Steve's Primordial Soup: An Embodied God

[This post is a continuation of a discussion (begun here) of Crawling Out of the Primordial Soup: A Step toward the Emergence of an LDS Theology Compatible with Organic Evolution" (PDF), by BYU biologist Steven Peck.]

One of our most distinctive doctrines is that God the Father has a tangible body of flesh and bone, in the form of a man. To say that man was created in God's image has literal meaning in Mormonism. The conflict with evolution on this point seems acute. After all, chance and contingency play a large role in evolution. That evolution produced us, who look like God, seems beyond coincidence. It is as if we were told that the official language of heaven has always been King James English. How can this be explained except by direct intervention? My favorite part of Steve's paper is his brief exploration of this issue. Below I summarize his discussion and extend it a little bit.

The coincidence of our physical likeness may be more likely than we might think. As Steve explains, this might be an example of convergent evolution. Given similar environmental constraints, the laws of physics, etc, it is not uncommon for independent lineages to produce similar forms. (Think of fish and dolphins.)

Another way to think about this is to ask the question, if we were to make contact with aliens, what are the chances that they would look like us--more or less? In his column in Scientific American, Michael Shermer expressed doubt that aliens would look like us. However, he quoted correspondence with Richard Dawkins as follows:

I would agree with [Shermer] in betting against aliens being bipedal primates, and I think the point is worth making, but I think he greatly overestimates the odds against. [University of Cambridge paleontologist] Simon Conway Morris, whose authority is not to be dismissed, thinks it positively likely that aliens would be, in effect, bipedal primates.

Dawkins went on to position himself between Simon Conway Morris and Michael Shermer. Simon Conway Morris is a well-known paleontologist who is also a Christian, and his views on convergent evolution have been criticized as serving the purpose of reconciling science with his faith. Nevertheless, in addition to the fossil record, the quote from Dawkins shows that there is a secular case to be made for such a convergence.

Now let's look at the other side of the equation--God's body. At first appearance, this would seem to be a non-negotiable topic. However, at this point Steve draws on an interesting paper, Divine Embodiment and Transcendence: Propaedeutic Thoughts and Questions, by BYU philosopher, and Richard L. Evans Chair of Religious Understanding, James E. Faulconer. Faulconer writes:

The bodies of flesh and bone with which I am familiar do not shine, have blood, cannot hover, can be wounded and die, must move through contiguous points of time-space--in short, they are not at all like the bodies of the Father and the Son. So what does it mean to say that the Father and the Son have bodies? In fact, does it mean anything at all? When I use the word body in any other context, I never refer to something that shines, can hover, is immortal, and moves through space seemingly without being troubled by walls and doors. Given the vast difference between what we mean by the word body in every other case and that to which the word refers in this case, one can legitimately ask whether the word body has the same meaning in this case that it has in the others.

Further, in a passage not quoted by Steve, Faulconer makes this intriguing statement:

I believe that, rather than a positive statement of doctrine, the earliest latter-day discussion of divine embodiment is best understood as a rejection of traditional Christian doctrine concerning God and the metaphysics that makes that doctrine possible and perhaps even necessary. Joseph Smith's most clear statement of God's embodiment comes as part of a denial of Nicean trinitarianism: "That which is without body, parts and passions is nothing. There is no other God in heaven but that God who has flesh and bones" (Teachings 181).

Fauloner's statement has indirect support in history. Joseph is commonly said to have learned of God's corporeal body from the First Vision in 1820. However, the historical record suggests otherwise. Although the exact time line is debated, in the words of Richard Bushman [1],

Joseph's concern about nothingness can also be seen in his views of God. By 1841, he had moved from a traditional Christian belief in God as pure spirit to a belief in His corporeality.

Faulconer notes that we cannot help but imagine what God's body is like by extrapolating from our own experience. Given how little has actually been revealed, it seems to me that it is easy to fill in our ignorance with inference and analogy.

To summarize, the correspondence between the human body and God's body may be a matter of convergence. However, we don't really know much about how God's body works, its properties, or its history. We may therefore be artificially narrowing the parameters of correspondence, making the problem of evolution seem more acute than it actually is.

Notes:

1. Richard Bushman, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling, p. 420. For more information on the development of the doctrine of the Godhead, see Thomas G. Alexander, "The Reconstruction of Mormon Doctrine (PDF)" and James B. Allen, "Emergence of a Fundamental: The Expanding Role of Joseph Smith's First Vision in Mormon Religious Thought." For an alternate view, see Robert L. Millet, "Joseph Smith and Modern Mormonism: Orthodoxy, Neoorthodoxy, Tension, and Tradition" as well as Thomas Alexander's response, "Afterwords."

---