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Videos from the Interpreter conference, Science & Mormonism: Cosmos, Earth & Man, are now available.
I'm still working my way through them, but I want to congratulate the organizers and participants for a stimulating discussion.
Last February Elder Jeffery R. Holland gave a talk (recently published) at the J. Reuben Clark Law Society Conference in Washington D.C. that touched on the growing influence of the 'new atheism.' Elder Holland acknowledged the influence of men such as Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, and Christopher Hitchens, and called for more effective persuasion.
In the face of such waning religiosity—or, at the very least, waning religious affiliation—Latter-day Saints and other churches must be ever more effective in making the persuasive case for why both religious belief and institutional identity are more relevant than ever and deserve continued consideration and privilege within our society.Given the venue and purpose of his talk, I would not expect Elder Holland to take on that task in this speech. Frankly I was impressed to see him call attention to the issue and name (even quote) some of the most prominent voices of atheism. However, it isn't clear to me from this speech that Elder Holland has paid close attention to their arguments. For example, Elder Holland said that militant atheism is untenable,
simply because it would take someone with God’s omniscience and omnipresence to be sure that nowhere in the universe was there such an omniscient and omnipresent being. Catch 22. But I digress with philosophical nitpicking.This was clearly a line designed for laughs. But Dawkins (who is often called 'militant' for his blunt style) doesn't hold that view, and I doubt his compatriots do either because it's so obviously logically flawed. Dawkins' argument in his book, The God Delusion, is one of probability based on what we know from science, reason, and history, and is directed toward conceptions of God with certain characteristics.
In this Church that honors personal agency so strongly, that was restored by a young man who asked questions and sought answers, we respect those who honestly search for truth. It may break our hearts when their journey takes them away from the Church we love and the truth we have found, but we honor their right to worship Almighty God [or not, in this case] according to the dictates of their own conscience, just as we claim that privilege for ourselves.Many atheists are truth seekers and hold their position because that's where their conscience has taken them. Indeed, it appears that many young atheists are disappointed idealists. Making caricatures of their arguments and experience is an indicator to them that our claims are empty because we cannot engage their concerns head-on.
Inasmuch as more than two-thirds of the religiously unaffiliated nevertheless do say they believe in God, it may well be that part of the reason for this drift away from formal church affiliation has something to do with how churches are perceived. More than two-thirds of the religiously unaffiliated say “religious institutions are too concerned with money” (70 percent) and tooWe should recognize that the mapping of our religious values onto public policy is a tricky business. Often people of opposing political parties share many of the same values. Their disagreement is rooted in the prioritization of those values and their application to law and public policy. Church leaders decide how the institutional Church should interact with specific laws and policies. As for individual members, I think we would do well to emphasize the things we value and avoid shallow cultural warfare.
deeply entangled in politics (67 percent). A word to the wise for all churches.
Millet: Oddly enough, I’m currently doing a good bit of reading on atheism. Not to become one, of course, but I am concerned with how our people are responding to atheism. There is currently an upsurge in interest in the new atheism, as it’s called, and they’re proselyting!I am not aware that any such conference has occurred (not that that means much), but I think it would be a great idea. Done right, it would help fulfill Elder Holland's call.
Thayne: So you’re reading Christopher Hitchens?
Millet: Hitchens, Dawkins, Dennett, Harris. And I’ve read about ten or twelve responses to atheism. It’s a project I started on my own. Then, out of the blue, I discovered a group of faculty members in other colleges who were doing the same. We are planning a major conference on the subject.
A few days ago Slate.com published a fun (in a bit of a perverse kind of way) article, The Most Adorable Animals Engage in the Most Reprehensible Behavior. My favorite line:
There is no animal that is made of rainbows and kisses and goodness all the way through.This is something I think we all would freely acknowledge. Yet because we urban dwellers live a life largely removed from the wild--or even farm life--it's easy to forget that the world is not like a Primary lesson on the creation.
What is natural is not inherently good or evil: It simply is, and we’d be fools to take such examples as models of right or wrong. The dark side of superficially cute animals is a part of their nature that reminds us that the wild does not exist for our entertainment and whimsy. We can find beauty and poetry in nature, but we can also find terror and savagery, all essential parts of the entire picture.
I enjoy reading physicist Sean Carroll because he is a penetrating thinker and good communicator. A recent blog post of his hits on a theme that raises fundamental issues of concern to Mormons. First, let's set the backdrop. We're all familiar with the following statement from Joseph Smith, canonized as D&C 131:7-8:
There is no such thing as immaterial matter. All spirit is matter, but it is more fine or pure, and can only be discerned by purer eyes; We cannot see it; but when our bodies are purified we shall see that it is all matter.
Claims that some form of consciousness persists after our bodies die and decay into their constituent atoms face one huge, insuperable obstacle: the laws of physics underlying everyday life are completely understood, and there’s no way within those laws to allow for the information stored in our brains to persist after we die. If you claim that some form of soul persists beyond death, what particles is that soul made of? What forces are holding it together? How does it interact with ordinary matter?
