 Please join in a moment of centering silence and now please join our in-gathering hymn It's in your hymnal number six and we'll sing only the first verse Welcome to the first Unitarian society of Madison This is a community where curious seekers gather to explore spiritual ethical and social issues in a safe and accepting and nurturing environment Unitarian Universalism supports the freedom of conscience of each individual as together we seek to be a force for good in the world My name is John Powell and on behalf of the congregation. I'd like to extend a special welcome to visitors We're a welcoming congregation So whoever you are and wherever you happen to be on your life's journey. We celebrate your presence among us Newcomers are encouraged to stay for our fellowship hour after the service and to visit the library Which is directly across the center doors here bring your drinks and your questions and members of our staff and lay ministry Will be on hand to welcome you you may also look for persons holding teal stoneware coffee mugs These are FUS members knowledgeable about our faith community and they would love to visit with you Experience guides are available after each service on Sunday for a tour of our special Sustainably designed addition this building and our national landmark meeting house if you'd like such a tour Please meet over here to my right near the big window right after the service We welcome children to stay for the duration of the service However, because it's sometimes difficult for some In attendance to here in our very lively acoustical environment Our child Haven and common commons are excellent places to retire if a child needs to talk or move around The service can be seen and heard from those areas and speaking of noise This would be a very good time to turn off any electronic device It takes a lot of volunteers to run the services smoothly I'd like to thank our volunteers for this morning our lay minister on duty during this service is Tom Boykoff our greeter and Janine Nussbaum our ushers this morning Susan Millar and Marty Hollis Hospitality is being handled by Sandra Plitch and our tour guide at after the service will be Rose Detmer Please note the announcements in the red floor is insert of your order of service and again welcome We hope today's service will stimulate your mind touch your heart and stir your spirit Come in with all your vulnerable fears and anxieties Loves for here you need not hide nor pretend Nor be anything other than who you are and who you are called to be Come into this place where we can touch and be touched heal and be healed forgive and be forgiven Come into this place where the ordinary is sanctified the human is celebrated the compassionate is expected Come into this place Together we make it a holy place. Good morning and welcome to you all Like to invite you to rise as you're able and join in reading together the words printed in your order of service for the lighting of our chalice May the light we now kindle Inspire us to use our powers to heal and not to harm to bless and not to curse to serve you spirit of freedom and While we're up I invite you to turn and share a warm greeting with your neighbors on this refulgent summer day To come up and join me because I have brought a very special friend of mine Got a very special area for you if you want to come and sit and if not if you can see from where you are That is totally cool This is my buddy fudgy bear some of you may know him He lives up in the caves and forests of bear a boo with With his mama bear and papa bear and grandpa bear and his brother and sister Arabica and espresso So you know what the minister is thinking of on Sunday mornings Well, the weather has been so wonderful lately that all fudgy bear wants to do is stay outside All day and play with his best friend frappuccino They were down at the creek playing in the water and digging in the sand looking for pretty stones fudgy bear found Strange old coin in the sand It had a weird picture of an owl on it and words that he couldn't understand Well, his friend frappuccino is very very smart and she said fudgy bear. I think I know what this is I think this is a wishing coin if it is It will grant you five wishes Wow five wishes with five wishes you could have anything you wanted so Fudgy bear and frappuccino sat in the shade and looked at the coin and Thought about what they would use those five wishes for well This being summer in Wisconsin the storm clouds soon began to roll in and Rain began to fall on them and fudgy bear said oh, no, I don't want it to rain I wish it would be sunny all the time Well as quick as a wink the sky cleared and the sun shone again, and it was a perfect beautiful day and So was the next day and the next and the next and the next Until the creek began to dry up and the gardens all began to turn brown and dry and fudgy bear Heard his family talking about how badly they needed water And he felt really sad and guilty that this might be his fault So he and frappuccino got together again He said Okay, I know what I need to do I Wish that the weather was back to normal, and that we would have rain sometimes too And I'm sorry that I made such a selfish wish Clouds began to move in and the rain began to fall again and the grass and the gardens were green Once more the next day fudgy bear and frappuccino were picking blackberries which are so delicious But they were trickled by thorns and bitten by mosquitoes and all sweaty and sticky And fudgy bear was getting more and more frustrated And he said I wish all of these blackberries were already picked and sitting on the kitchen table He realized When he saw all the empty bushes what he had done And as they ran back to fudgy bears cave They realized what he had said not just every blackberry on those bushes, but all the bushes everywhere in the world Had been picked and We're pouring out of the cave in a mountain of blackberries Frappuccino said oh no fudgy bear. We're gonna be in so much trouble What are the other bears in the world going to eat? We've taken all of their berries How'd you bear realized what he had to do? He said I wish all of the blackberries were back where they were an hour ago And I'm sorry for making a stupid wish again all of the blackberries were back where they belonged But fudgy bear and frappuccino realized that there was only one wish left which meant if they made a mistake They couldn't fix it and they thought and they thought what would be the perfect wish that had nothing