© 2003 Larry and Joan Mullins
© 2003 The Christian Fellowship of Students of The Urantia Book
Dick Bain has written an important article, and opened a significant dialogue. Dick’s concerns about eugenics are shared by many Urantians. The purpose of this follow-up article is to examine the premises Dick presented, and offer a somewhat different perspective. Several Urantians with a scientific bent have lamented the science in the Papers. And many have found some comfort in the disclaimer presented in the Papers. However, they often make the error when they claim the Papers state: “some of the science would be outdated” as human science progresses. The Urantia Papers do not make that statement.
The Papers say: “We full well know that, while the historic facts and religious truths of this series of revelatory presentations will stand on the records of the ages to come, within a few short years many of our statements regarding the physical sciences will stand in need of revision in consequence of additional scientific developments and new discoveries.” (UB 101:4.2) Albert Einstein’s theories have required revision as a consequence of more recent discoveries; as have Newton’s. Both retain important status nonetheless.
Of course, all the science in the Urantia Papers could be revised and it would not change their essential philosophical essence. The overarching theme of things (science), meanings (philosophy), and values (personal religious insight), would not be altered. Science’s perception of what is (things) will ever be constantly changing. Likewise, personal religious insight, or autorevelation (what ought to be), is progressive. As a consequence, philosophy as the adjudicator of these two dynamics must constantly adjust to discover new meanings. This is living truth, and such a philosophy cannot be confined between the covers of a book, as the Urantia Revelation clearly instructs us.
Dick is correct to write that we are confronted with issues that affect us as Urantians. These questions must be carefully answered. Most serious, perhaps, is this one: Do the Urantia Papers “promote” the desirability of developing a race of advanced beings through the application of eugenics? They definitely do not, moreover, they admonish us not to attempt this. One of the important references on this issue is too often overlooked by those who study it. This deserves to be carefully read:
“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. 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.” (UB 68:6.11).
Is this not the opposite of what the Nazis were advocating in the thirties and forties? Why is this reference so often ignored? We believe it is clear that the Urantia Papers do not advocate the development of a “super race,” in fact, they strongly urge us to foster the “average” man. They tell us that from the ranks of normal, average people come the mutant geniuses of the race. This revelatory information is diametrically counter to the defamed eugenics idea of fostering race superiority from supposed elite pedigrees.
The term eugenics has come to imply a master race philosophy, although originally it appealed to some well-intended people who thought the general population could be improved by selective breeding. Today, one can study genetics or heredity without the implication of Nazism. But the older term, eugenics, generally prevails now in marginal websites, many of which advocate the methodical breeding of super beings. The Urantia Papers do not use the term genetics, and use the term eugenics only once. They use it in connection with youth studies as Dick noted: “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) In our judgment, to be fair to the Book, had it been written in modern times this sentence would probably have used the term genetics, since the Urantia Papers clearly do not advocate eugenics as it is presently understood.
Some readers have made the argument that the Urantia Papers state that human stock could be improved by selective breeding. This is an unjust implication, because the term “selective breeding” appears only once in the Papers (UB 69:7.3) and then strictly in relationship to animals in Dalamatia.
Dick defines “to disfellowship” as: 1. To exclude from fellowship; to refuse to intercourse with, as an associate. Also, to excommunicate. Then he adds: “What do the authors really mean by disfellowship? Sterilization?” Yet, the word “sterilization” does not appear in the Urantia Papers. We believe that if disfellowshipping retains its appropriate definition, the supposed “Land Mines” will not seem quite so difficult.
Some of Dick’s important quotes are worth repeating here because we have drawn different conclusions. The Urantia Papers point out that had our planet progressed normally, the “Planetary Prince and the Material Son, with other suitable planetary authorities, [would] pass upon the fitness of the reproducing strains.” We presume they mean a process of birth control. However, the Papers rightly caution us that: “The difficulty of executing such a radical program on Urantia consists in the absence of competent judges to pass upon the biologic fitness or unfitness of the individuals of your world races.” (UB 51:4.8) This is clear enough, there are no humans who could make this judgment. The final statement in this section is worth careful attention: “Notwithstanding this obstacle, it seems that you ought to be able to agree upon the biologic disfellowshipping of your more markedly unfit, defective, degenerate, and antisocial stocks.”
In our opinion an example of disfellowshipping is given in the Paper “Government on a Neighboring Planet:” “Ordinary criminals and the defectives are placed, by sexes, in different agricultural colonies and are more than self-supporting.” In other words, they are disfellowshipped. When it comes to habitual criminals, we have long disfellowshipped them in many American communities under the “three strikes” law. If a criminal commits three felonies he is automatically sentenced to a life in prison. Certainly this accepted practice is a serious degree of disfellowshipping.
