Joseph and the Third Option

Over at the FAIR Blog, in a post titled Seer or Pious Fraud,
Keller discusses the issue of how we should view Joseph Smith's pre-plates treasure seeking. I am not going to pass judgment here, but I want to round out his discussion a little bit.

I think the title and the post presents a false dichotomy: that either Joseph genuinely could see treasures, or he was lying. Anybody who spends some time reading or listening to material from the skeptical community (i.e. the community of people who promote science and fight pseudoscience and the paranormal) knows that there is at least one additional option: that people genuinely believe that they have powers, even though they do not.

It is not as simple as someone lying to themselves until they believe it, or even being crazy. Of course, nobody knows what is in a person's heart. However, there are still people who use methods of divination (such as dowsing) to find water or other objects. There are probably some mediums who genuinely think that they can communicate with the dead. There are probably some people that genuinely think Ouija boards can give them messages. And, to use a non-paranormal example, there are people who believe that facilitated communication works.

None of this requires a person to consciously generate falsehoods; they need only fall prey to ordinary human psychology. A few successes--or apparent successes--can go a long way to convince people that some genuine power is at work, even in the face of many failures, which can be explained away. Even if the person does not initially believe that they actually have any powers, others might convince them otherwise. For example, a mentalist who demonstrates the apparent ability to communicate with the dead, and explains that it is a trick based on psychological techniques, may have audience members convinced that there really was something supernatural involved and that the performer does not appreciate their true power. (You don't have to dig too deep into the skeptical literature to find such stories.) Such a performer could become a victim of their own success.

I recently saw a book at my local library that explains how to find things using a pendulum. It is entirely conceivable that an honest and open-minded person might read the book, try it out, and become convinced that it works. Although such methods fail in the face of repeated tests under controlled conditions, those tested usually do not lose belief in their ability--and most practitioners would never be tested under such conditions anyway. As an exercise, consider the video below that I found by doing a simple search. Must I either accept that the man has true powers or decide that he is a liar?

As I said, I am not going to pass judgment on Joseph here, and in my opinion the production of the Book of Mormon does move things into another level of debate with higher stakes, but one need not attribute deceit to Joseph in order to reject the authenticity of his pre-plates (and maybe even some post-plates) activities.

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Evils and Designs of Conspiring Men

Aside from the health hazards that have become evident from using substances prohibited by the Word of Wisdom, one argument for the prophetic nature of the revelation comes from verse 4.

Behold, verily, thus saith the Lord unto you: In consequence of evils and designs which do and will exist in the hearts of conspiring men in the last days, I have warned you, and forewarn you, by giving unto you this word of wisdom by revelation--

Do we need to revisit the sins of the tobacco industry?

[Judge] Kessler wrote: "Over the course of more than 50 years, defendants lied, misrepresented, and deceived the American public, including smokers and the young people they avidly sought as 'replacement smokers,' about the devastating health effects of smoking and environmental tobacco smoke."

"They suppressed research, they destroyed documents, they manipulated the use of nicotine so as to increase and perpetuate addiction, they distorted the truth about low-tar and light cigarettes so as to discourage smokers from quitting, and they abused the legal system in order to achieve their goal -- to make money with little, if any, regard for individual suffering, soaring health costs, or the integrity of the legal system[.]"

I wonder how many Mormons are aware that some of the same people who helped cast doubt on the bad health effects of smoking are now doing the same thing for global warming? Last year the Union of Concerned Scientists issued a report (summary here) showing that Exxon Mobile was using the tobacco industry's tactics to cast doubt on climate science. In fact, some of the groups it helped to fund include former tobacco industry defenders.

If you would like some historical perspective on this, the below presentation by professor of science history Naomi Oreskes is interesting. For those who don't have an hour, here are the main points:

1. Although confidence that global warming was a problem was very high by the late 1970s, it was not yet a political controversy.

2. Many scientists (such as Carl Sagan) were opposed to Reagan's SDI program. Several scientists, motivated by anti-communism, banded together to take on the much larger group of critics and formed the George C. Marshall Institute.

3. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Marshall Institute turned to climate science. Meanwhile, Fred Singer, an otherwise distinguished scientist, began to work with the Marshall Institute in its battle against climate science and also defended the tobacco industry in regard to second-hand smoke.

4. In their various causes, these people employed the same tactics of sowing confusion and controversy, and disguised a political debate as a scientific debate.

5. The ideological thread running through their work is anti-government regulation, and unbridled faith in free-markets.



(This post was prompted, in part, by a post at Mormon Metaphysics.)