wrong with it That couldn't possibly go wrong Fudgy bear couldn't think of it He said you know maybe Maybe I'm just not smart enough to have a coin like this You know I Think I know what we need to do And he held the coin tightly He said I wish I Wish that I had never found this coin and that it was gone So as fudgy bear and frappuccino went back to pick blackberries and pit play in the creek again She said you know what fudgy bear? Actually, that was a pretty wise wish So sometimes getting exactly what we want might not be the best thing for us Well, thank you so much for being such good listeners It's so great to be able to bring fudgy bear back to be with you And our young people are going to leave for summer fun now, and we will see you afterwards Thank you all Our ancient reading this morning is from Greek mythology the story of Daedalus and King Minos of Crete Called upon the brilliant inventor Daedalus to help build an enclosure for the Minotaur a fearsome creature with the body of a man and the head and tail of a bull The king wanted the violent monster contained in a labyrinth with so many twists and turns that a prisoner could be lost there forever Unfortunately the king also imprisoned Daedalus and his son Icarus so that the secrets of the labyrinth would never be revealed Although the escape routes from Crete by land and sea were all guarded clever Daedalus Knew that nothing could stop an escape by air and so the inventor Constructed wings for the two of them out of feathers held together by wax and they began to plan their escape as Icarus strapped on his wings his father warned him to fly carefully if He rose too high the heat of the sun could melt the wax of his wings And if he dipped too low the dampness of the sea could leave the feathers waterlogged Icarus agreed and Furiously flapping their wings the two of them flew out across the sea and were soon far away from Crete Unfortunately exhilarated with the joy of flight Icarus forgot his father's warnings and soared higher and higher Sure enough the heat of the sun melted his wings and the poor boy plunged to the sea and drowned His father sadly continued his flight until he was safely in Sicily But without his beloved son our modern reading is from the philosopher Daniel Dennett from his book freedom evolves He writes now what will we do with our knowledge? The birth pangs of our discoveries have not subsided Many are afraid that learning too much about what we are Trading in mystery for mechanisms will impoverish our vision of human possibility The more we learn about what we are the more options we will discern about what we try to become Americans have long honored the self-made man But now that we are actually learning enough to be able to remake ourselves into something new many flinch Many would apparently rather bumble around with their eyes closed Trusting in tradition then look around to see what's about to happen Yes, it is unnerving. Yes, it can be scary After all these are entirely new mistakes. We are now empowered to make for the first time But it's the beginning of a great new adventure for our knowing species and It's much more exciting as well as safer if we open our eyes Now I'd like to invite you to rise as you're able and join in singing together our next him Number 90 in your gray hymn book from all the fret and fever of the day A few months ago by the news that Chinese researchers had for the first time successfully produced genetically modified human embryos Biologists at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou announced that they have edited the DNA of embryos To modify the gene responsible for producing Thalassemia a life-threatening blood disorder While medical researchers and doctors use a variety of approaches to treat or prevent disease Few of them are as dramatic as the prospect of editing our genetic code Such that even future generations may be transformed Knowing the controversy that this announcement would incite the Chinese Scientists were quick to reassure the world that these embryos were never intended to produce a live birth Nevertheless, ethicists around the world have responded furiously to the news with the most significant scientific journals Refusing to publish the research and calling for all such experimentation to be stopped The National Institutes of Health firmly restated its policy that editing the genetic code of humans is Quote a line that should not be crossed and that this research remains Absolutely ineligible for federal funding in the United States The emergence of radical new medical technologies raised ethical questions with no easy answers On the one hand nearly eight million children are born each year with a serious birth defect That is at least partly genetic Can we morally refuse to pursue treatments that are theoretically within our reach? On the other hand the possibility of permanently eliminating certain kinds of bodies from the human gene pool Raises the specter of eugenics the organized effort to produce more perfect humans Either by limiting the reproduction of less desirable individuals or encouraging the more desirable ones The prospect of designer babies long the subject matter of science fiction is ever closer to coming a reality And we're tempted to react emotionally at the thought of crafting children in the same way that we custom order designer clothes or furniture We still remember all too well Nazi Germany's vision of a master race With the unwanted classes of humanity simply eliminated The practice of eugenics in the mid 20th century was one of the most tragic scandals in the history of medical experimentation Haunting us and guiding our ethical decisions even today In fact because we can still remember these atrocities so vividly I find that we're often distracted from the more likely scenarios in which we engineer the future of humanity for better or worse With this knowledge of the potential repercussions of our decisions How can we articulate a unitarian universalist moral response to these controversies? These questions have captured my imagination since I was a child When I was first drawn to the world of science fiction to stories and films Describing futuristic science as wondrous as magic Technologies which are now becoming a reality Most interesting for me was the vision that authors presented of the future Often as an allegory for our own society in the present How will humanity respond to the problems that afflict us today? Will we defeat disease and aging? Will we