Latest / Urantia Radio / A Conversation with Byron Belitsos Part 2

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A Conversation with Byron Belitsos Part 2 · Urantia Radio

0:00
Welcome to the Rancher Radio podcast, Jim Watkins, good to
0:03
have you here. And a moment, we're going to be
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joined by Bayern boletos who is just back from an event of great
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importance. He attended a conference in
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Washington DC, in late November at the American Academy of
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religion, and it was the first time at the Rancho book presence
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was felt at this convention that attracts thousands of people
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from around the country. And even around the world who
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are in the business of teaching religion in our Our cities in
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our schools and Byron is going to share what he experienced and
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much, much more here on the ranch Radio podcast, we have
0:44
Byron bullet. The thought we had them on a
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couple of podcasts ago and he was headed off to the American
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Academy of religion which was held in DC and it was a big deal
0:55
around the funding firing as you are doing that.
0:58
While I was on a cruise, You were there with all these do you
1:04
know, religious teachers and professors in here?
1:07
I am juggling beer on a boat in the middle of the Caribbean, but
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I thought of you would rather have been with you actually, but
1:18
you were kind enough to write about because I asked when I got
1:20
back I wanted to know what you know how it went and and there
1:24
are so many things that you wrote that.
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I just felt compelled to get you back on and and maybe talk about
1:29
some some of it, you would mention that there were 100
1:32
other major seminaries and institutes on hand that were
1:35
there. You were members of the Rancho
1:39
Fellowship, lending Goodwin David Cantor.
1:41
Big buck Weimar and re-read Otis Sharon atoms.
1:45
They were there. Chuck Thurston was there.
1:48
You had a lot of support. So what was it like?
1:51
And in first question for you, which is what you would, has
1:56
motivated you to do this is that you want there to be a
1:59
scholarly. I just discourse about the
2:02
Urantia book. Be right?
2:03
So you're feeling is when you went into the Seminary.
2:08
A couple of years ago, you realized that there was so
2:11
little reference at all to the ranch of look in any scholarly
2:17
order. And so, tell us that story first
2:20
about what it was like, you were, you were going to Seminary
2:23
Union, Theological Seminary, it's 2021, so, tell us that
2:27
experience. Oh yeah.
2:30
Thanks, the union Theological Seminary or, you know, it's
2:33
right next door to Columbia University and upper west side
2:37
of New York and Colombia has this fabulous library.
2:40
And of course, you know, the the digitized periodicals of all
2:45
fields of knowledge. And so you know those grad
2:47
student you get to search these databases and you do a thorough
2:51
search on the ranch a book for periodicals for essays and do
2:56
scholarly pieces. There was practically nothing.
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I'm In really nothing there, but in books in the, you know, the
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huge huge, you know, Library there, the Columbia has, you
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know, upwards of 10 million books and that's connected to
3:10
the Seminary libraries, 800 thousand volumes main menu,
3:14
theology, religion, and their only two bucks.
3:17
There was the ranch, a book, but an old Edition, and with the
3:23
stamping as to when it was taken out, when it had been checked
3:26
out which they used to have. And it was only a Poor people
3:29
have checked it out, really? Oh yeah.
3:31
Oh sure. Yeah, it was.
3:32
Yeah, and not the right addition an old Edition and then Martin
3:37
Gardner's book was the other book.
3:39
That's important that right there.
3:41
Would it upset me a lot? I would have.
3:43
And so that means you think okay, well, something's got to
3:46
be done about this. I mean, yeah.
3:50
I mean you know we're those of us that are sort of activists
3:53
about this and wanting to get, get this rolling in these
3:56
different things. Ñ use right and One of the
3:59
venues that we haven't paid much attention to is this the
4:02
academic world. And so there are was in pretty
4:07
academic setting and I mean I knew what it was going to how
4:11
was going to be and I you know figured there wouldn't be much
4:14
there but at couldn't believe it was so little you know serve
4:18
example the Urantia book secondary works that we all know
4:22
about like the pair ammonia or something.
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Those aren't in there and so I Contacted him and I gave him a
4:30
list of things and actually don't know if they ever required
4:32
them. But in any case, I had to deal
4:35
with that, and I had planned to do some work on the, you be
4:41
there because I told them going in, I was going to do it, and to
4:46
my surprise, they let me in to do that, but it wasn't.
4:49
The only thing I wanted to do, but I applied to Princeton
4:53
Divinity School. Also, when they really overtly
4:57
said, like to my face, Face. No, you can't do that research
5:01
here, why? Jesus the whole thing?
5:04
Yeah. So God that's that's that's
5:07
another story maybe for another time.
5:09
But you know, you could have done this at Harvard, you know,
5:12
for example because Harvard they broke ground because of an Angie
5:17
first and was there and brought that forward at Harvard Divinity
5:20
School. So a lot of credit to her to get
5:23
that done. But Harvard's really wide open
5:26
in the Divinity School. And where I was a wide open, do
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you mean they're open? They're tolerant of other views.
5:35
You mean wide open or wide open in the sense that they need
5:38
more? They're not up there.
