Meaning of "cosmology".

What is the real meaning of the word "cosmology?" Currently it is used almost exclusively as relating to the physics and astronomy of the universe. But this exclusivity is quite recent. The "Oxford Companion to Philosophy¹" of 1995 describes cosmology in these terms, "Traditionally a branch of metaphysics dealing with features of the world as a whole, though the term can be used synonymously with speculative philosophy in its widest sense."

The meaning of cosmology was widely known in the early part of this century in its relation to the theistic arguments of Thomas Aquinas that became known as the "cosmological argument." Many believed that this argument constituted a complete proof of the existence of God. Put crudely, the argument followed the line that everything must have a cause, hence giving rise to an infinite regression that could only terminate with something that is uncaused. This something is "First Cause" or "Uncaused Cause" or alternatively, "God."

The truth of the "cosmological argument" was embraced by many well known philosophers and theologians including even Bertrand Russel in his early career. It is the subject of a recent book, "The Cosmological Argument" by William Rowe². "Cosmology" is derived from the Greek word  kosmos, to which Hartrampf's Vocabularies of  1929 gave the meaning as "harmony," while The Concise Oxford Dictionary (revised edition of 1929) gave it as the "sum total of experience."

When the Urantia Papers were received in 1934/5, the general usage of "cosmology" in the English-speaking world would appear to have been reasonably described by the phrase, "the sum total of experience including experience of the universe as a whole." The revelators use the term "universe frame" in this same sense.

"Universe frame" equals "cosmology".

"Partial, incomplete, and evolving intellects would be helpless in the master universe, would be unable to form the first rational thought pattern, were it not for the innate ability of all mind, high or low, to form a universe frame in which to think. If mind cannot fathom conclusions, if it cannot penetrate to true origins, then will such mind unfailingly postulate conclusions and invent origins that it may have a means of logical thought within the frame of these mind-created postulates. And while such universe frames for creature thought are indispensable to rational intellectual operations, they are, without exception, erroneous to a greater or lesser degree." (1260)

When does our intellect cease to evolve and become complete? Since a Divine Counselor who has many times been in the presence of the Universal Father freely states, "we do not know," (87, 104, 107, etc.), the answer to that question must be "never." Logically, it follows that the universe frame in which each of us thinks will always be erroneous to a greater or lesser degree. This conclusion must apply to all created beings, a statement confirmed in the Papers in a different context where we are informed that infallibility is possessed only by those of creator status. (1768)

Universe frames and cosmologies are always erroneous.

None of the revelators were of creator status. Hence, just as our cosmology must always be a part of the "universe frame" in which we think, so must the cosmology of the authors of the Urantia Papers have been part of their "universe frame." It follows, therefore, that the cosmology of the Urantia Papers must be erroneous to some degree. Fundamentalists please note that this conclusion derives directly from the revelators own statements and is quite independent of the ambiguous phrasing of the mandate.

Urantia Book science as universe frame.

What was the purpose of including science materials in the cosmology in the Papers? It certainly was not for our enlightenment, for the mandate (1109) informs us that the imparting of unearned knowledge is proscribed. Surely then it was for the purpose of giving us a temporary but more realistic universe frame in which to think, a frame that would be useful for many generations to come. However, we can be sure it was not to give us a plethora of new knowledge of a scientific nature that would demonstrate the credentials of the revelators. The Papers tell us that the "miracle" pathway to God mostly ends in a dismal debacle--and making sense of science is a task we need to do for ourselves.

Prior to the revelators description of the heavenly hierarchy and our universe careers, the only things we knew for certain about an afterlife were given to us by Jesus. These were that, "in my Father's house there are many mansions" and, in heaven, we "are not taken or given in marriage but are as the angels." The revelation banished our ignorance, thereby providing us with a whole new conceptual outlook for the meaning of creature life, its purpose and its goals.

Most Urantia Book science is from outmoded text books of early 1900's period.

However, because virtually all the early readers of the Papers lacked in the dual acquisition of a solid background in science plus the history of its unfolding, there was a failure to perceive that the major portion of the Papers' science material is of a standard that was already present in text books at high school or elementary university level in the mid 1930's. Because of this, the fact that the Papers themselves deny being a divinely-dictated, errorless revelation was overlooked. And so developed the expectation that among other things, the science of the Papers would not only confirm their revelatory authority but also guide the way to new discoveries. It has taken almost fifty years for those initial expectations regarding the Papers to be recognized as erroneous by any substantial portion of the readership. Surely it is now time for a rethink about where we are heading.

Purpose of the Papers.

