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Science and The Urantia Book - With Marjorie Ray · Urantia Radio

0:00
Welcome back. And if you are new to the
0:02
podcast, we talk about the Urantia book here on these
0:05
Urantia Radio Podcast. An exciting series of papers
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that discuss cosmology, science, history, and philosophy in a
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book that asserts the existence of a personal God and also
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includes the extensive life and detail of his son as he lived on
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our world 2000 years ago. So welcome to the Urantia Radio
0:24
Podcast. In this episode, we're going to
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talk with longtime reader Marjorie Ray, a scientist by
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trade and who has an extensive history in multiple sciences,
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including microbiology, as well as being involved in the NASA
0:37
space program and other assorted scholarly accomplishments.
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While we discuss the science of the Urantia Book, Marjorie will
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also be the host of the upcoming Scientific Symposium slated for
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November 6th, 2025 in Chicago at the Urantia Foundation and also
0:56
on Zoom. We'll get that information as
0:59
well as a general discussion we'll have about the different
1:01
sciences in the Urantia book and how it stacks up with today's
1:05
science. So sit back and relax as we have
1:08
our conversation with Marjorie Ray, this time up on the Urantia
1:12
Radio Podcast. Marjorie Ray is part of this
1:37
year's Urantia Scientific Symposium, which we're going to
1:41
talk about here. Marjorie, it's good to have you
1:44
here. We should say that Marjorie has
1:47
a science background. She attended the University of
1:49
Alabama, grew up in the South. Now she lives in the Northwest.
1:53
She discovered the book in 1975. Of course, the Urantia book.
1:57
Welcome to the program. How are you?
1:59
Oh, thank you, Jim. I really appreciate this
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opportunity to talk with you about the Scientific symposium.
2:07
I've been involved in it since Ralph Zayer reinstituted it a
2:12
number of years ago. Anytime anybody wants to talk
2:15
about science in the Urantia book, I'm I'm there because I
2:20
is. Well, that's one of my favorite
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topics next to talking about Jesus.
2:23
So yeah, we're we're right in a good place.
2:26
So yeah. I've had some interesting
2:31
conversations over the years with various people.
2:33
Some who I think have spoken at previous symposiums, one of them
2:37
that comes to mind is Philip Calabrese.
2:41
I don't know if you had an opportunity to.
2:42
Speak Oh yeah, yeah, Oh yeah. Known to Phil.
2:45
We're we're it's a really incestuous group that sort of,
2:51
we say in contact people that have been involved in it.
2:55
Let's talk about that. Be part of that.
2:56
Yeah, I'm glad to be part of that group.
2:58
Tell me a little bit about this year's symposium.
3:01
Is it going to be in person this year or as with COVID, doing it
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over Zoom and tell tell us about the event.
3:09
OK, we're going to do a hybrid meeting this time.
3:12
The 1st 2 that we did, which we, the plan had been do it to do
3:16
them every three years. The 1st 2 that we did, they
3:20
originated at, at the foundation and, and you know, we all came
3:26
to the foundation and did our presentations and did all of our
3:30
discussions in the, you know, big forum room.
3:34
But then when the pandemic and, and Ralph did those two and at
3:39
the end of that second one, he asked me if I could take over
3:43
for doing the organizational part.
3:46
And but the unbeknownst to us was that the pandemic was going
3:50
to happen, you know, and so the only way we could really do it,
3:55
because travel was just way, way too difficult was to do it
3:59
totally virtually. And that was a real experiment
4:03
because we were using a new Zoom platform and all this sort of
4:06
stuff. So we learned a lot from that
4:08
one. We all the way and we've got
4:09
some really good critiques. But this time we're going to do
4:13
what a lot of study groups, you know, actually do is, is have
4:17
hybrid meetings where they may have members that have moved
4:21
away, but they still want to participate in the group.
4:23
So they'll get together and have their group meeting and then
4:27
people will Zoom in because they all have, you know, some sort of
4:30
set up at the meeting. We're going to do the same thing
4:34
at the foundation. We're going to be in the forum
4:37
room, which is now a big Zoom room.
4:39
So that, and it will allow people like Nigel, instead of
4:44
having to fly halfway around the world and be just so jet lagged
4:49
to come, you know, to the founding.
4:51
They'll be able to zoom in and do their presentations.
4:55
But some of us will be at the foundation and, you know, any
5:00
other participants that are that they'll be able to hear if they
5:04
want to, you know, zoom in and, and join the group so that we'll
5:09
be able to have some good, you know, good discussion about the,
5:13
the, you know, the different papers that are going to be
5:17
presented. We, we ask that people, you
5:21
know, that we're going to the proposal process is that between
5:25
now and the 15th, if you contact joanne@urantia.org, she will
5:32
send you a kind of a format for your proposal.
5:36
It's, it's not real complicated, but we do, we do need to have a
5:40
kind of an idea and then we have a, a committee that will oversee
5:45
all of them and read everything and, and then we'll accept, you
5:52
know, some, there's only 10 slots because it's, it's pretty
5:57
intense. You, you give a 45 minute talk
6:00
and then you have 45 minutes for discussion.
