© 2023 Halbert Katzen, JD
By Halbert Katzen J.D.
Editor’s note: February 2022, I published the Topical Study: Food For Thought, which is highly recommended as an introduction to this study aid. In September 2022, I penned a short piece for social media that captures the essence of this study and my understanding of The Urantia Book, in general:
Roles and relationships:
Valuable differences change and stay the same from generation to generation.
Male and female differences endure.
Racial differences blend into oneness.
Children becoming adults combines an enduring and an evolving aspect of life’s relationships.Life works best when we make the most of enduring and disappearing differences.
Love is about wisely harmonizing these three fundamental differences—gender, >race, and parent-child.
Please pass the love.
—Halbert Katzen
The Urantia Book warns us that:
“Modern society is in reverse. Slavery has nearly disappeared; domesticated animals are passing. Civilization is reaching back to fire—the inorganic world—for power. Man came up from savagery by way of fire, animals, and slavery; today he reaches back, discarding the help of slaves and the assistance of animals, while he seeks to wrest new secrets and sources of wealth and power from the elemental storehouse of nature.”
Unpacking that paragraph is what this Topical Study is all about.
The Urantia Book teaches that genetic progress provides the foundation for cultural progress. The intelligently designed, preprogrammed plan for evolutionary progress involves variation (colored race mutations). This was genetically preprogrammed to occur during the primitive stage of human development. Our path to homogenization (the colored races blending into one general genetic type) is the story of humanity’s cultural progress, for better or worse. To make better cultural progress, we are encouraged to:
The “Eugenics, Race, and The Urantia Book” paper was written as an apologetic in response to criticism and misunderstandings about these teachings. This study aid approach to the topic allows for a much briefer education on issues that are addressed throughout the text’s two thousand plus pages. The brevity and structure of this approach likely will be more useful and appreciated by all types of readers, from those with no previous experience with The Urantia Book to those well versed in its teachings.
If you are new to The Urantia Book, here are some contextualizing comments to help you get started:
The Urantia Book teaches that we are not the only inhabited planet in the universe nor the center of God’s material creation. In a manner somewhat consistent with religious traditions about Lucifer, Satan, and/or the Devil, The Urantia Book affirms that a celestial administrator/leader lost faith and rejected the divine order. It teaches that the tempering of justice with mercy has not yet allowed for a full and final resolution to this problem, both above and below, for those directly affected.
Within the context of this broadened perspective, the authors describe the progressive patterns—the general plan—for the genetic and social development of planets (those that have not suffered a rebellion). For the sake of brevity and in an effort to stay focused on the material of greatest interest to most people, this study aid does not cover life on normal worlds. But quotes used in this study aid will lead you to that material.
The first section—_Religious, Political, Psychological, Moral and Ethical Framework—_presents what is encouraged. Because the teachings are on the leading edge of humanity’s moral and ethical development, this becomes an integral factor in appreciating the intelligent (and creative) design as well as the specific commentaries.
The second section, Humanity’s Genetic History, is a chronological presentation of our genetic history, integrated with a taxonomical adaptation. The taxonomical adaptation does not come directly from The Urantia Book; it was developed as a study aid.
The third section, Conditions Favoring Excellence, covers climate, natural antipathy, and the value of variety.
The fourth section, A Genetic Foundation for Cultural Progress, addresses what it means, genetically and culturally, to not keep up as a group and to not keep up as an individual within a group, respectively and respectfully.
The fifth section, A Genetic Foundation for Cultural Progress, reviews the challenges we face with respect to variations in intelligence, racial mixing, and labor issues.
Do you experience yourself or others as trying to shut down conversation about controversial topics that scrutinize perspectives and opinions? Do you experience yourself or others as disinclined to start conversations about controversial topics that scrutinize perspectives and opinions? To what degree to you experience sharing perspectives and opinions as argumentative vs. educational. How do those answers relate to these teachings?:
True and genuine inward certainty does not in the least fear outward analysis, nor does truth resent honest criticism. … Sincere men are unafraid of the critical examination of their true convictions and noble ideals. (UB 146:3.2)
Successful living is nothing more or less than the art of the mastery of dependable techniques for solving common problems. The first step in the solution of any problem is to locate the difficulty, to isolate the problem, and frankly to recognize its nature and gravity. The great mistake is that, when life problems excite our profound fears, we refuse to recognize them. Likewise, when the acknowledgment of our difficulties entails the reduction of our long-cherished conceit, the admission of envy, or the abandonment of deep-seated prejudices, the average person prefers to cling to the old illusions of safety and to the long-cherished false feelings of security. Only a brave person is willing honestly to admit, and fearlessly to face, what a sincere and logical mind discovers. (UB 160:1.7)
But logic can never succeed in harmonizing the findings of science and the insights of religion unless both the scientific and the religious aspects of a personality are truth dominated, sincerely desirous of following the truth wherever it may lead regardless of the conclusions which it may reach. … (UB 103:7.5)
What both developing science and religion need is more searching and fearless self-criticism, a greater awareness of incompleteness in evolutionary status. The teachers of both science and religion are often altogether too self-confident and dogmatic. Science and religion can only be self-critical of their facts. The moment departure is made from the stage of facts, reason abdicates or else rapidly degenerates into a consort of false logic. (UB 103:7.7)
Where does our world stand on the spectrum of keeping religion out of politics—internationally, nationally, and locally?
Religionists must function in society, in industry, and in politics as individuals, not as groups, parties, or institutions. A religious group which presumes to function as such, apart from religious activities, immediately becomes a political party, an economic organization, or a social institution. Religious collectivism must confine its efforts to the furtherance of religious causes. … (UB 99:2.3)
There is always the great danger that religion will become distorted and perverted into the pursuit of false goals, as when in times of war each contending nation prostitutes its religion into military propaganda. Loveless zeal is always harmful to religion, while persecution diverts the activities of religion into the achievement of some sociologic or theologic drive. … (UB 99:3.8)
The institutionalized church may have appeared to serve society in the past by glorifying the established political and economic orders, but it must speedily cease such action if it is to survive. Its only proper attitude consists in the teaching of nonviolence, the doctrine of peaceful evolution in the place of violent revolution—peace on earth and good will among all men. (UB 99:2.5)
Christianity, today, has become a religion well adapted to the social, economic, and political mores of the white races. It has long since ceased to be the religion of Jesus, although it still valiantly portrays a beautiful religion about Jesus to such individuals as sincerely seek to follow in the way of its teaching. It has glorified Jesus as the Christ, the Messianic anointed one from God, but has largely forgotten the Master’s personal gospel: the Fatherhood of God and the universal brotherhood of all men. (UB 98:7.11)
How does the following standard set by Jesus compare to what we see today—internationally, nationally, and locally?
Jesus never taught that it was wrong to have wealth. He required only the twelve and the seventy [evangelists] to dedicate all of their worldly possessions to the common cause. … Jesus never personally had anything to do with the apostolic finances except in the disbursement of alms. But there was one economic abuse which he many times condemned, and that was the unfair exploitation of the weak, unlearned, and less fortunate of men by their strong, keen, and more intelligent fellows. Jesus declared that such inhuman treatment of men, women, and children was incompatible with the ideals of the brotherhood of the kingdom of heaven. (UB 163:2.11)
When it comes to wisely balancing group, subgroup, and individual interests across the full spectrum of social groupings and activities—from parental affairs, to economic endeavors, to government regulations—how much should we expect reasonable minds to differ on these issues?
The family is the fundamental unit of fraternity in which parents and children learn those lessons of patience, altruism, tolerance, and forbearance which are so essential to the realization of brotherhood among all men.” (UB 84:7.28)
Only those who face facts and adjust them to ideals can achieve wisdom. Wisdom embraces both the fact and the ideal and therefore saves its devotees from both of those barren extremes of philosophy—the man whose idealism excludes facts and the materialist who is devoid of spiritual outlook.” (UB 160:4.14)
How much should we expect reasonable minds to differ when it comes to: balancing justice with mercy, distinguishing patterns from circumstances, or giving due consideration vs. enabling?
Jesus’ teaching to trust in the overcare of the heavenly Father was not a blind and passive fatalism. He quoted with approval, on this afternoon, an old Hebrew saying: “He who will not work shall not eat.” (UB 140:8.2)
Labor, the efforts of design, distinguishes man from the beast, whose exertions are largely instinctive. The necessity for labor is man’s paramount blessing. … Adam was a gardener; the God of the Hebrews labored—he was the creator and upholder of all things. The Hebrews were the first tribe to put a supreme premium on industry; they were the first people to decree that “he who does not work shall not eat.” But many of the religions of the world reverted to the early ideal of idleness. Jupiter was a reveler, and Buddha became a reflective devotee of leisure. (UB 69:2.5)
If an affectionate father of a large family chooses to show mercy to one of his children guilty of grievous wrongdoing, it may well be that the extension of mercy to this misbehaving child will work a temporary hardship upon all the other and well-behaved children. Such eventualities are inevitable; such a risk is inseparable from the reality situation of having a loving parent and of being a member of a family group. Each member of a family profits by the righteous conduct of every other member; likewise must each member suffer the immediate time-consequences of the misconduct of every other member. Families, groups, nations, races, worlds, systems, constellations, and universes are relationships of association which possess individuality; and therefore does every member of any such group, large or small, reap the benefits and suffer the consequences of the rightdoing and the wrongdoing of all other members of the group concerned. (UB 54:6.3)
Simply put, God creates mortal life with a plan for genetic development that includes specific types of periodic sudden mutations, progressive evolutionary developments, and eventually, once the evolutionary process has plateaued, for the introduction of additional genetics to further improve humanity’s physical foundation.
The Urantia Book’s coined terms for the races, which are rich with etymological meaning (see Appendix 1). An adaptation of Latin-based taxonomy was created as a study aid tool. to facilitate appreciation of the evolutionary and hierarchical aspects of humanity’s genetic history. Regarding the question of how the evolutionary design got started and from whence it came, an order of celestial beings referred to as “Life Carriers” are said to be both responsible for the initiation of life on planets and also, in this particular case, authoring a description of those events for The Urantia Book:
… This sphere is a life-modification world; all life appearing hereon was formulated by us right here on the planet; and there is no other world … that has a life existence just like that of Urantia. (UB 58:4.1)
[T]he Life Carrier corps … [i]n co-operation with spiritual powers and superphysical forces …, initiated the original life patterns of this world and planted them in the hospitable waters of the realm. All planetary life … had its origin in our three original, identical, and simultaneous marine-life implantations. (UB 58:4.2)
The Urantia Book teaches that the original life pattern integrates progressive evolutionary characteristics with a structure for mutations that will cause new orders and species of plants and animals to suddenly appear.
