Date: Fri, 27 Feb 1998 13:45:49 -0600
To: urantial@ubook.org
From: "LARRYM MULLINS" <LAWRENCEOFDENVER@worldnet.att.net>
Subject: MO, GARD, AND PURISM
 

MO, GARD, AND PURISM

A recent unfortunate post in reply to mine compels a counter-reply from me, something I rarely do.

I have known Mo and Gard for twenty years or so. Mo, in particular, has been opposite me in some of the most volatile Urantia issues here in Boulder and eight years on the Brotherhood/Fellowship council. Always, we each respected the motive of the other. I love both Mo and Gard as Urantian brothers, they have both made impressive contributions to the Revelation, and I believe in their sincerity. If they can restore the integrity of Urantia Foundation, it would be one of the greatest turn-arounds in History.

As stated in my last post, their work is cut out for them. They must: [1]. Re-establish the integrity of the text by designating editorial changes with footnotes. [2]. Refute the statements by Judge Schroeder which demeaned the Revelation and declared it to be a product of human creativity. (In fact, all of the legal positions that denigrate the Urantia Papers must be refuted. Including the sophistry that "it is not a religious book." [3]. Acknowledge that the Revelation belongs to the people and that Urantia Foundation is supposed to be serving the people, not persecuting them. [4]. Refute, not praise the Foundation's repugnant 'thousand word limit?' (This is a particular affront to creative people attempting to disseminate the teachings with study aids.) [5] Refute the claim that the Foundation owns, or 'holds in trust' the banner of Michael. [6]. Pledge no more wanton lawsuits against readers who act in good faith. [7]. Pledge their faith and allegiance to Jesus, over and above the Foundation.

Both Gard and Mo happen to be businessmen. The blanket condemnation of them in a recent post, partially based upon their occupation of being in business, is hard to understand. There are some great and noble business people working in the vineyards. In fact, if some great and noble businesspeople had not spun off extra capital there would be no Urantia Papers, at least as we know them today.

The problem is that, because Mo and Gard are now, in a sense, working for an institution without integrity, they are forced to hedge. They are like middle managers who are respected by great numbers of the workforce. They may have been placed where they are to form an insulation between a leader who is not generally respected and trusted by the rank and file. In this capacity, they are being used to keep the heat off the man in charge. Trustees will be constantly explaining, promising to correct, rationalizing, shrugging off errors and excesses, promising change, and when necessary (as recently happened) even threatening Kristen with interminable litigation unless she signs an agreement. This is particularly lamentable, because it seems to foreshadow "business as usual" at 533 ^× the faces change, but the threats remain as ruthless as ever. Unless trustees resist playing hardball roles and turn resolutely toward correcting the center, they will be first compromised, and eventually their good will shall be used up. If Mo and Gard are seeking to correct and cleanse Urantia Foundation, they need to show us, and they will need all the prayers they can get.

ON BEING A PURIST

If we must use labels, let's use them fairly.

Very few people disagree with the position that the changes made in the Urantia Papers were significant or changed them in any important way. As stated over and over again, the Revelators evidently allowed the mistakes to be cast into plates and eventually published. Since virtually all of us agree that footnotes are an absolute minimal norm in making changes to another's creative work, let's get footnotes into the text where true editorial changes have been made.

Having written this, I must add that we must also be concerned with the hundreds and hundreds of punctuation changes, and changing-backs, and re-changes. We must be concerned with the arbitrary spelling changes. It is short-sighted not to wonder why Urantia Foundation makes the "meaningless" punctuation, spelling and capitalization changes in each edition. By exceeding five percent changes, Urantia Foundation can get yet another copyright after the current one expires. This possibility is in keeping with a tradition of ends justifying the means, and could keep the Revelation in bondage to 533 in perpetuity. We must be alarmed at this prospect. The time to free the Revelation is now.

A "purist," if that is what I am, does not believe the Urantia Papers were materialized and handed down as finished plates. Virtually all apocrypha and tradition support the idea that they were copied from the original materialized text or manuscript and entered the evolutionary mainstream at the point it was copied by Christy. Errors were allowed to be made, perhaps much as Life Carriers must allow evolutionary error to exist and not tamper directly with life once it is planted. The original materialized manuscript was then ordered destroyed. Even Christy's manuscript, copied in duplicate, was destroyed after the type was set, the proofs were checked, and the plates were cast. The plates were at least three generations away from the original materialized manuscript produced by extra-human beings.

"Purists" may be said to believe the plates were produced in good faith. We believe the Contact Commission kept their sacred oaths and gave us a book as close to the original materialized manuscript as humanly possible. We believe the Sadlers, the Kellogs, and Christy were honorable people who did their best. We further believe that, as is supported by all the testimony of the early pioneers who were there, that what Clyde Bedell told me personally is true: The "contact" or sleeping subject remained active until after the Papers were published, and then the connection was severed with the remark: "You are now on your own." As Bill Sadler, Jr. said: "They didn't even bother to say goodbye." We do not believe there were any communications after that, and there are no, and never were any, "special" people with a continuing pipeline of superhuman knowledge.

If such people exist, I can't imagine them being so immature and needy for human praise and esteem that they would be going around bragging about it.

In short, we purists believe in the integrity of these pioneers, and that we were given Urantia Papers that were NOT corrupted. Martin Gardner believes the Urantia Papers were corrupted, and the whole thing is a hoax. Harold Sherman and Gabriel of Sedona believe the Papers were corrupted and altered by Dr. Sadler because he had to take out references to things like astrology, reincarnation and communication with the dead.