5:40
They don't, they don't really they're not really picking or
5:43
picky. Yeah, they're not particularly
5:45
picky because they're their background.
5:47
A lot of people don't know this, but Harvard is not like any
5:50
other Seminary, really. Because it Harvard Divinity,
5:53
School was founded by. Italians right in the early or I
6:02
think mid 19th century, right? So unitarians are quite
6:07
open-minded. Yeah, they are right though,
6:10
it's not like it's a Yale Divinity School or Duke Divinity
6:14
School which you know, pretty you know, not real conservative
6:17
but but definitely focused on biblical roots.
6:24
And of course, I go far beyond it, but it, but it is there.
6:26
They're Christian cemeteries that are Combination will, but
6:29
this is Harvard is not didn't really other than unitary, but
6:33
even though you're tearing is not a non-denominational, you
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know, they're they're, they're not strict about Doctrine,
6:39
right? That's just, not so, but
6:41
Harvard, but making that happen at Harvard, was that was a bit
6:46
of an inspiration for me, trying to do the same thing at fairly
6:51
equivalent seminary in New York. And, and lo and behold I did let
6:57
me in and I got a Jesuit guy who was my reader of my thesis and
7:05
who was, you know, just what's a great this way in the sense that
7:07
they are interested. Widely interested widely read
7:11
people and open-minded. So this guy enabled me to do it
7:15
even though he didn't know what the UB was, but he sort of
7:19
trusted me and so I was able to do research of not even
7:26
research. I was just exegesis Of the
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Urantia book itself. Yeah.
7:31
When I reach your truth, evil and sin and the Demonic, or at
7:35
least excerpt from it. I got the feeling that you were,
7:38
you were very careful about what you included, as reference
7:42
material, from the Rancho book. It was it was very well done
7:46
because you could tell you were trying to take as much of a
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objective approach as you could without without the appearance
7:54
of having a personal preference for the ranch of teachings,
7:58
Okay, it didn't it didn't sound at all.
8:00
Like, you were someone who was actually a reader for a long
8:03
time. Was that your intent was to sort
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of keep it? So it wasn't a personal, but
8:08
more of an academic approach to using using anecdotes from the
8:13
book, you know what I'm asking? Well, I certainly do Jim and in
8:19
the field of theology, you know, most of the most of the
8:23
academics are members of, or sort of Friendly to a
8:29
denomination, you know, certainly the Catholic
8:31
theologians are and but most of them will disclose that their
8:37
Methodist or the Presbyterian. And so you can't you don't want
8:40
to hide that, but you want to have a critical distance from
8:45
from the materials. That's the whole point, right?
8:47
And so you do both you, you but you you don't use the occasion
8:53
to evangelize, right? But you do, you know, you will
8:58
exploit Kate you know whatever it may be John Wesley or
9:02
whatever your source is and so I actually hate the you be but
9:07
without the adverbs and adjectives as you know.
9:11
Yeah. And that's a smart approach
9:13
because it just gives more credulity what you're trying to
9:15
do. So you go to this convention.
9:18
So you you've determined from your experience at Union
9:22
Seminary, the Theological, Seminary that you now motivated
9:26
to go and see what Avenues are. Available to get the Urantia
9:29
book up out more. And so just from the experience
9:33
you had at this event was that surprising to you?
9:38
How many people have even heard of the Rancho book at this
9:41
convention? Virtually none.
9:46
There were over seven thousand attendees.
9:49
You know, most all of them academics future analysts and we
9:55
had a pretty In Your Face Booth. And that's a couple thousand
9:59
passed by our booth because we were kind of on the far end
10:03
where they put the small, the small organizations.
10:06
So, but a lot of people want the entire West Wing.
10:18
Right. Yeah, but Catholics, but and you
10:21
know, they should because, you know, these are Big institutions
10:24
with, you know, history, lots of info, And they have, you know,
10:28
it's so it's not so much that it's the seminaries in the
10:32
universities, but it's mainly the Publishers that are
10:35
affiliated with them and or independent Publishers in the
10:38
field of Theology of which there are maybe 20, major ones, you
10:43
know, published for worldwide and, you know, the best academic
10:47
stuff. And so they have these big, big,
10:49
big exhibits there. And as far as the eye can see
10:53
I'm in their books. Being put out on every topic,
10:57
we're Kitchen Theology. And so yeah, we had back to your
11:00
question that we we could tell you can tell as people passed
11:04
your booth that they recognize that or don't and then you just
11:09
use a little good little sad for her for all of us to realize,
11:13
you know, in our experience there, how little we are
11:18
recognized. Are these people who are there
11:22
on the floor to see what's going on right there walking by and,
11:26
and, and you, you soon discover. So, you know, is once an hour,
11:32
did we have, somebody really stopped to ask what this is and,
11:36
and, and now and then there'd be somebody say yeah, I've heard
11:39
about that from a graduate student or, you know, somewhere
11:42
along the line. We ran into this, but I don't
11:44
know what it is. It was kind of a, but in there
11:46
was a few that really did there was maybe three or four and that
11:54
kind of knew what it was wondering if you had anybody who
11:58
knew what it was but had a bad opinion of it or maybe a
12:01
preconceived notion ain't but they wouldn't come up and tell
12:04
you that obviously but I wonder if but it's shocking to me, you
12:08
know, you guys are all there. We you know everybody who's
12:11
listening to this program you and I we sort of have our lives
12:15
involved in this and it's I find it somewhat tragic, doesn't
12:19
Affect my belief but I find it tragic.
