Talk:The Urantia Book

Mercury/Moon Paragraph Sentence Diagramed

The article states:

• "The book repeats the idea prevalent at the time of its origin that one side of the planet Mercury always faces the sun due to tidal locking. In 1965, radio astronomers discovered that Mercury actually rotates fast enough for all sides to see exposure to the sun. In the same passage, the book states that tidal friction will slow the rotation of a planet or other orbiting body "until axial revolution ceases". However, current understanding is that revolutions do not cease, but stabilize such that the time to complete one revolution will become equal to the time needed to complete an orbit."

The paragraph in question reads:

• "The planets nearest the sun were the first to have their revolutions slowed down by tidal friction. Such gravitational influences also contribute to the stabilization of planetary orbits while acting as a brake on the rate of planetary-axial revolution, causing a planet to revolve ever slower until axial revolution ceases, leaving one hemisphere of the planet always turned toward the sun or larger body, as is illustrated by the planet Mercury and by the moon, which always turns the same face toward Urantia. (657)"

A professional sentence diagram of the paragraph in question follows:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mercury-diagam.png Dogyo (talk) 16:04, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

“Which” is a relative pronoun introducing an adjective clause. Adjective clauses modify nouns. The statement “Which always turns the same face toward the Earth” is an adjective clause. In the statement "by planet Mercury and by the moon" are two adverbial prepositional phrases joined with the conjunction, "and." The relative pronoun “which” does not modify more than one noun construction. Therefore, grammatically speaking, the clause only modifies the noun directly preceding it (i.e., “moon”) and not both “moon” and “Mercury.”

It then is a reasonable conclusion that the current page is making an erroneous conclusion about how the text is to be interpreted when it states, "The book repeats the idea prevalent at the time of its origin that one side of the planet Mercury always faces the sun due to tidal locking." Grammatically speaking, the book only states the moon "always turns the same face toward the Earth." Dogyo (talk) 05:03, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

That looks like a welcome clarification. 94.237.95.174 (talk) 18:15, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

The point that stated “the planet Mercury always faces the sun” was misleading, therefore I decided to remove this paragraph. The text in the book states: “The planets nearest the sun were the first to have their revolutions slowed down by tidal friction. Such gravitational influences also contribute to the stabilization of planetary orbits while acting as a brake on the rate of planetary-axial revolution, causing a planet to revolve ever slower until axial revolution ceases, leaving one hemisphere of the planet always turned toward the sun or larger body, as is illustrated by the planet Mercury and by the moon, which always turns the same face toward Urantia”. This point was taken from Martin Gardner book Urantia: The Great Cult Mystery which is not always entirely accurate. Jaworski (talk) 16:27, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

• • The book states that "...leaving one hemisphere of the planet always turned toward the sun ... as is illustrated by the planet Mercury ...". The sentence diagram above is misleading because it cuts out more than half of the sentence. The passage in the book clearly states that both Mercury and Earth's moon illustrates tidal locking.

When this book was written, it was thought that Mercury was tidally locked with the sun. See the Wikipedia entry on Mercury's Spin–orbit resonance. Radar observations in 1965 proved that the planet was not tidally locked with the sun. I vote that this paragraph be reinserted in the the article. Nursebhayes (talk) 14:33, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Understanding the functions of parts of the speech in a sentence and their relationship to one another can be very helpful. None of the omitted material changes the basic relationship of the relevant sentences. The simple grammatical fact is that the phrase in question is related to the moon, not mercury. That is relevant information when considering the question at hand. I vote to keep the article at least factually accurate based upon sound reasoning and data, and that is exactly what the sentence diagram provides: good data to evaluate the question at hand. Dogyo (talk) 04:02, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

The phrase "which always turns the same face toward Urantia" of course isn't talking about Mercury but is about the moon. I don't imagine that anyone could read it otherwise, so I don't see what the diagram was meant to show. The paragraph from the book is about the general concept of planets slowing until one hemisphere is always turned to the sun:

"The planets nearest the sun were the first to have their revolutions slowed down by tidal friction. Such gravitational influences also contribute to the stabilization of planetary orbits while acting as a brake on the rate of planetary-axial revolution, causing a planet to revolve ever slower until axial revolution ceases, leaving one hemisphere of the planet always turned toward the sun or larger body, as is illustrated by the planet Mercury"

Mercury is pointed out as the first and foremost illustration of what the paragraph says. That there then follows a secondary, non-planetary example -- "and by the moon, which always turns the same face toward Urantia" -- doesn't do anything to change the simple and clear prior statements about Mercury being a planet that illustrates planetary-axial revolution slowing until one hemisphere of that planet always is turned to the sun.

That a published, cited, WP:V, WP:RS source notes this and makes the further analytical point that this understanding of Mercury was the accepted scientific understanding at the time UB was published, but was later proven to be wrong, is fully valid to include in the wikipedia article. Wazronk (talk) 18:19, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

REFERENCES

should be a REFERENCES and BIBLIOGRAPHY sectionwakan (talk) 18:43, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

Paragraph removed

Paragraph removed:

• From Appendix 3, Section 3 in "Sadler, William S., Jr., Appendices to A Study of The Master Universe", the authors of The Urantia Book "postulate an additional and unrevealed creation" beyond this, "a possible never-beginning, never-ending universe of infinity".

