The Humanist Newsletter for January/February 2002

Early every year, we Humanists here in Massachusetts choose our direction for the coming months, set priorities, and determine expenditures

If you are on our mailing list you will be most welcome when we gear up for the year ahead. As an independent, thoughtful, and decent human being, you can have your say at our annual general meeting in the parlor of Phillips Brooks House, (across from the Science Center, in Harvard Yard, Cambridge) on Sunday afternoon, 2 PM. Members alone can vote and will decide on our structure and budget. But everyone gets to take aim on the future.

We live in an age when life, freedom and dignity stand in peril. War time puts stress on conscience and challenges national leadership. Living in this democracy, every citizen must assume some responsibility for the plan of war. And then there is the continual assault on constitutional rights and on the separation of church and state. (For instance, will the Supreme Court breach that wall in June when it decides whether or not to allow federal aid to parochial schools?).

In setting a budget close to $10,000,we must raise the income to meet it. On page four you will read a message from President Joe Gerstein announcing our first fund drive in a year, (a tear-off slip and envelope are enclosed). Please be as generous as you can.

We are a chapter of the American Humanist Association, headquartered in Washington, DC. Not all HAM members are AHA members, that’s a separate process. Does that make sense to you? Would HAM be willing to engage in a pilot project that would allow the payment of annual dues to include both memberships? The simple idea is that you are a Humanist everywhere, locally and nationally. (Isn’t that true of other organizations that you belong to?) Good question.

There’ll be hot coffee, munchies and good fellowship. Keep in mind, our official parking area nearby – the Littauer lot near the back of the Science Center, with entrance part way down on Oxford Street.

Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable. Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle, the tireless exertion and passionate concern of dedicated individuals.

(Quoted in "A Book of Ethical Wisdom" edited by Stanley Wayne and published by the Ethical Society of Boston).

Prof. Robert Allison:
 "Celebrating the Bicentennial, Jefferson’s ‘Wall of Separation’ Letter to the Danbury Baptists,
Harvard Science Center, A, at 1:30 PM on Sunday, February 10

The Humanist Forum starts its spring semester with a recognition of a major document from the Founders’ era. In January of 1802, the new President wrote to a Connecticut church his approval of its stand against making Congregationalism the state church. In referring to the First Amendment, he coined a now famous phrase: "I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church and State." It has stood for 200 years and served the American people well. It’s worth a celebration.

We have asked Professor Robert Allison, a Harvard trained historian, now a professor at Suffolk University, to speak of those momentous times and the brilliant solutions devised by Madison and Jefferson, which delivered us from internecine strife, as well as imitating Europe’s practice of uniting religion and government. Earlier these men, the professor will remind us, had collaborated in crafting the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, one of Jefferson’s proudest moments. Prof. Allison also teaches courses in Colonial America, Native American History, and Constitutional History, among others. Having published a book on early U.S.–Muslim relations (1995), he’s now writing a biography of the naval hero, Stephen Decatur. He is also an authority on Boston, past and future.

The separation of Church and State is in great trouble. Prayer in the Public Square has become routine, especially after September 11, and the trial vouchers in Ohio schools may become the law of the land when the Supreme Court issues its ruling in early summer. We advocates of civil liberties should not fail to learn the origins of our religious freedom when Prof. Allison speaks on Feburary 10 in the Science Center, Harvard, (auditorium A) at 1:30 PM. (Parking available in the Littauer lot behind the Center; call 617—547-1497 for information).

You who subscribe to The Humanist must be sure to read in advance of this talk three splendid articles on Thomas Jefferson in the January/February 2002 issue. (If you are a member of the American Humanist Association, you receive this magazine automatically).

My wife and I were touring Australia (her homeland) about 3 years ago, visiting relatives in various locales. We included in our itinerary the far southwest corner of Australia (Cape Esperance) because one of Barbara’s nephews was there, teaching at a Christian school for Aboriginals. He is a very dedicated and altruistic individual and we wished to demonstrate to him that we respected and supported what he has been doing.