12:22
And I wonder you must think about this, too.
12:24
What are we doing wrong? Are we doing something wrong?
12:28
First, it says funny you say the word tragic is that was the word
12:31
I wanted to use to tell you, yes, this actually went into
12:35
this interviews. I want to get across the gym
12:37
that this is tragic. So we're in agreement on that
12:40
and and, you know, I think it's really we put it on of kind of a
12:44
mundane level and we could say in answer to a question, why is
12:48
this the case? It's simply it's simply because
12:52
nobody wanted to Target that audience in particular over the
12:57
decades then and there were reasons for that.
12:59
I mean I think one of them is that you don't know how to get
13:04
started because you don't have anything to stand on other than
13:06
a single text. Yeah, and and that's not how I
13:11
could do. They work from they work from a
13:15
set of texts and essays articles reviews.
13:20
So you want to get a body of something then you can begin to
13:23
build a discourse from that but but you never Get into the
13:28
academic business with a single text that you call revelatory.
13:33
So you in your own in your own Community, you would have
13:39
scholarship going on in the community, right?
13:42
So you could put that get that shirt.
13:45
Make sure that gets into the journals.
13:49
You know, that's so that's another thing we didn't try.
13:51
People who are academics, did not try, who are you Ranch book
13:56
and who are academics? Did not publish anything.
14:01
That I know of, in terms of reviews, essays research pieces
14:06
in any academic Journal, there may be exceptions but so you
14:11
don't have that 2.2 And I would think that, after 50 years, I
14:18
mean, certainly Meredith sprunjer has written books.
14:20
I think Sadler wrote A Few. There have been other, Angie, as
14:25
you mentioned, Angie Thurston, I think just published one within
14:28
the last five years. Other was other works that most
14:31
Siegel has sponsored the foundation and you're right.
14:34
There isn't, if you go to any bookstore, if there's still, any
14:37
bookstores in your neighborhood, in this has always been the case
14:40
you go into a Barnes & Noble and you see all these, you go to the
14:43
religious, Action. Oftentimes, you won't even see
14:47
the Rancho book, but you'll see every other cockamamie, you
14:51
know, anything to do with Zen, or as a million different
14:54
things. But yet, you know, the greatest
14:56
assemblage of writings probably in the last 500 years and yet
14:59
it's, it's not there, it should be, there should be at our
15:03
libraries. I know it's in our prisons, we
15:05
spent the first 20 years trying to get the book into prisons and
15:09
they still do it and I think it's great but you know that's
15:12
your right where was I guess the argument could be made.
15:17
Well, Jesus, didn't worry too much about the scribes and
15:19
Pharisees, did he? And I guess there's some truth
15:22
to that, but he was still considered a rabbi because he
15:25
had the education of the, the Old Testament at his fingertips.
15:29
He could pull a quote out of the air like anybody so he could use
15:33
the academics arguments from the Old Testament, from which they,
15:38
you know, Source their material. But the ranch a book and maybe
15:42
Matthew blocks book could be a big help to this.
15:44
Because he's Unearthed a lot of these Source sources, you know,
15:48
even though the Urantia book, doesn't give direct credit to
15:51
where that Source was Matthew block, have you blocked us,
15:56
right? So Matthews work, for example,
15:58
should be in these databases that I was Consulting when I was
16:01
in a seminar and they're not in there.
16:04
And you know, that that would be one of the first things that you
16:07
would think would be in there. Meredith, some of his work
16:12
should be there. Sadler is Sadler would be but
16:17
nothing he never really put out a book on the UB.
16:19
Although Sadler Junior, you know, have his study, the master
16:23
universe that should be in there in such a library but it was
16:29
never anybody. That was focused that I know of
16:32
that was, especially focused on getting it into these Seminary
16:37
and University libraries. So, you in what you have to do
16:41
is you have to get reviews written by Scholars, you know,
16:46
and to get it, you know, noticed by the, by the libraries, by The
16:51
Librarians, they hold on. Well, you know, I think this is
16:58
the thing that, however, Catherine has been arguing for a
17:01
long, long time. Yeah, yeah.
17:03
That's why. He's put so much effort into his
17:05
works because you know for me the simple reader, I'm amazed at
17:10
all the pre scientific statements made in 1934.
17:14
We're not confirmed until decades later.
17:17
I could write a list of them. I've written a list of them.
17:20
They're still amazing to me that and to me, that would be
17:23
evidence, you know, they're here, here's some evidence, how
17:26
did they know this 1934? But you, and I had that
17:29
discussion in the last podcast and you said that the weakness
17:33
of that argument is you're doing it.
