BYU Tears Down Another Piece of My Past (WIDB)

It seems like every time I visit my undergraduate alma mater another construction project has destroyed a building of significance to me. Most recently, the Widtsoe building (WIDB) was torn down in May/June after the new Life Sciences building was dedicated. As a microbiology major, I spent a lot of time in the WIDB (and waiting for the elevator). And since most of that time was in my junior and senior year, I also associate it with the vast career unknown that lay before me at the time.

Here's a fun memory: As part of a micro lab class we had to culture the aerobic and anaerobic bacteria in our own poop! When the time was right, I took the little cup I was given to a bathroom in the southwest corner of the sixth(?) floor and...ready, aim, fire. This was all kind of awkward, but really, would you rather culture your own poop or someone else's? I then nonchalantly (I like to think) walked over into the lab and swabbed my specimen onto agar plates. (Meanwhile, over in the Tanner building, students were learning how to make money.)

I recognize the need for the university to update facilities, but it would be nice if they could leave a few buildings more or less the same so that I can show my children and grandchildren the actual locations of my memories. 'I once cultured my own poop in a building that used to be right there' just doesn't have the same punch.

Here is a time-lapse video of the demolition of the WIDB.

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The Story of John Taylor's Watch Seems Too Good to Let Go

I just returned from my summer vacation, part of which included a visit to Carthage Jail. When the sister missionary leading our tour told us that John Taylor's watch had stopped a bullet, I figured it was just one missionary repeating the traditional story. Later, in the bedroom where Joseph and Hyrum were killed, and John Taylor nearly-killed, we listened to an audio production that also told the traditional watch story. I realized that the issue of accuracy went beyond the missionary.

While John Taylor was recovering from his bullet wounds, received during the martyrdom of Joseph and Hyrum Smith, his family noticed a small hole cut in his pocket and damage to the face of the watch. He and his family came to believe that his watch had stopped a bullet, which not only saved him from another (perhaps fatal) wound but also prevented him from falling out of the window. The story has become a prominent part of the story of the martyrdom, and serves as a faith-promoting miracle in church history. It can be found in church publications as recent as the 2011 John Taylor manual. The problem is that it probably isn't true.

Historian Glen M. Leonard was the director of the Church History Museum for twenty six years. In his book, Nauvoo: A Place of Peace, a People of Promise (published by Deseret Book in 2002), Leonard wrote that after John Taylor was shot in the leg,

He collapsed on the wide sill, denting the back of his vest pocket watch. The force shattered the glass cover of the timepiece against his ribs and pushed the internal gear pins against the enamel face, popping out a small segment later mistakenly identified as a bullet hole.

The reason for the alternative story, simply put, is that the damage to the watch is not consistent with a bullet hitting it. Consider that Hyrum's watch was much more damaged by a bullet that had passed part-way through his body. Other leading historians, such as Richard Bushman in Rough Stone Rolling, have followed Leonard's lead [1].

This information has been known for over a decade, and was featured in a 2010 BYU Education Week presentation that was reported in a Deseret News article, so why hasn't it penetrated the presentation at Carthage Jail (to say nothing of the average saint, or even the 2011 manual)? It's possible that I'm being too nit-picky, but how would you feel if you spent your mission repeating the story every day, only to find out later that it was known to be mistaken since you were at least 3 years old?

I am happy to report a couple of signs of progress. First, the new Institute manual, Foundations of the Restoration, omits the watch entirely in its treatment of the martyrdom.

As the conflict at the doorway increased, John Taylor tried to escape the room through a window. As he attempted to leap out of the window, he was shot in the thigh from the doorway and was also shot by someone outside. He fell to the floor, and while attempting to get under the bed next to the window, he was severely wounded by three more shots.

Second, and more importantly, an article published last April in the history section of the Church's website, John Taylor's Miracle, is devoted to the damage of Taylor's pocket watch. Although it bends over backwards to retain the miraculous in his survival, it does a nice job of gently putting the traditional story to rest--or at least legitimizing the alternative.

So now you don't have to cite some historian nobody cares about [2] when challenged on the revision of the pocket watch story. Instead you can cite the Church's own website. Maybe someone should tell the missionaries at Carthage [3].

Notes:

1. The LDS history blog Juvenile Instructor has a nice summary of the issue, with great references that I am too lazy to reproduce here.

2. You know what I mean.

3. I didn't raise the issue when I was there because I was afraid I would sound like a jerk, and it wasn't until I returned home that I found the Church article. However, given the number of people who tour the jail, I find it hard to believe that nobody has ever called them on it.