6:04
And so, so you, you know, it's, we only have the 10 slots other
6:11
and, and you can only do so many of those in a day just because
6:15
it's, it's very, very intensive. And the, the people that are
6:19
chosen to participate, you'll be, we will, you will share your
6:24
stuff with your other participants ahead of time so
6:28
that they can possibly formulate questions based on your, you
6:34
know, how much information you've given them up to that
6:36
point. And so we will originate at the
6:41
foundation. But people that are, you know,
6:44
we have participants from Europe and then Australia and Canada
6:49
and they, they'll be able to zoom in without having to
6:52
travel. Then some of us will travel to
6:55
the foundation. I will travel to the foundation
6:58
and some of other people that live close and want to come and,
7:02
and be part of the, the, the group that you know, gathers
7:07
there that you know, that'll be, that'll be great because you,
7:11
you know, you get to have a lot of personal interaction that
7:13
way. And so it's, it will, after you
7:19
send your proposal in on the 15th, we'll let you know by the
7:24
1st week or so of May as to whether your proposal has been
7:29
accepted. And then we give you a timeline
7:34
as to when you need to, you know, have your, your
7:37
presentation ready. There are a lot of people that
7:40
like to rehearse, particularly if they're zooming to, to with
7:44
the technology. And so we offer rehearsal times
7:48
for, for people if that they want to, you know, do it or if
7:51
they're worried about their slides or something like that.
7:54
We give them an opportunity to, to work with our team to, to get
8:00
it in a form that that is, is easy to understand and their
8:05
graphics are good and things like that.
8:08
And then the, IT starts on November the at the found, it'll
8:14
originate at the foundation, but it starts on November the 6th
8:18
and it goes until noon on Saturday, November the 8th.
8:24
And, you know, we're, we're hoping this, this hybrid sort of
8:29
format will encourage a lot of people that are far distant.
8:35
And the travel may have been a, you know, an obstacle in the
8:39
past. We've removed that obstacle now.
8:42
And we're hoping that even we'll get even more proposals.
8:48
And it's, it's not that somebody writes sincerely, they don't
8:52
know, write a bad proposal. It's just that we do have the,
8:56
the kind of the theme. Every one of them has had a
8:59
theme. And this one is evolution of
9:02
human knowledge 100 years later, because we know from from Garge
9:08
Avison and Maryland Kulakis delving deep into the history of
9:14
the Urantia book, that they first started getting
9:17
information around 1925. And so we are 100 years in since
9:23
the 1st when we were beginning to get information from our
9:27
unseen friends and our revelators.
9:30
And so there's a lot that's been happening in human science.
9:35
And of course, we know that there are inconsistencies and
9:40
they tell us they're going to be inconsistency scientific and
9:43
that it would need to be updated because they're not going to
9:45
give us unearned knowledge, OK. And so we are going to look at
9:53
this 100 years and hopefully we get proposals on papers that,
9:59
you know, where things were maybe discussed in the Orange
10:02
Book we have are coming closer to what aligning to what they
10:07
say or things that seemed very obscure before are now becoming
10:12
very, you know, much clearer to us.
10:16
Yeah, I want to delve into that too, for I, I know that there's
10:21
a fair amount of people who know very little about the Urantia
10:24
book. And this podcast serves as a as
10:26
a bit of a study aid, at least I'd like to think it that way.
10:29
So let's talk about the importance of the science in the
10:33
Urantia book, because like you, I've always been fascinated by,
10:37
for example, the story of the, the the six Sangik races, which
10:42
is in contemporary archaeology or anthropology.
10:46
That means nothing. There has never in my, and I
10:49
read as much as you about any differentiation about this idea
10:54
that there were the andonics, the original human beings
10:59
stretching back 997,000 years ago.
11:02
Andon and Fonta, and this is according to the Urantia book.
11:06
They founded the modern humans. They were the first to achieve
11:11
wisdom and and the ability to pray and that distinguished them
11:16
from their animal cousins. They decided to take their life
11:20
into their own hands. They journeyed north and they
11:23
founded the endonic race. For 1/2 a million years, the
11:26
endonic race spread over the northern climates.
11:29
That's what the Urantia book says.
11:30
That's a summary of the narrative, and it wasn't until
11:33
the sand geeks appeared on the stage some half a million years
11:37
later in this Swahilik valleys of Nepal, that you had the six
11:43
colored races who then migrated outward.
11:45
Now, I don't want to go through the whole story, but reading
11:48
that in 1935, many people would have said, well, it's possible.
11:52
Reading it in the year 2025, I'm still amazed that our science
11:58
has still not caught up to the Urantia book as to exactly how
12:02
we came about having multiple different colored races with
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skeletal types that are different, the mongrels and all
12:08
the various types of human beings.
12:10
What do you say to the Urantia narrative and to someone
12:14
listening who has no knowledge of any of this?
12:17
How close is it? For example, are the Denisovans,
12:21
which is the term for the You know the is it?
12:26
Am I saying it right? The Denisovans, right?
12:28
These are. Yeah, right.
12:30
Are they? That's the way I pronounce it,
12:31
anyway. Yeah.
12:32
Are they the Andana? Are they the Andonites?
12:35
That's as a as an example. They are or they're very, very
12:42
you know, they're they're in that that group.
12:45
They're OK that that may well be it and you know it it it's
12:51
really interesting that you bring up the thing about the
12:54
Sangitz, because like you, I have been amazed that we haven't
12:59
gotten a little bit further on on on that that that front.
13:06
OK, that we can't, but you have to look at at what all the
13:15
archaeologists and the, you know, the the anthropologists
13:20
that yeah. And and all of that that are
13:23
looking back in time. There are so many levels of
13:28
civilization. I mean, we're not thinking in,
13:31
in terms of a million years when we're looking at, I mean, we
13:35
haven't gotten that far back yet really.
