And I thought I had seen it all. Not very long ago I wrote a post on the newly discovered Gigantoraptor, and I fully expected to see creationists try to use the dinosaur as proof that evolution didn’t occur. What I did not expect, however, was to see this comment posted on my initial thoughts about the dinosaur earlier today;
CHECK OUT “THE URANTIA BOOK” AND SEE THEIR WEB SITE FOR THE MOST FASCINATING INFO ABOUT EVOLUTION ON THE PLANET. GO TO “SEARCH THE URANTIA BOOK” AND ENTER “PASSENGER BIRDS” I’M SURE YOU’LL FIND THIS INTERESTING.
I had a bad feeling about this one (anyone who writes in all caps (=shouting) immediately makes me dubious), and my feelings were justified as, according to The Urantia Book, Adam and Eve rode giant “Fandors” (“passenger birds”) while in Eden;
74:0.1 ADAM AND EVE arrived on Urantia, from the year A.D. 1934, 37,848 years ago. It was in midseason when the Garden was in the height of bloom that they arrived. At high noon and unannounced, the two seraphic transports, accompanied by the Jerusem personnel intrusted with the transportation of the biologic uplifters to Urantia, settled slowly to the surface of the revolving planet in the vicinity of the temple of the Universal Father. All the work of rematerializing the bodies of Adam and Eve was carried on within the precincts of this newly created shrine. And from the time of their arrival ten days passed before they were re-created in dual human form for presentation as the world’s new rulers. They regained consciousness simultaneously. The Material Sons and Daughters always serve together. It is the essence of their service at all times and in all places never to be separated. They are designed to work in pairs; seldom do they function alone.
…
74:3.4 The third day was devoted to an inspection of the Garden. From the large passenger birds — the fandors — Adam and Eve looked down upon the vast stretches of the Garden while being carried through the air over this, the most beautiful spot on earth. This day of inspection ended with an enormous banquet in honor of all who had labored to create this garden of Edenic beauty and grandeur. And again, late into the night of their third day, the Son and his mate walked in the Garden and talked about the immensity of their problems.
Yikes. Just what the heck is this all about? From what I can tell, The Urantia Book is an obscure, modern religious text that attempts to meld Abrahamic religion with science and New Age mystic B.S., claiming that is supports evolution, but supporting it in a way that it is non-accidental and also allows Adam and Eve to ride around on Gigantoraptor in the Garden of Eden. I honestly had never heard of them before, nor any of their beliefs, and I am certainly not going to put the effort into reading through over 2,000 pages of unsubstantiated, ever-changing woo (although the book is entirely online for anyone who wants to hurt their brain).
This new information will perhaps be useful as a footnote in considering various creationist doctrines while I work on my book, but I’m not going to put much time or effort into such a poor amalgamation of spiritual nonsense. At least now I can promptly run away if I should ever hear a friend or acquaintance say “Have you ever read The Urantia Book? It’s really good!”
Laelaps 
How New Age. How sensitive. How communication-oriented. How… heart-rendingly boring.
Unless an imminent attack by a pack of raving Smilodon was among their problems… “Why, look, Adam! A saber-toothed cat approaches, red in tooth and claw.” “Indeed it does, Eve; and I espy its fellow-cats gathering yonder, bent on joining the fray.” “How ought we to proceed, my beloved co-biologic uplifter?” “Let us mount our trusty Fandors and take to the skies, where we can survey this vista of Edenic grandeur from a lofty point of safety.” “A fine plan, Material Daughter. To the Fandorrr…. auuuughhhh…” (rending and slavering sounds)
Hahaha! I love it! In the space of one comment you’ve managed to best both the writers of Urantia and Jeff Rovin.
mmm, i wonder who the authors are? who are we belittling?
[…] traveled to India, where his body rests in a tomb. Others believe that Gigantoraptor was really a magical bird called a “Fandor” that carried Adam and Eve around the Garden of Eden. Some of the most surprising and strange […]
Click to access AI19800916_TimesPicayune_01.pdf
I think we (humanity) have hurt our brains with all the misrepresent “history” and knowledge society had teach us. We have been manipulated , and also our brains, that is why is to difficult to us accept other beliefs . As humanity in times of Galileo did not believe in a complete solar system rotating around a sun, and finally is prove , now is almost impossible people remove the blind mask in front of their eyes and see things other way society have show. Everything is possible in this material world, and we DO NOT KNOW IT ALL!!!!
