© 2004 Ken Glasziou
© 2004 The Brotherhood of Man Library
| The Ridiculous—Passenger Birds and Secondary Midwayers | Volume 11 - No. 4 — Index | Prophetic material and errors in Urantia revelation—Epilogue |
The best known ‘errors’ in the Papers are the distance to the Andromeda galaxy, the “instantaneous disruption” of elements higher than the one-hundredth, the planet Mercury always turning the same face to the sun, and the human chromosome number. All of them were simply direct quotations of the then current knowledge.
“2,500,000,000 years ago the planets had grown immensely in size. Urantia was a well-developed sphere about one tenth its present mass and was still growing rapidly by meteoric accretion.” UB 57:6.10
Comment: The fact that evidence is available for the occurrence of sedimentary rocks and oceans dating back to from 3.8 to 4.4 billion years ago and for life forms existing close to 4 billion years ago is impossible to reconcile with this statement. And there is much convincing evidence indicating the Earth and its moon were close to their full size by about 4.4 billion years ago.[1],[2]
“1,500,000,000 years ago the earth was two thirds its present size. . . Volcanic action is now at its height. The whole earth is a veritable fiery inferno, the surface resembling its earlier molten state before the heavier metals gravitated toward the center. This is the volcanic age. . . The primitive planetary atmosphere is slowly evolving, now containing some water vapor, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, and hydrogen chloride, but there is little or no free nitrogen or free oxygen. . . . Presently, the atmosphere became more settled and cooled sufficiently to start precipitation of rain on the hot rocky surface of the planet. For thousands of years Urantia was enveloped in one vast and continuous blanket of steam. And during these ages the sun never shone upon the earth’s surface.” UB 57:7.4-7
Comment: There is no geological evidence to support such a scenario. Photosynthetic bacteria have been present in the oceans of the world since between 3.5 and 4 billion years ago, a fact demonstrated by the ratio of carbon isotopes in fossil remains that is unique to photosynthesis by living organisms. Additionally, studies of crater formation on the moon demonstrate that bombardment by large planetesimals virtually ceased by 3.8 billion years ago and that crater formation fell to the current level at about that time. An Earth, two thirds its present size just 1.5 billion years ago is not a possibility.
Oxygen is the waste product of photosynthesis, itself a biological process. 3.8 billion years ago these bacteria had oxygenated the waters sufficiently to convert the soluble ferrous iron salts to the insoluble oxidized ferric form. Deposits from this process are present as sedimentary strata at Isua in Greenland and elsewhere. Barite/gypsum deposits, aged 3.5 billion years are found at places like Pilbarra in Western Australia, and are the result of oxidation of sulfides to sulfates. This oxidation process continued until 1.7 billion years ago when the oceans were cleared of the excess reduced salts.
A period of “thousands of years” during which the “sun never shone on the earth’s surface” would have wiped out all photosynthetic organisms. Thus the incredibly complicated oxygen producing process of photosynthesis would have needed to evolve all over again. But the evidence is for a sharp rise in atmospheric oxygen commencing in this period, rising towards 10% of current levels by its end, 1.0 billion years ago.[1:1],[2:1]
1,000,000,000 years ago. “The planet had attained approximately its present size. . . . The real geologic history of Urantia begins with the cooling of the earth’s crust sufficiently to cause the formation of the first ocean. Water-vapor condensation on the cooling surface of the earth, once begun, continued until it was virtually complete. By the end of this period the ocean was world-wide, covering the entire planet to an average depth of over one mile. The tides were then in play much as they are now observed, but this primitive ocean was not salty; it was practically a fresh-water covering for the world. In those days, most of the chlorine was combined with various metals, but there was enough, in union with hydrogen, to render this water faintly acid.” UB 57:8.1
Comment: The Urantia Paper describes a period of 500,000,000 years prior to this billion year period during which “the surface of the planet was bombarded by meteorites so that it increased its mass by one third, for much of the time was a fiery inferno due to volcanic activity, and for thousands of years was enveloped in steam.” And ocean formation commenced only after this period.
In conflict with the above, craters and maree on the moon’s surface date back as far as 3.9 billion years, and present no signs for a meteor bombardment that could increase the Earth’s mass by one third in this period.
Also algal fossils are known aged 1.9 billion years from the Gunflint formations in Canada and aged 1.5 billion years from the Amelia dolomites in Australia. Current estimates are that the oceans reached their present degree of salinity 1.5 to 2 billion years ago.[1:2] And sea dwelling Ediacaran creatures[1:3] were present on the ocean bottoms from almost one billion years ago to the late Pre-Cambrian a half billion years later
The description in the Paper is diametrically opposed to the evidence of modern investigatory sciences–so much so that any new reader having a sound knowledge of the new technologies of geophysics and astronomy would be mystified as to why it was ever written.
