Urantia Book - Who Could've Hoaxed This?

[Racoon]

Really????????? I know at least a thousand, a handful of them are crazy, how many do you know?

 

Mo Siegel

Capitol Peaks

Boulder, Co.

In Quest of Life's Summits

 

I never said there was nothing to gleen from the book. But to sift through 2000 pages of jabberwockey isn't worth it IMHO....

 

And to answer your question: less than I can count on both hands..Thankfully

 

It is what it is :bouquet: ;)

[sandor606]

Hi Turtle,

 

___The Urantia Book, first published in the early 1950's, purports to contain discertations delivered by "angels" on God, creation, science, spirits, Jesus, etc.. At some 3,000 plus pages it's no easy read! :)

___So I want to know if you have heard of it? Read it? Have an opinion on it?

___I believe it is a hoax for the record so my question is "who could have hoaxed this?". Even though it was published in the 50's, it seems to have been written earlier; possibly in the 30's. By the writing style which is so cleverly convolute, & the broadness of the topics covered, I tend to think it is the work of an enclave rather than a single author.

 

The Book is a compilation of 196 Papers plus a Foreword for a total of 2,097 pages published as a book in 1955. As to the authors of the Papers and their origin, please read the following.

 

Sandor

 

 

Affidavit of Dr. Meredith J. Sprunger

regarding the origin of The Urantia Book

October 24th, 1998

 

 

MEREDITH J. SPRUNGER

4109 Plaza Dr.

Fort Wayne, IN 46806

 

October 24th, 1998

 

AFFIDAVIT

 

I declare, under penalty of perjury, that the following are my recollections about the authorship, and the issues surrounding the authorship, of The Urantia Book.

 

Following my discovery of The Urantia Book in December of 1955, and after introducing it to a number of clerical colleagues and friends, I spent years researching with them the historical aspects of the book. We quickly discovered the Urantia Papers were received by a small group of people in Chicago. Their leader was Dr. William S. Sadler. Dr. Sadler was a highly respected psychiatrist and college teacher in the graduate school of medicine at the University of Chicago. For almost thirty years Dr. Sadler was also a lecturer in Pastoral Counseling at McCormick Theological Seminary.

 

On May 7, 1958, our group of ministers had an appointment with Dr. Sadler to discuss the phenomena associated with the origin of the Urantia Papers. My personal association with Dr. Sadler continued until his death in 1969. In the course of this friendship, we had many candid conversations about the materialization of the Foreword and the 196 Papers that were eventually published as the text of The Urantia Book. It is important to point out that in this regard Dr. Sadler was a professional researcher of unquestioned integrity.

 

Dr. Sadler categorically declared that there was no known psychic phenomenon attached to the origin of the Urantia Papers. The final text of the Urantia Papers was materialized in written form, but it was not channeled or spoken, nor was it the product of automatic writing. Dr. Sadler stated that although the Thought Adjuster (a fragment of God that indwells all normal human minds) of the “contact personality” was somehow engaged in the materialization process by spiritual beings, the contact person was totally unaware of this activity. Neither this contact person, nor any other human, wrote any of the text nor authored or originated any material used in the revelatory text of the Urantia Papers, which consist of the Foreword and the 196 Papers.

 

Although Dr. Sadler was emphatic that no known psychic phenomena were associated in any way with the authorship of the Urantia Papers, he admitted that he was baffled as to precisely how the text of the Urantia Papers was materialized into the English language. HE was very clear in his conviction that no human being edited, selected, or had any creative input whatever into the authorship of the Urantia Papers, no in the arrangement of the text of The Urantia Book, which consists of the Foreword and Papers one through 196. Dr. Sadler was crystal clear that the members of the contact commission had no editorial authority whatever, and their responsibility was confined to spelling, capitalization, and punctuation. Members of the forum were not even permitted to see the original materialized documents, and they had no input in their authorship. Dr. Sadler was convinced that the Urantia Papers are exactly what they purport themselves to be, an epochal revelation authored solely by celestial beings.

 

I have studied The Urantia Book for over forty years, and I am likewise convinced that the authorship of the text was superhuman, and that it was materialized by unprecedented means that are not fully understood. In my best professional and personal opinion, I am absolutely convinced there was no human authorship or creative input, and there were no human editorial decisions involved with the materialization of the Urantia Papers. I believe the truth of what Dr. Sadler wrote – and personally disclosed to me numerous times: the Urantia Papers were published just as received, and the contact commission had no editorial authority whatever, and its role was confined solely to the clerical tasks of spelling, capitalization, and punctuation. Neither did the forum members contribute to the creative contents of the Urantia Papers. The forum was similar to a modern focus group in that they were used by the celestial authors solely as a gauge to measure human understanding.

 

Dr. Sadler was also absolutely clear about two related things: (1) Absolutely no human name or names would ever be attached to the authorship or materialization of the Urantia Papers and the publication of The Urantia Book. Even the printer, R. R. Donnelly and Sons, was not permitted to place an indicia in the first edition, which stated their identity. (2) No human being knows or ever knew, the exact method by which the Urantia Papers were materialized. We can only be categorically certain that there was no human authorship, no human editorial involvement, nor any human activity in creating, selecting and/or arranging the Urantia Papers, which consist of the Foreword and Papers one through 196 inclusive, and which constitute the text of The Urantia Book.

 

Dr. Sadler made it plain to me that the revelators held total authority over the process by which the Urantia Papers were materialized. The revelators suggested the submission of questions, and at one point after the contact commission and forum had read some of the papers, requested that more significant questions be developed and asked by the contact commission. Dr. Sadler said that in a particular session a celestial personality who claimed to be a student visitor to our planet stated to the commission: “If you people realized what a high spiritual source you are now associating with you would stop making these puerile investigations to detect fraud and would ask some significant questions about the nature and reality of the universe.” It was at this point the forum was engaged by Dr. Sadler to help him formulate all appropriate questions in answer to the challenge of the revelators. The forum had originally been assembled by the Sadler family as an informal discussion and social exchange. The revelators soon answered the questions the forum had asked, and these answers were presented to the forum by the contact commission. Shortly after this the revelators directed Dr. Sadler and the contact commission to make the forum a closed group, and required each member to take a vow of secrecy about their knowledge of what the contact commission was doing and what information the revelators had disclosed to the forum through the contact commission. “The forum, as it were, was taken away from us,” wrote Dr. Sadler. He was indicating that the general discussions in the forum ceased, and the revelators henceforth directed the agenda of the group through the contact commission, and used the forum essentially as a focus group for the Urantia Papers.

 

Dr. Sadler said no forum member, except members of the contact commission, was ever present during any of the contacts with the revelators. He also said that only one “sleeping subject”, or person was involved throughout the entire process of materializing the text of the Urantia Papers.

 

Dr.Sadler told me that at one point he and his son Bill wrote a draft for an introduction to the Urantia Papers, and submitted it to the revelators. At a contact session with the revelators the were told that although they meant well, such submissions were not acceptable, and the revelators made the comment, referring to the introduction written by Dr. Sadler, Jr.: “A candle cannot light the sun.” At the proper time, the humans were assured, an introduction to the book would be materialized. When the revelators produced the Foreword to the Urantia papers, Dr. Sadler stated that he and his son realized the inadequacy of their own attempt to write an introduction. Dr. Sadler and his son were, however, given permission to compose a Table of Contents for The Urantia Book. Bill Sadler compiled the titles as they appeared in the Papers, and the section headings from the Papers, and he briefly outlined some of the material that was originated in the Urantia Papers, and incorporated it into a Table of Contents for The Urantia Book. Dr. Sadler and other members of the contact commission assured me that no human wrote, edited, or arranged any of the text of the Urantia Papers, which consist of the Foreword and all of the Papers from Paper one through Paper 196 inclusive. Dr. Sadler told me that one individual, not a member of the contact commission, but rather a member of the forum, who made suggestions to “improve” the Urantia Papers was vigorously informed by the revelators (through the contact commission) that no human additions to the Urantia Papers would be allowed. Dr. Sadler said that every possible precaution was taken to see that the text of the Urantia Papers was presented just as the revelators had authored and materialized it.

