made it even harder for them to focus usefully on his teachings than it had the Apostles, who benefited from close everyday contact with him. But this was expected too. Surely, he had foreseen the statistics of his popular appeal, even if he could not accurately predict the outcome of individual free will choice. As much as his mercy impulse prompted him to help and heal all his unfortunate children on Urantia, he would not do so, for it was essential that humankind master these problems itself, within the scope of its evolved planetary knowledge. A necessarily temporary removal of this burden would be worse than no help at all, especially since the people were so unwilling or unable to embrace the higher motivations to truth-seeking that he taught.

For fifteen months of his public ministry, Jesus appeared as both a teacher and a healer, but the work of healing increasingly consumed his energies and gradually stirred up more and more opposition from the religious authorities in Jerusalem. As the point of diminishing returns on this phase of his ministry was reached, Jesus performed his most massively visible creative miracle, the feeding of the five thousand, and then, at the peak of his popularity as a miraculous Messianic personage, refused to be made a king, disheartening many of his followers who left that day, never to return.

The necessity for shedding any remaining semblance of the Messiah role became even more apparent when, a few days later, he confronted the religious authorities from Jerusalem at the Capernaum temple. In the epochal sermon, presented on pages 1709-11 of The Urantia Book, we see for the first time that Jesus is actually claiming his own deity, notwithstanding that the Apostles' recognition of that change in approach will be delayed another four months. Surely he did not decide to take this new and extreme position without recognizing that, at this point in his ministry, the reaction of the religious authorities would be severe and negative. And so it was. From this time forward, although the door to forgiveness and reconciliation by Jesus would remain open to the religious authorities, Jesus' ministry would focus on the individual. Any idea of his life as a fulfillment of the Jewish racial destiny would not be seriously entertained, notwithstanding that the Apostles and many of his closest followers would continue to believe in it.

The great collapse in popular support, combined with the increasingly active opposition by the religious authorities, reduced Jesus' following to a minute fraction of its former size. Yet these remaining disciples were more numerous than those he had at the beginning of his work, and they had survived the disappointment of his first major break with the Jewish Messianic delusion. The result was the accomplishment of what had been Michael's purpose from the beginning of his public work as Jesus. He had managed to assemble a following of liberal-minded Jews who, by virtue of their experience of living and working with him for over two years, were totally loyal to his vision and trusting of his life purpose, even though they did not at all grasp its import. In short, their loyalty was increasingly fixed on Jesus as a person and less and less dependent on their confusions about his presumed Messianic role.

Yet even after this, there were many among his followers who remained because their Messianic delusion was so strong as to override the clear evidence of error which Jesus had provided. During the ensuing four months, he tried his remaining followers sorely, forcing them to face the near total rejection of his apparent mission by the general populace, and affording them few opportunities to experience acceptance of their teaching. Through out all this time he continued to teach, placing ever greater emphasis on the new revelation "of the spirit of the living God who dwells in the minds of men." And in conjunction with the emergence of this new and expanded view he increasingly disclosed his deity both to the religious authorities and to the Apostles.

He had carefully prepared the Apostles to achieve closure on the new revelation of his person and had laid the plans to achieve this closure which would bring about, at last, the ignition of planetary religious redevelopment, the irrevocable launch of the final eight month phase of his mortal life. It is appropriate to close this paper with an examination of this pivotal moment when the plans of Salvington, matured and refined through the mortal life, were set into final motion, since the outcome of this moment will move Michael's bestowal mission forward to its accepted, if not planned, conclusion.

What exactly had happened as a result of the final rejection of Jesus by the Jewish religious authorities which caused him to take this new direction? Two previous approaches to a coherent life mission appeared to have failed. The Son of Man, as a teacher, achieved only limited success. The Son of Man, as a teacher-healer, while apparently successful in attracting attention, created a confusing image by reinforcing the Messianic longings of the Jews, which he could never fulfill. Now, however, a new objective appears on the scene. For the final phase of his bestowal, Michael will structure the external, visible, material part of his life in such a way as to mesh with the salvation myth of Mithraism, which is, in material if not in spiritual content, much closer to the facts than the myth of the Jewish Messiah. And this is the final stage which must have been planned from the beginning on Salvington. No wonder the mortal mind of Jesus seemed to have its doubts.

