© 2003 Dick Bain
© 2003 The Christian Fellowship of Students of The Urantia Book
| Sir Hubert Wilkins: 20th Century Magellan, Early Urantian | Fall 2003 — Index | Eugenics and the Urantia Papers: A Different View |
When we fall in love, many of us enter a state of altered consciousness (or unconsciousness) known as infatuation. Under the spell of this condition, we are blind to the flaws of our beloved one. But as time passes, the inferno dies down and our rational mind begins to function again. We begin to become aware of the flaws and annoying little habits of our loved one. We begin to resent their lack of punctuality, their nail biting habit, their mis-matched socks, their miserliness, etc. This may be the first test of the relationship. If we find the perceived flaws really annoying, our ardor may wane, and we soon may decide to move on to another relationship. Or we may decide that he or she is really a worthwhile person, so we need to do a bit of compromising and proceed to build the relationship. And this is how our relationship with The Urantia Book has evolved for many of us.
As is true for many folks, I was happy to find a book whose spiritual concepts rang so true to me. But after some years of study I began to have some questions. The first problem I had with some of the papers in The Urantia Book was the science. As I looked at the science content, compared it with current scientific theories, and read what other folks had to say about it, I began to realize that some of the science and cosmology does not fit the evolving picture of the universe our astronomers and scientists have pieced together. But I would have been less surprised and disappointed had I paid more attention to the statement that some of the science would be outdated as our human science progressed. I have made peace with this problem and now accept the limitations of the Urantia Papers in this area. But I can’t say the same for the eugenics measures promoted in some of the papers.
I’m sure that the human race could have been greatly improved by a program of genetic selection if it had been started by Adam and Eve thousands of years ago, but it wasn’t. It’s not that I disagree with the idea that the human stock could be improved by selective breeding; it’s just that I don’t think we mere mortals can apply this technique to our fellow human beings as we do to dogs or cattle. After all, we are the dogs’ masters and the cattle are a food source. Since neither dogs nor cattle have lobbies in Washington, we can do pretty much anything we please with them as long as it doesn’t raise the ire of the ASPCA. But when we consider controlling the reproduction of people to eliminate undesirable traits or “disfellowshipping” degenerates, ethics and morals immediately come into play, as well as some heavy-duty political flak from both the right and left. It is difficult to believe that the authors did not understand how repugnant some of their ideas would be in the decades after the book was published. Perhaps the authors of the Papers thought that eugenics was on its way to universal acceptance. They were obviously wrong.
Modern eugenics originated in England in the early part of the 20th century among some of the aristocracy there who hoped to improve their bloodlines through encouraging the best of their young people to intermarry. But when eugenics moved to the US, it began to take on a somewhat more ominous tone. From a eugenics website: “The Englishman Francis Galton coined the term eugenics, but the American zoologist Charles Davenport brought the movement to prominence when he founded the Eugenics Record Office (ERO) at Cold Spring Harbor, New York… Eugenicists feared that genes for feeblemindedness were insidiously ruining the American germ plasm from within, while allegedly inferior immigrants from southern and Eastern Europe threatened from without.” [1]
The eugenics movement reached its height of influence in the 1920’s, but it had affected public policy long before this. In his book, The Flamingo’s Smile, Stephen Jay Gould relates that Indiana passed the first sterilization act based on eugenic principles in 1907. Sterilization was mandated for inmates of mental hospitals and homes for the feeble-minded, as well as prisoners. By the 1930’s, more than 30 states had passed similar laws. Some included alcoholism, drug addiction, and even blindness and deafness as criteria for sterilization. Unfortunately, California and Virginia applied the laws zealously. By 1935, 20,000 forced eugenic sterilizations had been performed in this country. But according to Gould, the eugenics laws were enforced most ruthlessly in Nazi Germany, where 375,000 people had been sterilized by the start of World War II, and 4000 of these were for blindness and deafness.
In the early part of the last century, scientists discovered the role that heredity plays in passing along characteristics such as the color of our eyes and other physical characteristics. It became a common belief that all problems were due to heredity and that environment played only a small role. Many believed that problems such as criminal behavior were due to bad heredity. Further, intelligence was taken to be a sign of good heredity. Binet’s newly devised IQ test was seen as a tool to determine a person’s intelligence and thereby know whether or not that person had good heredity. Today we understand that intelligence is not a guarantee against criminal behavior. And we understand that environmental background plays a significant role in determining behavior. Further, as Dr. Paul Premsager points out in an article [2], while the tendency for something like alcoholism may be inherited, it is not foreordained that all people with the inherited tendency will become alcoholics.
