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Bro Dave has put forward theBro Dave wrote:Yes, there is the eye witness account [to Jesus' resurrection] given in the Urantia Book.
Book as eyewitness testimony to support the allegation that Jesus was raised from the dead. Is the Urantia Book a reliable source of information? Does it meet the criterion used by historians or scientists or theologians?I think I see what the problem is here. You are seem to be of the idea that this is a 'discussion forum', Perhaps somewhat like one's I have seen where like minded people who all believe the same thing sit around and pat each other on the back for being the only smart ones in the universe while fiddling around the edges 'discussing' detail.Woody wrote:Well that's some fine but kissing Dave but if you think this place is well moderated......well then off to internet discussion forum board school with ya.
I will not argue about there being plenty of calcium in the sun. However, the authors of the Urantia Book explicitly make the claim that "there is a calcium layer, a gaseous stone surface, on the sun six thousand miles thick. " By my rough calculation, a calcium layer six thousand miles thick on the surface of the sun would make the sun about 2 per cent calcium. Current estimates put calcium at about 0.00019% of the sun. Somebody is off by more than a few orders of magnitude.
Bernie, my fault I fear...bernee51 wrote: I think I see what the problem is here. You are seem to be of the idea that this is a 'discussion forum', Perhaps somewhat like one's I have seen where like minded people who all believe the same thing sit around and pat each other on the back for being the only smart ones in the universe while fiddling around the edges 'discussing' detail.
This is actually a 'debate' forum. Where people who make claims are expected (for some silly reason known only to the moderators) to back them up with evidence.
I put up a post on TruthBook, inviting folks to participate in the "discussion". And, you are correct in the assumption they are used to like minded folks more or less agreeing in those discussions. So, I'm afraid they were unprepared for the in-your-face kinds of exchanges that sometime happen, especially on this kind of thread. 
McCulloch wrote:I will not argue about there being plenty of calcium in the sun. However, the authors of the Urantia Book explicitly make the claim that "there is a calcium layer, a gaseous stone surface, on the sun six thousand miles thick. " By my rough calculation, a calcium layer six thousand miles thick on the surface of the sun would make the sun about 2 per cent calcium. Current estimates put calcium at about 0.00019% of the sun. Somebody is off by more than a few orders of magnitude.
I did my admittedly very rough calculations based on volume not mass. Feel free to re do them using mass and a reasonable value for the densities of the gasses. That might reduce the 10,000 times order of magnitude discrepency somewhat. Let me know.Arrow wrote:I was wondering, in these calculations, what figure was used as the density for gaseous calcium? Wouldn't this vary with temperature?(I assume we are referring to per cent by mass, not volume).
In which case the UB is not the infallible fountain of wisdom that some are claiming it to be. If indeed it does overlook principles of self-organization in its explanations then we have a clear indication that the authors, far from being divinely informed, were basing the content on their own interpretations of the world as they saw it at face value. Since the writing the book researchers in the latter half of the 20th century have discovered previously unknown principles of self-organization. Such principles are widespread at all scales in nature.Woody wrote: Do the rocks out in your backyard administrate themselves?
Stuff doesn't just happen.
Only an intelligent person can administrate. A machine cannot administrate.
Life is about animate objects. The inanimate ones are window dressing.
Again....not to bore you my friend.... but all of this is explained in great and exhaustive detail in the UB.
It is not merely my opinion that Stuff does just happen and that not only can intelligent persons administrate... machines can also administrate. Those things are fact.Woody wrote:Hi QED,
Well I will accept your statment as an opinion and not as a statment of fact which is the way you worded it.
TNX Woody
McCullock, I don't know whether or not this reply belongs in this thread or not, to be honest, but it is the thread you asked the questions and made the request you do above. You asked that a "reputable ... Scientist" be cited, and I am doing so below. I don't believe that any scientist will use the Urantia Book as an "accepted source" nor as a friend of science and historian of science, would I ever recommend the "abandonment of a disciplined scientific peer review process," but I do think McMenamin, as an honest human being and a scientist who is able to recognize fact and truth and is speaking the truth when he says,McCullock wrote:How about citing any reputable scholar, historian, scientist who uses the Urantia Book as an accepted source? .... It would provide me with some evidence that the book was worth a closer look....
