Animals

In the Urantia Book

Differences with respect to man

• cannot know God, develop language 130:2.8
• Animals do, in a crude way, communicate with each other, but there is little or no personality in such primitive contact. 109:4.2 160:2.1
• the endowment of mind even in impersonal beings as animals qualifies them to think and endows them with consciousness despite the total absence of personality. 9:6.3
• they do not build fire and this human discovery is the bound that separated man from animal 69:6.2
• Animals do have fellow feelings, but they do not communicate concepts to each other; they can express emotions but not ideas and ideals. 109:4.1-2
• do not experience consciousness of time or self-consciousness 118:3.1 130:4.9 130:7.5 (133:7.6,8)
• do not survive death 36:6.5 130:2.8
• do not visualize survival after death 68:3.2
• Animals have knowledge, but only man possesses wisdom capacity. 101:6.4
• Labor, the efforts of design, distinguishes man from the beast, whose exertions are largely instinctive. 69:2.5
• Unspiritual animals know only the past and live in the present. 12:5.10
• Animals make no inquiry into the purposes of life; therefore they never worry, neither do they commit suicide. 160:1.5
• Emotionally, man transcends his animal ancestors in his ability to appreciate humor, art, and religion. 69:0.1
• The selective response of an animal is limited to the motor level of behavior. 16:7.2-4
• Those who cannot know God are reckoned among the animals of any given realm. 133:0.3

Animal evolution

• multicellular animals appear suddenly in the evolution process 59:1.4
• When the seas were at their height, a new evolutionary development suddenly occurred. Abruptly, the first of the land animals appeared. 59:5.5
• all animals except most primitive are dependent on plants
• the ability to adapt to air, water and lad of animals is derived from adjutant mind-spirits, it is not just a physical matter 65:6.7-8
• adjutant mind-spirits #1 to #5 function in animals 36:5.13 42:10.4 65:6.7
• evolution require appearance of many apparently useless forms of animal and vegetable life destined to disappear 36:2.17
• Ordovician was the age of invertebrate animals 59:2
• thousands of marine species perished in Permian 59:6.2
• life of mammalian animals little changed by great glacier; they persisted in that narrow belt of land lying between the ice and the Alps 64:4.7
• vertebrates
• crustaceans were ancestors of first vertebrates 59:4.10
• fish were first vertebrates (59:4.3,9)
• frogs were ancestors of land vertebrates 60:0.2

Andonites use of animals

• Andonites largely subsisted thanks to animals 63:6.3
• Andonites warmed themselves with skins of animals 63:2.5 63:4.1
• This intense use of animals caused the Andonites to worship them 63:6.3

Domestication of animals

• The domestication of animals came about accidentally. 69:7.2
• Domestication of animals placed in primitive man hands living tools, the intelligent use of which prepared the way for both agriculture and transportation. 81:2.10
• one of first four great advances in human civilization was domestication of animals (81:2.3,10-12)
• pastoral civilization was made possible by domestication of animals 68:5.6
• Prince’s staff taught domestication of animals to primitive man. The director of this task was Bon 52:2.8 66:5.4-8
• The domestication of animals was promoted by selective breeding, an art which has made great progress since the days of Dalamatia. 69:7.3
• Prince’s staff taught protection against predatory. The director of this task was Dan 66:5.4-8

Animals in heavens

• In the architectural spheres they enjoy ten forms of material life. On Urantia there is both plant and animal life, but on a world like Edentia, the material classes of life exist in ten divisions, three plant and three animal but there are four that are neither, and all animal life is companionable, affectionate, noncarnivorous, intelligent, and do not speak 43:6.4-5
• At Jerusem spornagia utilize animals and numerous mechanical contrivances in culture of soil 46:7.2

Animals in other planets

• On the nonbreathing worlds the animal species are radically unlike those found on the atmospheric planets. 49:3.5

