Urantia Book Commentary and Articles

Quick restart of Big Bang machine stuns scientists

noreply@blogger.com (Ad Astra) — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 14:31:00 +0000

By ALEXANDER G. HIGGINS, Associated Press Writer Alexander G. Higgins, Associated Press Writer

GENEVA – Scientists moved Saturday to prepare the world's largest atom smasher for exploring the depths of matter after successfully restarting the $10 billion machine following more than a year of repairs.

The nuclear physicists working on the Large Hadron Collider were surprised that they could so quickly get beams of protons whizzing near the speed of light during the restart late Friday, said James Gillies, spokesman for the European Organization for Nuclear Research.

The machine was heavily damaged by a simple electrical fault in September last year.

Some scientists had gone home early Friday and had to be called back as the project jumped ahead, Gillies said.

At a meeting early Saturday "they basically had to tear up the first few pages of their PowerPoint presentation which had outlined the procedures that they were planning to follow," he said. "That was all wrapped up by midnight. They are going through the paces really very fast."

The European Organization for Nuclear Research has taken the restart of the collider step by step to avoid further setbacks as it moves toward new scientific experiments — probably starting in January — regarding the makeup of matter and the universe.

CERN, as it is known, had hoped by 7 a.m. (0600 GMT) Saturday to get the beams to travel the 27-kilometer (17-mile) circular tunnel under the Swiss-French border, but things went so well Friday evening that they had achieved the operation seven hours earlier.

Praise from scientists around the world was quick. "First beam through the Atlas!" whooped an Internet message from Adam Yurkewicz, an American scientist working on the massive Atlas detector on the machine.

"I congratulate the scientists and engineers that have worked to get the LHC back up and running," said Dennis Kovar of the U.S. Department of Energy, which participates in the project.

"The LHC is a machine unprecedented in size, in complexity, and in the scope of the international collaboration that has built it over the last 15 years," said Kovar.

The next step, possibly later Saturday, was to decide whether to collide beams in the detectors to get necessary measuring data or to try using the machine to accelerate the protons to higher energy than any machine has ever reached, said Gillies.

In the meantime CERN is using about 2,000 superconducting magnets — some of them 15 meters (50 feet) long — to improve control of the beams of billions of protons so they will remain tightly bunched and stay clear of sensitive equipment.

Gillies said the scientists are being very conservative.

"They're leaving a lot of time so that the guys who are operating the machine are under no pressure whatsoever to tick off the boxes and move forward," he said.

Officials said Friday evening's progress was an important step on the road toward scientific discoveries at the LHC, which are expected in 2010.

"We've still got some way to go before physics can begin, but with this milestone we're well on the way," CERN Director General Rolf Heuer said.

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

And for your consideration, a few Urantia Book passages discussing the ultimaton, which very well could be the particle which the physicists are searching for...

42:1.2 Matter—energy—for they are but diverse manifestations of the same cosmic reality, as a universe phenomenon is inherent in the Universal Father. "In him all things consist." Matter may appear to manifest inherent energy and to exhibit self-contained powers, but the lines of gravity involved in the energies concerned in all these physical phenomena are derived from, and are dependent on, Paradise, The ultimaton, the first measurable form of energy, has Paradise as its nucleus.

42:5.4 2. Ultimatonic rays. The assembly of energy into the minute spheres of the ultimatons occasions vibrations in the content of space which are discernible and measurable. And long before physicists ever discover the ultimaton, they will undoubtedly detect the phenomena of these rays as they shower in upon Urantia. These short and powerful rays represent the initial activity of the ultimatons as they are slowed down to that point where they veer towards the electronic organization of matter. As the ultimatons aggregate into electrons, condensation occurs with a consequent storage of energy.

And see "Ultimatons, Electrons, and Atoms" HERE

For the largest overview of this subject, please see "Energy - Mind and Matter"

Charter for Compassion

noreply@blogger.com (Ad Astra) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 16:37:00 +0000

Charter for Compassion
Posted at: 2009-11-15
Author: Austen Ivereigh

As a fan of the writer Karen Armstrong -- a former nun who has become one of the leading authorities on religion and its deformation in the modern world -- I was intrigued to learn of an initiative she has just launched: no less than a global charter calling for the restoration of the principle of compassion. It is backed by the Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu, and other world worthies.

There's a danger that such all-inclusive single ideas aimed at uniting the world melt into glibness: is there a hint here of the Enlightenment project, which sought to create a universal "reasonable" religion, and ended up eviscerating all that was best in faith?

Actually I think the Charter -- read it here or watch it being voiced in a clever video -- escapes this danger, because it is written by a woman who deeply respects and understands religion.

Please click on "external source" to access the entire article, including a link to the "Charter for Compassion" in a compelling video.

'Ardi' Reverses Common Understanding of Human Evolution

noreply@blogger.com (Ad Astra) — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 16:35:00 +0000

By Eric Young
Christian Post Reporter
Fri, Oct. 02 2009

A team of researchers unveiled Thursday research findings on the skeleton of a hominid who is now being touted by some as the earliest known human ancestor of modern-day man.

The multinational team of 47 researchers, who have been studying the bones of "Ardi" since they were discovered in 1994, presented the oldest known skeleton of the "potential human ancestor," calling it by far the most complete among those of the earliest specimens found.

The skeleton, found in Ethiopia and thought to be 4.4-million years old, includes most of the skull and teeth, as well as the pelvis, hands, and feet - parts that the researchers say reveal an "intermediate" form of upright walking, considered a hallmark of hominids.

"This species...resolves many uncertainties about early human evolution, including the nature of the last common ancestor that we shared with the line leading to living chimpanzees and bonobos," commented team member , director of the Human Evolution Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley.

"The most popular reconstructions of human evolution during the past century rested on the presumption that the behaviors of the earliest hominids were related to [or even natural amplifications of] behaviors observed in these living great apes (Chimpanzees, bonobos, and gorillas...our closest living relatives)," added anthropologist C. O. Lovejoy of Kent State University. "Ardipithecus ramidus nullifies these presumptions, as it shows that the anatomy of living African apes is not primitive but instead has evolved specifically within extant ape lineages."

Simply put, this means the new skeleton reverses the common understanding of human evolution. Rather than humans evolving from an ancient chimp-like creature, "Ardi" provides evidence that chimps and humans evolved from some long-ago common ancestor - but each evolved and changed separately along the way.

"This is not that common ancestor, but it's the closest we have ever been able to come," White told The Associated Press.

Please click on "external source" for the complete article...and below are some Urantia Book quotes that seem to corroborate the finding of the article, although the time-line is off by a couple million years. Please click on the reference links to open the text.

61:6.1 The great event of this glacial period was the evolution of primitive man. Slightly to the west of India, on land now under water and among the offspring of Asiatic migrants of the older North American lemur types, the dawn mammals suddenly appeared. These small animals walked mostly on their hind legs, and they possessed large brains in proportion to their size and in comparison with the brains of other animals. In the seventieth generation of this order of life a new and higher group of animals suddenly differentiated. These new mid-mammals—almost twice the size and height of their ancestors and possessing proportionately increased brain power—had only well established themselves when the Primates, the third vital mutation, suddenly appeared. (At this same time, a retrograde development within the mid-mammal stock gave origin to the simian ancestry; and from that day to this the human branch has gone forward by progressive evolution, while the simian tribes have remained stationary or have actually retrogressed.)

62.3.12 ...man and the ape are related only in that they sprang from the mid-mammals, a tribe in which there occurred the contemporaneous birth and subsequent segregation of two pairs of twins: the inferior pair destined to produce the modern types of monkey, baboon, chimpanzee, and gorilla; the superior pair destined to continue the line of ascent which evolved into man himself.

62.3.13 Modern man and the simians did spring from the same tribe and species but not from the same parents. Man’s ancestors are descended from the superior strains of the selected remnant of this mid-mammal tribe, whereas the modern simians (excepting certain pre-existent types of lemurs, gibbons, apes, and other monkeylike creatures) are the descendants of the most inferior couple of this mid-mammal group, a couple who only survived by hiding themselves in a subterranean food-storage retreat for more than two weeks during the last fierce battle of their tribe, emerging only after the hostilities were well over.