13:38
You know, we're not that they they're still talking about less
13:42
than than 1/2 a million years ago in a lot of in in most
13:46
cases, in a lot of cases. And they they so so we still got
13:52
to get back a lot further than we're really looking at now, you
13:58
know, because I mean, when they they think of olden times, it's
14:03
it's not even anywhere on the scale that they talk about it in
14:06
the Urantia book. OK.
14:08
But yeah, you have to realize that that that's a way far down.
14:14
You know, we know about the geology folks know about the
14:17
different eras of that, but they, they're, they're not
14:21
necessarily placing humans exactly, you know, back where
14:26
they are. And they keep finding, I mean,
14:28
this is the thing that I, I find really interesting is they keep
14:31
saying, oh, we found a new civilization.
14:33
Oh, we found another new civilization.
14:35
You know, it, it's, it's, it is this sort of thing where we get,
14:39
we're getting closer and closer and, and we're moving toward
14:44
that. If you want to say it's a
14:46
target, but we're still somewhat removed from it, you know, and
14:51
there are certain discoveries. I think that will be, you know,
14:55
made. Maybe, I mean, I'm 75 years old,
14:57
maybe I'm during my lifetime, maybe not where they'll rethink
15:02
about, you know, I mean, they, they, the, the idea that, you
15:09
know, where everything comes from or, or, or even where it
15:14
like the, the Sangit's, they haven't placed that where it
15:20
says it is in the Urantia book, you know, because they haven't
15:22
really asked that question yet very much.
15:25
And so it, it's going to be just like anything else, the
15:31
evolution of our knowledge as we get better and better, we, we
15:36
develop better and better tools, we make more and more and more
15:42
discoveries of what's on our planet that things will, you
15:47
know, become more understandable and explicable as we go further
15:55
back, because that's going to inform the stuff that's more
16:01
recent also OK, about how it got here.
16:04
But really, if you think about it, we've only scratched the,
16:07
the, the surface. You know, I think the oldest
16:11
archaeological dig I was added. And is it in Ignacio on the
16:16
Adriatic in Italy, They continually been digging there
16:23
for like, you know, only less than 200.
16:27
I think it's less than 200 years now, or maybe it's right at 200
16:31
years. That's not, you know, a lot of
16:35
time yet for us to have, you know, do I mean, they, they,
16:40
you, you, yeah, yeah. And so there's and there's just
16:44
so much because I mean, there was an explosion at times when
16:48
when tribes were moving, you know, different groups were
16:51
moving north or they were moving S because of the, you know, the
16:56
the different ice intrusion ages and things like that.
16:59
You know, they start finding these like, Caucasian people in
17:04
northern Mongolia and they have no explanation for, you know,
17:07
it's things like that where if you read the Urantia book, it
17:11
makes a lot more sense why they find some of these these things.
17:15
That's the reason I find things like Gobeki techies so
17:19
amazingly. Yeah, interesting, you know,
17:23
because. But by the Urantia book, we kind
17:26
of understand what that could possibly be, you know, and if.
17:29
I know it correctly. I think it's in the paper.
17:32
They time it to Goblecki Techie, which was of course this
17:36
underground structure that they discovered highly complex
17:39
architectural finds. And the deeper they go, the more
17:42
advanced the structures become. And you can correlate that to
17:46
the section of the Urantia book where it talks about the last of
17:49
the Andites, which coincides with about the time that our
17:53
current archaeologists believe that Kablaki Tepe was was
17:57
erected or constructed. There's another example here
18:00
where the migration of the Red race, the Urantia book specifies
18:05
that about 80,000 years ago, that was when the last of the
18:09
remnants of the Red Race made it across the Bering Straits before
18:13
it fell. But our current paleontologist
18:16
only date the migration. It's going back maybe 15 to
18:20
30,000 years. Is science too dogmatic?
18:24
Now you've hit on a totally you know, a great scientific
18:29
question is that if you are, it has to do with how science
18:35
actually works. OK, I'll make a recommendation
18:39
of a, a books read. If you're really interested in
18:42
how science works, there's this great professor at Columbia
18:47
named Stuart Feinstein. And he, he wrote this to well,
18:51
he's written two books, but his first one was the title was
18:55
Ignorance. And then the subtitle is what
18:58
drives science. OK and explains to you how how
19:02
science works. He's a he's a really
19:04
interesting. I had a colleague at, at at
19:09
Columbia who actually taught in one of students, one of Stuart's
19:13
classes. And his class is a lot of people
19:18
go to Columbia, they sign up for the class and if they get into
19:21
accepted into the class, by the time they're a senior, they're
19:23
very grateful. But anyway, what he does is he
19:27
invites really major scientists to come and talk about not what
19:31
they know or what they discover, but what they would like to
19:35
know. In other words, where their
19:36
ignorance is what drives them is the thing that they don't know,
19:41
you know, and that's what they talk about, not what they've
19:45
done, not what they, that, you know, their, their current
19:48
theories on anything, but just the things that they that are
19:51
driving them to want to, to know.
19:54
And, and they have no clue, you know, they're, they're, they're
19:56
just trying to figure it out. And so it's not like a it's,
20:00
it's really a very interesting idea.
20:02
But that being said, he explains in that book somewhat about,
20:08
about dogma, about science dogma.
20:10
And you have to realize that. You know, science buys in to a a
20:19
theory and they they, they kind of, you know, all jump on board
20:23
on it. And and so then if you're
20:27
basically a scientific heretic and you go outside of that and
20:31
you challenge that you're, you're really swimming up
20:34
against a really strong current. OK.
20:39
But it's like, you know, if you're really understand how a
20:44
scientist is supposed to do that you're always supposed to be
20:47
withholding. In other words, you always, you
20:51
know, withhold a thing that, you know, it could be disproved.
