Urantia News - Verifying History and Science in The Urantia Book

This report has been challenging for a number of reasons. First of all, the standard standards for UBtheNEWS reports do not apply to this one. The Shroud of Turin Report is being written because it is intriguing, not so much because it adds credibility to The Urantia Book. If anything, the UB adds more credibility to the Shroud than vice versa. There are many scientific aspects related to this peculiar relic. Sorting through them and determining what to include was a difficult task. Obviously, the authenticity of it remains questionable. So those aspects had to be addressed in the report. On top of all of this, the subject matter tended to bring on a rather melancholy mood, not a good a thing for getting the work done.

Soon, however, we will have a document on this subject that I think is destined to spark a lot of interest in The Urantia Book among those who are intrigued by the Shroud and especially, of course, those involved with Shroud research. It is a very nice way to do outreach with the Christian community because this report highlights the reality of the resurrection and attracts those who have an interest in using science to develop credibility about spiritual issues.

On the way up to New England I stopped at Penn State University to look up a researcher who was involved in documenting the blue jet phenomenon. This was a classic case where the credentials that Chris Halvorson has were crucial to the outreach effort. There’s nothing like having someone available with a PhD in physics who works at the National Center for Atmospheric Research when approaching a scholar about how his research regarding the atmosphere has striking parallels to The Urantia Book. Naturally, this gentleman was much more interested in speaking with Chris than he was in speaking with me. Fortunately, I was able to reach Chris at work and arrange for him to call the professor’s office right after I had scheduled an appointment. This was the first instance of putting Chris directly in touch with a researcher through an on-campus UBtheNEWS outreach effort!

From Penn State I passed through the Bronx to visit my cousin, David, who I traveled with last summer and who was there to help when we blew out two tires, one right after the other, on the way to Chicago. This was due to dry rot because motor homes tend to sit still for long periods and so the tires get old and degraded, unlike people who get old and upgraded (thank God). David is “famous” for starting to grow Halbertcicles in his freezer after he heard about how they grew for me. We had a small one grow while I was there. This occurred with just regular tap water (not distilled water, which allows the effect to happen more frequently).

After an afternoon in the Bronx, I headed up to Connecticut to meet with my friend, Dawn, and her housemate, Kathy. They prepared a wonderful meal and we had a great time catching up/getting to know each other. I met Dawn in Boulder last summer, but had never met Kathy before. Dawn is a big fan of the first song I ever recorded with a band, Please Pass the Love. This was recorded right before I hit the road in January 2007. We all have Dawn to thank for the fact that this song will soon be posted on UBtheNEWS. Sorry I neglected to take a picture of these two wonderful women before I left, but I’ll be seeing them again soon hope to do better next time.

Because the UBtheNEWS project has now attracted so much ongoing support, the “Who” section of the website is in the process of getting completely redone. If it is not done yet, eventually, that is where you’ll find the song.

UBtheNEWS is going to have a lot of exciting new develops in this coming quarter. Stay tuned.

4/30/08: Lynn and Jim Wheeler hosted a UBtheNEWS presentation and took full advantage of this opportunity to introduce people in their community to the The Urantia Book. Of the two-dozen people in attendance, nine of them were new to the book! This was the first group to learn about the newly published Shroud of Turin Report. The event was videoed by Prof. Lyone Fein. This is the second semester that I have presented to her World Religions class.

Lynn and Jim were wonderful hosts for this event, really going all out to make this a great event for both the new people and regular study group participants. From the concentric circles on the mailbox to mark their home to the delicious (and abundant) food and drink, they made sure that everyone was well taken care of. Daryl Berry, UAUS Treasurer, was very helpful in terms of getting the word out and organizing to have it held at the Wheeler’s. He also showed up with a case of books and very generously donated them to the UBtheNEWS project!

The books immediately got put to good use because Prof. Fein’s friend, Bob, was not able to attend, but is very interested in the UB. He read through the syllabus material that I prepared for Prof. Fein’s class and expressed a lot of interest in it when we had dinner together the night before. Thanks to Daryl, I was able to leave a copy for him. Prof. Fein noted that there were a couple people who lived close to Denison University (about 45 minutes from the Wheeler’s study group) and on the drive back was considering the possibility of getting a study group started with Bob a little closer to where these folks live.

Now that the Shroud of Turin Report is published and incorporated into the slide presentation, the next step is to make this fully available to everyone. Soon people will be able to watch and listen to the presentation online, as well as being able to download the files so that anyone can host a presentation of the material for their local communities. This development is probably still a few months away because I need to get a good recording made of me reading through the material and then this will need to be integrated with the slides so that audio and video are synced up.

