Offsite Comments

#3 of 3

6. The so-called "leader" is just Celestial Seasonings mogul Mo Siegle.

The first time I met any group of Urantia readers was at a gathering near Chicago in 1974. At the time, the only other folks I knew who had ever even heard of the book were my older brother who introduced the book to me and, separately, to my childhood chum Tom. Tom was excited to find out about the Urantia "Brotherhood," and proposed we travel to their meeting. I was more wary - I didn't want to find out there was some Divine Light Mission or Scientology-like cult ruining this intriguing book. (I mostly saw a chance to visit a gal I'd met in college, she who is today my beloved companion of over four decades and mother of our three offspring.)

The folks at that early gathering mostly looked like anyone I'd meet at the local Episcopal Church (in the old days). Businessmen and homemakers. Seigel's flowered van-full of Colorado hippies were about the only other long-hair and blue-jeans types at that gathering - besides myself.

The general idea back then was of promoting the book by slow growth: basically individual-to-individual ("have you heard of this?") and small living-room study groups. Later generations of UB fans were not so sedate about popularizing the book, with results that I don't consider entirely welcome. As the Breitbart article exemplifies.

Mo was a funny guy. He told this joke... well, another time for that.

In short, in subsequent decades, after some internal clashes among fans of the book, and problems among the official "Brotherhood" and other clots of readers, Mo bought his way onto the board of directors of the publisher, the Urantia Foundation. Not knocking that. Foundations need money.

As he has always been a Colorado hipster, I'm not all that surprised Mo's a Hillary supporter, although I am disappointed, as I am in most of the moovement's latter generations' politics and social attitudes. You know that saying about any organization not specifically geared toward conservatism becomes liberal? Yeah.

You can see, perhaps, why I resent Mo's associating his progressive politics with this great work. However, Mo is hardly the worst of those who pretend to "leadership" while wielding a UB. An apocalyptic sub-cult many years ago, fortunately, ended with disappointment and bitterness, not newsmaking suicides. There's a guy in the Southwest who has headed up one of the better-known cults waving the UB. As I said, humans. Meh.

*

On the whole, I just find this kind of publicity for the UB distorting, misleading, and unpleasant. It seems to me that it encourages the liberal-ish flakey blare-about-it factions and discourages many more thoughtful and quiet folks who might genuinely appreciate the book, one way or another.

In conclusion (at last): as with with the Bible... or anything... remember Gell-Mann. Don't believe the articles, pro or con, don't listen to the cultists, and certainly don't buy Breitbart writer Patrick Howley about it.

If you really want to know what it's about, you can read the book, free online and downloadable, at Urantia.org.

Apologies again for the wall-o-text. Someday, I'll write that book thread article about it I really wanted to. Not today.

#2 of 3

"Hillary Clinton Fundraises with Leader of Alien Religious Group"
http://bit.ly/1I9DwWo

Breitbart misrepresents the book and the Urantia movement.

1.

The "religious group" is a diverse menagerie of folks ranging from casual readers of, to raving fanatics about, The Urantia Book.

The Urantia Foundation is the original publisher of the book, and it has an associated official "Brotherhood." There's an unofficial "Fellowship." And there are all manner of private study groups.

There are many other different groups of adherents, some of whom claim all manner of things, including their own channeled "extensions" to the book and bizarre re-interpretations. Meh. Humans, right?

And there's a "silent majority" of individuals who just read the book and aren't joiners or cultists or give a fig about the moovement.

2.

The Foreword and 126 "papers" which comprise the UB purport to be written by higher types of beings. These orders are all described in the books. but from our perspective, for non-students of the book, you might as well call them all "angels."

Anyway, certainly not by "aliens," which suggests little green ET's. It's a religious revelation. Not "how to serve humans." (Twilight Zone reference, in case you don't recognize it.)

3.

The article asserts, "In all likelihood, the book was written at least in part by Chicago doctor William Sadler in the 1920s and might have been based to some degree on the ravings of a lunatic patient."

Siiigh. No and no.

Although "contact" was supposedly first initiated in the late 1920s, the papers were "indicted" and "transcribed into the English language" gradually, from the mid-1930s up through just before WW2.

I'm personally assured it was not "written by" eminent psychologist Dr. Sadler. He was an interesting fellow, respected in his day, but supposedly his interest in the "revelation" was academic, initially. He was a debunker of mystic phenomena, intrigued by one inexplicable case that obliquely led to the appearance of the papers. He is said not to have "believed" the book until very late in the papers' appearance. If Sadler was a genius huckster faking all that, he fooled his closest friends.

