Timeline - What is The Urantia Book?
The Urantia Book is a synthesis of science, religion, and philosophy unlike anything else in publication. It is a book for believers in things unseen, for those who will only believe what they can see, and for those who can believe both.
The existence of God and the spiritual component to creation cannot be proven scientifically. For believers this is not an obstacle; for literalists and the wholly material minded scientist it usually means that a belief in God and religion are both dispensed with. The Urantia Book makes it clear that true science and true religion are not at odds but that they can and do complement one another. Scientistists can believe in God and believers can value scientific inquiry.
According to astronomers and physicists, the instant of creation, the moment of the Big Bang, occurred about 13.73 billion years ago (Wikipedia article). Anyone viewing this Urantia Book Timeline immediately notices that the first date entered, 987 billion years ago, is about 70 times greater than the scientific dating for the inception of creation. This is the oldest date recorded in The Urantia Book, but it is by no means the date for the beginning of creation, which The Urantia Book indicates has essentially existed forever, having no recorded beginning date.
Science uses theories and hypotheses to understand material reality, like the Big Bang theory, which, some will acknowledge, is already beginning to wane in the scientific community as new theories and concepts are considered and tested. The spiritual component to reality, which The Urantia Book declares exists and is even more real than material reality, cannot be scientifically verified and is therefore not responsive to the kinds of tests science is capable of performing to prove or disprove; that proves to be a stumbling block for those who categorically reject belief in a Creator God.
The Urantia Book declares itself to be a revelatory gift of truth conferred upon our world, Urantia, in the year 1934 A.D., and as such that it renders dates and other concepts otherwise humanly impossible to uncover; that this book is an interjection of the hand of divinity, reaching down into the commonplace evolutionary flow of time to provide humanity with new knowledge. Whether you can believe this or not is up to you; The Urantia Book has to be read to be believed.