I’ve been waiting to complete the Shroud of Turin Report before posting the slide the presentation. This is an especially intriguing report; I highly recommend reading through it. It is unlike any of the other reports in that it is not so much about science catching up to the UB. If anything, the UB gives more credibility to the authenticity of the Shroud than the other way around. I’m very much looking forward to initiating contact with researchers who have spent time studying this relic. My guess is that most of them are not familiar with The Urantia Book and that this will be the first time they read anything that provides a degree of detail about what exactly happened to Jesus’ body. And, of course, these details correspond in rather striking ways to the most mysterious and unexplainable aspects of the image on the Shroud.

Prof. Fein also made a video of the presentation I did for her class. So I’ve now got about three hours of video that should provide a few nice clips for posting on UBtheNEWS. Again, this is probably still a couple months away, but it’s coming!

What’s already posted, however, is the new pamphlet. Along with a major rewriting of the text, the pamphlet now has information on the Shroud of Turin Report. This issue already seems to be catching the eye of some folks. Please review this pamphlet and email it to everyone on your email list, particularly those people who do not know about the UB. It’s for them; they’re waiting for it and don’t even know it.

This semester Prof. Fein spent two days on the UB and saved it as the capstone of her World Religions class. This meant that the students were a little bit more primed for the material than they were last semester, when my presentation was the only day that they spent on the UB. Unfortunately, the battery on the camera died about three minutes before the end, so the big round of applause is only preserved in my memory. I offered free copies to the class of my first book, The Logic of Love: Finding Faith through the Heart-Mind Connection, and most of them came up to grab a copy, which I thought was a good indication of how much they enjoyed the class.

Now that a dozen reports have been written for UBtheNEWS, I’m going to start focusing more of my time on doing direct outreach and on upgrading and broadening the material that is already on the website, i.e. the slide presentation, videos, Chris Halvorson’s scholarship, etc.

One of the newest and boldest developments is the “Chris Halvorson Liberation Initiative.” To learn more about this, you will need to sign up for my email list. A couple months ago I started an email list for talking about things that are not well suited for the “Trail Tales.” These are more forward looking statements and also address organizational issues related to the UBtheNEWS project. If you would like to be on this list, just let me know. It is not subscription based; anyone who wants to be on it is welcome to be on the list.

5/15/08: It’s been almost a year since I last visited Worcester Academy in search of long lost Iranian classmates who just might be intrigued enough by all this science-catching-up-to-the-Urantia-Book stuff to take an interest in discovering the archeological remains of Adamson’s civilization. Honoring a unique opportunity to develop the Adamson’s Civilization Project is what set this whole UBtheNEWS project in motion. So, naturally, it was a great pleasure to give a slide presentation at the Worcester Academy Alumni Office.

The first couple weeks of May have been a time to “recover” from finishing up the Shroud of Turin Report. It took a lot more time (and energy) to prepare that report than what I had originally anticipated. But now that it is finished, I have been able to refocus my attention on direct outreach at academic institutions, upgrading the site (Thanks, Joe for all your wonderful work), and getting ready to launch the “Chris Halvorson Liberation Initiative.” To find out more about that last item, you’ll have to sign up for the UBtheNEWS email list. Feel free to contact me about that.

Chris Halvorson was brought to Boston at the beginning of May, care of Paul Anderson, et al, for an interfaith panel discussion. This provided an opportunity for a half dozen of us to get together at Paul’s for a more informal gathering. Polly Friedman was there and she is helping to set up a presentation for later in the month.

I have spent a good deal of time at Brandeis University, where I did my undergraduate work in “The Nature and Development of Religious Experience.” Who would have ever thought I’d end up using that type of degree? All good things in all good time! With graduation so close, of course, there were no more classes, but I did have a chance to meet informally with a number of students who got a pretty thorough introduction to The Urantia Book and UBtheNEWS.

On the trip up to Boston I stopped in the Amherst area so that I could look up Mark McMenamin. Some of you may have heard of him because his book The Garden of Ediacara, about early biological and geophysical evolution, dedicates several pages to discussing how The Urantia Book was ahead of the curve on those issues. We had a very nice but brief discussion and the door has been opened for further communication. He found the Shroud of Turin Report especially intriguing. Apparently, he knows some people who have done work on that artifact. I’m looking forward to reconnecting with him about getting in touch with those folks.

