When both science and religion deal with facts, there is no conflict between them. When both religion and the theory of evolution deal with facts, there is no conflict between them.
     As the following information explains, the process of evolution on inhabited planets was decreed by God himself.

The Sovereignty of God.
     "You, God, are alone; there is none beside you. You have created the heaven and the heaven of heavens, with all their hosts; you preserve and control them. The Creator covers himself with light as with a garment and stretches out the heavens as a curtain." [Psalms 104:2] [UB 1:0.1]
     The earth is inhabited with beings who can know God, receive the divine affection, and love him in return. "God created the heavens and formed the earth; he established the universe and created this world not in vain; he formed it to be inhabited." "You, God, are the eternal maker and infinite upholder of all creation. [UB 1:0:2,3] [Isaiah 45:18]
     Thou, even thou, art LORD alone; thou hast made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their host, the earth, and all things that are therein, the seas, and all that is therein, and thou preservest them all; and the host of heaven worshippeth thee. [Nehemiah 9:6]

     The theory of evolution confirms the sovereignty of God.

Man: Created in God's Image.
     And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. [Genesis 1:26,27]

     The theory of evolution confirms that man was created in the image of God.

God's Plan of Progressive Attainment.
From The Urantia Book:
     This is the Universal Father’s plan of evolutionary ascension, a program unreservedly accepted by the Eternal Son when he concurred in the Father’s proposal, “Let us make mortal creatures in our own image.” This provision for upstepping the creatures of time involves the Father’s bestowal of the Thought Adjusters [Indwelling Spirits] and the endowing of material creatures with the prerogatives of personality. [UB 7:4.4 1]

     Within the bounds of that which is consistent with the divine nature, it is literally true that “with God all things are possible.” The long-drawn-out evolutionary processes of peoples, planets, and universes are under the perfect control of the universe creators and administrators and unfold in accordance with the eternal purpose of the Universal Father, proceeding in harmony and order and in keeping with the all-wise plan of God. There is only one lawgiver. He upholds the worlds in space and swings the universes around the endless circle of the eternal circuit. [UB 3:2.2]

     The long drawn out process of evolution shows the wisdom of the Creators. It would be just as easy for the Universal Father to make all mortals perfect beings, to impart perfection by his divine word. But that would deprive them of the wonderful experience of the adventure and training associated with the long and gradual inward climb, an experience to be had only by those who are so fortunate as to begin at the very bottom of living existence. [UB 32:3.11]

     Indwelling Spirits [Thought Adjusters] are the bestowal of the Universal Father, the reflection of the image of God abroad in the universe. The Thought Adjuster is the mark of divinity, the presence of God. The “image of God” does not refer to physical likeness nor to the circumscribed limitations of material creature endowment but rather to the gift of the spirit presence of the Universal Father in the supernal bestowal of the Thought Adjusters upon the humble creatures of the universes. [UB 108:6.3]
     Said the author of Paper 107 in The Urantia Book, "Origin and Nature of Thought Adjusters:" Adjusters are undiluted and unmixed divinity, unqualified and unattenuated parts of Deity; they are of God, and as far as we are able to discern, they are God. [UB 107:1.2]

Creation of Heavens, Earth, Creatures of Earth, and Man.
     The book of Genesis sets forth the story of creation of the heavens, earth, life on earth, and man, supposedly on a day to day basis. [Genesis 1:1-31; 2:1-25]
Genesis 2:7: And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.
     When the Jews were rewriting their known history during the Babylonian captivity, they could not have known that life was planted on earth 550,000,000 years ago. Therefore, they had no inkling that it required a little more than 549,000,000 years to bring forth the first two humans by the process of evolution.

Were All Creatures Created Separately?
Genesis 1:21-25: And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good. And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth. And the evening and the morning were the fifth day. And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so. And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
     As the Jews of 2,500 years ago had no knowledge of the process of evolution, they assumed that God created all creatures one by one, each specie being a separate creation.

Process of Evolution Decreed by God.
     God the Father, in the eternity of the past, decreed that all mortal-inhabited worlds should be evolutionary in origin and nature. God’s plan of evolution provides for the development of higher organisms from the lower groupings of life. It is on these evolutionary planets that the mortal races of time and space begin their eternal existence if they choose to survive. [UB 49:0:1] [UB 49:1:6,7]
     As the process of evolution was ordained by God, it follows that the process of evolution is not a godless procedure.
     Life never originates spontaneously on a barren planet. The design of life forms is formulated by a Divine Order of Sons, the Life Carriers. These Sons then initiate life on a barren planet with the help of the Holy Spirit who imparts the "breath of life." [UB 36:0.1] [UB 36:3.1] [UB 36:6:4,7] More about the Life Carriers later.
     The original life plasm of an evolutionary world must contain the full potential for all future developmental variations and for all subsequent evolutionary changes and modifications. [UB 36:2.10]
     Evolution is always purposeful and not accidental. Although evolution may be extremely slow from man's point of view, it unerringly achieves its end. [UB 90:3.10]
     The establishment of life on no world is ever experimental in the sense that something untried and unknown is attempted. The evolution of life is a technique ever progressive, differential, and variable, but never haphazard, uncontrolled, nor wholly experimental, in the accidental sense.
     The process of evolution is still actively and adaptatively in progress on this planet. [UB 65:6.5]

     The following selected excerpts from The Urantia Book illustrate that evolution on our planet was, and is, a process covering almost unbelievable periods of time.