Is Health Care A Moral Imperative?

noreply@blogger.com (Ad Astra) — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 20:25:00 +0000

By Harris Sherline
September 28, 2009

In June 2009, President Obama said that providing Americans with affordable health insurance is "an economic imperative, but it's also a moral imperative."   Immanuel Kant defined moral imperative as a principle that compels that person to act, saying that it's a kind of categorical imperative. Kant viewed the imperative as a dictate of pure reason. Not following the moral law was seen to be self-defeating and thus contrary to reason. Later thinkers took the imperative to originate in conscience, as the divine voice speaking through the human spirit. The dictates of conscience are simply right and often resist further justification. Looked at another way, the experience of conscience is the basic experience of encountering the right.

The idea that providing affordable health care is a moral imperative raises a number of questions: At what cost or regardless of the cost? Are there other moral imperatives that are of equal importance to society, say food, clothing, shelter (housing) or education?

After all, we can't or shouldn't allow people to go hungry or sleep on the streets, right? How about transportation? Should the society at large provide free transportation for everyone, say bus or subway fares, or should the government give a car to everyone who "needs" one, including the cost of maintenance and insurance?

At a September 10 interfaith meeting in Tampa, spiritual leaders from a number of denominations, including Episcopal, Jewish, Islamic, Metropolitan Community Church, Unitarian Universalist and United Church of Christ, united to advocate for health care reform as a moral imperative. The Rev. Leddy Hammock stated, "If anyone is vulnerable to suffering, we are all vulnerable, we all suffer. For the sake of our common humanity, let us call upon our collective intelligence to create a health care system that is inclusive, affordable, accessible, and accountable." (Unfortunately, the terms, "affordable, accessible and accountable" are all subjective. They can mean almost anything to anyone at any point in time.)

The meeting concluded with the following statement: "We, the undersigned, serve several religious and spiritual communities across the Tampa Bay. Our faith traditions teach us that care and compassion for the sick and injured is a basic human responsibility rooted in the foundational principle of affirming human worth and dignity. We believe that the crisis of American health care is not merely an economic or social or political problem -- it is a moral problem that confronts us all. As people of faith, we envision a society where each person is afforded human dignity, health, and wholeness."

Please click on "external source for the whole article. This is only page one.

Four Myths Defy Modern Science

noreply@blogger.com (Ad Astra) — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 15:43:00 +0000

This is a very interesting article posted by Dr Mercola. Enjoy the movie...To view additional comments by Dr Mercola, please click on "external source" below.

Following are some Urantia Book quotes which illustrate the soundness of the ideas presented in this video, and their harmony with Urantia Book teachings:

MECHANICAL UNIVERSE MYTH

103:6.4 When man analytically inspects the universe through the material endowments of his physical senses and associated mind perception, the cosmos appears to be mechanical and energy-material. Such a technique of studying reality consists in turning the universe inside out.

42:11.1 In the evaluation and recognition of mind it should be remembered that the universe is neither mechanical nor magical; it is a creation of mind and a mechanism of law. But while in practical application the laws of nature operate in what seems to be the dual realms of the physical and the spiritual, in reality they are one.

42:11.2 Mechanisms do not absolutely dominate the total creation; the universe of universes in toto is mind planned, mind made, and mind administered. But the divine mechanism of the universe of universes is altogether too perfect for the scientific methods of the finite mind of man to discern even a trace of the dominance of the infinite mind. For this creating, controlling, and upholding mind is neither material mind nor creature mind; it is spirit-mind functioning on and from creator levels of divine reality.

LIFE IS BASED ON SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST

49:1.6 The early stages of life evolution are not altogether in conformity with your present-day views. Mortal man is not an evolutionary accident. There is a precise system, a universal law, which determines the unfolding of the planetary life plan on the spheres of space. Time and the production of large numbers of a species are not the controlling influences. Mice reproduce much more rapidly than elephants, yet elephants evolve more rapidly than mice.

71:5.3 Throughout the earlier ages of any world, competition is essential to progressive civilization. As the evolution of man progresses, co-operation becomes increasingly effective. In advanced civilizations co-operation is more efficient than competition. Early man is stimulated by competition. Early evolution is characterized by the survival of the biologically fit, but later civilizations are the better promoted by intelligent co-operation, understanding fraternity, and spiritual brotherhood.

LIFE EVOLVED AS A RANDOM PROCESS

49:1.7 The process of planetary evolution is orderly and controlled. The development of higher organisms from lower groupings of life is not accidental. Sometimes evolutionary progress is temporarily delayed by the destruction of certain favorable lines of life plasm carried in a selected species. It often requires ages upon ages to recoup the damage occasioned by the loss of a single superior strain of human heredity. These selected and superior strains of living protoplasm should be jealously and intelligently guarded when once they make their appearance. And on most of the inhabited worlds these superior potentials of life are valued much more highly than on Urantia.

GENES CONTROL YOUR LIFE

116:6.1 In the evolutionary superuniverses energy-matter is dominant except in personality, where spirit through the mediation of mind is struggling for the mastery. The goal of the evolutionary universes is the subjugation of energy-matter by mind, the co-ordination of mind with spirit, and all of this by virtue of the creative and unifying presence of personality. Thus, in relation to personality, do physical systems become subordinate; mind systems, co-ordinate; and spirit systems, directive.

19:1.5 ...The human mind would ordinarily crave to approach the cosmic philosophy portrayed in these revelations by proceeding from the simple and the finite to the complex and the infinite, from human origins to divine destinies. But that path does not lead to spiritual wisdom. Such a procedure is the easiest path to a certain form of genetic knowledge, but at best it can only reveal man's origin; it reveals little or nothing about his divine destiny.

Found: Firm place to stand outside solar system

noreply@blogger.com (Ad Astra) — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 21:18:00 +0000

By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer
Sep 16, 10:08 am ET

WASHINGTON – Astronomers have finally found a place outside our solar system where there's a firm place to stand — if only it weren't so broiling hot.

As scientists search the skies for life elsewhere, they have found more than 300 planets outside our solar system. But they all have been gas balls or can't be proven to be solid. Now a team of European astronomers has confirmed the first rocky extrasolar planet.

Scientists have long figured that if life begins on a planet, it needs a solid surface to rest on, so finding one elsewhere is a big deal.

"We basically live on a rock ourselves," said co-discoverer Artie Hatzes, director of the Thuringer observatory in Germany. "It's as close to something like the Earth that we've found so far. It's just a little too close to its sun."

So close that its surface temperature is more than 3,600 degrees Fahrenheit, too toasty to sustain life. It circles its star in just 20 hours, zipping around at 466,000 mph. By comparison, Mercury, the planet nearest our sun, completes its solar orbit in 88 days.

"It's hot, they're calling it the lava planet," Hatzes said.

This is a major discovery in the field of trying to find life elsewhere in the universe, said outside expert Alan Boss of the Carnegie Institution. It was the buzz of a conference on finding an Earth-like planet outside our solar system, held in Barcelona, Spain, where the discovery was presented Wednesday morning. The find is also being published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.

Please click on "external source" to see the rest of the article.

Hawking Radiation

noreply@blogger.com (Ad Astra) — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 19:32:00 +0000

A clip from a BBC documentary explaining Hawking radiation around black holes.

The Urantia Book tells us that there are several types of "dark islands" of space. Here is one that may correspond with this discovery by Stephen Hawking:

41:1.5 One Supreme Power Center of the sixth order is stationed at the exact gravity focus of each local system. In the system of Satania the assigned power center occupies a dark island of space located at the astronomic center of the system. Many of these dark islands are vast dynamos which mobilize and directionize certain space-energies, and these natural circumstances are effectively utilized by the Satania Power Center, whose living mass functions as a liaison with the higher centers, directing the streams of more materialized power to the Master Physical Controllers on the evolutionary planets of space.