 

It should be emphasized that there is not now, nor has there ever been, a human authority on the content or the origin of the Urantia Papers. However, Christy often requested that I reply to many of the letters Urantia Foundation received from readers requesting information on the origin of the Urantia Papers. As these requests increased, I produced a paper on the essentials of the origin of the Urantia Papers, which constitute the text of The Urantia Book. This paper was approved by Urantia Foundation, printed, and freely distributed for several years by both Urantia Foundation and Urantia Brotherhood.

 

In regards to outreach efforts by Urantians, the following statement was written by Dr. Sadler under the heading, Distribution of the Urantia Book: “However, one thing should be made clear: While it is the policy of the Brotherhood to work slowly in the distribution of the book, nothing is done to interfere with the energetic and enthusiastic efforts of any individual to introduce The Urantia Book to his friends and associates. Signed, Meredith Justin Sprunger

 

ADDENDA TO AFFIDAVIT:

 

MEREDITH JUSTIN SPRUNGER is a minister in the United Church of Christ and a college professor, now retired from pastoral and teaching responsibilities. For many years Dr. Sprunger was active as a counselor and psychological consultant, holding a Private Practice Certificate in Psychology in the State of Indiana. He has served congregations in the Midwest and taught at Elmherst College and Indiana Institute of Technology, functioning as the head of the Department of Psychology, chairman of the division of Liberal Arts, and as President. Dr. Sprunger has served as a Field Representative, chairman of the Educational and Fraternal Relations Committees, and President of Urantia Brotherhood. He is founder and Executive Director of The Christian Fellowship for Students of The Urantia Book, a trustee of Jesusonian Foundation, and editor of The Spiritual Fellowship Journal.

 

Dr. Sprunger is the only living professional educational colleague of Dr. William S. Sadler associated with The Urantia Book.

[Buffy]

So?

 

Dr. Sprunger is heavily associated with the Urantia organization and greatly benefits personally from people believing it is "real." Why should anyone give any credence to this "affidavit?"

 

Independent sources,

Buffy

[sandor606]

So?

 

Dr. Sprunger is heavily associated with the Urantia organization and greatly benefits personally from people believing it is "real." Why should anyone give any credence to this "affidavit?"

 

Independent sources,

Buffy

 

 

Merriam-Webster

affidavit: a *sworn* statement in writing made especially under *oath* or on affirmation before an authorized *magistrate* or officer

 

Until proven otherwise his sworn statement - perjury if he lies - is true.

 

Sandor

[Buffy]

You're right, no one ever perjures themselves for money, especially if disproving the "affidavit" is virtually impossible (he-said, he-said)... Why did I ever doubt this? :)

 

Easily creduled,

Buffy

[sandor606]

You're right, no one ever perjures themselves for money, especially if disproving the "affidavit" is virtually impossible (he-said, he-said)... Why did I ever doubt this? :)

 

Easily creduled,

Buffy

 

 

Easily creduled? A sworn statement and no proof of financial collusion? Under these conditions his word would stand up in a court of law if challenged. Any *impartial* jury would decide that he is telling the truth.

 

Sandor

[Buffy]

A sworn statement and no proof of financial collusion?

Well according to this page, Dr. Sprunger bills himself as the "President of the Urantia Brotherhood". It does not take much brain power to realize that even if it is indirect, the fellow has a financial interest in the Urantia Book being supported as "real."

Under these conditions his word would stand up in a court of law if challenged. Any *impartial* jury would decide that he is telling the truth.

Only due to lack of any facts in opposition. They would be *forced* to, which is not equivalent to providing proof that it is true.

 

I've just signed an affidavit that this post was actually dictated to me by the Easter Bunny who appears as an apparition in my room. Can you provide any evidence to contradict this? Wouldn't you say that I actually have no fear whatsoever of being found guilty of perjury by signing that statement? Would you say that this statement constitutes unassailable evidence of the existence in the Easter Bunny?

 

Hippity hopping,

Buffy

[sandor606]

From "The Birth of a Divine Revelation" (2000) by Ernest P. Moyer:

 

(p.100) "Here I wish to concentrate on the episode which caused

Sadler to describe his first contact with the Sleeping Subject.

[Harold Marrow] Sherman published this account in his 1976 book he

called "How to Know What To Believe."

 

This was Sadler's account, as recorded by Sherman [excerpts]:

 

"About thirty-five years ago when Lena and I were young physicians

together, we decided to move, but the place we had in mind was not

yet available. We were direceted to a furnished apartment in the

neighborhood., which we took for several months until our place was

ready.

We had been there about two weeks, and some of the tenants had

apparently learned we were physicians, because one of them, a woman

living directly below, rapped on our door about 11:00 PM as we were

in the act of retiring. She said: 'Will you please come downstairs

with me? Something has happened to my husband. He's gone asleep; he

is breathing very stargely; I can't wake him up.'

We slipped into our bathrobes and went down to her apartment, where I

saw a medioum-sized man, approaching middle age, asleep in bed,

breathing very fitfully,. He would take couple of short, quick

breaths, for a time, and then he would hold his breath for a long

time, long enough for any normal human to have gotten black in the

face, but nothing happened. I took his pulse and was surprised to

find it normal. I then tried to arouse him with every known method,

even to sticking pins in him - but failed. ...

We sat around and waited for him to return to consciousness, during

which time his body gave several violent jumps and starts. Finally,

after about an hour he looked around and saw us. We had propped him

up on pillows, and he now turned to his wife and asked, pointing at

us, 'Who are these people?' She explained that we were doctors she

had called in when she found she couldn't awaken him, and he

said, 'What's wrong? What happened?

I asked him, 'How do you feel?' He said, 'Fine.' I said, 'What have

you been dreaming about?' He said, 'I haven't been dreaming at all.'

I said, 'You have been jumping about on the bed.' He said, 'I don't

know anything about that. I can't understand it.' I told him I would

keep him under observation, to which he readily agreed.

....

Nothing happened for several weeks, and then, one night, about the

same time, his wife called us and said he was having one of those

spells again. We went down, and gave him some more tests and tried

to rouse him - all to no effect. His labored breathing; his sudden

breathing off and then no breathing at all would have been alarming

had not his pulse reamined strong and even throughout. The whole

affair wqas baffling. When he awakened, he was, as before,

unconscious of anything having transpired.

(p.101)This sort of experience was repeated at different times at

night, until the fall fall of the year, when we were able to move to

the residence of our choice. This man's lease expeired the same

fall, and he moved into an apartment house in the same block so he

could be near us(1).

One night, when we were called to his new address, as we sat by the

bedside, Dr. Lena noticed that he was moistening his lips as though

he was preparing to speak. She said, 'Perhaps he want to talk to us.

maybe if we ask him a question we will get answer.'

(p.236) She did so, and to our great astonishment he did reply; but

it was not his voice. It was that of what we later learned was

astudent visitor on an observation trip here from a distant planet!

This being apparently conversed with us through thsi sleeping

subject and expressed ideas and philosophies which struck us as

entirely new."

