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Martin Gardner's "Urantia, The Great Cult Mystery."
A review by Dick Bain
Several years ago, Martin Gardner, a columnist for a journal called The Skeptical Inquirer wrote two very uncomplimentary columns about The Urantia Book. About a year later, he decided to write a book on the same subject. He began to interview people in the Urantia community and to research material for his book. I was invited to his home for an interview and I accepted. That was how I met Martin Gardner.
In his book Gardner states that he couldn't understand how I could admit that the book contains some errors, yet be open to the idea of fandors, birds large enough to carry several people. He calls me a "large friendly engineer" in his book; he didn't find some other people so friendly. Some folks refused to talk to him and some became very angry when they read his book. Why were some people so angry about his book? Did he do justice to The Urantia Book in his "book report?"
Connections with Seventh Day Adventism
One of the major themes of his book is that there is a connection between the Seventh Day Adventist church and The Urantia Book. He attempts to prove this by showing that at least two of the people on the contact commission, Dr. William Sadler and Wilfred Kellogg, had both been members of the Seventh Day Adventist Church. Furthermore, Wilfred's father, the well known John Kellogg, was a prominent member of the church. Gardner also attempts to show that all three of these men had a great respect for Ellen White, an Adventist prophetess. But they all lost that respect and began to doubt her prophecies when they found out that she had plagiarized from human sources much of the material that she claimed was divine revelation. John Kellogg was ejected from the church, and not long after this Wilfred and Dr. Sadler both apparently resigned from the church. Gardner tries to show that the concepts in The Urantia Book are Adventist except for a few minor(!) ones like the doctrine of the Atonement and Original Sin. Gardner theorizes that Wilfred, Dr. Sadler and perhaps others generated The Urantia Book, and that accounts for its similarity to Adventism. And just what are these Adventist ideas?
Dr Sadler and Wilfred Kellogg wrote the Urantia Papers?
In a chapter devoted to the Adventist-Urantia Book connection, Gardner lists numerous similarities. Two of the major ideas that are the same in the two are: No Hell, and soul sleeping until resurrection. He states that these concepts disagree with the concepts of "mainline Christianity." He does not mention that at least two other smaller denominations do not support the idea of Hell; the two I know of are Unity and Unitarian Universalist. As far as the sleeping souls are concerned, I have never heard that Christian theology universally refutes this idea. He also tries to show that the Paradise-centered cosmology of The Urantia Book has as its source Ellen White's ideas about the universe because she spoke of the "throne of God" with all creation circling around it. But he also admits that Adventists have long believed that the creation is 6000 years old. This is certainly different from the over four billion year age The Urantia Book gives for the earth and the over one trillion year age given for our local universe.
Gardner mentions several other similarities. Michael, the archangel, and Jesus are one in the same person according to both sources. He says that both teach the annihilation of the wicked. This is not strictly correct; what The Urantia Book teaches is actually non-resurrection of those who reject God. Had Gardner been an unbiased book reviewer, he would have given us a complete picture; he would have pointed out how The Urantia Book agrees or disagrees with the theology of other segments of Christianity. But perhaps that would have diluted his theme that The Urantia Book is an Adventist derivative.
Contradictory logic
While Gardner makes some good points, he sometimes uses contradictory logic in an attempt to prove some of his points. At one place he theorizes that the ideas in The Urantia Book agree with Adventist theology because Wilfred had been an Adventist; at another place, he tells us that some ideas don't agree because Wilfred "...abandoned Adventist beliefs." (Pg. 226) Elsewhere, Gardner says that if Sadler left something in the book that turned out to be obviously wrong it was because he feared that readers would notice if he changed it. On the other hand, Gardner cites testimony that The Urantia Book was being edited until about 1949. So no one noticed the editing?
Gardner's multiple personality hypothesis
Gardner expressed the opinion that Wilfred's channeled material was coming from an alternate personality within Wilfred's mind. He also feels that Dr. Sadler wrote material and presented it to the revelators for approval by way of the sleeping Wilfred. It is difficult to believe that Dr. Sadler spent a fair amount of time investigating mediums and recognized this alternate personality in them, but not in Wilfred. But not all of Gardner's comments about The Urantia Book were negative.
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