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NRO, Expelled, and Dishonesty

(via The Panda's Thumb) -- John Derbyshire of National Review Online has written a column critical of the movie, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, wherein he laments the dishonesty of today's creationists and says that the movie is anti-Western civilization. A couple of money quotes:

My own theory is that the creationists have been morally corrupted by the constant effort of pretending not to be what they are. What they are, as is amply documented, is a pressure group for religious teaching in public schools.

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I think this willful act of deception has corrupted creationism irredeemably. The old Biblical creationists were, in my opinion, wrong-headed, but they were mostly honest people. The “intelligent design” crowd lean more in the other direction. Hence the dishonesty and sheer nastiness, even down to plain bad manners, that you keep encountering in ID circles. It’s by no means all of them, but it’s enough to corrupt and poison the creationist enterprise, which might otherwise have added something worthwhile to our national life, if only by way of entertainment value.

He also links to another NRO column by Discovery Institute fellow David Klinghoffer. I am not a regular reader of NRO, but this is not the first time I have read opinions of Discovery Institute fellows there.

Klinghoffer, as if to make Derbyshire's point, recently was shown to have quote-mined a historian, and in the linked column he either quote-mines or near-quote-mines Darwin three times. The second and third Darwin quotes are dealt with here and here, respectively.

As to the first: Klinghoffer says that Darwin thought morals came from natural processes rather than God and quotes him as follows:

We may, therefore, reject the belief, lately insisted on by some writers, that the abhorrence of incest is due to our possessing a special God-implanted conscience.

Read in context, Darwin makes the point that,

The nature and strength of the feelings which we call regret, shame, repentance or remorse, depend apparently not only on the strength of the violated instinct, but partly on the strength of the temptation, and often still more on the judgment of our fellows.

Darwin then relates examples of such peer-pressure, such as a man that felt compelled by duty to kill an innocent woman of another tribe. Darwin also notes that incest, which he refers to as an example of "real and great crimes," is often--but not universally--taboo, and that different cultures make different moral judgments. The offending quote then follows.

Now you could argue that Klinghoffer was correct; that Darwin saw morals as outcomes of natural processes. Fine. What is missing is that Darwin based his view in part on the behavior of humans. Indeed, Darwin might ask Klinghoffer, if "the abhorrence of [murder] is due to our possessing a special God-implanted conscience," why were the Nazis so successful at it?

Furthermore, if Klinghoffer looked further on in the chapter he would find passages like this:

As man advances in civilisation, and small tribes are united into larger communities, the simplest reason would tell each individual that he ought to extend his social instincts and sympathies to all the members of the same nation, though personally unknown to him. This point being once reached, there is only an artificial barrier to prevent his sympathies extending to the men of all nations and races. If, indeed, such men are separated from him by great differences in appearance or habits, experience unfortunately shews us how long it is, before we look at them as our fellow-creatures. Sympathy beyond the confines of man, that is, humanity to the lower animals, seems to be one of the latest moral acquisitions.... This virtue, one of the noblest with which man is endowed, seems to arise incidentally from our sympathies becoming more tender and more widely diffused, until they are extended to all sentient beings. As soon as this virtue is honoured and practised by some few men, it spreads through instruction and example to the young, and eventually becomes incorporated in public opinion.

Or this:

The moral sense perhaps affords the best and highest distinction between man and the lower animals; but I need say nothing on this head, as I have so lately endeavoured to shew that the social instincts,- the prime principle of man's moral constitution - with the aid of active intellectual powers and the effects of habit, naturally lead to the golden rule, "As ye would that men should do to you, do ye to them likewise"; and this lies at the foundation of morality.

Hitler probably missed those passages as well.

Klinghoffer concludes,

Yet it is surely of interest that, at the very heart of his message, Hitler appealed to Germans primarily as devotees of modern biological science. He could have framed his pitch in any terms he liked. He chose evolutionary terms. No one knows what he believed in his heart, if he had one. But we know what he judged would stir up fellow Nazis and ordinary citizens to commit themselves to his movement. In that, he judged correctly.

The Discovery Institute, too, knows a thing or two about framing its pitch in terms of modern biological sciences in order to stir people up.

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The God Delusion

I finished reading The God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins. I do not want to add my voice to those of his critics who obviously miss his point or offer up lame counter-arguments, nor am I equal to the task of taking him on. And yet I feel like I ought to write something. I have mixed feelings about the book; Dawkins is clearly a smart person, and I think a great writer as well. He brings a number of issues into sharp focus and puts forth some strong arguments.