 

(p.237)"I had been led to believe, through previous study and

research, that all such manifestations, however phenomenal, were the

work of the subconscious. I therefore got this man into my office

several days later, since other entities were apparently coming

through him, and secured his premission to submit to hypnotism that

I might explore his subconscious. It was diffcult to get him under,

but when I finally did so, I was amazed to find no consciousness

whatsoever of the subjects discussed by these purported beings,

which we had all, by this time, started to record in long hand and

later combined.

I now felt that I needed help in solving the causes of this

mysterious phenomenon, and I called on other doctors and scientists,

friends of mine, as well as Houdini and Thurston. They were equally

unable to furnish any explanation. Finding by now that we could

communicate by direct voice with different student visitors and

other beings, we began to look forward to each 'contact,' as we came

to call them, and enjoy the opportunity of asking questions, which

always brought the most stimulating and unexpected answers.

We took to writing questions in advance about the universe and

asking them verbally whenever given a chance. Finally, as a test, I

worked out fifty-two questions privately and had them in my own

mind, deciding to wait and see whether those so-called student

visitors might be able to divine what was in my own consciousness.

(p.238) One night, a particularly electrifying personality seemed

to be present from a distant planet and had greatly excited us by

his comments. As he was about to go, I addressed him saying, 'How

can you prove that you are who you say you are?' He replied, 'I

cannot prove it - but you cannot prove that I am not.' He then

stunned me by continuing, 'However, I have just received permission

to answer forty-six of the fifty-two questions you have been holding

in your mind.'

Dr. Ruth [Lena Sadler] spoke up and said, 'Why Henry, [sic] you

haven't had such questions, have you?' And I had to admit, " Yes,

Ruth, the exact number.'

This personality then proceeded to give me the answers to the

forty-six questions as promised. When he had finally finished he

said, 'If you people really knew what you had here, you would not

take up our time asking silly, trivial questions like this. You

would ask something really significant and important.'

We got home around one-thirty that night, but thare was no

sleep... We stayed up the rest of the night discussing and

formulating questions so that we might be prepared for the next

contact.

At this point I must go back and tell you that a few months

previously I had made a lecture trip to the University of Kansas;

and while there, I wrote a letter to my son, Henry, suggesting that

since we seldom went to church, though I often talked in churches, I

thought it would be a good idea if he and his mother would consider

inviting others in regularly for Sunday afternoon tea, about twenty

or thirty friends with whom we might discuss religion or any other

subject of mutual interest, and perhaps I would give them a little

talk to stimulate these discussions. When I returned home the

following Sunday noon, I found Dr. Ruth and Henry had already acted

upon my suggestion and were having about thirty people that

afternoon. This was about October, 1923, as I recall.

(p.239) It was in November that I was asked by some memebers of

this little social group, which we had come to call the Forum, if I

woudn't tell some of my experiences in abnormal psychology. And

since we had not been prohibited from talking about the phenomena we

had been witnessing, I related to them my encounter with the

sleeping subject and the strange communications we were receiving

through him, and told of our being challenged to ask real questions.

It suddenly occurred to me as I got to this point - why not

enlist the service of this group in the asking of such questions,

and I called upon them to help me. I said, 'Come back next Sunday

with all the profound questions you can think of, having to do with

God and the Universe, and we'll see if these intelligences can

answer them.'

The following Sunday the group arrived with over four thousand

questions! Dr. Ruth and I spent several days sorting and classifying

them. Then we held them in readiness, hoping for the opportunity

of 'calling the bluff' of the higher intelligences. We were, as we

thought, 'loaded for bear.'

Some weeks went by and nothing happened. We thought we had them

stumped, and then one morning at 6:00 A.M., the phone rang. It was

the man's wife calling, 'Come over quick!' she said. 'What

happened?' I asked. 'Is he still asleep?' 'Yes, but that's not it,'

she replied. 'Please get over here - hurry!'

We dressed like volunteer firemen and arrived out of breath. She

led us to the desk in his study and picked up a voluminous

manuscript of 472 pages, written in his own hand. I said, 'Where did

this come from?' She said, 'I don't know. He made some strange

noises in his sleep and woke me up, and I saw it there on the desk.'

I asked, 'Has he been out of bed?' She said, 'Not to my knowledge. I

don't see how he could have gotten out without waking me - and he is

not awake yet.' I said, 'Is this his handwriting?' She said, 'It's

his handwriting all right - but I don't see how he could have done

it.'

(p.240) I took a look at the manuscript and saw to great

astonishment that it was in answer to all of the questions that had

been formulated by ourselves in the Forum group.

I couldn't wait any longer. I took this bulky manuscript into the

bedroom and wakened up the subject. I said, 'Do you know what you

have been doing in your sleep?' He said, 'I haven't been doing

anything.' I said, 'Oh, yes, you have - and look at this! Isn't this

your handwriting?' He stared at the manuscript. 'Yes, it's my

hadwriting, but I didn't do it.'

I estimated it would take a normal individual seven to eight

hours, writing at top speed, and the subject matter was so profound

and yet so intelligently set down that I knew it was beyond human

capacity to achieve. I phoned Cindy and told her to bnring over at

one a 'grip device' for testing muscular fatigue. I reasoned, if he

had physically written all this, his right arm would give evidence

of it - but the device registered no fatigue what-so-ever.

We took the papers home and had them typed. They concerned the

Universal Father, the Supreme being, the Central and Super

Universes, and the Isle of Paradise. It was an unforgettable

occasion when I appeared before the Forum group and

announced, 'Well, we got the answers to our questions all right,'

and they were awestruck and speechless as we read the papers to

them. This was all we needed. Reading these papers led to hundreds

and thousands of more questions, and more papers commenced coming

through.

We found there seemed to be an organized group of high

intelligences on 'the other side,' prepared to present us the whole

astounding story of the universe, leading from God, the Universal

Father, down to the origin of the human creature, man, and his

ultimate glorious destiny beyond the reaches of time and space.

This continued for perhaps seven or eight years when what we

considered the first edition of papers was finished. At that time,

the Forum received its first direct message, and its members were

advised that now, since their knowledge had been expanded, they

should be able to ask more intelligent questions and if they would

do so, as they commenced a rereading of each paper, these

intelligences would completely revise the entire, tremendous manuscript."

[sandor606]

"Convergence"--The Science Content of The Urantia Book

Ken Glasziou, Australia [Ken Glasziou, Ph.D., is a retired physicist.]

 

While at a recent Urantia Book conference, I had occasion to sit

in on a discussion between various groups who were in the process of

translating the text of The Urantia Book into their own languages.

Virtually everyone of them had what, to me, seemed a strange, but

understandable, attitude toward the text. They acted as if it were

divinely hallowed truth in the same sense as the fundamentalists

treat their Bible, a book dictated by God himself, and therefore

infallible. These people gave the impression that they were in fear

of making a mistake in their translation, lest lightning from the

heavens should terminate their efforts.

 

Yet it is a fact that, among the many authors of The Urantia

Book, not a single one has that "Creator" status that would grant

them infallibility (1768)--not even those Divine Counselors who

authored papers in Part 1. In reality, some of the authors, the

midwayers and the seraphim, are only a little above the level of us

mortals. Besides that, the revelators inform us that about 3000

contributions have come from human sources, and that the conditions

of the mandate were that human sources should be used wherever

possible. The revelators tell us that the cosmology of the book is

not "inspired," and that they expected that much of the science and

cosmology would come to be outdated and in need of correction.

Hence when thinking about this book, we need to get our expectations

right, and maybe take the recommendation of Bill Sadler who advised

Urantia Book readers to never equate their hopes and their

expectations.

