{"id":209,"date":"2025-08-01T04:50:25","date_gmt":"2025-08-01T11:20:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/urantiachurch.org\/?p=209"},"modified":"2025-08-01T04:50:28","modified_gmt":"2025-08-01T11:20:28","slug":"anthropology-race-slavery-and-revelation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/urantiachurch.org\/index.php\/2025\/08\/01\/anthropology-race-slavery-and-revelation\/","title":{"rendered":"Anthropology, Race, Slavery, and Revelation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Race is all and nothing at all<\/em><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
by Rebecca Bynum (August 2025)<\/h6>\n\n\n\n

Physical Anthropology, which studied<\/strong> human evolution, and the origin and distribution of races, is pretty much a dead science although modern DNA sequencing (showing human migration patterns, for example) is reviving it to some degree. The fact that great genetic variability<\/a> is found within the modern hybridized races has been used since the early twentieth century<\/a> to assert that race itself is largely a myth, and that that myth has been used exclusively by some races to oppress others, although the actual difference between them is negligible. On the other hand, because of that oppression narrative, it is likewise asserted that race is of supreme importance and must be considered in all circumstances. This schizophrenia\u2014race is nothing and everything at once\u2014has caused, and is causing, endless racial animosity and human anguish.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An idea deeply imbedded in modern thinking on human origins is the \u201cout of Africa\u201d model. This model is largely due to the work of Louis Leakey<\/a>, who uncovered early hominid remains in the area of the Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania in the middle of the last century. Because these were the earliest pre-human remains found, the scientific community jumped to the conclusion that early man originated in Africa and then migrated to the other continents. This idea was popularized in books such as African Genesis<\/em><\/a> by Robert Ardrey (1963) and The Naked Ape<\/em><\/a> by Desmond Morris (1967). The central idea embedded here is that the \u201cblack\u201d race was the original type and that the \u201cwhite\u201d race grew lighter as an adaptation to northern climes. This idea has persisted with speculation about vitamin D<\/a>. No real consideration has been given as to why the Oriental race exhibits a yellow tinge or indigenous Americans a red tinge to the skin since there is no obvious adaptive benefit, and both live in the same latitudes as the \u201cwhite\u201d race.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This unconscious idea that dark skin equates to primitive, and thus, \u201cwe were all black once,\u201d continues to the present day, with relatively late appearing Europeans being depicted has having dark skin. Above is a facial reconstruction of a man living in Britain approximately ten thousand years ago. To me, the skeleton looks very similar to a Medieval European burial, but in the reconstruction, he is depicted as having blue eyes, very dark skin and frizzy dark hair. Here is another<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Out of Africa vs All of a Sudden in Asia<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Darwinian theory of the origin of life through the random assembly of amino acids in warm ponds in the early earth has been shown to be “probabilistically absurdly improbable<\/a> even when all assumptions are chosen to unreasonably favor evolutionary theories.” The Urantia Book<\/em> revelation, however, depicts a very different origin of life and of human races. According to it, life was engineered and implanted on our world five-hundred million years ago. The DNA code contains the secret of evolution, which did not proceed by Darwin\u2019s theory of random mutation conferring survival benefit, but rather new morphological types appear suddenly in response to the environment and as a direct result of this primary DNA coding. The idea that life may have been seeded was first seriously proposed by Carl Sagan and I. S. Shklovski<\/a> in 1966; and Francis Crick (who discovered the DNA molecule) and L. E. Orgel coined the phrase \u201cdirected panspermia<\/a>” in 1973 to propose the idea that life was not just accidentally seeded by an asteroid, for example, but directed to specific worlds by advanced civilizations on other planets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Urania Book also states that as a result of this prior DNA coding, six basic racial variants appeared all at once in Asia five-hundred thousand years ago (the first human beings having appeared one-million years ago). The \u201cblack\u201d or Indigo race is not more primitive than any of the others (three primary\u2014red, yellow and blue, and three secondary\u2014orange, green and indigo). The Urantia Book describes the Indigo race as migrating into<\/em> Africa having first mixed with the remaining orange and green races (now extinct) and then proceeding to dominate the lower continent. The blue race (Cro Magnon) is also extinct except as its genes persist in the hybridized \u201cwhite\u201d race.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Bible\u2019s depiction of the curse of Noah\u2019s son, Ham (Genesis 9: 24-27), and the Book of Mormon similarly depicting the mark of Cain as a curse<\/a>, and the interpretation from these scriptures that the curses are tied to black skin and to slavery, are antiquated ideas which have unfortunately poisoned racial relations for hundreds of years. The Urantia Book\u2019s <\/em>explanation that the races appeared purposefully as a result of DNA coding, and that no race is more primitive than any other, is an antidote to that thinking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