Homo erectus prosapiens: Andonite. Originating 1,000,000 years ago. Mutation. Fraternal twins, Andon and Fonta, brother and sister, respectively, were the first human beings.
Andonite intelligence has sufficient potential for individuals to experience a spiritual level of human consciousness and, therefore, the development of a potentially eternal soul. The actualization of a soul requires the adjutant minds spirits of worship and wisdom to be activated (in addition to the animal level spirits of intuition, understanding, courage, knowledge, and counsel). The birth of a soul also requires a down reach of spiritual forces to create the death-surviving soul. The arrival of an indwelling spirit from God—the Thought Adjuster— is bestowed to co-parent, along with human freewill, the birth and development of one’s soul.
Being under God’s control, the activation of the spirits of wisdom and worship, along with the bestowal of Thought Adjusters, can be wisely and lovingly withheld, also. Doing so safeguards for humanity the value of having a single common pair of ancestors. All prosapiens and, therefore, all human beings have Andonite heritage.
950,000 years ago the descendants of Andon and Fonta had migrated far to the east and to the west. To the west they passed over Europe to France and England. In later times they penetrated eastward as far as Java, where their bones were so recently found—the so-called Java man—and then journeyed on to Tasmania. (UB 64:1.6)
The groups going west became less contaminated with the backward stocks of mutual ancestral origin than those going east, who mingled so freely with their retarded animal cousins. (UB 64:1.7)
By 2500 B.C. the westward thrust of the Andonites reached Europe. And this overrunning of all Mesopotamia, Asia Minor, and the Danube basin by the barbarians of the hills of Turkestan constituted the most serious and lasting of all cultural setbacks up to that time. These invaders definitely Andonized the character of the central European races, which have ever since remained characteristically Alpine. (UB 80:9.7)
Andonite genetics do not provide sufficient intelligence to support the development of civilization.
Homo erectus subsapiens. Evolutionary. This classification encompasses the full range of types that are able to reproduce with H. erectus prosapiens.
Even the loss of Andon and Fonta before they had offspring, though delaying human evolution, would not have prevented it. Subsequent to the appearance of Andon and Fonta and before the mutating human potentials of animal life were exhausted, there evolved no less than seven thousand favorable strains which could have achieved some sort of human type of development. And many of these better stocks were subsequently assimilated by the various branches of the expanding human species. (UB 65:3.4)
This classification includes the spectrum ranging from the “backward stocks” to the “seven thousand favorable strains.”
Homo neanderthalensis: Badonite. Evolutionary. Originating 850,000 years ago.
850,000 years ago the superior Badonan tribes began a warfare of extermination directed against their inferior and animalistic neighbors. … And the mixed descendants of this improved Badonite stock appeared on the stage of action as an apparently new people—the Neanderthal race. (UB 64:3.5)
The most evolved H. erectus prosapiens—the Badonites—lived in the Afghanistan region.
Homo neanderthalensis prosapiens. Evolutionary. The improved superior Badonans (H. neanderthalensis) blended with the Andonites (H. erectus prosapiens).
Homo neanderthalensis subsapiens. Evolutionary. H. neanderthalensis mated with H. erectus subsapiens.
Homo sapiens: Sangik races. Originating 500,000 years ago. Mutation.
500,000 years ago … a man and woman … began suddenly to produce a family of unusually intelligent children. This was the Sangik family, the ancestors of all of the six colored races of Urantia. UB 64:5.1-2
… Among these nineteen children were five red, two orange, four yellow, two green, four blue, and two indigo. These colors became more pronounced as the children grew older, and when these youths later mated with their fellow tribesmen, all of their offspring tended toward the skin color of the Sangik parent. (UB 64:5.3)
All of these races had sufficient intelligence to support the development of civilization. Therefore, a spiritual administrator (invisible) was sent—the Planetary Prince, Caligastia. The Prince had a visible corporeal staff of one hundred (discussed below), who were given human bodies.
Homo sapiens primarius: primary Sangik. Originating 500,000 years ago. Mutation. The color spectrum of the Sangik races is described as having alternating sets of differences, starting with the red race. Usually, height tends to decrease across the color spectrum, going from red to indigo.
The … red man stands far above the indigo—black—race. The Life Carriers impart the full bestowal of the living energies to the initial or red race … Even mortal stature tends to decrease from the red man down to the indigo race, although on Urantia unexpected strains of giantism appeared among the green and orange peoples. (UB 51:4.2)
On those worlds having all six evolutionary races the superior peoples are the first, third, and fifth races—the red, the yellow, and the blue. The evolutionary races thus alternate in capacity for intellectual growth and spiritual development, the second, fourth, and sixth [orange, green, and indigo] being somewhat less endowed. (UB 51:4.3)
The use of “red man” in comparison to “indigo—black—race” is not the only example of using synonyms for making comparative references to the six Sangik races. This is also done with a description of all six races at 64:6. Why do you think the authors do this?
Homo sapiens secundarius: secondary Sangik. Originating 500,000 years ago. Mutation.
Biologically considered, the secondary Sangiks were in some respects superior to the primary races. (UB 82:6.10)
Though the primary races … were in many respects superior to the three secondary peoples, it should be remembered that these secondary races had many desirable traits which would have considerably enhanced the primary peoples if their better strains could have been absorbed. (UB 82:6.2)
[U]nexpected strains of giantism [8 to 9 feet in height] appeared among the green and orange peoples. (UB 51:4.2)
The last great struggle between the orange and the green men occurred in the region of the lower Nile valley in Egypt. … [T]hese people were absorbed by the green and by the later arriving indigo men. But as a race the orange man ceased to exist about one hundred thousand years ago. (UB 64:6.13)
Homo sapiens transerectus: Nodite. Originating 200,000 years ago. Unplanned genetic uplift. This is when the Lucifer Rebellion occurred—the loss of faith by a high-ranking celestial administrator. Religious traditions related to Lucifer, Satan, and the Devil started with this event, which resulted in the Planetary Prince’s corporeal staff all losing the immortal status they had enjoyed for 300,000 years (along with 100 human beings with whom they had been genetically paired in a surgical, not sexual, manner to allow for an immortal status on earth). The hybrid of human beings with the corporeal staff created a distinct dual origin race.
With noteworthy results, the rebellion undid plans governing restrictions on their procreative activities:
[T]heir children proved to be far superior in almost every way to both the Andonite and the Sangik peoples. This unexpected excellence characterized not only physical and intellectual qualities but also spiritual capacities.
These mutant traits appearing in the first Nodite generation resulted from certain changes which had been wrought in the configuration and in the chemical constituents of the inheritance factors of the Andonic germ plasm. These changes … caused the chromosomes of the specialized Urantia pattern to reorganize … The technique of this germ plasm metamorphosis by the action of the system life currents is not unlike those procedures whereby Urantia scientists modify the germ plasm of plants and animals by the use of X rays.
Thus did the Nodite peoples arise out of certain peculiar and unexpected modifications occurring in the life plasm which had been transferred from the bodies of the Andonite contributors to those of the corporeal staff … (UB 77:2.4-6)
The pure-line Nodites were a magnificent race, but they gradually mingled with the evolutionary peoples of earth, and before long great deterioration had occurred. Ten thousand years after the rebellion they had lost ground to the point where their average length of life was little more than that of the evolutionary races. (UB 77:2.9)
“The Nephilim (Nodites) were on earth in those days, and when these sons of the gods went in to the daughters of men and they bore to them, their children were the ‘mighty men of old,’ the ‘men of renown.'” … And all this legend became further confused with the race mixtures of the later appearing Adamites … (UB 77:2.3)
Homo sapiens ultrasapiens: Adamite and Adamsonite. Originating 38,000 years ago. Planned genetic uplift. The violet race. (Adamson was Adam and Eve’s first child.)
[A]lmost forty thousand years ago, … the Life Carriers on duty took note that, from a purely biologic standpoint, the developmental progress of the Urantia races was nearing its apex. (UB 73:0.1)
[Celestial administrators] counseled Adam not to initiate the program of racial uplift and blending until his own family had numbered one-half million. It was never intended that the Garden should be the permanent home of the Adamites. They were to become emissaries of a new life to all the world; they were to mobilize for unselfish bestowal upon the needy races of earth. (UB 73:7.3)
When this strain of the Material Sons is added to the evolving races of the worlds, a new and greater era of evolutionary progress is initiated. Following this procreative outpouring of imported ability and superevolutionary traits there ensues a succession of rapid strides in civilization and racial development … [E]ven in the face of the miscarriage of the ordained plans, great progress has been made since the gift to your peoples of Adam’s life plasm. (UB 51:5.6)
The miscarriage occurred just one hundred years after Adam and Eve arrived.