In adopting this approach, or, rather, in accepting this final plan as a model for his earth life, the human Jesus was required to accept certain extraordinary corollary requirements. He would not try to be, nor would he want to be, a prophet or savior to the Mithraic cult. His experience with the Jews showed the problems in that approach. Rather, the story of his life, especially these last eight months, would become a vehicle by which his later apostles and followers would, without even meaning to, successfully take over the structure of the widespread Mithraic cult and infuse it with their Galilean ideals of liberalized Judaism, from which could then flower, under the influence of the Spirit of Truth, a religion of adequate power to preserve the ideals, if not the realities, of Jesus' religion to the time of a new, more tolerant, and spiritually conscious world order.

In order for this to happen, Jesus would have to become known as the Son of God, and would have to be fully accepted as such by a critical mass of Galilean Jews. This acceptance would have to be a matter of total personal faith, and not simply a matter of instruction. They would have to know the truth to the very core of their beings. It would be desirable for Jesus to enact, for their edification, a true parallel to the mythic adventure of Mithras. The Apostles would have to know and understand the reality of Jesus' victory over the Lucifer rebels. They would have to witness, in part, his acceptance and confirmation as the supreme power of the universe. Most of all, they would have to experience the phenomenon of a visible resurrection, with lots of appearances in the morontia form to convince large number of believers, who had not been close to him during his life, of the veracity of the Apostles' stories.

There was definitely a down side to this plan, especially for the human Jesus. As much as the Jewish authorities had hated and despised him and his teachings when he appeared as the Son of Man, they would become positively apoplectic when he claimed deity sonship as the Son of God. It took no great insight to know that they would pursue him personally to the limits of their ability, and destroy him when they could. That would be distressing, to say the least. On the other hand, there was much advantage to continuing a Hebrew-oriented ministry, even though it would hasten the end. In particular, the rite of the Passover could be readily adapted to form the foundation of a real communion experience.

He knew that, once he had attained full co-supremacy over the local universe, he would be able to literalize his presence anywhere and anywhen, so that, if he committed to appear wherever and whenever his followers celebrated the sacrament of remembrance, all practitioners of this form of communion throughout the time and space of Urantia would at last be able to worship in the genuine deity presence and be subject to the divine influence on their minds and souls. Since the Mithraic cult had already made a communion ceremony central to the weekly celebration of their belief system, the transformation of this ritual into a literal spiritual communion would expose the Mithraic communicants to regular, high-quality spiritual contact, whether they planned it or not. The rite would lay the foundation for the spirit to accomplish the motivation of the laggard human will.

Of course, the adapted Mithraic rite would have vastly more effect on its communicants than would occur with his own Apostles (who had been taught the truth and only awaited the activation of the spirit) or on the ceremonial Jews (who would experience relatively less exposure to the deity presence, since the communion was not a formal feature of their worship). The rapid acceleration of spiritual uplift among the Mithraists, once connected to this reality, would rapidly change the Roman Empire, since Mithraism was the major religion of personal experience within the Roman Army. Because of the extreme organization of the army, as well as the organization of the Mithraic cult, the infusion of spiritual power would create a social force able to begin the reformation of planetary culture.

Although I have described this plan quite plainly, this was not a cynical exploitation of human foolishness. Rather, it was a divinely loving acceptance of the necessity forced upon the bestowal Son by mankind's unwillingness to recognize the possibility of deity as anything other than a totem god. Although Moses and the Hebrew prophets had repeatedly tried to center the developing cult of Judaism on a spiritual concept of deity, judged in terms of statistics and outcome, they had failed miserably. Yet within ceremonial Judaism there lurked a concept of the truth, and within the lay followers of Judaism there were a few who retained this concept of the truth and were able to respond to Jesus when he appeared. The opposition of the majority was necessary to fully dramatize the occasion, and this could never have occurred in a liberal, cosmopolitan community like Alexandria. Without this persecution, Michael could not have created the image of the mythic Jesus that would enable the reform of Mithraism and lay the foundations of the future.

