Editing The Urantia Book (section)

=== History and future of the world ===
The book's extensive teachings about the history of the world include its physical development about 4.5 billion years ago, the gradual changes in conditions that allowed life to develop, and long ages of organic evolution that started with microscopic marine life and led to plant and animal life in the oceans, later on land. The emergence of humans is presented as having occurred about a million years ago from a branch of superior [[primate]]s originating from a [[lemur]] ancestor. The first humans are said to have been male and female twins called Andon and Fonta, born "993,419 years prior to 1934."{{sfn|Gardner|1995|p=21}}{{sfn|House|2000|p=270}}

''The Urantia Book'' teaches not only biological evolution,{{sfn|Lewis|2003|p=129}} but that human society and spiritual understandings evolve by slow progression, subject both to periods of rapid improvement and the possibility of retrogression. Progress is said to follow a divine plan that includes periodic gifts of revelation and ministry by heavenly teachers, which eventually will lead to an ideal world status of "light and life" in the far distant future.{{sfn|Lewis|2003|p=130}}

Although there is the ideal and divine plan of progression, it is said to be fostered and administered by various orders of celestial beings who are not always perfect. Urantia is said to be a markedly "confused and disordered" planet that is "greatly retarded in all phases of intellectual progress and spiritual attainment" compared to more typical inhabited worlds, due to an unusually severe history of rebellion and default by its spiritual supervisors.{{sfn|Lewis|2003|pp=140–141}}{{sfn|The Urantia Book|1955|p=578}}