[T]he Adams and Eves and their progeny contribute [germ plasm] …, resulting in the immediate upstepping of biologic status, the quickening of intellectual potential, and the enhancement of spiritual receptivity. (UB 51:6.1)
[T]he violet race, begin[s with] Adam … and extend[s] down through its amalgamation with the Nodite and Sangik races, about 15,000 B.C., to form the Andite peoples and on to its final disappearance from the Mesopotamian homelands, about 2000 B.C. (UB 78:0.2)
Adam and Eve … had blue eyes, and the violet peoples were characterized by fair complexions and light hair color—yellow, red, and brown. (UB 76:4.1)
The body cells of the Material Sons and their progeny are far more resistant to disease than are those of the evolutionary beings indigenous to the planet. The body cells of the native races are akin to the living disease-producing microscopic and ultramicroscopic organisms of the realm. These facts explain why the Urantia peoples must do so much by way of scientific effort to withstand so many physical disorders. You would be far more disease resistant if your races carried more of the Adamic life. (UB 76:4.7)
The play and humor of the present-day races are largely derived from the Adamic stock. The Adamites all had a great appreciation of music as well as a keen sense of humor. (UB 74:6.7)
Adam’s blood has been shared with most of the human races, but some secured more than others. The mixed races of India and the darker peoples of Africa were not attractive to the Adamites. They would have mixed freely with the red man had he not been far removed in the Americas, and they were kindly disposed toward the yellow man, but he was likewise difficult of access in faraway Asia. Therefore, when actuated by either adventure or altruism, or when driven out of the Euphrates valley, they very naturally chose union with the blue races of Europe. (UB 80:1.5)
It was not that there were so many of the Andites, nor that their culture was so superior, but amalgamation with them produced a more versatile stock. The northern Chinese received just enough of the Andite strain to mildly stimulate their innately able minds but not enough to fire them with the restless, exploratory curiosity so characteristic of the northern white races. This more limited infusion of Andite inheritance was less disturbing to the innate stability of the Sangik type. (UB 79:7.3)
On an average world the post-Adamic dispensation is an age of great invention, energy control, and mechanical development. This is the era of the appearance of multiform manufacture and the control of natural forces; it is the golden age of exploration and the final subduing of the planet. Much of the material progress of a world occurs during this time of the inauguration of the development of the physical sciences, just such an epoch as Urantia is now experiencing. Your world is a full dispensation and more behind the average planetary schedule [due to the Lucifer rebellion and the Adamic default]. (UB 52:3.6)
Homo sapiens supersapiens: the Andite. Evolutionary.
The Andite races were the primary blends of the pure-line violet race and the Nodites plus the evolutionary peoples. In general, Andites should be thought of as having a far greater percentage of Adamic blood than the modern races. In the main, the term Andite is used to designate those peoples whose racial inheritance was from one-eighth to one-sixth violet. Modern Urantians, even the northern white races, contain much less than this percentage of the blood of Adam. (UB 78:4.1)
The Andites were the best all-round human stock to appear on Urantia since the days of the pure-line violet peoples. … (UB 78:4.3)
These early Andites were not Aryan; they were pre-Aryan. They were not white; they were pre-white. They were neither an Occidental nor an Oriental people. But it is Andite inheritance that gives to the polyglot mixture of the so-called white races that generalized homogeneity which has been called Caucasoid. (UB 78:4.4)
By 12,000 B.C. three quarters of the Andite stock of the world was resident in northern and eastern Europe, and when the later and final exodus from Mesopotamia took place, sixty-five per cent of these last waves of emigration entered Europe. (UB 78:5.4)
The Andites not only migrated to Europe but to northern China and India, while many groups penetrated to the ends of the earth as missionaries, teachers, and traders. They contributed considerably to the northern groups of the Saharan Sangik peoples. But only a few teachers and traders ever penetrated farther south in Africa than the headwaters of the Nile. Later on, mixed Andites and Egyptians followed down both the east and west coasts of Africa well below the equator, but they did not reach Madagascar. (UB 78:5.5)
These Andites were the so-called Dravidian and later Aryan conquerors of India; and their presence in central Asia greatly upstepped the ancestors of the Turanians. Many of this race journeyed to China by way of both Sinkiang and Tibet and added desirable qualities to the later Chinese stocks. From time to time small groups made their way into Japan, Formosa, the East Indies, and southern China, though very few entered southern China by the coastal route. (UB 78:5.6)
The authors use Aryan without negative connotations, consistent with historical origins, and inconsistent with the later de-evolution of the term into one associated with bigoted racial superiority. This is a Wikipedia summary of the issue:
The use of “Aryan” as a synonym for “Indo-European” or to a lesser extent for “Indo-Iranian”, is regarded today by many as obsolete and politically incorrect, but may still occasionally appear in material based on older scholarship, or written by persons accustomed to older usage, such as in a 1989 article in Scientific American by Colin Renfrew in which he uses the word “Aryan” in its traditional meaning as a synonym for “Indo-European”.
For an in-depth review of this aspect of Urantia Book teachings, see subTopical Study: Aryans and Whites.
One hundred and thirty-two of this race, embarking in a fleet of small boats from Japan, eventually reached South America and by intermarriage with the natives of the Andes established the ancestry of the later rulers of the Incas. … (UB 78:5.7)
The migratory conquests of the Andites continued on down to their final dispersions, from 8000 to 6000 B.C. As they poured out of Mesopotamia, they … contributed humor, art, adventure, music, and manufacture. They were skillful domesticators of animals and expert agriculturists. (UB 78:5.8)
The last three waves … went forth in their final exodus in several directions: (UB 78:6.1)
Sixty-five per cent entered Europe by the Caspian Sea route to conquer and amalgamate with the newly appearing white races—the blend of the blue men and the earlier Andites. (UB 78:6.2)
Ten per cent, including a large group of the Sethite priests, moved eastward through the Elamite highlands to the Iranian plateau and Turkestan. Many of their descendants were later driven into India with their Aryan brethren from the regions to the north. (UB 78:6.3)
Ten per cent of the Mesopotamians turned eastward in their northern trek, entering Sinkiang, where they blended with the Andite-yellow inhabitants. The majority of the able offspring of this racial union later entered China and contributed much to the immediate improvement of the northern division of the yellow race. (UB 78:6.4)
Ten per cent of these fleeing Andites made their way across Arabia and entered Egypt. (UB 78:6.5)
Five per cent of the Andites, the very superior culture of the coastal district about the mouths of the Tigris and Euphrates who had kept themselves free from intermarriage with the inferior neighboring tribesmen, refused to leave their homes. This group represented the survival of many superior Nodite and Adamite strains. (UB 78:6.6)
Homo sapiens sapiens. Evolutionary. Modern blended peoples. The various degrees of admixture between H. sapiens supersapiens, H. sapiens and H. erectus prosapiens.
The authors of The Urantia Book make no bones about the fact that they are instructing us in how to start out our anthropological studies with a better set of initial assumptions:
Each of the Urantia races was identified by certain distinguishing physical characteristics. The Adamites and Nodites were long-headed; the Andonites were broad-headed. The Sangik races were medium-headed, with the yellow and blue men tending to broad-headedness. The blue races, when mixed with the Andonite stock, were decidedly broad-headed. The secondary Sangiks were medium- to long-headed. (UB 81:4.2)
Although these skull dimensions are serviceable in deciphering racial origins, the skeleton as a whole is far more dependable. In the early development of the Urantia races there were originally five distinct types of skeletal structure:
- Andonic, Urantia aborigines.
- Primary Sangik, red, yellow, and blue.
- Secondary Sangik, orange, green, and indigo.
- Nodites, descendants of the Dalamatians.
- Adamites, the violet race. UB 81:4.3-8
As these five great racial groups extensively intermingled, continual mixture tended to obscure the Andonite type by Sangik hereditary dominance. The Lapps and the Eskimos are blends of Andonite and Sangik-blue races. Their skeletal structures come the nearest to preserving the aboriginal Andonic type. But the Adamites and the Nodites have become so admixed with the other races that they can be detected only as a generalized Caucasoid order. (UB 81:4.9)
[A]s the human remains of the last twenty thousand years are unearthed, it will be impossible clearly to distinguish the five original types. … [M]ankind is now divided into approximately three classes:
- The Caucasoid—the Andite blend of the Nodite and Adamic stocks, further modified by primary and (some) secondary Sangik admixture and by considerable Andonic crossing. The Occidental white races, together with some Indian and Turanian peoples, are included in this group. …
- The Mongoloid—the primary Sangik type, including the original red, yellow, and blue races. The Chinese and Amerinds belong to this group. … The Malayan and other Indonesian peoples are included in this classification, though they contain a high percentage of secondary Sangik blood.
- The Negroid—the secondary Sangik type, which originally included the orange, green, and indigo races. … UB 81:4.10-13
[T]hree small groups of mixed ancestry, the largest of these being a combination of the orange and blue races. These three groups never fully fraternized with the red man and early journeyed southward to Mexico and Central America, where they were later joined by a small group of mixed yellows and reds. These peoples all intermarried and founded a new and amalgamated race, one which was much less warlike than the pure-line red men. Within five thousand years this amalgamated race broke up into three groups, establishing the civilizations respectively of Mexico, Central America, and South America. (UB 64:7.5)
There are no pure races in the world today. The early and original evolutionary peoples of color have only two representative races persisting in the world, the yellow man and the black man; and even these two races are much admixed with the extinct colored peoples [orange and green]. While the so-called white race is predominantly descended from the ancient blue man, it is admixed more or less with all other races much as is the red man of the Americas. (UB 82:6.1)
“White race” is disfavored terminology and attempting subdivisions is also problematic. For an in depth review of this aspect of Urantia Book teachings, see subTopical Study: Aryans and Whites.
From “The Three White Races” section of The Urantia Book:
The European researches and explorations of the Old Stone Age have largely to do with unearthing the tools, bones, and artcraft of these ancient blue men, for they persisted in Europe until recent times. The so-called white races of Urantia are the descendants of these blue men as they were first modified by slight mixture with yellow and red, and as they were later greatly upstepped by assimilating the greater portion of the violet race. (UB 64:6.24)
But it is a fallacy to presume to classify the white peoples as Nordic, Alpine, and Mediterranean. There has been altogether too much blending to permit such a grouping. At one time there was a fairly well-defined division of the white race into such classes, but widespread intermingling has since occurred, and it is no longer possible to identify these distinctions with any clarity. Even in 3000 B.C. the ancient social groups were no more of one race than are the present inhabitants of North America. (UB 80:9.15)
To what degree do climatic conditions influence inherent genetic potentials? To what degree does a disposition towards climate impact a (sub)group’s genetic potentials over time? How does all of this influence the development of culture? (Note: The Urantia Book counts more glacial ages than what is generally recognized by science.)