The central problem of making this work, not just for the Mithraic cult, but for all other religionists who might someday hear the Apostles' stories, was to totally lock in their commitment to his deity. The Apostles knew Jesus on many levels. They had known him as an expert carpenter. They had experienced him as a knowledge able fisherman. They had heard him teach individuals and multitudes. And they saw him heal the sick and infirm. They saw him multiply the loaves and fishes. And, when he had at last triumphed over the emotions of the crowd and was ready to be crowned King, they saw him refuse. Now it was necessary to force these Apostles to think, to analyze and to understand the meaning of all these things. He must challenge their ideas of the Messiah forcefully, yet build on them to achieve an understanding of his true nature and to lay the foundation of the new world order.

To do this, he put the Apostles through the most trying experiences of their lives up to this time. He took them to places where nobody was interested in their message. He forced them to reconsider what they were doing and why they were doing it. And he told them repeatedly that he was the Son of God and was one in both deity and divinity with his father.

Then, at what must have been the psychological low point in their hopes up to this time, he deliberately issued the challenge to their faith and belief, knowing the intended and hoped-for result. First he asked them, "Who do men say that I am?" Then, after the Apostles had expressed a number of viewpoints, he invited them to disavow these lesser concepts of his nature with the clincher question (and note the phrasing of the idea) "But who say you that I am?" I wonder if the mortal Jesus held his breath while he waited for the answer to this one. He had focused heavily for the past four months on building the Apostles up for this moment. Would it work? What would be the result? Would it be close enough to the ideal that he would have what he needed?

In the event, Simon Peter obliged with his spontaneous outburst, "You are the Deliverer, the Son of the living God." Jesus' reply is even more remarkable, for he said, "This has been revealed to you by my Father. The hour has come when you should know the truth about me."

Obviously, he found the response satisfactory, but what did he mean by saying that it had been revealed to the Apostles by the Father? He had certainly spoken words that appear to have more or less that same message on many occasions during the past four months. What had the Father revealed? I believe that Jesus recognized in Peter's assertion a depth of acceptance of this truth that went far beyond mere intellectual assent. And it was in this that he recognized the revelatory hand of the Father, confirming the extraordinary path his divine self had planned and his human self had accepted for the remaining eight months of his bestowal life.

It was necessary for Jesus to make sure that the Apostles genuinely believed that they had discovered this truth completely independently and of their own, guided free will. He had to give them the opportunity to change their minds, so that they would be fully committed to this truth during the trying times ahead. So the following day he said to them, "Now that a full day has passed since you assented to Simon Peter's declaration regarding the identity of the Son of Man, I would ask if you still hold to your decision?" To which Simon replied, for them all, 'yes, Master, we do. We believe that you are the Son of the living God." And then Jesus took the first step on his now-certain path, when he said:

"You are my chosen ambassadors, but I know that, in the circumstances, you could not entertain the belief as a result of mere human knowledge. This is a revelation of the spirit of my Father to your inmost souls. And when, therefore, you make this confession by the insight of the spirit of my Father which dwells within you, I am led to declare that upon this foundation will I build the brotherhood of the kingdom of heaven. Upon this rock of spiritual reality will I build the living temple of spiritual fellowship in the eternal realities of my Father's kingdom. All the forces of evil and the hosts of sin shall not prevail against this human fraternity of the divine spirit. And while my Father's spirit shall ever be the divine guide and mentor of all who enter the bonds of the spirit fellowship, to you and your successors I now deliver the keys of the outward kingdom--the authority over things temporal--the social and economic features of this association of men and women as fellows of the kingdom."

So the Apostles also felt Jesus had finally decided to entrust them with a role in his Kingdom. It is doubtful that they understood what they had received, but they felt they had been given something, and that reinforced their commitment to stand by Peter's confession.

