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Forum Friends,
In spite of growing up in the US I’ve always been more philosopher than Christian. In fact I had all but given up on Jesus before finding the UB. I came to this new revelation thru the philosopher’s door. I felt like I was bathing in the waters of the rivers of Paradise when first reading the deep, deep Papers (103—118), just before the life and teachings of Jesus. Of course I had to go on and read about him, and a great relief it was to know the facts about this God man who happened to visit our ragged little planet only 2000 years ago. I love him now, appreciate and treasure his role as my creator father/elder brother ever in harmony with my creator mother/elder sister.
The authors of the Urantia Papers give new meaning, greater clarity, to many core words and central ideas we humans hold in common. They redefine truth as something living, always in relation to God, not as fact or knowledge. Philosophy is redefined as the vital reconciler of the verifiable facts of science and the genuine insights of religion. Philosophy is a unifier, and like truth, it too can be living. A frozen philosophy is a dead philosophy. A divinely inspired philosophy always improves as it integrates facts and insights into a living whole, a way of life that is in harmony with the highest beauty of the cosmos.
The authors gave us insights that should start and maintain a lively interest in philosophy for hundreds of years. This interest seems to be limited to a relative few, for few care for philosophy, right now anyway. Interest must become broader because a well thought out philosophy is central to benign co-existence and social progress, even more central to comprehending divine reality.
The very word philosophy brings up fear or resistance in some. That is because, though people may have tried, they can’t digest our evolved philosophy, our humanly derived philosophy. It is overly complicated and underly enlightening in large part. Its pearls are too well hidden, too few and far between, and that is not right. I ignored and resisted the evolved version of philosophy until finding the UB. So I was, philosophically speaking, a blank slate. I consumed a full course of UB’s revealed philosophy–where I even found insights into what the masters of universe philosophy ponder! I then realized my thirst for divine philosophy, for truth, goodness and beauty shall be both continuously engaged and equally slaked for all time.
I think people shun philosophy because they believe it is akin to nuclear physics in complexity and intellectual prerequisites. But the UB authors boiled philosophy down to three ordinary words: Truth, Beauty, and Goodness. This trio has roots that trace back to Jesus, Melchizedek, Adam, and Dalamatia, off-planet to Jerusem, Uversa, even to Havona and Paradise. All the universe schools of time and space teach this simple three-fold conceptual framework upon which we will build an ever expanding physical, intellectual and spiritual cosmos, as we simultaneously discover our place and destiny within it.
Now, here on outpost Urantia, we are witnessing the confluence of the 21st century after Michael’s visit and the arrival of our fifth epochal revelation. The revelation came just when a great and divinely inspired philosophy is needed more than ever, to help mediate wisely between burgeoning science and faltering religion, to assist us in taming our raging technology and understanding our humanity, to multiply wisdom and diminish error, evil and death.
No person, no nation, no civilization will go far or fast into Light and Life without a viable philosophy. A lack of sound philosophy, from the personal to the global, is responsible for many, perhaps all, of our present woes. And it is a great philosophy that will allow us to transcend them all and unify our personality, family, nation, planet, system, constellation, local creation, superuniverse, with our Creator in time, space and eternity, in order to bring about the culmination of God’s project in which we have a role: the evolution of the Supreme Being.
Question: How can philosophers interest a world that doesn’t especially like the word philosophy? How do we cultivate interest in this NEW cosmic philosophy so recently delivered into the hands of man kind? How best to arouse interest in philosophy, especially among the young?
Much love, Rick
Richard E Warren
Rick Warren wrote: How can philosophers interest a world that doesn’t especially like the word philosophy?I think the world is in love with ideology, which is a cousin of philosophy. I think that ideology has currently replaced both science and religion. The role of philosophy is to integrate science and religion, but ideology seems to divide the world into groups with certain beliefs concerning both science and religion.