The personal opinion and not the exactly quotation from The Urantia Book can be misleading. The original statement from the page 130 of the book says: “And there are those who maintain that the Infinite can never attain full expression short of infinity; and therefore do they postulate an additional and unrevealed creation beyond the fourth and outermost space level, a possible ever-expanding, never-ending universe of infinity”. The link: "Sadler, William S., Jr., Appendices to A Study of The Master Universe" doesn’t work. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jaworski (talk • contribs) 18:41, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

A touch too much

I'm wondering if this entire article isn't just rather long for a fairly NN sect/book/whatever. We don't need extensive quotes, since it is all online. We don't need an extensive list of its sci theory, etc, since that is all nonsense William M. Connolley (talk) 16:04, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

I moved some stuff out of the history section into the science section. The reason is that the bits there - the book had foreknowledge of science - are dubious in the extreme, and not important to that section (that Native Americans were discovered by settlers is trivia in the great history of the world: the claim is in that section only to bolster the book) William M. Connolley (talk) 12:39, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Maybe the fact “that Native Americans were discovered by settlers is trivia in the great history of the world” but this article is not about history of the world. Jaworski (talk) 20:42, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

Sentence removed

I have removed the sentence “It teaches ... that there are twelve planets in a Solar System rather than currently accepted eight” as this sentence not entirely clearly describes the issue. The Urantia Book uses classification of planets valid at the beginning of last century; another classification didn’t exist at that time. According to that classification, Pluto, now dwarf planet, was classified as a planet; Ceres was a member of asteroid belt, not a planet. Therefore, by adding to officially recognized in the last century nine planets, three new discovered, similar in size to Pluto ( Haumea, Makemake and Eris), we have twelve planets as described in the book. Statement of The Urantia Book is accurate according to definition of planet from the last century, when this book was received and published. Jaworski (talk) 20:42, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

• Perhaps a better explanation of this is needed, but I don't think that the sentence should be expunged solely because you object to Ceres being classified as a dwarf planet and not as an asteroid. Additionally, there are several similarly sized objects that are dwarf planet and Plutoids candidates. Furthermore, I think that the Book teaches that that are 12 planets, ten are rocky and two are gaseous. This is clearly wrong, as there are four known gaseous planets in the solar system. Nursebhayes (talk) 15:03, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

I don’t have any objection to today classification of Ceres as a dwarf planet. Classification of planets may change many times in the future, but I refer to the classification from the year of The Urantia Book publication (1955). If at that time Pluto was classified to planets (not dwarf planets) it is only logical that authors of the book categorized to the same group three then undiscovered planets behind Pluto, similar in size. Nobody has classified Ceres to a dwarf planet in 1955, since this classification was generally accepted in 2006 and authors of the book used then valid (not future) classification. If this sentence shall remain, it will be incorrect, until will be accompanied by long explanation, much extending scope of this article. Jaworski (talk) 00:23, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

A few sentences removed

They believe more of its science, if not all of it, will be proven correct in the future. However, interpretation of this claim is complicated by the delay between first use as "teachings" in 1935 and first publication in 1955. Science discovered during the two intervening decades can be perceived as prophetic by believers, while skeptics think such facts were added prior to publication. For instance, the catalytic role that carbon plays in the sun's nuclear reactions is described in the book. Hans Bethe's announcement of the discovery was in 1938, well before publication. Whether it was present in the original "teachings" cannot be verified.[4]

A few above sentences removed as not entirely correct. Today’s readers use only the date of first publication of book, the year 1955, as the base of search for prophetic science. http://www.ubthenews.com/Reports_List.htm (Jaworski (talk) 13:21, 28 May 2011 (UTC))

If that is the case, a published, reliable source needs to be cited. Also, it would then be more of case of adding further detail and nuance to the article rather than eliminating the currently sourced material. A website like the one you linked to, by the way, isn't considered reliable for wikipedia purposes (WP:RS), anybody can put up a website. Wazronk (talk) 18:19, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

This website uses many reliable sources and all it conclusions are verifiable and well documented. There is also The Urantia Book introduction, done by author of this site at Denison University.

Recently I have added to this article a few examples of prophetic science in The Urantia Book, information as short as possible but with links, that allow to verify all such findings, for example:

The book states about supernovae “the most recent of the major cosmic eruptions ... was the extraordinary double star explosion, the light of which reached Urantia in A.D. 1572. "Physical Aspects of the Local Universe" The fact that this was double star was discovered in 2004.

Unfortunately all those information were removed as well as link to the mentioned website, where they are discussed in details. Even the number of current translation of the book – fourteen – as stated on publisher website, was removed.

I have removed from critical section of this article only this material which was misleading or obsolete, explaining all such changes in discussion. Most of those paragraphs were now reinstated. The main source of criticism in this section is Martin Gardner book - Urantia: The Great Cult Mystery.