Gould devotes a whole chapter in his previously mentioned book [3] to the case of Carrie Buck. Carrie Buck and her mother were declared feeble-minded by the state of Virginia. Carrie Buck became pregnant after being raped and bore a girl. Gould found evidence that Carrie Buck’s daughter was of normal intelligence, but as is often the case, someone who knew little about the situation observed the child as a baby and said that she was peculiar. The state decided to sterilize Carrie Buck. A lawyer decided to defend Carrie Buck, and the Supreme Court finally heard the case. The court found for the State of Virginia. Gould quotes Oliver Wendell Holmes, a renowned jurist on the Supreme Court, in the majority opinion, “It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes. Three generations of imbeciles are enough.” Such a decision seemed to indicate that there was broad support for eugenics. Further evidence that Carrie Buck’s treatment was unjustified is the fact that people who visited and conversed with her later in her life said that she appeared to be of normal intelligence.
Some people well known to many folks in the Urantia community were apparently supporters of eugenics. According to one online source, J. H. Kellogg, of cereal fame, founded the Race Betterment Foundation in Battle Creek, Michigan in 1906 and had eugenics conferences at his sanitarium in 1914, 1915, and 1928. It appears that Dr. Sadler was a supporter of eugenics as well. In the final chapter of his book, The Truth about Heredity, he writes, “As the social stream flows at present, those best prepared to judge believe that, as the result of almost a thousand years of preserving the weak and protecting the defective, while, at the same time, allowing them freely to mate and marry, we have been, and now are, reproducing our defective social strains at a ratio many times that of the reproduction of our more desirable social elements. At this rate, where will civilized society find itself in another one hundred or five hundred years?”
Dr. Meredith Sprunger relates that Dr. Sadler wrote a book on eugenics, but decided not to publish it since it might have been too controversial.
Whatever acceptance eugenics had in the 1920’s and 30’s has mostly disappeared, though there are a few pro-eugenics sites on the Internet. The abuses have been so egregious that it is nearly impossible to have a rational discussion on the subject these days. In an atmosphere like this, should we defend the eugenics in the Urantia Papers? I am sure that we will have to deal with much criticism of the eugenics stand of the authors. Unfortunately, eugenics concepts are found in many of the papers. The following are some of the statements that I choose to characterize as eugenics land mines [4] :
These six evolutionary races are destined to be blended and exalted by amalgamation with the progeny of the Adamic uplifters. But before these peoples are blended, the inferior and unfit are largely eliminated. The Planetary Prince and the Material Son, with other suitable planetary authorities, pass upon the fitness of the reproducing strains. The difficulty of executing such a radical program on Urantia consists in the absence of competent judges to pass upon the biologic fitness or unfitness of the individuals of your world races. Notwithstanding this obstacle, it seems that you ought to be able to agree upon the biologic disfellowshipping of your more markedly unfit, defective, degenerate, and antisocial stocks. UB 51:4.8
[From an online dictionary: Disfellowship: 1. To exclude from fellowship; to refuse intercourse with, as an associate. Also, to excommunicate. What do the authors really mean by disfellowship? Sterilization?]
The methods of this people in dealing with crime, insanity, and degeneracy, while in some ways pleasing, will, no doubt, in others prove shocking to most Urantians. Ordinary criminals and the defectives are placed, by sexes, in different agricultural colonies and are more than selfsupporting. The more serious habitual criminals and the incurably insane are sentenced to death in the lethal gas chambers by the courts. UB 72:10.1
[It appears to me that the authors have included the paper about government on a neighboring planet (Paper 72) to give us some idea of where we should be heading in our development. Note however that they realize we will find some of their ideas “shocking.”]