The purpose of the Urantia Papers is best described as renewal. Mainstream Christianity deviated from the pathway for spiritual progress revealed in the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. While those deviations may possibly have been essential for the survival of Jesus' revelation, they have become an increasing hindrance as we move further and further towards a fully literate population, a population in which, very soon, a majority will have had some degree of tertiary education.

The Urantia Papers not only expose the deviations made by early Christians, they warn us that we cannot undo what was done by means of any frontal attack. Such a procedure involves conflict--and Jesus was not about conflict. We are instructed to take the positive pathway of revealing truth in our own lives and leave the task of replacing error with truth to the Spirit of Truth.

It has been the consistent policy of this journal to propound the positive path to truth. Accordingly we have attempted to expose the truth about the Urantia Papers and their purpose--and in so doing have incurred the wrath of some Urantia Book fundamentalists.

Repercussions of being positive.

Following upon some articles at the beginning of the year, we received a considerable amount of criticism plus the challenge that we have claimed that there are errors in the Papers but have failed to state what they are. In fact, none of our contributors have ever bothered to keep a detailed listing of errors. Instead, they have preferred to uncover details of the key prophetic information allowed by the mandate in order to help new readers to take the Papers seriously.

About ancient stromatolites and sedimentary rocks.

However in view of the demands to reveal error, we feel it is necessary to catalogue some samples and propose to now do so. Readers of Innerface might remember that the article on the origin of life on Urantia in our previous issue had a photo of one of the ancient stromatolites that exist in several regions of the world. Some of these are in excess of 3 billion years old.

In the last two decades, enormous advances have been made in the correct determining of ages of sedimentary and other rock strata. There is no use in still throwing up the criticism that radiotracer dating is unreliable. In any case, it was never the technology that was the main problem for it was highly accurate. Rather, it was the sampling methods and the interpretation of their results by field workers with little knowledge of basic science that was the main cause of confusion.

From the modern work, there can be no reasonable doubt that sedimentary beds, including stromatolites, were being laid down in oceanic environments between 3 and 4 billion years ago. The ancient stromatolite we showed was the result of the activities of photosynthetic bacteria--which means that bacterial "life" has been present on the planet, and in an oceanic environment, almost as soon as Urantia was cool enough and hospitable enough to permit life to exist. Thus new readers must be confused when they read that the first life implantations were made about half a billion years ago!

More incompatibilities.

A reading of the Urantia Paper's account of this period (page 658 through to 660), in which the primitive ocean is said to first appear just one billion years ago compared to the 3 billion years indicated by some stromatolites, will show to those with sufficiently open minds that the account given in the Papers is totally incompatible with findings of modern paleontology and geology. The reason of course is simple. Something along the lines of the account given in The Urantia Book was one of the many current theories circulating in the early part of the century--and the revelators were following the instructions of the mandate in using one of them to fill a gap in their story. For the purpose of providing a "universe frame in which to think," it was quite adequate.

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Error, mythology and universe frames.

The truth of this conclusion dawned upon me when I realized that my personal universe frame was not altered in any significant way regardless of which version of Urantia's geological history the revelators had chosen to use. All were incorrect and the revelators were not permitted to provide unearned knowledge. They assessed that a stop gap version was better for their purpose than some statement to the effect that they could say nothing.

A little thought will bring the realization that the exact details of Urantia's geological history have no significance for the kind of "universe frame" the revelators wished to provide. And, in fact, it is easily conceivable that the provision of the exact details would ultimately bring more harm than good.  For example, it was the experience of Jesus and his disciples that miraculous events heightened the demand for more miracles but seldom brought recipients closer to God.

Soon after, it also dawned upon me that stories such as that of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden were also in this category. My universe frame is not significantly different whether that story is true or whether part or all of it is mythological and has some greater meaning or purpose.

A further example of highly probable error is the book's account of the beginnings of the solar system as being due to the ejection of streams of gaseous materials from the sun caused by the approach of the gigantic Angona system. (655) There were several theories of this nature that were current in the early part of the century, which eventually brought the derogatory remark that any high school student would know that such gaseous ejections would quickly disperse rather than form the nuclei for planetary growth. Along with this theory, the book's account also used the notion of an exceedingly slow growth of our planet and its moon through meteoric accretion.

Current theory is that the time scale for collapse of an original interstellar cloud into a disk is remarkably short, about 10 million years--as is the time scale for formation of planetesimals, the building blocks of planets, which can be as little as 1000 years.

Since the landings on the moon, the comparative analysis of lunar samples and meteoric materials has demonstrated that the formation of the inner planets including the earth and the moon was essentially complete 100 million years after collapse of the interstellar cloud that gave rise to the sun. The later bombardment of the moon and the Earth by meteorites, comets, etc., continued intensively for another half-billion years but contributed no more than a few percent of their total mass. Thus the Earth and the moon had very close to their present mass more than four billion years ago.

