So which is it? Is science catching up with, or correcting the book?
Both, where they limited their discussion Science has surpassed, where they revealed new things or things that had been known but lost or forgotten current science in validating. This is a link to the timeline of validations. A number of new ones are now in the works.
http://www.ubthenews.com/documents/Diamond2R920_000.pdf
"The Urantia Papers. The papers, of which this is one, constitute the most recent presentation of truth to the mortals of Urantia. These papers differ from all previous revelations, for they are not the work of a single universe personality but a composite presentation by many beings. But no revelation short of the attainment of the Universal Father can ever be complete.
All other celestial ministrations are no more than partial, transient, and practically adapted to local conditions in time and space. While such admissions as this may possibly detract from the immediate force and authority of all revelations, the time has arrived on Urantia when it is advisable to make such frank statements, even at the risk of weakening the future influence and authority of this, the most recent of the revelations of truth to the mortal races of Urantia."
Stuu, There are lots of scientist and physicist that read and study the UB. A number of them have tackled some of the statements by the book. They have no problem showing where the UB is still wrong, but they have also found late validation of things that could not have been guessed.
From Truthbook.com:
http://www.truthbook.com/index.cfm?linkID=101
THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM FORETOLD IN THE URANTIA BOOK?
Religion and science have long pondered the questions posed by the Star of Bethlehem. Theories abound. Supernovas, comets, planetary conjunctions, and the miraculous have been invoked. Some even question if the event ever occurred, let alone how many wise-men there were.
Of the many proposals, the planetary conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter is by far the most popular. It isn't new. Johannes Kepler, after discovering the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction in Pisces a few days before Christmas in 1603, calculated backward and discovered the 7 B.C. event. Kepler was not the first to describe this. In 1977, David H. Clark described a similar assertion in English church annals dating from A.D. 1285. In the early days of planetariums, operators abused their Zeiss projectors by running the machines high-speed backwards to 7 B.C., producing the triple conjunction. This triple conjunction means that the retrograde loops of the two planets overlap. Translated, Jupiter passes Saturn three times over a several month period. The last occurrence of this sort was in 1981.
Until recently, all calculations to explain the Star of Bethlehem as a planetary grouping relied on the standard Planetary, Lunar, and Solar Positions by Bryant Tuckerman. This two volume work, published by the American Philosophical Society in 1962 and 1964, listed the coordinates of the naked-eye members of our solar system at five and ten day intervals from 601 B.C. to A.D. 1649. Utilizing these volumes, the dates proposed for the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction are as follows: May 27, October 6, and December 1, B.C. 7.
In 1976, at California's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a unique project of special interest to historians was undertaken. JPL scientists, together with the U.S. Naval Observatory, calculated the positions of all major bodies in the solar system throughout a span of forty-four centuries, from 1411 B.C. to A.D. 3002. This attempt proved singular, since they omitted all previous analytical theories of motion for individual objects. This New method embraced a technique of simultaneous numerical integration on a Univac 1100/81, inconceivable just a few decades ago. ne task required nine days of computer time resulting in a magnetic output known as the Long Ephemeris Tape. Jean-Louis Simon and Pieffe Bretagnon of Bureau des Longitudes in Paris published this data in Planetary Programs and Tables from 4000 B.C. to 2800 A.D. (Wilimann-Bell, 1986).
In the Star of Bethlehem (Sky and Telescope, December, 1986), Roger W. Sinnott "became keenly interested" in reexamining the proposed dates of planetary groupings in light of this new information. He discovered that the dates listed for the conjunctions of Saturn and Jupiter were incorrect. Compared to what earlier writers have deduced using Tuckerman's tables, the maximum difference is about five days. The newly calculated conjunctions occur on May 29, September 30, and December 5.
This insight is hardly dramatic for astronomers, but intriguing for readers of The Urantia Book. The Urantia Book was published in 1955, Tuckerman's tables in 1962, and Bretagnon & Simon's programs and tables in 1986. In order to appreciate the significance, a passage from the text follows: "These priests from Mesopotamia had been told sometime before by a strange religious teacher of their country that he had a dream in which he was informed that "the light of life" was about to appear on earth as a babe and among the Jews. And thither went these three teachers looking for this "light of life." After many weeks of futile search in Jerusalem, they were about to return to Ur when Zacharias met them and disclosed his belief that Jesus was the object of their quest and sent them on to Bethlehem, where they found the babe and left their gifts with Mary, his earth mother. The babe was almost three weeks old at the time of their visit.