Thank You for pointing out to these self-appointed wits that just because THEY don’t know something, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Many people find the reality of interior spiritual faith discomfiting, since they can’t codify it.
The writer of the start of this seems to think he/she does know it all, and the ugly, unfounded, and misinformed japing at the Urantia Book is typical of the ignorance that has plagued humanity for so long. Mention of Galileo is most ironic – the same kind of thinking found today in those who mock the UB was operative in condeming Galileo because he knew stuff that was not in the official body of so-called Knowledge. One can only wonder if the writer has ever looked into the Urantia Book, let alone actually read it. Such mindless and mocking egotism is typical of the modern “intellectual” mind set, which condemns what it does not understand without any serious investigation, just to show how “smart”the writers are.
Those who have actually read and reread and studied the Urantia Book may be few now, but in the future they will be many. Let the willfully ignorant wallow in their own egotistical dreams – in the end the Truth will bury them.
Right on, Keith. At age 33, as a long time avowed atheist, I discovered the Urantia Book and ended up spending 7 years reading front to back, back to front, inside out, and outside in, looking for baloney, darkness, or internal inconsistencies.
Finding a path to God through this book was a miracle for me.
Let the ignorant smartasses wallow in their egotistical ignorance – God will forgive them if they permit.
Praise the gods of havona! Someone else has the spiritual intelligence to recognise truth when they see it! Who ever you are dear soul, thank you for this statement of truth and beauty!! I am, like yourself, one of those few who have read, reread, and studied ub for over twenty five years! Godspeed!
Red Molly;
You are sad;
Stupidity in Academia in alive and, well!
“the earth is flat, I just “know” it!”
I’ve read the Urantia Book and I have to admit the fandor thing was one of my biggest problems with it, and it can be a very disturbing book, but also very beautiful and inspiring. To me it’s the kind of thing you should put aside your skepticism and just explore because there’s much worth finding in it. If you have half a critical mind you won’t be brainwashed by a book, and the looney parts about fandors and other silly things are trifles in comparison to the truly mind blowing concepts nearly everywhere else in the UB. Still, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to swallow the fandor part.
Just got given an intelligent talking Green Amazonian Parrot and I fantasized about riding such a brilliantly colorful feathered bird if it were much bigger. Did u all see Avatar with the 3D glasses and the magnificent colorful flying reptiles they rode ? I immediately reverted to the Fandors in the UB.
These very intelligent passenger birds understood up to 200 word commands and it led me to this blog. After reading the comments of which most were lazy excuses for not reading the book, I thought that although the book may be hard to read, especially since it in many cases uses the highest meaning value capability of the English language, it also and every so often brings ur thought level to the very pinnacle where words have not yet gone and coins a new word and concept that stretches ur mind like soaring on a giant loving Fandor!!!!!
Why should the idea of a now extinct large bird be looney? Some of the stuff being found as fossils is surprising and amazing already.
Picking nit is ok but you should have a solid foundation, a real reason, not just a
vague term like “looney”.
The crows and ravens we are familiar with are all very smart – smarter than some primates like gibbons.
I know right!…it would be the way the first men felt the first time they saw other humans riding on the backss of horses, you know! Everything thatsever been done, at one point was strange, and unbelievaable to those who were seeing it for thee very first time. Im half asleep…forgive my sloppy type!!! Lol, godspeed my brethren!
I praise scientists and everyone whom have and still makes tremendous efforts to make the rest of us (who do make other more vanal things for a living) to understand why and what we are. Unfortunately many have developed the same intolerant and close minded attitude as the catholic rulers of ancient times, the good scholars (I mean both religious and scientists) shall read and study with criteria and common sense both sides of the coin and just then express their theories and findings on a much more balanced way. Just as a clergy would sound stupid nowadays by saying that the entyre cosmos revolves around planet earth as a modern scientist saying he is totally right on his findings.