The Big Bang Briefly

noreply@blogger.com (Ad Astra) — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 18:46:00 +0000

Truthbook did not produce this video, but only offers it for your interest...

We [not Truthbook] made this video about the Big Bang because the theory is important and amazing, but often misunderstood.

This video was produced without any funding from any outside sources. It was put together with donated creative time from a group with a desire to further public cognition of science.

Science has many amazing stories to tell, this is the first. The Big Bang Briefly.
-------------------
Story Teller: Janna Levin
Director: Keith Olwell and Elizabeth Kiehner
Producer: Keith Olwell and Elizabeth Kiehner
Animation Studio: Thornberg & Forester
Director of Animation: Justin Meredith
Editorial: Proton Studio
DP: Luke Geissbuhler
Music: Copilot
Color: James Long

In the interest of advancing revealed cosmological truth from The Urantia Book we also offer the following collection of quotes taken from our new study of Evolution. They may help in addressing some of the issues brought up in the video.

________________
In The Beginning...

"In the eternity of the past...," The Urantia Book reveals, God the Spirit - the third person of the Trinity - came into existence. He is the God of Action

The stage of universal space is set for the manifold and never-ending panorama of the creative unfolding of the purpose of the Universal Father through the personality of the Eternal Son and by the execution of the God of Action, the executive agency for the reality performances of the Father-Son creator partnership.(8:1.3)

The Perfect Worlds of Havona are Created. This is center of the universe of universes.

The God of Action functions and the dead vaults of space are astir. One billion perfect spheres flash into existence. Prior to this hypothetical eternity moment the space-energies inherent in Paradise are existent and potentially operative, but they have no actuality of being; neither can physical gravity be measured except by the reaction of material realities to its incessant pull. There is no material universe at this (assumed) eternally distant moment, but the very instant that one billion worlds materialize, there is in evidence gravity sufficient and adequate to hold them in the everlasting grasp of Paradise.(8:1.4)

Gravity, Spirit and Personality in Relation to the Perfect Creation of Havona

There now flashes through the creation of the Gods the second form of energy, and this outflowing spirit is instantly grasped by the spiritual gravity of the Eternal Son. Thus the twofold gravity-embraced universe is touched with the energy of infinity and immersed in the spirit of divinity. In this way is the soil of life prepared for the consciousness of mind made manifest in the associated intelligence circuits of the Infinite Spirit.

Upon these seeds of potential existence, diffused throughout the central creation of the Gods, the Father acts, and creature personality appears. Then does the presence of the Paradise Deities fill all organized space and begin effectively to draw all things and beings Paradiseward. (8:1.5)

This is the one and only settled, perfect, and established aggregation of worlds. This is a wholly created and perfect universe; it is not an evolutionary development. This is the eternal core of perfection, about which swirls that endless procession of universes which constitute the tremendous evolutionary experiment, the audacious adventure of the Creator Sons of God, who aspire to duplicate in time and to reproduce in space the pattern universe, the ideal of divine completeness, supreme finality, ultimate reality, and eternal perfection.(14:0.2)

Havona is the home of the pattern personality of every mortal type and the home of all superhuman personalities of mortal association who are not native to the creations of time. (14:6.34)

In brief, the Infinite Spirit testifies that, since he is eternal, so also is the central universe eternal. And this is the traditional starting point of the history of the universe of universes.(8:1.9)

From the Infinite to the Finite - The Time-Space Creations, and the "Growth Cycle"

When the perfect worlds of the Central Universe have been created, there remains the creation of the worlds of time and space - the finite creations whereon mortal beings have their existence by the freewill choice of the First Source and Center.

Finite possibility is inherent in the Infinite, but the transmutation of possibility to probability and inevitability must be attributed to the self-existent free will of the First Source and Center, activating all triunity associations. Only the infinity of the Father's will could ever have so qualified the absolute level of existence as to eventuate an ultimate or to create a finite.

With the appearance of relative and qualified reality there comes into being a new cycle of reality—the growth cycle—a majestic downsweep from the heights of infinity to the domain of the finite, forever swinging inward to Paradise and Deity, always seeking those high destinies commensurate with an infinity source.

These inconceivable transactions mark the beginning of universe history, mark the coming into existence of time itself. To a creature, the beginning of the finite is the genesis of reality; as viewed by creature mind, there is no actuality conceivable prior to the finite.(105:5.6)

The universe response involved an activation of the architectural plans for the superuniverse space level, and this evolution is still progressing throughout the physical organization of the seven superuniverses. (105:6.3)

Enjoy the show...

Newfound Planet Orbits Backward

noreply@blogger.com (Ad Astra) — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 16:12:00 +0000

by Jeanna Bryner And Robert Roy Britt

Planets orbit stars in the same direction that the stars rotate. They all do. Except one.

A newfound planet orbits the wrong way, backward compared to the rotation of its host star. Its discoverers think a near-collision may have created the retrograde orbit, as it is called.

The star and its planet, WASP-17, are about 1,000 light-years away. The setup was found by the UK's Wide Area Search for Planets (WASP) project in collaboration with Geneva Observatory. The discovery was announced today but has not yet been published in a journal.

What's going on

A star forms when a cloud of gas and dust collapses. Whatever movement the cloud had becomes intensified as it condenses, determining the rotational direction of the star. How planets form is less certain. They are, however, known to develop out of the leftover, typically disk-shaped mass of gas and dust that swirls around a newborn star, so whatever direction that material is moving, which is the direction of the star's rotation, becomes the direction of the planet's orbit.

WASP-17 likely had a close encounter with a larger planet, and the gravitational interaction acted like a slingshot to put WASP-17 on its odd course, the astronomers figure.

Cosmic collisions are not uncommon. Earth's moon was made when our planet collided with a Mars-sized object, astronomers think. And earlier this week NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope found evidence of two planets colliding around a distant, young star. Some moons in our solar system are on retrograde orbits, perhaps at least in some cases because they were flying through space alone and then captured; that's thought to be the case with Neptune's large moon Triton.

Please click on "external source" to access this entire article, including several interesting related links - one concerning the ten most intriguing extrasolar planets.

The following quote from The Urantia Book gives some corroboration to the scientific findings in this article.

From The Urantia Book:(bold is added by ed.)

57:5.14 All of the solar system material derived from the sun was originally endowed with a homogeneous direction of orbital swing, and had it not been for the intrusion of these three foreign space bodies, all solar system material would still maintain the same direction of orbital movement. As it was, the impact of the three Angona tributaries injected new and foreign directional forces into the emerging solar system with the resultant appearance of retrograde motion. Retrograde motion in any astronomic system is always accidental and always appears as a result of the collisional impact of foreign space bodies. Such collisions may not always produce retrograde motion, but no retrograde ever appears except in a system containing masses which have diverse origins.

Human Stabbed a Neanderthal, Evidence Suggests

noreply@blogger.com (Ad Astra) — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 14:54:00 +0000

By Jeanna Bryner, Senior Writer

Newly analyzed remains suggest that a modern human killed a Neanderthal man in what is now Iraq between 50,000 and 75,000 years ago. The finding is scant but tantalizing evidence for a theory that modern humans helped to kill off the Neanderthals.

The probable weapon of choice: A thrown spear.

The evidence: A lethal wound on the remains of a Neanderthal skeleton.

The victim: A 40- to 50-year-old male, now called Shanidar 3, with signs of arthritis and a sharp, deep slice in his left ninth rib.

"What we've got is a rib injury, with any number of scenarios that could explain it," said study researcher Steven Churchill, an associate professor of evolutionary anthropology at Duke University in North Carolina. "We're not suggesting there was a blitzkrieg, with modern humans marching across the land and executing the Neandertals [aka Neanderthals]. I want to say that loud and clear."

But he added, "We think the best explanation for this injury is a projectile weapon, and given who had those and who didn't, that implies at least one act of inter-species aggression."

(The words "Neanderthal" and "Neandertal" refer to the same species, Homo neanderthalensis, which lived on the plains of Europe and parts of Asia as far back as 230,000 years ago. They disappeared from the fossil record more than 20,000 years ago, a few thousand years after modern humans appeared on the scene.)

