We planned for our first child with enthusiasm. We had just gotten married, had virtually no money, but that didn’t matter to us. I was getting a salary of $175 per month, and Jane was getting a secretary’s wages in 1965. We had a bed, some kitchen utensils, a few clothes, toiletries, and an old car. Our kitchen and living room furniture consisted of orange crates to sit on, and stacked orange crates to serve as a table. Poverty was no deterrent. Jane counted the days after her last period, then started checking her temperature. She confided, a few days later, that her temperature had gone up a tick, and had persisted the next day. She said, “tomorrows the day”. We pursued that union with joint enthusiasm, and were met with immediate success. Jane demonstrated her ability to be a great planner for that initial pregnancy and did not vary from that course of action for her two subsequent children. She was always a great planner, throughout her life. She was a beautiful, talented and intelligent woman. Our subsequent difficulties in marriage, most of which were my fault, I choose not to discuss at this time.
She had an uncomplicated pregnancy. Our first child’s birth was a joyful occasion for both of us. It just amazed me that we had produced another life, in ways that were so complex and mysterious, they were beyond my comprehension. I know it happened, but how did it happen? If you bump two rocks together, and they drop a little pebble between them after that collision, that little pebble doesn’t grow to become their size and look like them. The origins of life are such an amazing mystery. Each of our children was an amazing event, so different from inanimate existence. Each of them prospered and grew, seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, learning, expressing, and each of them became their unique person, with different traits and attitudes.
I used to try to tell what they would be later in life. Our first, when he was one and a half, would often get up on the settee, fold his arms on his chest, and deliver sermons, which, by the expression on his face, must have been very important messages, even though they were unintelligible to us. I always thought he would grow up to be a minister, but was quite wrong about that prediction; he has not shown the slightest inclination to be a famous orator since that time, but has achieved great success in his marriage and his job. He is now serving as a director for the American Cancer Society. Our second was a serious delightful child, who was always very mindful, always tried to follow the rules and do what was right, but was different. I remember one time when he was taking a bath, trying to get him to stop playing with the faucet, but failing miserably. He had his own direction and his own rules in life. He was handsome and intelligent. It was not until he was older that we all became aware he was gay. Once he accepted who he was, and changed his life accordingly, he was able to find happiness, much to my joy. He now serves as an important contributor to our society in his job and his advocacy of his cause. Our third child was happily a girl, who was always called “dumb “ by her older brothers, but who, after all was said and done, pursued her education further than either of them. I remember once being so exasperated with her, trying to get her to go to bed, that I threw her into bed. I have had remorse ever since, because she was such a great child, who I felt would go far in life. I never had the slightest premonition, however, that she would turn out to be a computer expert who designs icons for a software firm. Then there was my adopted child, later in life, through a second marriage. She was the source of another epiphany in my life: human bonding and love has nothing to do with skin color, countries, nationality, or personal genes. Each of my children has been the source of great amazement at this inexplicable marvelous phenomenon of life. Each has also been the source of epiphany, and the source of intense gratification for me. Life! Wow! How in the heck did this happen?
Our planet was born some 4.5 billion years ago. It was a horrendously violent place. There were constant cataclysmic meteor strikes, massive explosions covering half the planet in dirt, debris and hot ashes, constant erupting volcanoes, molten rock flows, boiling acid seas, violent storms, a constant stream of lightning strikes, dissolving hissing chemical reactions, and a rain of amino acids contained in various mountain sized rocks zooming in from the sky. We had one near fatal collision with another planet of almost equal size. Instead of blasting the earth to smithereens, that collision knocked a huge chunk of us off, creating our moon, then became embedded in the core of our planet, becoming a revolving molten iron core. That fiery hot revolving inner core is what creates the magnetic shield around our planet. That shield protects us enough from the intense radiation of our sun to create a protected environment. Other planets, which do not have this shield, have been stripped bare of atmosphere and moisture, of those prerequisites for a most unusual event: the formation of something that was able to self-replicate, to recreate itself. Experiments on earth, attempting to recreate this violent chemistry in a boiling broth of amino acids, have shown some of those amino acids gathering together in the forms necessary for life: a self-replicating being. After 500 million years of this violent chemistry, it happened; life began on earth.
