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Continental Drift--The Gardner critique demolished.
Ken Glasziou
In 1991, Dick Bain, Ken Glasziou, Matt Neibaur, and Frank Wright published a brochure, "The Science content of The Urantia Book," that discussed the book's prophetic statements on continental drift and certain aspects of particle physics.
A comprehensive theory of continental drift was first proposed by Alfred Wegener in 1911, but was greeted with derision then treated with contempt over the next forty to fifty years by the vast majority of professional geologists. Two of its major opponents were leading American geologist, Rollin Chamberlin who wrote, "Wegener's theory is of the footless type....it plays a game in which there are few restrictive rules." And in England, influential British geophysicist, Sir Harold Jeffreys, spent years in attempting to demonstrate that continental drift is an impossibility because the strength of the Earth's mantle would be far greater than any conceivable driving force.
Despite these powerful and then current criticisms, the authors of the Urantia Papers persisted in making forty pages of their detailed story of the Earth's geological and biological history totally dependent upon the reality of continental drift. If it was proved wrong, the whole revelation could have been lost.
In his book, "Urantia, the Great Cult Mystery," Martin Gardner dismissed the significance of the revelators' account of Wegener's theory, one of his reasons being that it was accepted by many geologists in the USA. He did this in spite of a personal letter from myself referring him to a book by science historian, H.E. LeGrand which emphasized the universality of the opposition, Chamberlin's vehement denuniciations, and a previous article by Gardner himself debunking Wegener.
The prophetic nature of The Urantia Book's account of continental drift and some of its consequences have now received vindication in a book by professor of geology, M.A.S. McMenamin, entitled "The Garden of Ediacara," reported by Larry Mullins in the recent "Spiritual Fellowship Journal." The following quotes coming from McMenamin's book followed upon that author having his attention drawn to The Urantia Book's content by book reader, J.J. Johnson:
"The anonymous members of the Urantia Corps hit on some remarkable scientific revelations in the mid-1930's. They embraced continental drift at a time when it was decidedly out of vogue in the scientific community. They recognized the presence of a global super-continent (Rodinia) and superocean (Mirovia), in existence on Earth before Pangea...The concept of a billion year old supercontinent (the currently accepted age for the formation of Rodinia) that subsequently split apart, forming gradually widening ocean basins in which early marine life flourished, is unquestionably present in the book.
"Orthodox scientific arguments for such a proposal did not appear until the late 1960's, and a pre-Pangea supercontinent was never described until Valentine and Moores made the attempt in 1970. The Urantia Corps not only had the age of formation of Rodinia approximately correct at 1 billion years, but they were the first to link breakup of Rodinia to the emergence of animals...One wonders how the Urantia Book authors arrived at the concept of a Proterozoic supercontinent and the link between the breakup of this supercontinent and the emergence of complex life in the ensuing rift oceans 30 years before most geologists accepted continental drift--and nearly four decades before any scientist had any inkling that Rodinia existed."
Urantia Book readers please be aware that Professor McMenamim also commented on other material in The Urantia Book that is now out of date or scientifically untenable.
So why this strange mixture of highly prophetic material set in a background of early 1900's science and cosmology that has since become outdated or untenable?
We can only guess at the truth. Being aware that much of this material is a component of a "universe frame" that provides a background in which we can fit the kind of universe career set out for us ascending mortals by the revelators may be helpful for some. The necessity for such a "framework-in-which-to-think" is suggested in:
"Partial, incomplete, and evolving intellects would be helpless in the master universe, would be unable to form the first rational thought pattern, were it not for the innate ability of all mind, high or low, to form a universe frame in which to think. If mind cannot fathom conclusions, if it cannot penetrate to true origins, then will such mind unfailingly postulate conclusions and invent origins that it may have a means of logical thought within the frame of these mind-created postulates. And while such universe frames for creature thought are indispensable to rational intellectual operations, they are, without exception, erroneous to a greater or lesser degree." (1260)
This paragraph verifies the fact that the revelators have provided a framework for their presentations. Additionally, the terms of the mandate (1109) explain the presence of error
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