That one strange case, described in the Breitbart article as a "lunatic patient" - that's the worst kind of prejudicial propaganda. The individual was reportedly a quite normal fellow by day, but he spouted strange things in his sleep, a condition with which he was unconcerned, but which caused his wife to take him to Dr Sadler. Long story about the "sleeping subject" associated with the book's conception, but the UB's mysterious and complicated origins are beyond the scope of this rant. "Lunatic" is just trash talk.

4.

If you have to categorize this unique work, it would be more part of the spiritual revivalism of first quarter of the last century, not the "New Age" stuff of later decades. Many "New Agers" have certainly taken it up, often with what I consider less than desirable consequences. I'll just leave it at that.

5.

A third of the book is the "Life and Teachings of Jesus,." Non-Christians would call it "Christian," therefore, but many Christians would object to that because the UB does differ with some fundamental Christian doctrines.

Naturally, these doctrinal differences are the closest the Breitbart article comes to accuracy, and which it harps on the most! Hardly a new thing. Some Fundamentalists insist it's the "work of the Devil." (Folks said the same about Jesus; you might recall his response.) It's just especially sad to see such a slanted screed in an article from Andrew's legacy site.

In general, the thrust of the UB's teaching can be simply put: living a life according to what Jesus called the first and greatest commandment and the second like unto it. But the larger content of it is beyond my rant's purposes here.

#2 of 3

From time to time, I've set out to write about The Urantia Book (UB) for the book thread. This seems the perfect venue to talk about the book's reported origins, how the publisher lost its copyright, about supposed "revelations" and their adherants. You know, not preaching the teachings but talking about it as a book. On the book thread.

Those attempted comments of mine keep ending up as Ace movie review-length treatises, so I file them away without posting, thinking I'll try to whittle them down some time.

This is not any of those.

Instead, my "hook" is a Breitbart article that ticks me off for several reasons. Alas, I keep running into the same problem of not being comment-concise. So, in my next two comments, I'll hit my topic, with apologies in advance for the wall of text. At least I waited 'til after 100 comments to blast you with this.

Why is it false assertions can be so brief, but refutations involve so many words? Or is it just me?

*

Mainly, keep in mind Gell-Mann, the "amnesia effect" with which regulars here should be familiar. If not, look it up. Here:
http://bit.ly/1P7JKZv

My own authority, so to speak, is having read the UB several times, and studied parts of it in depth repeatedly, having hung around with folks in the Urantia "movement" in the past, and having read a lot about the book and its adherents and opponents. I even have a whole section of my website about the UB, which includes my "UB Comix," many of which, I'd like to think, can be appreciated even without familiarity with the book.
http://mindfulwebworks.com/urantiana/ub-comix

#1 of 3

Heh, beat Aviator to it by one.

jow: Sidebar link to letter from Dr. Everett Piper, President, Oklahoma University...

Correction: Oklahoma Wesleyan University, located in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, me birthplace.

And yes, Piper is good.

Well, I... um...

er...

Wow. In early on the ONT and I gotz nuthin'.

Waiting for Dr Who to download. Speaking of nuthin'.

This thread is going so slowly this morning, I think it's lulled me to the point where I can go back to bed and finally get a little more sleep. Perchance to dream.

Apropos of absolutely nothing in particular, a lame comic strip I did about 45 years ago:
http://mindfulwebworks.com/doodles/a-common-tale

chavez the hugo: Should have throat punched the prick. Sounds like a smug asshole to me.

Um, heh, that's a little extreme. And not exactly in keeping with Mom's dictates about keeping the peace under her roof.

His remark is true on its face, of course. I've always said, to the families of the killed, to those wounded, to those who have to pick up the pieces in the aftermath, it doesn't matter in consequence whether the cause was a shrapnel-laden mass murderer's bomb vest, a lone off-his-meds nutcase, a broken gas main, or a tornado.

It does matter in the immediate response, of course, whether this was the initial part of some mass organized jihadi attack like in Paris or just a solo nutjob.

And, of course, it matters in a larger sense that Christians are not organizedly preaching attacks on PP clinics while OTOH Imams do regularly encourage jihad.

I just agreed with the remark on its face and went in search of pie.

We often see examples about how the Regressives (my preferred term) are bigoted and hypocritical, while utterly unaware of their being so. I rarely encounter such in daily life, mostly because I don't usually encounter Regressives and if I do, I don't engage with them on anything of significance.