If you seriously consider what Dawkins has to say, I think that you are likely to come away with increased respect for atheists like Dawkins, even if you don't ultimately agree with him. Perhaps paradoxically, many Mormons may find that they can walk farther down the road with him than perhaps many other religious people can. Mormonism's history of throwing off traditions and creeds while espousing notions considered heretical to mainstream Christians (not to mention Jews and Muslims), I think, gives Mormons extra latitude to agree with Dawkins. Lincoln Cannon of the Mormon Transhumanist Association, for example, has written some interesting reviews of The God Delusion wherein he finds (what may seem surprising) agreement with Dawkins.

In his discussion of the ontological argument for God, Dawkins quotes Bertrand Russell as saying, "It is easier to feel convinced that [the ontological argument] must be fallacious than it is to find out precisely where the fallacy lies." Similarly, although I found much to agree with (at least provisionally), I'm not convinced that Dawkins's argument is air-tight, even if I have not identified all of the problems.

Seeking out truth--no matter what the source--is an ideal that I try to live by, and there are some hard truths in The God Delusion. But I am not convinced that it represents the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

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Blogging BYU Biology Professor

BYU biologist Steven Peck has begun a blog called The Mormon Organon. I'm glad to see another LDS blog devoted to science, and a BYU professor to boot. (Does the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice know about this?)

He has written a couple of philosophical papers that are linked on his sidebar, and his list of up-coming topics looks fun. "What is truth? Why the Simpsons have it and Meridian Magazine does not." Can't wait for that one.

Looks like a promising blog; go over and welcome him to the bloggernacle.

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Ontogeny, Phylogeny, and the First Presidency

[The following is a re-edited and somewhat expanded version of an older post. It seems like an appropriate addition to my recent series.]

The 1909 First Presidency statement, "The Origin of Man," contains a sentence that seems odd when considered in light of modern science:

True it is that the body of man enters upon its career as a tiny germ or embryo, which becomes an infant, quickened at a certain stage by the spirit whose tabernacle it is, and the child, after being born, develops into a man. There is nothing in this, however, to indicate that the original man, the first of our race, began life as anything less than a man, or less than the human germ or embryo that becomes a man. [emphasis added]

What idea were they trying to counter with that sentence? Perhaps we can affirmatively restate it as the following:

The first human began life as a lesser species, or as an embryo of a lesser species that became a human.

No modern science textbook would state such a thing, so where did this idea come from? I believe that the sentence highlighted above was a response to the Biogeneic Law (also known as recapitulation) of Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919).

According to Haeckel, embryonic development involved passing through the adult stages of "primitive" organisms in one's evolutionary lineage, and this concept was encapsulated in the phrase "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny". Each evolutionary innovation added another stage onto the developmental process, which also compressed the earlier stages--otherwise development would take more time than was observed. Thus, the addition of another stage of development resulted in the creation of a new species higher up on the chain of being. Applied to humans, this would mean that the first human was created when a stage was added to the development of a non-human embryo.

Although Haeckel viewed humans as the pinnacle of nature's creation, it was conceivable that there might be another step up on the chain of being. Although he many not have been reacting to Haeckel, the potential for further progress up the chain of being seemed to be a concern for James E. Talmage (who, by the way, helped draft the First Presidency statement) in his 1931 speech "The Earth and Man" when he said,

Were it true that man is a product of evolution from lower forms, it is but reasonable to believe that he will yet develop into something higher. While it is a fact that eternal progression is a characteristic of man's Divine birthright, as yet we have learned nothing to indicate that man shall develop physically into any other form than that in which he now appears.

The idea of progress up the chain of being was not new or exclusive to Haeckel; however, he tightly tied it to embryology, heavily promoted it, and combined ideas from Darwin, Lamarck, and others. Although comparative embryology does shed light on evolution, Haeckel's scheme began to be undermined in the 1890's and was ultimately discarded. Also as a secondary issue, at least since the modern synthesis speciation is generally understood to be a gradual process of reproductive isolation of populations rather than a one-step event (although some exceptions are known).

Unfortunately, modern readers of "The Origin of Man" may come away with an incorrect notion regarding what evolution is and how it occurs. The passage above was relevant in its time, but has become anachronistic. Like the writings of earlier LDS commentators on evolution, readers of "The Origin of Man" should keep the history of science in mind.

For more of on Haeckel see here and here.

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LDS Commentators and the Eclipse of Darwinism

This post is a follow-up to Understanding Talmage, Widtsoe, et al.