 

The book, of course, calls itself the Fifth Epochal Revelation,

and regardless of how it got here and who wrote it, for many,

including myself, that is precisely what it is, a book that reveals

truth of a quality, spirituality, and consequence that far exceeds

anything previously available to mankind. But the book itself makes

it clear that "revelation" and "absolute truth" are not synonymous.

 

There is so much material out there on the book shelves of the

world claiming to be revelation that we would have to be either

naive or desperate to accept the claims of The Urantia Book without

at least making some effort to validate its claims. But if we

attempt to validate the book's status on the basis of its science,

we must distinguish between its prophetic content, its topical

content, and its outdated materials. An alternative approach is to

concentrate on the prophetic component and also to consider who,

other than celestial beings, might have written it--and this is the

approach we will take today.

 

Most of the Urantia Papers bear the date of having been given

to us in the 1934/5 period, but history tells us that much of the

source material that gave rise to those papers was received and

discussed long before that time, even as much as twenty or more

years earlier. According to the book, the mandate given to the

revelators carried the proviso of "the proscription [prohibition] of

the impartation of unearned or premature knowledge," but with a few

minor exemptions that permitted correction of errors and divulgence

of key facts. This latter provision is what allowed the revelators

to include prophetic materials unknown to science at that time. For

some of us, the prophetic science content was the justification for

singling out The Urantia Book from among all the others for

continued in-depth study. Later, many would have found, as I did,

that the book's lofty spirituality carries its own justification and

validation.

 

However, The Urantia Book is no ordinary book for not only does

it provide us with a multitude of reasons for believing in its

revelatory status, but it also provides much ammunition that keeps

our options open to reject that status--if that is our desire. In

this article, we'll touch upon more than ten physical phenomena that

were, at best, the wishful thinking of theoretical physicists at the

time the Papers were received, plus a couple of others that they had

not even thought of. But if a reason to reject the book's

*revelatory* status and even to make fun of its content is needed,

there are always the giant birds that talk while carrying their

passengers on 500-mile non-stop trips, or the couple who conceived

red, orange, blue, green, yellow, and indigo children, or the other

couple that had 16 invisible progeny who, as pairs, produced 248

more invisibles per couple at the rate of one every 70 days. Surely

anyone first opening the book where that kind of material occurs

would be justified in concluding it was simply rubbish for the

gullible. And as well as that, there are the errors now accumulating

from its outdated science.

 

So who wrote the book?

 

But let's get back to the question that if celestial beings did

not write the Papers who did? Because of the magnitude, diversity,

and depth of the book's content, I believe that the book could only

have been put together by a committee that included highly

knowledgeable academics, or people of similar bent and interests.

 

A committee wrote the book!!

 

I think that such a committee would have needed a top rate

physicist who had close contact with the frontiers of research in

sub-atomic physics and astronomy. As well, people with a good

knowledge of archaeology, anthropology, geology, the Bible,

philosophy, history, and theology would have been required. Some

members could have had interests covering more than one area. For

the sake of brevity we'll refer to this hypothetical group as the

Triple "A" committee, indicating a committee of anonymous

academician authors.

 

Who commissioned the committee?

 

Who could have commissioned the Triple "A" committee? Among

those at the helm of the early Urantia gatherings were the husband

and wife team of Dr William and Dr Lena Sadler, Wilfred Kellogg, and

at a later stage, Emma Christiensen, the son of the Sadler's, known

to everyone as Bill, and perhaps a few others. It is possible that

if a committee was commissioned, only Dr William and Dr Lena Sadler

were ever aware of its existence. One reason for saying this is that

it is difficult to equate the devotion to the cause displayed by

most of those associated with the origins of the book if these

people were aware that the book was a fraud. One or two people for

their own personal reasons might conduct themselves in such a way,

but it seems unlikely that a larger group with no reward offering,

would dedicate the whole of their lives to the task of propagating a

fraud. This same line of reasoning would have to apply to our

hypothetical Triple "A" committee members. They would have needed to

have had a driving motive to do what we are postulating they may

have done.

 

Some problems of the committee hypothesis

 

Such a hypothesis poses many problems, not the least of them

being the preservation of secrecy. The amount of work involved in

researching the materials for The Urantia Book, the amount of time

required to write it up for presentation to the Sadlers and friends,

then the rewriting, and the presentation of the final drafts must

have been quite enormous. Hence it is virtually inevitable that

other family members or friends of the hypothetical committee

members would have become curious about what was transpiring. Close

collaboration by the Triple "A" committee members would have been

absolutely essential in order to maintain the extraordinary

consistency to be found throughout the book, a problem that would

have been many-fold more difficult in pre-computer times. Taken

together, these circumstances present a scenario in which secrecy is

virtually certain to break down. But, to my knowledge, not the

slightest hint of the existence of such a committee has ever hit the

skyways and byways of rumor propagation. We will be looking at this

problem again as we come to some of the materials we need to cover.

 

[Free copies were available at Flagstaff of a booklet

entitled "The Science, Anthropology, and Archaeology of The Urantia

Book." It is referred to in this article. If you would like a copy,

contact David Biggs or Ken Glasziou.]

 

The title of this address is listed as "Convergence," a term

used by some Urantia Book readers on the Internet which implies

keeping track of new scientific findings that might have a bearing

on the prophetic content of the book, and judging whether this new

science is either converging with or diverging from the prophecies

in the book. Please refer to page 7 of the science booklet (Urantia

Book p. 479) and I'll endeavor to clarify two fairly difficult

pieces of prophetic material in the book that have now converged

with modern scientific knowledge. Later we'll go to some work by a

scientist-reader from Finland who uncovered some quite astounding

convergences buried deeply in the content of what appear to be maths

exercises for high school students.

 

[The following quotations from p. 479 of The Urantia Book are

provided for convenience]

 

1.The charged protons and the uncharged neutrons of the nucleus

of the atom are held together by the reciprocating function of the

mesotron, a particle of matter 180 times as heavy as the electron.

Without this arrangement the electric charge carried by the protons

would be disruptive of the atomic nucleus.

 

2.As atoms are constituted, neither electric nor gravitational

forces could hold the nucleus together. The integrity of the nucleus

is maintained by the reciprocal cohering function of the mesotron,

which is able to hold charged and uncharged particles together

because of superior force-mass power and by the further function of

causing protons and neutrons constantly to change places. The

mesotron causes the electric charge of the nuclear particles to be

incessantly tossed back and forth between protons and neutrons. At

one infinitesimal part of a second a given nuclear particle is a

charged proton and the next an uncharged neutron. And these

alternations of energy status-are so unbelievably rapid that the

electric charge is deprived of all opportunity to function as a

disruptive influence. Thus does the mesotron function as an "energy-

carrier" particle which mightily contributes to the nuclear

stability of the atom.

 

3. The presence and function of the mesotron also explains

another atomic riddle. When atoms perform radioactively, they emit

far more energy than would be expected. This excess of radiation is

derived from the breaking up of the mesotron "energy carrier," which

thereby becomes a mere electron. The mesotronic disintegration is

also accompanied by the emission of certain small uncharged

particles.

 

4.The mesotron explains certain cohesive properties of the

atomic nucleus, but it does not account for the cohesion of proton

to proton nor for the adhesion of neutron to neutron. The

paradoxical and powerful force of atomic cohesive integrity is a

form of energy as yet undiscovered on Urantia. 5.These mesotrons are

found abundantly in the space rays which so incessantly impinge upon

your planet. (479)

 

Firstly we'll be looking at the beginning paragraphs from p.

479 of The Urantia Book that can be found at the top of p. 7 of the

science booklet.