War and Slavery<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Furthermore, primitive warfare consisted entirely of wars of annihilation–utter extermination of the enemy, men, women and children. Even into the sixteenth century, war captives in Meso-America were sacrificed on an industrial scale, which is why the Urantia Book<\/em> describes enslavement as \u201ca forward step in the merciful treatment of war captives.\u201d By the time we get to the Greeks in the development of Western culture, mass enslavement of the women and children of captured cities was standard practice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These and other matter-of-fact descriptions of historic reality in the Urantia Book<\/em> cannot be construed as a justification for slavery in the present day\u2014a statement that went unchallenged<\/a> during the Kulieke theater controversy. On the contrary, the Urantia Book<\/em> states: \u201cTrue, 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.\u201d (69:8.8)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Urantia Book<\/em> points out another reality that modern man refuses to acknowledge and that is the deep tie between race and culture, and it states unequivocally: \u201cIt is the people who make a civilization; civilization does not make the people.\u201d (76: 6.4) It also warns that civilization is imperiled by permitting idleness and tolerating poverty; and thus, it is unfortunate that in our efforts to eliminate poverty, we have reinforced idleness. Indeed, there are many hard truths in the book; but we must ask ourselves: Would we rather face the truth squarely in order to deal with our problems realistically, or continue to live with those comforting lies which gradually degrade civilization over time? Witness the following statements which directly contradict America\u2019s founding myth that \u201call men are created equal.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Civilization and the Myth of Equality<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBut 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.\u201d (70:9.16-17)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The book also makes plain that though there are many material handicaps attendant upon this material life, these impediments can only delay spiritual progress, never defeat it, for such progress is subject to individual moral choice alone. Those who sincerely love God and desire to draw close to Him will survive material death, without exception. God is no respecter of persons, and from His viewpoint, human souls are all absolutely equal. Nevertheless: \u201cSociety 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.\u201d (70:9.17)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Urantia Book<\/em> was not given to our world to coddle our feelings or indulge our illusions; it was given to clarify our past and point the way to our future, and certainly, it is widely agreed that a course correction is needed now. \u201cModern man is confronted with the task of making more readjustments of human values in one generation than have been made in two thousand years.\u201d (92:7.14)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Urantia Book<\/em> prods us to question everything, especially our most deeply-held and cherished assumptions. With this in mind, the idea that black skin equals primitive should be the first assumption to go; and though our spiritual<\/em> equality is the absolute truth, the idea that all human beings are materially<\/em> equal is an obvious untruth which must also be abandoned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Race is all and nothing at all by Rebecca Bynum (August 2025) Physical Anthropology, which studied human evolution, and the origin and distribution of races, is pretty much a dead science although modern DNA sequencing (showing human migration patterns, for example) is reviving it to some degree. The fact that great genetic variability is found […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":210,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/urantiachurch.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/urantiachurch.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/urantiachurch.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/urantiachurch.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/urantiachurch.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=209"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/urantiachurch.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":211,"href":"https:\/\/urantiachurch.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209\/revisions\/211"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/urantiachurch.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/urantiachurch.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/urantiachurch.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/urantiachurch.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}