That’s the shock and awe of it all. Life was born. It required an extremely special set of circumstances to occur. It had to have a planet which was just the right size, at just the right distance from its sun, that sun being just the right size of nuclear furnace, that planet having a collision of just the right destruction to not destroy but create an inner hot rotating iron core and magnetic shield, with no further cataclysms that destroyed that planet up to now. All the innumerable circumstances had to be perfect for life to be created. Yet we live in a universe of chance, which is so huge we do not yet know its size, with an exponential number of chances for those circumstances to occur. Well, they did; and we are here. We are here because once that particular set of circumstances occurred at this particular spot in the universe, and once life began, nothing else was needed. These amino acids, which we are, are bombarded by various chemicals, and cosmic radiation events. We not only have the joining of two separate prolonged sequences of amino acids, which then split apart, with the possibility they can be recombined in a myriad of different ways, but we have all the changes wrought by all these extraneous radiation injuries to our genes. The possibilities become endless. None of our progeny was just like us. No progeny anywhere, as a matter of fact, is just like the self-replicating organisms which created them. What happens then? Those progeny which are best able to survive in the environment in which they were created are the ones which create the most progeny to follow after them. Environments are constantly changing in our universe. That’s the nature of the beast. Those progeny which meet the challenges of the next environment the best are those which survive the best. Therefore organisms change through natural variability to survive in those changed environments. Species develop. Species change by natural variability, as certain varieties survive where they can. Organisms become more complex as they change to meet those changing challenges to their existence. Life evolves. Species evolve. A personal God does not have to exist for any of this species differentiation and evolution to occur.
Well, yes. Life was created in an environment which was exponentially unique in our universe, and has not as yet been found to exist anywhere else in our universe. Once born, life has evolved in a pattern which is completely reasonable, although unpredictable. Those who believe that a God not only began life, but directed its development, appear to be under a mass hypnosis, because such a belief makes no logical sense, using the information that we have today. Life did not require in any way some kind of mysterious divine interfering hand. To believe otherwise is perhaps very comforting, but also greatly misleading. The universe, as best we can determine, runs only on chance, from which we derive the laws of probability and the laws of physics. The universe does not guide, does not expect certain conducts from us, and does not attach any value to any action, reaction, fission or fusion.
I do not know how the universe began, nor does anyone else who exists on the face of the planet earth. The only thing that I know is that it did begin. Otherwise you and I would not be here to enjoy. The only other thing I know is that to exist is an exquisite pleasure. I am humbly every day on my knees in gratitude for this opportunity to smell, touch, taste, feel, love, learn, express, and be blown away by sudden revelations of understanding. Every night I most humbly and from the bottom of my heart express my gratitude for being here, to be able to think, to enjoy, to be a part of life. My God, whatever you are that created us, I am grateful with every fiber of my being. I am however, acutely aware that whatever you are, once creation occurred, you Force had nothing to do with us, care nothing about us, and actually would just as soon we do not exist. There is no God which cares about us in any way, as far as we can determine. What a terribly encumbering delusion, which burdens the great majority of those humans who exist on this planet. To believe in a personal God who cares about us, prevents us from understanding that all life deserves equal respect. That delusion keeps us from making those decisions that will allow all of us to survive, rather than destroy.
Life, in all its various species, has those which are the most primitive, and which resemble the earliest organisms, which assimilate basic amino acids and chemicals from their environments to recreate their life. They get their basic food stuffs from the left over parts of past life which has died. All species in life prey upon each other. There is no form of life in existence, which does not survive without preying on other life, or the left over pieces of previous life. It is cruel and it is sad, but cannot be denied. Whether we are carnivores, omnivores or vegetarian, we do not exist unless we use, for our sustenance, other life. As those who are at the top of the predator chain die, for various reasons, those amino acids we contain get thrown back to the environment to serve as a meal for some other organism. Although humans are at the top of the predator chain, we also have those who devour us, to continue the circle of life.
What’s the bottom line? All of life is dependent on all other life. We are all dependent upon each other. Ethics does not just mean respect for Jews, Polaks, Niggers, Spikes, Wetbacks, Towelheads, Chinks, Indies, or any other name we wish to apply to each other. It does not mean just respect for all other humans, as Jesus, the Buddha, Gandhi and King have taught us. It has to do with respect for all of life, and an attempt to live in equilibrium with all other life. We are all tied together, in one giant organism which was uniquely created in this one location in this vast universe on this one planet, all of life completely dependent on all other forms of life. This fact is an essential piece of understanding that must precede any clear definition of our value systems. Any other definition of ethics, which does not contain this understanding, is to me inadequate. Ethics is not the same as morals, which relate only to animal systems behaviors, and vary from society to society. It is not mores, or doing what is right, or following God’s law, or any other misleading definition. Ethics is an overlying value system which must contain the realization that life is one giant organism, all of its various manifestations and species tightly bound together in order to survive.
The birth of life was a completely natural event, occurring in a universe which runs completely by chance. This universe has no value system, and attaches no importance to our being here. All species of life has its own set of values, so that there are as many morals as there are stars in the sky. If we are going to set a standard of value for all these millions of variable right and wrongs, it has to be a standard which contains these understandings, as well as equal value for all births, and all forms of life.