From here on in Jesus' life, he will increasingly live the life of a mythic hero. And he does this deliberately, to reinforce the myth, which is the most substantial literal thing the bestowal limitations allow him to leave to a generation of totem worshipers. He has already fully expounded his message of truth to the Apostles and to the people of Palestine. Knowing that that revelation is doomed as a social force, he now works to provide the mythic trappings, the sugar-coating which will make the awful social medicine of truth palatable.

The price the divine Michael will pay for this decision is, in its way, as great as the price the Christ myth says that Jesus paid on the cross to redeem the souls of a sinful world. The spiritual price to the human race is horrendous in the near term. And every spiritual horror which flows from this decision, and their number is beyond human calculation, is a double agony to the Creator Son because he experiences it personally through his mortal children and he knows that it is an inevitable consequence of his plan for the rapid, radical uplift of Urantia. Growth is accompanied by discomfort. Extreme growth is accompanied by extreme pain.

Let us examine some of the small change that makes up the price of Peter's confession and Jesus' acquiescence. Religious truth will be submerged on Urantia for fifty generations in the cocoon of a gross pagan myth that the incarnate deity decided to literalize in order to capture the attention of a totem-minded culture. The factualization of this myth will make it terribly difficult to uncover the truth, except through the passage of time. Those far-seeing souls who dare to penetrate the myth to secure the truth will be persecuted by Jesus' appointed managers of human affairs even more outrageously than the Master himself was persecuted by the Jewish authorities.

In time the practice of the religion of the myth will diverge so much from the inner truth that men will see the truth standing apart, an obviously divine reality unto itself. Perhaps a new revelation will be possible to sharpen the difference and accelerate the change, while making the divergence abundantly clear. But the price of further acceleration will beget more conflict for a time. In a sense, the belief system of the human race was tricked by God for two thousand years in a way which displays respect for the human mind only as a vehicle of free will choice. Man chose to require his savior and teacher to function as an object of idolatry in order to be believed. And the savior accepted this role because it was the best he could do with the resources at hand. And all the best religious engineers of Salvington had examined the problem beforehand and agreed with the diagnosis and treatment.

In the end, this was the best way to maximize the penetration into human culture of the knowledge and attitudes of heart that would be necessary to work effectively with the Spirit of Truth. The price was that the Creator Son would have to endure a lot in the short term, until the human spirit on Urantia could begin to find and harmonize with itself and with his own.

I think Michael must have carefully weighed the alternatives, not only before but after the event. What if he had not done this? What would have happened? He could have lived as King of Urantia, but that would have been bo-ring. Realistically, he might have stuck with the Son of Man image to the bitter finish. The Jews would have destroyed him one way or another, but he would have made only a very small mythic splash. The Apostles might not have kept the point so well and, since they would not have a good story for marketing purposes, they would have probably become a small school of religious philosophy, holding meetings in secret to avoid persecution. Ultimately, without the link into the Roman power structure, they would have gone the way of the Atenites, a fate superior to that of the Cynics and Stoics, but not much better than the followers of Abner achieved. We see that Jesus was the truly brilliant marketer, because he created the concepts that convinced Saul of Tarsus to accept the new religion, and Tarsus was the Mithraic cultural center.

If Jesus had not done these things, the Spirit of Truth would have been limited in its effectiveness in working with mortal minds that had no basis for understanding or appreciating its existence. Cultural progress would have been slow, hard, brutal, and barbaric. The truth-induced collapse of culture in preparation for the rebirth of civilization would have been deeper, because there would have been no literal, material institution to catch and preserve the useful pieces until they could be reassembled into a more appropriate structure. The recovery of civilization would have been slower, yet some aspects would have been improved. In the end, the time governor of progress was pressed to its limit by this plan and a universe learned the final lesson of the Lucifer rebellion.

There is a faster way towards perfection, if guided by the hand of God. But that faster way requires the mortal race to accept the transition from barbarism to light and life more rapidly, and does not bypass any of the steps along the way. The shocks come more frequently, the joy and pain more often, and only the eye of faith can sustain the mortal mind from the fear of this headlong rush into the unknown.