20:57
And I mean, actually the way science works is that you're
21:00
supposed to hypothesize a theory or put one forward and then try
21:04
to disprove it about how it doesn't work instead of, and
21:10
this day and age we tend to, because of funding and stuff,
21:14
try to prove, you know, prove stuff.
21:16
And so it's not exactly. The scientific method right
21:22
because. Right, right.
21:23
You're not when you're with, when you know, when you're
21:25
withholding and you put forward a theory and try to disprove it,
21:29
then you're you're pure scientific method.
21:32
But that's not how science really works.
21:34
So they've been a lot of that is because of funding issues and,
21:38
and people having and, and so a group of scientists that are
21:42
working in some area will marry themselves to a dogma that and,
21:48
and what they try to do is, you know, gain more and more nuanced
21:55
about perhaps the the theory, you know, to know more about how
21:59
something works instead of the thing about finding about all
22:03
the things that don't don't work.
22:06
And this is probably where one of the places we have shot
22:09
ourselves in the foot now knowing how artificial
22:12
intelligence works is that scientists on the whole, they do
22:16
not publish negative results, OK?
22:22
There's no there, there was one journal called the Journal for
22:25
Irreproducible Results. That was the only one where you
22:29
could publish something and then somebody can.
22:32
But I couldn't do that. OK, The thing is, is that all
22:36
the, you know, you only hear about the successes.
22:39
You never hear about the failures, OK.
22:42
And I can tell you as been scientists that I had many more
22:45
failures than I ever had successes.
22:48
And but we didn't publish those, OK.
22:53
Now with AI, if we had had a method or a way to publish all
23:00
the things that we tried that didn't work, AI would have so
23:05
much more information to work with.
23:08
OK, but we didn't do that. So, so I'm hoping that with AI
23:14
we begin to publish like if you're, you're working in a
23:17
particular area that, you know, part of the, the papers will
23:22
will become, you know, we tried this, but this didn't work.
23:27
So then we went to this and then we went to this and then then we
23:29
went to this and then this is what actually worked.
23:33
That would give AIA lot more information to deal with than
23:38
just the things that that work. I'll just say a quote.
23:41
I mean, it's one of Edison's most famous quote, you know,
23:44
when asked, you know, how long did it take for you to invent
23:47
the light bulb? He says, well, I had to figure
23:48
out 99 ways that it didn't work before I could get to the way it
23:52
did work. And that's sort of, I think, you
23:54
know, knowing what doesn't work is, is valuable information.
23:58
But if you don't. Absolutely, yeah.
24:01
And and The thing is, is that science because, you know I mean
24:05
because of the the tenure system, you know here and in
24:09
Europe, if if you know you basically publish or parish and
24:13
many things. And so you and, and this is all
24:17
tied to the, the dogma because if you go against the big guys,
24:21
you know, and and try, then you, you, it, it's hard going you,
24:29
you, you may, you may not get funded.
24:31
You might be seen as a troublemaker, you know.
24:33
Yeah, and you might be seen as as sort of a, a heretic or an
24:37
outlaw, so to speak, you know, and but it it's and, and people
24:44
have, you know, have done it, OK.
24:46
I mean, it's like now the changing of the ideas in
24:51
cosmology about The Big Bang and all that.
24:54
I mean, they're getting further and further away from The Big
24:56
Bang. OK, Yeah.
24:58
Notice that and James Webb's telescope I think disproved
25:02
because now they've discovered galaxies that are so huge and
25:06
they say, well, if he it would have taken more than 14.6
25:10
billion years for that mass of energy to travel the distance
25:14
that we see and it. But if you notice, they've been
25:17
very quiet about these, these sort of discoveries, right?
25:22
Yeah, you have to know where to be to be looking about it.
25:27
But there's, you know, it's, it's becoming a much more, you
25:36
know, I used to say what, you know, when you went to the part
25:38
about the I mean, when I was first young, it was the, there
25:42
was 2 ideas. There was a steady state idea
25:44
and there was The Big Bang, OK. Then the steady state just went
25:47
away because, you know, they wanted the glitzy Big Bang stuff
25:51
because of the early information they were getting.
25:54
Now they're beginning to realize first of all, that, that it that
25:58
things are a lot older, a lot bigger, a lot more stuff is out
26:04
there than we ever, you know, dreamed.
26:07
And so, so it's not as heretical now to to say that the current
26:14
ideas about The Big Bang just don't fit the data that we've
26:18
got, you know, and. I will say this, I, I will say
26:23
that based on again, the Urantia book and it describes I, I
26:27
always find it interesting and I hope I get a laugh out of you on
26:30
this one. But when I read the first, the
26:33
first page or the first section of the start of three-part 3,
26:38
which is the history of of Earth, of Urantia, it doesn't
26:42
start with the history of Earth. It goes back 98900 and 87
26:48
billion years ago to somebody known as a what is He is an
26:53
assigned Sentinel and he files a permit.
26:58
Right, that's that's right. He calls a permit.
27:00
I know it's it's fantastic. It's sort of like you, you guys
27:04
need to like plant your your flag a long, long way back, you
27:08
know, from what you're doing it. And I agree that that it's sort
27:14
of like, you know, you get to be a finale and then you finally
27:18
get a job. Yeah, right, right.
27:20
Yeah, that's sort of the job. Training takes a long, long.
27:23
Time. Yeah, a long time.
27:26
And then finally you'll get a job.
