Converging Paths to Truth...and Peace?

A little over a decade ago I purchased my first book on Mormonism and science, The Search for Harmony. It contains a number of classic essays, and it will always have a fond place in my heart. However, as I have revisited it from time to time, I've noticed that it has a somewhat gloomy tone as various authors express their sadness that the Church has betrayed its original openness to truth and marginalized supporters of science. Given that most of the essays were written during the 70's and 80's, this is understandable. After all, it was 1980, for example, when Apostle Bruce R. McConkie included evolution in his talk, "The Seven Deadly Heresies."

As I look back at the essays in that book, I don't share the sense of gloom. Most Church members and leaders are perhaps not as enlightened on scientific topics as I wish they were, or think they ought to be, but more and more I sense a return to the spirit of President Heber J. Grant's admonition to leave science to scientists.

As evidence, I would like to highlight the Summerhays lectures, a series of talks given at Brigham Young University by faculty on science and religion between 2003 and 2008. In 2011 the lectures were published by both the Religious Studies Center (a publishing arm of the BYU religion department) and Deseret Book. The RSC has since made the book available for free on its website. The lectures themselves are not all that remarkable--some are better than others--but I believe that their very existence, combined with the publishers standing behind them, make them important. The book models the attitude expressed in a Church Newsroom commentary last July that,

Mormons welcome truth from whatever source and take the pragmatic view that where religion and science seem to clash, it is simply because there are insufficient data to reconcile the two. Latter-day Saints approach such tensions as challenges to learn, not contradictions to avoid.

Contributors include Terry Ball (dean of Religious Education), Robert Millet, (former dean of Religious Education), and Michael Whiting (evolutionary biologist), and their essays anchor the book (in my opinion). Each contributor presents his own view, but collectively the lectures contain positive comments on the role of BYU in education in the sciences, critique of creationism and defense of Darwin's character, an overview of the BYU Evolution Packet with a link to where it can be found, calls for peacemaking and a "healthy agnosticism," and more.

Below I excerpt parts that I liked, or think important. I also have some criticisms and additional comments, but I'll save those for a separate post.

Ball:

Rather than adding to the tension that some individuals and institutions create between science and religion, a Brigham Young University education should help students increase their understanding and appreciation for both. ...we should not only avoid alienating secular learning from spiritual development but also endeavor to avoid compartmentalizing and departmentalizing the two. Spiritual development can and should occur in all classes taught on the BYU campus, and secular learning may indeed find application in Religious Education classes.

How tragic it would be if a BYU student who had the potential to become a James E. Talmage or a Henry Eyring never reached that potential because some teacher, purposefully or unwittingly, convinced that student that one must abandon faith in God in order to be a credible scientist, or conversely, that one with a testimony of the restored gospel cannot accept the tenets of science. It is imperative that as a community of learners at BYU we work to avoid such a tragedy.

Millet:

More times than I would like to remember, during the decade that I served as dean of Religious Education, I received phone calls from irate parents who simply could not understand why Brigham Young University was allowing organic evolution courses to be taught. They would then ask what I planned to do about it, as though I were the head of the campus thought police. I would always try to be understanding and congenial, but I would inevitably remark that such things were taught at this institution because we happened to be a university; that what was being taught was a significant dimension in the respective discipline; and that we certainly would not be doing our job very well if a science student, for example, were to graduate from Brigham Young University and be ignorant of such matters.

I must admit sadly that when I was a student here at BYU and even in my first years as a faculty member, it was not uncommon for ideological grenades to be flying back and forth between the Joseph Smith Building and the Eyring Science Center. This person was labeled as godless, and that one was categorized as ignorant or naive. This faculty member hustled about to put forward his or her favorite General Authority quote, while that one relied upon a Church leader with a differing perspective. Thereby authorities were pitted against one another. Very little light, if any, was generated, but there was a great deal of heat, including much heartburn for university and college administrators. And of course the real losers during this “war of words and tumult of opinions” were the students. They admired their science teachers and valued their opinions but did not want in any way to be in opposition to what Church leaders believed and taught. They trusted their religion teachers but were not prepared to jettison their field of study. Further, such standoffs did something that for me was even more destructive: they suggested that one could not be both a competent academic and a dedicated disciple—one had to choose. And such a conclusion is tragically false. It defies everything that Brigham Young University stands for.

It is wrong to hide behind our religious heritage and thus neglect our academic responsibilities; there may have been a time when some faculty members at BYU excused professional incompetence in the name of religion, on the basis that BYU is different, that it is a school intent on strengthening the commitment of young Latter-day Saints. This was commendable but insufficient. It is just as myopic, however, to hide behind academics and thus cover our own spiritual incompetence. We can be thoroughly competent disciples and thoroughly competent professionals. We do not hide behind our religion, but rather we come to see all things through the lenses of our religion.