choose peace over war and even more urgent? Considering the smoldering protests in Ferguson and Baltimore and Madison What are the social consequences of our vision? Who will enjoy the rewards of our amazing technological future and who will be left behind or even eliminated? So often the vision described by my favorite childhood authors Ray Bradbury and Robert Heinlein and Isaac Asimov was a future populated entirely by white people What does it feel like to glimpse someone else's image of the future and realize that people like you are Invisible or even entirely absent from it I've also read a number of stories in which the future apparently contains no gay or lesbian people And I have to wonder when this vision actually becomes scientifically possible What will stop us from making it a reality? Human genetic engineering is just one part of a larger trend known as transhumanism In which we attempt to overcome our biological limitations Biotechnology promises to lengthen our lives Repair our injuries and protect us from disease make us stronger smarter even more attractive and emotionally healthy The possibilities seem so limitless as to resemble magic Increasingly these promises are becoming practically possible But is this the reality we want? Being a historian one of the first questions I ask with challenging topics is in what ways has humanity already faced this issue? Our forebears imagined escaping or at least transforming the human condition at least as far back as the Bronze Age several hundred years before the birth of Jesus Ancient stories promised that we could elude old age and death The epic of Gilgamesh tells of an herb that grants immortality and stories of the fountain of youth were told in many cultures But ancient tales also warned about the misuse of technology to become too much like the gods For example when the people of Babel began to build a tower that would have its top in the heavens God scattered them across the globe and left them speaking different languages And in Greek literature the fall of Icarus is practically synonymous with hubris the sin of forgetting humanity's proper place in the world in Western cultures which have been shaped by these biblical and Greek stories The rise of ambition in humans is often followed by a humiliating failure in which we are reminded to remember our limitations Despite this ambivalence however Humanity has persisted in developing a variety of technologies to repair or enhance the human person We have boosted our bodies with mechanical aids such as canes dentures and eyeglasses We have treated our bodies surgically by extracting or filling teeth Removing an inflamed appendix or tumor even replacing failing organs We have regulated our bodies processes chemically Using medicines to lower our fevers and relieve our pain kill infections Even adjust our psychological health by altering our brain chemistry There's no question that biotechnology has done so much to lengthen and improve our lives and these Technologies are all familiar enough to seem like reasonable modifications Even though our society is not always accommodating of people using wheelchairs or hearing aids These technologies at least don't strike us as unnatural or threatening our humanity Rather, it's the smart drugs that boost our memory and attention microscopic robots that swarm through our bodies making repairs and Babies genetically designed to excel in sports and languages That leave me feeling that the essence of our future humanity may be at stake The most enthusiastic promoters of transhumanism call these concerns hysterical and Recall the so-called Luddites of the 19th century who smashed the textile machine rate that threatened to replace human workers At the radical edge of the transhumanist movement are those who don't want their modifications to blend in but to stand out Enhanced and decorated not merely to be human, but to be superhuman One flamboyant spokesperson is 28 year old model and performer Victoria Modesta whose lower left leg was amputated when she was 15 Rather than try and hide her amputation with a standard flesh-colored prosthesis Modesta flots her differences by drawing attention to them Her leg is covered in sparkling crystals in one scene electronics and flashing lights in another and in yet another Fitted with an ominous black spike with no attempt to resemble an ordinary limb at all She cultivates a Betty page pin-up sexiness in her videos and advertises her unconventionality as a weapon against conformity and fascism for Modesta Body modification is about becoming more than human the less colorful promoters of Biotechnology simply say that we have a moral obligation To do whatever we can to raise the healthiest humans possible Including screening embryos for genetically determined conditions and even modifying their DNA These advocates aren't arguing for superhuman enhancements or decorations, but life-saving measures and it's harder to dismiss their arguments The critics of transhumanism on the other hand Point to the Chinese genetic research as one reminder of why we need greater awareness and stronger Restrictions worldwide We're tinkering with biology. We don't entirely understand and we can't yet guarantee That modifying an embryo's genetic code won't have Unanticipated repercussions later in its life or for future generations other critics look beyond mere practical concerns to the moral values at stake and reject this research as playing God as ambitions that are indecent and immoral I Suspect that the most reasonable positions fall Somewhere between our two readings this morning between the divine punishment of Icarus for his arrogance and the rosy optimism of Daniel Dennett Unitarian Universalists are typically guided by positive attitudes towards science and reason But these complicated questions also call us to consider a broad range of traditions and Perspectives which helps us to articulate our most basic ethical positions Respect one another treat others fairly Seek to understand more build more inclusive community Remember the web of all life Several years ago. I was invited to serve on a board at Meritor Hospital where I spent six years making sure that their human Experimentation was conducted safely and morally This experience helped me to see that many real life controversies can't be understood as simply right or wrong But are perhaps better evaluated in terms of their consequences For example, if your doctor told you that they could give your dying family member