Roger Rolly, flying birds? it sounded crazy for me when I first read about it, and even the fandor thing has not been totally crystalized in my brain, I have no choice but to remember that every other beast ( at least a big percentage of them ) has been dominatd by humans, felines, aquatic species, even the wildest mammals can be domesticated or at least be put under our control, just because we extincted almost all the big birds during our walk trough earth does not mean it might not have been possible; there are some ancient inscriptions on rock of some men fliyng over some big birds, I may be wrong but I think it was some mesopotamian culture, probably sumerian I¨m researching on it.
How can anything sound crazy when you stop and think, oh ya, existence! Science and philosophy can come close, but they are still within the confines of all that is and cannot explain existence. Oh wait, it was an accident. My bad. Thank you science.
An open mind is not an invitation to stupidity!!!!! Do some research… I’m sure you will find that there exsits material things that can not be explained by modern science. And besides all that, can any one here say that they’ve done or produced something that could quite possibly promote the spirituality of a human being?????????????
Summerian texts refer to them as GIR or MU. They were kept in a GIR.SU which I take to be some sort of stable.
Their handlers were called MU.HE.
In the UB, Adam is described as having a glow all over his body. Imagine this glowing “sun disc with wings”. There is evidence of these birds once having existed in almost all ancient cultures. I believe the first ziggurats were constructed for the explicit use and housing of these magnificent birds.
Having just discovered the UB, I haven’t made up my mind on whether to believe if it’s true or not. But the general impression I get from it is it’s how the Bible was originally meant to be understood when it was first written. It feels to me that it fills in a lot of gaps that the bible just glazes over, like how Adam and Eve’s children were able to find wives (they weren’t the only humans) and where the Sabbath originated from ( the customs of the people who followed Adam at that time) where that the Bible glazes over in vague, metaphorical language, whereas this book is much more specific with events.
If anything, it’s more believable than the actual Bible. I think it just takes a bit of a paradigm shift.
The regrettable truth about The Urantia Papers (aka The Urantia Book) is that all too often, non-readers rely exclusively (or primarily) on the input from others who like themselves have not read its Foreword + 196 Papers and also like themselves are basing their evaluation on input (mostly negative) from others who like themselves have read very little if any of its contents. I think I have made my point without carrying out the number of levels of non-readers to a ridiculous degree. I find this to be an unfortunate reality because I would challenge anyone who considers themselves to be hungry for a superhuman revelation of cosmic truth and thirsty for a reasonable and logical explanation of the otherwise unexplainable to momentarily set aside everyone else’s views about all things Urantia-related and judge for themselves solely on what IT says as opposed to what others have said about IT. As for me, this Fifth Epochal Revelation of Truth to our planet, Urantia, simply answered questions that no one else had the answers to (none that I found to be acceptable anyway). By no one else, I include religions whose teachings I have studied and the books they promote including The Bible. But when I suggest that one ignore everything that others have to say about The Urantia Papers, I include myself in that category. Don’t take my word for something you can easily deduce for yourself. To paraphrase, why should I try to convince someone else something that will only register as being a surviving experiential possession of this initial mortal journey if it is personally experienced by someone seeking that kind of destiny-determining experience and who subsequently embraces the direction dictated by THEIR choices…THEIR decisions…THEIR momentum? Countless times people would tell me they hated this movie or they really liked another one. And then when I would see these movies, I often had a reaction that was the exact opposite of the one they conveyed to me. I find it amusing to read movie reviews that demonstrate this divergence of opinion in written form. And my perception of opinions about movies can be equally applied to opinions about The Urantia Book. I could employ a psychological manipulation and say “DON’T READ IT!” knowing that this would potentially increase some people’s interest in reading it but I am hesitant to utilize anything that might interfere with one’s freedom to choose TO READ OR NOT TO READ even if it means that some truth-seekers will be deprived of learning about things going on “behind the scenes” until after their soul is released from the bonds of the flesh to continue the next universal stage of educational development (intellectual, emotional and spiritual) and progressive advancement of the God-seeking mind who has learned (not just from any book but more significantly from personal experience) that believing is the only price of admission to the afterlife and living forever is merely a by-product of being on the right path as opposed to being some kind of reward for the performance of good deeds done dirt cheap!