From www.differencebetween.net
There are very fundamental differences between philosophy and ideology. Ideology refers to a set of beliefs, doctrines that back a certain social institution or a particular organization. Philosophy refers to looking at life in a pragmatic manner and attempting to understand why life is as it is and the principles governing behind it.
I’m not sure how to change ideologies since by definition they tend to be rather fixed and schismatic. Philosophy requires deep thinking about all sides of an issue, which must include varying ideologies, in other words, open-mindedness. Ideologues resist open-mindedness. So in essence, I think you’re asking how to open people’s minds and get them to think deeply.
Excellent question. I think it starts with leadership and education. But we won’t have adequate leadership without an excellent education. The theme of education today stresses inclusion, equality, diversity, avoidance of competition and the denial of failure. In other words, mediocrity. How can minds be open and thinking deeply if they are half-asleep, indifferent and uninspired? What good is a mind if it cannot accept the reality of God, a person who has been put to death by modern educators?
People of all ages need to wake up and realize they are free from the suffocating stranglehold of ideology. How to wake them up is another issue. I don’t think pushing a book in their face will do it though. I think they just have to grow tired of the low oxygen levels and finally open the windows of their minds. It seems to be governed by some sort of evolution.
Excellent question. I think it starts with leadership and education. But we won’t have adequate leadership without an excellent education. The theme of education today stresses inclusion, equality, diversity, avoidance of competition and the denial of failure. In other words, mediocrity. How can minds be open and thinking deeply if they are half-asleep, indifferent and uninspired? What good is a mind if it cannot accept the reality of God, a person who has been put to death by modern educators?
I agree that Rick posses “excellent question[s]” and your assessment of “leadership and education.” However, would it not indicate that in the UB “education” has been replaced by “experience” but, then what type of experience — life-experience — sometimes know as the school of hard knocks? Although, much of my education/experience has taken on a more hands on approach then actual schoolroom studies, and much of that has been supplemented by reading the various historic philosophic works as expressed sometimes by others. My primary study has been of how people think, as compared to how I know of my own working of mind. I agree with the “ideology” aspect as presented, although it would seem that “ideology” can be changed, over time, through and with the understanding of “wisdom” as it applies to “self”, “knowledge” and how one defines or sees universal “reality”. My philosophy has been indicated in the following, which I have presented in the past, which I attribute more to a muse interaction with: The Reality of knowing what Wisdom is, is in the Experiencing of the Philosophy of using Knowledge. Where “knowledge” does not come from education as was presented in schooling, where sometimes there is only a little truth presented therein.
People of all ages need to wake up and realize they are free from the suffocating stranglehold of ideology. How to wake them up is another issue. I don’t think pushing a book in their face will do it though. I think they just have to grow tired of the low oxygen levels and finally open the windows of their minds. It seems to be governed by some sort of evolution.
I also agree with the statement above, specifically the part of “pushing a book in their face” in when knowledge is forced and made mandatory rather than interesting, one either takes on these narration as “ideology” and even an open mind tends to fall into these traps as do many other’s. However, as you should know, that even too much “oxygen” can bring on hallucinations and visual effects which seem real at the time. Can one be taught wisdom through knowledge only or, must we experience it for ourselves? Even experience can not always be transferred from one person to another but, the their roots can be transferred through germ plasm.
(398.1) 36:2.14 There are over one million fundamental or cosmic chemical formulas which constitute the parent patterns and the numerous basic functional variations of life manifestations. Satellite number one of the life-planning sphere is the realm of the universe physicists and electrochemists who serve as technical assistants to the Life Carriers in the work of capturing, organizing, and manipulating the essential units of energy which are employed in building up the material vehicles of life transmission, the so-called germ plasm.
Rick, your appreciation of philosophy is insightful and important.
In retirement, when I started to reach out beyond academic circles with my work, I titled my weblog ANewPhilosophyOfLiving.com. But after a year, I, too, realized that a majority of the people who are most receptive to writing of the kind that I do are not think of what they are looking for as philosophy. So I re-titled my book (due to be published by Cascade Books in about August): Living in Truth, Beauty, and Goodness. And now I’m creating a podcast, which I hope to launch next month under the title Adventuresome Thinking.