This modern view is based on actual measurements of Earth, lunar, and meteoric materials and is in total contrast to The Urantia Book story that says the Earth had  only two thirds of its current size just 1.5 billion years ago. But this is not at all surprising to those who have realized that the accounts of our origins were taken from theories put forward by astronomers such as Chamberlin, Moulton, Jeans, and Jeffreys and were current in the early years of our century--but have long since been abandoned as being contrary to the laws of physics.

Error is liberating!

However as a stop gap to complete a "universe frame" by the revelators, the book's picture is entirely adequate. That it is erroneous has absolutely no significant effect upon, for example, my own  "universe frame" which is derived directly from that given by the revelators. The fine detail of The Urantia Book's account of planetary origins is of no importance relative to the overall cosmology presented in the book. For me, the importance of its "universe frame" must be seen in terms of its spiritual and not its material content.

Bigoted or simply foolish?

About fifty years ago, I became engaged in a discussion with a minister of religion on some recent fossil discoveries. It happened that I was unaware that he had a fundamentalist attitude to the Bible. Apparently some comment I made was contrary to his "universe frame," and I received a long lecture on the infallibility of the biblical account which, according to him, made the age of the creation about 6000 years. When I inquired about the presence of fossils in rocks that appeared to be millions of years old, I was informed that God made it that way to confuse unbelievers like me.

Among Urantia Book readers, there are those with closed minds who class readers like me as unbelievers--just as did that Episcopalian minister. These same fundamentalist readers also insist that if any scientific evidence disagrees with The Urantia Book account, then it is science that is wrong. Recently one such reader has been injecting information from The Urantia Book into an Internet discussion forum on evolution--and has drawn the correct response (plus much derision) that many of the book's outdated statements come from high school text books of the 1930's. This is the truth, but is entirely in accord with what the revelators have themselves told us.

How much damage has been done to the cause and hopes of the revelators by such happenings in the period since first printing of the book cannot be measured. It may have been enormous. In the opinion of one now-deceased, former Foundation trustee, that damage is irreparable to the point that the Urantia revelation has already failed.

In what follows, I'm hoping to induce some fundamentalists to rethink their attitudes by relating  a set of errors in the book that cannot be discounted by the assertion that the book is errorless, nor that anything that appears to indicate error must be wrong.

The Forty day problem.

In Paper 193, Section 5 we can read that the Master's ascension took place early on Thursday morning,  May 18. In the same section (p. 2057), we can read reference to the forty days of Jesus' morontia career. This story continues onto page 2059. Here the book says that at one o'clock on the same day as the ascension, one hundred and twenty believers were engaged in prayer when the Spirit of Truth was bestowed upon them. This was on the day of Pentecost. At the top of page 2060 we read how the apostles had been in hiding for forty days. This refers to the same period as for Jesus' morontia career.

If we turn back to page 1987, we find that Jesus was brought before Pilate on Friday 7th April, the day before the Jewish Passover. The apostles were in hiding from the afternoon of that day until the morning of the ascension on May 18, about forty full days.

The Jewish Passover is reckoned as occurring on the first new moon after the March Equinox. The ancient Jewish feast of Pentecost is celebrated exactly fifty days later--hence the term Pentecost (from the Greek pentekostos meaning fifty days).  So how did a fifty day period in the Jewish calendar become forty days in The Urantia Book?

Easter and Pentecost.

Reckoning for both of Christianity's Easter and Pentecost celebrations follows the Jewish tradition. How The Urantia Book acquired this set of errors is close to impossible to conceive. It cannot be a simple type setting error or even an error of copy editing as there are too many actual days and dates given in the text to permit that conclusion.

Why is it so?

I also find it impossible to conceive that the Midwayers of all people, could have made this set of errors. Neither can I understand how the errors were overlooked by the large number of people reputed to have read the Papers during and after their receipt. The fact that Dr Sadler and others knew about the forty day error when the book went to press is discussed in  "Notes on the Forty Day Error" an addendum to the article "Forty Days and Forty Nights," both of which appear later in this issue.

At enormous risk to life and limb, I'm forced to speculate that since the presence of the error was known before the printing of the book, correction was probably refused by the revelators. Why? Well, perhaps  to discourage attempts to attribute infallibility to the book, something that was already then occurring.

Ken Glasziou.

References:

1. Honderich, T. (Editor) "The Oxford Companion to Philosophy" (Oxford University Press, 1995. Oxford)

2. Rowe, William "The Cosmological Argument" (Princeton, NJ, 1975)