750,000,000 years ago the first breaks in the continental land mass began. . . UB 57:8.23
Comment: We finally arrive at what is a truly prophetic statement for the period in which it was made. This breakup of a single land mass is the commencement of continental drift, now a virtually unopposed theory. But up until towards the end of the 1950 period it was vigorously opposed by the vast majority of professional geologists. The concept was put forward around 1910 by Alfred Wegener and drew almost hysterical opposition from many prominent geologists.[3]
“500,000,000 years ago, primitive marine vegetable life was well established on Urantia.” UB 58:4.3
Comment: Primitive marine vegetable life of both prokaryote (no nucleus housing the chromosome) and eukaryote forms (chromosomes are contained in a nucleus) had for long existed on Urantia. The prokaryotes were in existence close to 4 billion years ago while the eukaryotes, including photosynthetic algae, had been present for about 2 billion years.
Fossils of red algae of the species Eosphaera and Huroniospora are dated at 1.9 billion years ago. The crawling trails of bottom-dwelling, worm-like creatures are found among Ediacaran fossils that occur as early as about 1 billion years ago. Amongst these Ediacaran creatures was a leaf-like organism called Charniodiscus that grew to about 10 feet in length and had a holdfast for anchoring it to the sea bed.
400,000,000 years ago marine life, both vegetable and animal, is fairly well distributed over the whole world. The world climate grows slightly warmer and becomes more equable. There is a general inundation of the seashores of the various continents, particularly of North and South America. New oceans appear, and the older bodies of water are greatly enlarged. UB 59:1.2
Vegetation now for the first time crawls out upon the land and soon makes considerable progress in adaptation to a non-marine habitat. UB 59:1.3
“Suddenly and without gradation ancestry the first multicellular animals make their appearance.” UB 59:1.4
Comment: According to modern paleontology, most of the known phyla were already represented in the Cambrian period, 570-505 million years ago.[1:4] The multicellular priapulid worms were already diverse, fossils of annelid worm are present, also sponges, coelenterates, arthropods, trilobites, and crustaceans. Air-breathing scorpions are found in the Silurian period, 410-435 million years ago.[1:5]
This was the biogeologic picture of Urantia at the end of that long period of the world’s history, embracing fifty million years, designated by your geologists as the Cambrian. UB 59:1.20
Comment: This curious statement appears at the end of a section commencing at 360,000,000 years ago so would cover from 410-360 million years ago. As far back as the 1950’s the Cambrian period was given as from 540,000,000 to 500,000,000 years ago.
310,000,000 years ago. “The marine fauna developed to the point where every type of life below the vertebrate scale was represented in the fossils of those rocks which were laid down during these times. But all of these animals were marine organisms. No land animals had yet appeared except a few types of worms which burrowed along the seashores, nor had the land plants yet overspread the continents; there was still too much carbon dioxide in the air to permit the existence of air breathers.” UB 59:2.9
Comment: Air-breathing scorpions (an animal) were present in the Silurian period 100 million years earlier. Fossil evidence for land plants exists in the Ordovician (505-438 million years ago) and fossilized tracheids (which are diagnostic of vascular plants) are found in the early Devonian (408-360 million years ago)
200,000,000 years ago the really active stages of the Carboniferous period began. For twenty million years prior to this time the earlier coal deposits were being laid down, but now the more extensive coal-formation activities were in process. The length of the actual coal-deposition epoch was a little over twenty-five million years. UB 59:5.13
“180,000,000 years ago brought the close of the Carboniferous period, during which coal had been formed all over the world–in Europe, India, China, North Africa, and the Americas.” UB 59:5.20
Comment: Modern geology places the Carboniferous at from 360,000,000 to 286,000,000 years ago. In the 1950 period some geologists drew the boundaries at 320,000,000 to 260,000,000 years ago. It would be interesting to obtain information on the geological time scale for the 1920 to 1935 period. As with other commentaries on matters of science and cosmology in the Urantia Papers, it is possible that much of the information on paleontology is drawn from one or two text books that were current in that period. If so, they will eventually come to light.
75,000,000 years ago, marks the end of continental drift. UB 60:3.12
Comment: Drift continues. Satellite pictures show that, taking Africa as a fixed point, the Australian plate moves north at 8.4 cm/yr (4000 miles/75 million yrs); the South American plate west at 3.2 cm/yr; the Arabian plate north at 2.6 cm/yr; the Pacific plate north east at 10.6 cm/yr., etc. Plate movement is expected to continue far into the future.[4]
¶ External links
- Article in Innerface International: https://urantia-book.org/archive/newsletters/innerface/vol11_4/page16.html
| The Ridiculous—Passenger Birds and Secondary Midwayers | Volume 11 - No. 4 — Index | Prophetic material and errors in Urantia revelation—Epilogue |
¶ References
Encyclopedia Britannica CDRom editions 1999-2001 ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
Delsemme, A.H. An Argument for the Cometry Origin of the Biosphere. American Scientist 89:432-442, 2001; E.B. 2001 ↩︎ ↩︎
Le Grand, H.E. Drifting Continents and Shifting Theories. (Cambridge University Press, 1988) ↩︎
Rothery, D. (1997) Geology (Hodder & Stoughton, London) ↩︎