27:27
Yeah. And that's, but it's, it's the
27:31
same sort of thing, you know, you, we, we just don't, we, we
27:35
have not developed the, the and they tell us that we have, you
27:38
know, our human capacity is limited, yeah, to to, to some of
27:43
these things. But I don't know personally,
27:46
I've never been put a been able to put a limit on God myself.
27:50
Yeah, but you know, maybe other people again, so.
27:52
Well, that's what makes this symposium so exciting because
27:54
as, as we progress, I personally have found and, and Philip
27:59
Calabrese's work was great because he listed the
28:02
approximations of how likely we got things right versus how much
28:08
we got thing wrong. And he nailed it to I think
28:11
either 50 million or 10 million to one that the Arantia book
28:15
could have accidentally guessed things that ended up being
28:18
correct, you know, so I, I give him big kudos to that.
28:23
Do you think that by proving the scientific credibility of the
28:29
Urantia book will give it more validity in academia and is that
28:35
possible? Well, let me just first say this
28:39
you you use the P word, which is proving.
28:42
And if you're truly a scientist, your job isn't to to prove
28:47
anything. OK.
28:49
And, and Feinstein talks about this in his book, if you prove
28:56
something, then investigation stops, you've proven it and you
29:01
don't give it any more time. OK?
29:03
That's not what science is about.
29:05
Science is constantly pushing forward and you're not proving
29:09
anything. You're just gaining more
29:12
evidence to either prove it to to support your hypothesis or to
29:18
discount it. OK, so, but as far as like as we
29:24
gain more data that coincides with things in the Urantia book,
29:30
I think that's one of the things that's going to, you know, going
29:33
to help it as far as like, you know, being accepted.
29:38
But, but the Urantia book, it is not really, you know, it, it's
29:43
not got the validity yet where it's considered a, a reference
29:49
book. You know, I mean, that's part of
29:50
the reason I went to Oxford and, and started doing philosophy
29:53
after I retired from being in science.
29:55
It's because I, I wanted to, you know, write a thesis and, and
30:03
put the Urantia book in it. My particular area was ethics.
30:06
And of course, in the Urantia book, there's tons of ethics.
30:09
And so I, you know, it was more that, you know, the more people
30:15
that we get writing theses in, in every area, be it science or
30:19
philosophy or religion or whatever, you know, we got a lot
30:26
of academic work to do on that, that front, because it's not
30:32
really accepted as a, you know, reference or even in the case of
30:38
professional philosophers, if you look at some of them and are
30:43
they have to couch their writing because the question is whether
30:48
you're going to reference the Urantia book and not be able to
30:51
find a publisher. OK, because it has no, you know,
30:57
credibility as a yeah, as a represent.
31:00
So the, you know, we have to start back like I did, you know,
31:04
made an attempt at at Oxford where, you know, every paper I
31:07
wrote at Oxford in my classes and stuff, I used something out
31:12
of your answer book. OK.
31:13
And but I wasn't, you know, trying to publish a book or
31:17
something like that. But, but you have to start and,
31:21
but as more and more data, be it in cosmology or in genetics or
31:28
in my area about, you know, biochemistry or in chemistry,
31:34
then, you know, as we become more and more aligned with
31:41
what's in, in the Urantia book, that's going to help it.
31:45
But that that academically is going to take, you know, a
31:49
while. I mean, my old mentor, Jim
31:51
Mills, he was a graduate chemist, but when he retired
31:55
from his, his, you know, original career, he went back
32:00
and got a PhD in, in philosophy. He was a senior scholar for the
32:04
state of Florida and got a PhD at 72, I think he was 72.
32:11
And he, and he wrote his thesis on Whitehead and his use of the
32:17
IM, which is of course, what he could, you know, pull from also
32:22
the, the Urantia book, 'cause that was a philosophical that,
32:25
you know, as they say, a philosophical concept that we
32:27
have developed for ourselves. And that's what Jim wrote his,
32:32
his, his thesis on. But see, we need more of that
32:37
sort of thing. And the more of those that
32:39
happen, then the more and more so whether it's in science or
32:46
philosophy or the archaeology or history, you know, as it becomes
32:52
more aligned, it will, you know, help with the validity of the
32:58
book. But of course, I think you are
33:00
very much like me, that that's very secondary to us who are
33:05
real students of the book, you know, and.
33:08
I've heard that say before too. It if you're looking for science
33:12
to prove that the Urantia book is a credible document, you're
33:15
missing the point because it's supposed.
33:17
To be. More of a spiritual introduction
33:19
to perhaps the greater universe. And I tend to look at Jesus's
33:23
revelation was more about the personal relationship between
33:28
man and God. Whereas the Urantia book is more
33:30
of the OK, let's fill in the the spaces where you don't have that
33:34
much knowledge about what happens in the universe.
33:37
And we're here to tell you, because the only other way
33:39
you're going to find out is through terrestrial escape, IE
33:41
death and resurrection. Right, right.
33:44
So we're. We can tell you I totally agree
33:46
with that. Yeah.
33:47
What? Are the most amazing things that
33:50
you think the Urantia book did, did, for lack of a better word,
33:56
were prophetic and and as a cellular biologist, anything in
34:00
the book that was written in 1934 that we should be paying
34:04
attention to that would actually aid us in in areas of science
34:09
and health? Well, there there's, yeah.
34:13
I mean, the, the, the, I think one of the most interesting is,
34:18
is for looking at that genetics is that, you know, they, they
34:24
tell us that we did not get the Adamic infusion.
34:27
And basically now you're on your own.
34:29
You know, you gotta, you get the, whatever improvements
34:32
you're gonna have to do yourself.