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EVEs Are Bone of Our Bones and Flesh of Our Flesh

When we think of the human genome, we generally have in mind the collection of genes that make us human. What most people don't realize is that a significant portion of their genome (at least 8%) actually comes from viruses, and these parts are called endogenous viral elements (EVEs). EVEs, and other genetic elements like them [1] (which all together make up around half (!) of the human genome), can help establish genetic relationships because they are like molecular fossils. In fact, the term 'paleovirology' has been coined to describe their study. A paper from 2010, aside from being interesting in its own right, has a great illustration that helps to convey this concept [2].

The left side is not very important for our purposes, but basically it shows various types of viruses and the pathways that can land their genetic material into a host genome. The box in the middle-bottom represents double-stranded DNA where the viral sequence has integrated into a host genome.

The right side of the figure represents what happens after that. When the virus integrates into a host genome, it doesn't instantly become part of the genome of the whole population. At first, only one individual in the population has the virus in its genome in a particular spot. However, when that individual has offspring it can pass on the viral element as if it was just another gene. Simply by chance (or perhaps due to selection) the new genetic variant containing the EVE can become more common in the population. (That exact scenario is currently happening in koalas.) Not every individual has it, just like not every human has color blindness, type A blood, blue eyes, or blond hair. Eventually, though, the variant may go extinct, or it may become fixed, which means that every member of the population has it. From that point on, all descendants will have the viral element in the same spot of the genome (unless it is secondarily deleted, which generally leaves a genetic scar).

So looking again at the right side, we can see a rabbit-like species that eventually gave rise to three daughter species. The population giving rise to species C branched off before the EVE invaded the genome, so it is clean (in that specific genetic location). When the EVE first invaded the host genome, it was passed along to descendants until it became fixed--present in all members of the species. So when species A and B branched off, both were marked by the EVE. If you knew nothing about how species A, B, and C were related to each other beforehand, the presence of the EVE in identical spots in the genome would tip you off. After all, the genome is a large place and the likelihood that two EVEs would independently end up in the exact same location are pretty small. This also works for populations within a species as well.

With improvements in technology over the last 10-15 years, scientists have been sequencing the genomes of all kinds of animals to see what is in them. It turns out that EVEs are all over the place. Scientists looking for the presence of one type of human EVE in other primates got results like what is shown below. In case it isn't obvious, the entry of each virus group is mapped onto the primate family tree, and it communicates much of the same information as the figure above, with humans and chimpanzees most closely related because they share the most EVEs [source].

Probably most of the EVEs are just genomic junk hanging around. Sometimes they can cause problems by disrupting a needed gene or its regulation (see: cancer). However, occasionally they can be helpful. For example, in mammalian evolution retroviruses have repeatedly, and independently, donated a gene that is used in placenta formation.

Their critical role in fetal development, their ability to reveal common ancestry, and the fact that they are an integral part of us--all of this makes EVE a fitting name.


Notes:
1. Things like transposons, LINEs, and SINEs (especially Alu elements).
2. Katzourakis A, Gifford RJ (2010) Endogenous Viral Elements in Animal Genomes. PLoS Genet 6(11): e1001191.

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Before Richard Dawkins, There Was Orson Pratt

At By Common Consent, writer WVS shared an excerpt of Wilford Woodruff's journal, which captured a speculative explanation that Orson Pratt gave for the origin of God. After referring to the trial-and-error process that chemists often go through, Pratt said:

An eternity was filled as it were with particules of intelligences who had their agency, two of these particles in the process of time might have joined their interest together exchanged ideas & found by persueing this course that they gained double strength to what one particle of intelligence would have & afterwards were joined by other particles & continued untill they organized a combination or body though through a long process...

Pratt's process is that of an individual advancing in organization. But if you look at it from a slightly different angle and apply his process to populations, then you're not very far from 'the replicators' in Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene. (The 'replicators' chapter defies a concise summary quote, so you'll just need to click through and read it.)

This all reminds me of something that Terryl Givens recently wrote [1]:

Mormons ironically find an unlikely (and surely unwilling) ally in the arch-atheist Richard Dawkins. In his controversial critique of religion, he wrote that: “Any creative intelligence of sufficient complexity to design anything comes into existence only at the end product of an extended process of gradual evolution.” Elaborating this point, he said that

you have to have a gradual slow incremental process [to explain an eye or a brain] and by the very same token, God would have to have the same kind of explanation. … God indeed can’t have just happened. If there are Gods in the universe, they must be the end product of slow incremental processes. If there are beings in the universe that we would treat as Gods, … that we would worship … as gods, then they must have come about by an incremental process, gradually.

