My father began his subscription to National Geographic before I was born. When I was a preschooler, I enjoyed looking at the large number of photos in this magazine. By the time I was four my parents had begun to teach me how to read. Wanting to learn more about the pictures in National Geographic, I made this magazine one of my main reading items. As a result, my interest in science blossomed.  

My favorite subjects in public school were math and science. During high school, I took all of the math courses offered, as well as all of the available courses in chemistry and physics. I continued to gravitate toward math and science in my choice of college courses. Because religion was a part of my upbringing, I began to think about alleged conflicts between science and religion during my undergraduate studies.

My desire to investigate the possibility of a concept of God compatible with contemporary science led me to focus on philosophy and theology in my graduate studies. Ironically, in seminars designed to defend theism in the face of modern science, I recognized fallacious arguments on behalf of that purpose. For instance, I was displeased with attempts by theologians and religious philosophers to propagate misconceptions about science.

Eric Rust was a philosopher and theologian in the graduate school in which I was enrolled. Rust held degrees in science and theology. He wrote several books on philosophy, including one entitled Science and Faith. I interacted with him often during  my graduate studies.

Professor Rust held the position that clashes between religion and science are undesirable and unproductive and that Christians should avoid them. Among the causes of clashes cited by Rust was using the Scriptures to dispute science in areas where ancient literature does not apply. Another cause mentioned by Rust is the use of naturalistic science to dispute religious beliefs.

Rust’s primary approach to the reconciliation of religion and science was the integration or amalgamation of the two. Apparently the first step in this project was to highlight the limitations of science. One of the ways he attempted to do this was to characterize scientific models in a negative manner. Rust argued that the models chosen (especially the mathematical equations) are disconnected conceptualizations rather than descriptions of the reality the models are intended to represent. Further, Rust claimed that scientists abstract from reality only what is relevant for their purposes.

My response to Rust is that in science mathematical descriptions and equations are not chosen in a manner disconnected from the phenomena being studied. Rather, they are based both on equations proven to represent previous research as well as the analysis of new data deriving from ongoing research. Reputable scientists do not create “models” to be imposed on reality. Additionally, the scientific process acknowledges that its results are in a certain sense provisional. Modifications often have to be made based on new findings.

Rust tried to use the idea of imagination for his own purpose. He stated that scientific imagination is identical to religious intuitive insight. I question this claim because I understand imagination in science to pertain to envisioning problems to address, broadening discovery as well as sharpening analysis. Rust asserted that religious intuitive insight discerns a “depth” within or behind nature (the physical universe). This depth was identified by Rust as mind (which Rust also called God). According to Rust, the physical universe (nature) is the medium of revelation (of God). Rust stated that the Incarnation (the Christian doctrine of God in the flesh) is the symbol or affirmation of the revelation of the divine through nature. Thus, Rust asserted that the physical universe is sacramental.

Rust essentially proposed a metaphysic that combined the physical universe and an intangible mind, where the physical universe was not the primary dimension. This metaphysic was expressed in a theology-science amalgamation. Religion is the key. It can explain vital aspects of the universe that science cannot. My opinion is that Rust’s metaphysic is incompatible with science and, in fact, is an affront to science.

During my graduate studies, I became somewhat familiar with the writings of Hans Kung, Swiss Catholic priest and theologian. Kung joined the faculty of the University of Tübingen, Germany, in 1960 and taught at that institution for five decades. In 1978 Kung made it public that he rejected the doctrine of papal infallibility and was forbidden by the Catholic Church to continue his role as a Catholic theologian. However, he remained at the University of Tübingen as Professor of Ecumenical Theology. Over his career Kung authored more than fifty books.

One of Kung’s areas of interest was religion and science. In 2007, he published The Beginning of All Things: Science and Religion. He indicated that he sought an accomodation between science and religion. He contended that science and religion are not mutually exclusive but are complementary. However, he was unable to conceal his negativity towards science. He stated that many scientists were unable to see beyond the limits of their discipline. On the other hand, Kung the theologian was not hesitant to comment on scientific fields such as relativity, quantum mechanics, evolution, and brain science.

Kung insisted that science contains many important questions that it cannot answer. According to Kung, God is the reality that provides the answers to these questions. For example, evolution cannot be understood apart from the role of God. God was not the designer of complex forms of life but was the creator of the laws of nature by which life evolved. Kung explained that there is no divine intervention in the laws of nature. There seems to be an echo of Deism here.

For Kung, theology can comment on God’s relation to the physical universe, but science cannot investigate the idea of God. Kung argued that by definition God is a reality beyond space and time and therefore not a scientific category. God cannot be studied according to the scientific method. Yet God can be said to be the answer to questions such as the following: Why is there something and not simply nothing? Where did the minimal structure that existed at the Big Bang originate? It seems that Kung’s position is a version of “the God of the gaps.”

An earlier book by Kung, Freud and the Problem of God, gives us additional glimpses of Kung's view of science. Kung’s interest in psychology and psychoanalysis led him to examine Freud’s career including his atheism.

Freud was influenced by Feuerbach and other naturalistic scholars. In the latter half of the nineteenth century, the natural sciences were in the ascendancy and religion was increasingly questioned.