 

A mental picture of the atom

 

In order to be able to communicate with one another in terms of

normal, everyday experience, we can visualize an atomic nucleus as

being a kind of spherical container in which other little spherical

containers are found (Fig 1.). One kind is called a proton and it

carries a positive electric charge. The other kind could be

described as a mirror image of the proton minus its electric charge,

and is given the name "neutron." The simplest of all atoms is the

hydrogen atom and it consists of a single proton with its single

positive charge. It is a fact of creation that for every positive

charge in the universe there exists an equal and opposite charge

that we call negative. The proton is accompanied by its negatively

charged electron that is thought of as being smeared out in a cloud

skirting the spherical proton. The size of an atomic nucleus is in

the order of 10-15cm and the electron cloud is of the order of 10-

8cm. Putting that into more familiar terms, if the electron cloud

was a mist clinging to the surface of the earth, and the nucleus of

the atom was at the very center of the earth, that nucleus would be

about the size of a football field and situated 4000 miles away from

its electron cloud. Which all goes to show how powerful is the

electric field that holds the electrons to the nucleus and permits

matter to exist.

 

As atoms get larger, Nature endows them with more and more

protons with their positive charges and these are highly repellent

to one another. To help alleviate the problem, Nature adds neutrons

to the protons, on a roughly one to one basis to start with, but as

the bundles gets bigger, Nature has to supply more neutrons than

protons in order to stop things falling apart. The number of protons

in the mix decides whether a particular mix, called an element, will

be hydrogen, oxygen, silver, gold, iron, aluminum, or what have you.

The number of neutrons accompanying the protons does not influence

which element a mix will be, but it does determine its stability.

Carbon, for example, has only six protons, but can have from 5 to 8

neutrons. The last one is called carbon 14; it is unstable, and

breaks down radioactively, which is very convenient for those

archaeologists who use it to carbon date the remnants of their

ancestors.

 

On making nuclear peace

 

Par.1 of page 479 is about how the atomic nucleus holds itself

together despite the antipathy of the protons for one another. Fig.

2 shows diagrammatically, a theory published by a Japanese

physicist, Hideki Yukawa, that is almost the exact equivalent of

what is stated in Par.1. Eventually Yukawa was awarded the Nobel

Prize for his efforts, which, of course, was not just a simple

drawing like Fig. 2, but a highly developed mathematical treatment

of his proposal. Effectively, it assumes that this particle, termed

the mesotron or meson, picks up a positive electric charge from the

charged protons of the nucleus and switches it to the neutron which

thereupon becomes a proton while the proton that lost its charge is

now a neutron.

 

Why does it have two names? Well the Greeks used the

word "mesos" to mean middle and Yukawa's particle had a calculated

mass somewhere between the electron, the proton, and the neutron. So

there were three choices, meson, mesoton, or mesotron simply meaning

middle sized particle. Eventually "meson" won the day.

 

A breach of the mandate?

 

Yukawa's theory was published in 1935, one year after receipt

of the Urantia Paper. Does that controvert the mandate about the

proscription of unearned knowledge? Not necessarily, because

Yukawa's memoirs state that he had been thinking about the problem

ever since the discovery of the neutron in 1932. It is customary in

most research laboratories to have internal seminars, often on a

weekly basis, in which research workers present progress reports on

their projects. Although the mandate for the revelators proscribed

the disclosure of unearned knowledge, there was no stipulation that

it had to be published before it could be used in their revelation.

Presumably the revelators could have used Yukawa's seminar notes, or

even his spoken addresses as source material for the book.

 

We do need to note that Yukawa's idea was only one among other

possible theories attempting to account for nuclear stability. We

also need to note that in Par. 4., p. 479, the revelators point out

that Yukawa's explanation of nuclear binding is only partial. The

book actually says, "The mesotron explains certain cohesive

properties of the atomic nucleus, but it does not account for the

cohesion of proton to proton nor for the adhesion of neutron to

neutron. The paradoxical and powerful force of atomic cohesive

integrity is a form of energy as yet undiscovered on Urantia."

 

That particular comment appears to be highly prophetic, and

would have remained so even if our Triple "A" authors had written it

in during the 1950's. For example, Nobel Prize winner, Leon

Lederman, wrote: "The hot particle of 1950 was the pion or pi meson.

The pion had been predicted in 1936 by a Japanese theoretical

physicist, Hideki Yukawa. It was thought to be the key to the strong

force, which in those days was the big mystery. Today,we think of

the strong force in terms of gluons. But back then, mesons which fly

back and forth between the protons to hold them together tightly in

the nucleus were the key, and we needed to make and study them."

Here Lederman appears to indicate that, in the 1950's, most

physicists thought the Yukawa theory was still adequate--and perhaps

they should have for they had only just awarded him the Nobel Prize

because of it. The Urantia Book, of course, says it was inadequate--

a comment that turned out to be true.

 

A development causing mini-excitement occurred in 1936 when

Anderson and his co-workers announced the discovery of a particle in

cosmic ray experiments that appeared to correspond to Yukawa's meson

as it had almost exactly the mass that Yukawa had predicted.

However, the euphoria was short-lived when it was discovered that

Anderson's meson had a negative charge and not the positive charge

required by Yukawa theory. Even later Anderson's meson turned out

not to be a meson at all, but a heavy electron, now called the muon.

Yukawa's meson was finally discovered in 1947.

 

Colliders bring confusion in the 1950's

 

In the 50's, confusion broke loose as powerful accelerators

collided nuclear particles at higher and higher energy levels and

generated an absolute profusion of new particles, including 4 or 5

kinds of mesons.

 

The confusion in the fifties was such that one prominent

physicist is reported to have advocated presenting the Nobel Prize

to the next physicist not to discover a new particle. That brings up

a point. It has been claimed (by Martin Gardner) that the text of

The Urantia Book could have been modified until the books started to

roll off the presses in 1955. If so, then the enormous confusion in

the world of sub-atomic physics during the early 1950's should have

generated enough anxiety in our Triple "A" committee physicist for

him to become uncertain about any of his prophetic commentary--and

surely he would have been impelled to remove it if he gave thought

to the potential effects upon the revelatory status of the book.

 

Let's now examine the details of Par. 3.

 

On radioactive decay of the neutron

 

The presence and function of the mesotron also explains another

atomic riddle. When atoms perform radioactively, they emit far more

energy than would be expected. This excess of radiation is derived

from the breaking up of the mesotron "energy carrier," which thereby

becomes a mere electron. The mesotronic disintegration is also

accompanied by the emission of certain small uncharged particles.

(479)

 

Here we are told about two kinds of undiscovered particles that

result from the beta radioactive decay of the neutron. One of them,

called in the book, a "small uncharged particle," had been predicted

by Wolfgang Pauli in 1932 to account for the missing energy when a

neutron decayed radioactively to a proton and an electron. This tiny

particle became known as the neutrino. A word of explanation. The

mass of the neutron was known to be greater than the masses of the

proton and the electron combined. From Einstein's famous equation E

= MC2, the change in energy can be calculated from the change in

mass and since all the energy could not be accounted for, Pauli

invented his little particle with no properties that he said could

never be discovered.

 

The accepted theory of beta radioactive decay in 1934/5 was

that proposed in 1932 by one of the most famous physicists of this

century, Werner Heisenberg. It became known as the four fermion

theory and is shown in our Fig. 3. Here a single neutron arrives at

a single space-time point (position A) whereupon it decides it is

sick of being what it is and opts for a new life as three new

particles, a proton, an electron, and a little uncharged particle,

a neutrino. This theory was shown to be entirely satisfactory for

the low energy conditions available in those days, except for one

thing. Nobody could demonstrate that the neutrino actually existed.

 

Conservation of energy. True or false?