     The prelude to the initiation of life on our planet began 600,000,000 years ago when a commission of Life Carriers arrived on earth and began the study of physical conditions preparatory to launching life on our world. [UB 58:1.1]

[1] 550,000,000 years ago the Life Carriers returned to earth for the purpose of actually planting the life patterns in the hospitable waters of the realm. [UB 58:4.2]
Note: The Life Carrier who wrote the several papers in The Urantia Book pertaining to evolution on our planet has lived on our planet [in the spiritual realms] since life was first planted on earth. He witnessed all these events firsthand.
     The story of man’s ascent from seaweed to the lordship of earthly creation is indeed a romance of biologic struggle and mind survival. Man’s primordial ancestors were literally the slime and ooze of the ocean bed in the sluggish and warm-water bays and lagoons of the vast shore lines of the ancient inland seas, those very waters in which the Life Carriers established the three independent life implantations on Urantia. [UB 65 2.1]

[2] 50,000,000 years later primitive marine vegetable life was well established. [UB 58:4.3]
     In the development of planetary life the vegetable form always precedes the animal and is quite fully developed before the animal patterns differentiate. All animal types are developed from the basic patterns of the preceding vegetable kingdom of living things; they are not separately organized. [UB 49:1.5]

[3] 450,000,000 years ago the transition from vegetable to animal life occurred. [UB 58:6.1]
[4] 400,000,000 years ago marine life, both vegetable and animal, is fairly well distributed over the whole world. Vegetation now for the first time crawls out upon the land and soon makes considerable progress in adaptation to a nonmarine habitat. [UB 59:1.2,3]
[5] 250,000,000 years ago witnessed the appearance of the fish family, the vertebrates, one of the most important steps in all prehuman evolution. [UB 59:4.9]

     As the ages rolled on, one by one, new life forms appeared as the process of evolution continued. Some species survived, others became extinct.

[6] During the period beginning 50,000,000 years ago, in North America the placental type of mammals suddenly appeared, and they constituted the most important evolutionary development up to this time. [UB 61:1.2]

     The Life Carrier who wrote Papers 58 through 65 in The Urantia Book which deal with the process of evolution as it unfolded on our planet, explains at length that man is not descended from apes.

Dawn Mammals.
     A little more than one million years ago the Mesopotamian dawn mammals, the direct descendants of the North American lemur type of placental mammal, suddenly appeared. [UB 62:2.1]
     The aggressive Dawn Mammals multiplied and spread over the Mesopotamian peninsula for more than one thousand years, constantly improving in physical type and general intelligence. And it was just seventy generations after this new tribe had taken origin from the highest type of lemur ancestor that the next epoch-making development occurred—the sudden differentiation of the ancestors of the next vital step in the evolution of human beings on Urantia. The mid-mammals appeared. [UB 62:2.6]

Mid-Mammals.
     Compared with the ancestral species, the mid-mammals were an improvement in every way. Even their potential life span was longer, being about twenty-five years. A number of rudimentary human traits appeared in this new species. In addition to the innate propensities exhibited by their ancestors, these mid-mammals were capable of showing disgust in certain repulsive situations. [UB 62:3.6]
     Thousands of years passed. Then two superior mid-mammals, twins, one male and one female, gave birth to twins, the most interesting and important animals ever to have been born into the world up to that time, for they were the first of the new species of Primates constituting the next vital step in prehuman evolution. [UB 62:3.10]

The Primates.
Splitting of the Family Tree.
     Contemporaneously with the birth of these superior Primates twins, another couple—a peculiarly retarded male and female of the mid-mammal tribe, a couple that were both mentally and physically inferior—also gave birth to twins. These twins, one male and one female, were indifferent to conquest; they were concerned only with obtaining food and, since they would not eat flesh, soon lost all interest in seeking prey. These retarded twins became the founders of the modern simian tribes. Their descendants sought the warmer southern regions with their mild climates and an abundance of tropical fruits, where they have continued much as of that day except for those branches which mated with the earlier types of gibbons and apes and have greatly deteriorated in consequence. [UB 62:3.11]
     From that day to this the human branch has gone forward by progressive evolution, while the simian tribes have remained stationary or have actually retrogressed. [UB 61:6.1]

