Block-heads Head in the Wrong Direction

Get a clue; then FOLLOW IT!

This morning, I was working on my last article for the series on the relationship between the Urantia community and technological advances. A related fact is that Urantia Foundation has a YouTube channel with over 120 videos. Over the last ten years, they posted videos from their online Scientific Symposium conferences. About 25% of their videos are from these events. One of the Urantia Foundation trustees, who is also a Philosophy professor, regularly does a presentation. Most recently, in 2022, the title of his third talk was “A Great Confusion About Race: A Sociological and Genetic Meditation.”

This is my wheelhouse. I care what people have to say about this subject, especially when it contradicts my work.

A little before the seven-minute mark in that 2022 presentation, the Urantia Foundation trustee says, “We have what’s called a Melchizedek Library. We have a library full of the human sources. One of them was a fellow named Ashley Montagu, which was a fairly late source in the development of The Urantia Book. He was an anthropologist. And he was asked by the UN to write a statement on race in the early 50’s, which he did. And he spoke of one human race, and he wrote a book, which was very famous in the 50’s called The Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race. And there he really started the ball rolling with the appreciation in evolutionary thought that race is a social construct and not a biological fact.”

Montagu’s ideas are not well aligned with teachings in the Urantia Papers on race. Ancient and current racial differences most certainly are described as a biological fact, notwithstanding our ongoing process towards eventual homogenization.

Why would a trustee, entrusted with championing the teachings in the Urantia Papers as an epochal revelation, cite Montagu as a human source? Montagu published the referenced book in 1942. The Urantia Papers indicate that they were completed almost ten years prior. A signed proposal from the original printer dates from June 1941. In November 1941, funds were being solicited for printing.

People new to the revelation may get a little confused because the publication date for The Urantia Book is 1955. But The Urantia Book was completed well before the publication date and Urantia Foundation trustees know this, of course.

As it turns, Matthew Block is known in the Urantia community for documenting human sources that influenced how material in the Urantia Papers was presented. His reputation is well established; he has been doing this for around forty years! In fact, he worked at Urantia Foundation back in the 1980’s and had access to books that helped him develop his scholarship. Matthew Block says Montagu was a human source. Others tend to reference his work.

Block’s assertion that Montagu is a source author has bothered me for a long time. The way Montagu is overinterpreted by a trustee, doing a Urantia Foundation sponsored Scientific Symposium presentation, to try to support the notion that “race is a social construct and not a biological fact,” boils my blood. But I never took a closer look AND followed up on what I saw until now.

On page forty-one of Block’s parallel chart, he introduces Montagu for the first time. Reference to the Urantia Papers starts with:

(82:6.2) “Of the six colored Sangik races, three were primary and three were secondary. Though the primary races—blue, red, and yellow—were in many respects superior to the three secondary peoples, it should be remembered that these secondary races had many desirable traits which would have considerably enhanced the primary peoples if their better strains could have been absorbed.”

Block then starts to draw parallels to 82:6.3-12. The problem is immediately apparent with the first Montagu quote from page 101, footnoted on page 102:

“As Castle has written, “Since there are no biological obstacles to crossing between the most diverse human races, when such crossing does occur, it is in disregard of social conventions, race pride and race prejudice. Naturally, therefore it occurs between antisocial and outcast specimens of the respective races, or else between conquerors and slaves. …”

Who is Castle? Wikipedia’s page on William E. Castle says:

“Castle entered the senior class of Harvard University in 1892 and in 1893 took a second A.B. degree with honors. He was appointed laboratory assistant in zoology, an A.M. degree in 1894 and a Ph.D. in 1895. He then taught zoology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and at the Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, each for a year. …

“In 1903 Castle intervened in the debate on mathematical foundations of Mendelian genetics. He corrected some tentative work of Udny Yule on breeding by deliberate selection and genetics. In so doing, he anticipated what has now become known as the Hardy–Weinberg law.

“At Harvard, Charles W. Woodworth suggested to Castle that Drosophila might be used for genetical work.^[4] Castle was the first to use the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, and it was his work that inspired T.H. Morgan to use Drosophila and the basis of Morgan's 1933 Nobel Prize.”

What is being quoted? “Biological and Social Consequences of Race Crossing” by Castle was published in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, Vol. 9 No. 2 (1926), almost ten years before the Urantia Papers claim they were completed. (Montagu’s footnote references page 147. Page 146 in the journal is correct; see page 162 of the online reference.)

Block, reasonably enough, picks up on Montagu’s references to words like “antisocial” and “outcast specimens,” along with other words, phrases, and structures to build his case for a parallel. Had he researched Castle, who seems much more likely to be a source author, Block would have found even more noteworthy parallels. For instance, also on page 146, Castle writes:

“When isolated groups of flowering plants have become specifically distinct, they often show a tendency to remain distinct even if subsequently they are brought into the same territory. One may have become earlier or later than the others in its time of flowering, or structural or physiological differences may have arisen which make cross fertilization between the two difficult. Similarly in the higher animals (particularly among birds and mammals) a psychological element enters into the maintenance of the group differences. The individual prefers to mate only in his own group and with his own kind, but circumstances may overcome racial antipathy and the overpowering impulse of sex bring about mixed unions when mates of the same race are not available.” [Emphasis added.]

The word antipathy is used once in the Urantia Papers in “Dispersion of the Colored Races”:

(64:7.2) “Thus it was that for almost one hundred thousand years these Sangik peoples spread out around the foothills and mingled together more or less, notwithstanding the peculiar but natural antipathy which early manifested itself between the different races.”

Point being, Block lists numerous authors as human sources for the Urantia Papers, even though the publication date for their work is too late to be consistent with when the Urantia Papers claims to have been completed. By doing this, he casts doubt on the credibility of the authors. And because he is generally acknowledged as the Urantia community leader for this type of study, his research and opinions have become influential and are often referenced.

As someone who does work that emphasizes this revelation’s unique quality of credibility, I have found the defaming aspects of Blocks work distasteful, even though I appreciate his tenacious efforts that document many texts worthy of consideration as human source material. In fact, he is referenced in my annotations more than anyone else. But I have always wondered whether there were earlier sources for the ones he says came at or after the mid 1930’s. Now we know that one of them, at least, was not sufficiently researched.

New annotations related to this subject are next on my list. Perhaps getting after more of this type of work needs to be prioritized. And I need to finish the last installment of the series on technology and the Urantia movement! Let’s consider this an appendix.