Through his publication of The Origin of Species, Charles Darwin established that evolution occurred and argued that natural selection was the chief process of evolution. By 1870 most biologists were convinced that evolution occurred, however there was a lot of doubt about natural selection, which would not be re-established as the dominant force of evolution until the modern synthesis of the 1930's and 40's. The intervening time has been called "the eclipse of Darwinism." (Note that the term Darwinism has had several different meanings through history. This post uses the term with reference to evolution with an emphasis on natural selection.) There were several reasons for this eclipse, not the least of which was that many people thought natural selection was too materialistic.

The main historical rivals of natural selection follow below. (For convenience, unless otherwise noted, quotes are from wikipedia.)

1. Orthogenesis: "the hypothesis that life has an innate tendency to move in a unilinear fashion due to some internal or external 'driving force'." In other words, evolution moved along predetermined trends. Orthogenesis was popular with some paleontologists, who saw trends in the fossil record (e.g. horses) which were interpreted in a straightforward manner of A -> B -> C. This theory collapsed because no mechanism could be found to drive such trends, and the very existence of the trends was undermined by a more complete fossil record, which showed multiple branching lineages that lacked an overall directed trend.

2. Neo-Lamarkism: "Lamarckian evolution refers to the once widely accepted idea that an organism can pass on characteristics that it acquired during its lifetime to its offspring." This idea was easily hitched to the notion of progress--that species could improve themselves through behavior. However, experimental support was lacking, and with the rise of genetics it became apparent that there was no way for acquired characteristics to be transmitted to the genome.

3. Mutationism: Historically, the word "mutation" has been used differently than our current scientific use (a change in genotype). In the early years of genetics the word was associated with saltations, or jumps. Genetic traits were often discontinuous (think of the simple either/or traits that Gregor Mendel studied), and it was thought that new species arose through sudden saltations. For decades mutations were seen as the chief alternative to natural selection (orthogenesis and neo-lamarkism having been refuted, in part, by genetics). However, as understanding of the complex interactions between genes grew, it seemed increasingly unlikely that radical changes could result in surviving organisms, and the many failures that would be expected were missing. The modern synthesis finally brought the two concepts together with mutations providing the variation upon which natural selection acts (so to speak). All of this preceded the elucidation of molecular genetics (i.e. determination of the structure of DNA, how it codes for proteins, etc).

It is also important to consider the Great Chain of Being, or scala naturae. We intuitively see that life-forms vary in complexity and intelligence, and the chain of being was a medieval concept that organized life on earth into an ascending ladder-like hierarchy that culminated with humans at the top. According to Bowler (p. 63) [1],

The attractions of the chain of being came not from its practical applications but from its articulation of certain key assumptions. It was conceived as a static plan of nature: all the links in the chain were created together by God. It was a highly structured system in which every species had an unambiguous position, with its closest relatives placed one above and one below it in the sequence. It was a complete system: every link in the chain from amoeba to human, had to exist, and God's perfection was displayed by the fact that He had created every link in the chain...

The alternatives to natural selection listed above were sometimes linked (at least implicitly) to the hierarchal chain of being, thus giving a sense of progress through time as organisms climbed the ladder. In addition, the historical evolution of life was sometimes likened to the development of a fetus (in fact there are evidences for evolution in fetal development), which at the very least gave a sense of progress and goal-oriented development. However, these notions of evolutionary progress rely on human values and subjective judgments rather than objective criteria or mechanistic laws, and there is no evidence that mutations occur in anticipation of the future.

In summary, much of LDS commentary on evolution by General Authorities or other prominent members occurred before the evolutionary synthesis, and although some argue that current biology has outgrown that synthesis (e.g. here), the ideas that flourished during the eclipse of Darwinism have not been vindicated in any significant degree. This history of science should be kept in mind when reading such commentary.

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References:
It is difficult enough to keep up with current science without trying to understand science of the past. I primarily consulted the following references in drafting this post.

1. Bowler, Peter J. Evolution: The History of An Idea.
2. Mayr, Ernst. What Evolution Is.

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Scientific American on Expelled

The editors at Scientific American watched a screening of Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed and have posted their reviews. Surprisingly, associate producer Mark Mathus actually sought out the SciAm staff and brought the movie to them.

The reviews and the podcast are interesting, but what I really enjoyed was the spirited hour-long conversation between the SciAm folks and Mark Mathus. Mathus was certainly not a shrinking violet, and I give him credit for taking the heat, but I have to say that I really enjoyed editor in chief John Rennie. (Steve Mirsky was good too.)

Neither side was flawless, but I thought the propaganda-like nature of Expelled was made apparent. Listen and decide for yourself.

In other news, Expelled Exposed has gone live.

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