Talk:Glossary of terms in The Urantia Book

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Over time, likely there will be many improvements to this glossary (hopefully!), like has happened with The Urantia Book entry.

Those of us who know the book know that it's full of details and there's almost always more that can be said on a topic. I've tried to pare the definitions down to their most basic essentials, and I ask people to please consider carefully their own edits and additions in a similar frame of mind. Please put yourself in the shoes of people for whom this all is completely foreign! Think in terms of you having only one shot, only a handful of sentences to get across the fundamentals of an entry — what should those sentences be? Sometimes it's easy because the book itself provides a clear concise definition, sometimes it's subjective and extremely hard to pinpoint *the* essentials that people are likely to agree on (like a definition for "Universal Father", where multiple long papers cover the topic). I've done my best to get things started and look forward to improvements.

Some of the entries already push the limits of what is likely suitable for a glossary definition. I think if anybody finds they want to describe much more detail on the longer entries, it would be good to start a separate article on it. I've already linked the terms of some entries to non-existent articles so they can be built up, (e.g. Universal Father, Eternal Son, Infinite Spirit, etc.)

The purpose I've had in mind with the glossary is for it to be a tool for non-readers who come across The Urantia Book related topics & discussions and for relatively new readers who don't yet have the basic terminology figured out. I'm skeptical of this becoming an exhaustive glossary on all terms in the book, simply because that would probably require it to be a hundred pages or more, as there are so many unique terms (many only mentioned once or a few times). I have a concern that it would tend to crowd out the more essential and fundamental terms that are more likely to be helpful for the average person.

I've chosen the terms I've defined mainly based on:

Whether they are relatively common and integral to the book and unique to it (e.g. "morontia", "midwayer", "Life Carrier")
Whether they are different in meaning from traditional understandings people are likely to have (e.g. "Adam and Eve", "Supreme Being", "universe")
Whether they are used by the UB readership somewhat frequently, even if uncommon in the book (e.g. "agondonter", "reserve corps of destiny")
Whether other term definitions in the list needed them to make sense. The reader should be able to look up any strange & unique terms used in a definition and find those defined on their own.

I look forward to people's suggestions and improvements. Thanks. — Wazronk 22:25, 23 December 2005 (UTC)