17:34
Because you believe it already and you can't, he can't take
17:38
that approach. You have to be very.
17:40
It has to be, I don't know. What would you start with?
17:44
I You studied the book. You're a reader.
17:47
If you were going to approach the say one particular paper, or
17:52
one subject from the book that you could go after and unearth
17:57
some, I don't know scholarly knowledge.
18:01
What would you, what would you choose?
18:03
I guess, what area of the book? Do you think you would want to
18:06
try to go in and take a scholarly Approach at explaining
18:11
or? Yeah, the one that I'm currently
18:13
doing. NG with the topic of Good and
18:16
Evil that one. Okay.
18:18
Yeah. That's a good one.
18:19
Yeah. Because you're one.
18:20
Yes. And that's of great interest
18:24
solve easily in any generation. There was the problem here with
18:28
so much evil here. And and, and how do we know the
18:34
good? How do we know the Divine will?
18:36
Well, one way is, by contrast with evil, but what really is
18:39
evil and what are they, or their degrees of evil.
18:41
And what is others said about it?
18:44
So my, my task was see, not just to do exegesis of the ranch
18:50
book, that's what we tend to do. We just do it either.
18:53
Even the, you know, the book by, you know, they even Matthew
18:57
blocks work. Well, no, I would say not
19:00
Matthew block, but say the study of the master Universe by Sadler
19:04
jr. Is just about the UB.
19:06
It's not a comparative, right? And that's what you need to be
19:11
doing you need. So, when my current book, You
19:15
know, I have 200 Pages talking about everybody else's ideas
19:20
about about evil, you do, right? And that's what you do, I need.
19:25
So, you know, you show you show an interest in, in, in
19:30
everything around the topic. Not just your what you believe
19:36
in, and that's what we call a scholarship.
19:38
But if there's nothing wrong with, you know, what you believe
19:42
in and doing a Actions of that. And that everybody does it.
19:46
But that's not scholarship unless you use a methodology of
19:53
a little bit of critical distance from it.
19:56
And this is kind of why I think you want to try to.
19:59
I mean, you have a pretty big plan your auntie book, academy
20:03
yours. Are you?
20:05
Let's talk about that a little bit.
20:06
Tell us about this. What is you be a?
20:10
Yeah, you be a is, you know what, I kind of hatched the idea
20:14
of having a booth there, which was made me queasy right away.
20:19
Because I knew it was going to be difficult to pull it off.
20:23
I think you had to put down the name of the entity.
20:25
He and I did not want to do this as a Rancher Fellowship project
20:31
because that's an advocacy organization.
20:33
That's a, that's reader Believers.
20:35
I didn't want it to be that or the or the foundation.
20:38
So I invented a new entity so I could call it that at the booth
20:42
that was an independent entity that was had a scholarly Focus.
20:46
So I so it was a little bit drill premature because it
20:50
hadn't been thought through that much.
20:53
But yeah, so I kind of came up Name.
20:56
It's a generic sounding name and so you see this at the booth and
21:01
the people say, oh, these people are doing critical study of
21:04
their own of their own revelatory text, that was the
21:07
idea behind it, but there's two parts of that.
21:12
You might say, one part of it is just get the ball rolling one
21:15
way or another for this notion of critical scholarly Research
21:24
into the text. That's Just anyway, you want to
21:26
do it. And so this is just one of many
21:29
ways, it's just announce an entity that that has that ideal
21:32
and and that's it could have been done another way.
21:35
Another way to do it would have been this launch a scholarly
21:38
Journal? Yeah, well they do have journals
21:42
around Fellowship has the journal Right, because you could
21:48
never get that journal into a seminary.
21:50
No, no. It's, it's, it's it that.
21:54
So the idea of a Urantia book academy would be to bring to
21:58
attract people who would be as part of their academic, study to
22:03
apply, critical studies to the Urantia book, and delve into the
22:07
subject matter. And, and, and then do the
22:10
research to substantiate, whether the authors were
22:14
accurate or not, is that sort of in the direction you Wanting
22:18
that to head and then you could, then have a is that am I on
22:21
track? Yeah, you started so totally on
22:24
track and you know, it's a way like anything else.
22:26
I mean you you get disinterested Scholars.
22:31
So to speak who would take up a topic about what is your Ranch
22:37
book, say about the trinity. And if the writing a book about
22:41
the Trinity, they can cover in a couple of paragraphs and say,
22:44
well, this is esoteric text or whatever you want to call this,
22:47
which states that the Trinity, you know, has these permutations
22:51
in 27 and that these, you know, or whatever you want to say,
22:54
this is what you could imagine that somebody would do
22:57
comparative study of that and compared to what to what parent
23:04
likes that or what about the baby, something a little bit
23:07
more rooted in science. Let's say you took the first the
23:12
ranch book explanation of the origin of our son you know we
23:15
pegged the Big Bang if I've got this right.