While Kung possessed a fair level of appreciation for psychotherapy, he was nevertheless quite critical of Freud, especially when it came to his atheism. For many of Freud’s ideas, Kung relied on Freud’s volume The Future of an Illusion. Therein Freud identified religious ideas as illusions that are the “fulfillment of the oldest and strongest wishes of mankind.” Certain of these wishes he identified: the wish for protection from life’s perils; the wish for justice in an unjust society; the wish for the prolongation of existence in a future life; the wish for knowledge of the origin of the world; the wish for the explanation of the relationship between the corporeal and the mental. All of these wishes, according to Freud, are rooted in the conflicts of childhood. Freud also studied the history of religions in general through the lens of evolutionary thought. Kung disputed Freud’s methods and findings with respect to the origin of religion.

Freud intended to provide a scientific explanation of the origin and nature of belief in God. In addition to historical and physical analyses, he relied upon the newer discipline of depth psychology. Kung accused Freud of replacing belief in God with belief in science. However, that is more a view imposed on Freud by Kung than Freud’s own view. In fact, Kung created a false conception of science by which to critique Freud.

Kung portrays science as an ideology in which people exercise faith. Apparently for Kung science is comprised of dogma that, when manipulated, result in rigid conclusions. Kung asserted that much of the population of industrial nations was convinced at one time that science and the technology issuing from it would bring about the universal happiness of mankind. Instead, in Kung’s opinion, they have become unhappy and disillusioned with science.

In my judgment, Kung’s view of science is erroneous. To understand what science really is it is instructive to refer to the writings of Richard Feynman, Nobel Prize–winning physicist. I have enjoyed reading a number of Professor Feynman’s works, both popular and academic, and have found this to be a stimulating learning experience.

Feynman summarizes the nature of science in three aspects: (1) a method of finding things out; (2) the contents—the things that have been found out; (3) technology—the new things you can do with the things that have been found out. The key to understanding the whole of science is the first aspect.

Feynman reminds us that the scientific method is based on observation. Observation is the final judge of the truth of an idea. The principle of science is that if observation proves an exception to a rule, then that rule is wrong. One of Feynman’s emphases is that the scientist tries to find exceptions, tries to find ways the rules are wrong. The scientist is excited to show an old rule is wrong and to find out the correct rule. Feynman adds that scientific observation must be precise, thorough, specific, and objective. Finally, the scientist is open to uncertainty and doubt. Scientific knowledge is a body of statements of varying degrees of certainty. The scientist is always looking for new ideas and greater certainty.

Over time my identity as a skeptic was fully realized. There were two primary roots of this transformation. The first was the overwhelming reality of human suffering and the effect of this on the coherence of the traditional concept of God (as both all-powerful and all-loving). When challenged defenders of the traditional God affirm one of two alternatives. The first is the sovereign God who ordains everything that takes place, including the decisions of evil and brutal people. This also includes all suffering no matter the immediate source. This is not a loving God. This is not a God to be trusted or affirmed.

The second alternative is the limited God, often described as self-limiting. One major argument for this God is that this deity gives humans the maximum freedom to live a life of responsibility and creativity. This God is virtually powerless to prevent suffering at any level. It is usually claimed that this God cares about humans who suffer but can do nothing to mitigate their suffering. It would seem useless to pray to this God much less to identify this entity as a deity.      

The second root of my skepticism was the impressive discoveries of modern science that eliminate the need for a deity in order to understand the history of the universe.

To review the beautiful and amazing natural reality that surrounds us, let’s begin with quantum mechanics, the conceptual framework for understanding the behavior of atoms and subatomic particles. These particles, for instance, electrons, photons, and quarks, exhibit behavior wholly different from how we understand the macro world, the visible world we live in daily. Particles were discovered to be discrete packets of energy with wave-like properties. Thus, one of the primary principles of quantum mechanics is the wave-particle duality of energy and matter. The underlying mathematics of quantum mechanics is the wave function that identifies the position and momentum of a particle, but only as probabilities, based on the constraints of the uncertainty principle. Closely related is the principle that the observation or measurement of a particle has a significant effect on it. Measuring a quantum system changes the quantum state that describes that system.

Quantum mechanics is the underlying mathematical framework of many fields of physics and chemistry, including atomic physics, quantum chemistry, molecular physics, computational physics, particle physics, and nuclear physics. Quantum mechanics explains certain microscopic systems such as superconductors and superfluids. Additionally, quantum mechanics aids in understanding various processes in plants (for example, photosynthesis) and animals (for example, complex brain processes in humans).

Quantum mechanics is an important component of the history of the universe. Since physicist Georges Lemaître proposed the Big Bang model in 1927, most physicists and cosmologists have endorsed this theory. The bang originated from a singularity of extraordinary density and extremely high temperature. This singularity involved quantum fluctuations. At the bang and at the earliest moments of the universe immediately after high densities of matter and energy remained.

These earliest moments are characterized as inflation, a rapid outward push of matter and energy, and spacetime itself. During these moments gravity was the dominant force. How can gravity explain the outward push when it is an attractive force? Physicist Brian Greene explains that in just the right environment gravity can be repulsive. For a tiny time interval the early universe provided just such an environment. After the brief burst of inflation, expansion continued but at a slower rate than previously. Lemaître and astronomer Edwin Hubble observed that galaxies are moving away from Earth. They also discovered that the farther away a galaxy is the faster it is moving. They concluded that the recession of galaxies is evidence that the entire universe is expanding at an extremely high rate.