Violent past

Scientists are continuing to refine their understanding of early Homo sapiens and Neanderthals, with hopes of also resolving the mystery of how the latter species went extinct while we did not. Past research has yielded conflicting evidence on interbreeding between the two species, but the new study clearly shows the opposite of affection.

In fact, another Neanderthal skeleton dating back some 36,000 years and found in France showed signs of a scalp injury likely caused by a sharp object that may have been delivered by a modern human at the time, Churchill said.

"So if the Shanidar 3 case is also a case of inter-specific violence and if Shandiar 3 overlaps in time with modern humans, we're beginning to get a little bit of a pattern here," Churchill said.

Competition for resources with modern humans, along with other factors, may have also played a role in the die-off of Neanderthals, the researchers say.

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

About the Neanderthals - their rise and their elimination - from The Urantia Book:

(64:4.1) THE neanderthal RACES The neanderthalers were excellent fighters, and they traveled extensively. They gradually spread from the highland centers in northwest India to France on the west, China on the east, and even down into northern Africa. They dominated the world for almost half a million years until the times of the migration of the evolutionary races of color.

(64:4.11) These times of the fourth and fifth glaciers witnessed the further spread of the crude culture of the Neanderthal races. But there was so little progress that it truly appeared as though the attempt to produce a new and modified type of intelligent life on Urantia was about to fail. For almost a quarter of a million years these primitive peoples drifted on, hunting and fighting, by spells improving in certain directions, but, on the whole, steadily retrogressing as compared with their superior Andonic ancestors.

(78:1.8) 6. The blue race. The blue men were scattered all over Europe, but their better centers of culture were situated in the then fertile valleys of the Mediterranean basin and in northwestern Europe. neanderthal absorption had greatly retarded the culture of the blue man, but he was otherwise the most aggressive, adventurous, and exploratory of all the evolutionary peoples of Eurasia.

(80:1.7) Slowly these migrating sons of Eden united with the higher types of the blue race, invigorating their cultural practices while ruthlessly exterminating the lingering strains of neanderthal stock. This technique of race blending, combined with the elimination of inferior strains, produced a dozen or more virile and progressive groups of superior blue men, one of which you have denominated the Cro-Magnons.

Did You Know?

noreply@blogger.com (Ad Astra) — Wed, 20 May 2009 23:08:00 +0000

This video is an amazing testament to the speed with which Urantian civilization is accelerating...but is it accelerating in the right direction? Is is truly sustainable?

p1086:6(99:1.3) Urantia society can never hope to settle down as in past ages. The social ship has steamed out of the sheltered bays of established tradition and has begun its cruise upon the high seas of evolutionary destiny; and the soul of man, as never before in the world's history, needs carefully to scrutinize its charts of morality and painstakingly to observe the compass of religious guidance. The paramount mission of religion as a social influence is to stabilize the ideals of mankind during these dangerous times of transition from one phase of civilization to another, from one level of culture to another.

p909:6(81:6.25) The greatest twentieth-century influences contributing to the furtherance of civilization and the advancement of culture are the marked increase in world travel and the unparalleled improvements in methods of communication. But the improvement in education has not kept pace with the expanding social structure; neither has the modern appreciation of ethics developed in correspondence with growth along more purely intellectual and scientific lines. And modern civilization is at a standstill in spiritual development and the safeguarding of the home institution.

p910:1(81:6.28) At first life was a struggle for existence; now, for a standard of living; next it will be for quality of thinking, the coming earthly goal of human existence.

p1772:4(160:1.3) The more complex civilization becomes, the more difficult will become the art of living. The more rapid the changes in social usage, the more complicated will become the task of character development. Every ten generations mankind must learn anew the art of living if progress is to continue. And if man becomes so ingenious that he more rapidly adds to the complexities of society, the art of living will need to be remastered in less time, perhaps every single generation. If the evolution of the art of living fails to keep pace with the technique of existence, humanity will quickly revert to the simple urge of living—the attainment of the satisfaction of present desires. Thus will humanity remain immature; society will fail in growing up to full maturity

Please see The Maintenance of Civilization

And enjoy this short presentation...!

German Fossil Found to Be Early Primate

noreply@blogger.com (Ad Astra) — Sun, 17 May 2009 23:36:00 +0000

This article is on the same subject as the previous one, but with a slightly different perspective. From the Urantia Book:

p703:5 62:2.1 A little more than one million years ago the Mesopotamian dawn mammals, the direct descendants of the North American lemur type of placental mammal, suddenly appeared. They were active little creatures, almost three feet tall; and while they did not habitually walk on their hind legs, they could easily stand erect. They were hairy and agile and chattered in monkeylike fashion, but unlike the simian tribes, they were flesh eaters. They had a primitive opposable thumb as well as a highly useful grasping big toe. From this point onward the prehuman species successively developed the opposable thumb while they progressively lost the grasping power of the great toe. The later ape tribes retained the grasping big toe but never developed the human type of thumb.

p706:3 62:3.12 And so it may be readily seen that man and the ape are related only in that they sprang from the mid-mammals, a tribe in which there occurred the contemporaneous birth and subsequent segregation of two pairs of twins: the inferior pair destined to produce the modern types of monkey, baboon, chimpanzee, and gorilla; the superior pair destined to continue the line of ascent which evolved into man himself.

By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
Published: May 16, 2009

Fossil remains of a 47-million-year-old animal, found years ago in Germany, have been analyzed more thoroughly and determined to be an extremely early primate close to the emergence of the evolutionary branch leading to monkeys, apes and humans, scientists said in interviews this week.

Described as the "most complete fossil primate ever discovered," the specimen is a juvenile female the size of a small monkey. Only the left lower limb is missing, and the preservation is so remarkable that impressions of fur and the soft body outline are still clear. The animal's last meal, of fruit and leaves, remained in the stomach cavity.

In an article to be published on Tuesday in PLoS One, an online scientific journal, an international team of scientists will report that this extraordinary fossil could be a "stem group" from which higher primates evolved, 'but we are not advocating this."

This is only a few sentences from a very interesting article, and pretty exciting, as it appears to corroborate what the Urantia Book tells us about this part of the evolutionary process, and this particular branch of the tree...please click on "external source" to access the complete article.

Fossil Discovery Is Heralded

noreply@blogger.com (Ad Astra) — Sat, 16 May 2009 23:23:00 +0000

May 16, 2009

From The Urantia Book:

The great event of this glacial period was the evolution of primitive man. Slightly to the west of India, on land now under water and among the offspring of Asiatic migrants of the older North American lemur types, the dawn mammals suddenly appeared. These small animals walked mostly on their hind legs, and they possessed large brains in proportion to their size and in comparison with the brains of other animals. In the seventieth generation of this order of life a new and higher group of animals suddenly differentiated. These new mid-mammals-almost twice the size and height of their ancestors and possessing proportionately increased brain power-had only well established themselves when the Primates, the third vital mutation, suddenly appeared. (At this same time, a retrograde development within the mid-mammal stock gave origin to the simian ancestry; and from that day to this the human branch has gone forward by progressive evolution, while the simian tribes have remained stationary or have actually retrogressed.)
p700:2 (61:6.1)

MAY 15, 2009
Fossil Discovery Is Heralded

By GAUTAM NAIK

In what could prove to be a landmark discovery, a leading paleontologist said scientists have dug up the 47 million-year-old fossil of an ancient primate whose features suggest it could be the common ancestor of all later monkeys, apes and humans.

Anthropologists have long believed that humans evolved from ancient ape-like ancestors. Some 50 million years ago, two ape-like groups walked the Earth. One is known as the tarsidae, a precursor of the tarsier, a tiny, large-eyed creature that lives in Asia. Another group is known as the adapidae, a precursor of today's lemurs in Madagascar.

Based on previously limited fossil evidence, one big debate had been whether the tarsidae or adapidae group gave rise to monkeys, apes and humans. The latest discovery bolsters the less common position that our ancient ape-like ancestor was an adapid, the believed precursor of lemurs.

