In the Bible’s first two chapters of Genesis, we read two slightly different
creation stories, thought to be from different sources put together by a later
editor. Taken together, they tell us that we are all one big human family,
descended from the original man and woman. We’re all brothers and
sisters. Science has subsequently refined the details of the origin of Homo
sapiens but the conclusion is the same: genetically, we are one species,
99.9% the same. And we are related to every other living thing on Earth. All
living things are one big extended family.

Since some of our human ancestors started leaving our original home in
Africa to migrate around the world, we have evolved some minor variations,
notably skin color. As our ancestors migrated further away from the equator
in both Europe and Asia, they developed a few mutations in their skins’
melanin synthesis pathways. Paler skins let in more sunlight, which is a
necessary catalyst for the synthesis of Vitamin D, which we need for strong
bones and teeth. Those of our ancestors who stayed closer to the Equator,
retained dark skins as a protection against skin cancer caused by the same
sunlight that we need for Vitamin D synthesis. Some of our benighted
brethren have concluded over the centuries that melanin synthesis
deficiency (the European, not the Asian mutations) somehow makes them
the apex of God’s creation and entitled to rule over everyone else. One
should note that God never said this.

As our ancestors continued migrating around the globe, eventually filling it
with brothers and sisters of all shades, we also developed a number of
religions, some with one god and some with many. The pronouncements of
these gods, as interpreted and promulgated by a variety of kings and priests,
gave us a lot of different rules for living. Human history is littered with
records of squabbles, sometimes murderous, between people of different
religions over whose gods are true and whose rules must be obeyed. Many
religions, like many other living species, have gone extinct. These include,
but are not limited to: Egyptian, Sumerian, Babylonian, Assyrian, Canaanite,
Greek, Roman, etc. Their gods are similarly extinct and mostly forgotten.
Who were Marduk, Ea, and Enlil? Parenthetically, it seems like being the
religion of a government with a powerful army helps its gods survive.

Over the centuries, as we developed different societies in different lands,
human made laws began replacing religious laws. Although most of us
admit that our secular laws are derived from human thought and
experience, in lots of governments the state religion heavily influences the
secular laws. That is clearly evident in some states here in the USA.

As we can easily see, we humans are migrators. We migrate to places where
we see opportunity and want to live. We leave places where we don’t want
to live for economic, religious, and other reasons. That Americans come
from migration is illustrated by the family of our current President, Donald
Trump. All four of his grandparents were born in Europe. His mother was an
immigrant from Scotland. Two of his three wives were immigrants: from
Czechoslovakia and Slovenia. Four of his five children had immigrant
mothers. (One of his children was even born out of wedlock, though Donald
later married her mother.) In the President’s current campaign against
immigration, all these family members might have escaped deportation
because they all have melanin synthesis deficiency. The President has
emphasized deporting brown people.

As we read further in Genesis, beyond Chapter 12, we are introduced to a
man living about 4,000 years ago, in Ur, a city in what historians now call
Sumer, where writing was invented. God told Abram to get up and go to a
land that God would show him where he would make his descendants a
great people. Abram did migrate to what was then called “Canaan,” and,
through many trials and tribulations, established his family there. As the
story continues, his name became Abraham and he had two sons, Ishmael,
with his wife’s maid, Hagar, and Isaac, with his wife, Sarai. From these two
boys grew two of the great monotheistic religions: first Judaism and later,
Islam. Today, both Arabs and Jews trace their descent from Abraham. Both
religions have branched into lots of variants, perhaps the most important
being Christianity, from Judaism. We’re all aware that the descendants of
Abram’s two boys still squabble, sometimes murderously, over “their”
homelands, now Israel and/or Palestine, that God bequeathed to all of
Abraham’s descendants. Besides Arabs and Jews fighting each other for
millennia, the Christians have periodically joined in, slaughtering each other
and both of their fellow monotheists. Consider the Crusades, the
Inquisition, and the Holocaust.

Adam and Eve’s descendants have been fighting among themselves for all of
recorded history and probably before that. Scientists have shown that
Neanderthal DNA is 99.5% the same as Homo sapiens. Neanderthals
probably evolved in Eurasia from Homo erectus, who had left Africa about a
million years before Homo sapiens’ recent migration out of Africa (perhaps
about 70,000 years ago.) Homo sapiens probably evolved from Homo
erectus who did not leave Africa.