While I was out there, I got to spend some time with friends from my college days. Peter, a musician, was a having a party the day I showed up. Perfect timing. That’s him with the guitar. As you can see these musician types all stick together. I met Peter through my friend Tobi, who also lives out in that area. She has two kids, so it was definitely time to make Halbertcicles. As you can see, that cool little phenomenon is still working just fine.

I hope EVERYONE can make it out to IC08. I look forward to starting my journey out there in couple weeks and have several presentations planned along the way. There will be two opportunities at the conference to see a specially prepared UBtheNEWS slide presentation. Don’t miss it!

5/31/08: May 21st was my birthday! The big present of the day was getting to spend a couple hours having lunch at the Brandeis University Faculty Center with Benson Saler, an anthropology professor, and Charles Ziegler. A little while back they published a book about the UFO reported to have crash-landed at Roswell, New Mexico. Charles Ziegler has a Masters in Physics as well as a PhD in Anthropology. By the end of our lunch he seemed especially interested to have a conversation with Chris Halvorson.

If you are already on the UBtheNEWS email list, then you know the Chris Halvorson Liberation Initiative was launched at the end of May, a unique development in the history of Urantia Book outreach endeavors. Everyone is welcome to be on this list. It addresses more forward looking aspects of the UBtheNEWS project and touches on other things that are not well suited for the website or the Trail Tales section. Please email me at halbert@ubthenews.com if you would like to be placed on this list.

The Chris Halvorson Liberation Initiative is destined to make an enormous difference in the amount of respect and credibility given to The Urantia Book, especially within academic communities. Before too many more years the UBtheNEWS project is going to have so many reports that a “tipping point” will be reached with most people, a sufficient number where for most people it creates a compelling presentation of The Urantia Book’s unique quality of credibility. My guess is that we’re just a bit under half the reports we need before this shift begins to really start taking effect. Chris is going to be instrumental in accelerating this process.

A big thanks goes out to Maribeth. I stayed at her place a couple times on this trip to New England and took care of things when she had to travel. We have known each other for over 20 years, having met through a mutual friend, Tobi, who has been hosting the Matomifest in Vermont for over 25 years (see the Trail Tales from last summer). Maribeth is a very “tuned in” individual who writes a Tarot Card column for a local paper and has a website called TarotCare.com. As you can see, Reese is a quadruped, who appreciates having two-legged beings around with opposable thumbs.

Reese was very willing to consider what The Urantia Book has to say about evolution. But he was insistent that even though "God" is "dog" spelled backwards, the reverse is not true. He tried to justify this by saying that the logic supporting his assertion is the same one that underlies The Urantia Book’s statement to the effect that just because God is love, it does not necessarily follow that all love is God, that all expressions of love are perfect and divine in nature. Of course, his logic is totally twisted and I told him as much, but I had to admit it was an extremely creative suggestion for a dog. At which point, he’s like, “Well, what do you mean for dog? Are you really going to sit there and defend the logical propensities of the opposing-thumbs crowd?” And I said, “Look, there’s difference between ‘can’t get it,’ ‘don’t get it,’ and ‘won’t get it.’ Sure a lot of humans don’t get it, but someday they will get it. You, my furry friend, just can’t get it.” So then he just walks off, growling, “I can’t believe the back talk I get from a guy who walks around behind me picking up my excrement.” “If you had opposable thumbs you’d be picking it up yourself,” is what I’m thinking. So much for trying introduce a dog to the book.

On the other hand (you know, that thing with the opposable thumb), the humans that Maribeth had hanging around were a lot easier to deal with. I did a UBtheNEWS presentation for Maribeth and some of her friends one evening. Fortunately, I had some extra copies of the book with me because after the presentation Lynn bought two copies, one for each eye. She’s really smart. Or maybe the second one was for a friend; I forget. Pretty much all of Maribeth’s friends seemed very interested to learn about The Urantia Book. The Halbertcicles grew very well at her place, as well. You can see some pictures of them in the Photo Gallery. In fact, her friend, Diane, was checking out the halbertcicles.com website and then two days later a Halbertcicle grew in her freezer. She said it was about an inch and a half long. She makes ice cubes regularly and didn’t do anything different. One just showed up for the first time. How cool is that?

Some of you may remember from the Trail Tale for the last two weeks of February that I was visiting a friend from high school, Mark, who lives in New Orleans. He has developed a very nice appreciation for the UB since then, having read all the Jesus Papers and some of the Religion papers within the last few months. He came up to Boston for Memorial Day weekend and we stayed at the home of another friend of ours from high school, Lee, who lives at the base of Beacon Hill in Boston. When I was here last summer, I watched the 4th of July fireworks from his private rooftop deck. Lee and Mark hadn’t seen each other in 30 years. It was an excellent reconnection. They took good care of me, fed me extremely well. Thanks guys!

