© 2000 Charles Laurence Olivea
© 2000 The Urantia Book Fellowship
| The Science of Parenting | Volume 2, Number 2, 2000 (Summer) — Index | The Intellectual Role of The Urantia Book |
(This address was presented at the Fellowship Summer Study Session 2000, in Elmhurst, IL on July 2, 2000)
The ethical tension surrounding issues over genetic control and social engineering is essentially a reflection between realism and idealism, which is to say, between what is and what ought to be. Frankly, the human reputation for controlling the power of science or engineering social behavior is part reality and part myth, due to the law of “unintended consequences.” Nonetheless, we should address our problems with every ability and resource at our command. Modern society needs a keener sense of spirituality and a higher ethic of behavior to shape its underlying and long term interests.
It is the hope of many of us that the disparity between the actual and the ideal will be bridged gradually through the effective dissemination of the teachings in The Urantia Book.
At stake is the destiny of evolutionary progressive civilization.
At the heart of the matter is the question: who is fit to have children? This question carries profound biological and social repercussions for individuals and for society. There is within the modern world mounting pressure to not only control the growth of human population but also to assess the present and future quality of that population.
Consider the following points: (1) The Urantia Book indicates that there has been more mixing of different races and ethnic groups in the last 150 years than in thousands of years. (UB 82:6.8) (The time frame is adjusted from when the book was written to now.) (2) The world’s population doubled in the 20th Century. (3) The human gename project, which is progressing on the cutting edge of biology, appears to be opening up a new horizon for science to deal with health and disease and to give people the knowledge they need to select genetic traits. (4) Marriage and family - the home life - seem to be reeling under the unrelenting pressure of a civilization top heavy with material power. (5) Martin Luther King has pointed out that science and technology have made the world into a neighborhood; but, ethics and religion have heretofore failed to make the world into a brotherhood.
Dr. King has perhaps touched on the core issue bedeviling the modern world: the lack of balance between our great industrial, technological, and scientific growth on the one hand and society’s ethical and religious immaturity on the other. Ethics is characterized in The Urantia Book as “social judgment” - a matter of social consciousness or awareness of one’s obligations to others; religion is denoted as “God-judgment” - choice directed by God-consciousness or living faith in our Heavenly Father. (UB 196:3.11-14)
The great lesson religion can teach human culture is the doctrine of equal footing, which refers to the sweeping truth that each person is a child of the living God, indwelt by an absolutely perfect spirit-fragment of that infinite source and center of the universe. In responding to a question by Ganid on the caste system in India, Jesus explained that, “…as these different classes of mortals appear before the judgment bar of God, they stand on an equal footing…” (UB 133:0.3)
What to do? Society must develop a superior ethics based upon the spiritual doctrine of equal footing emphasized in the religion of Jesus.
Within the broader context contained in divine revelation as we have it now in The Urantia Book, a higher sense of ethics may be called the doctrine of fair play, as a compliment to the doctrine of equal footing.
To paraphrase some of the language in The Urantia Book, the doctrine of fair play may be defined as behaving in a way that exercises self-control, exhibits due restraint, and shows proper respect to other individuals and toward society as a whole. In Webster’s, the notion of fairness “implies an elimination of one’s own feelings, prejudices, and desires so as to achieve proper balance of conflicting interests,.” The doctrine of fair play would require both the institutions of society and its members to place responsibility over rights. The Urantia Book cites twelve factors that are needed for civilization to progress. The ethics in the doctrine of fair play speak to most, if not all, of these factors. “1. preservation of individual liberties 2. protection of the home 3. promotion of economic security 4. prevention of disease 5. compulsory education. 6. compulsory employment 7. profitable utilization of leisure 8. care of the unfortunate 9. race improvement 10. promotion of science and art 11. promotion of philosophy — wisdom 12. augmentation of cosmic insight — spirituality” (UB 71:4.2-14)
If we were to distill these twelve factors down to the three most critical ones, that is, the ones most essential to the course of civilization, they might be these: (1) mindfulness of the invisible presence of God; (2) upgrading the quality of the gene pool; and, (3) enhancing the integrity of marriage and family — the home life. Seriously damage any one of these three essentials and the course of civilization would suffer grievous harm.
So significant is the first essential concerning knowledge of the true God, that 4,000 years ago, a Melchizedek was moved to incarnate into human form for the purpose of reintroducing the concept of a single, universal, personal God. The second and third essentials are the biological and cultural foundations of society. According to their relative quality, the DNA and family structure together lay the groundwork for human destiny. One overlaps the other. The home life draws on the gene pool for its quality potentials; the gene pool’s strengths and weaknesses are actualized through the choices people make to mate and bear children. These three essentials combined constitute the core of what is indispensable for the forward movement of civilization.
From these observations, our highest priorities would seem to be for us to spiritually exhibit the presence of God in our lives and apply a higher ethical consciousness to the complexities resulting from the convergence of biological and cultural factors. In particular, maybe a new institution needs to be created to more effectively promote the ethical doctrine of fair play as we address sensitive problems associated with the gene pool and family life. Human genetics, along with marriage and family, should be approached as two sides of the same foundational coin for civilization. We labor in this world under a peculiar set of circumstances.