During primitive times life on Urantia was a serious and sober business. And it was to escape this incessant struggle and interminable toil that mankind constantly tended to drift toward the salubrious climate of the tropics. While these warmer zones of habitation afforded some remission from the intense struggle for existence, the races and tribes who thus sought ease seldom utilized their unearned leisure for the advancement of civilization. Social progress has invariably come from the thoughts and plans of those races that have, by their intelligent toil, learned how to wrest a living from the land with lessened effort and shortened days of labor and thus have been able to enjoy a well-earned and profitable margin of leisure. (UB 81:6.7)
In this way the life that was planted on Urantia evolved until the ice age, when man himself first appeared and began his eventful planetary career. And this appearance of primitive man on earth during the ice age was not just an accident; it was by design. The rigors and climatic severity of the glacial era were in every way adapted to the purpose of fostering the production of a hardy type of human being with tremendous survival endowment. (UB 65:2.16)
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. (UB 61:6.2)
These Andonites avoided the forests in contrast with the habits of their nonhuman relatives. In the forests man has always deteriorated; human evolution has made progress only in the open and in the higher latitudes. The cold and hunger of the open lands stimulate action, invention, and resourcefulness. While these Andonic tribes were developing the pioneers of the present human race amidst the hardshipsand privations of these rugged northern climes, their backward cousins were luxuriating in the southern tropical forests of the land of their early common origin. (UB 64:1.3)
This event occurred at about the time of the beginning of the third glacial advance; thus it may be seen that your early ancestors were born and bred in a stimulating, invigorating, and difficult environment. And the sole survivors of these Urantia aborigines, the Eskimos, even now prefer to dwell in frigid northern climes. (UB 61:6.3)
500,000 years ago, during the fifth advance of the ice, a new development accelerated the course of human evolution. Suddenly and in one generation the six colored races mutated from the aboriginal human stock. This is a doubly important date since it also marks the arrival of the Planetary Prince. (UB 61:7.4)
200,000 years ago, during the advance of the last glacier, there occurred an episode which had much to do with the march of events on Urantia—the Lucifer rebellion. (UB 61:7.8)
The ice age is the last completed geologic period, the so-called Pleistocene, over two million years in length. (UB 61:7.17)
35,000 years ago marks the termination of the great ice age excepting in the polar regions of the planet. This date is also significant in that it approximates the arrival of a Material Son and Daughter and the beginning of the Adamic dispensation, roughly corresponding to the beginning of the Holocene or postglacial period. (UB 61:7.18)
If a natural antipathy between the races was not built into the genetics, how could distinct racial types ever develop? Does teaching that hatred has to be learned actually deny due credit for choosing a more spiritualized disposition? Are more blended people falsely accusing less blended people? Until blending erases the natural antipathy, how does overcoming this tendency relate to the growth of one’s soul?
When the colored descendants of the Sangik family began to multiply, and as they sought opportunity for expansion into adjacent territory, the … glacier … was well advanced on its southern drift over Europe and Asia. These early colored races were extraordinarily tested by the rigors and hardships of the glacial age of their origin. This glacier was so extensive in Asia that for thousands of years migration to eastern Asia was cut off. And not until the later retreat of the Mediterranean Sea, consequent upon the elevation of Arabia, was it possible for them to reach Africa. (UB 64:7.1)
In the early days of racial development there is a slight tendency for the red, the yellow, and the blue men to interbreed; there is a similar tendency for the orange, green, and indigo races to intermingle. (UB 51:4.5)
Thus it was that for almost one hundred thousand years these Sangik peoples spread out around the foothills and mingled together more or less, notwithstanding the peculiar but natural antipathy which early manifested itself between the different races. (UB 64:7.2)
These secondary Sangik peoples found existence more easy and agreeable in the southlands, and many of them subsequently migrated to Africa. The primary Sangik peoples, the superior races, avoided the tropics, the red man going northeast to Asia, closely followed by the yellow man, while the blue race moved northwest into Europe. (UB 64:7.3)
The superior races sought the northern or temperate climes, while the orange, green, and indigo races successively gravitated to Africa over the newly elevated land bridge which separated the westward retreating Mediterranean from the Indian Ocean. UB 64:7.13
Civilization is a racial acquirement; it is not biologically inherent; hence must all children be reared in an environment of culture, while each succeeding generation of youth must receive anew its education. The superior qualities of civilization—scientific, philosophic, and religious—are not transmitted from one generation to another by direct inheritance. These cultural achievements are preserved only by the enlightened conservation of social inheritance. (UB 68:0.2)
The process of planetary evolution is orderly and controlled. The development of higher organisms from lower groupings of life is not accidental. Sometimes evolutionary progress is temporarily delayed by the destruction of certain favorable lines of life plasm carried in a selected species. It often requires ages upon ages to recoup the damage occasioned by the loss of a single superior strain of human heredity. These selected and superior strains of living protoplasm should be jealously and intelligently guarded when once they make their appearance. And on most of the inhabited worlds these superior potentials of life are valued much more highly than on Urantia. (UB 49:1.7)
Hybridization of superior and dissimilar stocks is the secret of the creation of new and more vigorous strains. And this is true of plants, animals, and the human species. . . . Race mixtures of the average or superior strata of various peoples greatly increase creative potential, as is shown in the present population of the United States of North America. When such matings take place between the lower or inferior strata, creativity is diminished, as is shown by the present-day peoples of southern India. (UB 82:6.5)
Race mixture is always advantageous in that it favors versatility of culture and makes for a progressive civilization, but if the inferior elements of racial stocks predominate, such achievements will be short-lived. A polyglot culture can be preserved only if the superior stocks reproduce themselves in a safe margin over the inferior. Unrestrained multiplication of inferiors, with decreasing reproduction of superiors, is unfailingly suicidal of cultural civilization. (UB 79:2.7)
The evolution of … colored races … provides certain very desirable variations in mortal types and affords an otherwise unattainable expression of diverse human potentials. … (UB 51:4.4)
Flexible and shifting social classes are indispensable to an evolving civilization, but when class becomes caste, when social levels petrify, the enhancement of social stability is purchased by diminishment of personal initiative. Social caste solves the problem of finding one’s place in industry, but it also sharply curtails individual development and virtually prevents social co-operation.
Classes in society, having naturally formed, will persist until man gradually achieves their evolutionary obliteration through intelligent manipulation of the biologic, intellectual, and spiritual resources of a progressing civilization, such as:
- Biologic renovation of the racial stocks—the selective elimination of inferior human strains. This will tend to eradicate many mortal inequalities.
- Educational training of the increased brain power which will arise out of such biologic improvement.
- Religious quickening of the feelings of mortal kinship and brotherhood. (UB 70:8.13-17)
But these measures can bear their true fruits only in the distant millenniums of the future, although much social improvement will immediately result from the intelligent, wise, and patient manipulation of these acceleration factors of cultural progress. Religion is the mighty lever that lifts civilization from chaos, but it is powerless apart from the fulcrum of sound and normal mind resting securely on sound and normal heredity. (UB 70:8.18)
1. Variety is indispensable to opportunity for the wide functioning of natural selection, differential survival of superior strains.
2. Stronger and better races are to be had from the interbreeding of diverse peoples when these different races are carriers of superior inheritance factors. And the Urantia races would have benefited by such an early amalgamation provided such a conjoint people could have been subsequently effectively upstepped by a thoroughgoing admixture with the superior Adamic stock. The attempt to execute such an experiment on Urantia under present racial conditions would be highly disastrous.
3. Competition is healthfully stimulated by diversification of races.
4. Differences in status of the races and of groups within each race are essential to the development of human tolerance and altruism.
5. Homogeneity of the human race is not desirable until the peoples of an evolving world attain comparatively high levels of spiritual development. UB 64:6.31-35
If an ethnic group (no matter what its predominant racial factors may be) lacks the spiritual maturity necessary to address its own defective, degenerate, and antisocial traits, what hope does this group have for peacefully managing such issues between ethnic groups?
What checks and balances does nature provide to support the progressive evolution of our gene pool and, thus, the progressive evolution of civilization?
This problem of race improvement is not such an extensive undertaking when it is attacked at this early date in human evolution. The preceding period of tribal struggles and rugged competition in race survival has weeded out most of the abnormal and defective strains. An idiot does not have much chance of survival in a primitive and warring tribal social organization. It is the false sentiment of your partially perfected civilizations that fosters, protects, and perpetuates the hopelessly defective strains of evolutionary human stocks. (UB 52:2.11)
What may be regarded as right in one age may not be so regarded in another. The survival of large numbers of defectives and degenerates is not because they have any natural right thus to encumber twentieth-century civilization, but simply because the society of the age, the mores, thus decrees. (UB 70:9.14)
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)
Can we find the wisdom to minister to the individual without damning our gene pool?
Teach all believers to avoid leaning upon the insecure props of false sympathy. You cannot develop strong characters out of the indulgence of self-pity; honestly endeavor to avoid the deceptive influence of mere fellowship in misery. Extend sympathy to the brave and courageous while you withhold overmuch pity from those cowardly souls who only halfheartedly stand up before the trials of living. Offer not consolation to those who lie down before their troubles without a struggle. Sympathize not with your fellows merely that they may sympathize with you in return. (UB 159:3.11)
The weak and the inferior have always contended for equal rights; they have always insisted that the state compel the strong and superior to supply their wants and otherwise make good those deficiencies which all too often are the natural result of their own indifference and indolence. (UB 70:9.16)
It is neither tenderness nor altruism to bestow futile sympathy upon degenerated human beings, unsalvable abnormal and inferior mortals. There exist on even the most normal of the evolutionary worlds sufficient differences between individuals and between numerous social groups to provide for the full exercise of all those noble traits of altruistic sentiment and unselfish mortal ministry without perpetuating the socially unfit and the morally degenerate strains of evolving humanity. There is abundant opportunity for the exercise of tolerance and the function of altruism in behalf of those unfortunate and needy individuals who have not irretrievably lost their moral heritage and forever destroyed their spiritual birthright. (UB 52:2.12)
While the ideal of society is universal freedom, idleness should never be tolerated. All able-bodied persons should be compelled to do at least a self-sustaining amount of work. (UB 69:8.11)
Jesus’ teaching to trust in the overcare of the heavenly Father was not a blind and passive fatalism. He quoted with approval, on this afternoon, an old Hebrew saying: “He who will not work shall not eat.” (UB 140:8.2)
Is an attitude of service—a positive and loving attitude towards life—equally available to the weak and inferior as it is to the strong and superior?
Does not blaming children for the sins of their parents, patterned over eons of time, mean we should turn a blind eye to the realities of longstanding negative genetic and cultural trends. Are there ever circumstances that warrant rejecting a subgroup as procreative partners, as we, nonetheless, love them as children of God?
