Rexford,
I couldn't agree more. This is one of the reasons why I think I'm starting to love TUB and talking to you guys.
I've been philosophizing according to TUBs definition my entire life. I didn't excel in grade school because I was always putting all my energy towards integrating the concepts I was learning before I would actually try to learn them as they were taught.
If a human personality was capable of formulating TUB then he or she wouldn't pass away in obscurity, we'd have more evidence of their works somewhere.
Here's why it seems unreasonable to me to think it's a fabrication: If we got 100 of the best writers, historians, and philosophers together and say have them formulate a book that's kinda half Christian but half sci-fi, and make it agreeable with common sense and profoundly wise and unsurpassed in philosophical insight ( especially as far as modern philosophy is concerned.) Furthermore we make it so that it can be a complete work of fabrication, they can tell as many lies as they want and make them sound real, would they produce anything near TUB? Those of us who've been changed by the truths in it know that would be an impossible task.
When you read the book it sounds exactly like you'd expect a book written by higher celestial beings to sound. They look down at us, but don't talk down to us. Would a crazy aspiring cult leader produce this work? How could someone craving power over others produce a work like this? Show me the cult it has inspired, or the power it has given to egocentric psychopaths. It hasn't. The group that "wrote" it doesn't even claim authorship.
So why would someone produce this work? There's only one reason. It is sustained by a fundamental element of truth. I don't know what that element is yet, I know there are some basic or possibly even substantial inaccuracies in the book, but that pales in comparison to the sense of life that the book presents.
When I say sense of life, I mean the overall view of the universe, of everything that we encounter. Even the fact that it's as obscure as it is even after 71 years of being in existence, it's almost as though only the people who are ready to confront the truths seem to end up reading it.
Most books appeal to some kind of common denominator of person that would read it. But TUB has no common denominator that is the same as any other book. It's equally relevant to every tradition and religion. It shamelessly proclaims truths in a matter of fact sense as if there was never really any doubting them, then it goes on to answer the questions raised by such proclamations before you even realize it's a question you had. It feels like it's reading your mind and saying "Rest easy child, I've got this."
It denounces all of the least important doctrines of Christianity to me and strengthens the most important and central doctrines that have made Christianity a reliable religion for my life.
I've read Mary Baker Eddy, I've read the book of Mormon, I've read the apocrypha and the pseudepigrapha. I've been to four years of Bible college. I've studied the Talmud. I've ingested the origin, source, and apoligetics defending the writings of the New Testament and the received canon. I've studied western and eastern philosophy from Confucius to Aristotle to Sartre. I've read Calvin and Wesley. I've visited dozens of kinds of churches and studied their worship services. I know all of the ways the new testament can be days to fulfill the old covenant. I know more of the Bible by heart than is even useful to me.
Yet in spite of all of this, I have never in my entire life read or studied a more cogent, complete, or full example of the best of human religion, philosophy, science, and history, brought into one work, while simultaneously giving a plausible explanation for a universe of universes that is more vast, enthralling, full and satisfying than any revealed religion has ever come close to.
I will admit that I wish there was more clarity as to the genesis of the Book. It's difficult to accept another new revelation when I can't even analyze the source because it all happened in a private room with only 150 other people who I don't know and never will.
But the text speaks for itself. It's not the spiritual words in the physical book, but the spiritual book in the physical words. It stands alone there is no other book that has the same sense of life. Regardless of the origin, or of its minor scientific discrepancies, I can't deny what I've seen with my own eyes. And what I've seen with my own eyes is deeper than the ocean, wider than the earth, and greater than the worldviews that currently pervade.
Say what you will about the Urantia Book, but at the end of the day it's the most plausible and universally satisfying worldview in existence today. Perhaps my statement will be proven wrong in the next few years as I continue to study, but I highly doubt it. The best of the philosophers and worldviews I know of are merely apprentices to apprentices to understudies of The Urantia Book.
At risk of repeating myself, I'll say again that it takes the best aspects of Christian theology and reinterprets them while leaving the worst aspects of Christianity in particular and religion in general out.
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