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The
Story of Everything
An
abridged edition of The Urantia Book
Paper
65: The Overcontrol of Evolution
Evolution is always purposeful, never accidental. Its course is directed by the combined teamwork of the Master Physical Controllers, who manage the mechanical, non-teachable types of life; the Adjutant Mind Spirits, who activate and regulate teachable life; and the Life Carriers, who plant life and oversee it until the appearance of human will.
Life Carriers perform on three levels: the physical, the quasi-morontial, and the semi-spiritual. When Life Carriers have chosen the sites for life implantation, they are modified to function on the physical level. Having started life, Life Carriers are returned to a morontial phase from which they can manipulate and maneuver evolving life. When will creatures appear, the Life Carriers cease their attempts to steer the course of organic evolution.
Life on Urantia was planted in three warm-water locations. All plant and animal life evolved from the slime of the sea beds. Bacteria and fungi were the most primitive forms of plant life. Next came transition organisms such as sponges, then single-celled ameba and other protozoans-the first true animals. These were followed by stone lilies, sea urchins, sea cucumbers, centipedes, insects, spiders, crustaceans, earthworms, leeches, and mollusks. Further mutations produced fish, frogs, reptiles, and placental mammals. Within this latter group arose the ancestral lemur from which sprang the dawn mammals, then mid-mammals, and lastly the Primates, who gave origin to the first human beings.
Life Carriers take advantage of environmental conditions to guide evolving life in favorable directions. Having selected southeast Asia as the best site for early man to evolve, and knowing that good prehuman stocks were developing in the central life group, the Life Carriers led man's North American lemur ancestors across the Bering land bridge and into that central region where the two superior stocks could continue to evolve.
The appearance of man during the ice ages was intentional. The rigors of a cold climate produce hardiness in humans. If man's ancestor strains had perished, evolution would have been retarded but not prevented; Life Carriers were simultaneously fostering over a thousand mutating strains of potentially pre-human life. Even the loss of Andon and Fonta would only have delayed the eventual appearance of human beings.
Urantia is an experimental planet, where Life Carriers have the opportunity to modify life forms in the attempt to improve them. Evidence that life was intelligently planned is demonstrated by the way an injured cell throws off chemical substances to alert neighboring cells to create replacement cells. This healing method was chosen by the Life Carriers after half a million laboratory experiments. The appearance of the Andonic will creatures prior to the evolution of the six Sangik races was a planned experiment. Another was the simultaneous appearance of the six colored races in one family.
A major advance in the evolution of higher mammals was the development of the ability of iron to double as oxygen carrier and carbon dioxide remover. The fact that evolution is still in progress is illustrated by the evolution of teeth in higher mammals-while man's remote ancestors had thirty-six teeth, humans are now gravitating toward twenty-eight.
Experiments in plant evolution include the development of chlorophyll-making ability and the evolution of the spore into a complex seed. A great disappointment for the Life Carriers on Urantia was the reversion of certain plant forms to parasitic bacteria, which later caused diseases in higher mammals.