You are wise to pose the question of the language we use to reach people. In the introduction to my book, I respond to the further objection that the terms “truth,” “beauty,” and “goodness,” are also off-putting to many people. I support persons who prefer to speak of intuition and insight instead of truth. I have used “cool” instead of “beautiful” to convey a major insight successfully. The reluctance to use the traditional language tends to disappear when people are (1) encouraged to re-define great concepts in terms that they feel comfortable putting into practice and (2) genuinely engaged in projects of experiential education, personal growth in which they creatively apply these in daily life.
Beloved Rick and friends, let me address another question of how to interest people in the new philosophy. There is a clear answer here:
155:1.4 (1726.1) “In all that you do, become not one-sided and overspecialized. The Pharisees who seek our destruction verily think they are doing God’s service. They have become so narrowed by tradition that they are blinded by prejudice and hardened by fear. Consider the Greeks, who have a science without religion, while the Jews have a religion without science. And when men become thus misled into accepting a narrow and confused disintegration of truth, their only hope of salvation is to become truth-co-ordinated — converted.
155:1.5 (1726.2) “Let me emphatically state this eternal truth: If you, by truth co-ordination, learn to exemplify in your lives this beautiful wholeness of righteousness, your fellow men will then seek after you that they may gain what you have so acquired.
The philosophy of living outlined at the end of Paper 2 contains the key to how truth-coordination leads to the beautiful wholeness of righteousness. People who can speak the language of their cultural environment can set forth “a cosmology, a philosophy, and a religion commensurate with man’s intellectual and cultural development”–in a way that manifests a noticeably higher quality of thinking. That does attract receptive individuals. And the other thing, of course, is what Jesus points to: Living it is attractive. I believe that the higher quality of thinking generated by the new philosophy of living is partly a cause and partly an effect of growing in living the truth. To live the truth is to proclaim, in thought, word, and deed the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man.
I try to sense that moral fragrance in individuals. When I do I try to make a connection and build on it.
its usually hopeless to get into religious discussions because most people not familiar with the 5th revelation will not discuss outside of the context of their bible.
a colleague is a self proclaimed progressive secular atheist mechanist etc. However he is very moral, loyal, honest and tends to be altruistic. At a very convenient time I told him that he is indeed religious but he just don’t know it yet. I got closer to him on a spiritual level and had more rewarding discussion than so called religionists I have tried to communicate with.
Rick, dear fellow brother,
How can philosophers interest a world that doesn’t especially like the word philosophy?
Rick, I always was fascinated with philosophy in early years. I remember being glad for my older sister and sad for me to learn she attend an obligatory course in philosophy at High Schools.
Through my inquiry, I conclude philosophy was a way of thinking.
Permit me to rephrase your question attempting to get closer of supemind border, where humanity mingles with Divinity.
How can The Philosopher (God) interest a world that doesn’t especially like the world philosophy?
The way of thinking, of doing things is The Way and only way to reality. Divine reality.How do we cultivate interest in this NEW cosmic philosophy, so recently delivered into the hands of mankind?
The interest, the significance could arouse “at start” only because The First Source and Center of all things and beings IS LOVE.
“Unless a divine lover lived in man, he could not unselfishly and spiritually love. Unless an interpreter lived in the mind, man could not truly realize the unity of the universe. Unless an evaluator dwelt with man, he could not possibly appraise moral values and recognize spiritual meanings. And this lover hails from the very source of infinite love; this interpreter is a part of Universal Unity; this evaluator is the child of the Center and Source of all absolute values of divine and eternal reality.” (2094.15) 196:3.16
How best to arouse interest in philosophy, especially among the young?
