Our Children: Past/Present/Future

January 5, 1992

Host: Barbara Thompson ..................................... Invited Guest: Karl Puechl

Barbara: Good Morning! I'm glad you could join us. I'm expecting this morning, judging by discussions we've had in previous visits with him, that our guest this morning will be giving us a scientist's perspective because, first of all, that's what he is. As a theoretical physicist (and I've been told that to really understand what that involves, you need to have a degree in it) you could say he's in a field of thought similar to Einstein and Newton. Not that all theoretical or mathematical physicists are necessarily super genius but thinking in those terms definitely requires, shall we say, a mind capable of concepts far more abstract and complex than most of us are accustomed to thinking about. That's our guest this morning, Karl Puechl, of the Unitarian-Universalist Fellowship here in Hemet. Which Karl has told us we can less tongue trippingly refer to as "UU's" (U for Unitarian, U for Universalist ---'UU's") Now, not all "UU's" are scientists nor are all scientists "UU's" but I gather from what Karl has told us in past discussions that most "UU's" do take a somewhat scientific approach to their understanding of their relationships in and with the universe. So I think we're going to have a lot of good interesting perspective today, perhaps somewhat of a departure from what we usually hear but definitely in the good food for thought category. Welcome back once more, Karl Puechl, to the Seekers Forum!

Karl: Thank you, Barbara. I really enjoy being here to represent the local Unitarian-Universalist Fellowship. This seems like a good way to start a new year. A baby 1992, and now, as I understand it, we are going to talk about OUR CHILDREN: PAST/PRESENT/FUTURE. I trust, not too much about the past; you and I fit into that category, and I'm afraid that there is not much chance for improvement left to either of us.

Barbara: Oh now, you can speak for yourself there, Karl. I intend to continue at least trying to improve myself for some time to come. You know the saying, "While there's life, there's hope." I follow that credo. But now, Karl, I've talked about what I understand the "U" approach to be. But I know there's much more to it than that. Would you like to tell us a little more about the Unitarian-Universalist (or UU) beliefs?

Karl: Yes, I would, Barbara, especially in the light of our topic, Children... What you said is essentially correct. We believe that one's religion has value only if it has great impact on one's behavior; on how one interacts with others --- that religion should pave the way for a better life for the individual; for the people that he or she interacts with; and for humanity as a whole, now as well as in the future. Consequently, relative to theology, unless it impacts these kinds of things, Unitarian-Universalists don't really care what individual UU's believe in as long as their beliefs were thought out and not simply accepted because they were espoused by their parents, priests, ministers or rabbis. And following such thought and analysis, an individual should not only feel "comfortable" in his or her belief but should also be willing to modify beliefs as he or she grows intellectually. What is particularly pertinent to our topic today is my statement that religion should impact humanity as a whole both now and IN THE FUTURE.

Emphasis on the "future" leads us to emphasis on "children". And relative to how our children behave, as children and later as adults, I contend that some theological beliefs are very important. For example, I believe that it is criminal to teach young children that they are inherently defective; that they are born sinners and that this innate flaw cannot be remedied. Not even the Marquis DeSade could have thought up a more effective way to intellectually chain our children; to make them forever dependent upon "leaders", the church and the clergy; to keep them from ever being autonomous, which is certainly a psychological necessity in a free democratic society. Can we really teach children "self-esteem", as some governmental programs are trying to do, if such a debilitating and perhaps even cancerous lie is buried deep in a child's psyche? What other harmful prejudices are we passing onto our children, perhaps, inadvertently?

Also, going somewhat deeper, I further believe that many of society's current ills are due to the fact that there is an essential dichotomy between what most of us truly believe and what most of us teach our children. Certainly, what society has been doing cannot be called successful; our failures cry out for a change! Witness the religious and ethnic conflicts throughout the world, the escalating crime rate, the prevalent use of drugs; having children without regard for the need of subsequent nurturing, having children without regard for the finiteness of the size of the earth and its resources, destroying our environment without regard for future consequences; and the emerging ethical uncertainties with regard to sexual practices, medically - assisted methods of procreation, and the humanitarian termination of life. To elaborate on this dichotomy, let me quote from a book, CHANCE AND NECESSITY, written by Jacques Monod a noted French molecular biologist and Nobel laureate, with some minor inserts of mine to bring certain sentiments up-to-date since the book was written in 1971.