34:34
And so, you know, now we've, you know, we've got the ability, you
34:40
know, to do that. We can actually, you know,
34:44
change a gene and that's going to be a long time in development
34:50
because we are, we already have some, you know, sort of social
34:56
deep grained psychological things about changing humans
35:04
because of, you know, the way we use the word eugenics.
35:07
And then, you know, World War 2, particularly with, you know, the
35:11
thing about the area and all that sort of stuff.
35:14
And so people that makes this a very negative context on that.
35:17
But actually, you know, what we have now and the ability to
35:22
change some of the things I, I see it as just as we're
35:26
beginning to, you know, go back in, in archaeology and realize
35:31
that older civilizations actually live in different
35:33
places, is that we're going to start with changing the genome
35:39
on for disease, you know, to hopefully prevent disease in, in
35:47
children that have, you know, that are born with genetic
35:50
diseases or even before they're conceived.
35:53
You know, I mean, they, they do now they'll, they'll do, they
35:57
will pick embryos that they know are not expressing a gene for
36:01
something like Tay Sachs or, you know, some bad, really terrible
36:04
genetic disease. And then it is going to, you
36:09
know, progress. It is going to progress on to
36:12
where we, we know that we can, you know, do, you know, do other
36:19
other things with it. But we we as a society, as
36:23
society, as a world society, we're we're going to have to
36:27
make some, you know, really hard decisions, just like it says in
36:31
the you know, your into book and, and about what you have to
36:35
to do to help society or the the all of of humankind, you know,
36:43
the purge of, of disease that you know, and the the genes that
36:50
really are detrimental. And so we'll, we'll do that and
36:55
then we'll move on, you know, to to other things.
36:58
I don't, I have a horror of them, you know, using it when
37:04
they were first doing, you know, changes in genetics, you were
37:07
doing it mainly for somatic cells.
37:10
But then when they got to the point to where they can do it
37:13
with, you know, your sex cells, then then you're, you're, you
37:20
know, some people are afraid of we're playing God, you know,
37:24
but, but but basically in the in the your answering book, they
37:28
said, well, you know, you didn't get the incomplete Adamic
37:31
infusion. You know, that would have
37:33
eliminated a lot of this stuff like, you know, your propensity
37:37
for cancer or, or, or, you know, whatever you may have, but you
37:43
know, so now you've got to figure this, you've got to
37:47
figure it out. You're, you're smart, go out and
37:49
figure it out, you know, and so we are, we're making progress on
37:54
that line, but those also bring in, you know, we've got to grow
37:58
in in ethics and our philosophy of, of life and what we want a
38:04
society to be, you know, and, and that we don't want to be so.
38:09
Yeah, because some of the things that we're doing now with, and I
38:12
know that they in in less savory countries, let's say you know,
38:16
with donor replacement, they're using basically prisoners and
38:21
and that is so egregious. Yeah, right.
38:25
Beyond any ethical boundary, and that cannot be the approach that
38:28
we take. It has to be a spiritually
38:32
fragrant approach to improving the overall health of everybody.
38:37
As a for example, I know in one section of the Urantia book it
38:40
makes a passing comment about the ability of using our own
38:44
body to and I believe it's probably an advanced idea of
38:50
immunology. Immunotherapy, right, right,
38:53
right. Uh huh.
38:54
Where we begin to use, you know, our own when we understand more
38:59
about the human body. I mean, we're doing that now in
39:02
in some cancers, you know where we're, we're looking at, at
39:08
using our manipulating the immune system to can't the
39:12
individual to attack the cancer, OK.
39:15
And so, you know, immunotherapies I've I've
39:19
actually been on an immunotherapy for skin cancer,
39:21
which has worked really well, OK.
39:24
And so you know, but we're using my my immune system to go after
39:31
the the cancer, OK. And so, you know, the, it's
39:35
learning on all of these different levels.
39:38
And they give us, it's like the, the, the, the thing you just
39:41
just alluded to, they give us all these hints, but then when
39:44
we make a scientific discovery about something, we go, oh,
39:49
that's what they meant. OK, that's what then.
39:52
And I love to do that. You know, I like read something
39:55
and I'll go, oh, wait a minute and I'll go back in the Urantia,
39:58
but you know, and I'll figure out where the the and I go, Oh,
40:01
that's what you meant. OK, now, now I get it.
40:04
Thank you. You know and.
40:06
Which begs the question, Marjorie, we're talking with
40:09
Marjorie Ray, who is spearheading the symposium
40:13
coming up in November. But we're looking for scientists
40:15
who want to make presentations. And the deadline to file is
40:18
April 15th. And again, joanne@urantia.org is
40:23
a way that you can get more information.
40:25
What could, do you think that scientists or or researchers or
40:30
any feel, do you think that they could learn a lot from the
40:34
Urantia book? Do you think it's worth even if
40:36
it's done in secret? And do you think it's happening?
40:39
Do you think that there are scientists who are aware and are
40:42
using the urantia? I think so, you know, a lot of
40:45
people think that, that most scientists are, you know.
40:52
Atheists. Agnostic, agnostic at best and
40:55
atheists at worst, you know, and I need to tell you, but that's
40:59
not necessarily true. Now, granted, the, the folks
41:03
that are in the head of the national, you know, they're in
41:05
the National Academy, a larger percentage of those, if you go
41:10
back and look at how the Pew Trust has polled them over the
41:16
years about their religious belief.