Please click on "external source" for this most interesting article...

Astronomers: Dark Matter Guides Universe's Structure

noreply@blogger.com (Ad Astra) — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 20:24:00 +0000

by Bob Evans on
Apr 5, 2009

A 10-year study of 100,000 galaxies close to our own offers compelling proof that long-hypothesized "dark matter" does exist and is in fact a guiding force behind the structure of the universe, a team of Australian, British, and American astronomers revealed this week.

Saying that "the universe we see is really quite structured," one of the lead researchers explained that the 10-year "census" of galaxies near our own Milky Way offers powerful evidence that this invisible dark matter "seems to hold the galaxies together."

The dark matter's influence on galaxies "stops their constituent stars from flying off and it seems to be driving the large-scale galaxy clusters and super clusters" that are the largest objects in the universe, said Dr. Heath Jones of the Anglo Australian Observatory in an article on the website of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Offering rich details about the direction, speed, shape, and evolving structure of 100,000 galaxies, the 10-year study offered great promise because of its exhaustive scope: it analyzed those dynamic properties for a much larger number of galaxies than any other study had ever attempted.

In reviewing the data from the study, Jones said, it became clear that directly observable visible objects could not possibly have exerted sufficient gravitational force to account for all of the movement and dynamics of the galaxies being studied.

And in hypothesing about what other, nonvisible forces could account for that additional gravitational effect, theories about dark matter completed that equation very nicely, he told the ABC:

"The galaxies just aren't uniform. They are scattered throughout the universe," he said. "What we find is that they tend to clump and cluster together. So you'll get galaxies clustering along nice delicate filamentary chains. You get some galaxies that will congregate in their clusters and you will get clusters of galaxies collecting in super clusters of galaxies, so the universe that we see is really quite structured….

"Astronomers know that this dark matter must exist in the universe," he said. "We can't see it with our telescopes directly, but by studying large objects like galaxies and how they move with respect to each other we can infer its existence quite accurately."

In addition to the compelling evidence the study provides for the existence of dark matter, Jones said, it also offers equally compelling proof that the universe is expanding and will continue to do so, rather than at some point collapsing back in upon itself as some astronomers have theorized.

No Ordinary Angel: Celestial Spirits and Christian Claims About Jesus

noreply@blogger.com (Ad Astra) — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 20:14:00 +0000

Books
April 07, 2009
by Sam Wells

Book Review: No Ordinary Angel: Celestial Spirits and Christian Claims about Jesus
by Susan R. Garrett
Yale University Press, 352 pp., $30.00

The most impressive thing about Susan Garrett's wide-ranging and lucid six-chapter discussion of angels is that it takes a subject that scholars generally consider to be on the fluffy end of popular piety and integrates it into ecclesial and academic reflection. The real energy of the book is how close it remains to the netherworld of angelic appearances, miraculous rescues and near-death experiences—in short, a theology based on the movie It's a Wonderful Life. Never condescending, never scaremongering, Garrett shows both an admirable grasp of and critical distance from the ways angels have captivated and continue to stimulate the popular imagination.

At the outset Garrett acknowledges the three broad constituencies in the conversation: Billy Graham-style ingenuousness toward the scriptural record, including the (erroneous) assumption that the Bible has a single consistent view of the nature and role of angels; Rudolf Bultmann-style skepticism about the abiding value of angel imagery, supplemented by Walter Wink-characterized disenchantment of the world into physical phenomena of assorted powers; and New Age "en chanted-world cosmology," sometimes called a "Third Great Awakening," full of spiritual presences and inexplicable powers, largely centered on and designed to bolster the self.

Garrett starts, as one would expect, with the notion of messenger. It seems odd that she does not offer a fuller account of Gabriel and the role of angels in the Christmas and resurrection narratives, since these seem to be at the core of the scriptural record, but her concern at the outset is more with showing Jesus' similarity to and difference from angels. (In brief, Jesus ate, suffered and died in a way that angels never do.) She goes on to explore the role of angels in naming and mediating God's presence, still focusing largely on Jesus, and she provides helpful notes on the way in which understanding of the divinity of Christ emerged from reflection on other motifs, such as God's word, glory, wisdom, power, spirit and name.

After the first two chapters Garrett dwells more on popular conceptions of faith and spirituality. The middle two chapters deal with the negative aspects of the spiritual world—fallen angels and Satan as the fallen angel; the final two deal with concerns of piety—guardian angels and experiences and beliefs surrounding death.

The book is exceptionally well structured, with conclusions to each chapter that perfectly summarize the foregoing material, and very engagingly written, with hosts of examples from ancient literature and contemporary culture. It is disappointing not to see more positive examples from contemporary experience and culture; almost without exception Garrett's contemporary material scrutinizes the self-centered, death-denying character of popular spirituality. This is not necessarily a criticism of the author; it is more a lament about the material she has at her disposal. There are glimpses of helpful historical narrative, particularly where she draws out the way that Calvin's theology, with its conviction that the finite cannot contain the infinite, enhanced the material-spiritual duality that undermined Protestant belief in the intimate presence of angels.

The theological absentee from the book is the Holy Spirit. Garrett helpfully points out how belief in angels thrives in a milieu where God seems to be distant from the world, either experientially or philosophically. Belief in angels—particularly guardian angels—seems to be a way in which people understand the divine drawing close to the human in everyday and crisis situations. This is exactly where the Holy Spirit fits into Christian theology. If, as Calvin insists, Jesus is fully human and thus after the ascension can only be in one place—heaven—then the Holy Spirit is the One who makes "Christ and his benefits" present to the believer.

Angels amplify, illustrate, invigorate, add color to and make vivid the gospel narrative and the world of the discipleship community, but they are not the hinge of salvation; nor are they the principal way in which God is made known in the world today. These are the roles of Jesus and the Holy Spirit. It makes complete sense that angels emerged in Judaism as the faith searched for a vocabulary to describe God's communication with Israel, both corporately and in the experience of believers. But in the Christian era, emphasis on angels sounds suspiciously like an abandonment of the Trinity in favor of a unitary God who has a portfolio of alternative methods of communicating with the world.

These questions don't quite get the treatment they deserve in this otherwise highly readable and in many ways intriguing account of popular piety and historic faith.

Editorial/Opinion Letters to the editor

noreply@blogger.com (Ad Astra) — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 22:02:00 +0000

Published Friday, April 3, 2009 9:26 AM MDT

Total collapse?

Dear Editor:

Jesus prayed, "Thy will be done on Earth as it is done in Heaven." Surely all Christians want this prayer to become reality, but how can we do our part to bring this to fruition if we don't know how things are done in heaven?

Nearly one hundred years ago in Chicago divine personalities began transmitting messages through a sleeping individual. Didn't Saint Luke write, "For with God nothing is impossible." After more than 40 years of transmissions these papers known as the "Urantia Papers" were published in 1955 as the Urantia Book. This 2,000 page book self proclaims to be the most recent presentation of truth to our planet.

The first 1,300 pages teach how things are done in Heaven. The last 700 pages are the complete life and teachings of Jesus. These papers give a detailed account of 19 appearances of Jesus after his resurrection. The New Testament only tells of four appearances.

When I became a student of the book in the 1970s I was intrigued by a paper entitled, "Government on a Neighboring Planet." The authors claim that our planet is in dire need of help and they relate how the most progressive nation on this neighboring planet is advancing its civilization. The paper makes suggestions for improvement in ten areas of our society. At this point of our nation's development, I believe the areas of Home Life, Education, Dealing with Crime, and Military Preparedness are the most relative.

In the family children are not allowed to marry until the age of twenty. They must attend marriage preparation classes before given a marriage license, and they must attend weekly parenting classes until their children are grown.

The education system doesn't confine children in classrooms. In the basics they are home schooled. The public schools are farms, building skills, libraries, and technical skills. One half of each school day is devoted to competitive athletics for all students. When they graduate from the public schools they are skilled craftsmen and women. All who desire academic education can attend colleges without cost.

Crime in this advanced nation is dealt with justly and quickly. The death penalty is given to all public officials who betray the public trust and to all petty criminals who can't be rehabilitated.