The modern phrase, “back to nature,” is a delusion of ignorance, a belief in the reality of the onetime fictitious “golden age.” (UB 68:1.7)
Among the early races there was little or no regulation of the relations of the sexes. Because of this sex license, no prostitution existed. Today [1934 is The Urantia Book reference date.], the Pygmies and other backward groups have no marriage institution; a study of these peoples reveals the simple mating customs followed by primitive races. But all ancient peoples should always be studied and judged in the light of the moral standards of the mores of their own times. (UB 82:2.2)
Does identifying contemporary Pygmies as being in the category of “backward groups” imply that everyone living today should be judged by today’s moral standards. Should national boundaries or other geographic subdivisions be the reason why modern moral standards are not considered important?
That contemporary cultural society is a rather recent phenomenon is well shown by the present-day survival of such primitive social conditions as characterize the Australian natives and the Bushmen and Pygmies of Africa. Among these backward peoples may be observed something of the early group hostility, personal suspicion, and other highly antisocial traits which were so characteristic of all primitive races. These miserable remnants of the nonsocial peoples of ancient times bear eloquent testimony to the fact that the natural individualistic tendency of man cannot successfully compete with the more potent and powerful organizations and associations of social progression. These backward and suspicious antisocial races that speak a different dialect every forty or fifty miles illustrate what a world you might now be living in but for the combined teaching of the . . . staff of the Planetary Prince and the later labors of the Adamic group of racial uplifters. (UB 68:1.6)
Sex hunger and mother love establish the family. But real government does not appear until superfamily groups have begun to form. In the prefamily days of the horde, leadership was provided by informally chosen individuals. The African Bushmen have never progressed beyond this primitive stage; they do not have chiefs in the horde. (UB 70:3.2)
While the belief in spirits, dreams, and diverse other superstitions all played a part in the evolutionary origin of primitive religions, you should not overlook the influence of the clan or tribal spirit of solidarity. In the group relationship there was presented the exact social situation which provided the challenge to the egoistic-altruistic conflict in the moral nature of the early human mind. In spite of their belief in spirits, primitive Australians still focus their religion upon the clan. In time, such religious concepts tend to personalize, first, as animals, and later, as a superman or as a God. Even such inferior races as the African Bushmen, who are not even totemic in their beliefs, do have a recognition of the difference between the self-interest and the group-interest, a primitive distinction between the values of the secular and the sacred. But the social group is not the source of religious experience. Regardless of the influence of all these primitive contributions to man’s early religion, the fact remains that the true religious impulse has its origin in genuine spirit presences activating the will to be unselfish. (UB 103:3.1)
Does identifying Pygmies, Bushman, and Australian natives as “miserable remnants of the nonsocial peoples of ancient times,” mean these are the only groups that have established themselves as an especially inferior and antisocial genetic subgroup? Do contemporary tendencies to romanticize today’s primitive peoples create an unrealistically favorable bias regarding whether such groups might have some special or unique contribution to make to humanity’s future gene pool?
If prophylactically screening for genetic problems during pregnancy is a good idea, how does that relate to the wisdom of people with these genetic problems having children?
The early development of a normal world is greatly helped by the plan of promoting the increase of the higher types of mortals with proportionate curtailment of the lower. And it is the failure of your early peoples to thus discriminate between these types that accounts for the presence of so many defective and degenerate individuals among the present-day Urantia races. (UB 52:2.9)
[Y]ou ought to be able to agree upon the biologic disfellowshiping of your more markedly unfit, defective, degenerate, and antisocial stocks. (UB 51:4.8)
No society has progressed very far when it permits idleness or tolerates poverty. But poverty and dependence can never be eliminated if the defective and degenerate stocks are freely supported and permitted to reproduce without restraint. (UB 71:3.8)
After all, the real jeopardy of the human species is to be found in the unrestrained multiplication of the inferior and degenerate strains of the various civilized peoples rather than in any supposed danger of their racial interbreeding. (UB 82:6.11)
From “Government on a Neighboring Planet”:
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 self-supporting. The more serious habitual criminals and the incurably insane are sentenced to death in the lethal gas chambers by the courts. Numerous crimes aside from murder, including betrayal of governmental trust, also carry the death penalty, and the visitation of justice is sure and swift. (UB 72:10.1)
Efforts to prevent the breeding of criminals and defectives were begun over one hundred years ago and have already yielded gratifying results. There are no prisons or hospitals for the insane. For one reason, there are only about ten per cent as many of these groups as are found on Urantia. (UB 72:10.3)
How do cannibalism and slavery factor in to considerations about cultural relativism? Anybody hungry for that debate or is it a bit too salty?
Modern ideas of early cannibalism are entirely wrong; it was a part of the mores of early society. While cannibalism is traditionally horrible to modern civilization, it was a part of the social and religious structure of primitive society. Group interests dictated the practice of cannibalism. It grew up through the urge of necessity and persisted because of the slavery of superstition and ignorance. It was a social, economic, religious, and military custom. (UB 89:5.1)
The more backward humans are usually employed as laborers by the more progressive races. This accounts for the origin of slavery on the planets during the early ages. … These races of primitive men think no more of utilizing the services of their backward fellows in compulsory labor than Urantians would of buying and selling horses and cattle. (UB 51:4.6)
Not long ago enslavement was the lot of those military captives who refused to accept the conqueror’s religion. In earlier times captives were either eaten, tortured to death, set to fighting each other, sacrificed to spirits, or enslaved. Slavery was a great advancement over massacre and cannibalism. (UB 69:8.2)
Slavery was an indispensable link in the chain of human civilization. It was the bridge over which society passed from chaos and indolence to order and civilized activities; it compelled backward and lazy peoples to work and thus provide wealth and leisure for the social advancement of their superiors. (UB 69:8.6)
Slavery, even of superior peoples, was a feature of Roman military conquest. The power of the master over his slave was unqualified. The early Christian church was largely composed of the lower classes and these slaves.
Superior slaves often received wages and by saving their earnings were able to purchase their freedom. Many such emancipated slaves rose to high positions in state, church, and the business world. And it was just such possibilities that made the early Christian church so tolerant of this modified form of slavery. (UB 121:3.7-8)
The institution of slavery compelled man to invent the regulative mechanism of primitive society; it gave origin to the beginnings of government. Slavery demands strong regulation and during the European Middle Ages virtually disappeared because the feudal lords could not control the slaves. …
True, slavery was oppressive, but it was in the schools of oppression that man learned industry. Eventually the slaves shared the blessings of a higher society which they had so unwillingly helped create. Slavery creates an organization of culture and social achievement but soon insidiously attacks society internally as the gravest of all destructive social maladies.
… [I]t has always proved disastrous suddenly to liberate great numbers of slaves; less trouble ensues when they are gradually emancipated. (UB 69:8.7-9)
What impact does a hunter-gatherer culture have on the land-man ratio? Is there a moral obligation for modern society to provide this?
Man is a creature of the soil, a child of nature; no matter how earnestly he may try to escape from the land, in the last reckoning he is certain to fail. “Dust you are and to dust shall you return” is literally true of all mankind. The basic struggle of man was, and is, and ever shall be, for land. The first social associations of primitive human beings were for the purpose of winning these land struggles. The land-man ratio underlies all social civilization. (UB 68:6.1)
Human society is controlled by a law which decrees that the population must vary directly in accordance with the land arts and inversely with a given standard of living. …
When the land yield is reduced or the population is increased, the inevitable struggle is renewed; the very worst traits of human nature are brought to the surface. The improvement of the land yield, the extension of the mechanical arts, and the reduction of population all tend to foster the development of the better side of human nature. (UB 68:6.3-4)
The size of the family has always been influenced by the standards of living. The higher the standard the smaller the family, up to the point of established status or gradual extinction.
… When standards of living become too complicated or too highly luxurious, they speedily become suicidal. Caste is the direct result of the high social pressure of keen competition produced by dense populations. (UB 68:6.6-7)
From a world standpoint, overpopulation has never been a serious problem in the past, but if war is lessened and science increasingly controls human diseases, it may become a serious problem in the near future. [The Urantia Book was published in 1955 and claims to have been provided twenty years before its publication.] At such a time the great test of the wisdom of world leadership will present itself. Will Urantia rulers have the insight and courage to foster the multiplication of the average or stabilized human being instead of the extremes of the supernormal and the enormously increasing groups of the subnormal? The normal man should be fostered; he is the backbone of civilization and the source of the mutant geniuses of the race. The subnormal man should be kept under society’s control; no more should be produced than are required to administer the lower levels of industry, those tasks requiring intelligence above the animal level but making such low-grade demands as to prove veritable slavery and bondage for the higher types of mankind. (UB 82:6.11)
Biologic evolution and cultural civilization are not necessarily correlated; organic evolution in any age may proceed unhindered in the very midst of cultural decadence. But when lengthy periods of human history are surveyed, it will be observed that eventually evolution and culture become related as cause and effect. Evolution may advance in the absence of culture, but cultural civilization does not flourish without an adequate background of antecedent racial progression. Adam and Eve introduced no art of civilization foreign to the progress of human society, but the Adamic blood did augment the inherent ability of the races and did accelerate the pace of economic development and industrial progression. Adam’s bestowal improved the brain power of the races, thereby greatly hastening the processes of natural evolution. (UB 81:5.1)
While a good environment cannot contribute much toward really overcoming the character handicaps of a base heredity, a bad environment can very effectively spoil an excellent inheritance, at least during the younger years of life. Good social environment and proper education are indispensable soil and atmosphere for getting the most out of a good inheritance. (UB 76:2.6)
- The second stage of light and life. This epoch is signalized on the worlds by the arrival of a Life Carrier who becomes the volunteer adviser of the planetary rulers regarding the further efforts to purify and stabilize the mortal race. Thus do the Life Carriers actively participate in the further evolution of the human race—physically, socially, and economically. And then they extend their supervision to the further purification of the mortal stock by the drastic elimination of the retarded and persisting remnants of inferior potential of an intellectual, philosophic, cosmic, and spiritual nature. Those who design and plant life on an inhabited world are fully competent to advise the Material Sons and Daughters, who have full and unquestioned authority to purge the evolving race of all detrimental influences. (UB 55:4.11)
After all, the real jeopardy of the human species is to be found in the unrestrained multiplication of the inferior and degenerate strains of the various civilized peoples rather than in any supposed danger of their racial interbreeding. (UB 82:6.11)
On a normal world the biologic fitness of the mortal race was long since brought up to a high level during the post-Adamic epochs; and now, from age to age throughout the settled eras the physical evolution of man continues. Both vision and hearing are extended. By now the population has become stationary in numbers. Reproduction is regulated in accordance with planetary requirements and innate hereditary endowments: The mortals on a planet during this age are divided into from five to ten groups, and the lower groups are permitted to produce only one half as many children as the higher. The continued improvement of such a magnificent race throughout the era of light and life is largely a matter of the selective reproduction of those racial strains which exhibit superior qualities of a social, philosophic, cosmic, and spiritual nature. (UB 55:6.3)
Is it possible for there to have been a subnormal Andonite or would the lower range of Andonite intelligence preclude the functioning of the spirit of wisdom? What was the upper and lower range of subnormal prior to the Nodites and Adamites? What does it mean in today’s world?
