The Church's Position on Embryonic Stem-cell Research

Embryonic stem cells are back in the news, so I thought it might be worth reminding everyone of the Church's position. It can be found in two places that I know of.

First:

Misstatement: “Mormons, for example, oppose abortion, but find some embryonic stem cell research morally acceptable. According to Mormon belief, life does not begin until a human embryo attaches to the mother's uterus after about 14 days. That is the moment, according to Mormon theology, at which the human spirit joined with human flesh and a resulting full human being is created.”

Fact: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has no official position on the moment that human life begins. Further, the Church has not taken a position on the issue of embryonic stem-cell research.

Also:

The First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has not taken a position regarding the use of embryonic stem cells for research purposes. The absence of a position should not be interpreted as support for or opposition to any other statement made by Church members, whether they are for or against embryonic stem cell research.

Okay, time for a quiz. True or false?
1. According the the Church, life begins at conception.
2. The Church opposes research using stem cells derived from embryos.
3. According to the Church, embryonic stem-cell research is acceptable because the embryos do not have a spirit.
4. The Church's official position on when life begins and the morality of embryonic stem cells is that it has no position.
5. Any Church member, including priesthood leaders, who makes definitive statements about the Church's position for or against these matters (absent new official communication) is misinformed.


Answers:
1. False
2. False
3. False
4. True
5. True

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Happy 400 ppm!

Carbon dioxide concentrations have hit 400 parts per million for the first time in human history. Some historical perspective is in order.

Here is the last 300 years:


And here is the last 800,000 years:


Make sure your poison ivy thanks you.

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And God Created Fowl

If you have 3 minutes to spare, have a look at this video. Science writer Carl Zimmer explains the origin of birds and feathers. I don't think I'm spoiling anything if I tell you that there was more to it than God saying, "Let there be..."

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Don't Forget that the Universe is Strange

Over at BOAP.org, WVS expresses his doubt that absolute foreknowledge and free will can co-exist (here and here), and I think I agree with him. But it reminds me of one of the irritants I found in Converging Paths to Truth, a book published by Deseret Book and the BYU Religious Studies Center. You may recall that I highlighted the book a couple of months ago, and hinted that I had some gripes. So here's one of them.

J. Ward Moody's essay is "Time in Scripture and Science: A Conciliatory Key?". The title is a bit of a misnomer because there's not really any reconciliation. It's more of a rumination on the concept of time, using both scriptural and scientific perspectives. It has the kind of ideas that any science enthusiast has kicked around at one point or another. Good clean fun.

Not far into his essay Moody takes up relativity, a scientific concept that captures the imagination and perhaps ranks only behind quantum mechanics in its difficulty to comprehend. Moody, of course, knows this.

It is tempting to stop and shout, “Of course there is a difference [between past, present, and future]! The past is behind, the future is ahead and the present is now! Only dimwitted philosophers could get confused about such an obvious thing!” Indeed! But there are some physical, philosophical, and religious facts that challenge such a straightforward interpretation.

When Albert Einstein gave the world the special theory of relativity, he irrefutably established that events which are simultaneous to one person are not simultaneous to another person moving with respect to the first.

Got that? Relativity seems like philosophical nonsense, but is in fact irrefutable. I presume that Moody would say the same for quantum mechanics. So far, so good.

Turning to a little speculation about God's sense of time, Moody says

If every point of time can be called “now” according to some perspective, then the entire extent of time must already be created. You cannot say that, at this instant, a point of time is known to be “now” before it has come into being. Therefore all time—and with it, all past, present, and future—must already exist. If so, it is trivial for God to know the future.

Moody has a couple of criticisms of this idea (also known as block time). Then he says,

Even though block time allows for God to comprehend all time, I am uncomfortable with it from a religious perspective. It seems a bit like predestination with our decisions already made and existing in a future that can only unfold to us as our “now” hyperplane passes through it. I see no purpose in living in such a universe. If I know anything about life from my own experience, it is that we have agency. Our decisions matter and are not made before we make them. Time must allow for this.

Oh, well I guess that settles it then. It's fine with me that Moody is not a fan of block time, and I don't mind that religion adds to his suspicion. What irritates me is that he asserts that block time cannot be correct because it doesn't comport with his personal experience. Well guess what? Relativity and quantum mechanics don't fit with my personal experience either!