Military preparedness is only for defensive purposes. To aid less advanced nations, scholarships are provided for the most able students. They are taught by example how to advance their home nations.

Will the economic programs of the Obama administration rescue our nation and keep us from total collapse? Or is this an example of "the blind leading the blind?" Maybe it's time that skeptics make a serious investigation of The Urantia Book. Copies of the book can be found in our local libraries, the book is also on the internet.

Sincerely

Lynn E. Rhoderick

Keck and Kepler team up to find other Earths

noreply@blogger.com (Ad Astra) — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 20:19:00 +0000

From the Urantia Book:

Satania itself is an unfinished system containing only 619 inhabited worlds. Such planets are numbered serially in accordance with their registration as inhabited worlds, as worlds inhabited by will creatures. Thus was Urantia given the number 606 of Satania, meaning the 606th world in this local system on which the long evolutionary life process culminated in the appearance of human beings. There are thirty-six uninhabited planets nearing the life-endowment stage, and several are now being made ready for the Life Carriers. There are nearly two hundred spheres which are evolving so as to be ready for life implantation within the next few million years.

Not all planets are suited to harbor mortal life. Small ones having a high rate of axial revolution are wholly unsuited for life habitats. In several of the physical systems of Satania the planets revolving around the central sun are too large for habitation, their great mass occasioning oppressive gravity. Many of these enormous spheres have satellites, sometimes a half dozen or more, and these moons are often in size very near that of Urantia, so that they are almost ideal for habitation.

The oldest inhabited world of Satania, world number one, is Anova, one of the forty-four satellites revolving around an enormous dark planet but exposed to the differential light of three neighboring suns. Anova is in an advanced stage of progressive civilization. p559:3 49:0.3

Keck and Kepler team up to find other Earths

This is an exciting article about the newest of science's efforts to discover inhabitable (or inhabited?) planets outside our solar system. Please click on "external source" to access the entire article, and to follow links to the Keck Observatory site - most interesting!

Kamuela, Hawaii- For nearly a decade, Cal-Berkeley astronomer Geoff Marcy and his colleagues have been using the W. M. Keck telescopes to discover giant planets orbiting distant stars. Now, with the successful launch of NASA's Kepler mission, they will be using Keck I's ten-meter astronomical eye to discover distant Earths. Kepler will pick out Earth-like candidates. Keck will then zero in on them and determine, with certainty, if they are at all similar to our home planet.

"Keck and NASA have a long-standing partnership to push astronomy research to its fullest potential. This Keck-Kepler collaboration gives that partnership a compelling new scientific focus," said Taft Armandroff, the Director of Keck Observatory headquartered in Kamuela, HI.

Kepler was launched from NASA's Kennedy Space Center last Friday. Aboard the spacecraft is an 84-megapixel camera that will focus on a single region of the sky and snap repeated images of 100,000 stars looking for those that dim periodically. By studying the stars' episodic decreases in starlight, astronomers will be able to determine the diameter of the object that passes in front of the star, blocks its light and causes the dimming.

"Kepler does not tell astronomers with certainty if the object taking a bite out of the starlight is a planet or another star. That is where Keck plays a crucial role to the Kepler mission," said Marcy, a frequent Keck user and Kepler mission co-investigator. He, along with a large international planet-hunting team, has discovered nearly half of the 300-plus known planets outside the Solar System.

Astronomers call the objects Kepler detects transits because from the telescope's perspective the planet candidate seems to eclipse its parent star's light. The phenomenon is similar to the Moon eclipsing the Sun during a total solar eclipse. But a distant planet eclipsing its parent star will only block a small fraction, 1/10,000, of the star's light. The Moon, by contrast, blocks nearly all of the Sun's light in a total solar eclipse.

In the Kepler-Keck duo, once Kepler team members find an Earth candidate and determine as best they can that they’re not looking at two stars orbiting each other, they will hand the object off to Marcy and his colleagues. The team will use Keck I telescope and its instrument HIRES, the High Resolution Spectrometer, to monitor how the light coming from the parent star changes as the planet candidate orbits.

HIRES is an instrument that spreads light collected from the telescope mirrors into its component wavelengths or colors. This is called a spectrum. When the planet candidate orbits around the back of the star, its gravity will ever so slightly pull on the star causing the star's spectrum to shift toward redder wavelengths. When the planet comes around in its orbit to cross the face of the star, it will pull the star in the other direction, and the star's spectrum will shift toward bluer wavelengths. HIRES will detect these shifts and give astronomers the star's radial velocity, or the speed at which the star moves toward or away from Earth. Based on this speed, Marcy and his team will be able to calculate the mass of planet candidate.

Calculating the planet candidate's mass is important because it tells astronomers whether a planet or another star is eclipsing the parent star. If the object turns out to be a planet, Marcy and his team can then use the Keck-calculated mass and Kepler-calculated diameter to determine the planet's density. "In a sense it's as if we are taking the planets and dunking them in a bathtub to see if they float. A rocky planet like Earth would sink," Marcy said. Earth has a density of about five grams per cubic centimeter. Gas giants, on the other hand, have a density close to water at about one gram per cubic centimeter.

"Studying the radial velocity of the planet candidates Kepler discovers is a key endeavor in understanding our place in the cosmos. It will help answer one of humanity's biggest questions, "Are we alone?" Armandroff said.

Marcy and his colleagues plan to start studying Kepler's candidate Earths with Keck I and HIRES during the last three nights of July 2009.

Why is TUB translated into other languages when its authors favor a one world language?

noreply@blogger.com (Ad Astra) — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 21:16:00 +0000

Q: Why is The Urantia Book translated into other languages when its authors favor a one world language?

A: The very first paragraph of the book states that the authors were "authorized to translate into the English language..." I think one reason that the authors chose English is that it is a very fluid language, ever adaptable and full of derivative words from many languages.

This is surely no accidental or unthinking choice. All we have to do is look around us and we see that many countries educate their children in English, and English, I have heard, is becoming the language of business as well. And we know how important commerce is to establishing global unity and cooperation.

Jesus was conversant in several languages, and this is a trend that is developing throughout the world. For example, here in America, English co-exists with Spanish in many communities. Language is an evolutionary development, and it is going to take a long time before we reach the stage of a "one tongue" world, which is a feature of the ages of Light and Life.

Some may question the decisions that have been made regarding translations into other languages, but it seems to me that if you want to reach a wide audience, you do what is necessary. Jesus said that we were to spread this message to all the world... better that people should get this message in their own language right now; later on, they may be able to master English because of it. But regardless, they will have gotten the good news.

We are given no concrete guidance in the book regarding this issue, but since the Urantia Revelation is meant to feed humanity for the next millenium or so, I think translations in other languages at this early stage is entirely appropriate. In the end, the message of The Urantia Book - in any language - must be translated by each individual into "the language of the spirit..." that Jesus spoke of.

Thanks for this interesting question!

Do we have intelligent planetary neighbors?

noreply@blogger.com (Ad Astra) — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 22:50:00 +0000

Q: The Urantia Book authors state that there is intelligent life in close proximity to Earth. They go on to say that there are three planets in our solar system suited to harbor life. Do we have intelligent planetary neighbors?

A: The Urantia Book teaches us that there are three planets near us that are suitable to harbor life, but perhaps not intelligent life, as we know it. However, there MAY BE intelligent life on some of the moons in our solar system.

Even if a planetary moon may appear to have no familiar attributes that would support life as we know it on Earth, it may yet be able to support life-forms that are unlike us, for example, the nonbreathers. The nonbreathers are a fascinating group, and they are mortals like us, except that they are not Adjuster-fused. Their lives are very different from our own, as you will see if you follow the links.