If you believe in an immaterial soul that interacts with our bodies, you need to believe that [the Dirac equation, which describes the behavior of electrons] is not right, even at everyday energies. There needs to be a new term (at minimum) on the right, representing how the soul interacts with electrons. (If that term doesn’t exist, electrons will just go on their way as if there weren’t any soul at all, and then what’s the point?) So any respectable scientist who took this idea seriously would be asking — what form does that interaction take? Is it local in spacetime? Does the soul respect gauge invariance and Lorentz invariance? Does the soul have a Hamiltonian? Do the interactions preserve unitarity and conservation of information?
Among advocates for life after death, nobody even tries to sit down and do the hard work of explaining how the basic physics of atoms and electrons would have to be altered in order for this to be true. If we tried, the fundamental absurdity of the task would quickly become evident.
Current events in Syria--the alleged use of sarin gas--have brought the opaque methods of intelligence gathering to the national attention again. This seems like as good a time as any to briefly recount the story of "yellow rain."
In 1981 the United States accused the Soviet Union of having backed the use of chemical weapons on the Hmong people, who had allied with the U.S. during the Vietnam War. Hmong refugees described aircraft spraying a yellow liquid over them, which was followed by sickness and death. Yellow spots on leaves and other materials were collected and sent to the U.S. and elsewhere for analysis, with a lab at the University of Minnesota confirming the presence of trichothecene mycotoxins, toxins produced by fungi. Combined with eyewitness testimony, including both victims and a defected Lao pilot, these results formed the foundation of the U.S. accusation. The Soviets dismissed the accusation as a lie.
Things took a strange turn as scientists, doctors, and others began investigating. The yellow spots were found to contain local pollen, other labs were unable to reproduce the initial chemical analysis, and the eyewitness testimonies turned out to be shaky. It turns out that yellow rain, as it was called, was most likely bee feces from the mass defecation of swarms of bees, but the chaos of war combined with bias and differences in language and culture turned a strange natural phenomenon into evidence of chemical warfare. The U.S. has never withdrawn the charge, and of course there are a number of documents that remain classified, including a CIA critique produced a few years ago.
I don't think anybody would put it past the Soviets to facilitate chemical warfare, but there seem to be significant problems with the evidence behind the original accusation. Although a definitive conclusion may never be forthcoming, outside of the government the sentiment is largely (but not exclusively) one of skepticism.
You can read a 2008 book chapter by one of the leading scientific skeptics here.
Radiolab did a fascinating episode on yellow rain that turned out to be somewhat controversial because the Hmong interviewees felt attacked by the journalists.
Does any of this have anything to do with the current situation? I don't know; probably not. Mostly I find it interesting on its own. But then again, it might.
There are a lot of news stories out today about a new study that explains the recent 'pause' in global warming. The background is that the rate of surface temperature warming over the last 10-15 years is lower than in decades previous, which has led some to claim that global warming has stopped or slowed down. The new study says that this can be explained by a natural cycle in the Pacific Ocean that has been burying some of the heat, thus masking the true warming.
Adopting the term 'pause' or 'hiatus,' as almost all of the stories do, is a little problematic and may lead to confusion, I think. So a couple of clarifications are in order.
1. While it is true that the short-term rate of warming has been lower than before, there is still a good case to be made that this is statistical noise, due to natural variability, in a long-term trend. If you look at the temperature record, you can find other similar 'pauses' in the middle of clearly upward trends. See the figure below.
Over at Interpreter, Gregory Smith has written a longish review of several books on the theme of evolution and religion. I haven't read his review in detail, but my skimming (and past experience) suggests that Smith has what I take to be a pretty healthy view on the issue. One of the books reviewed was written by William Dembski who, although I don't hear much about him anymore, was once one of the leading lights of Intelligent Design at the Discovery Institute. Several of the comments below Smith's review are supportive of ID, with one person wondering why LDS scientists don't align with ID more than they do.
It has been a while since I have mentioned ID. Although it hasn't gone away, it is much less of a public issue lately than it used to be. Nevertheless, I thought I would take a moment to review why I do not accept ID (something I first articulated here.) For fun, I have arranged it in a question-answer format.
Q: Isn't Intelligent Design a scientific idea?
A: ID is more of a religious/cultural movement than a scientific one. Defenders of ID complain about ID being lumped together with young-earth creationism and assert that it has secular intellectual merit on its own. However, it is a matter of historical record that the ID brand, so to speak, was formulated as a response to court rulings prohibiting the teaching of creationism in public schools, and as a weapon in an ideological battle against naturalism. The scientific component of ID has always been minor, which is to say that scientific research has not been a focus of ID proponents. ID is mostly polemics, and it was the Discovery Institute that sought to introduce ID into public schools notwithstanding the fact that it had scant support in higher education and among professional scientists. When the background of ID and its proponents are considered, it becomes clear that ID is a religiously/ideologically motivated movement.
Q: Don't some scientists advocate Intelligent Design?