“All true love is from God, and man receives the divine affection as he himself bestows this love upon his fellows. Love is dynamic. It can never be captured; it is alive, free, thrilling, and always moving. Man can never take the love of the Father and imprison it within his heart. The Father’s love can become real to mortal man only by passing through that man’s personality as he in turn bestows this love upon his fellows.” (1289.3) 117:6.10
Rick, I am commove and much grateful by the time you took to express yourself so lovely.
p.s. I consider the internet as our ”communication of our realm”. Planetary intercommunication, until the broadcast from Salvington is reestablished. Our forum english/french is one of my brotherhood’s source.
Thanks all expressing yourself.Thank you all for some very insightful, well stated feedback,
Each in your own way has expressed much the same thinking as other reader groups have when presented with these questions–which might be stated most simply as: Better education and better teachers living the better way.
Most students can rise no higher than their teachers, and the majority of teachers will ascend no higher than their education. The system is closed and only lets a little new light in when compelled by undeniable fact and sufficient social force. Ergo, progress in philosophy on Urantia is soul-breakingly slow, always struggling, always lagging behind religion and science, like an unwanted little sibling.
But philosophy will have its day on Urantia, I believe. First primary, secondary and tertiary schools will have to realize its fundamental importance, after the majority of people have to come to terms with an empty materialism and a fulfilling God, which creates a longing for solid truth, righteous values, and knowing life’s real meaning and purpose.
Philosophy is not unique to Urantia, it is an elemental, essential understanding of God’s motives and values, with attending intellectual and physical realities, taught from here to Havona. Without a sustainable ever-evolving philosophy stagnation sets in. Apparently philosophy, like truth and goodness, is always relative to God and living. But, it is not seen or practiced a lot because the word philosophy has so much heavy baggage. Philosophy is something that demands acknowledgment and practice even if the world won’t admit it now. In time it must, or die of spiritual-factual, religious-scientific irreconcilability :)
Thanks again everyone. Much love, Rick
Richard E Warren
Rick and all,
Additional counsel from The Urantia Book may be found by word searches on philosophy, philosophical. Include the words reconcile and reconciliation by linking in one search, at least for the word philosophy. This takes time, but a larger perspective is gained for this sort of mortal challenge for greater understanding, I believe.
No one ever talked to me about philosophy and its benefits when I was matriculating through Sunday school!!!!!! Its never too late to learn!
The Melchizedek who wrote Paper 103 states that philosophy has historically fallen into three different distortions because it has failed to consider the elliptical symmetry of reality. Either philosophy has been too naturalistic, idealistic or metaphysical thus failing to merge into one cohesive view of reality. Revelation is supposed to rectify the distortion of metaphysics, but what rectifies the distortion of naturalism and idealism?
In the same Paper the Melchizedek author informs us that the only way to correct the distortion is to live a truth dominated life. I can take personal responsibility for living a truth dominated life, but I can’t make others do it, nor can I influence the world to give it a try. Truth dominated living has to spread like a benign virus, that much we know. I still think that the best way to do that is to socialize the personality. Nothing and no one exists in isolation, so contact with one another is a sure fire way of spreading a virus. UB’ers who isolate themselves in little like-minded groups are not doing the world a service.
Likewise, I think proselytizing is evil; nobody likes being told what to think. Living a truth dominated in life out in the open where everyone can see should inspire people to ask questions, to think deeply, to begin the process of searching for truth themselves. We all have to develop our own philosophy of living, and it has to be done individually, one person at a time. Trying to sway great groups of people to think in a certain way is wrought with danger, and basically evil, in my opinion. I think if anyone is interested in what Jesus considered a master philosophy of life, read the Ordination Sermon.
p1572.5 140:4.5 While light dispels darkness, it can also be so “blinding” as to confuse and frustrate. We are admonished to let our light so shine that our fellows will be guided into new and godly paths of enhanced living. Our light should so shine as not to attract attention to self. Even one’s vocation can be utilized as an effective “reflector” for the dissemination of this light of life.