And that pretty much wraps up my stay in New England. June basically begins the trek across country so that I can get myself out to IC08. Hope to see you there. Come check out the specially prepared presentation that I’m putting together for the occasion.

6/15/08: In 1986 I hiked the Appalachian Trail from Pennsylvania to Maine. So naturally, I couldn’t resist the opportunity to explore a little piece of it as I crossed over the Blue Ridge Mountains. As the sign indicates, there was a shelter in 2.2 miles. It looked like an outreach opportunity to me, so I loaded up my daypack with UBtheNEWS pamphlets and 54 copies of my first book, The Logic of Love: Finding Faith through the Heart-Mind Connection and hit the trail. This quickly turned into an experience of what it means to be a second-miler; the sign neglected to mention it was pretty much all up hill.

The trail is a good place for reflecting on the past and envisioning the future. It is common for notebooks to be left in the shelters for hikers to share stories, make comments, wax eloquent, or pen poetry. The last person to make an entry in the notebook is then supposed to mail it to whoever left it. This poem was contributed by yours truly.

7/15/86
Out here in the wilderness
Far from all the rest
There is every shade of green
Except envy
And the blue sky is never sad

Out here in the wilderness
Far from all the rest
Meanings are made clear without words
And understandings are reached without debate

Here there is silence;
but nothing and no one is silenced
Here songs are sung a capelo
And harmonies ring out
In one voice alone in the wilderness
Far from all the rest

(Check out the photo gallery for additional pictures from the Appalachian Trail.)

The summer of 1986 I took a 700-mile walk-about before heading out to Boulder to study The Urantia Book. Twenty years later I was planning an endless “drive-about” the country, to report on and educate people about how science has been catching up the book. From this perspective I guess we could say I’ve upgraded from living in a tent to living in a small motor home.

The day before this hike, in Lynchburg, Virginia, I gave my third Unity Church presentation since hitting the road. Dick Bain, who has also helped with report preparation, organized this event. He and his wife were wonderful hosts and provided a very comfortable bed. (For those of you who might have heard me complaining, my back seems to be doing better now that I’m using an air mattress in the van.) The presentation to about seven people went very nicely, once we were finally able to scavenge the right power cord for the projector.

Apparently, I left the power cord back in Maryland, where I was doing a presentation at Bill and Claudette Beamer’s home. The presentation at the Beamer’s was, in every way, a real McIntosh power and Magnepan speakers type-of-event. Sorry for the obscure references. It’s simply one of those unavoidable comments. For those of you who do not understand, nothing can be said. And for those who do, no more needs to be said. Much thanks also goes to Allene and Willis and everyone else involved in getting the event organized and put together.

The first half of June has been pretty busy, I suppose, even by UBtheNEWS standards. I did four presentations in four states and drove from Boston, Massachusetts to Boulder, Colorado. It all started out near Providence where Polly organized with Peter to provide a place for the presentation. Emilio Coppola came all the way from New York City, thus impressively smashing the previous record for longest distance traveled to attend a UBtheNEWS presentation. This group got the first taste of what I’m planning for the IC08 conference. From there it was down to Connecticut, where Bill Rocap and Gordon Coombs brought together a very nice crew. Sorry to have missed taking pictures at these events.

After the Appalachian Trail excursion, it was on to Dean White’s in Tennessee, where I had that little bout of freezing pipes when I did a presentation there in February. The weather was much friendlier this time around. And Dean was once again very supportive of the mission. Thanks Dean! The next stop was Nashville, where I had lunch with Hal Bynum and his wife, Rebecca. Hal is the one who wrote the famous country song, “Lucile,” as in “You picked a fine time to leave me, Lucile. . .” He said he would give me a quote for Star Power, so I hope to have an entry for him soon.

After lunch with Hal on Thursday, I headed directly to Boulder so that I could make Chris Halvorson’s study group on Friday and his special study session on Saturday. That means to get from Dean’s on Thursday morning to Boulder by five o’clock on Friday, I had to cover about 1475 miles. Not the pace I prefer to travel at, but I very much wanted to make it to the study group so that I could deliver a special message to the folks there about the Chris Halvorson Liberation Initiative. If you do not about this, you need to get on the UBtheNEWS email list. This is a “secret” initiative that is coming along very nicely. Being on the email list also gives you the inside scoop on other things as well. Everyone is welcome to be on the list. Just drop me a line and let me know.

Trail Tales, Second Quarter, 2008

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