It's fun when the 'new atheism' sounds like the old Mormonism!

Notes:
1. Givens, Terryl L. (2014). Wrestling the Angel: The Foundations of Mormon Thought: Cosmos, God, Humanity (p. 216).

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The Ways of Correlation are Mysterious: When Jesus Was Born

Lately I've been browsing through some of the newer manuals published by the Church. I've found some things that I like, and some things I dislike. And then there are other things that are just...interesting. Let's take the birth of Jesus, for example. In the old New Testament (Ha!) manual for Institute (1979), we find the following subheading in chapter 3: "Jesus Was Born in Bethlehem, April 6, 1 B.C." The manual then states:

After summarizing the opinions of various scholars in the matter of Christ’s birthday, Elder James E. Talmage compares their conclusions with modern revelation and then affirms: “We believe that Jesus Christ was born in Bethlehem of Judea, April 6, B.C. 1.” (Jesus the Christ, p. 104.) Of this President Harold B. Lee declared:

“This is the annual conference of the Church. April 6, 1973, is a particularly significant date because it commemorates not only the anniversary of the organization of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in this dispensation, but also the anniversary of the birth of the Savior, our Lord and Master, Jesus Christ. [Quoted D&C 20:1]” (CR, Apr. 1973, p. 4.)

To help drive the point home, the manual has a graphic showing the months of the years 1 B.C. and 1 A.D. (there is no year zero), with an arrow pointing to April accompanied by the words (in two lines), "April 6, 1 B.C." and "Birthday of the Lord."

That is pretty straightforward, and it is complemented by commentary in the Institute manual for the Doctrine and Covenants. The statement by President Lee was cited by Elder Bednar in his April 2014 General Conference talk in which he said that April 6 is known by revelation to be "the actual and accurate date of the Savior's birth."

The new manual (2015) is a little different:

Concerning the year in which Jesus Christ was born, “the Church has made no official declaration on the matter” (J. Reuben Clark Jr., Our Lord of the Gospels [1954], vi). The calendar currently used throughout most of the world was created many centuries after Jesus Christ lived, and experts disagree about how to use existing historical information to calculate the year of His birth. Elder Bruce R. McConkie wrote: “This is not a settled issue. Perhaps also it does not matter too much as long as we have an accepted framework of time within which to relate the actual events of [Christ’s] life” (The Mortal Messiah: From Bethlehem to Calvary, 4 vols. [1979–81], 1:350).

For some reason the manual went from a declarative statement of belief based on revelation, to a complete punt on the year and no mention of April 6 at all. And it's not like the J. Reuben Clark quote didn't exist when the first manual was printed, so why the change?

We can only speculate, but it might in part be because in 2010, BYU religion professor Jeffrey Chadwick published an article in BYU Studies [1] that pretty much demolished 1 B.C. as a viable option, and kicked out the supports from underneath the April 6 date as well [2]. Yes, Presidents Lee, Kimball, and Hinckley made comments in support of April 6, but so far as can be determined, they were relying on a tradition started by Elder James E. Talmage in Jesus the Christ [3]. Of course it's possible that Elder Talmage was just really lucky on the April 6 part and later Church presidents felt inspired that he was right, even if his reasons were wrong [4]. Whatever the case, it seems that the authors and editors steered clear of April 6, which allowed them to avoid taking a position that would contradict a fresh conference statement by a living Apostle on the one hand [5], or lend additional support to the date on the other.

I should clarify that I support the change that the manual made, although I wish they had given the history of the topic more discussion. And who knows? Maybe April 6 will make a comeback in another manual (though I doubt 1 B.C. will). When exactly Jesus was born has zero significance to any core element of the gospel. But it is the insignificance of the issue that allows us to think about how we relate to the manuals, and issues of revelation, tradition, authority, doctrine...and of course correlation.


Notes:
1. Don't ignore the endnotes, especially 9, 10, 11, 12, and 18. A summary of the article was published in the Deseret News. FAIR also has a nice treatment of the issue.
2. Elder Talmage's use of D&C 20:1 applies with equal force to both the year and the date. In his argument, both stand or fall together.
3. In fact if you look at the first passage you will find that President Lee quoted D&C 20:1--clearly following Elder Talmage's argument.
4. Scientists, too, sometimes accidentally hit on the right answer.
5. Elder Bednar spoke in April 2014, and the manual appears to have been approved the following November. If I have misinterpreted the approval date, then Elder Bednar's talk would have come after the manual approval.