Science, properly defined, involves hypotheses, testing, evidence and logical reasoning. The UB simply asserts facts to be true. Like other revelations. If there were any science in it, there would have been some details about how to validate or verify the alleged scientific facts asserted in the book. So, from where I sit, it looks just the same as any other religion. Based on faith and not verifiable or falsifyable.
I would be interested on any of the science that shows the Papers proven correct. Can you provide a link?
-- McCullock, Debating Christianity and Religion Forum: Christianity, The Urantia Book, 11/20/2005
When Alfred Wegener first proposed his theory of continental drift in 1924, he was met with various degrees of interest and skepticism. His theory was based upon sound scientific methods, and he was critically examining a number of current long held views within the scientific community that were no longer tenable due to new information that was slowly forthcoming. Therefore, he used his great mind, with its keen and sure sense of fact and truly analytical mind he set out to create a better theory for the origin of the current configuration of our continents that would better explain the then know scientific facts. When he was presented with valid honest criticism, he acknowledged it, analytically considered it and modified his theory accordingly. That is what scientists do. Yet, some of his critics were little more than carping critics and trifling skeptics, who really did not desire to examine the merit of his ideas, or the validity of his facts, but only pick flaws and let others do the difficult work of sustained analytical thinking that would uncover the weakness of current theories and ideas, the critical assumptions that keep erroneous theories in place, but not stop there but move to the next creative step of actually using critical and creative thinking to seek out the truth, an approximation to truth albeit, but a better explanation of how the continents came to their current configuration which would better conform to the facts as they actually existed on the ground.McMenamin wrote:I can't help but wonder whether science would benefit by having scientists themselves or friends of science systematically scan the various nonscientific literatures for writings such as those appearing in The Urantia Book. Scientists would ordinarily ignore and dismiss such writings, but a discerning eye might pick up some gems. (McMenamin 1998: 176)
So I did, and to date it appears you are ignoring it or perhaps have not had time to examine it.McCullock wrote:If there were any science in it, there would have been some details about how to validate or verify the alleged scientific facts asserted in the book.... I would be interested on any of the science that shows the Papers proven correct. Can you provide a link?
McMenamin wrote:The theory of Wegener [continental drift] is to me a beautiful dream, the dream of a great poet. One tries to embrace it and finds that he has in his arms but a little vapor or smoke; it is at the same time both alluring and intangible. -Pierre Termier1
We have known since the days of Kant that scientific arguments must never be founded on analogies, but the authors are dead serious about these poetic digressions. -Peter Westbroek2
The continental land drift continued; increasingly the ocean penetrated the land as long fingerlike seas providing those shallow waters and sheltered bays which are so suitable as a habitat for
marine life … [with] the further separation of the landmasses and, in consequence, a further extension of the continental seas … these inland seas of olden times were truly the cradle of evolution.
-The Urantia Book3
The last quotation in this chapter's epigraph describes the Proterozoic breakup of the supercontinent Rodinia. This amazing passage, written in the 1930s, anticipates scientific results that did not actually appear in the scientific literature until many decades later. This unusual source is The Urantia Book. The name Urantia refers to planet Earth. (McMenamin 1998: 173)
(....) Promotional literature of the Urantia organization inserted into new copies of the book state the following:
We hope your experience with the URANTIA teachings will enhance and deepen your relationship with God and your fellowman, and provide renewed hope, comfort, and reassurance in your daily life.
