Urantia: The Great Cult Mystery

by Martin Gardner

Gardner's skill &insight reveal how modern cults arise & the extent to which believers develop a mind-set that becomes impossible to alter regardless of how strong the evidence is against those beliefs. In addition to discussing the beliefs of the Urantia cult, he reveals major developments that threaten to split the movement & addresses the extent to which 7th-Day Adventist beliefs have penetrated the Urantia movement.
The Urantia book
Dr William Sadler
Dr John Kellogg
Ellen White's plagiarisms
The Living temple
Wilfred Custer Kellogg
The revelation begins
Harold Sherman & Harry Loose
OAHSPE
Science in the Urantia book, part 1
Science in the Urantia book, part 2
Adventist influence on the Urantia book
Sadler & Sister White
Did Sadler contribute to the papers? Part 1
Did Sadler contribute to the papers? Part 2
Plagiarisms in the Urantia book
Bitter schisms
Joe Pope & the new teachers
The Great rebellion
Appendices
Name Index

Genres: Religion, Nonfiction, History, Cults

445 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1995

About the author

Martin Gardner was an American mathematics and science writer specializing in recreational mathematics, but with interests encompassing micromagic, stage magic, literature (especially the writings of Lewis Carroll), philosophy, scientific skepticism, and religion. He wrote the Mathematical Games column in Scientific American from 1956 to 1981, and published over 70 books.

Reviews

[Jamie Barringer (Ravenmount) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ugh. I have read other works by this author, and find him a trustworthy historian. My issues with this book are not about what he has to say, but about how he structures the book for readability (or lack thereof). The first few chapters are great. I grew up in the Seventh Day Adventist church community, and am familiar with Ellen White's writings, as well as the Adventist teachings, and I read the Urantia Book while acting out in middle school (yes, I read the whole thing). I thought back then that the Urantia book was amusing, entertaining, but quite a waste of someone's time. The poor author(s) of that massive book put together lots of tedious detail about a fantasy realm that is supposed to be real, but reads like a bad fantasy novel out of the late 1800's. I knew nothing about the history of the Urantia movement back then, but I thought it was interesting how easily I could work out what ideas and imagery the Urantia Book was trying in its odd, wordy way to relate.

I found Gardner's book interesting at first because it turned out to be a history of the early Adventist church and its splinter groups, of which Urantia is one. No wonder I understood the Urantia Book so well. The history chapters are well-written and clearly well-researched. I had never heard anyone say that Ellen White plagiarized content from other authors for her books, nor had I heard any reasonable explanation as to how she, with the education and penmanship of a 3rd-grader, could write books like The Desire of Ages. I am sure many Adventists would prefer to stick proverbial fingers in their ears and remain in the dark on the information Gardner presents about Ellen White and her books. To discover that the authorship of the Urantia Book is similarly problematic is hardly surprising.

What I did not like about this book is the chapters on the proof of plagiarism, which are extremely tedious. Most believers in either sect would not bother reading these chapters too closely, and most non-believers would lose interest after the first paragraph of this section. I would have expected side-by-side comparisons between texts to belong in an appendix, not in chapters right smack in the middle of a history. Eventually the book returns to history, and while still tedious in places, the last few chapters regain the overall readability of the first part of the book. Reading the review blurbs on the back cover, I am sure that the first reviewer only read the first chapter, while the second waded all the way into the plagiarism topic before giving up.

So, overall, this book was slow and tedious and took forever to read, requiring many cups of coffee and lots of patience (coupled with judicious skimming after a while). I would recommend the first few and the last few chapters, though, as interesting 'comparative religions' history that I doubt most people know much about.

[Elizabeth Engstrom · Rating 1 out of 5]

Stupid beyond measure.

[Steven H · Rating 5 out of 5]

A HISTORICAL CRITIQUE AND ANALYSIS OF THE URANTIA BOOK AND MOVEMENT

Martin Gardner (1914-2010) was an American popular science writer, who wrote a column in Scientific American for twenty-five years; he was also one of the founders of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP).

He wrote in the first chapter of this 1995 book, “Until 1955 the largest sacred work of a religious movement said to be written by nonhumans was ‘Oahspe,’ subtitled ‘A Kosmon Bible in the Words of Jehovih and His Angel Embassadors.’ … Oahspe’s record of being the largest ‘Bible’ ever said to be dictated word for word by higher intelligences was shattered by the publication in 1955 of ‘The Urantia Book.’ Urantia, the book’s name for Earth, is pronounced ‘you-RAN-sha. The UB… is a mammoth tome of 2,097 pages… No author’s name is on the UB’s blue cloth cover or on its title page… The story of how this Bible came into existence, and the curious role played by Seventh-Day Adventism, has never been fully told until now.” (Pg. 10-11)