"These wise men saw no star to guide them to Bethlehem. The beautiful legend of the Star of Bethlehem originated in this way: Jesus was born August 21 at noon, 7 B.C. On May 29, 7 B.C. there occurred an extraordinary conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in the constellation of Pisces. And it is a remarkable astronomic fact that similar conjunctions occurred on September 29 and December 5 of the same year. Upon the basis of these extraordinary but wholly natural events the well-meaning Zealots of the succeeding generation constructed the appealing legend of the Star of Bethlehem and the adoring Magi..." (The Urantia Book page 1352, 122:8.7)
The tabulated differences in dates follow:
The Urantia Book (1955)
Tuckerman (1962) Difference (days)
- May 29 ...............................May 27......................... 2
- Sep 29 ................................Oct 6 .............................7
- Dec 5 .................................. Dec 1 ........................... 4
- The Urantia Book (1955) Bretagnon & Simon (1986) Difference (days)
- May 29 ......................................May 29........................... 0
- Sep 29 .......................................Sep 30 ...........................1
- Dec 5 .........................................Dec 5 .............................0
It is remarkable that the New calculations match so closely with the Urantia text. The only exception is the calculated date of September 30 and what is listed in the text as September 29. A possible explanation for this discrepancy may be methodological. In Computing the Star of Bethlehem, Sinnott states:
An important matter, when dealing with ancient astronomical events, is the distinction between Ephemeris and Universal time. The two systems run within a minute of each other throughout the last three centuries, but they diverge in the remote past because of slight changes in the length of the Earth's day. For the planetary calculations in this article, I've adopted the value ET-UT=+177 minutes, as recommended by Bretagnon and Simon. But for the lunar eclipses at Herod's death, I used +158 minutes in accordance with the introduction to the Meeus-Mucke canon. The actual value is unknown; a recent study by F. R. Stephenson and L. V. Morrison leans toward +166 minutes near I B.C. (Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Series A, 313, 47, 1984).
Whether changing the time to another value, perhaps +166 minutes as suggested by Stephenson and Morrison, would make-up the one-day variance, is unknown. Further investigation is warranted. For now, readers of The Urantia Book may take solace in discovering that science and their text are converging ever closer on the Star of Bethlehem. [note: the difference of one day may be a fraction of a second or up to a full 24 hours depending on the conventions used before and after midnight.]
REFERENCE: Dr. Maft Neibaur, Brotherhood of Man Library file NEIBAU03.DOC, 1988
COMPUTER ANALYSIS OF DATES IN The Urantia Book
In 1572 a former professor from Bologna named Ugo Buoncompagni became Pope Gregory XIII; ten years later the Gregorian calendar was introduced. The Julian calendar, founded 16 centuries earlier by Julius Caesar, was inaccurate and the need for reform was widely recognized. Its principal failure was the discrepancy between the mean length of its year, 365.25 days, and the tropical year, then averaging 365.24232 days. This is nearly eleven minutes and four seconds shorter than the Julian year. This small discrepancy had continued to accumulate until it was no longer a matter of minutes but days. By the time of the Gregorian reform, the error had grown to eleven days. Understandably this was of concern to the Pope. If the calendar had continued unchanged, Easter would eventually have to be celebrated in the summer.
The attempts at reform set off a wide range of debates, both academic and religious. At one point excommunication was threatened against anyone who refused to accept the New calendar. The details about this reform are to be found in the May 1982 issue of "Scientific America," by G. Moyer.
In Part IV of The Urantia Book, there are numerous references in which dates and weekdays are listed. Is there any way to check these dates? Was April 14, A.D. 2 really a Friday as stated?
Using information obtained from "Astronomical Formulae for Calculators" by Jean Meeus, a computer program was written to calculate dates and the co-incidental day of the week. The program takes into account the Gregorian calendar reform. All dates are first converted to Julian day numbers, and the results divided by seven to obtain weekdays from the remainder. A calendar was then generated using this information. Even by computer standards, it is a rather tedious process.
The following dates from The Urantia Book were used to check their correctness:
April 14, A.D. 2 - Friday April 26, A.D. 2 - Sunday
June 24, A.D. 5 - Wednesday January 9, A.D. 7 - Sunday
April 17, A.D. 9 - Wednesday February 23, A.D. 26 - Saturday
March 3, A.D. 26 - Sunday June 15, A.D. 26 - Tuesday
All of these dates and their corresponding day of the week as cited in The Urantia Book were found to be correct. The odds for obtaining these results from random guesswork are one chance in 5,764,801. [note: there are more than 100 such dates in Part IV of The Urantia Book. An additional 30 have now been checked and all were correct.]
Caino
