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Chapter 3 - The Christ and Christian Science.
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Fossil records tell us that the first life began in the seas. That life was primitive at first, but developed over the next three thousand million years into a variety of more and more complex shapes, including soft-body life forms. During the next 250 million years, the proliferation of life accelerated. By the end of the Palaeozoic era, the marine life-forms had become immensely complex and diverse in their individuality, and of vast abundance. Also, at that period, Plants began to emerge.
Fossil records further indicate that in the last forty million years of the Palaeozoic era, 90% of the vast profusion of life that had unfolded became extinct again. At this time, all of the earths continents 'crashed' into each other under the forces of continental drift (15cm/year). The enormous collision temporarily combined all land-masses of the planet into a single super-continent, called Pangaea. Under the force of the collision, huge tracts of land were raised out of the sea, continental shelves and inland oceans disappeared, the climate changed. Out of the ensuing catastrophe that unfolded over millions of years, new forms of life emerged as the Mesozoic era began, the era of the dinosaurs.
A few species of marine life, especially reptiles, had found it possible to adopt themselves to living outside the water as the inland oceans drained away. From these the dinosaurs evolved, which became possibly the most successful species that ever lived, both in terms of proliferation and survival. The dinosaurs ruled the planet for close to 190 million years. Humanity, in contrast, sees itself put at such risks that its long term survival is hardly gaged in spans of millions of years, much less hundreds of millions of years.
Well, about 67 million years ago, the dinosaurs became extinct. Fossil records tell us us that it happened quite suddenly. Scientists are divided over the exact cause for the extinction. A great catastrophe is thought to have occurred that caused the dinosaurs and all large life-forms from a certain size up, to die out, virtually over night. Still, life as a whole didn't end. A new unfolding of species began after the second great extinction, almost from the ground up, which is recognized as the Age of Mammals, the Cenozoic era in which we live. Man emerged on the scene barely seven million years ago, of which our modern man has occupied only a minute period of approximately 100,000 years.
There exists plenty of physical evidence from every stage of the unfolding of life, from the earliest beginning to the present time. With all this material evidence considered, how, can anyone say that there is no such thing as matter, or material history, or material life?
There exists a perfect reason for this insistence, none-the-less. The history of the universe represents a giant unfoldment in itself. The only question that needs to be answered, is: Whether or not the unfolding that has been discovered physically, including all its tremendous vitality of life, its order and resourcefulness, resulted from accidental interactions of nuclear processes that just happen to fall into place, or had an intelligent cause reflected in an underlying principle?
From the minutest to the largest manifestation, we see complex patterns of energy and intelligent manifestation. We see the unfolding of advancing species in near infinite individuality. The question should be asked: Does this unfolding represent a self-acting process of chemical accretion, resulting into ever higher manifestations of mind, or did the intelligence that is reflected, and its principle, exist before the unfolding order and its vitality began to be manifested?
The naturalist sees the unfolding of living species as a sequence of accidental mutations, coupled to a process of natural selection based on the survival of the fittest. He sees an order in which the most ideal characteristic of individual entities enhance their chances for survival, to be reproduced and be enhanced again and again. What the naturalist denies with this theory, is that the wonderful adaptability of species to an ever changing environment is more likely driven by intelligent means rather than by accidental aboritions resulting from failures in the replication process of genes. If a single mental command can heal a leper, as Christ Jesus has amply demonstrated, or a single perception of Truth can cause a tumor of ten years standing to vanish, why shouldn't intelligent metaphysical processes not cause the progressive unfolding of qualities commensurate with intelligent living? There is more logic in the spiritual proposition, that mind can uplift the species, reflecting the patterns of infinite Mind, than in the proposition that life and its rich unfoldment is the result of infinite failures and a life/death struggle that preserves the most ideal mutations.
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