The teaching about guardian angels is not a myth; certain groups of human beings do actually have personal angels. It was in recognition of this that Jesus, in speaking of the children of the heavenly kingdom, said: “Take heed that you despise not one of these little ones, for I say to you, their angels do always behold the presence of the spirit of my Father.” (UB 113:1.1)
- The subnormal minded—those who do not exercise normal will power; those who do not make average decisions. This class embraces those who cannot comprehend God; they lack capacity for the intelligent worship of Deity. The subnormal beings of Urantia have a corps of seraphim, one company, with one battalion of cherubim, assigned to minister to them and to witness that justice and mercy are extended to them in the life struggles of the sphere. (UB 113:1.3)
If subnormal intelligence cannot comprehend God, does this mean that the quality of knowing God is any less real? If subnormal intelligence cannot experience intelligent worship, does this make thoughts of appreciation and the desire to be of service any less real?
A good and noble man may be consummately in love with his wife but utterly unable to pass a satisfactory written examination on the psychology of marital love. Another man, having little or no love for his spouse, might pass such an examination most acceptably. The imperfection of the lover’s insight into the true nature of the beloved does not in the least invalidate either the reality or sincerity of his love. (UB 103:8.3)
In the next world you will be asked to give an account of the endowments and stewardships of this world. Whether inherent talents are few or many, a just and merciful reckoning must be faced. If endowments are used only in selfish pursuits and no thought is bestowed upon the higher duty of obtaining increased yield of the fruits of the spirit, as they are manifested in the ever-expanding service of men and the worship of God, such selfish stewards must accept the consequences of their deliberate choosing. (UB 176:3.8)
And how much like all selfish mortals was this unfaithful servant with the one talent in that he blamed his slothfulness directly upon his lord. How prone is man, when he is confronted with the failures of his own making, to put the blame upon others, oftentimes upon those who least deserve it! (UB 176:3.9)
Does it make sense for Jesus to have picked a couple apostles from the subnormal classification for illustrative purposes?
The twins [two of Jesus’ apostles] were good-natured, simple-minded helpers, and everybody loved them. Jesus welcomed these young men of one talent to positions of honor on his personal staff in the kingdom because there are untold millions of other such simple and fear-ridden souls … whom he likewise wishes to welcome into active and believing fellowship with himself and his outpoured Spirit of Truth. Jesus does not look down upon littleness, only upon evil and sin. James and Judas were little, but they were also faithful. They were simple and ignorant, but they were also big-hearted, kind, and generous. (UB 139:10.8)
These twins could not comprehend the mind of Jesus, but they did grasp the sympathetic bond between themselves and the heart of their Master. Their minds were not of a high order; they might even reverently be called stupid, but they had a real experience in their spiritual natures. (UB 139:10.6)
For a deeper study of the Alpheus twins along with the use of the terms common people (man), feeble (-mindedness), abnormal, and subhuman, see Topical Study: Were the Alpheus Twins Subnormal?
Where does the average secondary Sangik intellect stand in relationship to the range of subnormal? How does the bottom half of secondary Sangik compare?
There are six basic evolutionary races: three primary—red, yellow, and blue; and three secondary—orange, green, and indigo. Most inhabited worlds have all of these races, but many of the three-brained planets harbor only the three primary types. Some local systems also have only these three races. (UB 49:4.2)
Notwithstanding their backwardness, these indigo peoples have exactly the same standing before the celestial powers as any other earthly race. (UB 64:6.27)
What is the relationship between the above paragraph and the admonition to, ““Take heed that you despise not one of these little ones, for I say to you, their angels do always behold the presence of the spirit of my Father.”?
What would ensure that society’s needs, morals, and mores are respected regarding management of a subnormal population? In what ways should private enterprise be regulated to protect their interests?
What psychological and political influences are at play that interfere with respecting and loving people who cannot manage their own affairs reasonably in an increasingly complex and intellectually demanding world, but who can nonetheless work cooperatively and in mutually uplifting ways with those who do have this capacity?
By classifying work as making such “low-grade demands as to prove veritable slavery and bondage for the higher types of mankind,” the authors beg for the question to be asked, “What types of work are they referring to?” And how do we progressively evolve our relationship to these areas of industry?
Mankind was not consigned to agricultural toil as the penalty of supposed sin. “In the sweat of your face shall you eat the fruit of the fields” was not a sentence of punishment pronounced because of man’s participation in the follies of the Lucifer rebellion under the leadership of the traitorous . . . [Planetary Prince]. The cultivation of the soil is inherent in the establishment of an advancing civilization on the evolutionary worlds, and this injunction was the center of all teaching of the Planetary Prince and his staff throughout the three hundred thousand years which intervened between their arrival on Urantia and those tragic days when . . . [he] threw in his lot with the rebel Lucifer. Work with the soil is not a curse; rather is it the highest blessing to all who are thus permitted to enjoy the most human of all human activities. (UB 66:7.19)
From the paper “Government on a Neighboring Planet”:
The feeble-minded are trained only in agriculture and animal husbandry, and are committed for life to special custodial colonies where they are segregated by sex to prevent parenthood, which is denied all subnormals. These restrictive measures have been in operation for seventy-five years; the commitment decrees are handed down by the parental courts. (UB 72:4.2)
The book does not prescribe whether we should implement voluntary (incentivized) programs or involuntary programs or some combination of the two. Professionals in the field of psychology are regularly asked by the courts to offer opinions on competency. The lower boundary, it can be inferred, demands a certain degree of involuntary implementation. The upper boundary of subnormal may need to change over time, which, of course, makes involuntary implementation more morally challenging and suggests the appropriateness of incentivized programs.
How does the use of feeble-mindedness in The Urantia Book compare to how it has been used in the courts to define the need for intervention?
The advanced stages of a world settled in light and life represent the acme of evolutionary material development. On these cultured worlds, gone are the idleness and friction of the earlier primitive ages. Poverty and social inequality have all but vanished, degeneracy has disappeared, and delinquency is rarely observed. Insanity has practically ceased to exist, and feeble-mindedness is a rarity. (UB 55:5.2)
Does the paragraph above mean that the birth of subnormals among the normal minded population has become a rarity (in contrast to subnormals who “should be produced” as is “required to administer the lower levels of industry”)? Or in light and life are the lower levels of industry somehow managed out of the culture so that a subnormal population is no longer valuable to the economic ecology of the civilization?
If our gene pool improves over time, how might this effect the spectrum of what is considered subnormal?
When it comes to “the lower levels of industry, those tasks requiring intelligence above the animal level but making such low-grade demands as to prove veritable slavery and bondage for the higher types of mankind [higher than subnormal]” does society have a moral obligation to prefer that such work be done by those who would not experience it as “veritable slavery and bondage?”
What are the fundamental growth stages for the progressive development of civilization? How does this get coordinated over time with the value of racial varieties eventually leading to a hybrid homogenization?
If people do not have discussions that specifically identify the genetic values in our various racial types and encourage the optimization of those valuable characteristics, what hope is there of realizing results in this realm of human potentials? What are the moral implications of sacrificing the long-term genetic potentials related to optimizing human hybridization (the greatest good, for the greatest number, for the greatest length of time)? What exactly are the justifications for a more short-sighted and selfish approach? How do we balance our regard for humanity as a whole with our regard for each individual, when those interests are in conflict?
Present-day prejudice against “half-castes,” “hybrids,” and “mongrels” arises because modern racial crossbreeding is, for the greater part, between the grossly inferior strains of the races concerned. You also get unsatisfactory offspring when the degenerate strains of the same race intermarry.
If the present-day races of Urantia could be freed from the curse of their lowest strata of deteriorated, antisocial, feeble-minded, and outcast specimens, there would be little objection to a limited race amalgamation. And if such racial mixtures could take place between the highest types of the several races, still less objection could be offered. (UB 82:6.3-4)
As long as present-day races are so overloaded with inferior and degenerate strains, race intermingling on a large scale would be most detrimental, but most of the objections to such experiments rest on social and cultural prejudices rather than on biological considerations. Even among inferior stocks, hybrids often are an improvement on their ancestors. Hybridization makes for species improvement because of the role of the dominant genes. Racial intermixture increases the likelihood of a larger number of the desirable dominants being present in the hybrid. (UB 82:6.7)
… Mixtures of the white and black races are not so desirable in their immediate results, neither are such mulatto offspring so objectionable as social and racial prejudice would seek to make them appear. Physically, such white-black hybrids are excellent specimens of humanity, notwithstanding their slight inferiority in some other respects. (UB 82:6.9)
This European culture for five thousand years continued to grow and to some extent intermingle. But the barrier of language prevented the full reciprocation of the various Occidental nations. During the past century this culture has been experiencing its best opportunity for blending in the cosmopolitan population of North America; and the future of that continent will be determined by the quality of the racial factors which are permitted to enter into its present and future populations, as well as by the level of the social culture which is maintained. (UB 80:9.16)
But this equality ideal is the child of civilization; it is not found in nature. Even culture itself demonstrates conclusively the inherent inequality of men by their very unequal capacity therefor. The sudden and nonevolutionary realization of supposed natural equality would quickly throw civilized man back to the crude usages of primitive ages. Society cannot offer equal rights to all, but it can promise to administer the varying rights of each with fairness and equity. It is the business and duty of society to provide the child of nature with a fair and peaceful opportunity to pursue self-maintenance, participate in self-perpetuation, while at the same time enjoying some measure of self-gratification, the sum of all three constituting human happiness. (UB 70:9.17)
No society has progressed very far when it permits idleness or tolerates poverty. But poverty and dependence can never be eliminated if the defective and degenerate stocks are freely supported and permitted to reproduce without restraint. (UB 71:3.8)
Between the times of the Planetary Prince and Adam, India became the home of the most cosmopolitan population ever to be found on the face of the earth. But it was unfortunate that this mixture came to contain so much of the green, orange, and indigo races. These secondary Sangik peoples found existence more easy and agreeable in the southlands, and many of them subsequently migrated to Africa. (UB 64:7.3)
But while the pure-line children of a planetary Garden of Eden can bestow themselves upon the superior members of the evolutionary races and thereby upstep the biologic level of mankind, it would not prove beneficial for the higher strains of Urantia mortals to mate with the lower races; such an unwise procedure would jeopardize all civilization on your world. Having failed to achieve race harmonization by the Adamic technique, you must now work out your planetary problem of race improvement by other and largely human methods of adaptation and control. (UB 51:5.7)
The authors only use the word eugenics one time, consistent with its original use and dictionary definition. But they provide extensive commentaries throughout the text on issues related to eugenics, genetics, and race, For such a controversial subject, this literary technique of using the word once reflects a noteworthy degree to foresight, creativity, and attention to detail. The single use of eugenics is saved for a chapter about the nature of the soul in a subsection called The Inner Life.
