Welcome to “The Church of What’s Happening Now” *

by Rebecca Bynum (July 2025)

Eugenics—the very word is enough to send people into a moral panic, as it has become attached to the Nazi regime’s early elimination of people with severe genetic disorders living under the care of the state, their peculiar experimentation on living human subjects, and was used as one justification for their official antisemitic policies and eventual attempted genocide of the Jews. However, the oldest hatred is a recurring phenomenon, justified by different reasons at different times. Eugenics is defined as the study or practice of improving the genetic quality of the human population through selective breeding, genetic engineering, or other interventions aimed at promoting desirable traits and reducing undesirable ones, Genocide and eugenics should not be confused.

Eugenics has, in fact, continued on apace in the hands of individuals, as allowed by official policy, through the use of abortion, voluntary sterilization, in vitro fertilization, and birth control of all kinds. Those poor souls abandoned to state care in Germany in the early decades of the twentieth century, would likely not have been born at all in the early decades of the twenty-first. Advances in technology now allow “non-invasive pre-natal testing” through a blood test on the mother (there are fetal cells circulating in the mother’s bloodstream). It is estimated that 60-90% of Down syndrome fetuses detected in this way are aborted in the United States. According to the latest studies, termination of pregnancy following prenatal diagnosis was 83% for anencephaly (characterized by absence of much of the brain and skull) and 63% for spina bifida (herniation of neural tissue through an incompletely formed spine). This quiet form of eugenics has been going on ever since we’re had the technology to allow it.

Now consider in vitro fertilization (IVF). This is a technique in which several embryos are created outside the womb and are tested for genetic defects such as cystic fibrosis, Tay-Sachs disease, or Huntington’s disease, but can also tested for other characteristics such as male/female, eye color, height, susceptibility to disease, and over-all viability. Two or three of the most desirable embryos are selected for implantation, while the others are discarded. This form of eugenics is supported by up to 75% of the population. Pre-implantation genetic testing is advancing rapidly with several companies claiming the ability to assess the risk of many genetic problems and diseases, even those developed later in life such as type 2 diabetes.

This brings us to the next technological step made possible by the newly discovered CRISPER gene editing technology—designer babies—not only choosing certain embryos based on their DNA, but actually changing the DNA of those embryos. The first use of this technology was in China where a scientific team used CRISPER to eliminate a gene called CCR5 in hopes of rendering the offspring resistant to HIV, smallpox, and cholera. This type of research has been radically curtailed following the birth of the first CRISPER edited babies in 2018 in China through the work of He Jiankui. He was prosecuted, fined, sentenced to house arrest, and prohibited from practicing medicine ever again. Also in response, The World Health Organization issued a moratorium on human genome editing. There is no doubt in my mind, however, that this type of research will go on informally, even if formally condemned by our governments.

CRISPR genetic therapies using adult stem cells, which do not affect germ cells and so are not replicated in the next generation, have been highly effective in treating diseases such as sickle-cell, cystic fibrosis, muscular dystrophy, Huntington’s disease, and even certain forms of blindness. This research continues.

Genetic modification of other organisms, especially plants, has already revolutionized the food supply and been the key to the so-called Green Revolution. Of course, selective breeding of plants and animals has been going since they were first domesticated by human beings. The process has been slow, but effective. We are now entering a brave new world in which this process is greatly accelerated through direct gene editing, ancient species can be brought back to life, and entirely new species can be created, not in generations, but at once. In short, the bio-engineering of species, including the human species, is upon us.

The Ethical Question—Are We Playing God?

Traditional religion has viewed all life, that is, every species, as being uniquely created directly by God, and human life especially is considered sacred. Modern science posits that life spontaneously appeared from non-life and then proceeded to evolve, eventually producing human beings by pure chance. The Urantia Book uniquely poses a third way: Life is purposely implanted on the dead worlds as part of the divine plan to create material beings with the capacity to know God and to become like him, in other words, to develop immortal souls. In this view, the material body is the substrate or “soil” in which the immortal soul is born and grows. Upon death of the body, the soul is salvaged and “re-potted,” if you will, into another type of body on another world. In other words, the soul is the wheat and the body, the chaff. It is the soul alone which is truly valuable.

Seen in this way, genetic engineering to optimize the human substrate is highly moral if it leads to a healthier and more spiritually-oriented population, which has been the goal of eugenics all along.

Hybridization and Geniuses

“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.” —The Urantia Book, 82:6.5 (920.3)

According to the book, there were originally nine different races existing on our world, and they were meant to be mixed. In the present day, there are no pure races left; all are the result of race mixing to some degree. The so-called “white” race is the most highly hybridized, and every race contains its higher and lower genetic strains. The Urantia Book goes on:

“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.” —The Urantia Book 68:6.11 (770.8)

And certainly, this is true: geniuses invariably come from average homes and there is no doubt genetic variability needs to be maintained. In seeking perfection, we should not rush headlong into removing variation. That could be a suicidal mistake.

On another track, human/machine interfacing will also become much more sophisticated as time goes on, but the current transhuman quest for immortality through machines, or the idea that machines can be endowed with moral will, are probably equally doomed to failure.

Right or Privilege?

The basic question before us is: Is reproduction a right or a privilege? This question needs to be debated. If reproduction is deemed a human right, then there can be no restrictions on it whatsoever. If, however, reproduction is deemed a privilege due to the fact that it affects the whole of society, then regulations can be placed on it, including regulating the prospect of babies made to order. If regulations can be placed on some parents’ rights to have any child they want, then it follows that reproductive restrictions can be placed on the whole of society. These questions may come before the courts sooner than we expect.

Early eugenicists proposed using statistics similar to insurance actuarial tables in deciding genetic desirability. If potential parents come from parents who were sane and productive members of society, then the likelihood of their offspring being sane and productive is high, and so their reproduction should be encouraged for the benefit of society. And the opposite is also true: criminal and unproductive potential parents should be discouraged from having children. Of course, the devil is in the details of how this encouraging and discouraging would be carried out; and, needless to say, this is not an area our legislators are keen to dive into.

One can easily imagine a future, however, where potential parents submit their DNA samples to a machine, which, by employing an algorithm, spits out the number of children to be allowed. But again, the problem is who programs the algorithm, and would those parents be sterilized after that number is reached? The ethical questions get very sticky, very fast.

I believe that until man recognizes the reality of the soul, and indeed, the reality of spirit altogether, we will continue to flounder in the dark, with morality itself being viewed as just another social convention, as is happening now. Society is undergoing a radical technological transformation, and the test will be if we can grasp and hold onto the spiritual transformation we are being beckoned to from above. Divine guidance will be crucial in the coming decades.

Spiritual revival is the key to civilizational revival.

* Taken from the old Flip Wilson Show.

First published in New English Review.

Rebecca Bynum, Founder of New English Review and Publisher of New English Review Press. She is the author of Allah is Dead: Why Islam is Not a Religion (2011), and The Real Nature of Religion (2014). She has recently founded the Urantia Corps for Spiritual Progress.