"Modern societies have accepted the treasures and the power that science laid in their laps" (with the most recent example being the near-adulation of advances in biology and medicine). " But they have not accepted --- they have scarcely even heard --- its profounder message: the defining of a new and unique source of truth, and the demand for a thorough revision of ethical premises, for a total break with the animist tradition, the definitive abandonment of the "old convenant", the necessity of forging a new one. Armed with all the powers, enjoying all the riches they owe to science, our societies are still trying to live by and to teach systems of values already blasted at the root by science itself."

"No society before ours was ever rent by contradictions so agonizing. In both primitive and classical cultures the animist tradition saw knowledge and values stemming from the same source. For the first time in history a civilization is trying to shape itself while clinging desperately to the animist tradition to justify its values, and at the same time abandoning it as the source of knowledge, of truth. For their moral laws the "liberal" social orders of the West still teach --- or pay lip service to --- a disgusting farrago of Judeo-Christian religiosity, scientistic progressism, belief in the "natural" rights of man, and short-sighted utilitarian pragmatism. However this may be, all these systems rooted in animism exist at odds with objective knowledge, face away from truth, and are strangers and fundamentally hostile to science, which they are pleased to make use of but for which they do not otherwise care. The divorce is so great, the lie so flagrant, that it afflicts and rends the conscience of anyone provided with some element of culture, a little intelligence, and spurred by that moral questioning which is the source of all creativity. It is an affliction, that is to say, for all those among mankind who bear or will come to bear the responsibility for the way in which society and culture shall evolve." (our children).

"What ails the modern spirit is this lie gripping man's moral and social nature at the very core. ... Modern societies, woven together by science, living from its products, have become as dependent upon it as an addict on his drug. They owe their material wherewithal to this fundamental ethic upon which knowledge is based, and their moral weakness to those value-systems, devastated by knowledge itself, to which they still try to refer." (and I believe that our children, at an early age, readily become aware of this inconsistency and, thereby, become confused). "The contradiction is deadly. It is what is digging the pit we see opening under our feet. The ethic of knowledge that created the modern world is the only ethic compatible with it, the only one capable, once understood and accepted, of guiding its evolution."

I know that this was probably quite difficult for our listeners to follow; therefore, for those of you who were somewhat smitten by the content, I urge you to read Jacque Monod's book, CHANCE AND NECESSITY. Now Barbara, want to continue with the questioning?

Barbara: Yes, I have a listener's question which I believe you've already answered to some extent. "If I believe and trust in God and am as kind and caring as I know how to be, particularly with people less fortunate than myself, can you tell me why I should go to church? What difference would it make?"

Karl: If our listener has no desire to go to church, there certainly is no compelling reason to go; and whether or not she believes in a God is of no importance at all. What is important is the need to keep on learning throughout life and, as she says, "to be kind and caring"; to do these things requires interaction with people. Going to church may be a way of interacting and of receiving mental and emotional stimulation; however, such may also be achieved in many other ways, ways which can be completely satisfactory without added churchgoing.

Barbara: Thanks so much, Karl. Just as I expected, you are giving us a very interesting and very different perspective. .... Karl, the question which has been you might say our "opening gun" for our current series topic: "Our Children: Past/Present/Future" comes from a listener who says she believes it is time and past time for the churches to take up the mission of helping the children of our world to break away from the destructive rules of living which have become so predominant in nearly all societies today, rules generally known as "rules of the street" and which she defines as (1) get all the money you can however you can, (2) if you have to break the law to get what you want, just be sure you don't get caught, and (3) remember the law of the jungle: "kill or be killed," "eat or be eaten" and act accordingly. As an alternative, she wants "Rules for Living". Her point is that there has been a proliferation of children learning street rules by example and by experience because they are taught nothing else. She believes the government is not only ineffective in this area, it is inappropriate and so it must be the churches who lead the way or society in general will become totally barbaric. I think it would be helpful if we could hear your thoughts on this, Karl. From your personal viewpoint of course. And, if you think it appropriate, from the viewpoint of the Unitarian-Universalist Church.