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On Being Faithful to the Future

I've been a little more active in my reading lately, but am unable to comment in detail on some of the pregnant passages I have found. So from time to time I will simply post quotations as food for thought. First up:

Often Christians focus on the need to be faithful to the past, to make sure that present belief matches that of previous generations. I support the sentiment in general, but we must be just as burdened to be faithful to the future, to ensure that we are doing all we can to deliver a viable faith to future generations.

--Peter Enns, The Evolution of Adam, What the Bible Does and Doesn't Say about Human Origins, (pp. 147-148).

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The Evolution of Adam

When I bought The Evolution of Adam, by Peter Enns, I was afraid that I might be in for a tenuous attempt to read evolution into the Bible. What I found instead was an engaging discussion of the history and cultural background of the Old and New Testaments, in support of Enns's argument that Adam was probably not a historical person.

As fate would have it, I happened to be in the middle of the book during April General Conference, which made for an interesting juxtaposition. In the middle of a powerful talk on Jesus Christ and the Atonement that used two boys' harrowing experience on a cliff as a metaphor, Elder Jeffrey Holland turned for a moment to the importance of the fall of Adam and Eve.

In our increasingly secular society, it is as uncommon as it is unfashionable to speak of Adam and Eve or the Garden of Eden or of a “fortunate fall” into mortality. Nevertheless, the simple truth is that we cannot fully comprehend the Atonement and Resurrection of Christ and we will not adequately appreciate the unique purpose of His birth or His death...without understanding that there was an actual Adam and Eve who fell from an actual Eden, with all the consequences that fall carried with it.

Enns is by no means a secularist. He is a professor of Biblical studies who is clear and straightforward about his belief in Jesus Christ [1]. Nevertheless, as Enns sees the historical evidence, which he lays out in the first half of the book, Adam was probably a mythological character that the ancient Israelites used to orient and define their identity.

The second half of the book examines what this conclusion means for Paul's teachings. Briefly put, if I understand Enns correctly, Paul used Adam to show Jews and Gentiles that they were united in having a common problem that was solved by Jesus Christ. Since that common problem pre-dated Abraham and the law of Moses, and since Jesus had solved the problem, there was no need for Gentile Christians to convert to Judaism first and/or be circumcised. To put a finer point on it, Paul was explicating the origin of sin and death in a Biblically novel way [2] to solve a problem (i.e. refute the Judaizers). The fact that he used a scriptural figure that (according to Enns) probably did not exist is simply a reflection of the fact that Paul was a first-century Jew. (By comparison, there is no necessary reason to think that Job was a historical figure just because he is mentioned in D&C 121. Joseph had no reason to think otherwise, and Job was a fitting example to make the point.)

Noting that "It is commonly argued that, as goes the historicity of Adam, so goes the historicity of Christ," Enns's perspective can be summarized by these passages (italics in original):

Admitting the historical and scientific problems with Paul’s Adam does not mean in the least that the gospel message is therefore undermined. A literal Adam may not be the first man and cause of sin and death, as Paul understood it, but what remains of Paul’s theology are three core elements of the gospel:

The universal and self-evident problem of death
The universal and self-evident problem of sin
The historical event of the death and resurrection of Christ

These three remain; what is lost is Paul’s culturally assumed explanation for what a primordial man had to do with causing the reign of death and sin in the world. Paul’s understanding of Adam as the cause reflects his time and place [p.123].

So, even without attributing their cause to Adam, sin and death are with us, and we cannot free ourselves from them. They remain the foes vanquished by Christ’s death and resurrection. The fact that Paul draws an analogy between Adam and Christ, however, does not mean that we are required to consider them as characters of equal historical standing. Unlike Adam, Christ was not a primordial, prehistorical man known only through hundreds and hundreds of years of cultural transmission. The resurrection of Christ was a present reality for Paul, an event that had happened in Jerusalem about twenty-five years before he wrote Romans [p. 125].

For Enns (to use Elder Holland's metaphor), it doesn't really matter how the boys got into their predicament. What matters is the cold reality of their predicament and need for saving.

I fear that my highlighting Enns's argument that Adam was not a historical person will result in otherwise interested readers passing on Enns's book. That would be a mistake because even if you can't accept his conclusion, there is much to learn. For one thing, he admits that there are other possible interpretations, even if he does not favor them. Further, LDS readers ought to be more conversant with the cultural and historical background of the Bible, as understood by mainstream scholars. But there are also some gems that serve our own parochial interests. For example, LDS readers may find this statement striking:

The Protestant reading of Paul reflects medieval theological debates, not Paul or the Judaism of his time.