Our ancestors, as they migrated up through the Middle East, met
Neanderthals and interbred with them, so they are now part of today’s
human family. Everyone with ancestors from Europe or Asia still carries from
2-4% Neanderthal DNA. Those who stayed in Africa do not have
Neanderthal DNA. Did we then wipe out the Eurasian Neanderthals and
take their “homeland”? We’ve subsequently done just that several times in
several places. For Americans, what immigrating Europeans did to the
Indians illustrates this behavior pattern. The “Native Americans” had been
in the Americas for tens of thousands of years before the arrival of
Europeans. We think that these first Americans walked across what was
then the Bering land bridge from Asia, then spread east and south to the tip
of South America. They might have caused the extinction of several
non-human, native species, including Mastodons. These first unwelcome
migrants were already established in the land that migrating Europeans,
mostly Spanish, English, and French, wanted as well as having darker skins
and different religions. So our European ancestors killed a huge percentage
of them, both with their better weapons and with new diseases, such as
Smallpox, which had not been seen in the Americas before. Under the
banner of Manifest Destiny, white Europeans spread “from sea to shining
sea,” and from north to south to control both continents in the New World.
For those Americans here before the Europeans, the new immigrants caused
an absolute catastrophe.

Nature has produced a diversity of skin shades, due to requirements for
vitamin D synthesis and skin cancer prevention, a diversity of languages, due
to separation by migration, a diversity of governmental systems, and a
diversity of religions, due to different thought patterns and mythologies, all
sources of internecine strife. These have been with us from prehistory to
the present. They seem firmly entrenched in the human character.
Individually and collectively we also fight over land, natural resources,
money, and gender equality. Money, first a medium of exchange, has now
developed into something some of us use to judge each other individual’s
worth as a human. We have several multi billionaires just in the United
States. Some of them don’t seem like you would want them as a friend. The
apparent goal of a lot of them seems simply to get more money, as if money
has become their chief god.

To illustrate just how big the number one billion is, you can calculate that,
since Julius Caesar was assassinated in 44 BC, there have been about
1,085,913,600 minutes or about 65,204,816,000 seconds. Elon Musk has
five times as many dollars as there have been seconds since Julius Caesar’s
time. How do you compare his worth as a human being to George
Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Marie Curie, Rosa Parks, Wolfgang Mozart,
Ludwig Beethoven, Itzhak Perlman, Marion Anderson, Maya Angelou,
Stephen Sondheim, the other members of your family, your neighbors,
schoolmates, etc.? (I could go on.) Jeff Bezos will fly you to space for a few
minutes on his Blue Origin rocket for ticket prices ranging from a few
hundred thousand to a few million bucks. Is he a better human being for
offering such a trip or are you a better human being than the rest of us if you
can afford the trip? Jewish mothers often want their children to grow up to
be a real “Mensch,” a kind, warm, smart, generous, good human being, male
or female. Are either Musk or Bezos a real Mensch or are they just rich?

Natural variation produces varieties, eventually species, diversity in living
things. Diversity in living things is a rule of nature, as clearly articulated by
Charles Darwin. A pale skin has nothing whatsoever to do with your worth
or value as a human being. It is valuable for successful bone development in
the varying, often weak sunlight of Northern Europe, Scandinavia, or
northern Asia.

There are both wonderful and rotten human beings in all of the world’s
societies and religions. It has not been my experience in 81 years of living
that any of the religions professed by any of the people I have known, have
made them a better person than people raised in other religions. The
attributes that I admire most in these people seem to derive from rather
universal, humanistic values present in Jews, Muslims, Christians, Buddhists,
Hindus, agnostics and atheists.

Science is a method of exploring nature through testing hypotheses by
well-controlled experiments. Hypotheses may be affirmed or rejected. This
method often leads to conclusions at odds with this or that religious or
political doctrine. Changing one’s mind based on experimentally verified
“facts” is characteristic of science. In contrast, in religions and politics, we

are taught to defend our faith or loyalty and often try to resolve our
differences with murderous force. Consider the Ku Klux Klan and its
treatment of Blacks, Jews, and Catholics. We use the same force in
competitions for land, resources, money, and sex for entertainment. We
also fight about whether XY males or XX females are more suited to be in
charge at home, at work, or in the government or church. The Bible, written
thousands of years ago, is pretty much in favor of XYs but modern
experience in our educational systems calls the Bible’s natural order into
question. Throughout the United States, females now outnumber males in
colleges and a lot of grad schools like medicine and law.

Consider what we have learned over the thousands of years that we have
been writing about “where we come from and what it all means.” We have
found that we are one big, sort of functional family, all descendant from the
same origin, in fact likely from the same single-celled organism that arose
almost four billion years ago. We’re still squabbling like the kids in any large
family, which, don’t forget, includes all living things. We must take our
stewardship of Earth seriously, observe world history and learn from it, and
listen to all of our real Menschen, both male and female. The selfish, greedy,
and aggressive will remain with us, at least through this stage of human
evolution. But by cultivating more and more Menschen, we can gradually
make mankind a happier and more loving family.

Peace, love, and brotherhood in this season when the light is returning.

References for my assertions are available on request.