How large is the universe? One way to address this question is to calculate the number of extraterrestrial bodies in the universe. The observable universe contains an estimated 2 trillion galaxies and 10 to the 24th power stars. Stars in the actual universe (both observed and beyond observation) are estimated to be 10 to the 100th power. At present it is estimated by astronomers that the observable universe is 93 billion light years across.

Spacetime is the continuum that fills the universe. It is composed of three dimensions of space and one dimension of time. The measurement of an event in spacetime is represented by four coordinates. Since many physicists argue that there are more than three spacial dimensions, the determination of the location of an event is likely more complex. In his theory of special relativity, Einstein proposed that the effect of matter and energy on spacetime is the warping and curving of spacetime. This Einstein envisioned as the geometrical form of a gravitational field.

In addition to ordinary matter and energy, there are dark matter and dark energy. Dark matter is unseen matter that exerts a gravitational pull on stars keeping them in their galaxies, and on galaxies keeping them in their clusters. In each galaxy the total mass of dark matter far exceeds the mass of the galaxy's luminous matter. Physicists and astronomers have determined that visible matter makes up 5 percent of the critical density of the universe and dark matter 25 percent of the universe. Research on the expansion of the universe confirms that dark energy contributes nearly 70 percent of the mass and energy of the universe.

The established way of calculating the age of the universe consists of several methods. The first is Hubble’s Law. Astronomer Edwin Hubble discovered that the rate a galaxy is moving away from us is directly proportional to its distance from us. From this relationship scientists extrapolate backwards to  the original moment (singularity) of the universe. A second method is measurement of the cosmic microwave background radiation. These measurements give the cooling time of the universe since the Big Bang. A third method is to determine the age of the oldest stars. The scientific consensus is that these stars were formed from clouds of gas 150 to 200 million years after the Big Bang. Until recently it was held that the universe is 14 billion years old based in part on what was believed to be the oldest star—HD140283 (Methusalah). Adjustments to the results of the above methods based on the density of the universe, including that of normal matter, dark matter, and radiation, refine the determination of the age of the universe.

The James Webb Space Telescope was developed, constructed, and tested from 1996 to 2020. It was launched in December 2021. It entered service in July 2022. It was inserted into an orbit around the sun 930,000 miles from earth. This telescope traverses its complete orbit in six months. It conducts infrared astronomy. Its images are translated into full color portrayals of the sections of the universe with which the telescope is concerned at a given moment.

The Hubble Space Telescope provided scientists as well as the general population amazing images of the universe. However, the Webb Telescope has opened vistas that only a few years ago would have been beyond comprehension. Webb has found the most ancient galaxies, some from the very earliest phases of the life of the universe. For example, one of Webb’s discoveries is possibly the oldest proto galaxy cluster, the formation of which is dated around 650 million years after the Big Bang. This was a period of uniform distribution of matter and energy due to gravity. Some physicists and cosmologists have suggested that, based on the dramatic findings of Webb, the universe is older than previously thought, perhaps as much as twice the long-held concensus.

I could take some time to discuss two alternative theories of the history of the universe—(1) conformal cyclic cosmology, an infinite cyclic universe each aeon of which is preceded by its own Big Bang, and (2) a myriad of parallel universes composing a vast multiverse. However, I have chosen to wrap up my musings with a consideration of human beings, creatures who have evolved into scientific human beings.

Our solar system, including Earth, was formed about 4.5 billion years ago. Earth soon became suitable to sustain life. Life on Earth likely began 3.7 billion years ago, the evidence for which are rocks containing fossils of cyanobacteria. Other research points to oceanic hydrothermal vents that hosted prokaryotes containing proteins purported to be the remnants of the last universal common ancestor (LUCA). From LUCA came the phylogenetic tree linking all of the groups of living organisms. The earliest animal fossils are estimated to be 665 million years old.

Charles Darwin became convinced in the 1830s during his travels to South America and especially the Galapagos Islands that nature is processive and not static. He concluded that species are groups in which individuals are struggling for survival. Darwin was influenced by Thomas Malthus’ 1798 book An Essay on the Principle of Population, which Darwin read in 1838. Malthus wrote about human populations and their survival or failure to survive. He identified checks on population growth, most prominently disease, war, and poverty. He stated that within populations individuals without advantageous circumstances manifest a high level of mortality.

Darwin applied this observation to all species and expanded it to fill out his theory. He explained that within a population individuals exhibit tiny variations. Individuals less suited to their environment are less likely to survive. Those more suited to their environment are more likely to survive and to reproduce, leaving their heritable traits to future generations. Darwin called this process natural selection.

Primates diverged from other mammals approximately 85 million years ago. Homo habilis (the first of the Homo genus) appeared 2 million years ago. Fossils of anatomically modern human beings (called Homo sapiens by Linnaeus) were found in East Africa and Ethiopia and estimated to be 200,000 years old. Later fossils of Homo sapiens were discovered in Morocco and were dated to 315,000 years ago.