He recounts, “The UB goes into great detail about the early geological history of the earth… and about the evolutionary development of various races. The races are identified by colors… Here is how the Urantian races came about. Five hundred thousand years ago … one of the Eadoman tribes of northern India, suddenly produced nineteen children whose skins turned various colors when exposed to sunlight… The six primary-colored races (red, yellow and blue) were the most intelligent. The secondary-colored races (orange, green, and purple) were less intelligent… The reds had the highest intelligence… The yellows, slightly inferior to the reds, became our present Orientals… The blues … became the ancestors of the present white race… the inferior orange race… [was] wiped out in a prolonged battle with the greens. The inferior greens… also eventually died out. The indigo race was the least advanced of the six. Its members migrated to Africa to become the Negro race… That the UB regards the black race as the most inferior of all races is something the small number of blacks in the Urantia movement find embarrassing and hard to rationalize.” (Pg. 23-24)

He explains, “The only detailed account in print of how the Urantia papers were first channeled is … in ‘How to Know What to Believe’…. By Harold Sherman… a well-known author of self-help books and books about the paranormal… in 1941 … Sherman and his wife, Martha… joined what was called the Forum, a group of Chicagoans who met on Sundays to discuss the Urantia Papers while their content was being channeled at night by the sleeping Wilfred [Sadler]…” (Pg. 113) Later, he admits, “I am not ABSOLUTELY certain Wilfred did the initial channeling, but the evidence seems to me so overwhelming that in this book I assume it is true… If definitive evidence ever turns up that the sleeper was someone else… I shall be astounded.” (Pg. 121)

Mark Kulieke, author of a 1991 history of the movement, wrote, “the book was edited and expanded week by week and year by year as Forum members learned and grew… some revelatory material was recalled---either because it was just too incomprehensible to the human mind or because it was deemed best not to reveal the information to the future readership… By 1934 and 1935, the process was essentially complete for the first three parts of the book. A third and final creative round was undertaken between 1935 and 1942 to clarify concepts and remove ambiguities...” (Pg. 123)

Gardner notes, “The process of intimate cooperation between revelation and the Contact Commission, with input from several hundred Forum members, finally produced what Sadler considered a publishable work…. In 1939 a group called ‘The Seventy’ … was formed and charged with preparing the UB’s final text… It was decided that the UN would not be published until the long Jesus section had been completed... Its papers would give a full account of the life of Jesus, correcting hundreds of errors in the four gospels and supplying thousands of details about the life and teachings of Jesus never before revealed… there was constant movement of members in and out of the group. Before a person could join the Forum he or she would be personally interviewed … and sworn to secrecy about all that was going on. From time to time documents channeled …were destroyed.. in 1982 … the destruction of all the remaining documents… makes it impossible for anyone today to determine the extent to which channeled material was revised, cut or supplemented by Sadler or by other members of the Contact Commission or Forum.” (Pg. 123-125)

He continues, “Sadler declares, ‘If you knew all we know, you would still be ignorant of much concerning the phenomena of factualizing these documents. No living person understands just how the Urantia Papers got translated into English manuscript which was authorized for publication.’” (Pg. 127)

Gardner reveals, “Why have I become so intrigued by the UB and its growing secondary literature? One reason is that I have always been interested in the history of Seventh-Day Adventism ever since as a young boy, for … about a year, I considered myself an Adventist… When I learned about Adventist influence on the Urantia Movement it piqued my interest. I was also challenged by the mystery of who was the UB’s sleeping conduit to higher powers. Most of all, however, as a science journalist I was fascinated by the enormous amount of science in the UB. It is absolutely unique in this respect among all literature said to be channeled by higher intelligences… UB science is a strange mix of knowledge widely accepted by mainline scientists during the years the UB was crafted, and wild speculation about truths either unknown to science or contradicted by recent science.” (Pg. 181)

Later, he adds, “the UB swarms with plagiarisms identical in character with those of [Seventh-Day Adventist prophet] Ellen [G.] White.” (Pg. 269) He recounts, “I asked Meredith Sprunger, a leading UB defender, what he thought about UB copying from other sources. He responded in a letter by saying that if humans wrote the UB he would indeed be disturbed by plagiarisms. But if supermortals wrote the book, he would not be in the least disturbed. Indeed, he added, it would be ‘an excellent technique to assure relevant communication.’ He reminded me that the supermortals openly admitted in the UB that they made use of human sources.” (Pg. 355)

He states, “Another grave threat to Urantian unity… is a recent rebellion by rank and file Urantians about the Urantia Foundation… At the controversy’s center is the Foundation’s insistence that it has sole control over the copyright and sales of the UB, and sole control over the use of the Urantia trademark… So far the Urantia movement has made no effort to establish churches or ordain ministers, although from 1956 to about 1969 Sadler ran a Urantia Brotherhood School… At any rate, the idea of a formal church never materialized, and most records of the Brotherhood School were long ago destroyed.” (Pg. 395) But “the UB can hold a legitimate copyright only if it can identify humans as actual authors. The Foundation has refused to do more than say that the following persons acted as scribes: Dr. Sadler, his son Bill, members of the Forum, members of the Foundation, and the sleeper whose name they will not disclose. All five trustees of the Foundation have testified to their belief that the authors of all the UB’s papers are supermortals.” (Pg. 401)