After a long flight from Broome to Perth and another from Perth to Esperance, we put up at the Gibson Soak Motel overnight and early the next day took our tour of the school. The first character we met was Bob, the tame emu who mopes around the grounds. To my astonishment, there was not one "Aboriginal" student in residence. I had expected to see actual "pure-bred" Aborigines (Aboriginals, in "Stralian). Every student we saw was clearly a mixture of Caucasian and Aboriginal, with probably a predominance of Caucasian.

Such are the vicissitudes of "race". Australian Aboriginals (or the "pure" sort) certainly represent a characteristic segment of humanity. Arriving in Australia about 50,000 (possibly as much as 70,000) years ago from the Indonesian archipelago with dogs (dingos), then sequestered there for perhaps 1700-2100 generations from then until the modern era, a rather characteristic bodily strutcture and facial/skull architecture developed.

Just as Colin Powell, who is as "white" as many southern European, North African or Levantine people is described as "black" or "African-American", (and so describes himself) people of mixed ancestry in Australia are described as Aboriginals, no matter how small the Aboriginal contribution.

Clearly, at various times in the history of most "races" there has been mixing of genetic pools with other "races". The invasions of the Norsemen probably accounts for the blondes in Sicily and Genghis Khan’s hordes probably account for the "red hair" gene that runs through my maternal grandfather’s family of Ukrainian Jews. Most all of the female members of his family, many of the males and my mother had red hair. Almost certainly, there were Celts in Turkey and probably in China.

A reasonable hypothesis can be made, using mitochondrial DNA for study, that all human beings are members of the species homo sapiens sapiens and are descended from a single female. Other scientists disagree and claim that there were at least 2 separate radiations of humans out of Africa at different times, one into Europe and one into the East. But clearly, somewhere in the past, there is a common ancestor.

As the politically-dominant "race" of the last 500 years, Caucasians have measured purity as a degree of "whiteness". An "Octaroon" was a person with only 1/8 "black "blood". In Hitler’s Germany the same ratio of Jewish "blood" could send you to Auschwitz. In "apartheid" South Africa, even the slightest drop of kaffir, Malay, Indian or Oriental "blood" classified you as "colored".

Now we are seeing a new phenomenon, reversing the process of "passing" for white, with people showing pride that Black or Native American "blood" runs in their veins (Black is beautiful!). "White" teenagers look to young African-Americans in the ‘Hood to establish fashion trends and vernacular trends. The Mashantucket Pequods, of Foxwood fame, who have more money than tribe members actively recruit into their tribe (and into their ample coffers) anyone who can prove that he/she carries 1/16 tribal "blood" (one great-grandparent a Pequod). And we had episodes of people falsely claiming Hispanic forbears to gain preference in hiring as Boston firefighters. In Australia, Aboriginals are claiming much of the country through historical/spiritual bonds to many areas now inhabited by those of European origin and many such claims have been validated (so far, however, not Sydney). The Nunavit ("Eskimo") Nation has been carved out of Canada

Harris Sussman, in his cogent address at the last Winter Solstice Luncheon of HAM, indicated the move afoot among scientists to attempt to eliminate the word "race" and the descriptor "racial" because of the fact that we are all one species (homo sapiens sapiens) and that therefore these terms represent a distinction without a difference.

I think this is a noble and reasonable precept and that clearly the time has come in the history of humanity to accentuate the similarities rather than the dissimilarities among those groups of very slightly different genetic composition. It is quite possible that there might be more genetic variation between a Laplander and an Iranian (both Caucasians) than between an Englishman and an Australian Aboriginal.

However, I think that this development requires that we coin a new word to describe the peculiar group differences that have developed among widely separated populations over the hundred or so millennia since "Eve, the mother of us all" wandered the African savannahs.