We are told in The Urantia Book that there are nine moons in our local universe which can support the nonbreather type of life, and, intriguingly, "You would be more than interested in the planetary conduct of this type of mortal because such a race of beings inhabits a sphere in close proximity to Urantia." p564:2(49:3.6)

Earth science may be our best bet for eventually uncovering these mysteries. Some of the moons of Saturn, such as Titan, which has an atmosphere (nitrogen and methane) and Enceladus, which seems to have a "primordial soup" and "deep sea vent" components have been the subject of recent speculation concerning the possibilities of life as we know it, but I am far more intrigued by these other moons which may harbor nonbreathers, who enjoy a type of life quite unlike ours. Jupiter also has a number of moons that are of interest.

So, that makes these moons of our solar system quite interesting to me...we could indeed, have intelligent (and God-knowing) neighbors closer than we know right now! Hope I live long enough to find out for sure...

Do the Urantia Book authors refer to the Gregorian calendar?

noreply@blogger.com (Ad Astra) — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 20:55:00 +0000

Q: Do the Urantia Book authors refer to the Gregorian calendar?

The simple answer is no, the word Gregorian isn't mentioned in the text of The Urantia Book, but the authors do use the Gregorian calendar for their date references.

There are 6 references to the year 1934:
(31:10.12),
(56:10.20) ,
(62:5.1) ,
(62:7.6) ,
(63:6.7),
(74:0.1),
and one for the year 1935(119:8.9).

The year 1934 is used as the base year in the precise date calculations given by the authors of the papers, 1934 being the year when the bulk of material was indited for Parts I-III; the restatement of Jesus' life and teachings came after that in 1935. The specific dates of Jesus' life begin at 7 B.C.

The dates A.D. are based on the Gregorian calendar. B.C.dates prior to Jesus are usually counted back from the year 1934.

AAAS: 'One hundred billion trillion' planets where alien life could flourish

noreply@blogger.com (Ad Astra) — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 00:15:00 +0000

p166:8 15:2.9 7. The Grand Universe. 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. The superuniverses are ruled and administered indirectly and reflectively from Paradise by the Seven Master Spirits. The billion worlds of Havona are directly administered by the Eternals of Days, one such Supreme Trinity Personality presiding over each of these perfect spheres.

There could be one hundred billion trillion Earth-like planets in space, making it "inevitable" that extraterrestrial life exists, according to a leading astronomer.

By Richard Alleyne, Science Correspondent in Chicago
Last Updated: 12:05PM GMT 15 Feb 2009

Life on Earth used to be thought of as a freak accident that only happened once.

But scientists are now coming to the conclusion that the universe is teeming with living organisms.

The change in thinking has come about because of the new belief there are an abundant number of habitable planets like Earth.

Alan Boss, of the Carnegie Institution in Washington DC, said there could be as many Earths as there are stars in the universe - one hundred billion trillion.

Because of this, he believes it is "inevitable" that life must have flourished elsewhere over the billions of years the universe has existed.

"If you have a habitable world and let it evolve for a few billion years then inevitably some sort of life will form on it," said Dr Boss.

"It is sort of running an experiment in your refrigerator - turn it off and something will grow in there.

He believes his views will be proved by NASA's Kepler outer space-based telescope, which takes off in the next three weeks with a mission to track down Earth-like habitable planets.

Within four years Dr Boss, who was speaking at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting, believes it will have found one in our galaxy and that will prove his theories about their abundance.

He then would like researchers to build even bigger telescopes and send out an unmanned spacecraft to take photographs of the distant planet that could be up to 30 light years away. It would, however, take at least 2,000 years to report back.

Dr Boss said: "We already know enough now to say that the universe is probably loaded with terrestrial planets similar to the Earth," he says.

Our Inner Artist - Book Review

noreply@blogger.com (Ad Astra) — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 22:55:00 +0000

Reviewed by Jonah Lehrer
Sunday, January 11, 2009

This is an interesting article about art, and its necessity in the lives of mankind. The Urantia Book suggests that art is a desire for the good, true and beautiful; Dutton has an unusual take on art.

Click on "external link" at the bottom to access the complete article, and click here for a Truthbook topical study of "Art" from the pages of The Urantia Book.

THE ART INSTINCT

Beauty, Pleasure, and Human Evolution

By Denis Dutton

Bloomsbury. 278 pp. $25

The list of cultural universals -- those features that recur in every human society, from remote rainforest tribes to modern America -- is surprisingly short. There's language, religion and a bunch of traits involving social structures, such as the reliance on leaders.

Denis Dutton, a New Zealand philosopher, would like to add one more item to this list: art. As he observes in his provocative new book, The Art Instinct, people the world over are weirdly driven to create beautiful things. These aesthetic objects are utterly useless -- W.H. Auden pointed out that they make "nothing happen" -- and yet we enshrine them in climate-controlled museums and pay millions of dollars for a silkscreen of a soup can. What began with a few horses on the walls of a French cave has blossomed into a human obsession.

The premise of Dutton's work is that this instinct for art isn't an accident. Instead, he argues that our desire for beauty is firmly grounded in evolution, a side effect of the struggle to survive and reproduce. In this sense, a cubist painting by Picasso is no more mysterious than the allure of a Playboy centerfold: Both are works of culture that attempt to sate a biological drive.

Dutton frames his argument as a scientific response to the idea that art is a "social construction," driven by the fads of society. He begins the book by describing a series of paintings by the Russian artists Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid, who in the early 1990s surveyed people in 10 countries on their preferences regarding color, subject matter and painterly style. These poll results were then distilled into a series of realist landscapes. The American painting, for instance, featured a foreground of sun-dappled grass, a lake, a few adorable children and the figure of George Washington. It's an absurd pastiche, the visual equivalent of combining all of America's favorite foods in the same dish. We might enjoy pizza and ice cream, but that doesn't mean we want pizza-flavored ice cream.

While Dutton appreciates the irony of Komar and Melamid, he's more intrigued by the striking similarity of their paintings. Although the 10 national landscapes differed in their details -- the Russians wanted a brown bear, while the Kenyans preferred a hippo -- the basic layout was identical. In each case, people craved a painting that featured a large body of blue water, some open grass, a human figure and a few animals.

Why the cross-cultural similarity? According to Dutton, the survey results reveal our hard-wired preferences, which developed when we were Pleistocene hunter-gatherers roaming the African savannah. The landscapes we find most beautiful are simply those from which we evolved. If we like paintings with a foreground of short grasses, it's because that habitat contains more protein per square mile than any other, which is a crucial perk for a meat-eating primate.

Dutton is also interested in the origins of the art instinct. Shouldn't those cave-dwellers have been busy hunting instead of drawing on the wall? Why do we squander so much time and energy on art? Dutton has two distinct theories. The first is that fictional narratives, from the Iliad to "The Sopranos," provide people with a "low-cost, low-risk surrogate experience." Because I watch HBO, I'll be prepared the next time I'm in New Jersey.

His second explanation, which leans heavily on the work of Geoffrey Miller, an evolutionary psychologist at the University of New Mexico, involves sexual selection. Like Miller, he sees the arts as a tool of seduction, an intellectual version of the peacock's tail. Consider poetry, which for Dutton is little more than a way of showing off to potential mates. (He cites Cyrano de Bergerac as an example of poetic courtship, although he fails to note that Cyrano doesn't get the girl. His eloquent genes are never passed on.) According to Dutton, this process of mate selection -- chicks dig big vocabularies -- is responsible for the propagation of genes that lead to "the most creative and flamboyant aspects of the human personality," including artistic expression.

On the one hand, this explanation of art is just common sense. It doesn't take an evolutionary psychologist to know that a lot of poetry is written to impress the opposite sex, or that Lord Byron and Elvis Presley seldom slept alone. However, arguing that the sex lives of poets explains the origins of poetry makes about as much sense as using the bedroom exploits of Wilt Chamberlain to construct a biological explanation of basketball. Yes, poets have sex, perhaps even more sex than normal. That still doesn't explain Shakespeare.

Dutton is an elegant writer, and his book should be admired for its attempt to close the gap between art and science. It really is time that art critics learn about the visual cortex, musicologists study the inner ear and evolutionary psychologists unpack Jane Austen. Unfortunately, like so many other aesthetic theories, Dutton's ideas are ultimately undone by what they can't explain. This is the irony of evolutionary aesthetics: Although it sets out to solve the mystery of art, to explain why people write poems and smear paint on canvases, it ends up affirming the mystery. The most exquisite stuff is what we can't explain. That's why we call it art.