There are indeed troubling passages on this issue of bestowing “futile sympathy” on “unsalvable and abnormal mortals” in the Urantia Papers. Rather than pulling these passages out of context, would it not be more reasonable to balance them with the positive admonitions? “A moral society should aim to preserve the self-respect of its citizenry and afford every normal individual adequate opportunity for self-realization. Such a plan of social achievement would yield a cultural society of the highest order.” (UB 71:3.9) and “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)
Apparently so, as Dick pointed out. Dick reported that Dr. Sadler wrote a book on eugenics which he thought too controversial to publish. Larry questioned Meredith Sprunger on this point, and he affirmed this:
“Dr. Sadler told me that he thought the book would be too controversial, that our society was not ready for eugenics yet. The supermortal authors of the Papers probably did not anticipate the intensity of this negative reaction because at the time the Papers were given to us racial improvement was championed by our nations social, political, and academic elite. It was funded by America’s leading corporate philanthropies, such as the Carnegie Institution and the Rockefeller Foundation, and entrenched in classrooms across America. Eugenics was sanctioned by the Supreme Court and racial improvement laws were enacted by twenty-seven states. Supporters of eugenics included such progressive thinkers as Woodrow Wilson, Margaret Sanger, and Oliver Wendell Homes.”
If these individuals supported the idea of the methodical breeding of so-called superior people, they were clearly at odds with the Urantia Papers, as we have seen. Did they believe in sterilization? The Urantia Papers states that there are no competent human judges for any such programs. Did they believe that habitual criminals should be “disfellowshipped?” This policy has already been established in many American communities.
We have no idea what Dr. Sadler’s book advocated. But we do know whatever he advocated it was a human viewpoint and has no bearing whatever on the Urantia Papers. As Dr. Sprunger pointed out, the period in which the Urantia Papers were produced was one that accepted many of the more radical eugenics ideas, and committed many excesses. This also has no bearing whatever upon what the Urantia Papers state. It is true that classic injustices such as the sterilization of Carrie Buck are hard to fathom today. In fact, that case illustrates that we do not have competent judges to make the call. Again, these acts were human folly, and do not represent anything that is advocated by the Papers. In our opinion, it is unjust to arbitrarily make such a linkage.
Surely the most evil of all tragedies were those perpetrated by the Nazis. They were based upon a concept that the Urantia Papers vigorously rebuke. The Nazis believed that man is merely a more complex animal. The Nazis held that all of humankind are but products of heredity and environment … a philosophy they termed: Blood and Soil. This concept was supported by Freud, and also Skinner’s behaviorism. The notion of an elite race was popular in those days, and may have also been held by some in the Forum, and by J. H. Kellogg of Battle Creek. But on what basis are their ideas linked to the Urantia Papers? Especially when the Urantia Papers clearly and specifically refutes these ideas?
Indeed, the supreme over-arching theme of the Papers insists that we are far more than products of environment and heredity. We are Children of God, and our heritage is beyond measure. Viktor Frankl, a death camp survivor, said that when we think of man as less than he really is, we corrupt him. He wrote in The Doctor and the Soul: “The gas chambers of Autchwitz were the ultimate consequence of the theory that man is nothing but a product of heredity and environment … I am absolutely convinced the gas chambers … were ultimately prepared, not in some Ministry or other in Berlin, but rather at the desks and in the lecture halls of nihilistic scientists and philosophers.”
Our argument is not to claim the Urantia Papers infallible, nor that we need to defend every statement in them. The Urantia Papers declare their own fallibility: “… no revelation short of the attainment of the Universal Father can ever be complete. All other celestial ministrations are no more than partial, transient, and practically adapted to local conditions in time and space. While such admissions as this may possibly detract from the immediate force and authority of all revelations, the time has arrived on Urantia when it is advisable to make such frank statements, even at the risk of weakening the future influence and authority of this, the most recent of the revelations of truth to the mortal races of Urantia.” (UB 92:4.9)
In summary, there is no “emphasis on eugenics” in the Urantia Revelation. There is, rather, a strong admonition against the philosophical principle upon which eugenics leans.
We believe the truth and significance of the Revelation lies in what it clearly says, not in what some may insist it implies, or what Dr. Sadler wrote, or what some Forum members may have believed. And one of the greatest truths that the Revelation proclaims is that all normal minds are endowed with the potential of immortality. Surely any thinking person who believes that great truth would not dream of taking any chance that would remotely infringe upon the rights of another human. The Papers proclaim “ordinary” mortals as the “backbone of the civilization,” and that in their progeny lies the genius of the people. The Papers offer us the life and teachings of a lay preacher from typical Jewish parents, and tell us he was the greatest man who ever walked the earth. Indeed, they say he was the Son of the God. Could such a book also rationally advocate the harming of a single child of God? We think not.