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The Urantia Book The Urantia Book
The Urantia Book The Urantia Book

Love

Love is truly contagious and eternally creative. (p. 2018) “Devote your life to proving that love is the greatest thing in the world.” (p. 2047) “Love is the ancestor of all spiritual goodness, the essence of the true and the beautiful.” (p. 2047) The Father’s love can become real to mortal man only by passing through that man’s personality as he in turn bestows this love upon his fellows. (p. 1289) The secret of a better civilization is bound up in the Master’s teachings of the brotherhood of man, the good will of love and mutual trust. (p. 2065)

Prayer

Prayer is not a technique of escape from conflict but rather a stimulus to growth in the very face of conflict. (p. 1002) The sincerity of any prayer is the assurance of its being heard. … (p. 1639) God answers man’s prayer by giving him an increased revelation of truth, an enhanced appreciation of beauty, and an augmented concept of goodness. (p. 1002) …Never forget that the sincere prayer of faith is a mighty force for the promotion of personal happiness, individual self-control, social harmony, moral progress, and spiritual attainment. (p. 999)

Suffering

There is a great and glorious purpose in the march of the universes through space. All of your mortal struggling is not in vain. (p. 364) Mortals only learn wisdom by experiencing tribulation. (p. 556)

Angels

The angels of all orders are distinct personalities and are highly individualized. (p. 285) Angels....are fully cognizant of your moral struggles and spiritual difficulties. They love human beings, and only good can result from your efforts to understand and love them. (p. 419)

Our Divine Destiny

If you are a willing learner, if you want to attain spirit levels and reach divine heights, if you sincerely desire to reach the eternal goal, then the divine Spirit will gently and lovingly lead you along the pathway of sonship and spiritual progress. (p. 381) …They who know that God is enthroned in the human heart are destined to become like him—immortal. (p. 1449) God is not only the determiner of destiny; he is man’s eternal destination. (p. 67)

Family

Almost everything of lasting value in civilization has its roots in the family. (p. 765) The family is man’s greatest purely human achievement. ... (p. 939)

Faith

…Faith will expand the mind, ennoble the soul, reinforce the personality, augment the happiness, deepen the spirit perception, and enhance the power to love and be loved. (p. 1766) “Now, mistake not, my Father will ever respond to the faintest flicker of faith.” (p. 1733)

History/Science

The story of man’s ascent from seaweed to the lordship of earthly creation is indeed a romance of biologic struggle and mind survival. (p. 731) 2,500,000,000 years ago… Urantia was a well developed sphere about one tenth its present mass. … (p. 658) 1,000,000,000 years ago is the date of the actual beginning of Urantia [Earth] history. (p. 660) 450,000,000 years ago the transition from vegetable to animal life occurred. (p. 669) From the year A.D. 1934 back to the birth of the first two human beings is just 993,419 years. (p. 707) About five hundred thousand years ago…there were almost one-half billion primitive human beings on earth. … (p. 741) Adam and Eve arrived on Urantia, from the year A.D. 1934, 37,848 years ago. (p. 828)

From the Inside Flap

What’s Inside?

Parts I and II

God, the inhabited universes, life after death, angels and other beings, the war in heaven.

Part III

The history of the world, science and evolution, Adam and Eve, development of civilization, marriage and family, personal spiritual growth.

Part IV

The life and teachings of Jesus including the missing years. AND MUCH MORE…

Excerpts

God, …God is the source and destiny of all that is good and beautiful and true. (p. 1431) If you truly want to find God, that desire is in itself evidence that you have already found him. (p. 1440) When man goes in partnership with God, great things may, and do, happen. (p. 1467)

The Origin of Human Life, The universe is not an accident... (p. 53) The universe of universes is the work of God and the dwelling place of his diverse creatures. (p. 21) The evolutionary planets are the spheres of human origin…Urantia [Earth] is your starting point. … (p. 1225) In God, man lives, moves, and has his being. (p. 22)

The Purpose of Life, There is in the mind of God a plan which embraces every creature of all his vast domains, and this plan is an eternal purpose of boundless opportunity, unlimited progress, and endless life. (p. 365) This new gospel of the kingdom… presents a new and exalted goal of destiny, a supreme life purpose. (p. 1778)

Jesus, The religion of Jesus is the most dynamic influence ever to activate the human race. (p. 1091) What an awakening the world would experience if it could only see Jesus as he really lived on earth and know, firsthand, his life-giving teachings! (p. 2083)