41:18
It's really been interesting because the older ones are the
41:21
ones that tend to be what we refer to as non believers, where
41:25
the younger ones don't. They're much more open minded
41:28
about, about it. But there have been some really
41:30
significant scientists who have, you know, proclaimed their,
41:40
their, you know, their belief. And I mean, these are big time
41:43
people, people that have won the Nobel Prize, you know, for
41:46
physics. And one of them lived out here
41:49
on the West Coast, a guy named Charles Towns.
41:53
And he won. He was a major physicist, I
41:55
think he was at Caltech. But he was a serious
41:59
religionist. I mean, he was a flower of
42:04
Jesus. I, I think, you know, he, he
42:08
knew a little bit about the Urantia book.
42:10
You can look him up. He's pretty amazing.
42:12
He also won a Templeton Prize, which the Templeton Prize is
42:16
sort of like the Nobel Prize for science and religion.
42:20
OK. And there's another guy named
42:24
John Pokinghorn. We lost John a couple of years
42:26
ago. I, I met him when I was at
42:27
Cambridge for a meeting and John was a bang up physicist.
42:33
You can read some of his books about high energy and particle
42:37
physics and reality and those things.
42:39
But when he finished being a scientist, he went back and got
42:43
his degree in theology and became, and the Church of
42:49
England wanted him to be, you know, high up in their church.
42:52
And he goes, Oh no, I have to be AI, have to be a vicar.
42:55
I have to go and be in A and so he went in for five years.
42:58
He was a vicar, you know, in a, in a, in a church out in the
43:04
countryside in England and was very loved and revered by, you
43:10
know, his, his flock. And he actually helped start the
43:15
thing that I was involved with at Cambridge called the Faraday
43:17
Institute, which is an institute of science and religion and in
43:22
science and theology. And you can go and look up some
43:26
of the stuff that that they have done.
43:27
I've been there. I've been to some programs
43:30
there, you know, so, so these are people that are, you know,
43:36
they are, I mean, serious scientists, you know, CERN guys,
43:40
you know, yeah, the high energy particle physics guys.
43:44
And they absolutely believe in God, you know, And so you
43:49
mentioned you. That's.
43:51
You mentioned you worked with Elon Musk, the space, I'm
43:55
assuming the SpaceX program. Well, yeah, they only got us a
43:59
ride. NASA got us a ride on his first
44:03
rocket that that got us we needed the shuttle program had
44:08
been, you know, Needless to say, it was discontinued after
44:11
Columbia went down, which Columbia had actually been the
44:14
ship that my, my boss, who was an astronaut and also a
44:17
scientist. He had, he had gone up in
44:20
Columbia and he, you know, but we had trained a lot of people
44:25
on that thing. We knew everybody that was
44:27
killed on that. And our our site was the only
44:32
other place that they, they had a designated site for when they
44:35
did the memorial service from Johnson.
44:38
Was it our building in Alabama? But it it is, you know, we, we
44:47
just got what they NASA had come to us and asked us to solve a
44:52
problem from them. They were thinking about the
44:54
base on the moon and they wanted to know whether it would be both
45:01
economically and scientifically a good idea to think about
45:08
putting a crystallography thing on the on the moon.
45:13
In other words, write that in to the, the moon plan for the base
45:16
on the moon so that you could do crystallography up there in
45:20
microgravity, which is what we were really about.
45:23
And the, and so we, we were involved with some like 300
45:28
scientists over the world over that sent us their proteins.
45:31
And anyway, we were doing this experiment to answer that
45:34
question for, and the in the meantime, this shuttle program
45:38
had of course stopped after Columbia went down.
45:42
And so the, the next best way at that time was Musk was beginning
45:49
to, to, to start his rockets up there.
45:53
And so NASA bought us a ride and it was supposed to have gone off
45:57
in November of September and 2013.
46:02
And understand, I was trying to retire.
46:04
And so I kept putting off my retirement because I was, you
46:09
know, I had a big part of that project and it was really funny.
46:15
It kept getting put off, put off.
46:16
And so finally I, I retired and then they hired me back in as a
46:21
consultant and I went down to the Cape like 6 times trying to
46:25
get that, that rocket off the ground.
46:28
It was just like, and something would happen every time, every
46:31
you know. And so finally it it, it finally
46:35
went off. And then six days later I moved
46:39
to Ireland and well, the reason I I bring.
46:42
Up Elon is I hear him and I I'm AI guess I'm a fan because he's
46:46
so innovative in his thinking. Putting the politics aside for a
46:50
minute, but you know, I hear him talk about things like what does
46:54
he think made the universe? And, and I know that there's a
46:56
group of people, very smart people like we've discussed.
47:00
And my, my instincts are, man, I, I really want to get this guy
47:04
the, the Urantia book because I think that somebody like an Elon
47:08
Musk or even maybe even a Bill Gates, they're missing a big
47:12
part of the picture here, which is I think what's missing in, in
47:17
science in general. It's a very mono monochromatic
47:21
view of, of life as opposed to the stereoscopic view that we
47:25
get when we think about the spiritual aspect of the
47:27
universe, the universal mind concept.
47:30
And that's my desire is what I would like to see smart because
47:34
you know, most Siegel said it best.
47:36
The Urantia book is a smart religion.
47:38
It takes a little bit of work. It, it's, it's not reductionist
47:42
in any, in any fashion. In fact, it's very complex,
47:45
which turns a lot of people off, but it would have appeal to
47:48
people who are not just simply satisfied with simple faith, you
47:52
know? Yeah, it it, I would, I would
47:57
certainly love to to think so. I mean, I know that, you know,
48:02
some of these people are, you know, are committed
48:08
religionists. And then, of course, there's a
48:10
group of them that are not you. You mentioned Bill Gates.