Karl: I have a sincere desire for the churches to take a leading role in this; but since I believe that children are basically intelligent, I contend that churches will have little success unless they are willing to cast out the inconsistencies between what they preach and what children (perhaps, in a naive manner) recognize to be true.

Since our time is limited, I can't go into very much detail but I think I can illustrate the problem associated with being inconsistent by sticking to a down-to-earth subject, sex. But before I get into the sex part, we need a little philosophical foreplay. As my quote from Jacques Monod's writings pointed out, our children are raised in a culture wherein science rules supreme relative to material things; and the scientific method, i.e., the questioning and the need for rational explanation, also pervades our culture even though these aspects of science have not yet been completely accepted. As a consequence, our children because of this rational conditioning want, one might even say, need, explanations; and above all, these explanations must be based on realism, on what the world is really like, so as to minimize, inconsistencies and, in their minds, to avoid confusion. Now for the sex. I ask: Which approach will have the greatest impact on limiting the spread of AIDS: telling our teen-agers not to do it because it is wrong, dirty, or sinful; or telling them that we recognize the power of their hormones, that having sex is natural; but that there are medical risks associated with having sex indiscriminately and, therefore, that they should try to control their urges, or if that fails, they should take appropriate precautions? This type of argument is also valid relative to adults. Which approach will have the greatest impact on limiting the spread of AIDS: telling husbands and wives not to engage in adultery because "thou shalt not" is written on the tablets which were so often referred to by Jimmy Bakker, Jimmy Swaggart, and many clergymen with similar failings but of lesser renown; or simply telling them that the probability of contacting AIDS from engaging in raw sex with relatively unknown partners is relatively high and, therefore, that having sex without protection is much like playing Russian roulette?

I think that all "the rules for living" that our listener is looking for can be similarly developed by rationally looking at each problem and focusing on what approach will lead to the best end-result; but to remedy these types of problems will take appropriate childhood indoctrination at a very young age, which was the reason for my earlier admonition relative to teaching our infants "theological garbage" and passing on outdated prejudices

I thought that I could terminate my answer to this question at this point, but now that I've gotten into it, I find it difficult to stop. So, Barbara, if you'll allow me, I'll go on, starting from somewhat of a different angle.

I think it is high time that we, the adults, begin to express, openly and vociferously, the scientifically-derived knowledge that the development of the human race is a WONDROUS outcome of blind, undirected, dicey evolution, usually in an extremely hostile environment, and therefore that the existence of humanity and the condition of humanity (meaning its culture) have always been very fragile, and that this fragility will probably exist for the foreseeable future. We should openly recognize and tell our children that the species, Homo Sapiens, is the only one with the capability to imagine possible outcomes of actions, and therefore can plan ahead. What a wondrous talent! It is indeed "sinful" for anyone to waste this talent; to look only to short-term selfish benefits without considering later consequences to him- or herself, to friends, to neighbors, and to society as a whole. I am certain that greater awareness of the fragility of it all, learned at an early age, together with the awareness that each of us, admittedly in perhaps a very small way, has the built-in talent to either help protect or help destroy our culture will go a long way towards creating a "kinder and gentler" society. Since I recommended strongly that we take seriously the deeper advances made by science, not only the technological results, let me again quote from some of the popularized scientific literature.