Great topic Rick. When I think of philosophy, I think of what is the meaning of life. That question was ever-present in my mind until I was born-again. I think everyone has some sort of “philosophy,” even if it’s framed in three phases: I’m born, I live, I die. Some people on our world live in survival mode. They live a hand-to-mouth existence. They have TAs too, leading them Godward, but perhaps they have no leisure time to put into developing a philosophy beyond what their traditional religious authority says. I am awed to observe poor people, struggling people, who are religious. Their religion, whatever it is and even if it is something tribal, is a community (social) necessity, if not a personal one, as an explanation to them for the lives they live in their place and time.
Think about how hard it was for Jesus to bring his family, especially his mother, into his gospel of living. How many of us have perhaps offended our own family members by choosing to study the UB and to reach for its super-philosophy? Doesn’t this choice take much courage? I didn’t have this problem because I grew up in an non-religious family. I did not proselytize a ready-made religion to my children. This was a problem for one of my daughters whose fiance asked her “What is your religion?” She phoned me up to ask me “What religion are we?” I said Christian. (Why give her a complicated answer?) She got stressed out, because we never signed up as members of any religious group. For some reason is was a problem to her fiance, as she could not claim a traditional religious membership. Her fiance would have been fine, she said, if she were a Buddhist. (Which I think is weird, since he is a Presbyterian.) Anyhow, she had to get 4 weeks of “religious education” before they were married and later, an Episcopal priest married them. But my daughter does not take the children to church which for my son-in-law likely feels it a bane to their religious education. Neither is she a UB reader, though she is highly educated. As a parent and a UB reader, I had to decide early on what to do in terms of religious education. What would I communicate to my children? What would I share with them? I Educated them with a light touch, thinking all the while to allow them to grow their own religion. I was and continue to be an advocate of learn-by-doing, religiously speaking.
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Here are a couple of interesting references concerning philosophy.
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160:2:3 It is this ability to communicate and share meanings that constitutes human culture and enables man, through social associations, to build civilizations. Knowledge and wisdom become cumulative because of man’s ability to communicate these possessions to succeeding generations. And thereby arise the cultural activities of the race: art, science, religion, and philosophy.
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98:2:12 Religions have long endured without philosophical support, but few philosophies, as such, have long persisted without some identification with religion. Philosophy is to religion as conception is to action. But the ideal human estate is that in which philosophy, religion, and science are welded into a meaningful unity by the conjoined action of wisdom, faith, and experience..You folks know that Jesus never taught a gospel of living, right? He taught the living gospel. Big difference!
A gospel of living is an ideology, precisely what Jesus was attempting to free us from. Jesus’ ordination sermon was a philosophy of living for people who wanted to be apostles. The sermon integrated his gospel into a philosophy of living, or the art of living. The gospel is about revealed religion; philosophy is supposed to integrate religion and science with the help of revelation. Philosophy and the gospel are not the same thing.
The living gospel is: “the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man.”(142:7.4; 156:4.3; 194:4.4; 195:0.2;195:10.21) A philosophy of living is: “a combination of cosmic insight and the total of one’s emotional reactions to the social and economic environment.”(140:4.8)
I think one of the purposes of including the paper about Rodan is to show how a good philosopher thinks. He’s an example for those of us who would like to think deeply on a philosophy of living which includes the Master’s gospel. I think he does an excellent job. He drops major hints on how to go about it ourselves, or so I believe.
Well, isn’t the gospel the good news that we, too, can live the new way of his revealed teachings, if we want too? Maybe I should have said that.
Or maybe I should have said “the new and living way”. Or some other phrase. Anyhow, his mother at times thought he was nuts. Unfortunately her misunderstandings about her son kept her apart from him in a human way. It’s very sad to me, speaking as a mother myself. But he did not conform to her preconceived Messiah-ideas. She wanted him to be the way she had it figured, and like parents in modern times, children often disappoint parental expectations. They go in different directions, develop new outlooks and philosophies, strive for cosmic, rather than worldly, goals.Greetings my friends….been following along and enjoying this….thanks to all!!
Mara asks if we “….can live the new way of his revealed teachings…?”