Another 20 years of healthy life It would be nearly impossible to say no But if we offered this to every dying person the consequences for our society would be catastrophic The leap from an individual case to a general policy is enormous and requires more than simplistic responses My experiences with human research bring to mind a few more ethical concerns Raised by biotechnology and transhumanism First one of the temptations of these technologies is to create categories of less desirable Humans based on our growing ability to fix them For example, if we feel an obligation to raise only the healthiest children Does that mean that we would be willing to eliminate all embryos with Down syndrome? Historically, we've used the concept of personhood to promise every individual certain rights But we also know from experience how easily we treat people as possessing less humanity This is why it's so important that we uphold the inherent worth and dignity of every person This principle treats our humanity as something that does not have to be earned and therefore cannot be revoked The second question that comes to mind is if our entire society stands to benefit from a particular medical procedure Will we make it compulsory? This is a particular fear for people with inheritable disabilities who have in some societies been treated as defective citizens Again, because we still remember the most flagrant recent abuses of eugenics I'm less worried about reviving forced euthanasia or sterilization in a modern consumerist economy What I predict is that we'll see social and economic pressures to make people conform instead I regularly show my classes the 1997 science fiction movie Gattaca depicting a society in the near future where genetic testing predicts a newborn's chances of developing imperfections and Permanently defy the citizens into a ruling class and an underclass My third concern is that the latest medical advances are typically within the reach of only the wealthy On the hospital ethics board one of our guiding principles was that the risks and benefits of medical research Need to be shared equally by all of society in a similar concern transhumanism critic Kali Larson believes that modern technological developments inevitably serve the interests of corporations rather than individuals society or the environment How do we make sure that it's not only the interests of the powerful that are guiding the development of biotechnology? Lastly I want to address the concern that biological modifications might deprive us of what actually makes us human environmental ethicist Bill McKibbin suggests that we are created partly by our Limitations and struggles and he worries that the elimination of imperfections is also the end of life That is free or meaningful He writes the person left without any choice at all is the one you've engineered You've decided once and for all certain things about him He'll have genes expressing proteins to alter his mood to boost his memory to shape his stature Down that path lies the death of what we call human meaning The idea that people are in some way their own human beings and not Pre-programmed semi robots Others however reject McKibbin's views that struggle provides a noble source of character And they add that not all changes to the meaning of humanity will necessarily be for the worse There's no question that biotechnology will continue to shift what it means to be human in the future But I worry that our liberal religious ethical system is not up to the challenge in particular I believe that our habit of simply leaving these difficult choices up to the individual is not an Expression of the inherent worth and dignity of every person but rather a betrayal of it One of the most important lessons in this for me Comes from the black lives matter movement and this year of racial justice work that however Inherently precious we claim each person is this worth does not translate into the social power Needed for each of us to protect our lives equally From the interests of those who might exploit or neglect us The radical individualism of our first principle alone is not enough to guide our communities in the direction of justice if nothing else the recent news of human genetic engineering in China Reminds us that just because some of us will resist potentially destructive choices Doesn't mean that all of us will The good news is that I believe our tradition does contain what we need to shape our future wisely I Look to our awareness of the interdependent web and our care for all of the many strands that join us It's through that lens of our interconnectedness that we understand how systems may serve to oppress us But that relationships may also be formed to liberate us And I hold up also the Unitarian Universalist tradition of evolving our values and principles as our circumstances and needs change Just as we entered the modern era by asserting that the ancient stories and rules were not Adequate to our needs we move mindfully into the future by questioning our own principles and perhaps envisioning something new to guide us as We keep ourselves informed about the latest technological developments and the ethical questions They raise the world will very much need our example of open minds loving hearts and helping hands I'm so grateful for communities like this one where we are striving to build together a Future in which we will all have a place at the table May it be so at this time our ushers will pass the baskets for the giving and receiving of our offering We are so grateful that all you have made possible with your generosity and your giving does make a difference Thank you this morning But if you're wondering what will carry us safely and soulfully into the future I invite you to rise and join as you are able in our closing hymn number 131 in your hymn book love will I leave you with these words from the Reverend Mark Bellatini Who was my minister when I was a seminary student back in and has just retired from his long ministry with first Unitarian Church of Columbus, Ohio live simply at home in yourselves Act justly Speak justly Remember the depth of your own compassion Forget not your power in the days of your powerlessness Do not desire to be wealthier than your peers and stint not your hand of charity Practice forbearance Speak the truth or speak not Take care of yourselves as bodies for you are a good gift Crave peace for all peoples in this world Beginning with yourselves and go as you go with the dream of that piece