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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
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