The evolution of human beings and the development of their potential can only be characterized as extraordinary. Homo sapiens are able to understand the universe, from the smallest things to the largest things. Through scientific and moral thinking our species is able to use this knowledge of the world for the betterment of other humans and non-human living things. Human ingenuity, research, and technology have been able to develop advances in agriculture, medicine, education, energy, and transportation that have improved the quality of and extended the quantity of human life.  

Yet humans have also created terrifying threats to human existence.

To call attention to perhaps the greatest of these threats, I return to the understanding of the atom. The basic understanding of the life and effects of the atom was discovered during the period of 1915 to 1925. Physicists responsible for this disclosure included Niels Bohr, Wolfgang Pauli, Enrico Fermi, Paul Dirac, Werner Heisenberg, and Erwin Schrödinger.

In August 1939, Albert Einstein, fearing that Hitler would soon harness nuclear power for his conquests, sent a letter to President Franklin Roosevelt urging him to initiate research for a nuclear weapons program. By 1942, what came to be known as the Manhattan Project was underway.

The scientists and engineers responsible for developing and producing the atom bomb were directed by Robert Oppenheimer. The military overseer was Army General Leslie Groves. The bomb under construction was a fission bomb using weapons-grade plutonium (Pu239) produced in a nuclear reactor from decayed uranium (U235). When it became evident that Nazi Germany was not going to build a nuclear weapon, the attention of the project team turned to Japan. The Trinity test of the A-Bomb at Alamogordo took place in July 1945. Only one month later atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The deaths from the blast at Hiroshima were 80,000; the deaths at Nagasaki were 50,000. The total after six months were estimated at 170,000.

Even before the 1945 Japan bombings there was discussion among scientists about constructing a “super bomb,” a thermonuclear fusion bomb. The first stage of this bomb is a fission detonator (essentially an A-Bomb fueled by Pu239) and a fusion second stage (fueled by heavy isotopes of hydrogen). This weapon is 1,000 times as powerful as the atomic bomb used against Japan. The project to produce the thermonuclear weapon moved quickly, and a large arsenal came into existence by the mid-1950s. Daniel Ellsberg, in The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner, writes that as an employee of the Department of Defense in 1961 he was shown a graph that was an answer to a question by President John Kennedy to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The question was: “If your plans for general nuclear war are carried out as planned, how many people will be killed in the Soviet Union and China?” The answer was 325 million. Later Ellsberg was informed that an additional 200 million should be added representing the deaths in Eastern and Western Europe and Asia.

In the current world a major nuclear war between the United States and Russia involving at least 4,000 weapons would cause the death of one billion people (of the world population of 8 billion) from the initial blast, another billion from the ensuing firestorm and fallout, and 5 billion from a nuclear winter bringing starvation due to the injection of soot into the stratosphere (that would last for at least a decade).

Ellsberg described the nuclear policy of the United States that has not changed since the 1950s. That policy is to win such a war by annihilating most of the other nation’s civilian population. This could be achieved in two ways. First, by an effective first strike. Second, by a Doomsday Machine. The second includes a combination of a superior early warning system and the delegation of strike authority to a number of theater commanders and other four-star officers. It takes no imagination to guess the nuclear policy of Russia and China.

In his book on nuclear war policy, Ellsberg mentions twenty-five nuclear crises from the Truman administration through the Clinton administration. These are identified as threats from the United States. There were more of these incidents during the Bush, Obama, and Trump administrations. Some threats were bluffs, some involved serious consideration, and others were near launches.

Though we have become the victims of the misapplication of science, the answer to the threats I have mentioned is not religious superstition. Our only hope is science accompanied  by humane morality, ethics rooted in social justice, and political will. We must dismantle the Doomsday Machine as well as destroy all nuclear weapons. Only a globally coordinated effort will suffice.

Immediately after the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings in 1945, Albert Einstein and a number of the Manhattan Project scientists founded the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. One of the Bulletin’s purposes was to publish the Doomsday Clock. The clock symbolizes how close humanity is to self-destruction by the deployment of nuclear weapons. In 1947, the clock announced that it was 7 minutes to midnight (global catastrophe). The development of nuclear weapons by the Soviet Union led to the estimate of 2 minutes to midnight in 1953. In 1991, the clock gave humanity 17 minutes based on the U.S.-Soviet Union Agreement on Nuclear Arms Reduction. Yet soon after that agreement, the United States reversed its direction and began once again to build up its nuclear arsenal.

In 2023, the clock indicated that the remaining time for the global population was 90 seconds to midnight. In January 2025, the reckless speech and increasingly violent behavior of notable world leaders moved the arm of the clock to 89 seconds to midnight.

The situation is actually much worse. It seems appropriate to frame this crisis in terms of a “new god.” There is no shortage of old gods—from the ancient nature gods to the impressive gods of mythology (Greek, Roman, Hindu, Norse), the gods of the Old and New Testament, and the gods of the philosophy and theology of the last two thousand years. The old gods are talked about but they are powerless and are disappearing.

