© 2013 Santiago Rodríguez
© 2013 Urantia Association of Spain
| Channeling: error, truth, illusion or innocence | Luz y Vida — No. 35 — December 2013 — Index | Urantia Questionnaire: Jaime Marco |
Although the fact of evolution is widely accepted today as the way in which the species of living beings we know of have come into being, and certainly The Urantia Book and established science converge on the idea, they also converge on the fact. that evolution is directed by an adaptation to the environment and by a selection favored by appropriate mutations, which implies that all living beings have a “UBCA”, that is, a universal common ancestor.
But where there is a first radical divergence is that The Urantia Book espouses the idea of a UBCA designed for the evolutionary process to produce human beings. However, science today does not admit that the evolutionary process has a purpose, an intention; for current science, evolution is a mere adaptation to the environment.
Science indicates that it is very likely that UBCA was neither the only nor the first living being on our planet.
The general picture of the evolutionary process is consistent both in The Urantia Book and in current science, and in fact the appearance of a large number of hominids is consistent with the description in The Urantia Book.
Evolution, as a long and slow process or as the result of a suitable mutation, is compatible in both visions. We start from UBCA and we go through unicellular beings without a nucleus (prokaryotes), then they appear with a nucleus (eukaryotes), first vegetables and then animal prokaryotic cells appear.
Then multicellular animals will appear that will evolve into fish, which in turn will give rise to amphibians, which will give rise to reptiles, from which placental mammals will emerge, which will end up giving rise to lemurs, as precursors of primates from which the hominids that will end up giving Neanderthals, and later the Cro-Magnon, as lines closest to current human beings.
The second great divergence is the dates on which the events take place; in this case, science generally dates evolutionary events as much earlier than what is indicated in The Urantia Book, except as regards the appearance of Neanderthal man. Interestingly, the situation is reversed at the cosmological level, and science frames events much closer in time than The Urantia Book does.
In the following diagram, a series of milestones in evolutionary history appear, as well as the indication with a green arrow of the moment in which it happens according to science, and in blue color the moment that indicates The Urantia Book. The geological eras are delimited, to try to situate the events in time, indicated in millions of years.
¶ References
- Light and Life Magazine (all old issues): https://aue.urantia-association.org/numeros-antiguos-del-lyv/
| Channeling: error, truth, illusion or innocence | Luz y Vida — No. 35 — December 2013 — Index | Urantia Questionnaire: Jaime Marco |