The Adamic mission on experimental, rebellion-seared, and isolated Urantia was a formidable undertaking. And the Material Son and Daughter early became aware of the difficulty and complexity of their planetary assignment. Nevertheless, they courageously set about the task of solving their manifold problems. But when they addressed themselves to the allimportant work of eliminating the defectives and degenerates from among the human strains, they were quite dismayed. They could see no way out of the dilemma, and they could not take counsel with their superiors on either Jerusem or Edentia. UB 75:1.1
The church, because of overmuch false sentiment, has long ministered to the underprivileged and the unfortunate, and this has all been well, but this same sentiment has led to the unwise perpetuation of racially degenerate stocks which have tremendously retarded the progress of civilization. UB 99:3.5
Civilization is in danger when youth neglect to interest themselves in ethics, sociology, eugenics, philosophy, the fine arts, religion, and cosmology. UB 111:4.4
Though it seems odd to say that youth should take an interest in eugenics, it is a fact that many high school biology texts in the 1920’s and 30’s had a section on eugenics and a number of prestigious colleges had courses in eugenics. Perhaps it only sounds odd to our ears because of the “overmuch false sentiment” we learned in church. In fact, we have gone so far in this direction that there are those pushing for a limited bill of rights for chimpanzees since they seem to border on human in some of their social characteristics. This seems to be an extreme case of sensitivity to social inequalities that began in the last century. Are we too sensitive?
It seems to me that the authors of the Papers have placed us in a very awkward position. In an age when there is much sentiment against eugenics, they are faulting us for not purifying our populations. They tell us of how Adam and Eve were dismayed by the task of trying to cleanse the human race of defectives and degenerates. Here we have two beings especially trained to do such work, yet they could not see how it could be done without appealing for help to higher authorities. Nevertheless, they take us to task for not doing the very same thing. This seems neither fair nor helpful to us today. Even if we wanted to start a eugenics program, by what authority could we do it? Is such a program in harmony with the democratic ideals that we hold in such high regard? And who among us has the wisdom to choose who shall procreate, and who shall not? It seems to me that rather than criticizing us for our lack of progress, our celestial superiors could in some way provide the leadership that would show us the way forward.
There are a few things I have concluded about the Urantia Papers as I have studied them over the years. One of these things is that it’s OK to disagree with the authors. It’s obvious that we can’t implement their ideas on eugenics until far in the future, and in fact, probably not even then without some help from our spiritual friends. And why this emphasis on eugenics? Isn’t overpopulation as much of a threat to the future of humankind as bad heredity? In emphasizing eugenics, they have potentially alienated some who might otherwise take the book more seriously. Did they do this on purpose? Did they implant some land mines for us to step on so we wouldn’t take the book as gospel? If so, they did a good job of it.
Another thing I have concluded is that it’s OK to tell people to whom we introduce the Papers that we don’t take everything in the book as gospel. We need to use our sense of proportion and fairness to decide which of the teachings we choose to emphasize. We need not be apologists for things such as eugenics if we believe this will cause problems. I believe that the spiritual content of the Papers-especially the life and teachings of Jesus-is the most important part of them, and this is the area to which we should guide people when we introduce the Papers to them.
I believe that the authors really intended for us to use our intelligence and good sense in propagating the teachings of the book. I don’t believe they intended for us to unthinkingly endorse concepts in the Papers that are out of harmony with our concepts of truth as we understand them or pursue courses of action that are unwise in our present culture. I hope we will not disappoint them.
One can be technically right as to fact and everlastingly wrong in the truth. UB 48:6.33
Dick Bain is a long time reader of The Urantia Papers and serves on the Board of The Spiritual Fellowship. Dick’s e-mail address is N4RB@worldnet.att.net.
| Sir Hubert Wilkins: 20th Century Magellan, Early Urantian | Fall 2003 — Index | Eugenics and the Urantia Papers: A Different View |
A website with a comprehensive history of the eugenics movement: http://www.eugenicsarchive.org/eugenics/ ↩︎
Premsagar, Paul, 2002. “Eugenics and The Urantia Book-Another Perspective,” The Fellowship Herald, Summer 2002 ↩︎
Gould, Stephen Jay, 1985. Eugenics Past and Present, The Flamingo’s Smile, W.W. Norton and Co. ↩︎
Other references to eugenics in The Urantia Book can be found at the following places in the book: UB 52:2.9, P.UB 52:2.10 , UB 52:2.11, UB 52:3.4, UB 71:3.8, UB 72:9.8, UB 75:1.2, UB 82:6.4, UB 70:9.14 ↩︎