He records, “In January 1993 Kristen Maaherra wrote: ‘By suing me, the Foundation has swallowed a poison pill. If they admit the superhuman authorship of the Papers in court, they lose the copyright. If they say they hired a human to write the Papers, they lose their credibility with the readers…” (Pg. 405)

Gardner concludes, “It is because of this astonishing switch of an intelligent, gifted man [Sadler], from one cult to another, that I found his story sufficiently riveting to devote considerable time to writing a big book about him. My dear wife, I must add, thinks that writing this book was a total waste of my energies. I must also confess that I wrote this book because I found Urantianism to be almost as funny as Mormonism, Christian Science, and Sun-Moonism. I find Martin Myers, the deposed leader of the movement, as comic as Jimmy Swaggart, Oral Roberts, and Tammy Faye Bakker.” (Pg. 407)

This book will be of great interest to those seeking critiques of the Urantia movement (although even some skeptics may find this book far TOO detailed!)

[Einzige · Rating 4 out of 5]

With many modern works which claim divine and or extra terrestrial authorship/connection it is very easy to dismiss them at face value, and not invest the time in making a positive case from them not actually being so. Naturally for believers this reeks of intellectual dishonesty (and to be honest they are often right).

This is all the more pronounced with the Uranita Book due to its great length and density in addition to the behaviour of its principle group (which deliberately obscured its origin) and small number of adherents. So naturally its an area that has largely avoided any external scrutiny (though curiously not in French publications).

This book though imperfect helps fill this gap and I shudder to think of the sheer amount of reading and work it would have taken an individual to produce even this kind of analysis. The Seventh Day Adventist connection was also very surprising.

Overall a good analysis of the history of the Urantia Book and its practitioners though at times a bit light on their specific practices and occasionally marred by snarky jibes. That said this isn't a book for everyone; you wont find titillating scandal, intrigue or wackiness. However if you are interested in Urantia, new religious movements or New Age understandings of science this is a good read.

[Erik Graff · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Catholic Church in Fairfax, CA has a nice little resale shop just south of it in a mini-mall on Sir Francis Drake. Looking for books to present to the various friends I would be visiting in the Bay Area, I found this oddity--along with another book actually published by the Urantians. I'd heard of them, certainly, but hadn't given this small, Chicago-based cult much thought previously and wouldn't have looked twice at it were it not for its authorship, Martin Gardner having been the long-time mathematics columnist for Scientific American as well as one of the notables connected to The Skeptical Inquirer. In any case, being interested in religion, weird claims and their refutations, I picked the thing up.
This book is not for the millions. Gardner's own wife thought he was wasting his time. However, if you have an interest in channeling or in the histories of modern cults like 7th Day Adventism, the Mormons or the Branch Davidians, then this book is for you.

[Hank · Rating 5 out of 5]

Taking a long, serious look at the encyclopedia of drivel known as The Urantia Book is a dirty job, but somebody had to do it, and by golly did Martin Gardner do a fine job!

The Urantia Book's origins were shrouded in mystery before Gardner pieced a lot of the puzzle together. As it turns out, the book is rife with references to its own time period, and is very much confined to it. The book's bizarre concepts are nothing new, and were often derivative of the New Age spiritualism of the time - and yes, even eugenics.

This is a good history lesson on the most absurd cultural movements of the 20s, 30s, and 40s among the intelligentsia.

[James Morrison · Rating 2 out of 5]

Perhaps a good history of the amazing cult. Certainly well documented. 468 pages was a bit too much for me. I don't think many people would make it through ... I admit to "skip reading" it. Perhaps the absurdity of the UB and it's flock doesn't need to be stated too often, but I would have enjoyed more Martin Gardner editorial comments. I love most all of what I have read by the polymath Gardner, this perhaps being the exception.

[J.Z. Murdock · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you want an interesting history of where the Urantia Book came from, Kellogg and The Seventh Day Adventist Church, this is the book.

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read the Spanish versión of this book:

Gardner, Martin [1995]: Urantia. ¿Revelación divina o negocio editorial? [Urantia: the great cult mystery]. Traducción de Pilar Tutor. Tikal Ediciones (Col. “Eleusis”). Gerona. xv + 348 páginas. ISBN 9788430584123.

If you liked or are interested in the Urantia Book or looking for the sources of the J.J. Benitez saga "Caballo de Troya", then _this_ book is a must read choice. It debunks the origins, content and purposes of the Urantia Book in a marvelous way.