Meredith Sprunger's Synopsis of The Urantia Book
Synopsis of Paper 82
THE EVOLUTION OF MARRIAGE
1. Marriage—mating—grows out of bisexuality ...Marriage is enduring; it is not inherent in biologic evolution, but it is the basis of all social evolution and is therefore certain of continued existence in some form. Marriage has given mankind the home, and the home is the crowning glory of the whole long and arduous evolutionary struggle...the family is the master civilizer.
2. Notwithstanding the personality gulf between men and women, the sex urge is sufficient to insure their coming together for the reproduction of the species... Mating is an innate propensity, and marriage is its evolutionary social repercussion.
3. Sex interest and desire were not dominant passions in primitive peoples ...The all‑absorbing sex passion of the more highly civilized peoples is chiefly due to race mixtures, especially where the evolutionary nature has been stimulated by the associative imagination and beauty appreciation of the Nodites and Adamites.
4. The mating instinct... is the one emotion which, in the guise of individual gratification, effectively tricks selfish man into putting race welfare and perpetuation high above individual ease and personal freedom from responsibility.
5. With the savage, the food supply was the impelling motivation, but when civilization insures plentiful food, the sex urge many tines becomes a dominant impulse and therefore ever stands in need of social regulation ...No human emotion or impulse, when unbridled and overindulged, can produce so much harm and sorrow as this powerful sex urge... Self‑control, more and more self‑control, is the ever‑increasing demand of advancing mankind. Secrecy, insincerity, and hypocrisy may obscure sex problems, but they do not provide solutions, nor do they advance ethics.
6. The sex customs of dress, adornment, and religious practices had their origin in these early taboos which defined the range of sex liberties and thus eventually create concepts of vice, crime, and sin. But it was long the practice to suspend all sex regulations on high festival days, especially May Day.
7. Primitive marriage did not much curtail man’s sex liberties, but it did render further sex license taboo to the wife. Married women have always borne some mark which set them apart as a class by themselves, such as hairdress, clothing, veil, seclusion, ornamentation, and rings.
8. Marriage standards have always been a true indicator of the current power of the mores and the functional integrity of the civil government.
9. Many early tribes required feats of stealing as a qualification for marriage; later peoples substituted for such raiding forays, athletic contests and competitive games.. The groom was long required to enter the bride's family for at least one year, there to live and labor and prove that he was worthy of the wife he sought.
10. The qualifications of a wife were the ability to perform hard work and to bear children. She was required to execute a certain piece of agricultural work within a given time. Arid if she had borne a child before marriage, she was all the more valuable; her fertility was thus assured.
11. The fact that ancient peoples regarded it as a disgrace, or even a sin, not to be married, explains the origin of child marriages.. .It was also a general belief that unmarried persons could not enter spiritland...The ancients believed that even the dead. must be married.
12. Many tribes allowed members of the ruling group to have sex relations with the bride just before she was to be given to her husband. Each of these men would give the girl a present, and this was the origin of the custom of giving wedding presents.
13. Under certain mores widowhood was greatly to be feared, widows being either killed or allowed to commit suicide on their husband's graves, for they were supposed to go over into spiritland with their spouses.
14. In olden days many practices now regarded as immoral were encouraged. Primitive wives not infrequently took great pride in their husband's affairs with other women. Chastity in girls was a great hindrance to marriage; the bearing of a child before marriage greatly increased a girl's desirability as a wife since the man was sure of having a fertile companion.
15. Marriage has always been closely linked with both property and. religion. Property has been the stabilizer of marriage; religion, the moralizer...The ancients married for the advantage and welfare of the group; wherefore their marriages were planned and arranged by the group, their parents and elders.
16. The Old Testament deals with women as a form of property; the Koran teaches their inferiority. Man had the right to lend his wife to a friend or guest, and this custom still obtains among certain peoples ...The reason for holding the wife to stricter sex account than the husband was because her marital infidelity involved descent and inheritance.
17. When once started, this idea of female chastity took such hold on the races that it became the practice literally to cage up girls, actually to imprison them for years, in order to assure their virginity. And so the more recent standards and virginity tests automatically gave origin to the professional prostitute classes; they were the rejected brides, those women who were found by the grooms mothers not to be virgins.
18. Very early the savage observed that race mixture improved the quality of the offspring. It was not that inbreeding was always bad, but that outbreeding was always comparatively better; therefore the mores tended to crystallize in restriction of sex relations among near relatives.
19. Woman has usually favored the practice of in‑marriage; man, outmarriage... in an effort to conserve property within a clan, mores have arisen compelling women to choose husbands within their father's tribes... In‑mating was also practiced in an effort to preserve craft secrets; skilled workmen sought to keep the knowledge of their craft within the family.
20. Superior groups, when isolated, always reverted to consanguineous mating...The latter-day in‑marriage mores were tremendously influenced by the traditions of the violet race, in which, at first, matings were, perforce between brother and sister. And brother and sister marriages were common in early Egypt, Syria, Mesopotamia, and throughout the lands once occupied by the Andites.
21. Outmarriage itself was a peace promoter; marriages between the tribes lessened hostilities.. Outmarriage led to tribal co‑ordination and to military alliances; it became dominant because it provided increased strength; it was a nation builder. Outmarriage was also greatly favored by increasing trade contacts; adventure and exploration contributed to the extension of the mating bounds and greatly facilitated the cross‑fertilization of racial cultures.
22. Though the primary races—blue, red, and yellow—were in many respects superior to the three secondary peoples, it should be remembered that these secondary races had many desirable traits which would have considerably enhanced the primary peoples if their better strains could have been absorbed.
23. If the present‑day races of Urantia could be freed from the curse of their lowest strata of deteriorated, antisocial, feeble‑minded, and outcast specimens, there would be little objection to a limited race amalgamation.
24. Hybridization of superior and dissimilar stocks is the secret of the creation of new and more vigorous strains ...Hybridization augments vigor and increases fertility. Race mixtures of the average or superior strata of various peoples greatly increase creative potential, as is shown in the present population of the Unites States of North America.
25. Hybridization makes for species improvement because of the role of the dominant genes. Racial intermixture increases the likelihood of a larger number of the desirable dominants being present in the hybrid. For the past hundred years more racial hybridization has been taking place on Urantia than has occurred in thousands of years.. .Interbreeding between the highest types of the white, red, and yellow races would immediately bring into existence many new and biologically effective characteristics.
26. After all, the real jeopardy of the human species is to be found in the unrestrained multiplication of the inferior and degenerate strains of the various civilized peoples rather than in any supposed danger of their racial interbreeding.
Discussion Questions
1. Should we require the bride and groom to take courses on family education before granting a marriage license?
2. How do men and women differ in their motivation and outlook on life?
3. What is the best way to control the sexual drive in young people before marriage is practical or advisable?
4. Is the current practice of tolerating cohabiting a sign that our traditional marriage mores are weakening or changing?
5. Are there ethical ways to eliminate grossly inferior people from reproducing in our societry??
6. When should society encourage interracial marriage?
7. How serious is the sexual double standard today?
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