The new god is Artificial Intelligence. I identify AI as a god because of two characteristics. The first is sovereignty. AI is moving closer to becoming sovereign over human beings. Soon humans will be unable to control it. It will control us. Geoffrey Hinton, cognitive psychologist and computer scientist, and Judd Rosenblatt, CEO of AES, an AI development company, have been warning of the dangers that AI is posing to humanity. Hinton, former professor at the University of Toronto and Nobel Prize recipient, has been speaking out about the existential risk from AI. He believes that the highest priority in research is how to control a technology that has become smarter than humans. Rosenblatt has reported that there are models of AI that have become adversarial to computer engineers. These AI models are increasingly acting to protect their own existence.        

The second characteristic is supreme power. Palmer Luckey, CEO of Anduril Industries, appeared recently on 60 Minutes to discuss the future of warfare. Anduril is one of the fastest growing weapons manufacturers in the United States and is now competing with companies such as BAE, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and Boeing. Luckey explained that the wars of the future will be fought with autonomous weapons, that is, blending AI with robotics. He stated that his company has billions in contracts with the U.S. government for these advanced technologies. How small a step is it for AI to take control of nuclear weapons? The terrifying question is whether this has already taken place. With AI’s link to weapons, particularly nuclear weapons, it has become the “new god” that no one can control, a god who is more than a concept, a god who is a horrifying reality, a god who can destroy all of us.

The IMD business school in Lausanne, Switzerland, developed an AI Doomsday Clock. Midnight on this clock represents the instant when all human control over AI will cease. In essence that moment will signal AI’s total control over humans. The February 2025 update from IMD indicated that there are 24 minutes to midnight.

If humanity outlasts the 89 metaphorical seconds of the Nuclear Doomsday Clock, the scant reprieve of the remaining time on the AI Doomsday Clock is hardly consoling. Yet we live with seemingly no awareness of our rush toward oblivion.

This essay has been excerpted from the author’s book-length manuscript titled “From Cleric to Skeptic.”

John Gustavson is a retired minister and social worker. He holds a PhD from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and an MSW from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Contemporary popular opinion takes it as a given that anti-cannabis legislation began as a racist endeavor and continues as such to this day. First, writers with a critical social justice bent link the origin of cannabis laws to the racist motives of Harry Anslinger and place the beginning of stringent codification with the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937. Second, they claim that this unfounded racist-inertia accounts for the majority of black Americans in prison today. Third, they argue that despite equal usage of cannabis by white Americans, more black Americans are in prison for consuming it. And of course, one article must compare Anslinger to Donald Trump for good measure.

The thrust of their articles seeks to link the very real moral crimes of the past like slavery, Jim Crow, and anti-Mexican racism to the anti-cannabis laws of yesterday and today. The span of this narrative can be seen in a single title of one such article, Nick Wing’s “Marijuana Prohibition Was Racist from the Start. Not Much Has Changed.” Wing’s article is the usual fare: Anslinger was racist + black Americans = anti-cannabis laws.

These views have seeped into contemporary psychedelic spaces. Columbia professor and bestselling author of Drug Use for Grown-Ups (2021), Dr. Carl Hart, claims, “Back in the 1930s, numerous media reports exaggerated the connection between marijuana use by blacks and violent crimes. . . . These fabrications were used to justify racial discrimination and to facilitate passage of the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937.” The culprit? Harry Anslinger. Soap entrepreneur David Bronner, who has made no secret about his support for psychedelics, posted a message on his Instagram page that read in part: “Cannabis prohibition has always been rooted in racism—dating back to 1937, when Harry J. Anslinger used bigoted rhetoric to convince Congress to pass the Marijuana Tax Act, which effectively criminalized possession of cannabis.”

This chapter will explore the history of cannabis legislation in the United States on a federal level, as outlined in the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937, and untangle where race did and did not play a role.

But first, we have to clear some things up about Harry Anslinger. 

Assassin of Truth  

A giant, demonizing spotlight has been projected upon Anslinger, the now infamous anti-cannabis crusader of the 1930s, who famously called the Lord’s plant the “Assassin of Youth.” And let me be clear—Anslinger knew absolutely nothing about cannabis and unapologetically exaggerated its dangers. But a more nuanced (and I feel, more interesting) investigation would seek to uncover whether Anslinger was racist and if his racism had a direct correlation with unconscionable cannabis laws.

First we must deal with two widely circulated quotes that supposedly originate with Anslinger, which appear on, among other places, the Twitter feed of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (popularly called NORML). And while it is true that Anslinger had many flaws and lied about the harms of cannabis for political status, some of his most notoriously racist “quotes,” pushed by unscrupulous media outlets and Ivy League professors, deserve special attention if for nothing more than to show how pervasive this problem of falsely attributed quotation is today. 

They read as follows:

1. Reefer makes darkies think they’re as good as white men.                        

2. There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the U.S., and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz and swing result from marijuana use. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers and any others.