I don’t think so, no. We can be inspired by the truth of the good news to formulate an effective philosophy of living which, in a very unique and personalized way, can reflect, illuminate, and demonstrate the fruits of such a life however. That’s why we are taught that it is truly only by such fruit that one may be measured regarding our success in this spiritualization – not by words or deeds – but only by – sublime peace, joy and happiness, calmness and friendliness, confidence in source and destiny despite temporal confusions, patience and endurance, forbearance and love for others – do we verify the veracity of our understanding of the gospel.
At truthbook, some of us are discussing “adversity”….and how being a faithful believer does not eliminate this seemingly imperative form of testing our philosophy and spiritization among the edges of conflict and vicissitudes of material living. Neither does faith in the gospel and a sound philosophy prevent confusion, disappointment, or failure (the mirror of my true self). Mara gives but one example of the Master’s own adversities but the loss of such a mortal father, the resulting demands of fatherhood thrust upon his elder brother role, the resulting impoverishment of his beloved family, the call to arms to combat the Romans, the pining heart of a fair maiden – all of which he faced as a youth, long before the adversity faced in his mission and ministry and ultimate torment, torture, and public killing.
I think it was Jesus’ philosophy of living that propelled him forward and ever encouraged him to live this life as a cosmic citizen beloved and upheld by the parent creator of all. And somehow, to do so with humor and sweetness, knowing the difference in the temporal and the eternal natures while unifying and coordinating those to exhibit the strength such certainty delivers no matter the difficulty faced.
Thanks for the topic Rick…..western and eastern philosophy guided me back to a religious life within sometime after abandoning the religion and church of my youth. There is a yearning for truth that does not abandon us….if we don’t abandon it!!
140:4.8 (1572.8) An effective philosophy of living is formed by a combination of cosmic insight and the total of one’s emotional reactions to the social and economic environment. Remember: While inherited urges cannot be fundamentally modified, emotional responses to such urges can be changed; therefore the moral nature can be modified, character can be improved. In the strong character emotional responses are integrated and co-ordinated, and thus is produced a unified personality. Deficient unification weakens the moral nature and engenders unhappiness.
140:4.9 (1572.9) Without a worthy goal, life becomes aimless and unprofitable, and much unhappiness results. Jesus’ discourse at the ordination of the twelve constitutes a master philosophy of life. Jesus exhorted his followers to exercise experiential faith. He admonished them not to depend on mere intellectual assent, credulity, and established authority.
140:4.10 (1573.1) Education should be a technique of learning (discovering) the better methods of gratifying our natural and inherited urges, and happiness is the resulting total of these enhanced techniques of emotional satisfactions. Happiness is little dependent on environment, though pleasing surroundings may greatly contribute thereto.
140:4.11 (1573.2) Every mortal really craves to be a complete person, to be perfect even as the Father in heaven is perfect, and such attainment is possible because in the last analysis the “universe is truly fatherly.”
Mara asks if we “….can live the new way of his revealed teachings…?” I don’t think so, no.
Yes, we are inspired by the Master – his life and how he lived it. He shows us the way – 7:5:1. He is the way – 21:6:4, 166:3:7, 182:1:20. By following him we can live the new way of his revealed teachings, each of us in a unique way. Ascension is open to each of us. Each of us is a fusion candidate in potential. In some distant age when our world settles into eras of light and life, mortal souls will fuse with their Adjuster here.
55:2:3 Farther along in the era of light and life the midway creatures or their associates sense the approaching status of probable soul-Adjuster union and signify this to the destiny guardians, who in turn communicate these matters to the finaliter group under whose jurisdiction this mortal may be functioning; then there is issued the summons of the Planetary Sovereign for such a mortal to resign all planetary duties, bid farewell to the world of his origin, and repair to the inner temple of the Planetary Sovereign, there to await morontia transit, the translation flash, from the material domain of evolution to the morontia level of prespirit progression..For Jesus this moment arrived upon his baptism by John in the Jordan..Sorry Rick if I got off topic.
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