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Urantia Association International

SCIENTIFIC SYMPOSIUM IV

Science and Spirituality

It is with a great and joyous anticipation that we await the first solar eclipse to come across North America in several decades.  This amazing eclipse will stretch all the way across the United States of America from Oregon to South Carolina (view the path of the eclipse here). The wonderful thing for Urantia Book readers, is that this eclipse will occur on Jesus’ 2023rd birthday! 

We are hosting the fourth Scientific Symposium.  These symposia had their origin in 1988 in Nashville, Tennessee.  The second was held in 1991 in Oklahoma City. The third was also in Oklahoma City in 1994.  

Our Scientific Symposium as in the past, will be a larger event and will be geared more toward the generic reader of the Urantia Book.  In other words, the science topics will be so well known to the presenters, that they will be able to make their subject matter understandable to nearly anybody.

This exciting event will be held at the Wilderness Camping and Retreat Center near Lawson, Missouri on August 18-21, 2017.  An extraordinary solar eclipse will occur on the occasion of the celebration of the birth of our lord and master, Jesus of Nazareth.  The retreat center is very near to the center of the solar path.  The duration of totality will be 2 minutes and 38 seconds and will occur at 1:08 pm on Monday, August 21st.  We will be in a very dark location, away from lights, so celestial observations at night should be spectacular.

This conference will be a delightfully balanced jubilee of both Science and Spirituality.  A Sunday night banquet will be devoted to marvelous, worshipful remembrances of Jesus and his remarkable life.  Several remembrance presentations will occur along with music and poetry.

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The measure of the advance of society is directly determined by the degree to which public opinion can control personal behavior and state regulation through nonviolent expression. The really civilized government had arrived when public opinion was clothed with the powers of personal franchise. Popular elections may not always decide things rightly, but they represent the right way even to do a wrong thing. Evolution does not at once produce superlative perfection but rather comparative and advancing practical adjustment. 


There are ten steps, or stages, to the evolution of a practical and efficient form of representative government, and these are:
 



1. Freedom of the person. Slavery, serfdom, and all forms of human bondage must disappear. 
 
 2. Freedom of the mind. Unless a free people are educated -- taught to think intelligently and plan wisely -- freedom usually does more harm than good. 
 
 3. The reign of law. Liberty can be enjoyed only when the will and whims of human rulers are replaced by legislative enactments in accordance with accepted fundamental law. 
 
4. Freedom of speech. Representative government is unthinkable without freedom of all forms of expression for human aspirations and opinions. 
 

5. Security of property. No government can long endure if it fails to provide for the right to enjoy personal property in some form. Man craves the right to use, control, bestow, sell, lease, and bequeath his personal property. 

6. The right of petition. Representative government assumes the right of citizens to be heard. The privilege of petition is inherent in free citizenship. 
 
7. The right to rule. It is not enough to be heard; the power of petition must progress to the actual management of the government. 
 
8. Universal suffrage. Representative government presupposes an intelligent, efficient, and universal electorate. The character of such a government will ever be determined by the character and caliber of those who compose it. As civilization progresses, suffrage, while remaining universal for both sexes, will be effectively modified, regrouped, and otherwise differentiated. 
 
9. Control of public servants. No civil government will be serviceable and effective unless the citizenry possess and use wise techniques of guiding and controlling officeholders and public servants. 
 
10. Intelligent and trained representation. The survival of democracy is dependent on successful representative government; and that is conditioned upon the practice of electing to public offices only those individuals who are technically trained, intellectually competent, socially loyal, and morally fit. Only by such provisions can government of the people, by the people, and for the people be preserved.