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I think there is even a better question that can be asked than "why is the UB taken as false by most people?". This question is the following, to wit:

Why are certain aspects of the book rejected by certain readers?

I can give you a preliminary answer. I have been told that the UB rejects the concept of the Jews as the Chosen People. I have NOT yet read this for myself. However, if indeed the text does say this, then my mind, at least, will be unable to wrap itself around that aspect of the book. I shall simply have to reject that as a human interpolation, or as an alien (literally, in this case) failure to comprehend the Deity to whom they owe allegience. Of course, it also depends on Just HOW the denial is worded. If there is any wiggle room, trust a Jew to find and exploit it such that the book would still be coherent within a Jewish perspective. It all depends on how it is worded. See, this is a mind-set that most Gentiles simply haven't got. But in Yiddish we have a word for it. Pilpul, meaning argument or debate, but not in the same sense that the English conveys.We learn how to do it with our mother's milk, especially when we study Torah and Talmud. We argue it with each other, with ourselves, with books, and very rarely, with Gentiles. If a Jew argues with you and you're not a Jew, its one of two things. One: He respects you enough to make you part of the "Honourary Jew" club. Two: you've pissed him off something fierce, and right now he's only thinking about what he can throw at you. 95% of the time, its the latter. So, duck.
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......I have been told that the UB rejects the concept of the Jews as the Chosen People. I have NOT yet read this for myself. However, if indeed the text does say this, then my mind, at least, will be unable to wrap itself around that aspect of the book. I shall simply have to reject that as a human interpolation, or as an alien (literally, in this case) failure to comprehend the Deity to whom they owe allegiance......


For me, the bottom line of the spiritual teaching of the UB, can be summarized as the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of men. Once you understand this teaching, I am almost certain, you will never again entertain the idea of God choosing a group of people as His special children. Would you agree that God is not a respecter of person or group of people? Would not you think it’s more proper for a father to treat all his children equally?
But there is, I think, a way to see that the Jews are a chosen group of people. Jesus was born of a Jew family and considered the Jews as his own people. If the Jews did not reject Jesus as the spiritual messiah, then the Jews would really have become the true “salt of the world”.
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The only way I can answer that is to read the relevant papers when I get to them.
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I agree absolutely.
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There are certain passages in the Urantia Book that are difficult to read at first, difficult to accept, but by the time you've read the book as a whole and taken in its key concepts, these passages are easier to accept, especially when you realize that they were written from the perspective of beings much higher than ourselves. Something that helped me a great deal in this process was reading a condensed version of the Urantia Book, so I could more quickly take in its core concepts:
http://www.lulu.com/shop/search.ep?contributorId=872233

Before evaluating the specific teachings of the Urantia Book, it's important to look at what authority the book claims for itself:

Quote:
It has become fashionable in some Urantian publications to regularly warn readers that the science and cosmology is “not inspired”, but instead “transient” and has “errors on its face”, and even that it supposedly represents only the best of 20th century science, which is already, after a “few short years”, in need of revision. To justify such supposed errors it has even been suggested that superhuman authors purposely wrote known scientific falsehoods (not just imprecise statements) so that the Urantia Book would not become a fetish!!

This shows just how far wrong logic can go when based on a false premise, namely that there are large numbers of errors already apparent in the cosmology of the Urantia Book. But the Urantia Book precludes such faulty interpretations when it says that these self-qualifications of the cosmology of the Urantia Book do not prevent it from being of “immense value” [p.1109],

a) Immense value in reducing confusion by an authoritative elimination of error,

b) Immense value in co-ordination of known or about-to-be-known facts and observations,

c) Immense value in the restoration of important bits of lost knowledge concerning epochal transactions in the distant past,

d) Immense value in supplying information that will fill in vital missing gaps in otherwise earned knowledge,

e) Immense value by presenting cosmic data in such a manner as to illuminate the spiritual teachings contained in the accompanying revelation [p.1109]
http://www.ubim.org/the-coming-scientif ... ntia-book/

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The book is not meant to be an affirmation of what you already believe, its supposed to be a revelation. When I come across something that rubs me the wrong way I assume that there is some distortion in the way I am thinking about something that is causing this and as it so often turns out that is always the case. With reading revelation you have to be prepared for the old things to pass away.

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Surprisingly, The Urantia Book does actually say that the Jews were a chosen race. It does all stem from the covenant Abraham made with Melchizedek. The Jews were not meant to be the material rulers of the world led by an all-powerful military conqueror deemed the Messiah, but a chosen people whose mission was a spiritual one. Judaism harbored the most advanced concepts of the one God to appear on this world up until the times of Jesus. It was primarily for this reason that the Son of God bestowed himself upon the world as a Jew. Imagine the difficulty the Son of Man would have faced leading the world to the Father had he been born as a Roman, or one of the various Pagan sects, or even under the Hindu religion. The Jews were chosen, literally, by Melchizedek, and again by our Creator as the people to receive the bestowal of Christ.