What is the Difference Between Urantia Foundation, The Fellowship, and Jesusonian Foundation?

noreply@blogger.com (Ad Astra) — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 20:02:00 +0000

There are 3 primary organizations associated with The Urantia Book.

From their website www.urantia.org: "Urantia Foundation was established in 1950 to be the custodian of the inviolate text of The Urantia Book and to ensure that the book's teachings are spread, with the help of readers and fraternal organizations, to all people." The Foundation's headquarters are at 533 Diversey Ave., Chicago.

The Urantia Book Fellowship is the social branch through which the book's teachings are spread although the distinction between the functions of the Foundation and the Fellowship has become blurred. From its establishment in 1955 until the late 1980s the Fellowship was known as the Urantia Brotherhood and then the name was changed. The Fellowship's headquarters are a mail box in Grand Central Station, (PO Box 4583), New York, and in the electronic ether through telephone, internet (www.urantiabook.org) and email as well as committee meetings throughout the year.

The Beliefs and Mission statement of the Jesusonian Foundation state: "Our mission is to encourage and assist individuals in developing a personal faith relationship with our Heavenly Father by sharing the supernal teachings of Jesus in The Urantia Book with them and nurturing them as believers." The Jesusonian Foundation is a private non-profit organization established in the late 1990's which focuses on promoting the teachings of Jesus through their web site www.truthbook.com as those teachings are portrayed in The Urantia Book. The headquarters office for the Jesusonian Foundation is in Boulder, Colorado (PO Box 38).

The current version of the Truthbook.com web site was launched in 2002.

For more of the history of these and other organizations please visit the Urantia Book Historical Society's archives at www.ubhistory.org and select the subject "organizations".

Study illuminates star explosion from 16th century

noreply@blogger.com (Ad Astra) — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 15:44:00 +0000

By MALCOLM RITTER, AP Science Writer Malcolm Ritter, Ap Science Writer –
Thu Dec 4, 4:11 am ET

This article explains the "double star explosion" mentioned in The Urantia Book. Please see below for the Urantia Book reference. At the bottom of this entry, you can click on "external link" to access the full news article

NEW YORK – More than 400 years after Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe challenged established wisdom about the heavens by analyzing a strange new light in the sky, scientists say they've finally nailed down just what he saw.

A new study confirms that, as expected, it was the common kind that involves the thermonuclear explosion of a white dwarf star with a nearby companion.

The story of what's commonly called Tycho's supernova began on Nov. 11, 1572, when Brahe was astonished to see what he thought was a brilliant new star in the constellation Cassiopeia. The light eventually became as bright as Venus and could be seen for two weeks in broad daylight. After 16 months, it disappeared.

Working before telescopes were invented, Brahe documented with precision that unlike the moon and the planets, the light's position didn't move in relation to the stars. That meant it lay far beyond the moon. That was a shock to the contemporary view that the distant heavens were perfect and unchanging.

The direct light from the supernova swept past Earth long ago. But some of it struck dust clouds in deep space, causing them to brighten. That "light echo" was still observable, and the new study was based on analyzing the wavelengths of light from that.
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Our Starry Associates

There are upward of two thousand brilliant suns pouring forth light and energy in Satania, and your own sun is an average blazing orb. Of the thirty suns nearest yours, only three are brighter. The Universe Power Directors initiate the specialized currents of energy which play between the individual stars and their respective systems. These solar furnaces, together with the dark giants of space, serve the power centers and physical controllers as way stations for the effective concentrating and directionizing of the energy circuits of the material creations.

The suns of Nebadon are not unlike those of other universes. The material composition of all suns, dark islands, planets, and satellites, even meteors, is quite identical. These suns have an average diameter of about one million miles, that of your own solar orb being slightly less. The largest star in the universe, the stellar cloud Antares, is four hundred and fifty times the diameter of your sun and is sixty million times its volume. But there is abundant space to accommodate all of these enormous suns. They have just as much comparative elbow room in space as one dozen oranges would have if they were circulating about throughout the interior of Urantia, and were the planet a hollow globe.

When suns that are too large are thrown off a nebular mother wheel, they soon break up or form double stars. All suns are originally truly gaseous, though they may later transiently exist in a semiliquid state. When your sun attained this quasi-liquid state of supergas pressure, it was not sufficiently large to split equatorially, this being one type of double star formation.

When less than one tenth the size of your sun, these fiery spheres rapidly contract, condense, and cool. When upwards of thirty times its size—rather thirty times the gross content of actual material—suns readily split into two separate bodies, either becoming the centers of new systems or else remaining in each other's gravity grasp and revolving about a common center as one type of double star.

The most recent of the major cosmic eruptions in Orvonton was the extraordinary double star explosion, the light of which reached Urantia in A.D.1572. This conflagration was so intense that the explosion was clearly visible in broad daylight.

Not all stars are solid, but many of the older ones are. Some of the reddish, faintly glimmering stars have acquired a density at the center of their enormous masses which would be expressed by saying that one cubic inch of such a star, if on Urantia, would weigh six thousand pounds. The enormous pressure, accompanied by loss of heat and circulating energy, has resulted in bringing the orbits of the basic material units closer and closer together until they now closely approach the status of electronic condensation. This process of cooling and contraction may continue to the limiting and critical explosion point of ultimatonic condensation.

Most of the giant suns are relatively young; most of the dwarf stars are old, but not all. The collisional dwarfs may be very young and may glow with an intense white light, never having known an initial red stage of youthful shining. Both very young and very old suns usually shine with a reddish glow. The yellow tinge indicates moderate youth or approaching old age, but the brilliant white light signifies robust and extended adult life.

While all adolescent suns do not pass through a pulsating stage, at least not visibly, when looking out into space you may observe many of these younger stars whose gigantic respiratory heaves require from two to seven days to complete a cycle. Your own sun still carries a diminishing legacy of the mighty upswellings of its younger days, but the period has lengthened from the former three and one-half day pulsations to the present eleven and one-half year sunspot cycles.

Stellar variables have numerous origins. In some double stars the tides caused by rapidly changing distances as the two bodies swing around their orbits also occasion periodic fluctuations of light. These gravity variations produce regular and recurrent flares, just as the capture of meteors by the accretion of energy-material at the surface would result in a comparatively sudden flash of light which would speedily recede to normal brightness for that sun. Sometimes a sun will capture a stream of meteors in a line of lessened gravity opposition, and occasionally collisions cause stellar flare-ups, but the majority of such phenomena are wholly due to internal fluctuations.

In one group of variable stars the period of light fluctuation is directly dependent on luminosity, and knowledge of this fact enables astronomers to utilize such suns as universe lighthouses or accurate measuring points for the further exploration of distant star clusters. By this technique it is possible to measure stellar distances most precisely up to more than one million light-years. Better methods of space measurement and improved telescopic technique will sometime more fully disclose the ten grand divisions of the superuniverse of Orvonton; you will at least recognize eight of these immense sectors as enormous and fairly symmetrical star clusters.
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Religion and Unity: Report

noreply@blogger.com (Ad Astra) — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 16:31:00 +0000

Sunday, November 16, 2008
Religion and Unity: Report

Last night's interfaith panel discussion on the role of religion in promoting unity at the Boston Baha'i Center appeared to be a great success. The panel included representatives from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, The Urantia Book, the United Church of Christ, and the Baha'i Faith. The representatives from the LDS church emphasized the importance of family unity as the foundation of all other kinds of unity, sharing stories about their own families and the inspiration they derive from the scriptures of their faith. The representative of the Urantia Book, which appeared to also have some relation to biblical Christianity, emphasized how the expansion of consciousness of how great God is would contribute to greater unity among religious people. Pastor Michele Bagby Allen, a long time friend and fellow Harvard Divinity School grad, argued that the example of Jesus in the Gospels as well as statements by the Apostle Paul served as evidence that Christianity can be a basis for unity among people