What more could one ask for in a religion? Well, for starters, one could hope for accurate geology and profound scientific truths in its sacred literature, something both the devout and the skeptics alike find lacking in much of the Bible. (McMenamin 1998: 173-174)
(....) Clearly we are not dealing here with an orthodox scientific treatise. Nevertheless, the anonymous members of the Urantia Corps hit on some remarkable scientific revelations in the mid-1930s. They embraced continental drift at a time when it was decidedly out of vogue in the scientific community. They recognized the presence of a global supercontinent (Rodinia) and superocean (Mirovia), in existence on earth before Pangea. From The Urantia Book:
1,000,000,000 years ago … [t]he first continental land mass emerged from the world ocean…. 950,000,000 [years ago] … presents the picture of one great continent of land and one large body of water, the Pacific Ocean.
800,000,000 years ago … Europe and Africa began to rise out of the Pacific depths along with those masses now called Australia, North and South America, and the continent of Antarctica, while the bed of the Pacific Ocean engaged in a further compensatory sinking adjustment. By the end of this period almost one third of the earth's surface consisted of land, all in one continental body.
Of course I am being selective here in my choice of quotations, and there are reams of scientifically untenable material in The Urantia Book. However, the concept of a billion-year-old supercontinent (the currently accepted age for the formation of Rodinia) that subsequently split apart, forming gradually widening ocean basins in which early marine life flourished, is unquestionably present in this book. (McMenamin 1998: 174)
Orthodox scientific arguments for such a proposal did not appear until the late 1960s, and a pre-Pangea supercontinent was never described until Valentine and Moores made the attempt in 1970. The Urantia Corps not only had the age of the formation of Rodinia approximately correct at 1 billion years, but they also were first to link breakup of Rodinia to the emergence of animals (even if the mode of appearance was implantation by extraterrestrials). Furthermore, they even got the timing of that approximately correct at 650 to 600 million years ago ("These inland seas of olden times were truly the cradle of evolution"). (McMenamin 1998: 174-175)
(....) Assuming for the moment that space voyagers are not responsible for life's origin and history on this planet, one wonders how the Urantia Book authors arrived at the concept of a Proterozoic supercontinent, and the link between breakup of this supercontinent and the emergence of complex life in the ensuing rift oceans, 30 years before most geologists accepted continental drift and nearly four decades before scientists had any inkling that Rodinia existed. The anonymous authors responsible for the critical part of section 3 evidently possessed a high level of geological training, and while writing in the 1930s must have known of Wegener's ideas on continental drift. Perhaps he or she was, or had contact with, an expatriate from Nazi Germany. Whatever the identity of the author, this person proceeded to speculate about the relationship between evolutionary change and the breakup of a Proterozoic supercontinent in an exceptionally fruitful way. Perhaps this was because the thought and the writing of this person were not fettered by the normal constraints of the (too often highly politicized) scientific review process. (McMenamin 1998: 175-176)
Cases such as this one (which is by no means unique) are an exercise in humility for me as a scientist. How can it be that discovery of Rodinia, plus a fairly sophisticated rendering of the evolutionary implications of the rifting of Rodinia, falls to an anonymous author engaging in a work of religious revelation decades before scientists find out anything about the subject? Perhaps this is an important aspect of religion-a creative denial of certain aspects of reality in order to access a deeper truth. (McMenamin 1998: 176)
I am not advocating an abandonment of a disciplined scientific peer review process, but I can't help but wonder whether science would benefit by having scientists themselves or friends of science systematically scan the various nonscientific literatures for writings such as those appearing in The Urantia Book. Scientists would ordinarily ignore and dismiss such writings, but a discerning eye might pick up some gems. (McMenamin 1998: 176)
The concept of Rodinia therefore has a shockingly unexpected intellectual pedigree. When does the concept finally enter the conventional scientific channels? In articles published in the early 1970s, James W. Valentine and Eldridge M. Moores traced the geological history of the continents and spoke of a Precambrian supercontinent. (....)
McMenamin, Mark A. S. (1998) Discovering the First Complex Life: The Garden of Ediacara. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
http://www.bizmota.com/wegener/mcmenamin/mcmenamin.pdf