HI, I have to agree. When the UB came to me I had no idea what I was about to experience. I began reading and found myself entranced. Daily, I got up two hours early just to have time to read this amazing book!!! After the first 1000 – 1500 pages I looked the UB up on the intertnet and was shocked to read how it was portrayed, or should I say misrepresented, even hated. And yes, I agree again, that it seems like thebiggest haters haven’t even read the book.The book is so deep that it is hard to distill to soundbites which sadly is all most people can manage!! Most people don’t have the fill in the blank, time, patience, brain power etc>>>>> to read this book.. I’ve read and continue to reread it, it has improved my life and deepened my love of God. The UB books says we have one mandate to love God and to God is to serve your brother. This has had a positive impact on my life and those with whom I come in contact. I would tell anyone with the capacity to read this book (yes, it is an upper level read) to read the first 500 pages THEN we can talk. God Bless and I am forever grateful for the UB.
Seems like its just a part of a story in this book – not much religious or spiritual bs if you ask me. Whats a book without a story anyway? If you want to judge people that read this book and talk bad about them, at least read paper 100 (don’t start with the begining, its too hard to understand right away). Read about religion in the human experience, then move to Spiritual Growth – pretty cool stuff. Warning, the book can get very complex as far as vocabulary and the amount of information that is packed into a single paragraph. Challenge yourself a little before you give up : ) Sometimes reading with other people can help analyze the message of this book. – – – can’t say enough about this book really. Call me crazy, but it seems to have the answers on how all the people in this world can really coexist.
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The word “fandor” may be related to the word “condor” . Condor is from Peruvian archaic and is without any further research. Some Andites did make it to South America and may well have brought the word with them. Given the profound truth that I experience in the rest of the book I must cut the fandor thing some slack.
Fandors are discussed in the book “Rebel Angels in Exile.” You can believe whatever you want to believe.
I have read most of “The Urantia Book.” One of its main themes could be described as “The Master Race” since it heavily promotes eugenics, including negative eugenics, such as: Rounding up “defectives” and segregating them by sexes in forced labor camps; and putting “the incurably insane” to death in gas chambers As an Atypical Autistic, I have been horrified time and again while reading forums about the book in which readers casually talk about “fixing” people like me as if we were stray dogs and doing other horrible things to us. Some people have gone so far as to suggest that people like me are not even human, and therefore we do not share the same civil and human rights that everyone else enjoys. It strikes a similar posture toward the poor and other disadvantaged persons by suggesting that society just let them die for the betterment of the human race. It is because of these teachings that I have rejected “The Urantia Book” as a credible religious text. I cannot endorse a book that advocates genocide, especially not when I would be one of those “inferior” creatures who would be destroyed in the name of eugenics.
Christina White:
I’ve studied the Urantia Book for the past 40 years and it’s truly alarming that you could say the dishonest things you’ve said about the UB. There is absolutely no mention of putting defective people in labor camps, absolutely no mention of gas chambers and throughout the book sex equality is always a marker for advancing civilization. How you managed to interpret the UB as promoting separation of the sexes is pure nonsense.
The message of racial harmony and integration, sex equality and the abolition of warfare are the ideals and goals of progressive civilization.
Congratulations, either your reading comprehension level is abysmally low, you are a hyper-reactionary left- or right-winger or you simply cannot handle the truths of human progress on moral, ethical and spiritual levels.
The book may not be for you, that’s not a problem at all. But to tell lies about what it actually says and means instead of trying to understand what it says and means is both intellectually lazy and shameful.
I urge everyone to reject this person’s deep prejudices and ignorance of the Urantia Book
Wow! You called this girl a liar when yourself are the liar! You said that “There is absolutely no mention of putting defective people in labor camps, absolutely no mention of gas chambers and throughout the book sex equality is always a marker for advancing civilization.” Well, buddy, here ya go!