23:18
The Big Bang according to current science is 14 billion
23:21
years ago which is about the time of the last disgorgement of
23:27
the giant nebula that spawned the birth of our son and that's
23:31
just my own non-academic putting two two and two together to come
23:36
up with four but couldn't someone take a scholarly
23:39
Approach to just that theory that the Urantia book says and
23:44
then go out and find out if it's possible through our
23:47
understanding of astronomy to do today.
23:50
To determine that our son is indeed the result of a nebular.
23:54
Disgorgement 17 billion years ago we won't whenever it says it
23:58
was that's what I'm talking about.
24:01
Like there's a lot of Science in the ranch a book that I think
24:04
would be red meat or people who are, you know, curious Well, you
24:09
know, that's where we're closest to what I'm calling for.
24:13
We're already doing scientific symposia, which in which people
24:17
do look at current knowledge outside of the Rancher book and
24:22
compared with the UB, right? So that would be a scholarly
24:25
approach to it and that's what we need to do.
24:28
So we're doing a decent job with science now and but, but you
24:34
were not taking the next step which is to get bring it to the
24:37
larger Community. We're just We're just doing it
24:39
for each other. We're not doing it such that,
24:43
it's a grad student in cosmology somewhere could find it.
24:48
If they did Research into that question, they wouldn't find it.
24:52
You know, they're only. So we're outside of those
24:54
databases of Scholars. And so it's not that hard of a
24:58
thing to do. We take you to a period of
25:01
years, to get this stuff in Portage in to these databases
25:05
and get a person who Nigel none. Somebody like that.
25:09
Yeah, to to send his article into a well-known academic
25:15
journal and see if they'll pick it up.
25:17
For example, be better. If you're a PhD, you know, that
25:21
you could do that. And that's sort of what Meredith
25:25
did. I mean Meredith was out there
25:27
Hawking this book in the early 60s and he gives it to all of
25:30
his friendly. He knowing that Meredith was a
25:32
very influential, man. I mean, he could probably call
25:35
and he could probably get an audience with the, you know,
25:37
President Kennedy, if you tried, you know, back then.
25:41
And that's what exactly what he did.
25:42
He handed it out to a bunch of Scholars and some of them looked
25:45
at him and said, I'm not reading this.
25:47
This and then and then it will judge gave him the book.
25:52
His introduction was somebody gave him a book and I think it
25:55
was Judge Hammerschmidt who was I think, was he a Supreme Court
26:00
judge or was he a state supreme court judge?
26:03
I'm not sure what we call. Yeah.
26:05
And so he was aware of the book gives it to Meredith and it took
26:09
Meredith almost a year before his before he realized he had
26:13
something important but it seems like we have a long.
26:17
So Do you think that next year, when are you going to plan on
26:20
going back to this every year? And what are you going to do?
26:23
Did what should we do differently at the next, you
26:26
know, symposium Well, big question.
26:29
Yeah, I think that the fellowship committee that
26:32
funded, this the Outreach committee is they just got in
26:36
touch with me to say they probably want to fund fund it
26:41
next year and that would be in San, Antonio Texas of all places
26:46
where they're holding it and it's a very expensive
26:49
proposition but I think they would because the kind of the
26:53
feedback that I've been getting is, you know, people are happy
26:58
with the fact. That we tried this.
27:00
And so yeah, that would be the next thing also, they have
27:02
Regional scholarly meetings of theologians and religious
27:06
studies professors. So I'm going to 1 actually in
27:10
February at Princeton Theological Seminary where I
27:15
hope to get a paper accepted on the UB and I think I'll be able
27:18
to do it and maybe they have Bill Booth are.
27:21
So yeah, it's just it's just you just you just do what any
27:25
scholar does you show up at all? The venues that you read your
27:28
paper Sore and or you get a booth, if you have a any area of
27:34
scholarship that you excel in you you have a booth and you put
27:37
it out and everybody does it. Had been anybody that's in this
27:41
field wants their work known? So why are we do that?
27:44
And I think we it's so just an intention to do it and nobody
27:48
seems to have Advocate gentian to do it someday.
27:51
I mean, I imagine at some point some somebody who is the Rancho
27:55
book student of the taxable it will emerge in a Academia and
28:00
introduce it in the way that they know how.
28:01
Like, it Angie Thurston there more of them, but I think also,
28:05
and maybe I was thinking about this, when you were talking
28:07
about it, you know, the one thing that works against us is
28:11
that we don't have time. You know, we're not archaic,
28:14
they're in there in some ways, our culture's like books that
28:18
are that are rooted in Antiquity, it gives them more
28:21
Authority and then I think that's what we're missing it in
28:24
the Rancho book is relatively young in my opinion.
28:28
It has Had a chance, the seeds are not sprouting quite yet, you
28:33
know, right. I think that's the case.
28:37
And that as Merit astronomers pointed out, among the others,
28:41
you the authority of the Bible is only because of time and the
28:49
fact that the greatest minds of the Roman Empire in Byzantine
28:53
Empire, you know, got engaged with it and wrote, you know,
28:57
books and you know Scrolls of, you know, of exegesis of the
29:02
gospels or whatever. So you just have to have that
29:06
activity that it be makes it preponderant culturally.