Sometimes nature doesn't do things the way we think it should. That's science.

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Should Tea Be Allowed in Africa?

The history of Word of Wisdom observance in the Church is more interesting than you might expect. Many members are not aware that the uniformity of observance that is one of our most distinctive practices is a twentieth-century development that occurred primarily during the Joseph F. Smith and Heber J. Grant administrations. The story of this development is told in Thomas Alexander's classic treatment, "The Word of Wisdom: From Principle to Requirement [PDF]." However, the idea that the Word of Wisdom was not viewed as important before then goes too far in the other direction, according Paul Hoskisson's article last year in the Journal of Mormon History, "The Word of Wisdom in Its First Decade" [paywall]. Nevertheless, the strictness of observance did fluctuate within Joseph Smith's lifetime.

As part of his discussion, Hoskisson carves out two main exceptions to the Word of Wisdom: sacrament and medicine. When wine was used as part of the sacrament, it was obviously not viewed as a violation of Word of Wisdom observance. Similarly, medical exceptions were also tolerated, though not specifically recognized in D&C 89.

Even as late as the 1950s and early 1960s, I can remember faithful Latter-day Saints speaking of the medicinal use of tea and coffee. I have also heard anecdotal reports that some members continued to excuse their use of alcohol for medicinal purposes well into the second half of the twentieth century. Certainly statements about the medicinal value of prohibited substances reflect the generally held beliefs of members in Kirtland, Missouri, and Illinois.

Today in the Church the medical justification for breaking the Word of Wisdom has been severely restricted. I have not yet determined just when the medicinal loophole was tightened. Neither am I aware of any official Church prohibition today against legitimate medicines that contain the same active ingredients that are found in coffee, tea, and alcohol....

In short, from the date the Word of Wisdom was received in 1833, until at least the end of the nineteenth century, the Church seems to have implicitly or explicitly recognized two exceptions to strict abstinence—sacramental and medicinal—both of which were eventually eliminated or severely restricted.

(Fun Church history fact: A later example of the medical exception was when James E. Talmage temporarily took up cigar smoking, by order of the First Presidency.)

With this as background, I was interested to read an article on Slate.com a few days ago about wormwood tea as an anti-malarial. Medical authorities are worried that its widespread use could cause more harm than good by generating resistance to a class of anti-malarial drugs, but from a consumer point of view it's a no-brainer because it's cheap and easy.

The fact is that most traditional herbal remedies are probably useless, potentially dangerous, and will only delay a person’s efforts to seek proper medical treatment. But some herbs do have medically active compounds, albeit with varying levels of efficacy, and Africans are choosing to go that route because they know that drug supply won’t be cut off by war or corruption or bureaucratic incompetence. Herbs are not always going to be the right strategy, but the data about these unconventional interventions should be shared and discussed.

Let's put aside the question of what the best public health policy is. Would wormwood tea be prohibited by the Word of Wisdom? I'm not any kind of tea expert, but Wikipedia tells me that regular tea comes from Camellia sinensis, while wormwood is entirely different: Artemisia absinthium. So maybe on that basis it would not be considered prohibited. On the other hand, there's that T word. Maybe someone with more international Church experience than me would know.

Whatever the case, this seems like a worthy exception to the Word of Wisdom. The Word of Wisdom was made for man, not vice versa.

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Let Us Speak of Bowels, and the Fullness Thereof

A couple of days ago I got to wondering about the scriptural use of the word bowels, as in bowels filled with mercy. So I did a Google search and the first link to pop up was a 1999 BYU Studies article, "Bowels of Mercy," by John Durham Peters. It's a pretty interesting read.

The scriptures often come to us like messages in a bottle, blown from distant times and places. They bring with them modes of expression that can sometimes be mysterious for latter-day readers. One of these mannerisms is the frequent use of concrete bodily language in describing spiritual conditions....That bowels, of all things, should be singled out for special spiritual purposes arouses perplexity, if not aversion, in most of us. Yet if properly understood, the notion that the viscera can be the vehicle of virtue is poetically and morally powerful.

The Hebrew and Greek words translated as bowels have broader meaning than the end of the large intestine. In fact, the word itself used to have a similarly broader meaning. It can refer to the internal organs in general, for example, or may refer to reproductive organs. The ancients did not have a good understanding of how the body worked, so thoughts and emotions were associated with various internal organs, and this is reflected in the scriptures. For example, Jeremiah 20:12 says that God can see your kidneys (reins) and your heart.