All of the Apostles were Jewish by religion and heritage. Saul of tarsus, for all his flaws and compromising of the religion of Jesus, was a Jew until converted. And yes, they were chosen to have the Son of God delivered to them. However, the Gospel is for all mankind. If I may take the liberty of paraphrasing Jesus, he said that in the Kingdom of Heaven there is no Jew or Gentile. Only one brotherhood, united by the Fatherhood of the One true God.

The amazing thing about the revelations the Urantia Book provides is that it can in one single page shatter a previous belief system and at the same time confirm it. It is a paradox, but it is the truth.

I wish you well in your studies, and encourage you to keep an open mind and be led always towards the Father's will.
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LWatson wrote:
The amazing thing about the revelations the Urantia Book provides is that it can in one single page shatter a previous belief system and at the same time confirm it. It is a paradox, but it is the truth.


Excellent point and post!! I agree one must be sufficiently experienced in truth seeking to realize, accept, and be appropriately expectant of paradox and duality in the search for truth. The UB speaks much on the mind poisons of pride and prejudice - that feeling of knowing everything important, being correct in our conclusions about those, and being defensive/jealous/superior in those conclusions. If you already know everything, then, by definition, you are not seeking knowledge or truth - but only confirmation of our prejudice. Prejudice was always defined by me, previously, as bigotry but that is but a manifestation of prejudice which is actually a form of self love and self importance.

I have always found the UB a challenge to all preconception....including the preconceptions that are held by prior readings and study of the book itself....I have them still after decades studying the text. It is our grip and loyalty to those preconceptions that is the real problem, not the fact of preconception. If one comes to believe in enlightening but not enlightenment and truth discernment as incremental and progressive rather than a human absolute once discovered, then we can begin the honest and sincere quest for truth and the enlightening WAY....a way of being for our becoming.

Such a stance requires faith in a totality and absoluteness of truth and its source to have the confidence and comfort to face uncertainty, confusion, doubt, conflict, paradox, and NEW realization and utilization of additional truth!! This takes a brain, independent thinking, and courage. Too many mortals have strong prejudices that are not even their own or self acquired by experience but come from parents, media, peers, preachers, and priests. Lemmings. Lazy lemmings. Comfortable and confident in their ignorance and even prideful for their entrenched prejudices that usually have no connection to actual fact, knowledge, or to personal experience.

I found four distinct categories of sorting UB concepts as I encountered them but did not allow the sorting to prevent the continuation in the text. Upon every re-reading I found the contents of those sorting categories changed by simply reading forward, and then more, and then reading again. The book has a fascinating way of revealing more and more to the mind that is open and persistent and not entrenched in prejudice. The four categories are:

1. Confirmations of things believed or preconceptions.
2. New concepts that rang true and fit within prior concepts but expanded perception and connected things together in very logical and consistent ways.
3. Contradictions to preconceptions.
4. Completely new and hard to understand concepts.

Number 3 is enough for some to leave the UB and move on in search of additional confirmation material. Their mind simply cannot tolerate even the concept that there may be error in their own concepts, perspective, philosophy, and understanding. Truth will never be truthful to such a mind, but falsehoods already believed do not seem to bring great peace, harmony, or progress to them either - which is itself a paradox.....if what we believe does not bring joy and peace and love into our life, that is proof enough of the falseness of what we cling to so desperately in our pride and prejudice.

The Master was quite adept at feeding paradox to the Apostles. May we learn to feast and fatten upon it and all uncertainties and we can, but only if we have true faith in our source and our destiny; that sublime confidence in God which does not require such confidence in our own understanding.

I find the certainty of any human mind that thinks it knows or even can know the totality of the universe we are born into as a most amusing and childish immaturity of both mind and spirit progress. How can we not be in awe of the grandeur of what we do not yet know or understand?? Discovery is the very purpose of time and space experience! And we will discover much that is unknown to us today.....that is, once we lay down our prejudice and allow truth to still be discovered!

I do not understand how anyone cannot take exception to some things in the UB as a new student. It takes awhile to digest and connect and integrate and experience no matter how open minded we may be. We all have a set of preconceptions. Some of those are misconceptions while others are truthful and previously discovered in experience. There is only one reality and not any mortal mind can grasp its totality nor is there any need to. It would be wise to accept this fact and truth so that we might then discover truth more fully, more readily, and more effectively. Or so I think.

8)

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