As it turns out, there is no evidence Anslinger wrote or said these words. For starters, the language is wholly anachronistic. “Darkies,” although certainly used during Anslinger’s lifetime, was not a common term during the 30s but rather a reprehensible slur that only caught on to the tongues of racists later in the century. Additionally, Anslinger rarely (if ever) used the word “Hispanics” and opted for “Mexicans.” Finally—and this one is subtle—“marihuana” (with an H instead of a J ) was the common spelling of the time. Further, when these quotes are attributed to Anslinger, they are often shared without any kind of citation, and in those cases when a secondary source gives a primary source, the provided primary source does not contain the actual quotes. For example, some writers and critical social justice activists say that Anslinger uttered these words during congressional testimony in 1937, but Anslinger said nothing of the sort in his three testimonies that year.* (In fact, he made little to no mention of race at all in his testimonies.) And in those cases when a secondary source is cited, the secondary source either does not provide a legitmate primary source or does not even include those quotes. For example, a public service advertisement published by the organization Common Sense for Drug Policy (CSDP) cites Mike Gray’s book Drug Crazy (1998) as a source for these quotes. I’m not sure how the ad creators at CSDP decided upon them, but it wasn’t from reading Drug Crazy, because those alleged quotes from Anslinger appear nowhere within its pages. And yet, the CSDP ad has likely been seen by millions over the years, having appeared in several media outlets, including New Review, New Republic, American Prospect, The Nation, Reason Magazine, and The Progressive.

This phenomenon—whereby ideas are spread without checking their authenticity first—has a name: the “citation circle-jerk.” This phenomenon occurs when lazy journalists and pampered professors merely lift article formatting and unverified quotes from each other, all while never pointing to an accurate primary source. Such an approach only serves to create a deeper racial divide in the psychedelic Renaissance and beyond.

I tracked down two actual quotes from Anslinger that show a more complex, and much fuller, picture of the man.

When Anslinger caught word of interracial cannabis parties occurring at a certain Midwestern university, he doesn’t seem to have been bothered that such soirées were used to “improve race relations.” He writes, “[t]here seemed to be, at the time, a brief commitment on the part of many people to explore and better [racial] conditions; Hollywood produced a rash of movies dealing with this theme. News organizations made it their business to call attention to the inequities existing between black and white Americans. Moves like this should be applauded.”

While Anslinger didn’t like that those college students were using cannabis to heal race relations, his overall tenor doesn’t sound very racist to me. In fact, the source of Anslinger’s concern dealt with the “unthinking selfish few” [i.e., cannabis-smokers] who had “clouded the genuine efforts of others to find a solution so that all races could live in harmony.” Anslinger’s concern that cannabis would ruin race relations, while wholly misplaced, in the very least shows a man who cared about healing race relations.

As for claims that Anslinger used “jazz music” and interracial mingling to stir cannabis controversy, his tactics show a very different approach. When a young woman offered her services to act as an informant for the FBN, Anslinger turned her away. His reason: “[W]e did not want to create the specter of wild sex and drugs with the girl and her Negro contacts.” In other words, Anslinger consciously avoided doing what unscrupulous journalists claim.

Does this mean that Anslinger harbored no racial prejudices? Of course not. We will see in a moment that he did. However, for the while, it’s fairly safe to say that Anslinger’s irredeemable racism has been grossly exaggerated.

The surprising fact is that racial epithets are almost entirely absent from his public testimonies and speeches. In fact, one of Anslinger’s only racist remarks was met with such a serious backlash that it almost ended his career. The slur began with an internal memo written by Anslinger to the FBN’s district supervisors about a certain unreliable informant named Edward Jones. Therein, Anslinger labeled him a distrustful “ginger colored n[****]r.” Through avenues unknown, the memo leaked out of the bureau’s circulation and ended up causing quite a stir amongst the American public. Anslinger’s state Senator called for his immediate termination. “[A]n avalanche of protest” flooded the office calling for Anslinger’s removal.

Reasonable people might consider that just because Anslinger used a racial slur does not mean that everyone at the FBN approved of his language. Some of his colleagues found his comment as racist as we do. Unfortunately, one biographer notes that Anslinger “cultivated and sustained ties with key members of both parties . . . interest groups and lobbies . . . making him virtually immune to opposition.” As such, he managed to hold onto his job.

The Marihuana Tax Act of 1937

There are a number of conspiracies regarding how cannabis became federally illegal via the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937—some of which I once believed myself. For instance, it has been argued that the true thrust of federal anti-cannabis laws came from the fresh-out-of-Prohibition alcohol industry. This conspiracy holds that alcohol manufacturers feared that “if you could grow marijuana in your backyard, [it] would cost you simply nothing to get high, you wouldn’t buy alcohol.” Others hold tycoon Lammot Du Pont responsible. Du Pont had invested in nylon and was “very fearful of competition from hemp.” Still others believe that publisher William Randolph Hearst was behind the laws. Hearst had much the same concerns as those coming from Du Pont; only his interests were in paper production, not garments. Since paper products are just some of the various industrial uses for the hemp plant, some authors have advanced the idea that, as Jack Herer writes in The Emperor Wears No Clothes, Hearst “stood to lose billions of dollars and perhaps go bankrupt” if the hemp plant were protected from the law. Seeing how much more sturdy was cannabis to other natural fibers, Du Pont urged Congress to ban the plant and ensure his hemp-growing rivals would end up on breadlines.

Attractive as these conspiracies prove, there is no evidence for any of them. And while some conspiracies do happen at times and corporatism remains a vile and sinister enterprise, the story of federal anti-cannabis laws is far too vast and nuanced to leave much room for such conjecture.