Urantia has been on this course for over 1,961 years, and today we are privileged to be recipients of the new revelation which will, at last, free the religion of Jesus from the myth of Jesus and launch our planet on the next stage of its flight toward future perfection.

(C) Copyright 1997, L. Dan Massey, Jr. 10818 Fawn Drive, Great Falls, VA 22066

Author's Note: Information in this paper about the historic antecedents and context of Mithraism is derived from the book, "The Origins of the Mithraic Mysteries--Cosmology and Salvation in the Ancient World" by David Ulansey (Oxford, 1989). The historical data and conjectures presented by Ulansey have been reinterpreted in light of statements in The Urantia Book about Mithraism.

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A service of
The Urantia Book Fellowship

Human ancestor fossil found in Europe

2008-03-28T09:57:00.000-07:00

(63:5.1) The early Andon races did not penetrate very far into Asia, and they did not at first enter Africa. The geography of those times pointed them north, and farther and farther north these people journeyed until they were hindered by the slowly advancing ice of the third glacier.

(63:5.2) Before this extensive ice sheet reached France and the British Isles, the descendants of Andon and Fonta had pushed on westward over Europe and had established more than one thousand separate settlements along the great rivers leading to the then warm waters of the North Sea.

This article reflects recent scientific discovery that corroborates Urantia Book revelation. It should give us all hope that the world is catching up, ever so slowly...

Human ancestor fossil found in Europe
By DANIEL WOOLLS, Associated Press Writer
Wed Mar 26

MADRID, Spain - A small piece of jawbone unearthed in a cave in Spain is the oldest known fossil of a human ancestor in Europe and suggests that people lived on the continent much earlier than previously believed, scientists say.

A team co-led by Eudald Carbonell, director of the Catalan Institute of Human Paleo-Ecology and Social Evolution, reported their find in Thursday's issue of the scientific journal Nature.

The timing of the earliest occupation of Europe by humans that emerged from Africa has been controversial for many years.

Until now the oldest hominin fossils found in Europe were the Homo antecessor ones, also found at Atapuerca, but at a separate digging site, and a skull from Ceprano in Italy.

Carbonell's team has tentatively classified the new fossil as representing an earlier example of Homo antecessor. And, critically, the team says the new one also bears similarities to much-older fossils dug up since 1983 in the Caucasus at a place called Dmanisi, in the former Soviet republic of Georgia. These were dated as being up to 1.8 million years old.

"This leads us to a very important, very interesting conclusion," Carbonell said. It is this: that hominins which emerged from Africa and settled in the Caucasus eventually evolved into Homo antecessor, and that the latter populated Europe not 800,000 years ago, but at least 1.3 million years ago.

Chris Stringer, a leading researcher in human origins at the Natural History Museum in London and not involved in the project, said Carbonell's team had done solid dating work to estimate the antiquity of the new Atapuerca fossil by employing three separate techniques — some researchers only use one or two — including a relatively new one that measures radioactive decay of sediments.

"This is a well-dated site, as much as any site that age can be," Stringer said.

But he also expressed some caution about Carbonell's conclusions.

First of all, the newly found jawbone fragment, which measures about two inches long and has teeth attached to it, preserves a section not seen in the equivalent pieces found at Atapuerca in 1997. So assigning both to the same species must be provisional, Stringer said.

And on the broader issue of tracing the new fossil back to the species unearthed at Dmanisi — Carbonell's big leap arguing continuity — Stringer said this too must be tentative because it is based on just a piece of a front of a jawbone and the time lapse is half a million years.

"That is a long period of time to talk about continuity," Stringer said.

Still, there are similarities between the two and this along with other archaeological evidence, suggests southern Europe did in fact begin to be colonized from western Asia not long after humans emerged from Africa — "something which many of us would have doubted even five years ago," Stringer said.

Carbonell says that with the finding of human fossils 1.3 million years old in Europe, researchers can now expect to find older ones, even up to 1.8 million years old, in other parts of the continent.

"This has to be the next discovery," he said. "This is the scientific hypothesis."