29:11
And so, what we have been missing is we have nominated
29:14
preponderant, culturally outside of our own circles, very much.
29:18
Yeah, we're preaching to the crowd, you know.
29:21
Yeah. We preach to the choir when you
29:22
do your will pour live. Religion work has been really
29:25
big breakthrough, you know for us to get out there with You
29:29
know, Nan Your ranches. So that's that's a good example.
29:31
I think. Also the scientific symposia are
29:34
really close to what we need. It is a people doing, go to one
29:37
of the issues is it needs to be comparative, it needs to look at
29:41
current knowledge and compare it to the UPS statements on that
29:45
topic. And we do that in this
29:47
scientific Symposium. That's so it's so all you got to
29:50
do is just move it a little bit. Horizontally sideways into the
29:55
journals with, you know, the right person.
29:58
Person who has a PHD in science, some scientific field that with
30:04
them, just give it a, give it a try.
30:06
But I think it's like a chicken egg thing because you don't want
30:09
to be the first guy to do this. It's really, it's tough.
30:14
And in my case, I waited till I was almost 7 years old, you
30:18
know, because you don't want to be in any kind of get in
30:21
trouble. And that's why the scholars at
30:24
that. We know that our, your Ranch a
30:26
book people at our phds who were teaching They're all their
30:30
underground. They're they're they're
30:32
self-censoring as we say. Yeah.
30:34
Not, not a fun word, but but they can't, you know, keep their
30:39
employment and and do the, you know.
30:42
So so somebody has to. So somebody like me, I'm
30:46
independent and I don't have such a job and I can take a risk
30:51
of my age and and but you know what would have been even
30:55
better, would be that there would be people in the
30:57
fellowship or in the foundation. You whose work is Staff.
31:00
Work is their Staffing. This so that they could say,
31:04
look, we have these 20 major, you know, theological journals.
31:09
Let's try to get the UB itself reviewed in a journal.
31:14
How do you do that? Well, you mail it to the other.
31:18
That's what, that's what Publishers do and, but they've
31:22
never done that. Well, maybe we need to do that.
31:25
We're giving away books everywhere else.
31:27
And that's why it was Encouraging their, you know,
31:30
Tamara was kind enough to get you books for the AR, which is
31:34
great. Because yeah, we did our great
31:36
job at getting it in prisons and getting into public libraries,
31:39
that people don't even go to anymore.
31:41
Let's now get it to to the influencers people, not because
31:45
we're trying to convert them, but because there's good news to
31:49
be found, I mean, my God, if we had more of a modicum of
31:56
objectivity here, we really do think we're the only planet in
31:59
the universe and we just can run things the way we want.
32:02
I mean, the world is in a mess because of this, this lack of
32:06
knowledge. We we don't know that we are
32:09
much smaller than we think in the universe is much larger than
32:12
we even know. And until that gets, I think
32:15
that's why this book was given at this age.
32:17
I think you mentioned it that the Rancher book is a response
32:21
to the Mayhem and the disorderliness of this, this
32:25
current world. It's God saying I'm here like
32:28
with a You know, one of those things I'm here I'm here.
32:31
And this is his, I'm here moment you know, the Urantia book so
32:36
that in those are not your words but that's what your inference
32:39
was that like the way you put that job.
32:43
Yeah, I mean it's also that the celestials know that the Bible
32:50
has been really in the mid-nineteenth.
32:52
Century was the beginning of the end for the Bible as being, you
32:55
know, sort of like in eretz who. I so up until early 19th
32:59
century, there's hardly anybody, you know, other than the French
33:03
Phyllis of sorry you know that he is.
33:05
You know I mean almost every you know just could you could not be
33:09
critical of the Bible. So the Bible criticism is really
33:12
150 years old. So, by the time you come to the
33:14
early 20th century, the leading lights of Christianity.
33:18
Knew that the Bible was was was full of incorrect information.
33:25
And so that's why the UB is a response to that dilemma, which
33:29
is now, we're going to correct the record as to what happened
33:32
in those. And then all the way back to
33:36
Melchizedek, right? So you need to do that, you
33:39
know? And we is a tragedy of this is
33:43
that. Look if you if you will go to
33:45
these these conferences, they are slicing and dicing every
33:50
paragraph in the Bible with hundreds of books.
33:54
Well, it's also yeah. Oh, it's on spiring to walk the
33:58
floor because they're trying to you know, they're trying to get
34:01
to the bottom of what In their exegesis of the Bible because
34:05
there's a desperate need to know what these issues are about
34:09
informant for the modern mind for the postmodern month.
34:12
So they're doing, you know, these wild and treat, you know,
34:14
these these don't while, but these imaginative
34:17
interpretations of the Bible. So the current day and I noticed
34:23
that as well, that's their job, they have to make and every
34:26
generation has to give a new interpretation for the current
34:30
needs and that's what they're doing.
34:33
With thousands of Scholars of doing that.
34:35
And with the UB we've got, you know, like five.
34:39
People are trying to do that. And so we just need to up the
34:42
numbers, you know, get people doing this number one.