 

We'll digress for a moment to consider the status of a law in

classical physics that states that energy cannot be created or

destroyed. This energy-balance problem we have referred to during

neutron decay required an implicit faith that this law would hold

good despite the fact that many classical concepts had withered and

failed in the new physics introduced in the early part of this

century. Among the new theories were relativity and quantum physics.

As time went by, and on onto the 1940's, faith in this law of the

immortality of energy began to wither. Many asked the question of

whether it was really valid to postulate a little uncharged particle

that could never be detected because it had no properties, for the

sole purpose of preserving what may well have become an outdated law

of classical physics.

 

If this p. 479 material in the book was really written by our

Triple "A" committee, then its members show some pretty strange

behavior. In Par.4, they go against front line physics by pointing

out that the theory that earned Yukawa the Nobel Prize in 1948 is

inadequate to account for aspects of the binding of the nucleus, and

in Par. 3, they bet on the conservation of energy law holding up

under circumstances in which it had yet to be tested. This law was

derived from the effects of heat, work, and gravity on steam

engines, hydraulic pumps, horses pulling plows, apples falling off

trees, etc. It was not known whether the law held good in the micro-

world of the atom. Einstein came along and said the gravity concepts

were wrong and also introduced a new idea, the equivalence of mass

and energy for which there was nothing comparable in classical

physics. In radioactive beta decay a neutron changes into a proton

and an electron but the energy equivalent to the loss in mass does

not correspond to what was measured. Hence the invention of the

undetectable neutrino to preserve the validity of the law that

energy cannot be created or destroyed.

 

Now if our Triple "A" people were at work faking a

revelation, right here, in Par. 3, they took the unprecedented step

of ignoring the top physicists of the day and introducing their own

concept of beta-decay as illustrated in Fig. 4. Please note that I

did not draw Fig. 4, but copied it from a modern text book because

The Urantia Book concept has become the modern theory.

 

The major difference from the Heisenberg scheme (Fig. 3) was

the introduction of another unidentified (and in those days,

unidentifiable) particle that the revelators have called a mesotron,

but is now known as the W- particle. Clearly it is not the same

mesotron as postulated for mediating nucleus stability since that

mesotron shuttles a positive charge, and this second mesotron

carries negative charge as shown by its breaking down to the

negatively charged electron and the small uncharged particle.

 

The Urantia Paper that provided this information was dated as

having been delivered to the Contact Commission in 1934. In 1938,

Hideki Yukawa made an attempt to reformulate the Heisenberg scheme

for beta decay using one similar to that in The Urantia Book. In it,

he called his carrier a weak photon rather than a mesotron. The work

was not taken seriously as the four fermion process of Fig. 3 was

considered adequate and remained so until into the 1950's.

 

The speculative(?) predictions on p. 479 of the book

 

Here we can reasonably ask the question of why a physicist of

the Triple "A" committee would indulge in a guessing game that could

discredit all the work entailed in amassing a 2000-page revelation.

All told, there are six highly speculative suggestions that could

easily have been wrong.

 

1. The Yukawa meson (identified in 1947),

2. The small uncharged particles (neutrinos) of radioactive decay

proposed in 1932 and identified in 1956. Note that in an article in

the February 1996 issue of Scientific American, one of their

discoverers, Dr Frederick Reines, says, "For 25 years the neutrino

was little more than a figment of the theoretical physicists'

imagination." So even when the book was first printed, the neutrino

was still a figment of the imagination.

3. The mesotron of radioactive beta decay that became known as the W-

- boson (discovered 1981)

4. The force other than Yukawa's meson that holds proton to proton

and neutron to neutron and which was finally clarified in the period

between 1950 and 1970.

5. In Par. 5, the book states that, "These mesotrons are found

abundantly in the space rays which so incessantly impinge upon your

planet." The first report of a meson being discovered in cosmic

rays occurred in 1936, two years after the Paper was received--but

turned out not to be a meson.

6. Then there is another highly speculative suggestion in Par. 2.

The book says, "The mesotron causes the electric charge of the

nuclear particles to be incessantly tossed back and forth between

protons and neutrons. At one infinitesimal part of a second a given

nuclear particle is a charged proton and the next an uncharged

neutron. And these alternations of energy status are so unbelievably

rapid that the electric charge is deprived of all opportunity to

function as a disruptive influence." In effect, it is as if the

charge is smeared out rather than being localized. Nobel Prize

winner, Steven Weinberg (1992), remarks that these alternations

occur in the order of a million, million, million, millionth of a

second. In contrast, the movement of electric charge from neutron to

electron during the beta radioactive decay process takes about one

hundredth of a second. In 1934, there was no hard evidence available

to make such comparisons.

 

About collapsing suns

 

Now we move from the small uncharged particles of beta decay

to meet these particles once more in the book's description of the

death throes of large stars. From page 464 of The Urantia Book and

repeated on P. 9 of the science booklet, we have:

 

In large suns--small circular nebulae--when hydrogen is

exhausted and gravity contraction ensues, if such a body is not

sufficiently opaque (1) to retain the internal pressure of support

for the outer gas regions, then a sudden collapse occurs. The

gravity-electric changes give origin to vast quantities of tiny

particles (2)devoid of electric potential, and such particles

readily escape from the solar interior (3), thus bringing about the

collapse of a gigantic sun (4) within a few days. It was such an

emigration of these "runaway particles" that occasioned the collapse

of the giant nova of the Andromeda nebula about fifty years ago.

This vast stellar body collapsed in forty minutes (5) of Urantia

time. (464)

 

The collapsed star that does this trick usually winds up as a

neutron star and sometimes as a black hole. This whole Urantia Book

paragraph is packed with unconfirmed physics--the opaqueness failing

to support the internal pressure so that collapse occurs; the vast

quantities of neutral particles; that these readily escape from the

interior (actually in about 3 secs. in contrast to light energy that

can take a million years in large stars); the escape of the

neutrinos being sufficient to collapse a gigantic sun, and doing so

in as little as forty minutes.

 

For the mid-thirties, this paragraph is close to being a

ridiculous statement. The tiny particles devoid of electric

potential could have been the same undiscovered particles proposed

by Pauli to account for the missing energy of radio-active decay,

but whoever heard of a proposal such as a "vast stellar body

collapsing in forty minutes"? The craziest astrophysicist outside

the gates of a mental asylum at this particular time was an Austrian

immigrant working at the California Institute of Technology. His

name was Fritz Zwicky and his main interests in life were the

supernovae he was investigating in collaboration with Walter Baade

from the Mt. Wilson Observatory that then housed the world's largest

telescope. Between them they had amassed data on novae occurring in

this century that appeared to be outside of our galaxy. These novae

had roughly the same brightness as novae from within our galaxy but

if they were millions or billions of light years out into space,

then they must have been tremendously bright and have originated

from really mighty explosions. These are what became known as

supernovae.

 

At the beginning of the 30's, Baade collected detailed data on

six of these and he and Zwicky set to work to provide a theoretical

explanation. At first they achieved little, then, in 1932, Chadwick

reported his discovery of the neutron, in effect an uncharged

proton. This was just what Zwicky needed to calculate that if a star

imploded until it reached the density of an atomic nucleus, it might

transform into a gas of neutrons devoid of the repulsive effect of

the positively charged protons--thus permitting gravitational

collapse to shrink it to tiny core. In the process, according to

Zwicky, such a star should lose about 10% of its mass. The energy

equivalent of that mass loss would then supply the explosive force

to blast the star apart.

 

From Prof. Thorne, currently Feynmann Professor of Theoretical

Physics at Caltec comes an important statement relative to the

neutron star material in The Urantia Book. Thorne says: "Zwicky did

not know what might initiate implosion nor how the core might behave

as it imploded. Hence he could not estimate how long the process

might take--is it a slow contraction or a high speed implosion?

