© 1988 Ken Glasziou
© 1988 ANZURA, Australia & New Zealand Urantia Association
CONTINENTAL DRIFT: The URANTIA Book states quite categorically. that all land on earth was originally a single continent that subsequently broke up, commencing 750 million years ago (UB 57:8.23), followed by a long period of continental drifting during which land bridges were repeatedly. formed and broken.
The idea of continental drift was mooted in the 19th century and first put forward as a comprehensive theory by Wegener in 1912. It was not well accepted, being classified with gee-whiz science, and becoming more and more discredited until the 1960s. I can still remember attending a geology lecture at Sydney University in 1951 when the lecturer dismissed the concept of continental drift with the comment that there were no known forces that could wrench continents apart. The change in attitude was initiated by the discovery of long mountain ranges on the ocean floors, such as the Mid-Atlantic Ridge that stretches from Iceland to Antartica. During the 1960 's, careful examination of the ocean floor revealed that the rock from the Earth’s mantle is being melted, then forced upwards resulting in sea floor spreading. This upwelling would be expected to push the continents apart, and thus provided the missing evidence for physical mechanism that could bring about continental drift. However, it was not called continental drift, and instead was given the more scientific name of plate tectonics.
The URANTIA Papers that mention continental drift were presented in 1934, and published in The URANTIA Book in 1955. In the 1950’s, continental drift theory was widely ridiculed. The writers of The URANTIA Papers could not have been unaware of the very tenuous nature of the theory of continental drift, and unless they had access to pre-existing knowledge, would appear to be doing a foolish thing in going against virtually all established scientific opinion.
The URANTIA Book is at variance with many published estimates of geological time, for instance for the Carboniferous and Devonian periods where the discrepancy may be about 100,000,000 years. In some areas there is good agreement, for example The URANTIA Book UB 59:6.5 talks of the disappearance of the land bridges between the Americas and Europe and Africa in the era between 160 and 170 million years ago, and an article in Scientific American, June 1979 places this break at 165 million years. However, land bridges connected these continents again at later times via Greenland, Iceland and the Behring Straits, and also connected South America to Australia via Antartica, and directly to Africa (UB 61:1.12, UB 61:2.3, UB 61:3.4, UB 61:3.8-9, UB 61:4.6, and Scientific American (January) 1983 p. 60)
A most remarkable aspect of The URANTIA Book accounts is the statement that the breakup of the supercontinent commenced 750 million years ago. Wegener placed it at 200 million years ago. The 1984 edition of Encyclopedia Brittanica’s Science and Technology presented what purported to be an up to date series of maps depicting the progress of continental drift from 50 to about 200 million years ago which is at variance with a similar portrayal in Scientific American (1984) 250:41 by about 100,000,000 years in aspects of the progression. However, both versions still placed the commencement of continental drift in the vicinity of 200 to 250 million years ago. A little earlier, in Richard Leakey’s book “The Making of Mankind” published in 1981 p.32 we read “Two hundred million years ago, all the continents were in contact, forming a single super continent known as Pangea”. However; somewhere about 1980 some geologists were having different thoughts. In John Gribben’s book “Genesis”, published in 1982 we read that there was a pre-existing continent, Pangea I, roughly 600 million years ago that broke up into four new continents by about 450 million years ago, at the end of the Ordovician. Then about 200 million years ago, the continents converged to form Pangea II, which quickly broke, first to Laurasia and Gondwanaland, then further breakup occurred giving an appearance much like the present world at the end of the Cretaceous. In an article in Scientific American (1984) 250(2), p.41 it is stated that major preexisting continents broke up in late Ripherian times between 700 and 900 million years ago, and in a 1987 article (Sc.Am April 256,84) the breakup of Pangea I is placed somewhere near the beginning of the pre-Cambrian, in the order of 600 million years ago.
So, 30 years after publication of The URANTIA Book, not only has a discredited theory become accepted by virtually all geologists, but even the date of commencement of breakup of the super continent that for many, many years was assumed to have started only 200 million years ago, has, by virtue of new information coming to hand only in the 1980 's now been pushed back to beyond the pre-Cambrian era, and close to the 750 million years ago as stated in the URANTIA Papers in 1934.
It is quite impossible to calculate the odds against being right about such a matter 50 or even 30 years ago. Perhaps one chance in a million would be an underestimate. But considering both the predictions regarding neutrinos, the W particle, the undiscovered strong force, and neutron stars together, with this remarkable statement on both the time of commencement of continental drift and the factuality of its existence, it is exceedingly difficult to make any other conclusion but than that the authors had access to pre-existing knowledge, at least in respect to these subjects. Taking into account everything that had been written about them by 1934 , or even by 1955 , there is virtually no chance of guessing correctly the predictions found in the URANTIA Papers. This conclusion holds no matter how much error may be thought to exist in respect to other statements of a scientific nature to be found in the Book.
Ken Glasziou, Maleny, Queensland