Sandra Collins, SLIS, University of Pittsburg, wrote in the conclusion of her opinion about Martin Gardner book [Library Journal/April 15, 1995]: “Given the lack of scholarly distance from the subject, the patronizing tone, and the gross editoralizing, it would be difficult to recommend this book to any library”.

I find this article about The Urantia Book rather far from neutral point of view. Jaworski (talk) 08:49, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

The neutral point of view policy (WP:NPOV) is that "Editing from a neutral point of view (NPOV) means representing fairly, proportionately, and as far as possible without bias, all significant views that have been published by reliable sources."

The viewpoint that UB is prophetic (which isn't even accepted by sizable numbers of UB believers necessarily, see the Sprunger quote) is a tiny minority viewpoint that is already represented in the article descriptively, and with two specific examples from published third-party sources that do meet WP:RS. That's more than enough really (arguably too much), see WP:UNDUE.

This is quintessentially into the territory of an exceptional claim (WP:REDFLAG), that celestial beings provided prophetic science in a supposed revelational book. As wikipedia policy is clear in WP:V, "Exceptional claims require exceptional sources".

The website you cited falls short of being a reliable source for wikipedia purposes and a lot shorter for being an exceptional source. It's a self-published website of analyses by a non-scientist who is upfront about his purpose being UB promotion. He's non-WP:RS both in the sense that he's not a professional, respected authority on the topics (unlike, say, McMenamin on geology) and in the sense of not publishing through a peer reviewed respected channel but rather on a website he owns.

I'll point out that the need to cite a reliable source for analyses like these cuts both directions. There was a WP:OR analysis someone put in the article that UB's cosmology was like the steady state theory. Lacking a source, and also in the interest of streamlining the "Cosmology" section, I removed it.

The other point you bring up... Is true I took out the specific mention of 14 translations. Originally this was in the article as 9 I think, and the citation is a 2006 document from the publisher. The update to 14 was made but without a new source to support it. There is only a need to bring a source to the article that supports 14, and it's fine. I wouldn't be surprised that there is more than 9 but I didn't want to look it up and since I figured 9 was possibly an old figure I changed it to "a number of translations". Wazronk (talk) 04:00, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

In this quote Sprunger didn’t say anything that he doesn’t believe in prophetic science in UB. Look at the end of quote. The opinion of one man can not be used as proof of what is accepted by sizable number of people. Scientific analysis of those subjects, published on the Truthbook and the Urantia Fellowship sites suggest, that it is belief of rather majority of UB readers.

In some way The Urantia Book itself is an unusual and exceptional source, difficult to classify, and many problems arise from this fact.

At the same time this article is full of one man - Martin Gardner – opinions. His opinions are quoted 12 times in various parts of this article WP:UNDUE He had bachelor degree in philosophy but his opinions on the subjects of astronomy, physics, biology etc. are regarded in this article as WP:RS . His findings are 16 years outdated and biased. Because lack of scholarly distance from the subject his book was not recommended to any library. All his biased opinions should be removed from this article except for fact, that he wrote critical book. Jaworski (talk) 20:00, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

Dubious

Martin Gardner was intimately involved with TUB, and including his opinion as if he were an unbiased observer or scholar breaches NPOV (and also, in some twisted way, self-publishing/self-reference). This must be revised or removed: in any case, the extant statement is not referenced even as-is. JohnChrysostom (talk) 02:32, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

Copyright correction

Recently several paragraphs were removed from this Wikipedia page for the reason of copyright infringement. They have now disappeared completely. The URANTIA Book is not copyrighted, so this doesn't seem like a valid reason for removal. On the Wikipedia page for The URANTIA Book, it states: "In 2001, a jury found that the English book's copyright was no longer valid after 1983. The English text is a public domain work in the United States, and in 2006, the international copyright on the English text also expired." Can the information that was removed be re-posted? Thank you so much. (Chartruese (talk) 23:08, 19 October 2011 (UTC))

Copyright was not the only issue. Those sections were undue weight and original research. We're just here to summarize what reliable sources have to say about the subject, not give a sermon on it. Ian.thomson (talk) 23:18, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Comparing with the Book of Mormon

I think the line is inspired from Brad Gooch's book, but I don't think it is useful to compare the UB with the Book of Mormon's "popularity". First of all, the U book is much newer than the Book of Mormon. Secondly the latter is a book that people read because they belong to a church that espouses it. The book is intimately tied to a well established church and religion. Not many people are really 'into this book' without being part of the religion - with all the rewards and obligations involved. Outside the Mormon church, I believe the Urantia Book likely is 'more popular'. Also the book of Mormon is the only example of a new revelation given. There are tons of examples of ones that are no longer nearly as popular as the UB (for example in terms of book sales). It clearly has not exploded in combination with an organized religion as the Book of Mormon did, but compared to dozens of other books claiming to be from higher intelligences etc, it has had consistent sales etc since it was published. Some such books become hits or 'bestsellers' and then lose momentum, the UB did not do so but has proven to be a 'long seller' over the decades.184.96.39.201 (talk) 01:55, 3 January 2012 (UTC)