Relationship wih man

• primitive man mated sexually with his backward, animal-like ancestors, causing a deterioration of the race 64:1.7 85:3.1
• all animals are bellicose, and man, that evolved from animal, has inherited warfare from that 70:1.7
• animals are to a certain extent indispensable to man’s intellectual as well as to his physical evolution. 36:2.17 36:5.13
• Animals have been used for food, as companions, as guardians, for hunting, transportation 69:7
• When animals became fetishes, there ensued the taboos on eating the flesh of the fetish animal. 88:1.5
• Although the various races of earth became sadly mixed up in their notions of evolution, nevertheless, many of the primitive tribes believed and taught that they were the descendants of various animals. 74:8.5
• primitive man diagnosed disease by examining entrails of an animal 90:4.3
• the worship of animals was widespread, and also that of half-human, half-animal creatures, such as centaurs and mermaids, or fictional animals, such as the dragon in China; the worship of insects and other animals was fostered by a later misunderstanding of the golden rule —doing every form of life as you would be done by. 64:4.12 85:3

Relationship with Jesus

• animals always has been used for sacrificial rituals | sacrifice:animal sacrifice
• Jesus asked Joseph, his father, why heavenly Father required the slaughter of so many innocent and helpless animals in ritual sacrifices. 124:6.14
• At Jesus’ home had 3 cows, 4 sheep, chickens, a donkey, doves, and a dog 126:5.11

Animals mentioned

• there are quite a number of animal species mentioned in The Urantia Book. See references below | alligators; ammonites; amphibians; anteaters; antelopes; armadillos; arthropods; baboons; barnacles; bats; bears; beavers; birds; bison; brachiopods; bulls; butterflies; buzzards; camels; carrier pigeons; caterpillars; cats; cattle; centipedes; chimpanzees; clams; cockroaches; coral; coyotes; crabs; crickets; crinoids; crocodiles; crustaceans; cuttlefish; dawn mammals; deer; dinosaurs; dogs; dolphins; donkeys; doves; dragon flies; drills; ducks; eagles; earthworms; echinoderms; elephants; falcons; fish; flamingoes; foraminifers; foxes; frogs; gastropods; gibbons; giraffes; gnats; goats; gophers; gorillas; gulls; herons; hippopotamuses; horses; hyenas; jellyfish; kangaroos; lambs; leeches; lemurs; lions; lizards; llamas; lobsters; mammals; mammoths; marine life; martens; mastodons; mice; mid-mammals; mollusks; monkeys; musk oxen; octopuses; opossums; ostriches; owls; oxen; oysters; panthers; parrots; passenger birds; pearly nautilus; peccaries; periwinkles; pigeons; porpoises; poultry; Primates; Protozoa; pterosaurs; rabbits; raccoons; ravens; reindeer; reptilians; rhinoceroses; rodents; ruminants; saber-toothed tigers; salamanders; scallops; scorpions; sea cucumbers; sea lions; sea serpents; sea squirts; sea urchins; sea worms; seals; sharks; sheep; shrimps; simians; sloths; snails; snakes; sparrows; spiders; sponges; squid; squirrels; starfish; sturgeon; swine; tadpoles; tapirs; tigers; trilobites; turtles; vipers; water hogs; weasels; whales; wolves; yaks

Bible parallels

Passages that the paragraphs cited above parallel, quote or reinterpret, from Duane Faw’s Paramony cross-references. Hover a reference to read it.

• If not work, not eat 69:2.5 — Gn 3:19; Pr 20:4; 2 Th 3:10.
• God is no respecter of persons 133:0.3 — 2 Ch 19:7; Job 34:19; Sir 35:12; Acts 10:34; Ro 2:11; Ga 2:6; Ga 3:28; Eph 6:9; Col 3:11.
• Serpent reverence 88:1.5 — Ex 4:2-4; Ex 7:9-12; 2 Ki 18:4; Nm 21:8-9; Nm (Da 14:23-27): Bel 1:23-27; Jn 3:14.
• Snakes: voices of evil spirits 88:1.5 — Gn 3:1-5.

Where it appears

Animals is linked in 205 paragraphs of the text; the first 40 are listed.

See also

• insects
• mammals
• marine life

What links here