34:44
Number two, they have to get tested it, do the logistics,
34:48
they have to get to those journals.
34:49
I have to wear that to go to these seminaries and just show
34:55
up and begin to talk about this, write their papers, a better.
34:57
Write the thesis like I did, like Angie did and get the ball
35:01
rolling. Yeah, because the hour is late.
35:05
Yeah, I think they're in certainly, it would help if we
35:08
had influencers that would talk about a once in a while.
35:12
I learned a long time ago, that it's funny.
35:15
Very few people have actually read the book of Mormon.
35:18
I bet you most people that are call themselves.
35:20
Mormon have never read the entire just, like most
35:23
Christians have never read the entire Bible, but they'll swear
35:26
on that Bible. And you can tell people all
35:29
about the great things about the Rancho book.
35:31
There's a billion different great things about it, they may
35:34
never read it, but that doesn't mean that they can't learn from
35:37
its truths and you don't have to get into, you know, the Trinity
35:42
and the, you know, existentialism in the
35:45
unqualified absolute and all that, you know, you have to kind
35:48
of go at people's level, but there's nothing wrong with
35:51
talking about the fact that GE, you know, saying to somebody
35:54
will, you know, Jesus could have chosen 10, other world, 10
35:57
million, other worlds, to go to any chose hours.
35:59
Now, people might scratch their heads and say, what are you
36:01
talking about? But it will plant a seed in
36:04
their mind that maybe life is much more bigger, much bigger
36:08
than we thought, maybe it wasn't just a, you know, a smart
36:13
philosopher in the, you know, 2,000 years ago, maybe he came
36:17
from somewhere else. Where is that somewhere else?
36:19
What is that somewhere else will?
36:21
He told us about that somewhere else?
36:24
And you know what, you can read about his entire life if you're
36:26
interested. I'll give you this cool book
36:28
that I found. And there you go.
36:30
You've had you've had the discussion and that needs I
36:33
think that to be in more places, you know, Madonna is out there.
36:36
Pushing, you know, how many recruit she had to the Kabbalah.
36:41
I don't even know what the Kabbalah is, but apparently
36:44
she's got a lot of people to sign up for the Kabbalah.
36:48
I think it's an old Jewish ritual, if I'm not mistaken of
36:52
some kind, but, yeah, it's a great tradition tradition, with
36:55
texts and ritual and and belief system, the people are dead,
37:01
they want to know, they want to know, you know.
37:03
And that the certainly with a breakdown of the family, you
37:07
know, the parts on marriage and family could certainly be
37:11
introduced. I wish that you could go on a
37:13
TED talks. And I'm asked you this before,
37:15
when you came out with your, you're evolving soul, His people
37:18
are hungry, for people want to know, what is the soul?
37:21
What is this? Do I have a soul Byron?
37:23
You know, can you explain that to me, you know, that's what
37:26
people are dying for this information and it's for the
37:29
information. You also, this may be too big
37:32
levels here that we should be thinking about is that you have
37:35
a level of sort of the promulgating, this to the
37:40
average person in the street, which is great.
37:43
It's Evangelistic work. It's, you know, face-to-face and
37:47
what we've been doing A lot of it all just do it and then this
37:50
other level which is a little bit indirect it seems like he's
37:54
trying to influence a professor who doesn't believe in the UB to
37:58
put it on his curriculum for a class and religious studies.
38:02
And say this week we're going to study this unusual text and you
38:06
can get it in the library. It's on reserve and I want you
38:09
to read you know paper 170 and write a paper.
38:16
Like that and that's roughly what Meredith's bunker did when
38:19
he was teaching and you didn't they did have to believe it.
38:23
They didn't have to know that you're a Believer.
38:25
It's just this. It was assigned and and then so
38:29
you see that that's a different kind of thing where you're
38:31
beginning to develop a cultural disk or a discourse that is not
38:38
the Believers discourse. If not the Believers evangelists
38:43
it's It's the, it's the next layer of thinkers philosophers,
38:50
Scholars that are what it, what is this thing aside?
38:53
From whether I should believe it, but what is it?
38:56
What does it say about Judaism in relation to what we think of
39:00
know about? Judy is?
39:02
Well, it says some things about You know David you know that it
39:09
says the day that isn't what the Bible tells you you David was
39:12
not a really nice guy. It was not really dignified
39:16
person, you know. So why do they say that?
39:18
Is there any? Is there any other research that
39:20
supports that about King David? And you know, that's that's a
39:25
very particular and peculiar example, but you can think of a
39:29
hundred examples of how you do this without without
39:33
evangelizing it. Yeah, well, I think that's,
39:35
that's one of many, great approaches for introduction.
39:40
And then I think, you know, is now, of course, we get into the
39:43
debate of, okay. How fast do we want to go?
39:45
Do we want to go slow? Do we want to?
39:47
I don't know if we can determine the rate at which this thing
39:50
grows. But like the, I recently read
39:54
the late, John Hale would say, leave me out of it and just
39:57
focus on the work at hand and the work at hand, in this case
40:01
is just trying to create the awareness.
