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So whether or not the Adam and Eve story as given in the Urantia Papers is some form of "progressive and evolutionary truth," is not so important as that these modified stories demand careful thought concerning established beliefs--but without them being direct frontal attacks that might excessively distress new readers of the revelation to the point they abandon further reading.
In so many places the revelators have spelled out their go slow policy for gradual and progressive advance in their revelation of truth--as well as reminding us that the mandate for revelation proscribes the impartation of unearned knowledge.
However, a truly remarkable feature of the 45 years after publication of the Papers has been the ingenuity of so many readers in avoiding what the revelators surely intended to be obvious--and so to find justification for clinging to the concept of the infallibility of the Papers.
The lengths to which the revelators were prepared to go in attempting to ensure that their revelation could not for long survive as an infallible icon among either the most gullible among us or even the most fanatical of fundamentalists, is illustrated below:
First consider their "passenger birds." The Papers have these incredible creatures being employed like taxis to ferry Adam and Eve to meeting places in the garden. If this was not remarkable enough we are told:
"These enormous birds are able to carry one or two average-sized men for a nonstop flight of over five hundred miles…These birds are most intelligent, very obedient, and unbelievably affectionate." And they were "often able to speak many words of the languages of the realm." (590)
A second example of deliberately stretching human gullibility beyond all reasonable limits is the origin of those invisible creatures known as the secondary midwayers. Their grandparents are given as Adamson and Ratta, both labeled as belonging to a type of superhuman being who looked and acted "normal" and were able to interbreed with ordinary humans--hence were matched with us genetically and would qualify as the same species as ourselves .
However the Papers have this remarkable pair marry one another, then have sixty seven children. All seemed to be normal except that one out of very four was born invisible! Adamson, apparently being of scientific bent and noting that were eight males and eight females among the sixteen invisible offspring, paired them off and embarked on a breeding program to see what would happen.
The results must have amazed him. The pairs were able to reproduce themselves every seventy days, their offspring not only being invisible but were born fully developed and fully mature--"though they never ceased to grow in wisdom and experience."
These unusual offspring were called the secondary midwayers. Though incapable of procreation, they have no need for sleep or for earthly material food, being energized from "space emanations" that are a mystery to us poor humans. And they are immortal. (862,865)
If Urantia Book readers read such material in the Bible or the Koran they would likely collapse in raucous laughter. So surely these two examples must force us to consider whether the revelators have repeatedly challenged our intellects, virtually begging us to refrain from converting their precious revelation into an infallible icon.
The revelators also told us:
"Let it be made clear that revelation is not necessarily inspired. The cosmology of these revelations is not inspired."
And, "within a few short years many of our statements on the physical sciences will stand in need of revision in consequence of additional scientific developments and discoveries." (1109)
"All finite knowledge and creature understanding are relative. Information and intelligence, gleaned from even high sources, is only relatively complete, locally accurate, and personally true." (42)
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