It is only the inner life that is truly creative. Civilization can hardly progress when the majority of the youth of any generation devote their interests and energies to the materialistic pursuits of the sensory or outer world. (UB 111:4.3)
The inner and the outer worlds have a different set of values. Any civilization is in jeopardy when three quarters of its youth enter materialistic professions and devote themselves to the pursuit of the sensory activities of the outer world. 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)
Since this inner life of man is truly creative, there rests upon each person the responsibility of choosing as to whether this creativity shall be spontaneous and wholly haphazard or controlled, directed, and constructive. How can a creative imagination produce worthy children when the stage whereon it functions is already preoccupied by prejudice, hate, fears, resentments, revenge, and bigotries? (UB 111:4.9)
Ideas may take origin in the stimuli of the outer world, but ideals are born only in the creative realms of the inner world. Today the nations of the world are directed by men who have a superabundance of ideas, but they are poverty-stricken in ideals. That is the explanation of poverty, divorce, war, and racial hatreds. (UB 111:4.10)
What factors favor viewing procreation in terms of personal privacy? In terms of public policy?
What are our moral responsibilities and opportunities as individuals, subgroups, and collectively to be part of a process that improves our gene pool over time?
If our gene pool is getting worse over time, should this be considered a crisis? How bad and dangerous is it to go in a negative direction?
How do we develop civilization so that the expression of checks and balances evolves toward non violence, is increasingly beneficial to humanity as a whole, and is fairly applied to everyone on an individual basis?
What truly are the opportunities and blessings of personal liberty for people with subnormal intelligence in an increasingly complex world?
How does slavery compare to the worst jobs that exist for the “weak, unlearned, and less fortunate” in a non-slave society?
But there was one economic abuse which [Jesus] many times condemned, and that was the unfair exploitation of the weak, unlearned, and less fortunate of men by their strong, keen, and more intelligent fellows. Jesus declared that such inhuman treatment of men, women, and children was incompatible with the ideals of the brotherhood of the kingdom of heaven. (UB 163:2.11)
How do we apply this standard in the modern world so that “the weak, unlearned, and less fortunate” are not heartlessly cast into deregulated and economically competitive environments that financially incentivize taking advantage of the most disadvantaged?
Modern mechanical invention rendered the slave obsolete. Slavery, like polygamy, is passing because it does not pay. … (UB 69:8.9)
Today, men are not social slaves, but thousands allow ambition to enslave them to debt. Involuntary slavery has given way to a new and improved form of modified industrial servitude. (UB 69:8.10)
While the ideal of society is universal freedom, idleness should never be tolerated. All able-bodied persons should be compelled to do at least a self-sustaining amount of work. (UB 69:8.11)
And how much like all selfish mortals was this unfaithful servant with the one talent in that he blamed his slothfulness directly upon his lord. How prone is man, when he is confronted with the failures of his own making, to put the blame upon others, oftentimes upon those who least deserve it! (UB 176:3.9)
Modern society is in reverse. Slavery has nearly disappeared; domesticated animals are passing. Civilization is reaching back to fire—the inorganic world—for power. Man came up from savagery by way of fire, animals, and slavery; today he reaches back, discarding the help of slaves and the assistance of animals, while he seeks to wrest new secrets and sources of wealth and power from the elemental storehouse of nature. (UB 69:8.12)
What is our next step, individually and collectively?
See the Topical Study: Undiscovered for a perspective on the suppression of energy technology developed by Joseph Newman that is clean, safe, and scalable.
Some expanded commentary on the subject can be found in a 12-minute YouTube video I did about racial differences and soul growth.
I highly recommend this 36-minute video by a law professor Randy Trahan on the origins, history, and nature of critical race theory. Critical legal theory is, of course, reviewed as part of the history.
This paragraph encapusales the teachings and implicates an issue:
The first move away from brother and sister marriages came about under the plural-wife mores because the sister-wife would arrogantly dominate the other wife or wives. Some tribal mores forbade marriage to a dead brother’s widow but required the living brother to beget children for his departed brother. There is no biologic instinct against any degree of in-marriage; such restrictions are wholly a matter of taboo. [Emphasis added.] (UB 82:5.5)
Not surprisingly, in the context of contemporary and general genetic considerations, some people find themselves uncomfortable with teachings related to consanguineous mating practices. Morality is related to standards for healthy (helpful) genetic practices. But what is healthy for larger populations is not healthy for early archetypal expressions of progressive genetic developments.
Eugenics (health and morality) is context dependent. The context is a spectrum. At one end of the spectrum is proximity (similarity) to an archetype (Andon and Fonta; Sangiks; Nodites; Adam and Eve; and “superior strains”). At the other end of the spectrum is distance (diversity) within an archetype. This difference powerfully impacts the degree to which hybridization and the function of dominant genes work to preserve positive genetic developments.
Andonites
Andon and Fonta wisely chose to separate themselves from their animal origins. And this was the origin of moral and ethical eugenic practices. Their children wisely, morally, and for reasons related to individual and collective health chose to mate with each other. The truth of the matter is that those practices were good and beautiful.
In many respects, Andon and Fonta were the most remarkable pair of human beings that have ever lived on the face of the earth. This wonderful pair, the actual parents of all mankind, were in every way superior to many of their immediate descendants, and they were radically different from all of their ancestors, both immediate and remote. (UB 63:1.1)
The decision of Andon and Fonta to flee from the Primates tribes implies a quality of mind far above the baser intelligence which characterized so many of their later descendants who stooped to mate with their retarded cousins of the simian tribes. But their vague feeling of being something more than mere animals was due to the possession of personality and was augmented by the indwelling presence of the Thought Adjusters. (UB 63:1.4)
These early Andonites evinced a very marked clannish spirit; they hunted in groups and never strayed very far from the homesite. They seemed to realize that they were an isolated and unique group of living beings and should therefore avoid becoming separated. This feeling of intimate kinship was undoubtedly due to the enhanced mind ministry of the adjutant spirits. (UB 63:3.3)
Sangiks
A natural antipathy is wisely included with Sangik genetics. The truth of this matter is that this plan also good and beautiful. Even though it involves a degree of natural antipathy towards other human beings, children of God, such a disposition is necessary for establishing the value of variety.
Thus it was that for almost one hundred thousand years these Sangik peoples spread out around the foothills and mingled together more or less, notwithstanding the peculiar but natural antipathy which early manifested itself between the different races. (UB 64:7.2)
The genetic implication for Andonites backmating with the pre-human stock has obvious negative implications. The situation is different with the Sangik mutations and we can only speculate to what degree consanguineous mating occurred amongst the original Sangiks and exactly how the hybridization effect worked under these circumstances.
Nodites
Presumably, given the Andonic stock foundation provided for the Prince’s staff, bearing problems between Nodites and humans was not an issue.
No doubt they had some understanding of the importance of “jealously guarding” their genetic stock, along with value of sharing it. We are left to speculate about their exact practices and how this might have changed over the generations.
The sixty members of the planetary staff who went into rebellion chose Nod as their leader. They worked wholeheartedly for the rebel Prince but soon discovered that they were deprived of the sustenance of the system life circuits. They awakened to the fact that they had been degraded to the status of mortal beings. They were indeed superhuman but, at the same time, material and mortal. In an effort to increase their numbers, Daligastia ordered immediate resort to sexual reproduction, knowing full well that the original sixty and their forty-four modified Andonite associates were doomed to suffer extinction by death, sooner or later. After the fall of Dalamatia the disloyal staff migrated to the north and the east. Their descendants were long known as the Nodites, and their dwelling place as “the land of Nod.”
The presence of these extraordinary supermen and superwomen, stranded by rebellion and presently mating with the sons and daughters of earth, easily gave origin to those traditional stories of the gods coming down to mate with mortals. And thus originated the thousand and one legends of a mythical nature, but founded on the facts of the postrebellion days, which later found a place in the folk tales and traditions of the various peoples whose ancestors had participated in these contacts with the Nodites and their descendants. (UB 67:4.2-3)
Adamites
Adam and Eve were instructed to create a pure genetic culture. In fact, premature mating could have deadly consequences, which, obviously, stretches the boundaries of morality.:
Cain and Sansa were both born before the Adamic caravan had reached its destination between the rivers in Mesopotamia. Laotta, the mother of Sansa, perished at the birth of her daughter; Eve suffered much but survived, owing to superior strength. (UB 76:0.2)
To judge primitive people by modern standards is inappropriate. Similarly, it is inappropriate to judge those closer to an archetypal generation by the same standards as those more distant from an original archetypal expressions of genetics. Given the nature of archetypal genetic introductions, what might be the best wisdom for addressing issues related to new strains?