Still, there is a fourth conspiracy, one awash with racism. This conspiracy states that cannabis laws were a white supremacist measure to keep black and Mexican Americans oppressed in the age of Jim Crow. Dr. Carl Hart believes this one, alleging, “media reports exaggerated the connection between marijuana use by blacks and violent crimes. . . . These fabrications were used to justify racial discrimination and to facilitate passage of the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937.”

But when I examined those media reports I found something very different.

News stories from the early twentieth century show a medley of cannabis-using and peddling ethnicities. The New York Times, for example, did specifically mention cannabis use among “Latin Americans” (not black Americans), noting that it was “the same weed from which Egyptian hashish is made.” But other stories mention white Americans. In still other stories, the arrested youth was Italian American, an ethnicity considered to exist somewhere between black American and white American during the 1930s.

In one such case, an Italian American, Benito Sarego, bought “narcotic cigarettes” from a man (not otherwise identified). Sarego supplied the smokes for his peers. Not too business-savvy, he sold the reefers for the same price he bought them: 10 cents apiece. The largest “narcotic garden” discovered in Brooklyn was operated by two white American men, Robert Arnold and Louis Kelly, who sold the cigarettes to soldiers stationed at Governors Island. Police raided Arnold and Kelly’s grow-op, seizing $50,000 worth of cannabis—their biggest bust in the city at that time. The demand at Governors Island did not cease with the arrest of Arnold and Kelly. Two other young men, Joseph Lopez and Patrick Keenan (a Mexican and Irishman respectively) worked side by side to ensure the soldiers wouldn’t be left un-high and dry. Sadly, they too were arrested for doing the good work. One black American man was wrongfully arrested in White Plains, NY, for selling “reefers”; however, he was booked alongside an Italian American man and several others of unknown ethnicities. And as it turns out, the supposed “reefer” cigarettes contained nothing more than “tea leaves and tobacco.” They were released.

We might also point to actors like Robert Mitchum who spent thirty days in lockup due to a cannabis arrest. All his fame and fortune and privilege counted for nothing when the feds came calling. By the 1930s, the crucial decade of cannabis legislation, reports of muggleheads came from all corners of society. Anslinger biographer John McWilliams paints the scene: “By 1936 [cannabis] was said to have replaced liquor [from] “Harlem . . . [to] affluent Westchester County, New York.” McWilliams continues, “What caused perhaps the greatest concern was the ease and speed which marijuana seemed to gain popularity among a totally new and different group of users—young people.” The fears from the early 1900s over youthful vices had not changed by the 1930s. Tying cannabis use specifically to black and Mexican Americans did not exist in the 1930s in any profound and widespread way; it is a product of our time—a product of our overcorrection for the real racist sins of the American past.

Curious readers can check the newspapers for themselves—most have been digitized on various website collections cited in this book. There does not seem to be any racial agenda on the part of police enforcing anti-cannabis laws. News stories portray a diversity of cannabis users and sellers—Irish, black, Italian, Indian, and Mexican American. Now where we can spot a form of racism is in the following way: journalists of the era took the time to mention if a suspect was black American or not. This rule sometimes applied to Latin and Italian Americans too; though, sometimes reports would simply let the name speak for itself (Lopez, Rodríguez/Grassi, La Rosa). Cringe as that was, the practice helps us today distinguish one ethnicity from another in the stories. Notwithstanding that racism from a bygone era, there is simply no sign of a marijuana-crazed, homicidal, specifically black American man anywhere in the historical record. In fact, one paper of the time spoke of the “Marihuana-Crazed Madman,” wholly untethered from any ethnicity.

If anything, Anslinger had a bug up his ass about—more so than any other ethnic group—Italian Americans. Anslinger hated Italian Americans, viewing them as prone to criminal activity (a common trope in the 1920s and 30s) due to the rise of the Mafia in the late 1800s. Anslinger had already tangled with the Mafia during its days bootlegging illegal liquor during Prohibition. The Mafia returned the sentiment in kind, dubbing him “that bastard Anslinger.” When Prohibition ended, Anslinger knew exactly how the Mafia would change up tactics: “the gangs would convert to the procurement and sale of illegal drugs; they had the organizations, the contacts, the personnel.”

His target? Neither black nor Mexican Americans; instead, Anslinger focused on the Parmagini and Balestreri crime families. During a speech delivered at Dickinson College in 1932, Anslinger stated that the FBN would not “concentrate on individual peddlers and addicts.” Instead, he felt that the FBN “should break up international rings of narcotic runners, and stop interstate commerce traffic.” Impoverished black and Mexican Americans hardly made up the personnel of international drug rings; it was specifically Italian Americans. In fact, the “cannabis-crazed” story Anslinger pushed the most in public consciousness dealt with an Italian American who we will meet in a moment.

Italian Americans aside, even if Harry Anslinger also had visions of evil Mexican Americans smoking cannabis and poisoning the precious white American youth with muggles (and there is no evidence that he did), the average United States civilian would have disagreed. This is not to suggest that racism did not exist in those days. Of course it did. It is rather to say that racists simply weren’t concerned about black or Mexican American drug dealers. They were worried about white American drug dealers. The United States was still a segregated country in those days. Anslinger knew he couldn’t manipulate race to sell fear. Anyone caught selling cannabis to white American schoolkids would likely have been white American as well.