Steven Weinberg, a theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate, in his 1977 book entitled, THE FIRST THREE MINUTES, meaning the first three minutes after the "Big Bang", writes:

"However all these problems (in cosmology) may be resolved, and whichever cosmological model proves correct, there is not much of comfort in any of this. It is almost irresistible for humans to believe that we have some special relation to the universe, that human life is not just a more-or-less farcical outcome of a chain of accidents reaching back to the first three minutes, but that we were somehow built in from the beginning. It is very hard to realize that this all is just a tiny part of an overwhelmingly hostile universe. It is even harder to realize that this present universe has evolved from an unspeakable unfamiliar early condition, and faces a future extinction of endless cold or intolerable heat. The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless."

And he makes a final comment that expresses the universal sentiment of scientists:

"But if there is no solace in the fruits of our research, there is at least some consolation in the research itself. Men and women are not content to comfort themselves with tales of gods and giants, or to confine their thoughts to the daily affairs of life; they also build telescopes and satellites and accelerators, and sit at their desks for endless hours working out the meaning of the data they gather. The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things that lifts human life a little above the level of farce, and gives it some of the grace of tragedy."

A more recent (1988) book about cosmology is A BRIEF HISTORY OF TIME written by Stephen Hawking, who currently holds the chair of Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University, the chair once held by Sir Isaac Newton. Hawking's original manuscript had the title, THE SEARCH FOR GOD, but this was unacceptable to his publisher. He then changed the title, but without a major revision of the text he felt uncomfortable and as a solution he asked Carl Sagan, the Cornell University astronomer and popularizer of science, to write a short introduction. Sagan wrote:

"This is also a book about God. ... or perhaps about the absence of God. The word God fills these pages. Hawking embarks on a quest to answer Einstein's famous question about whether God had any choice in creating the universe. Hawking is attempting, as he explicitly states, to understand the mind of God. And this makes all the more unexpected the conclusion of the effort, at least so far: a universe with no edge in space, no beginning or end in time, and nothing for a Creator to do."

Now, Barbara, I'd like to add my two cents, as a theoretical physicist, which, as you know, is my profession. The confluence of particle physics (study of the very small), and cosmology (study of the very large) allows theoretical physicists to conjecture about the nature of the universe from less than one second after the "Big Bang" through its evolution to the present, and to its demise in the distant future; i.e., currently-accepted physics theories can be used, where appropriate, to predict the course of universe development. Further, from very substantial and detailed observation, coupled to chemistry and physics, biologists are able to conjecture, with a high degree of confidence, how "life" developed and evolved. There is nothing in the nature of this approximate 15-billion year development that gives any indication that the species, Homo Sapiens, was built into the pattern from the start; in fact, there is little to indicate that there was even a pattern to work from. Gross phenomena like the distribution of the chemical elements, and the formation of stars and galaxies are predictable. But micro-phenomena such as why planets formed about certain stars, or why conditions developed on certain planets to sustain life, or why life in general, or certain species in particular, continued to exist and develop rather than being wiped out by volcanic action or ice ages is not predictable; physics theories can only say that these developments were possible with some associated finite probability for occurrence. I repeat what Steven Weinberg so clearly stated: "The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless". This brings up a simple question: Why does our society award Nobel prizes to scientists like Jacques Monod, Steven Weinberg, I. I Rabi, and others I could name, and probably to come, Stephen Hawking, and then not take seriously what they are trying to tell us?

I hope we have a little time left Barbara, since I'd like to close on a philosophical note rather than on a scientific one. While it is "fun" to conjecture, or just to read about possible "beginnings"; and while we can appreciate that such activities might provide some sort of useful background, it is much more fruitful to face up to the fact that we are here and that, somehow, we must make the best of it. Facing up to this reality and contemplating the future to give some assurance that it will be "better" is a much more meaningful exercise for a true human being, or as our Jewish friends would say, a "Mensch". This philosophical position is not new, it was espoused by the American philosopher William James at about the turn of the century in his PHILOSOPHY OF PRAGMATISM. The cornerstone of this philosophy was to point out that philosophy should not concentrate on first causes, which doesn't do much for humanity; rather it should concentrate on that which can do the most for humanity under the current and foreseeable conditions.

Barbara: Well Karl, we are again out of time. Thanks for your usual interesting perspective. We'll be looking forward to your next visit to the Seekers Forum.