Because of planetary treason and Adamic default in the past, we have been denied the superhuman supervision that was ordained for us. This is essentially the origin of our problem. The revelation in The Urantia Book affirms that “In a general way, man’s evolutionary destiny is in his own hands, and scientific intelligence must sooner or later supersede the random functioning of uncontrolled natural selection and chance survival.” (UB 65:3.6) It is certainly in our interest to foster healthy genes for mind and body and to fight against disease. However, ethical concern over mind and body will become very controversial if information from the human genome project is used as a parts list by the average person as a means of genetic control. (Newsweek, 4/10/00)
Therefore, we must become wiser if we are to ethically practice genetic control and improve the institutions of marriage and family through better social means. There are many instances of citing the need for ethical consciousness within the vast scope of teachings contained in The Urantia Book. You may recall that one of the factors deemed necessary for the progression of civilized society is “care for the unfortunate.”
The necessity for wise ethics will be all the more pressing because of an issue we may have to face for a long time to come: whether or not to employ some measure of coercion to deny certain individuals the right to mate and bear children. We are already facing related issues, for example, in the form of discrimination over genetically based diseases having an impact on employment and life insurance. If and when respected, the doctrine of fair play would impose restraint on society in its behavior toward its members and, similarly, would require an individual to weigh sincerely the real interests of society. In any event, the current evolutionary political language of a modern democracy distinguishes this point-counterpoint as majority rule in tension with minority rights. The historical record of modern democracy offers to us some light on how to deal fairly with majority rule vs. minority rights under the principle of universal law.
The Urantia Book states that we should at least be willing to agree on restricting the reproduction of our markedly defective types. (P. 585) This is quite a challenge, politically speaking, given the egalitarian character of modem society. Equality has ever struggled with excellence. As we gain more and ever more knowledge of human biology, through such projects as the human genome study, society’s norms may shift closer to the actual issue at hand based on accurate scientific intelligence. But the ethics of the doctrine of fair play will be needed to guide the decision-making process with compassionate safeguards to prevent the brutality of evil and sin characteristic of totalitarian oppression and also to discourage misfits from exploiting society. Part of the problem is inherent in the way people and society change.
There are mainly three ways people typically learn: (1) through the imitation of someone else (which is how children usually learn); (2) thinking one’s way through a question or task (using knowledge and wisdom); or, (3) the aspect of struggle in human experience (the age-old process of trial and error). The harmony of ethics, science and social engineering will probably have to come about largely by means of the third method entailing the vicissi-tudes of human experience. If this latter point proves to be the case, then, more aggressive legislation toward genetic control and social engineering may rise in popularity if, for example, there should be a marked increase in recessive genes due to a further breakdown in the home life. It is at this point, with the pressure mounting to “control” or to “engineer,” that the principles and procedures governing majority rule and minority rights under law will be most needed, if we are to avoid tyranny or chaos.
Yet, education and voluntary choice concerning ge-netics and mating are preferable to the heavier hand of legislative fiat. However, freedom becomes license (false liberty) when ethics are lagging. Taking the long view, it is only with the enrichment of the ethical norms of society, coupled with a deeper, genuine spirituality, that we can hope to deal effectively and fairly with manipulating hu-man biology and strengthening the home.
The central thesis of this presentation is that the birth of a new hope for society will occur when responsi-bility toward the interplay of genetics and the home life is viewed as a trusteeship from God and for God. Indeed, the attitude toward fatherhood and motherhood - even the very words themselves - must come to be understood as “the supreme responsibility of human existence.” (UB 84:7.25) This point should be incorporated within the embrace of cosmic citizenship, or at least, a greater sense of obligation to humanity contained in the general notion of planetary citizenship. 20th Century civilization has already given birth to the beginning of such a concept, albeit vaguely expressed.
The propagation of a higher sense of fair play must come from the more enlightened individuals in the opinion shaping institutions of society. And, as suggested earlier, perhaps such a transformation in thinking will require a new, innovative, creative institution borrowing in part, shall we say, from aspects of the moral outreach and orga-nizational generosity of the Salvation Army combined with the humanistic idealism and non-violent ethics of the Quakers. Just a thought!
Here is where the potential leavening influence of The Urantia Book ought to come into play. This revelation accurately describes the reality of how culture is depen-dent on biology and how biology is manifested in the de-velopment of culture — two sides of the same coin. We have the model of the Mansion World program of com-pensation to inspire us for action down here. Furthermore, from the book’s teachings, we know that all persons are ennobled and dignified by the presence of a spark of God within them, implying a dearer and spiritually sweeter sense of brotherhood and sisterhood. Through the Fifth Epochal Revelation we can also appreciate authoritatively that, as children of God starting out on an earthly level, our future development is dependent on the dual foundations of a good genetic inheritance and a stable family structure. Moreover, The Urantia Book points out that these qualities can and should eventuate into a universal brotherhood and sisterhood gracious and good enough for our world to make a notable contribution to the evolution of the Supreme Being.
What a wonder it is to know that we have a direct hand in the growth of the God of Finite Experience. This multifaceted concept, of a nobler view of the children of God, who require a sound biological inheritance expressed through a sound family offers society a perspective power-ful enough to address its basic issues of evolutionary pro-gressive civilization and its core question of who is fit to have children.
But to get there, we must succeed in employing the doctrine of fair play, predicated on the doctrine of equal footing, as modern society attempts to re-align itself on the road to eventual light and life. Higher ethics mandate that the ends must be pre-existent in the means.
M. Charles Laurence Olivea is a long-time Urantia Book reader, drawn by its clarity of language, wisdom of thought, and the matchless story of Jesus. He and his wife Mary have two sons, Peter (30) and Gordon (29). Last year Charles retired from his career as a public high school history teacher. He and Mary now live in Santa Fe, NM.
| The Science of Parenting | Volume 2, Number 2, 2000 (Summer) — Index | The Intellectual Role of The Urantia Book |