Details of this process were not worked out until the 1960's and

later." So what was the basis for our Triple "A" committee physicist

making the statement about a collapse of a star in forty minutes? In

fact there was none until high speed computers became available, and

it is only in the 1990's that there has been a successful computer-

simulation of a supernova.

 

Accidentally I came across some comments on Zwicky that said he

was in Chicago in the mid-thirties. Since he and Baade appear to

have been the only research astrophysicists working on the supernova

problem when the relevant Urantia Paper was received, Zwicky

certainly looked like a "best bet" for being a physicist from

Triple "A." On my books, he remained so for many years until I came

across Thorne's 1994 book that provided a detailed account of Baade

and Zwicky's work. Thorne writes:

 

"At this time (1932-33), cosmic rays were receiving much

attention and Zwicky, with his love of extremes, managed to convince

himself that most of the cosmic rays were coming from outside our

solar system and that most were from far outside our Milky Way

galaxy (which was incorrect)--indeed from the most distant reaches

of the universe--and he then convinced himself that the total energy

carried by all the universe's cosmic rays was about the same as the

total energy released by supernovae throughout the universe. The

conclusion was obvious to Zwicky. Cosmic rays must be made in

supernova explosions."

 

Zwicky thought that cosmic rays, not neutrinos, dissipated the

energy of a supernova explosion

 

There was not a word anywhere in Zwicky's work about a role for

tiny particles devoid of electric potential that escape readily from

the interior of an exhausted star and bring about its collapse in as

little as forty minutes. So, in my humble opinion, because he

assigned the major role to cosmic rays for energy dissipation during

a supernova explosion and failed to mention a role for little

neutral particles, Zwicky must be eliminated as a possible

Triple "A" committee physicist. Thorne's book provides us with the

background thought of workers interested in that field at this time:

 

"Astronomers in the 1930's responded enthusiastically to the

Baade-Zwicky concept of supernovae, but treated Zwicky's neutron

star and cosmic ray ideas with disdain...In fact a detailed study of

Zwicky's writings of the era showed that he did not understand the

laws of physics well enough to be able to substantiate his ideas."

This opinion was also held by Robert Oppenheimer, who, with H.

Snyder, wrote the most authoritative paper during the 1930's on the

subject of stellar collapse. In it, he completely ignored Zwicky's

work even though he must have been well acquainted with it, since he

spent half of each year at Caltec.

 

Oppenheimer, Einstein, and Eddington all rejected the neutron

star idea

 

The Oppenheimer papers of 1939 drew attention to the subject of

neutron stars and the possibility of black holes which, in turn,

brought comment from Albert Einstein and the doyen of astronomers,

Sir Arthur Eddington, both of whom vigorously opposed the concepts

involved in stellar collapse that implied either the formation of

neutron stars or black holes.

 

One possible scenario of what might have happened with the

Urantia Papers following their receipt is that they were checked

over by Dr Sadler's cohort of workers until put into a form ready to

go to the printer. Funds to pay for the printing were being amassed

by Dr Lena Sadler in the late thirties, and apparently a draft was

ready to send to the printers, R.R. Donnelley & Sons in the early

forties. Following a check by a professional copy editor, the

contract to prepare the printing plates was accepted in September

1941, under the signature of Wilfred Kellogg. Letters exist from the

1942/43 period from Forum members that speak of checking the galley

proofs supplied by the printer, and this could only happen after

completion of the type setting of the printing plates.

 

Changes to the text during draft stages are always possible,

but once a publication gets to the galley proof stage and the

printing plates have been made, any extensive changes are very much

frowned upon and can be very expensive.

 

New information that provided a possible reason for a Triple "A"

committee physicist to write in the page 464 material on neutron

stars was forthcoming in 1942 when the book was, supposedly, at

galley proof stage. During the 1940's virtually all capable

physicists were occupied with tasks relating to the war effort.

Apparently this was not so for George Gamow, a Russian-born

astrophysicist, formerly a professor at Leningrad, who had taken up

a position at George Washington University. The Hubble expansion of

the universe was already an established theory and Gamow conceived

this as indicating that the start of expansion of the universe was

as a thermonuclear fireball, now called the Big Bang.

 

According to Gamow and his team, the original stuff of creation

was a dense gas of protons, neutrons, electrons, and gamma radiation

which transmuted by a chain of nuclear reactions into the variety of

elements that make up the world of today. The work was really highly

speculative as there was little real knowledge on which to base his

theories and the computer machinery needed for complex calculations

was unavailable. Referring to this work Overbye writes, "In the

forties, Gamow and a group of collaborators wrote a series of papers

spelling out the details of thermonucleogenesis. Unfortunately their

scheme didn't work. Some atomic nuclei were so unstable that they

fell apart before they could fuse into something heavier, thus

breaking the element building chain. Gamow's team disbanded in the

late 40's, its work ignored and discredited."

 

The Gamow-Schoenberg proposal

 

However one paper emerged from Gamow's group in 1941 that could

be meaningful for our task. In it Gamow and Schoenberg proposed that

the energy loss from aging stars in a supernova explosion would be

mediated by an efflux of neutrinos. But at that time there was

insufficient knowledge, and also a complete lack of the tools, for

making the necessary calculations to support their proposal and the

work appears to have received no subsequent mention in the

literature. In the summary for their paper, these authors remarked

that, "the neutrinos are still hypothetical particles because of the

failure of all efforts to detect them."

 

The question we must ask is could the Gamow and Schoenberg paper

of 1941 be the source of The Urantia Book's comments on the collapse

of gigantic suns? If our Triple "A" physicist did decide to use it,

it had to be added in the galley proof stage of preparation for

printing of The Urantia Book. The idea of the neutron star had been

only recently been condemned by Einstein and Eddington, and Gamow

and Schoenberg had provided no convincing evidence in support of

their proposals. Hence, it would appear to have been sheer

foolishness for our Triple "A" physicist to go to the trouble of

getting printing plates altered on the basis of the Gamow and

Schoenberg work which admitted that nine years after Pauli's initial

suggestion, there was still no evidence for the existence of the

neutrino, a particle that was of central importance for their

proposal. But note though that if celestial revelators became aware

of this work, and knowing that the neutrino proposal was correct,

they could have used it and been within the terms of their mandate--

provided that alterations to the printing plates were permitted to

the Revelatory Commission at that time.

 

Since we have posed the question of whether a Triple "A"

physicist would have added the collapsing star material of page 464

in 1942, perhaps we should also ask whether page 479's "mesotron"

material could have been either added or reviewed at this time.

Yukawa's theory was published in 1935 and in 1942, his meson

remained as a figment of a theoretical physicist's imagination. None

of the three hypothetical particles of page 479, the meson, the

neutrino, or the W- boson, had yet been discovered. Remembering that

the purpose of the speculative material would be to support the

concept that the Papers are revelatory, what would a Triple "A"

physicist have done about this material in 1942? In my view, since

no supporting evidence had emerged in the intervening years, at the

very least, it would have been very considerably modified, if not

completely omitted.

 

Emerging theory of and evidence for the existence of neutron stars

 

Getting back to supernova explosions, the theoretical basis for

them is said to have been laid by the Burbidges, Fowler, and Hoyle

in a 1957 paper. All of these were eminent workers in the field of

thermonuclear synthesis which covers the ways that elements are

formed and transformed in the stars. However in this paper, no

consideration is given to a role for neutrinos in the explosive

conduction of energy away from the core during a supernova. Instead

the authors proposed that when the temperature of a massive star

rises to 7 billion degrees Kelvin, iron is rapidly converted to

helium by a nuclear process that absorbs enormous amounts of energy,

causing the core to cool and shrink catastrophically. It implodes in

seconds and the outer collapsing envelope crashes into it. As the

lighter elements are heated by the implosion, they burn so rapidly

the envelope is blasted into space. But in this scheme, The Urantia

Book's tiny particles devoid of electric charge have no major role.