People who believe such things must also believe that virtually all of the early pioneers were liars or woefully deceived. The next step is to say the text of the Papers need not be inviolate because it is corrupted anyway. Human wisdom can then easily brush off the destruction of the plates, saying they are not necessary with modern printing technology. These are all reasonable deductions if you believe the premise that the early pioneers were liars, charlatans, and they broke their oaths and colluded to intentionally corrupt the Papers.

Purists subscribe to a different idea, a premise that is far less dark. Beyond believing in the integrity of the pioneers, and trusting that errors in the text were unintended human error, we believe the instructions that Dr. Sadler and the Contact Commission testified to, and published in the Foundation's History (not to be confused with the infamous "mandates") were simple, reasonable cautions based upon superhuman knowledge of human foibles. We believe the primary mission of Urantia Foundation is to safeguard the text they were given. The mission of Urantia Foundation is not to sue people because they tried to propagate their own Revelation, nor to sue people because they use the banner of Michael to express their religious beliefs. The mission of Urantia Foundation is to serve, not to sue. They are supposed to be working for us and in our behalf, not pushing people around and striving to intimidate and control them.

If one believes the premise of revelation at all, and that celestial advice was given, we would be wise to weigh the advice of the Revelators against those humans who refute it. Because, if we had heeded the advice of the Revelators from the beginning, we would not be in such difficulty today. The plates would be preserved, and all copies of the Urantia Papers would contain footnotes to indicate editorial changes. Do all of these brilliant human minds who would have us listen to them instead of the Revelators really think the superhuman beings did not foresee a new kind of printing technology would make the plates of the first edition obsolete? Do they imagine it was not anticipated that humans would start meddling with the Papers? And that celestial beings would not know that, if humans were given creative freedom to do good things with the Papers, unfortunately there also must be freedom for less wise mortals to do all kinds of distorted and silly things with the Papers? This is why the Revelators saw the need for a least one trusted group of mortal keepers of the inviolate text, who would secure a continuous lineage that future Urantians can trust.

In five hundred years, would it not be wonderful if a Urantia Foundation existed with trustees who would fall on their swords to protect the inviolate text? And that, even though there will be all kinds of versions and editions and corruptions of the book, that there exists a pristine touchstone, a thread of inviolate text running back to the first pioneers who sacrificed and struggled and did the very best they could to give us a perfect text?

Will we, instead, in five hundred years have fifty million copies of various English-language Urantia editions produced by Urantia Foundation and STILL no footnotes and STILL no two editions the same? Who will believe such an organization? Especially when official court records show though the early Foundation trustees testified purely to the integrity of the Papers, in the 1990's Foundation trustees waffled for expediency, and lied to maintain their secular controls? And, when there are many other people, and many charlatans claiming "first editions" that are very different from our precious technology? How can we prove them wrong? Anyone can fake first editions and stick them in a cave. Without integrity, Urantia Foundation will slip away into ignominious oblivion. And the best possibilities of the Revelation will follow Urantia Foundation and be lost if there are not purists to take up the cause of an inviolate text.

Of course, the Spirit of Truth will drive the Revelation, and the religion of Jesus will eventually win. But, must we make it so difficult, must we humans always do it the hard way? Why must there always be human minds of mediocre intellect (compared to superhuman intelligence) who profess to know more than the Revelators?

Of course, if you believe the Papers were corrupted, the Urantia Book is just another book. Then it is fair game for folks with all kinds of personal agendas. As Eric Shaveland told me, "We must be able to trust the scribe." Indeed, we must be able to trust the integrity of the Urantia Papers, or it is just an impressive book.

CORE VALUES AND PLURALITY OF OPINION

In America, the method for achieving truth is free discussion. Plurality in religion is necessary. Even dumb ideas, sloppy scholarship, and sick puppies are part of the very difficult process of shifting out truth. As John Stuart Mill, the great philosopher wrote in his famous essay on Liberty, we need other opinions, and he gave four distinct reasons:

"First, if any opinion is compelled to silence, that opinion may, for all we know, be true. To deny this is to assume our own infallibility.

" Second, though the silenced opinion may be in error, it may, and very commonly does, contain a portion of truth; and since the general or prevailing opinion on any subject is rarely or never the whole truth, it is only by collision of adverse opinions that the remainder of the truth has any chance of being supplied.

"Third, even if the existing opinion is not only true, but the whole truth, unless it is suffered to be, and actually is, vigorously and earnestly contested, it will, by most of those who receive it, be held in manner of a prejudice, with little comprehension or feeling of its rational grounds.

"Fourth, the meaning of the doctrine itself will be lost, or enfeebled, and deprived of its vital effect on the character and conduct, the dogma becoming a mere formal profession, inefficacious for good, but cumbering the ground, and preventing the growth of any real or heartfelt conviction, from reason or personal experience."

URANTIANS 2000

We need a Urantia movement with both a core of values that we - as well as the Foundation trustees - would fall upon our swords to protect and keep fidelity with, and at the same time we need to foster a drive toward change, debate and growth in a dramatically shifting situational field. Such a dual-system of core values that do not change and agendas and activities that constantly change, is organic, and resilient to conditions. If the opposite is true, and there is not integrity at the core and consistency with what is true, beautiful and good, and there is an attempt to stifle growth and plurality of opinion to maintain stability and control, the system is doomed to entropy and decay.

Prevailing scientific discoveries support this observation. Enlightened business people and organizations are using the twin-principles of preserving core values while encouraging growth. Those Urantians who would be leaders into the next millenium should learn and understand this. We cannot be Urantians 2000 if we keep using organizational systems that struggle vainly to operate as though the last half of the 20th century did not happen.

LARRY MULLINS