If my Latter-day Saint colleagues and I can enjoy such a sweet brotherhood and sisterhood with a growing number of Evangelical Christians—a group with whom we have been in intense dialogue since 2000—then surely it is possible for men and women of faith who labor in varying avenues of science to enjoy cordial and collegial relationships with those involved in the study and teaching of religion, especially at Brigham Young University, the best of all worlds. Our epistemological thrusts may be different. Our presuppositions may be different. Our tests of validity and reliability may be different. But our hearts can be united as we strive to look beyond the dimensions of our disciplines toward higher goals. Some things we may and should reconcile here and now, while other matters may await further light and truth and additional discovery.

Whiting:

I am not aware of any other scientific idea that has generated as many diverse views in the Church as evolution has, and very often the discussion of this wide range of ideas has resulted in more heat than light. When I teach evolution in the BYU classroom, I must often curtail students who begin selectively quoting their favorite General Authorities and pitting the quotations of one against another, as if one General Authority could beat the other up. While I am grateful that the Church has never expressed the same extreme views about evolution as have other religious denominations, there still persists a belief that evolutionary ideas and Church doctrine are fundamentally hostile to each other and that the full acceptance of one requires the compromise of the other.

I, of course, recognize that there are ideas in evolutionary theory that can be spun in such a way as to be in direct conflict with the doctrines of the Church, and unfortunately some prominent evolutionary biologists have gained great fame by doing so. Likewise, I recognize that there are interpretations of Latter-day Saint scripture that can be formulated in such a way as to contradict current ideas in evolutionary theory. What I would caution against is forcing a Joshua ultimatum here with “Choose you this day whom ye will serve” (Joshua 24:15), as if these are fundamentally and diametrically opposed views of creation with no degree of overlap and no possibility of reconciliation. In my experience, students who continue to think of this as a dichotomy will either have their faith so shaken when they learn the evidence for evolution that they drift away from the Church, or they will simply shut their eyes and their minds to what I consider to be a glorious way to view creation.

Ball:

In recent times, religious scientists not only have had to defend their faith in God and revelation, but also frequently find their commitment to scientific principles unjustly questioned. A Georgia judge, arguing against the teaching of evolution in school, offered an overzealous polemic that illustrates the point well. Making absurd accusations about the effect of Darwin’s theories on society, the judge claimed that the “monkey mythology of Darwin is the cause of permissiveness, promiscuity, pills, prophylactics, perversions, pregnancies, abortions, pornotherapy, pollution, poisoning and proliferation of crimes of all types.” Such pejorative and irrational rhetoric only serves to fan the flames of hostility between science and religion while deepening the dilemma for men and women devoted to both disciplines.

Whiting:

I might mention here that some portray Darwin as a man eager to destroy faith and tear down religion. These people are like the detractors who paint Joseph Smith and the history of the Church with similar brushstrokes. Within the Church, I have occasionally heard members equate Darwin with Korihor, the anti-Christ from the Book of Mormon. But these caricatures are too simplistic and not true to the record. (It seems to me that members of the Church should be particularly sensitive to the misrepresentation of mid-nineteenth-century historical figures in order to push a particular agenda forward.) Certainly the ideas that sprang from Darwin’s work had a profound influence on religious thought and still continue to do so, but by all accounts Darwin was a loving father and a kind man, afraid of confrontation, and someone who would much rather study the mining habits of earthworms than be involved in a debate over science and religion. Darwin was a complex man, and many lengthy biographies have delved into factors in his life that may have influenced his scientific ideas, including his faith, but at his very core, Darwin was simply a scientist trying to explain patterns in the natural world, and the notion that he had a hidden agenda to destroy religion is simply wrong.

There has been a temptation for some members of the Church to place us in the same category as religions that identify themselves as creationists. I tell my students that Mormons are creationists in the same way we are born-again Christians. Does the Church have a doctrine of being “born again”? It certainly does, but it is so radically different from churches that label themselves as born-again Christians that we have not adopted the name because we do not embrace the dogmas associated with being “born again.” Likewise, the Latter-day Saint doctrine of creation is sufficiently distinct from those religious groups that label themselves “creationists” that I am grateful the Church has not adopted this label.

Intelligent design is based on the (flawed) notion that there are certain features in the biological world that are too complex to be explained via evolution and that the probability of evolution giving rise to complexity is so vanishingly small that it is simply not possible. Consequently, they argue, the only scientific explanation for biological complexity is that there must be an intelligent designer working behind the scenes. The attempt to mandate the teaching of intelligent design in public schools led to a lengthy trial centered in Dover, Pennsylvania, in 2004. The overwhelming evidence during the trial established that intelligent design was a mere relabeling of the type of creationism described above and that it [is] not a scientific alternative to evolution. So while the Latter-day Saints do indeed have a doctrine of creation and certainly a belief in a Supremely Intelligent Creator, we are neither creationists nor proponents of intelligent design because both labels come with unwanted and uncomfortable doctrinal baggage.

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