I think Peters gets a tad carried away over how wonderful of a metaphor bowels are. Nevertheless, it's a nice quick read, and with Easter coming up you'll be able to display your superior knowledge at church when bowels full of mercy are mentioned.

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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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Lead Heads

The Guardian's George Monbiot:

At first it seemed preposterous. The hypothesis was so exotic that I laughed. The rise and fall of violent crime during the second half of the 20th century and first years of the 21st were caused, it proposed, not by changes in policing or imprisonment, single parenthood, recession, crack cocaine or the legalisation of abortion, but mainly by … lead.... It's ridiculous – until you see the evidence.

He's talking about the recent cover story for Mother Jones, "America's Real Criminal Element: Lead," by Kevin Drum. The whole article is worth reading, but here are the highlights:

-Lead was added to gasoline in the 1920s to eliminate knocking and pinging in automobile engines.

-Following WWII, the boom in automobile sales resulted in increasing environmental lead levels from auto emissions, particularly in dense population areas.

-Children in these areas were exposed to increasing levels of lead.

-The rise and fall of environmental lead mirrors the rise and fall of violent crime 20 years later.

-The link between lead and crime holds true in different cities, states, and countries.

-Lead is now known to cause damage to the developing brains of children, particularly in areas involved in control of aggression, attention, emotional control, etc. It also lowers IQ. These effects can be seen at blood levels previously thought to be safe.

-In children followed from birth to adulthood, higher blood levels are associated with arrests for violent crime.

-Residual lead in soil and old paint (especially dust produced) continue to cause damage.

-Areas with the highest levels of residual lead also tend to be the areas of highest crime.

When you put the whole puzzle together you get a compelling picture. Drum:

Needless to say, not every child exposed to lead is destined for a life of crime. Everyone over the age of 40 was probably exposed to too much lead during childhood, and most of us suffered nothing more than a few points of IQ loss. But there were plenty of kids already on the margin, and millions of those kids were pushed over the edge from being merely slow or disruptive to becoming part of a nationwide epidemic of violent crime. Once you understand that, it all becomes blindingly obvious. Of course massive lead exposure among children of the postwar era led to larger numbers of violent criminals in the '60s and beyond. And of course when that lead was removed in the '70s and '80s, the children of that generation lost those artificially heightened violent tendencies.

In a follow-up blog post, Drum is clear that lead was, and is not, the sole driver of crime. Without lead there would continue to be violent crime for a variety of reasons. However the evidence suggests that lead is largely responsible for the epidemic of crime.

Okay, so we have taken lead out of gasoline and paint. Existing environmental lead is still a problem, but at least it's not getting worse. Right? Back to Monbiot:

There is only one remaining manufacturer of tetraethyl lead on earth. It's based in Ellesmere Port in Britain, and it's called Innospec. The product has long been banned from general sale in the UK, but the company admits on its website that it's still selling this poison to other countries. Innospec refuses to talk to me, but other reports claim that tetraethyl lead is being exported to Afghanistan, Algeria, Burma, Iraq, North Korea, Sierra Leone and Yemen, countries afflicted either by chaos or by governments who don't give a damn about their people.

In 2010 the company admitted that, under the name Associated Octel, it had paid millions of dollars in bribes to officials in Iraq and Indonesia to be allowed to continue, at immense profit, selling tetratethyl lead. Through an agreement with the British and American courts, Innospec was let off so lightly that Lord Justice Thomas complained that "no such arrangement should be made again". God knows how many lives this firm has ruined.

Is it just me, or does it seem like those countries don't need a lower violence threshold?

Back to Drum:

Not only would solving our lead problem do more than any prison to reduce our crime problem, it would produce smarter, better-adjusted kids in the bargain. There's nothing partisan about this, nothing that should appeal more to one group than another. It's just common sense. Cleaning up the rest of the lead that remains in our environment could turn out to be the cheapest, most effective crime prevention tool we have. And we could start doing it tomorrow.

I find the whole idea striking! To think that so much hand-wringing about the cause of crime has perhaps been entirely beside the point--it makes me wonder what other of our ills have been entirely misdiagnosed. It's also another example where industrial production of a product has real consequences for society. What makes this one especially interesting is that it affects behavior.

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