Science, Science, guided by wisdom, may become man’s great social liberator. (p. 909) 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. (p. 560)

Life after Death, God’s love is universal… He is “not willing that any should perish.” (p. 39) Your short sojourn on Urantia [Earth]…is only a single link, the very first in the long chain that is to stretch across universes and through the eternal ages. (p. 435) …Death is only the beginning of an endless career of adventure, an everlasting life of anticipation, an eternal voyage of discovery. (p. 159)

About the Author

The text of The Urantia Book was provided by one or more anonymous contributors working with a small staff which provided editorial and administrative support during the book's creation. The book bears no particular credentials (from a human viewpoint), relying instead on the power and beauty of the writing itself to persuade the reader of its authenticity.

Leather Bound: 2097 pages
Publisher: Urantia Foundation; Box Lea edition (August 25, 2015)

Eugenics, Race,
and
The Urantia Book

[Originally published 1/1/11, revised 12/23/14]

Prepared by Halbert Katzen, J.D.

with ongoing editorial support from
Andrew Myers and Claire Miller.
Chris Halvorson, Ph.D. assisted on Appendix 1.
From Wayback Machine 2018


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TABLE OF CONTENTS

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Chapter 1:
Purpose and Parameters


The primary purpose of this paper is to provide a comprehensive review of statements in The Urantia Book related to eugenics and race and, in particular, to focus on aspects of this topic that are more likely to be misinterpreted and/or cause concern.

The UBtheNEWS project documents how new discoveries and scientific advances increasingly support The Urantia Book's account of planetary history as well as some of its other statements. Some UBtheNEWS reports involve sections from The Urantia Book that address eugenics and race. As the field of genetics continues to make advances, reports in this category also continue to increase. UBtheNEWS is primarily for people who are unfamiliar with The Urantia Book. For people unfamiliar with the fuller context of the book's statements about eugenics and race, the limited selections quoted in UBtheNEWS reports, naturally, raise more questions about The Urantia Book than provide answers. This problem led to the preparation of this paper.

People, of course, have legitimate concerns and strongly held beliefs and opinions on eugenics and race. Perhaps because of the size and complexity of the undertaking, this is the first effort in over fifty years to create a comprehensive review of what The Urantia Book says about eugenics and race. Because UBtheNEWS is responsible for leading people to these easily misunderstood sections of the book, the importance of creating the Eugenics, Race, and The Urantia Book paper became self-evident.

The authors of The Urantia Book integrate the material on eugenics and race with theological and cosmological statements that are outside the scope of this paper. However, in order to provide readers with the benefit of reading direct quotes, to a certain extent, some of this material needs to be explained.

Even among those who consider themselves scholars of The Urantia Book and accept it as an authentic revelation, there is ongoing debate and a wide variety of opinion on the book's statements about eugenics and race.1 Because this subject is controversial within the community of Urantia Book "reader-believers," a secondary purpose of this paper is to contribute to progressive appreciation of the topic amongst reader-believers.

The following wisdom from The Urantia Book guided the preparation of the paper:

True and genuine inward certainty does not in the least fear outward analysis, nor does truth resent honest criticism. You should never forget that intolerance is the mask covering up the entertainment of secret doubts as to the trueness of one's belief. No man is at any time disturbed by his neighbor's attitude when he has perfect confidence in the truth of that which he wholeheartedly believes. Courage is the confidence of thoroughgoing honesty about those things which one professes to believe. Sincere men are unafraid of the critical examination of their true convictions and noble ideals.2

But logic can never succeed in harmonizing the findings of science and the insights of religion unless both the scientific and the religious aspects of a personality are truth dominated, sincerely desirous of following the truth wherever it may lead regardless of the conclusions which it may reach.

. . .

What both developing science and religion need is more searching and fearless self-criticism, a greater awareness of incompleteness in evolutionary status. The teachers of both science and religion are often altogether too self-confident and dogmatic. Science and religion can only be self-critical of their facts. The moment departure is made from the stage of facts, reason abdicates or else rapidly degenerates into a consort of false logic.3


Organization of the paper

Jumping ahead to the later chapters is discouraged because issues about race are in many ways a subcategory of eugenic. After all, many issues involving eugenics arise even if everyone had the same color skin. Additionally, quotes from The Urantia Book used in later chapters presume familiarity with concepts that were explained in earlier chapters.

