Month: October 2018

The Search for Extraterrestrial Life

Published on by Jim WatkinsLeave a comment

Last week NASA announced it was stepping up its game on the search for other life in the universe. SETI has also recently received a windfall of funding and is also partnering with various agencies who share a keen, if not heightened interest in finding life out there in the cosmos.

With improved telescopes we have discovered thousands of exo-planets circling suns all around us. Most agree that the discovery of life elsewhere is a game-changer for humanity. Finding intelligent life would be even more profound. The last step might be communication with said life form, but for now, we’re just trying to find the right place to look with so many options.

What if the Urantia Book could provide some clues as to where we might look? Clearly, the Urantia Book gives an entire narrative of the various kinds of life forms there are in existence, and while is doesn’t violate its “prime directive” of giving us the answers as to where they are, it does give us clues that they probably anticipated would help in our search for life in our universe (remember, the book was written in 1934 when idea of ET life seemed more science fiction that science reality).

They give us an overview of the different kinds of life forms that evolve on worlds’ because of the differing environmental factors each planet possesses, heat, gravity, size of the world, proximity to its solar parent, size of the sun, kinds of suns, kinds of atmospheres, etc.

The point is the search is on for ET life, and the Urantia Book could help us.

Here is one statement the UB makes that could provide clues:

41:3.1 There are upward of two thousand brilliant suns pouring forth light and energy in your region of space (our local system) , and your own sun is an average blazing orb. Of the thirty suns nearest yours, only three are brighter.

Here are list of those suns.. We should start here, since it is likely the Urantia Book authors would only have mentioned our starry neighbors since it was in the context of life-bearing worlds.

These are our closest neighbors:

(Note that this list is continually changing as astronomers discover nearby stars with ever more sensitive detectors in a variety of spectral ranges, especially the infrared, where numerous small stars emit their energy. Recall that the brightest magnitudes are the largest negative numbers.)

Common Name

Scientific Name

Distance (light years)

Apparent Magnitude

Absolute Magnitude

Spectral Type

Sun

–

-26.72

4.8

G2V

Proxima Centauri

V645 Cen

4.2

11.05 (var.)

15.5

M5.5Vc

Rigil Kentaurus

Alpha Cen A

4.3

-0.01

4.4

G2V

Alpha Cen B

4.3

1.33

5.7

K1V

Barnard’s Star

6.0

9.54

13.2

M3.8V

Wolf 359

CN Leo

7.7

13.53 (var.)

16.7

M5.8Vc

BD +36 2147

8.2

7.50

10.5

M2.1Vc

Luyten 726-8A

UV Cet A

8.4

12.52 (var.)

15.5

M5.6Vc

Luyten 726-8B

UV Cet B

8.4

13.02 (var.)

16.0

M5.6Vc

Sirius A

Alpha CMa A

8.6

-1.46

1.4

A1Vm

Sirius B

Alpha CMa B

8.6

8.3

11.2

DA

Ross 154

9.4

10.45

13.1

M3.6Vc

Ross 248

10.4

12.29

14.8

M4.9Vc

Epsilon Eri

10.8

3.73

6.1

K2Vc

Ross 128

10.9

11.10

13.5

M4.1V

61 Cyg A (V1803 Cyg)

11.1

5.2 (var.)

7.6

K3.5Vc

61 Cyg B

11.1

6.03

8.4

K4.7Vc

Epsilon Ind

11.2

4.68

7.0

K3Vc

BD +43 44 A

11.2

8.08

10.4

M1.3Vc

BD +43 44 B

11.2

11.06

13.4

M3.8Vc

Luyten 789-6

11.2

12.18

14.5

Procyon A

Alpha CMi A

11.4

0.38

2.6

F5IV-V

Procyon B

Alpha CMi B

11.4

10.7

13.0

DF

BD +59 1915 A

11.6

8.90

11.2

M3.0V

BD +59 1915 B

11.6

9.69

11.9

M3.5V

CoD -36 15693

11.7

7.35

9.6

M1.3Vc

If directions to these stars were included, you could make a map and see that they are distributed around us more or less randomly.

What can we learn from this information? Quite a lot.

  • We live very close (500 lightseconds) to a star. This is probably a necessary condition for the origination and maintenance of life.
  • Stars are very far apart (average about 8 light years for the closest dozen), compared to their size (about 2 light seconds for the Sun); by a factor of 250 million or so.
  • Many stars occur in multiple systems, shown here by the suffixes A, B and C from brightest to dimmest. In fact, about 55% of stars in this list are in multiple systems. The nearest star is a triple. And we may be missing many dim stars.
  • Most of the nearby stars are dimmer (higher numbers for absolute magnitude) than our Sun, by factors of 100 to 10,000.

It’s Been 63 Years Since Gods’ Angels Spoke to Us

Published on by Jim WatkinsLeave a comment

by JR Watkins

On October 12 we will have had The Urantia Book for 63 years. that’s when the first edition of the Urantia Book rolled off the printing press and began to be sold and made available to humanity.