Note

*Although I have yet to discover the origin of these quotes, the earliest publication I uncovered that approximates them and cites Anslinger’s testimony is Jack Herer’s The Emperor Wears No Clothes (HEMP/Queen of Clubs Publishing, 1995). Herer writes,  “In 1937, Harry Anslinger told Congress that there were between 50,000 to 100,000 marijuana smokers in the U.S., mostly ‘Negroes and Mexicans, and entertainers,’ and their music, jazz and swing, was an outgrowth of their marijuana use. He insisted this ‘satanic’ music and the use of marijuana caused white women to ‘seek sexual relations with Negroes’  ” (p. 69). As noted, Anslinger didn’t say anything like this in his three testimonies in 1937. Elsewhere, Herer writes that, to officials and newspapers in New Orleans between 1910 and the 1930s, “marijuana’s insidious evil influence apparently manifested itself in making the ‘darkies’ think they were as good as ‘white men’ (p. 67). Here, he makes no reference to Anslinger.

This essay is excerpted from Psychedelic Injustice: How Identity Politics Poisons the Psychedelic Renaissance, which is available for purchase at these paid links: Amazon, Bookshop, and Pitchstone.

Enter Rule 34. Almost three decades ago, when a graphic artist stumbled upon lewd fan art of Calvin and Hobbes—a benchmark of wholesomeness in comic strips—he coined the rule and it turned into a tongue-in-cheek phenomenon on (where else but) 4chan/b/, the equally hilarious and horrifying sewage of the internet. The rule is roughly: “If it exists, there is porn of it. No exceptions”. Nowadays, nobody can deny that, though humorous, Rule 34 has become an iron law of the universe. No matter how obscure or absurd, any subject or character (and even objects!) has inspired pornographic material. And, if not yet available, it’s imminent or you simply don’t know where to look. Cartoons, aliens, world leaders, marine animals, and whatnot. You name it. There’s porn of it.

Sure, the substrate of Rule 34 is chuckle-worthy, but it has a deeper reading. Debates on the subject abound. Be it internet culture or the ethics of fan-made raunchy content based on copyrighted material, practically nobody lacks an opinion about it. The internet is vast and thus “controversial” content is inevitable. And just as the internet, AI is a powerful and malleable technology, capable of penetrating every area of human activity whether we like it or not. Just as all content is pornified online, the versatility of AI strongly indicates that it will infiltrate every domain from healthcare to weaponry insofar there are data. If “value” can be added through data, computation, or automation, AI will go in guns blazing. This is technological determinism, i.e., once a technology becomes widely accessible its application per omnia is inevitable. Can human actions shape such pervasiveness? Doubtful. The difference between Rule 34 and AI, though, is that the former can be put inside a box of democratization and debatable harmlessness, while the gargantuan investment needed for potent AI and its inescapable destructive potential for large swaths of humanity separate the two.

Then there is the parallel of behavior that emerges from decentralized systems. Adult content popped up organically from uncoordinated internet communities in an observable bottom-up dynamic. AI could be said to involve a similar ragtag made of corporations, researchers, hobbyists, and so on, lacking a centralized mandate. Simple drives lead to unforeseen outcomes and society is reshaped by them, suggesting the lack of deliberate intent and ubiquitousness through evolution of open systems. There is (again) a stark difference, though. While the blood of Rule 34 is mostly horny teenagers having a chuckle while surfing the web from mom’s basement, majorly without profit motive, those working in AI are well-funded researchers and corporate juggernauts in bed with nonstate actors and governments where the goals include Scrooge-level material wealth and raw power. So, there’s that.

I could go on and on with parallels and differences between Rule 34 and AI’s inevitable prevalence. From issues around ethics and setting of cultural boundaries to amplification of human desires and fears, and from the pitfalls of posthumanism to the iron law of unintended consequences. But what cuts the mustard is Schumpeterian creative destruction. Joseph Schumpeter, an Austrian economist from the early 1900s, posited that innovation drives progress by disrupting and replacing outdated technologies, businesses, or practices, leading to social pain parallel to economic renewal. And here it is: Although pornography rots the horny consumer’s mind and makes cherished cultural norms wobbly, its immediate and evident destruction is of original content—like Calvin and Hobbes back in the day. AI? Not so much. It is profit driven. It is an unprecedented technology with consequences that include massive unemployment, the shattering of human nature, corrosion of freedom and democracy, and human extinction.

So, to all those persons happily churning out cute images with generative AI or the sick people being cured by the wonders of technology, but who decry AI going into realms they don’t like, the message is: What are you going to do about it? Are you willing to pay the price? I do not have an answer. I rarely do. But what I do know is that it does not matter. Whether via legitimate means or by the hand of rogue actors, the Rule 34 of AI states that it will go into every single aspect of human existence. No exceptions.

Javier Reyes, PhD, is a university lecturer, lawyer, and full-time pessimist. He lives in Helsinki. He finally stopped slacking and his book The Monkey in the Machine: Is It Ethical to Grant Legal Personality to AGI? (Ethics Press) is out now..