So, you’re telling me, that the theories had been around well before the publication of the book, and the author misappropriated these solid theories in his ramblings, asserting they were, in fact, true. Then, when the empirical evidence eventually came in, it made the author appear like he knew the truth well in advance, at least to the gullible.
How convenient.
Perhaps you could elaborate on this, for those of us here unfamiliar with the book.
Not very surprising, wouldn’t you agree? Which book of his are you referring to?
Martin Gardner isn’t an atheist. He mentions frequently in his books that he is a theist who doesn’t believe in the tenets of any organized religion. If you’re inaccurate about something that we can easily check, like Gardner’s religion, why should we believe that you talked to Gardner at all? Where in his book are you mentioned? (Sorry, but you’re going to have to give us your real name.)
cmyk: It’s true that the plate tectonics theory was proposed before the book mentioned it but it was not accepted by most geologists. Wegner, the fellow who proposed it was not a geologist. The theory about the collapse of supernovas due to neutrino outflux was NOT around before the publication of the Urantia Book. There are other instances of predictive science in the book as well. Much of the science of the book is in agreement with the science of the mid-1930’s and some concepts are now incorrect as the authors said they would be. Which brings up the question: Why you would include science that would become obsolete in a book and then tell people it will become obsolete? My theory is that the authors didn’t want the book to become a fetish object as many holy books have become. For more thoughts on the science in the book, try http://urantiabook.org/archive/readers/doc184.htm.
It might not be appropriate for me to go into detail about the spiritual nature of the book in this thread about the science of the book. Perhaps a new thread? Dick
Wendall, My bad! I have not read the whole book, Urantia: The Great Cult Mystery, or any other book by Gardner. I probably should. I got the idea from speaking with him that he was an atheist or agnostic. Thanks for setting me straight. I think you can find where I am mentioned from the information I sent you. Dick
It got publication on the 1950s, so who knows what was changed since its 1930s source to the book you hold in your hand and consider gospel. Most religion is knee-deep in fraud, so I could easily see this cult editing the book for their own gain. Where is a certified by a trust-worthy third party copy of the 1930s book?
Do tell. Id love to debunk more of your horseshit.
Why would a skeptic bother with the religious aspects? You not only are mischaractizing him you even admit you never read HIS book. Something tells me the real hypocrite here is you.
Oh, also, Gardner addresses the science in that book that has been proven bunk. I know the cultists love mentioning neutrinos, but this sounds more and more like a case of the broken clock being right twice a day and wrong the rest of the day.
Gardner also finds word for word plagiarism in this book too from other sources. Care to comment on this?
Because that’s what a good scientist would do? Science is based on the notion of current theories being replaced by better theories in the future. No scientist worth his salt ever thinks he’s got the final answer on anything, and will gladly volunteer that his ideas will be superceded in the future.
I’m not saying that The Urantia Book is an example of good science. But there is a perfectly good reason to advance theories and simultaneously acknowledge that they will be made obsolete.
HorseloverFat, Sorry if I have offended you; I didn’t mean to. Sometimes I rely too much on my memory which is getting less reliable as time goes by. But I need to say that although I didn’t buy and read his book, he corresponded with me in 1993 and 1994 about the science in the Urantia Book as he was working on his book and sent me about 20 copies of marked up pages from his manuscript. So I am familiar with his thinking on that part of the book.
He contacted me because he had seen some copies of the journal I published at the time. I had written some articles about problems with the science in the Urantia Book so he wanted to consult with me. If you have doubts about this, I can scan a few pages of the correspondance and e-mail them to you if you give me your e-mail address. Dick
Yes, I should address the plagiarism issue. My dictionary says: “Plagiarize 1. To steal and use (the ideas or writings of another) as one’s own.” In two places in the Urantia Book, the authors say that they have used the thoughts of several thousand human sources. No, they don’t identify the sources, but neither do they claim that the writings are their own. Matthew Block has spent several decades researching the human source authors of the Urantia Book and in fact there is a book on the subject. The author/editor of the Jesus papers in the book wrote this “In many ways I have served more as a collector and editor than as an original narrator.”
So the source of part of the writing in the Urantia Book is well known to those within the Urantia community. Call it plagiarism if you will, but if it is that, it is certainly a benign form of it. Dick
Science concepts in The Urantia Book that might be predictive:
Dr. Ken Glasziou did a lot of research on the particle physics in The Urantia Book. At http://urantiabook.org/archive/readers/doc182.htm#particle , he discusses how Gardner got it wrong about the way that particles are converted to energy in the sun and how the book got it right.
The book mentions the supernova of 1527 observed by Tycho Brahe and later named after him. The book describes it as a “double star explosion”; it wasn’t until several decades after the book was published that this same idea was put forth by astronomers.
The Urantia Book speaks of neutron stars and how dense they are decades before their existence was confirmed.
The book speaks of the neutron star at the center of the Crab Nebula. It’s existence wasn’t confirmed until 1967 by the Einstein X-ray observatory.
But I reiterate, the purpose and meaning of the book lies not in the few pages about science but in its superb spiritual insights. Dick
I don’t have the time to pour through the given cites, but thanks for taking the time.
Regardless, you’ve only seem to have given cites about the few instances where the material has been “predictive” in the sense that it so happened to line up with what we were later able to confirm or discover.
In works such as these, they are usually far more rife with predictive elements that we know to be in error or just flat out wrong/non-sensical.
You state that the purpose and meaning of the book is in the spiritual insights, but how can you take stock of those if the science it seems to be predicated upon is all over the map?
Gardner reveals in his book that one of the editors of this book was an editor from a physics journal. All we are seeing are the best guesses of a guy who thought peppering this silly book with random cosmology would help sell it to the credulous and ignorant.
cmyk, I don’t think that problems with the science invalidate the spiritual insights of the Urantia Book. If you bought a set of Encyclopedia Britannica and then read a report that there were several errors out of a million facts (which is probably true), would that invalidate the set as a reference tool? In fact, the authors express the hope that people will not reject the rest of the book because they find errors in the science of the book.
In one letter, Martin Gardner said that other human books had just as inspiring spiritual writing as The Urantia Book. And since at least part of the spiritual concepts in the book may have come from human sources, he’s quite right. But what I think is important about the spiritual philosophy of the book is that it has a much more positive view of human nature than orthodox Christianity. It rejects Paul’s doctrine of the depravity of man and his doctrine of the Atonement, which doctrine I find very repugnant. The book also offers a positive vision of the possibility for great progress of the human race in the future rather than Armageddon and the rapture. It would be a wonderful thing if Christianity would rethink the theology it carried over from the Middle Ages.
Thanks for your feedback and for the dialogue. Dick
HorseloverFat, I don’t know that the Urantia Book is peppered with random cosmology and/or science. There are perhaps 15 papers out of the 196 that have some science content. About half of those are papers on evolution. There are large areas of the book with no science. For instance, the papers about the life and teachings of Jesus occupy about the last third of the book, over 700 pages with no science or cosmology content.
I wonder if Gardener mentioned the name of the editor of the physics journal? He didn’t mention it in any correspondence with me or in any of the copies of manuscript pages he sent me. I’d like to see if I can find some information about this person.
Anyhow, thanks for your skeptical input. Without the skeptics among us, who knows how much foolishness might get passed off as truth? I figure God has more regard for an honest skeptic than a self-satisfied and closed minded religionist. Dick