Yesterday, on the way to Mom's, I was listening to radio news about the then-unfolding shooting in Colorado Springs. At Mom's, I ask my Colorado relatives if they were aware of the news from their home state, which they weren't.

Warning of the fog of war, I said it appeared there was a shooter "at or near" a Planned Parenthood clinic.

BiL swiftly and blandly intones, "some right-to-lifer, then." I replied, well, no reports of any "allahu akbar." Which brought his swift and sharp rebuke, "Not that it matters to the ones being shot!"

It seemed to me that it was not said with the inclusiveness that it doesn't matter either way, but rather as if my reference to jihadism had stuck a thorn under thin skin.

I may have misinterpreted.

*

72 hours rule (at least) sure applies. It went from "at or near a PP clinic" to "nothing to do with the PP clinic directly" when I last talked about it with them, to "seemed to be an attack on the PP clinic" after all, last I read late last night.

On the whole I wish I'd never mentioned the matter.

Wow. Been a while since I've been in before Vic! Presuming he'll be in today.

Repeating for those who may have missed it, Sherry McEvil asked that I pass along to the Horde that her fiance did survive the surgery yesterday. I have no further details. Background on the ONT at #144.

Morning, Glories!

Been lying awake for hours, could not get back to sleep. Then one of the cats starts wandering around caterwauling. I turn on the kitchen light and see another cat has killed a mouse. So, I'm wide awake and up for a while now. What a way to start the day.

Time for this ol' Okie to ride off into the sunset. Er, walk off into the moonrise. Or stumble across the room to bed. Oh, whatever.

And thanks to Substitute Maetenloch for this evening's post!

Good night, Gracies!

chemjeff: ...when Youtube decides it wants to autoplay a video after the one you just played?

I never see that. IIRC, there's an option in the personal settings for that which I switched off, long ago. Presuming you have a YT account, of course.

/rant switch

I don't like it when folks on here use a tinyurl for YouTube. As I was saying in one of the morning art threads, I DL YouTubes and thus minimize what Googley thinks I've watched.

Folks, YouTube has its own tinyurls! (See Share button below videos.)

/rant off

browndog: I'm kicking myself for being open in my opinions, and I'm pissed that I'm going to pay a potentially huge price for being right.

That's unfortunate, but have faith in the power of truth. Soros is evil $#!+ from everything we know.

Too bad you couldn't stand up and reply, "You, sir, might strive to inform yourself and vet your golfing companions more closely."

It can be scary to be frank in public, online or off.

Twenty years ago, I'd written a couple of fairly mild (IMO) letters to the editor of the local rag. My son was arrested (on bogus charges of beating me up!), his lawyer overheard the D.A. ask if his Dad (me) was the person who wrote those angry (or something like that) letters to the newspaper?

Small town, and we'd just recently moved back with our family, were trying to start a business. I've never written the paper since.

BCochran1981: What's up with Sherry's fiance?

Last night (really this morning) on the ONT:

"...terminal cancer. The surgeon plans to remove a fist-sized mass from his colon ... very real chance that he may die during surgery... long term outlook is only 3-4 months... surgery today is just to make his pain level less and remove the chance of a complete blockage..."

http://acecomments.mu.nu/?blog=86&post=360291#c24472465
et al

What I have learned from the Collective Moron Wisdom so far tonight:

If fully nekkid and totally sloshed, bacon is best cooked in the oven.

Repeating from last thread, Sherry McEvil asks me to let the Horde know that her fiance survived the surgery today. Prayers for him still invited.

Dog's dinner party: We had that. Almost.

This year at Thanksgiving, we had
our faithful dog (m),
my sister's little "comfort" dog (f),
her son's medium-size dog (m),
and my son's medium dog and large dog (f's).

That's a new record for number of dogs at Mom's at once! Sister's little one and nephew's rescue fellow were allowed inside!! Special relaxed rules for Sister's side, I guess. Hmph. The little one even got up on Mom's chaise lounge with her. Really cute, actually.

My son & company went home last night, so just three dogs for the leftover feasting. We had to put ours and nephew's dogs in the garage because it's cold and rainy.

There was an occasional growlfest, but no violence or blood drawn.

Fortunately, the same can be said of all the relatives!

Sherry McEvil asks me to let the Horde know that her fiance survived the surgery today.

Been fun hanging out this morning. Gotta head to The City for more fun with the family wot's in town. Maybe I'll let on as if I'm for Trump, just for fireworks' sake.

Oops, forgot. Mom's house. Politix is strictly off the table. And at 95 years young, you don't mess with Mom!

Stay safe, Morons.