Paper 72 – “Government on a Neighboring Planet”:
72:10.1 (818.4) The methods of this people in dealing with crime, insanity, and degeneracy, while in some ways pleasing, will, no doubt, in others prove shocking to most Urantians. Ordinary criminals and the defectives are placed, by sexes, in different agricultural colonies and are more than self-supporting. The more serious habitual criminals and the incurably insane are sentenced to death in the lethal gas chambers by the courts. Numerous crimes aside from murder, including betrayal of governmental trust, also carry the death penalty, and the visitation of justice is sure and swift.
72:10.2 (818.5) These people are passing out of the negative into the positive era of law. Recently they have gone so far as to attempt the prevention of crime by sentencing those who are believed to be potential murderers and major criminals to life service in the detention colonies. If such convicts subsequently demonstrate that they have become more normal, they may be either paroled or pardoned. The homicide rate on this continent is only one per cent of that among the other nations.
72:10.3 (818.6) Efforts to prevent the breeding of criminals and defectives were begun over one hundred years ago and have already yielded gratifying results. There are no prisons or hospitals for the insane. For one reason, there are only about ten per cent as many of these groups as are found on Urantia.
_____
“Absolutely no mention,” huh? Well, gee golly gosh, Batman! Either your reading comprehension skills are abysmal or you are deliberately lying or both! Apparently, 40 years of experience with the book have simply turned you into a religious asshole instead of a spiritually mature child of God. You are a poser and a fraud and ought to be ashamed of your despicable attitude and behavior!
An Addendum to my previous post:
The UB does not say we should “let the poor die” , it does not advocate any form of genocide, and it does not classify autistic individuals as “defective”. Christina White’s confusion and miscomprehension is difficult to understand. The UB says that goal of civilization is to reach the stage of Light and Life. We are probably hundreds of thousands of years or more from that goal.
Eugenics is, when properly understood, not about hurting, killing or imprisoning individuals or groups. It’s about, through science and genetics, understanding how to breed out the worst characteristics of human beings while leaving our good qualities intact. We cannot do this at this stage of our evolution, and the writers of the UB know this. But they point out that sooner or later we’re going to have to discover the science that prevents the real defectives like Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Putin–the real racists, killers and warmongers among us–from being born in the first place. As I said– we lack not only the scientific knowledge and technology to do this but also the moral and ethical wisdom to do it even if we had the science.
As far as race is concerned, the UB promotes the amalgamation, the interbreeding of all intelligent people and also supports inter-racial marriage, saying the worst thing about it is the prejudice against it
The original poster asserts that the UB supports evolution, but not as an accident. He is right. The UB makes it clear that there is no conflict between the truths discovered through science, such as our evolution from primates, and the idea that evolution is planned and designed. Science can give us no proof that evolution is simply an accident–that is an assertion, an assumption that many materialistic biologists presume. We could just as easily presume that there is a divine consciousness, an absolute intelligence behind evolution and we’d still need the science to understand the mechanics of evolution.
The really intelligent and deep-thinkers among us know that there is no conflict between true science and real religion. By real religion I do not mean the superstition, misogyny, nationalism, racism, materialism and sexism that pervades many religions today, but rather the inner core of the individual human being’s capacity to seek truth, to seek beauty, and to seek righteousness. Most people think of faith as Jewish faith, or Hindu faith, or Christian or Muslim faith, whatever. But real faith is entirely personal, unique to the individual. Unfortunately, most people define their faith merely by the group they happen to worship with, but that’s not faith, that’s belief.
If with each passing year you are becoming more kind, more fair, more just and more patient, if with each passing year you are learning how to really love, serve and care for more people, you probably have real faith, even if you don’t know it yet. That’s a small part of the the UB really teaches.
Dear Christina,
I am sorry for turning my argument about your post as an attack on you personally. My error and I regret it.
Could you please point the readers to the places in the UB that advocate “gas chambers”, “labor camps”, and fixing people with autism? I cannot find any mention of these terms. Also, please provide references as to your statement that the UB says that society should just let poor people die.
Thank you,
Jerry Gerber