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Alternatively...
There is an alternative and quite different interpretation of the 48 chromosome polemic. In this instance, we simply accept that the authors followed their mandate to the letter. Hence, though they would have been aware that two of our chromosomes had fused to bring the number to 46, they conformed to the rule that they were not permitted to give us unearned knowledge (except in special circumstances), and so they remained with the then current count of 48.
In her article entitled "Intolerance" in the previous issue of Innerface, Ann Bendall commented, "When it comes to intolerance for another group's religious beliefs, it is interesting that The Urantia Book affirms, 'Only with revealed religion did autocratic and intolerant theologic egotism appear.'" (1012)
Surely the revelators were inferring that autocratic and intolerant theologic egotism would inevitably make an appearance among the readership of The Urantia Book.
This kind of tendency certainly comes to the fore with biblical fundamentalists who take the Old Testament as the divine and infallible word of God, then manipulate some of its verses to permit them to declare that the creationary act bringing our world into being was somewhere about 5,000 years ago.
Questioned about this, these biblical fundamentalists will declare that hard physical evidence such as the correspondence of sedimentary rock deposits (and the fossils they contain) between the east coast of South America and the west coast of Africa has no significance.
The revelators must have known that similar things could happen with the interpretation of materials contained in The Urantia Book. One possible way to avoid fundamentalism dominating the future course of events with the book was simply to sometimes take the mandate literally, and use the human source materials exactly as they were written.
That we must reflect deeply on how we think about The Urantia Book is indicated by: "Revelation is evolutionary but always progressive....If revelation is to exalt and upstep the religions of evolution...(it) must portray teachings not too far removed from the thoughts and reactions of the age in which they are presented....Always must the religion of revelation be limited by man's capacity of receptivity." (1107)
We must also beware of possible changes to the meaning of words during the evolution of language. For example, the word "cosmology" is used in the book in a quite different way from its current usage, and in a way that drastically changes the meaning of many statements in which it occurs.
Traditionally, "cosmogony" is an account of the creation of the universe, and "cosmology" is the unfolding story of the universe. Since the advent of Einstein's relativity theory, "cosmology" is used, almost exclusively, to describe the endeavors of physicists to understand the large scale space-time structure of the universe on the basis of that theory.1
The revelators use this term "cosmology" in its earlier and much broader sense, including in it the story--past, present, and future--of our universe's evolution, and details and history concerning both its celestial and terrestrial inhabitants.
The mandate warns us that "any cosmology presented as a part of revealed religion is destined to be outgrown in a short time" and "the cosmology of these revelations is not inspired."
If we take "not inspired" to mean "without dogmatic celestial authority" and "cosmology" in its earlier sense, at least one third of Parts 1-3 of the book may be in the "not inspired" category. Part 4 may be wholly so.
The authors leave it to the reader to sort out what, for them, is "inspired" from mere "cosmology" which is not.
This is really not so difficult once we rid our minds of our fundamentalist-type of preconceived notions. And if we err, the fault is ours, not the revelators. They have given us specific warning. (1109)
References
The Oxford Companion to Philosophy (1995) (Ed. T. Honderich) (Oxford University Press, N.Y.)
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