 

Nothing further of significance for us Urantia Book researchers

appears to have occurred until 1959. A lot more was then known about

sub-atomic physics; the elusive neutrino and its antiparticle had

been detected during the previous three years, and an enormous

amount of hard information had become available from the research on

the atomic and hydrogen bombs. In addition high speed computers with

the capacity to carry out enormous amounts of arithmetic had come

into being.

 

At the laboratory of Philip Morrison, a Ph.D student, Hing-Yee

Chiu was given the task of taking a further look at the neutron star

problem and came up with the proposal that towards the end of its

life, the core of a massive star would reach temperatures of about 3

billion degrees. By this time it was known that, at this

temperature, electron-positron pairs should be formed and should

give rise to neutrino-antineutrino pairs. Then, when the temperature

rose high enough and an iron core developed, the flux of neutrino-

antineutrino pairs would be able to carry off the explosive energy

of the star in a single day.

 

Before 1960, no hard evidence for the neutron star

 

All this work was strictly theoretical, the neutron star still

being a construct of the human imagination. Distinguished Russian

astrophysicist, Igor Novikov, has written, "Apparently no searches

in earnest for neutron stars or black holes were attempted by

astronomers before the 1960's. It was tacitly assumed that these

objects were far too eccentric and most probably were the fruits of

theorists' wishful thinking. Preferably, one avoided speaking about

them. Sometimes they were mentioned vaguely with a remark yes, they

could be formed, but in all likelihood this had never happened. At

any rate, if they existed, then they could never be detected."

 

Acceptance of the existence of neutron stars gained ground

slowly with discoveries accompanying the development of radio-

astronomy. The Crab nebula played a central role as ideas about it

emerged in the decade, 1950-1960. Originally observed as an

explosion in the sky by Chinese astronomers in the year 1054, the

Crab nebula became the focus of attention when, in 1958, Walter

Baade reported visual observations suggesting moving ripples in its

nebulosity. When sensitive electronic devices replaced the

photographic plate as a means of detection, the oscillation

frequency of what was conjectured to be a white dwarf star at the

center of the Crab nebula turned out to be about 30 times per second.

 

If a white dwarf with a diameter in the order of 1000 km revolved

at even once per second it would fly apart. Hence this remarkable

pulsation rate of 30 times per second indicated an object with a

much, much smaller diameter and the only possible contender was the

neutron star. Final acceptance came with pictures of the center of

the Crab beamed back to earth by the orbiting Einstein X-Ray

observatory in 1967.

 

The icing was put on the cake in 1987 when two laboratories deep

under the earth with special equipment for the detection and study

of neutrinos recorded a neutrino burst arriving on Urantia from a

supernova occurring in our satellite galaxy, the Large Magellanic

Cloud. I remember watching that supernova the night after it was

reported and wondering whether a neutrino burst would be recorded on

earth. Both of the detectors, one at Kamiokande in Japan, the other

at Fairport, Ohio, recorded a twelve second burst on the recorders

for their instruments, so finally proving beyond all doubt that the

page 464 prophecies of The Urantia Book about the collapse of large

suns were actual reality.

 

 

 

***************************

 

 

In just under 350 words, these statements we have discussed

from pp. 464 and 479 of The Urantia Book have correctly described

events that occur in eleven different physical phenomena all of

which were *unconfirmed* by Urantia science at the time they were

described. Eight of these appear to have been *original* to the

book, while the others were objects of speculation by Urantia's

theoretical physicists. If there had been a Triple "A" committee,

what chance did they have of making such predictions and coming up

right each time? My own judgment is no chance, hence no committee."

(*mine)

[Buffy]

For those of you who did not want to read these two long-winded excerpts of copyrighted material (which we may have to abrige for you because of its length), it basically is a person of questionable independence saying "I saw a miracle! Honest!"

 

While you're probably still safe in trying to claim that your purpose here is to prove the validity of the Urantia book, the method you are using is little more than Proselytizing which is frowned upon even in the Theology Forum.

 

I suggest you either pursue another course or give it a rest.

 

Thank you for your cooperation,

Buffy

[sandor606]

For those of you who did not want to read these two long-winded excerpts of copyrighted material (which we may have to abrige for you because of its length), it basically is a person of questionable independence saying "I saw a miracle! Honest!"

 

While you're probably still safe in trying to claim that your purpose here is to prove the validity of the Urantia book, the method you are using is little more than Proselytizing which is frowned upon even in the Theology Forum.

 

I suggest you either pursue another course or give it a rest.

 

Thank you for your cooperation,

Buffy

 

 

You have been ridiculing what I posted without offering a shread of *proof* of its fallacy. I cannot reply directly because I have not yet posted 10 posts.

 

If you don't want The Urantia Book on your forum just say so. There are almost one million copies sold and it has been translated into a dozen languages. You can do whatever you want (you are THE power here - and *only* here), even boot me, but The Urantia Book exists, it *is* a *divine* revelation, your subjective, unsubstantiated, and personal opinion to the contrary notwithstanding.

 

Until you or anyone refutes the evidence of its validity, it remains what it is: The Fifth Epochal Revelation to mankind.

 

Sandor

[Buffy]

In the scientific method, one does not "prove a fallacy" it is up to the proponent to prove that the Hypothesis is true. I don't have to do anything: your arguments are simply not persuasive from an objective viewpoint.

 

As to your other complaints, I strongly suggest you look in a mirror. Your glass house is showing....

 

Mixed debunking metaphors,

Buffy

[Eclogite]

The * authenticity* of the revelation has been amply proven; the *evidence* has been posted (I have more). The ball is in *your* park to *disprove* it; your personal opinion of me is irrelevant.

Two quite disparate points need to be made:

1) I would ask that you try to keep the vitriol, implict as well as explicit, out of your posts. Regardless of your belief in the Urantia Book and its revelations you must be aware of the incredulity it will invoke in most people. Do not be surprised when this incredulity is expressed and please do not react to it.

2) I have read and digested post #93. You titled this, I think, Proof of Authenticity. Can you please point me to the passage, or passages within the post that prove authenticity. All I can see are statements made by a single individual, with no validation for these statements. Thank you.

[Tormod]

I'm surprised that nobody has posted links to any sites debunking this stuff.

 

Well, here goes:

Urantia Book (Skepdic.com)

[ughaibu]

Why are the posts appearing before the two earlier posts?

[sandor606]

In the scientific method, one does not "prove a fallacy" it is up to the proponent to prove that the Hypothesis is true. I don't have to do anything: your arguments are simply not persuasive from an objective viewpoint.

 

As to your other complaints, I strongly suggest you look in a mirror. Your glass house is showing....

 

Mixed debunking metaphors,

Buffy

 

 

The * authenticity* of the revelation has been amply proven; the *evidence* has been posted (I have more). The ball is in *your* park to *disprove* it; your personal opinion of me is irrelevant.

 

Even if you think I am the most despicable worm crawling on the face of the earth, I couldn't care less. Just use the *scientific method* to refute the evidence; that's all that matters; the rest is just cheap chit-chat.

 

Sandor

[ughaibu]

Buffy: I'm one of those who cant be bothered reading it, is there any hint as to why it (the "miracle") should be of general interest?