Humans not Descended from Apes.
     And so it may be readily seen that man and the ape are related only in that they sprang from the mid-mammals, a tribe in which there occurred the contemporaneous birth and subsequent segregation of two pairs of twins: the inferior pair destined to produce the modern types of monkey, baboon, chimpanzee, and gorilla; the superior pair destined to continue the line of ascent which evolved into man himself. [UB 62:3.12]

     Modern man and the simians did spring from the same tribe and species but not from the same parents. Man’s ancestors are descended from the superior strains of the selected remnant of this mid-mammal tribe, whereas the modern simians (excepting certain pre-existent types of lemurs, gibbons, apes, and other monkeylike creatures) are the descendants of the most inferior couple of this mid-mammal group, a couple who only survived by hiding themselves in a subterranean food-storage retreat for more than two weeks during the last fierce battle of their tribe, emerging only after the hostilities were well over. [UB 62:3.13]

     1,000,000 years ago Urantia was registered as an inhabited world. A mutation within the stock of the progressing Primates suddenly produced two primitive human beings, the actual ancestors of mankind. This event occurred at about the time of the beginning of the third glacial advance. [UB 61:6.2,3]

     And now, after almost nine hundred generations of development, covering about twenty-one thousand years from the origin of the dawn mammals, the Primates suddenly gave birth to two remarkable creatures, the first true human beings. [UB 62:4.6]
     It is just 993,408 years ago (from the year A.D. 1934) that earth was formally recognized as a planet of human habitation in our local universe. Biologic evolution had once again achieved the human levels of will dignity; man had arrived on our planet. [UB 62:7.7]

     Thus it was that the dawn mammals, springing from the North American lemur type, gave origin to the mid-mammals, and these mid-mammals in turn produced the superior Primates, who became the immediate ancestors of the primitive human race. The Primates tribes were the last vital link in the evolution of man, but in less than five thousand years not a single individual of these extraordinary tribes was left. [UB 62:4.7]

     We see that the arrival of mortal man on a planet is the result of Divine Creation and the evolutionary process--he is not an evolutionary accident! Under the divine plan, the process of planetary evolution is orderly and controlled. It proceeds according to a precise system: God’s universal law. [UB 49:1:6,7]

The Life Carriers.
     A special order of the Sons of God, the Life Carriers, are responsible for implanting life on a barren planet. These Sons provide the physical body, fabricated out of the existing organized material of the realm, while the Holy Spirit contributes the "breath of life." [UB 34:2.5]
     [Paper 36 in The Urantia Book describe the Life Carriers in detail. This paper will greatly assist you in your understanding of the process of evolution.]
     The Life Carriers are intrusted with designing and planting life on the evolutionary planets. And after planting this life on such new worlds, they remain there for long periods to foster its development. [UB 36:0.1]
     On our planet the Life Carriers organized the life patterns after arriving on earth in accordance with formulas previously approved by their superiors. [UB 36:3:1,2,7]

Jesus is Briefed by Immanuel.
     Jesus was briefed extensively by his elder brother Immanuel regarding his forthcoming bestowal on our planet. Among his instructions:
     Under no circumstances and not even in the least detail, should you interfere with the normal and orderly progressive evolution of the Urantia races. But this prohibition must not be interpreted as limiting your efforts to leave behind you on Urantia an enduring and improved system of positive religious ethics. As a dispensational Son you are granted certain privileges pertaining to the advancement of the spiritual and religious status of the world peoples.
     While Jesus lived on earth, he was a progressive evolutionist. He engaged in the destruction of that which was only when he simultaneously offered his fellows the superior thing which ought to be.
[UB 120:0.6] [UB, Paper 120:3.5 “4.] [See especially Sections 2 and 3 in Paper 120] [UB 149:2.11]

Charles Darwin [1809-1882].
     No doubt Darwin is spinning in his grave. The author of On the Origin of Species, he has suffered relentless verbal abuse at the hands of theologians. However, castigating Darwin for his contribution to the theory of evolution is akin to condemning Henry Ford because his first automobile was the primitive Model T.
     In the absence of Divine Revelation, Darwin was greatly hindered in his efforts to justify his theory on the origin of species. Although Darwin speculated that thousands or even millions of years were required to develop new species, he may not have realized that on our planet age after age was required to bring forth man.

     After Darwin's five-year expedition on the H.M.S. Beagle, he returned to London in 1836. He conducted a thorough research of his notes and specimens. Out of this study grew several related theories: one, evolution did occur; two, evolutionary change was gradual, requiring thousands to millions of years; three, the primary mechanism for evolution was a process called natural selection; and four, the millions of species alive today arose from a single original life form through a branching process called “speciation.”
[www.lucidcafe.com/library/96feb/darwin.html]

     Although Darwin's research was hindered by a lack of specific scientific knowledge, we can admire his astute conclusions regarding the nature of evolution.