Chapter 2, "Setting the Standard," presents the moral and ethical framework of The Urantia Bookalong with its commentary on the integration of an individual's personal beliefs and values with social and political activities. Chapter 3: "Terminology" addresses issues related to semantics and physiology, how the word eugenics is used (and avoided) in contemporary culture, and how it is used in The Urantia Book. And Chapter 4 reviews what the authors say about human rights.

Collectively, Chapters 2, 3, and 4 provide a general context for the review of The Urantia Book's depiction of our genetic history. This history necessarily involves quoting sections from the book that contain theological and cosmological statements. This general perspective on The Urantia Book's moral and philosophical foundation allows for a more efficient presentation of the theological and cosmological references that are integrated into its statements about eugenics and race.

Chapter 5: "When Genetic Differences Occurred" presents The Urantia Book's account of humanity's genetic history. When selecting quotes for this chapter, preference was given to descriptions that also mention that there are no pure races left.

The next three chapters present some of the overarching issues related to eugenics and race. Chapter 6: "The Value of Variety and Racial Vitality" explains why life is intentionally designed to evolve into various colored races that eventually blend into a superior hybrid, ideally including a balanced mixture. Chapter 7: "Cultural Progress, Overpopulation, and Subnormal Human Beings" explores the eugenics issues faced by humanity independent of race. Chapter 8: "Modern Peoples and Slavery" provides a perspective on the implications of going through all the steps in a gradual evolutionary process—from barely being more than animals to perfecting an advanced civilization.

The next two chapters focus on inherent difficulties involved with deciphering the fossil records and some of the problems scholars have created by misinterpreting these records. Chapter 9: "Skull Shapes and Skeletal Types" reviews The Urantia Book's statements about our physical evolution; it shows how the authors are trying to provide us with a better set of initial assumptions as we try to piece together the fossil record and integrate these discoveries with insights gleaned from other fields, like genetics. Chapter 10: "Aryans and Whites" focuses on how The Urantia Book uses these terms.

Chapter 11: "Differences Between the Colored Races" and Chapter 12: "Racial Blending" review The Urantia Book's statements about racial differences and its commentary about blending of the various races.

The final chapter, "Eugenics, Race, and Morality," reviews The Urantia Book's statements about eugenics and race covered in the later chapters and integrates this with the philosophic foundation and moral standards covered in the earlier chapters.



Footnotes

1. The Urantia Book describes many orders of "angels" that exist "between" mortals and God and asserts that various orders of these celestial beings contributed to the authorship the book. No human being claims to have written the book. The process of getting the text from them to us apparently involved animating a person while he was asleep. Little information was revealed about this process and the person involved chose to remain anonymous. All persons directly associated with this process are now deceased. The generally accepted wisdom for the secrecy is to allow this revelatory gift to humanity to be as unencumbered as possible by association with any particular individual(s).

2. The Urantia Book 146:3.2

3. The Urantia Book 103:7.5, and 7




TABLE OF CONTENTS



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Disclaimer

Disclaimer:
Some material presented will contain links, quotes, ideologies, etc., the contents of which should be understood to first, in their whole, reflect the views or opinions of their editors, and second, are used in my personal research as "fair use" sources only, and not espousement one way or the other. Researching for 'truth' leads one all over the place...a piece here, a piece there. As a researcher, I hunt, gather and disassemble resources, trying to put all the pieces into a coherent and logical whole. I encourage you to do the same. And please remember, these pages are only my effort to collect all the pieces I can find and see if they properly fit into the 'reality aggregate'.

Personal Position

Personal Position:
I've come to realize that 'truth' boils down to what we 'believe' the facts we've gathered point to. We only 'know' what we've 'experienced' firsthand. Everything else - what we read, what we watch, what we hear - is what someone else's gathered facts point to and 'they' 'believe' is 'truth', so that 'truth' seems to change in direct proportion to newly gathered facts divided by applied plausibility. Though I believe there is 'truth', until someone representing the celestial realm visibly appears and presents the heavenly records of Facts And Lies In The Order They Happened, I can't know for sure exactly what "the whole truth' on any given subject is, and what applies to me applies to everyone. Until then I'll continue to ask, "what does The Urantia Book say on the subject?"
~Gail Bird Allen

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