There was considerable controversy at the end of the 15th Century in Spain and Portugal as to whether of not the indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere (Caribs, Tainos, Astecs, Mayans, Incas, etc.) had souls. Clearly, absent souls, they need not be treated any different than pigs, cows and geese. Despite the advocacy of Fr. de las Casas, the general consensus was that they did not possess souls. Unfortunately, de las Casas’ conclusion, that African "black" slaves should be brought in to do the devastating work in mines and fields of the New World because they clearly did not have souls, thus sparing the indigenous peoples, only complicated the situation.

Showing a class of Kindergarteners a picture of a 6’3" blonde-maned, muscular, fair-complexioned Nordic man and a 4’8" , brown Bushman with black, curly fuzz on his head and telling them simply that they are both members of the human race certainly sends a positive message of Brotherhood but suffers from the problem of failure to mention the "elephant in the room" : the obvious and inescapable observation of stark and stereotypical differences in size, shape, features and skin color. If we don’t want to redefine "race" and "racial" to make them simply descriptors of group differences involving very minor genetic drifts because of the negative connotations of these words through the centuries, then we must invent or adapt another word or other words to serve the same function but avoid the unfortunate innuendoes of inferiority of some races to others. We can adapt a current word or invent a new one. Any nominations?

Darwin’s Ghost:
 The Origin of the Species Updated by Steven Jones
Reviewed by John R. Guthrie

"Evolution is all around us."

It is the Human Immunodeficiency or AIDS virus that implodes the principal arguments of the anti-evolutionists just as surely as it did the lives of its victims early on in the AIDS epidemic. This formidable human pathogen is the centerpiece of Dr. Steve Jones’ cogent and compelling argument because its evolution is so rapid compared with larger and more complex creatures, and thus more readily observable over the brief span of a human life.

The Human Immunodeficiency Virus takes over the machinery of the host’s immune cells like commands taking over a factory. The virus coerces the host’s immune cell’s DNA into manufacturing copies of itself. The host cells have no choice but complicity in this peculiar and miniscule variation of surrogate motherhood, and produce billions of copies. Though the volume is high, as if by subtle acts of molecular sabotage, the quality is low. The rate of faulty copies is somewhere on the order of one in a thousand. Yet in an ironic twist, it is in this imperfection that the virus’s great power is found.

Many of the new generation of viri are such poor copies of the original that they simply die off. But a few have, on a random basis, changed in useful ways; they are, for example, able to overcome a given defense, such as Retrovir®, one of the earlier antivirals that showed such great promise in combating AIDS. But Retrovir® lost its dramatic effectiveness after only a few months because the lucky few viri, those that could endure Retrovir®, survived. They replicated and became the dominant form. The virus had evolved, reprieved (alas!) like the Stephen King monster you thought dead, but which had only morphed into a form more dreadful than ever.

Such has generally been the case with AIDS drugs. A given antiviral medication may show great promise originally, but after a brief period, the virus modifies itself to cope with the challenge. The modification is precisely that described by Charles Darwin in larger creatures that face challenge. The principles of evolution for the AIDS virus are the same as those that brought us from the Australopithecines of the African Savannahs to comtemporary human beings.

"AIDS is proof of descent with modifiction,"says Professor Jones, because its occurence can be observed. "Darwin," he adds puckishly, "would have been delighted to see the workings of his machine so starkly exposed."

DARWIN’S GHOST is a delightful read, and is quite probably the best update of Charles Darwin’s THE ORIGIN OF THE SPECIES on the planet.

Can we, the ABM Treaty, abandoning,
the Kyoto agreement, disdaining,
The ICC, scorning,
the Durban conference, betraying;
The U.N., deserting;
Can we, the envied, the despised, quell the Inferno
From this region rife with poverty,
Clinging to a medieval mindset,
Where anger and anguish churn?
Can we refresh the world with beneficial rains
Of democratic renewal?
Or will we duplicate the engine of death and destruction?