The process of planetary evolution is orderly and controlled. The development of higher organisms from lower groupings of life is not accidental. Sometimes evolutionary progress is temporarily delayed by the destruction of certain favorable lines of life plasm carried in a selected species. It often requires ages upon ages to recoup the damage occasioned by the loss of a single superior strain of human heredity. These selected and superior strains of living protoplasm should be jealously and intelligently guarded when once they make their appearance. And on most of the inhabited worlds these superior potentials of life are valued much more highly than on Urantia. (UB 49:1.7)
Secondary midwayers
Ratta’s genetic history involves circumstances that invite speculation about how consanguineous marriage mores may have changed over time amongst the Nodites.
A company of twenty-seven followed Adamson northward in quest of these people of his childhood fantasies. In a little over three years Adamson’s party actually found the object of their adventure, and among these people he discovered a wonderful and beautiful woman, twenty years old, who claimed to be the last pure-line descendant of the Prince’s staff. This woman, Ratta, said that her ancestors were all descendants of two of the fallen staff of the Prince. She was the last of her race, having no living brothers or sisters. She had about decided not to mate, had about made up her mind to die without issue, but she lost her heart to the majestic Adamson. And when she heard the story of Eden, how the predictions of Van and Amadon had really come to pass, and as she listened to the recital of the Garden default, she was encompassed with but a single thought—to marry this son and heir of Adam. And quickly the idea grew upon Adamson. In a little more than three months they were married. (UB 77:5.5)
Adamson and Ratta had a family of sixty-seven children. They gave origin to a great line of the world’s leadership, but they did something more. It should be remembered that both of these beings were really superhuman. Every fourth child born to them was of a unique order. It was often invisible. Never in the world’s history had such a thing occurred. Ratta was greatly perturbed—even superstitious—but Adamson well knew of the existence of the primary midwayers, and he concluded that something similar was transpiring before his eyes. When the second strangely behaving offspring arrived, he decided to mate them, since one was male and the other female, and this is the origin of the secondary order of midwayers. Within one hundred years, before this phenomenon ceased, almost two thousand were brought into being. (UB 77:5.6)
Additional teachings
There are many good and sufficient reasons for the plan of evolving either three or six colored races on the worlds of space. Though Urantia mortals may not be in a position fully to appreciate all of these reasons, we would call attention to the following:
1. Variety is indispensable to opportunity for the wide functioning of natural selection, differential survival of superior strains.
2. Stronger and better races are to be had from the interbreeding of diverse peoples when these different races are carriers of superior inheritance factors. And the Urantia races would have benefited by such an early amalgamation provided such a conjoint people could have been subsequently effectively upstepped by a thoroughgoing admixture with the superior Adamic stock. The attempt to execute such an experiment on Urantia under present racial conditions would be highly disastrous.
3. Competition is healthfully stimulated by diversification of races.
4. Differences in status of the races and of groups within each race are essential to the development of human tolerance and altruism.
5. Homogeneity of the human race is not desirable until the peoples of an evolving world attain comparatively high levels of spiritual development. UB 64:6.30-35
Hybridization of superior and dissimilar stocks is the secret of the creation of new and more vigorous strains. And this is true of plants, animals, and the human species. . . . Race mixtures of the average or superior strata of various peoples greatly increase creative potential, as is shown in the present population of the United States of North America. When such matings take place between the lower or inferior strata, creativity is diminished, as is shown by the present-day peoples of southern India. (UB 82:6.5)
Very early the savage observed that race mixture improved the quality of the offspring. It was not that inbreeding was always bad, but that outbreeding was always comparatively better; therefore the mores tended to crystallize in restriction of sex relations among near relatives. It was recognized that outbreeding greatly increased the selective opportunity for evolutionary variation and advancement. The outbred individuals were more versatile and had greater ability to survive in a hostile world; the inbreeders, together with their mores, gradually disappeared. This was all a slow development; the savage did not consciously reason about such problems. But the later and advancing peoples did, and they also made the observation that general weakness sometimes resulted from excessive inbreeding.
While the inbreeding of good stock sometimes resulted in the upbuilding of strong tribes, the spectacular cases of the bad results of the inbreeding of hereditary defectives more forcibly impressed the mind of man, with the result that the advancing mores increasingly formulated taboos against all marriages among near relatives.
Religion has long been an effective barrier against outmarriage; many religious teachings have proscribed marriage outside the faith. Woman has usually favored the practice of in-marriage; man, outmarriage. Property has always influenced marriage, and sometimes, in an effort to conserve property within a clan, mores have arisen compelling women to choose husbands within their fathers’ tribes. Rulings of this sort led to a great multiplication of cousin marriages. In-mating was also practiced in an effort to preserve craft secrets; skilled workmen sought to keep the knowledge of their craft within the family.
Superior groups, when isolated, always reverted to consanguineous mating. The Nodites for over one hundred and fifty thousand years were one of the great in-marriage groups. The later-day in-marriage mores were tremendously influenced by the traditions of the violet race, in which, at first, matings were, perforce, between brother and sister. And brother and sister marriages were common in early Egypt, Syria, Mesopotamia, and throughout the lands once occupied by the Andites. The Egyptians long practiced brother and sister marriages in an effort to keep the royal blood pure, a custom which persisted even longer in Persia. Among the Mesopotamians, before the days of Abraham, cousin marriages were obligatory; cousins had prior marriage rights to cousins. Abraham himself married his half sister, but such unions were not allowed under the later mores of the Jews.
The first move away from brother and sister marriages came about under the plural-wife mores because the sister-wife would arrogantly dominate the other wife or wives. Some tribal mores forbade marriage to a dead brother’s widow but required the living brother to beget children for his departed brother. There is no biologic instinct against any degree of in-marriage; such restrictions are wholly a matter of taboo.
Outmarriage finally dominated because it was favored by the man; to get a wife from the outside insured greater freedom from in-laws. Familiarity breeds contempt; so, as the element of individual choice began to dominate mating, it became the custom to choose partners from outside the tribe. UB 82:5.1-6
Andonite: The first and original (An), leader (don), in genetic development (ite).
an: used as a prefix meaning “single, lone” (as in anboren “only-begotten,” anhorn “unicorn,” anspræce “speaking as one”). See one for the divergence of that word from this. Also see a, of which this is the older, fuller form.
don (n.): title of respect, 1520s, from Spanish or Portuguese Don, a title of respect prefixed to a man’s Christian name, from Latin dominus “lord, master, owner” (from domus “house,” from PIE root *dem- “house, household”).
-ite: word-forming element indicating origin or derivation from, from French –ite and directly from Latin –ita, from Greek –ites (fem. –itis), word-forming element making adjectives and nouns meaning “connected with or belonging to.” Especially used in classical times to form ethnic and local designations (for example in Septuagint translations of Hebrew names in –i) and for names of gems and minerals.
Badonite: The second phase (B), of the initial (a), leaders (don), in genetic development (ite).
b: second letter of the Latin alphabet, corresponding to Greek beta, Phoenician beth, literally “house.” Often indicating “second in order.”
an [a]: used as a prefix meaning “single, lone” (as in anboren “only-begotten,” anhorn “unicorn,” anspræce “speaking as one”). See one for the divergence of that word from this. Also see a, of which this is the older, fuller form.
don (n.): title of respect, 1520s, from Spanish or Portuguese Don, a title of respect prefixed to a man’s Christian name, from Latin dominus “lord, master, owner” (from domus “house,” from PIE root dem– “house, household”).
-ite: word-forming element indicating origin or derivation from, from French –ite and directly from Latin –ita, from Greek -ites (fem. –itis), word-forming element making adjectives and nouns meaning “connected with or belonging to.” Especially used in classical times to form ethnic and local designations (for example in Septuagint translations of Hebrew names in –i) and for names of gems and minerals.
Sangik: The wonderful potentials of the underlying genetics that makes all of humanity bleed red (Sang), now blooms with an arrangement of life enhancing diversity (ik).
sanguine (adj.): “blood-red,” late 14c. (late 12c. as a surname), from Old French sanguin (fem. sanguine), from Latin sanguineus “of blood,” also “bloody, bloodthirsty,” from sanguis (genitive sanguinis) “blood” (see sanguinary). Meaning “cheerful, hopeful, confident” first attested c. 1500, because these qualities were thought in old medicine to spring from an excess of blood as one of the four humors. Also in Middle English as a noun, “type of red cloth” (early 14c.).
ikebana (n.): Japanese art of formal flower arrangement, 1901, from Japanese ikeru “to keep alive, arrange” + hana “flower.”
-ic: Middle English -ik, -ick, word-forming element making adjectives, “having to do with, having the nature of, being, made of, caused by, similar to,” from French -ique and directly from Latin –icus or from cognate Greek –ikos “in the manner of; pertaining to.” From PIE adjective suffix –(i)ko, which also yielded Slavic –isku, adjectival suffix indicating origin, the source of the –sky (Russian –skii) in many surnames. In chemistry, indicating a higher valence than names in –ous (first in benzoic, 1791).
Nodite: Those who wandered off the intended path (Nod), of genetic development (ite).
Nod: “Nod” (נוד) is the Hebrew root of the verb “to wander” (לנדוד). Therefore, to dwell in the land of Nod can mean to live a wandering life. The Land of Nod (Hebrew: אֶרֶץ־נוֹד – ʾereṣ-Nōḏ) is a place mentioned in the Book of Genesis of the Hebrew Bible, located “on the east of Eden” (qiḏmaṯ-ʿḖḏen), where Cain was exiled by God after Cain had murdered his brother Abel. According to Genesis 4:16:
And Cain went out from the presence of the LORD, and dwelt in the land of Nod, on the east of Eden.
-ite: word-forming element indicating origin or derivation from, from French –ite and directly from Latin –ita, from Greek –ites (fem. -itis), word-forming element making adjectives and nouns meaning “connected with or belonging to.” Especially used in classical times to form ethnic and local designations (for example in Septuagint translations of Hebrew names in –i) and for names of gems and minerals.
Andite: The genetic mix of Adamites and Nodites.
Mixed with the planned Adamite uplift, humanity has an additional (And), genetic uplift (ite).
and (conj.): Old English and, ond, originally meaning “thereupon, next.” Introductory use (implying connection to something previous) was in Old English.
-ite: word-forming element indicating origin or derivation from, from French -ite and directly from Latin -ita, from Greek -ites (fem. -itis), word-forming element making adjectives and nouns meaning “connected with or belonging to.” Especially used in classical times to form ethnic and local designations (for example in Septuagint translations of Hebrew names in -i) and for names of gems and minerals.