48:13
He's actually a very rather devout Roman Catholic.
48:16
OK. And there's there's, you know,
48:20
other other ones. I, I don't know the prolivity of
48:24
Elon Musk, but you know, there, there are some very smart
48:30
people, one of which I happen to actually know, which is Francis
48:34
Collins, who just. Yeah, Francis, you know, retired
48:39
from NIH and I did a lot of work in the cystic fibrosis area for
48:46
like protein lipid interactions. Anyway, Francis came out of the
48:50
cystic fibrosis area originally and he's a brilliant, he's one
48:57
of the most brilliant men I've ever, ever been around I've ever
49:00
known. And you know, he is an
49:03
absolutely confirmed religionist.
49:06
If you haven't read his book, The Language of God, I can
49:09
highly recommend it. He he, but he's also a
49:16
conservative. He's won a Templeton Prize too.
49:20
He but he's a what I think we would consider a conservative
49:27
religionist in that, you know, he's or almost evangelical to a
49:34
degree and which is great. I mean, and that works for
49:37
Francis and you know, there were there were times like when he
49:43
was under so much threat during the pending.
49:44
I thought about xeroxing just wanted one paper or just a page
49:50
or something and, and mailing it to a you know, but there there
49:55
are people like that and and you just don't know, you know, but
50:00
but like many things, I think a personal approach to these folks
50:06
is it will get you a lot more further down the road than just,
50:12
you know, dropping A2. Yeah, a 2000 page book.
50:16
Here, read this and get back. Gonna Yeah, yeah.
50:19
That I don't think that's gonna, you know, happen.
50:21
But yeah, I mean, I think anybody that is willing to put
50:25
the time in, I don't care who you are, OK, whether you're, you
50:29
know, just my next door neighbor or your, you know, person down
50:33
the street or Elon Musk or Bill Gates or whoever.
50:36
I I think that anybody can benefit from from reading it,
50:42
you know, at many levels, so all.
50:44
Right, well, I have one more question and I.
50:47
And I. And I, I know you'll take your
50:49
time and give me the the a very thoughtful response.
50:51
But as a scientist, what was it about the Urantia book that
50:56
appealed to you and convinced you that it was something
50:59
special? Well, it wasn't me as a
51:05
scientist that it, it, it, it got to me.
51:10
I, I'll tell you the 1st paper I read, which was, I wanted to
51:16
understand why evil existed in the world.
51:19
And I was, And so the first thing I read was the Lucifer
51:25
rebellion. And, and of course, that's,
51:29
that's a pretty, if you're interested in thinking about the
51:36
larger picture of good and evil and iniquity and sin, then
51:41
that's pretty, It lays it out pretty well, you know, And so I
51:46
was pretty hooked from the very beginning of that.
51:49
But the thing that got me was just that from page one to the
51:54
very last page, it's so amazingly consistent.
52:00
And it's, it's that you that I had the feeling that they were
52:07
really trying to help me understand the world that I live
52:12
in, but also the universe that I live in.
52:15
But that the things for me right now are really that are real
52:20
important, are personal, you know, very, very personal.
52:24
It's how I treat other people, how I appreciate other people,
52:28
how I respect other people. All those things came through.
52:32
I mean, I, I did not start in the, in the Jesus papers, but
52:36
boy, when I got to the Jesus papers, I, I just, I couldn't
52:41
stop. I was just, you know, totally
52:43
absorbed. And so, you know, it wasn't so
52:48
much that it told me stuff about science that I thought I wanted
52:52
to hear or, or wanted to, to know.
52:55
It was that I was a very valued, loved child of God.
53:03
And that's, that's the thing that, that appealed, you know,
53:07
to me. So it didn't really have a whole
53:10
lot to do with science. Very, very interesting.
53:14
Well, Marjorie, I have to say this has been an enjoyable hour.
53:17
And I don't really ever go an hour, but I've been.
53:21
Oh, OK. Well.
53:22
No, I it's a good thing. Yeah.
53:24
I'm very grateful. Yeah.
53:26
Yeah, Well, I need to, I need to, I do need to just say one
53:29
thing that the scientific symposium is being is sponsored
53:34
by the Your Rancho Foundation's Education Committee.
53:38
Guard used to head up that committee and boy, he really
53:41
helped us out. And and now, you know, things
53:43
are are changing, but we've always been tremendously
53:46
supported by the education committee for, you know, this,
53:49
the scientific symposium. So for that, I have to give them
53:53
kudos and thank you very much As for doing that for us.
53:56
So yeah, for all of us, you know, we're the, we're the kind
53:59
of the geekies of the geeks in the.
54:02
That's OK. Yeah, we're a loyal, we're a
54:06
pretty loyal group. So we'll, we'll, we'll be here
54:09
as long as we, you know, can and we'll pass it on to the next
54:11
generation of. All right, we'll mark it on your
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calendar. The 6th through the 8th of
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November is when the symposium, We'll be there.
54:18
I'm sure that if you reach out to joanne@urantia.org, she can
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give you the information. If you can't participate, at
54:24
least be a part of the viewing audience.
54:27
And I know people will be amazed.
54:30
And once again, thanks to our guest this hour talking about
54:33
the upcoming scientific symposium and science in general
54:37
in relation to the Urantia book. Follow the podcast on Spotify
54:41
and any major podcast player. Please share this with fellow
54:44
truth seekers and also all of the episodes are archived on our
54:48
homepage at urantiaradio.org. Until next time, be a good cheer
54:53
and thank you again for stopping by.