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The first of these, General Relativity, in a study on two neutron stars spiralling towards each other, has been shown to be accurate to one part in 1014 (100 million million). Nevertheless physicists claim quantum theory is the most accurate theory known to man. But despite this quite incredible accuracy of present theory, we still have to make educated guesses at the values of 20 parameters that we need for a 'final' theory.
How then would God go about creating a universe like ours containing people like us? To commence let's have God simply attempt to create a universe having stars like ours.
Let's imagine God is seated before a bank of celestial computers having the twenty dials that tune the parameters for providing the required outcome. He starts with the most important--tuning the force of gravity. The control dial is set in terms of proton masses and must be tuned so that stars are formed of the right size and lifetime to eventually provide a stable universe. If the stars are too small, they will not ignite to burn their hydrogen fuel to helium, if they are too big they won't last long enough to be useful. Or they might collapse to a black hole.
After some tinkering, the computers throw up the number, 1x10-38 proton masses. That means one divided by 10 followed by 38 zeros. Now that's tiny. God punches a few keys and gets some answers--the expected life of an average star comes out as ten billion years, which is about what is needed. Dropping a zero reduces lifetime by 1000-fold, drop another zero and the star lasts only 10,000 years. God accepts the computer value.
The next important job is selecting a cosmological constant that will fix the mass-energy density of space. The computers say it must be set to no more than 10-40 proton masses. More tinkering and it is found that for any bigger value, the universe won't last long enough to produce stars. God again accepts the computer value.
God still has 18 parameters (values) to assign. While he does the work, let's find out what the chances are of getting our kind of stars in our kind of universe if we just spin those twenty tuning dials at random.
That's not a major problem for the celestial computers, and the answer comes in a fraction of a second as just one chance in 10229. That means one chance in 10 followed by 229 zeros!!! One chance in 10229 is so incredibly slight as to be beyond our wildest imagining--for all intents and purposes, impossible.
But a starry universe is only a beginning. For life to exist, the stars need to have planets and, among other things, inhabitable planets need to have an orbit giving a temperature range that permits permanent surface water to exist. Then an atmosphere, the right balance of chemicals, and thousands of other critical little things are essentials. Like the crucial need for an ultra-violet light filter at the top of the atmosphere. Or the right amount of oxygen in the atmosphere. A few percent increase and our forests and grasslands go up in an unstoppable blaze. Or too much carbon dioxide, and temperatures soar, the ice cap melts, ocean levels rise, islands disappear, low lying continental land is flooded, millions become homeless and displaced. Maybe all this will happen anyhow!
All things considered, the possibility for self-generating universes and self-creating life does not appear all that bright. In fact it appears to be impossibly remote. So what does the Urantia revelation tell us.
"That we are called Life Carriers should not confuse you. We can and do carry life to the planets, but we brought no life to Urantia. Urantia life is unique, original with the planet. This sphere is a life-modification world; all life appearing hereon was formulated by us right here on the planet; (667)
"The material self, the ego-entity of human identity, is dependent during the physical life on the continuing function of the material life vehicle, on the continued existence of the unbalanced equilibrium of energies and intellect which, on Urantia, has been given the name life". (1229)
There was a time when we could put these two widely separated statements together and contend that they mean that only if an organism has the potential to develop intellect do the Urantia Book authors classify it as "life." Accepting this definition, we could live with the indisputable evidence for what we have routinely calld "life" existed almost 4 billion years ago.
The following quotations nullify that interpretation.
"550,000,000 years ago the Life Carrier corps returned to Urantia. In co-operation with spiritual powers and superphysical forces we organized and initiated the original life patterns of this world and planted them in the hospitable waters of the realm. All planetary life down to the days of Caligastia, the Planetary Prince, had its origin in our three original, identical, and simultaneous marine-life implantations." (667)
"The bacteria, simple vegetable organisms of a very primitive nature, are very little changed from the early dawn of life; they even exhibit a degree of retrogression in their parasitic
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