If I hadn't read this book, I would not have known that there is a movement among New Testament scholars called the New Perspective on Paul, which at first blush seems to reinterpret the New Testament discussion of grace and works in a way that undercuts Protestant critiques of Mormonism on these issues. LDS readers who must commonly address this issue with their Protestant acquaintances may want to give further consideration to the New Perspective. Similarly, Enns acknowledges that the doctrine of "original sin" is an Augustinian innovation that is not supported by scripture. And like others of his books, this book also cuts against the Protestant doctrine of scriptural inerrancy while maintaining reverence for the scriptures.

Of course Enns does not have extra-Biblical scripture to rekcon with. Adam and Eve appear in every additional LDS book of scripture, including Joseph F. Smith's vision described in D&C 138. Explaining them away as non-historical scriptural characters might be possible, but is orders of magnitude more difficult in an LDS context. Perhaps it is acceptable and sufficient to say that Adam is a combination of man, myth, and legend.

Enns does not pretend to have the final word and hopes for ongoing conversation. I hope that Elder Holland's talk does not end the conversation in LDS circles. Even taken on its own terms, the talk was more circumspect than one might have expected.

I do not know the details of what happened on this planet before that [the fall], but I do know these two were created under the divine hand of God, that for a time they lived alone in a paradisiacal setting where there was neither human death nor future family, and that through a sequence of choices they transgressed a commandment of God which required that they leave their garden setting but which allowed them to have children before facing physical death. [bolding added]

If that is the bare minimum of acceptable LDS doctrine on Adam and Eve, Elder Holland has still left a lot of space for exploration and discussion [3].

Notes:
1. BYU's Maxwell Institute featured a great interview with him on their podcast.
2. Enns points out that after the initial chapters of Genesis, Adam is virtually ignored in the Old Testament.
3. See also my previous posts, The Further Fall of Adam, and Book of Mormon Scholarship as an Elias for Evolution.

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Oklahoma is Fulfilling Prophecy

Several passages of scripture speak of "earthquakes in divers places" as a sign of the times. Matthew 24:7 is a fine example:

For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places.

Although earthquakes can be devastating, I'm not really sure what to make of that phrase because, like wars, earthquakes are always with us. I don't know if their frequency is common knowledge, but I have spoken with people who were surprised to learn that earthquakes happen everyday all around the world. Most earthquakes don't make the news because they don't cause damage or happen in uninhabited places (or simply aren't considered newsworthy), but they are there and seismologists track them.

One folk interpretation of this phrase that I have heard is that earthquakes will happen where they haven't before. I don't know whether such a place exists or not, but Oklahoma may be as good a candidate for this interpretation as any. It is certainly not an earthquake virgin, but check out the history of earthquakes of M3 or greater in Oklahoma since 1978.

For geologists, the reason for this surge in earthquakes is pretty clear: hydraulic fracturing (fracking). This month The New Yorker has an article, Weather Underground, that tells a sadly familiar story--the confidence of scientists, the concern of citizens, and the fecklessness of government. The problem is relatively straightforward.

Many of the larger earthquakes are caused by disposal wells, where the billions of barrels of brackish water brought up by drilling for oil and gas are pumped back into the ground. (Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking—in which chemically treated water is injected into the earth to fracture rocks in order to access oil and gas reserves—causes smaller earthquakes, almost always less than 3.0.) Disposal wells trigger earthquakes when they are dug too deep, near or into basement rock, or when the wells impinge on a fault line.

The solution is not to prohibit fracking, but to restrict disposal wells from being near basement rock or fault lines. But Oklahoma is built on the oil industry and state regulators and politicians have a sense of willful ignorance that is fitting for a state represented by Senator James Inhofe (who recently threw a snowball on the Senate floor as prop evidence against global warming).

In September, 2014, at the request of two state representatives, the Oklahoma legislature conducted an official interim study on induced seismicity. In subsequent hearings, more than five hours of testimony were presented to a committee of legislators. Holland, Dana Murphy, of the Oklahoma Corporation Commission, and Todd Halihan, the professor of geology at Oklahoma State University, all spoke about the link between disposal wells and earthquakes. Tim Baker, of the O.C.C., spoke about the link between drilling into basement rock and earthquakes.

After the hearings, Mark McBride, the committee chair, issued a press release. It denied “a correlation between the injection wells and seismic activity,” and quoted a legislator’s speculation that perhaps the quakes were caused by “the current drought.” None of the scientists who had been present were quoted.

They have no peer-reviewed science on their side, but that doesn't stop state officials from postulating natural causes or drought as the cause, and calling for more research.

The whole story is worth reading. Recently there have been some modest signs of progress; the state can't play dumb forever. Just long enough to perhaps be a sign of the times.

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