By all accounts, the book is a top-seller. Over a million copies have been sold, the book has been translated into a dozen languages, there are hundreds, if not thousands of sites dedicated to the Urantia Book and its teachings, and because anyone with a smartphone can now download the entire 2,097 page tome for free, thousands continue to do so every year. Downloads now exceed bookstore purchases, according to the Urantia Foundations’ most recent report. Last year over 130,000 people downloaded the book; 19,300 printed books were distributed globally in 2017. Not bad for a book that is never commercially promoted, has no leader or primary spokesperson, and has absolutely no presence in any mainstream media platform (TV, radio or print).

Despite the fact of its continued obscurity, the book spreads, almost like an underground movement with no activist goals. No one who reads the Urantia Book is screaming “new revelation” from the streets. You don’t hear people talking about it in interviews, referring to it in academia, or referencing quotations or topics in mainstream conversation. It’s a secret hidden in wide view.

It’s a revelation of new truth, on the same level of Jesus, Adam and Eve, even greater in scope than Moses and the Ten Commandments.  It’s a message from our unseen friends who felt it was time to share with us a much wider context of our world, our place among the worlds of space, and is, for the most part, consistent with its presentation of history, science and philosophy. In short, if you were looking for a new spiritual revelation, there is ample evidence that the Urantia Book is that revelation.

There is no fanaticism connected with the Urantia Book. There are no miracles connected to its appearance, indeed, even the revelators – the ones who wrote the book- don’t reveal how the book was written. It just is, there for anyone to peruse and learn from its scope of presentation.

It is rumored (though never substantiated) that Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek, as well as Rod Serling of Twilight Zone fame, were heavily influenced by the book. If this is true, and Star Trek was the result of the Urantia Book, think of all of the young minds of the 1960’s and 1970’s who went on to create technology not unlike we see in Star Trek. The very notion of life on other worlds, a literal community of planets is now part of our lexicon. One could infer that if Gene was merely borrowing this idea from the Urantia Book, then one could argue that the Urantia Influence has already begun.

Elvis, Jackie Gleason, Jimi Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Jerry Garcia were all avid readers of the Urantia Book. But they never talked about openly, at least as far as the press is concerned (maybe they never asked the right question when interviewing these folks), and yet, look at the influence these people had on our culture. Were their worldviews shaped by the Urantia Book? What other people and in what other industries has the Urantia Book influenced since it’s publication 63 years ago?  It would be hard to know since so few people talk about it openly. But I am confident many ‘UB readers’ have made their mark in industry, public policy, government, artistic achievement, science, business, technology and – especially religion.

It is the most popular secret religion in the world.

I believe the revelators are aware of our propensity to worship books, especially ones rooted in antiquity. The Urantia Book is still very much in its infancy, a young 63 years, compared to the Old Testament (3,500 years), The Bhagwat gita (2,500 years) the New Testament (1,700 years), the Quran (1,200 years) and the Book of Mormon (200 years).

Over time, and as it quietly grows in reception, the Urantia Book will one day be regarded as a true historical and religious text because its statements will have lasted the test of time. The information will have had a chance to ferment within the various cultures and within certain progressive societies where people are intellectually and spiritually responsive to what the Urantia book presents.

The Urantia Book is already beginning to reshape our spiritual concepts, pushing them along, as it were, towards a more intelligent understanding of our world and our role in it, a philosophy that is perfectly harmonious with the fact of science, intellectually consistent and religiously satisfying.

Happy Birthday to the Revelators, thank you for your wonderful gift which was given to us on October 12, 1955.

China and the Spiritual Threat

Published on by Jim WatkinsLeave a comment

by JR Watkins

While those of us in the west continue to enjoy our modern-day comforts we need to be concerned about what is happening in China,

Today, the threat of atheism is even greater. China contains half of the world’s population. It also has its tendrils throughout the rest of the world as it becomes even more aggressive as a police state, employing new technology to monitor and control not only its citizens, but its global partners as well, as detailed in this report you will find most disconcerting.

And this gives me pause to reflect on the subject matter contained in Paper 195 of the Urantia Book, where the authors extensively discuss the dangers of two primary social constructs of the modern age:

  1. Materialism/Secularism

  2. Totalitarianism

In my early years of study I had considered these two subjects directed more at the early 20th Century, as modern secularism was quite rampant and of course, Russia and China were pursuing communist goals which opened the door to Totalitarian governments in smaller countries like Cuba and North Korea as this ideology spread

Over time Russia seemed to moved towards a more open Democracy (relatively speaking), and China also seemed to be embracing modern open-markets and presumably, seemed more open to democracy.

Wrong.

If you read the news you are becoming aware that human-rights in China are at an all-time low, and religious expression is under full assault by the Communist party. When half of our world is run by a government has made it against the law to believe in God and only give adherence to  Chairman Xi, and this same government we will lock you up if you believe otherwise (and can now watch every move you make thanks to that smartphone you love and carry around with you everywhere you go), there is a problem.  I am sure this problem has even arrested the attention of our unseen friends on high, as it should concern us humans as well.

So with this in mind I have posted the audio narrative of Paper 195 all this week, which takes us from the time after Pentecost, to the modern age, including an extensive narrative on the dangers of Materialism, Secularism, Mechanism, atheistic Science, and especially the extreme dangers of Totalitarianism – which arise from these ideologies.

Is it prophecy? A warning perhaps?

Please enjoy this weekend’ Urantia Radio where we present paper 195 for your listening pleasure.