40:04
Otherwise, but I think the scholarly approach is important
40:07
to give it credibility, so long term.
40:10
It's possibly the best thing you could do because if you get a
40:15
professor, doing what's Meredith did in his classes for many
40:20
years when he was teaching in Indiana, out of that came, a
40:23
number of readers who were prominent readers in that
40:26
region. They came because he put it into
40:29
his class curriculum so smash if you had 20 professors around the
40:34
Tree assigning, their people and seminaries were teaching
40:37
theology, or whatever church history that they would assign
40:41
this. In some young student kids.
40:42
Grabs onto this and they make a career out of it.
40:45
Yeah. And they teach their, you know,
40:48
so it's a different feel to it than the street level of Angeles
40:53
and it's working at this level of, you know, higher education
40:58
and also cultural its cultural. It's not religious, really, it's
41:01
a cultural activity. Red, you're not bringing face to
41:06
these people. Like we're, you know, like folks
41:09
are working in our booth. One of the are one of our
41:12
slogans was, we're not trying to save their souls.
41:16
Yeah. These professors, they're
41:18
already teaching theology. We're not there to evangelize,
41:22
you know, to, to bring them into into belief, we're just want
41:27
them to know that this exists. It's on the radar screen of
41:31
thousands of people. And it's a phenomenon that
41:34
Should be studied doesn't mean you have to believe it.
41:36
And just a study of it is sufficient, you know, for this
41:40
for this Criterion which is to create a cultural discourse,
41:44
that's independent of the of the bubbly of the believer
41:47
community. And also the Urantia book offers
41:52
a lot of the missing gaps of our knowledge about our own growth
41:56
is as a species and so from an anthropological point of view,
41:59
it's a treasure Trove of previously unknown information.
42:04
As they say they sort and sensor and bring in new things that
42:08
maybe we didn't consider. So anyway, yeah, well, just
42:13
think it just as finish up. That thought, I mean that if I
42:18
don't know, I mean, is I wrote a paper on Evolutionary biology
42:21
and the UB and submitted it to the, to the scientific Symposium
42:25
and accepted it and that was in the light of what Theology and
42:30
science says about evolutionary biology with reference to the
42:35
orange origin of life. So if that article was in a
42:38
journal somewhere, somebody's going to, you know, somebody
42:41
who's resources. That's going to just going to
42:43
cite by article and it'll be in a footnote and then somebody
42:46
else will see it. Then we'll say, well, who is
42:47
this guy? What else has he written?
42:49
That that's the kind of thing, I mean.
42:52
Yeah and it it is is meaningless.
42:57
Really, unless it gets into the larger community of biologists
43:03
and theologians working with theologians of science.
43:05
It's Benny Lewis is just that's not totally mean, it's
43:08
something. We Believers it's not being used
43:11
to its full potential. This is knowledge that could be
43:13
helpful. It could Aid in our research of
43:16
ourselves in a multiple of facets.
43:19
I totally get what you're saying.
43:20
And I think people listening here hopefully that will spur
43:23
some ideas as well among folks listening.
43:26
So what Byron And thank you for coming on again and spending
43:30
some good quality time with me. And I'm always excited about
43:34
your projects. You've got a couple of
43:36
Publications coming out next year, which I'm very excited at.
43:39
We talked about one of them, which is the truth about evil
43:42
sin and the Demonic and integral, The Odyssey for the
43:46
21st century, which is from what I can tell is a great read
43:50
because I've read about half of it and then reason and
43:52
Revelation, scholarly writings about the ranch of book, which
43:55
is coming out. And it's from And press so you
43:58
are you on track? Now for these books to come out,
44:00
are you almost are you done with truth about CityVille sin or you
44:04
still proofing it and doing the editing and all that?
44:08
Because final proofing is really due in two weeks.
44:12
So it's basically done but then it has to be produced and
44:17
printed. So be several months and the
44:19
other book reason that Revelation is really the
44:22
Forefront of this effort, because it's all these scholarly
44:26
writings that I Find by people like Sadler Emeritus fun or
44:31
essays by number of people, some of whom were using pseudonyms,
44:35
that would be a Vanguard text for use in universities, you
44:42
know, because the only other text is just a very few, you
44:46
know, the that they could there really isn't enough, but this
44:49
would do it. This is a, this is an anthology
44:51
of really good writings. And so, yeah, that's that's more
44:55
like six months out. Okay.
44:57
Yeah. Well, as always a pleasure to
44:59
talk with you. It's an honor for me and I know
45:01
for the audience as well. So thanks again.
45:03
Byron, and thank you. Jim for doing a great work,
45:07
appreciate very much, appreciate you as well.
45:11
It's Byron ballistas, ladies and gentlemen, so glad to have him
45:14
on the show, talk about what's going on and we look forward to
45:17
having him on again, real soon. And also, thank you for stopping
45:20
by. Of course, follow us online.
45:22
Anytime your Rancher, radio dotnet, and our podcast
45:26
available worldwide. I share the good news and the
45:29
till next time, thanks again for stopping by.