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truth may indeed show forth, but always of relative purity and partial divinity. The creature may crave infallibility, but only the Creators possess it." (1768) Only the Creators possess infallibility!! None of the authors for the Urantia Papers were of Creator status! Hence we would indeed be foolish to expect an infallible revelation. The book also tells us:
"Truth is inconcussible--forever exempt from all transient vicissitudes, albeit never dead and formal, always vibrant and adaptable--radiantly alive. But when truth becomes linked with fact, then both time and space condition its meanings and correlate its values. Such realities of truth wedded to fact become concepts and are accordingly relegated to the domain of relative cosmic realities." (1297)
None of the 5th Epochal Revelation claims to be infallible truth. We, the recipients, are on a journey of discovery. For us, truth is relative, progressive, experiential. There are grades of relativity for the truth in the book. Each of us is expected to discover his/her own truth. Undoubtedly, some of its truth comes close to being divine truth, may even be divine truth. But that discovery is personal and experiential.
At the very bottom of the gradation of relative truth is the science component of The Urantia Book. The revelators have told us so: "...within a few short years many of our statements regarding the physical sciences will stand in need of revision in consequence of additional scientific developments and new discoveries....The cosmology of these revelations is not inspired. It is limited by our permission for the co-ordination and sorting of present day knowledge." (1109) Only in special circumstances could the revelators go beyond the bounds of the knowledge of the mid-1930's. Important lost knowledge could be restored, and where there were vital gaps in otherwise earned knowledge, information could be supplied.
There are some other important statements that we should be aware of concerning the limitations to the 5th Epochal Revelation. One of them states that, "we shall, in all our efforts to reveal truth and to co-ordinate essential knowledge, give preference to the highest existing human concepts pertaining to the subject to be presented." (16) For Part 1 of the book, "more than one thousand human concepts representing the highest and most advanced planetary knowledge of spiritual values and universe meanings" have been used. (17) For Part 4 of the book, the midwayer responsible for preparing the narrative of the life and teachings of Jesus utilized thought gems and superior concepts assembled from "more than two thousand human beings who have lived on earth from the days of Jesus down to the time of inditing of these revelations, more correctly re-statements."(1343) Other sources were used only when the midwayer could testify that he had failed to find the required conceptual expression in purely human sources.
The mandate states, "Any cosmology presented as a part of revealed religion is destined to be outgrown in a very short time. Accordingly, future students of such a revelation are tempted to discard any element of genuine religious truth it may contain because they discover errors on the face of the associated cosmologies therein presented." (1109) What could be clearer? The Urantia Book contains a cosmology as a part of revealed religion. It does not exclude itself from the consequences of its own statement. In effect, it says, "expect to discover errors, but please do not throw out the baby with the bath water, do not discard the genuine religious truths contained herein."
Many of us have tended to ignore these statements and have read the book as if it was entirely derived from superhuman or celestial sources. Only in the last few years has there been any concerted effort to identify the human sources of Urantia Book material. Slowly it is becoming evident that the book's own statements regarding human sources are accurate. Much of its science and cosmology is directly derived from human sources available at the time of writing of the Papers--and often includes what are now thought to be the errors contained in that material. But how could it be otherwise? Surely a version of mid-1930's speculative science and cosmology from which all error had been eliminated would have provided us with a very large mass of unearned knowledge, something specifically proscribed by the mandate.
The Urantia Book contains revelation. Of that I am sure. It contains a vast amount of authentic, original religious truth just waiting for us to discover and make our own. It also contains a cosmology appropriate to the level of human knowledge in the 1930's. Hidden within that cosmology, there is prophetic information to discover that covers vital missing gaps in our knowledge. For me, the fun in exploring the science content of the book has been to try to identify some of those prophetic segments. Finding them has helped me in my personal search for truth, particularly during the early days of my puzzling about the book. At first it helped me to take the book seriously, then to persist in trying to understand it until, eventually, I learned to rely upon my Thought Adjuster and the Spirit of Truth to take charge of the truth in my life.
Recognition of the book's peculiarities raised many questions in my mind. Why was it written in this strange way when many of the problems so generated could easily have been avoided simply by not mentioning them? Was it really necessary to give us such near unbelievable information? Examples are the incredible passenger birds, every fourth child of Adamson and Ratta being born invisible, and the single couple that gave birth to red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and indigo children. In contrast, it also provides prophetic statements about neutrinos and neutron stars, continental drift, the age of the solar system, etc.
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