A: There are a few practicing scientists, such as Michael Behe, who openly advocate ID, but most ID proponents tend to be non-scientists (e.g. lawyers, philosophers, mathematicians, etc). Others have an educational background in science, but did not pursue a career in science. For example, as a member of the Unification Church with a Ph.D. in religious studies, Jonathan Wells went on to obtain a Ph.D. in molecular and cell biology with the specific intent of fighting against 'Darwinism,' and has spent his career doing so. Again, ID is not really a scientific movement.
Q: OK, but if we put aside motivations and history, couldn't Intelligent Design have some merit?
A: Sure, any part of this world and life on it might have been designed, but ID arguments for such have been unconvincing. Usually the arguments boil down to simple disbelief that things found in nature could have been produced by nature. Many biological features that appear designed can be understood in the light of normal biological principles, although the exact step-by-step history may forever remain unknown. That is simply not good enough for ID proponents like Michael Behe, who once demanded each mutational step,
And not only a list of mutations, but also a detailed account of the selective pressures that would be operating, the difficulties such changes would cause for the organism, the expected time scale over which the changes would be expected to occur, the likely population sizes available in the relevant ancestral species at each step, other potential ways to solve the problem which might interfere, and much more.In other words, ID is impossible to falsify. So sure, it could be true on some level, but so could many other unprovable or unfalsifiable propositions.
To anyone familiar with [the science], it is simply laughable and pretty much insulting to see Stephen Meyer proclaim throughout his book that fossils with transitional morphology don’t exist, that the Cambrian body plans look like they originated all-at-once in one big sudden step. These statements don’t respect scientific process, they don’t respect the peer reviewed literature, they don’t respect the intelligence and knowledge of people who actually do know what they are talking about, they don’t respect the hard work of all the scientists that went out in the field and found these fossils, and then spent countless hours preparing them, describing them, inspecting them in microscopic detail, coding them in a morphology database, and analyzing them, all with care and effort and detail never taken by any creationist/IDist writer in any effort of comparative biology. And most importantly, Meyer’s statements don’t respect the data. They don’t follow the evidence wherever it leads, mostly because Meyer is ignoring most of the evidence.In my experience, Matzke's critique applies more generally to many ID proponents. They not only spread an idea that is scientifically dubious, they damage scientific understanding in the process.
I came across a nice essay in praise of the scientific method. It's actually an excerpt from a new book, You Are Now Less Dumb, by David McRaney. The tone is similar to a friend giving us a good-natured ribbing for how dumb we can be. Here's a snippet.
The people who came before you invented science because your natural way of understanding and explaining what you experience is terrible. When you believe in something, you rarely seek out evidence to the contrary to see how it matches up with your assumptions. That’s the source of urban legends, folklore, superstitions, and all the rest. Skepticism is not your strong suit. In the background, while you crochet and golf and browse cat videos, people using science are fighting against your stupidity. No other human enterprise is fighting as hard, or at least not fighting and winning.Boyd Petersen told a story of the time Hugh Nibley joked that he had found a mistake in the Book of Mormon. Whereas Alma 42:10 says that "man is carnal, sensual and devilish," Nibley said, "They left out stupid."
When you have zero evidence, every assumption is basically equal. You prefer to see causes rather than effects, signals in the noise, patterns in the randomness. You prefer easy-to-understand stories, and thus turn everything in life into a narrative so that complicated problems become easy. Scientists work to remove the narrative, to boil it away, leaving behind only the raw facts. Those data sit there naked and exposed so they can be reflected upon and rearranged by each new visitor.
Today, Slate.com's history blog calls attention to the attempt in 1818 by John Cleves Symmes, Jr to assemble an expedition to the North Pole. (If you click over you can see a copy of the circular he distributed.) Symmes had come to the conclusion that Earth is hollow inside and perfectly habitable. He traveled Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New England promoting his theory, gaining a small following in Cincinnati. Rejecting Newton's theories of gravity, his ideas mostly brought ridicule. Nevertheless, Symmes was an entertaining and convincing presenter; apparently he even convinced a group of Harvard students who had to be disabused of the nonsense by their professors. He died in 1829, apparently from stomach problems.
Over the course of Church history a variety of ideas have circulated as to the location of the lost Ten Tribes. It's more of a fringe thing now, but you can still find people who think that the Ten Tribes live inside a hole at the North Pole. Typically D&C 133 is cited as evidence along with an alleged corroborating statement by Joseph Smith, who is reported to have compared Earth to the shape of a kettle, with the Ten Tribes living inside. Is this the legacy of "Symmes's hole?"
Symmes was not the only person to have postulated a hollow Earth, but he promoted it heavily. I don't know whether he passed through Joseph's neighborhood, but I can envision Joseph and friends attending one of his lectures and coming away impressed. Even more plausible, given Symmes's following in Ohio, is that early converts in Kirtland brought the idea to Joseph's attention. The first volume of the LDS newspaper, Evening and Morning Star, published June 1832 in Independence, Missouri, contained a reference to "the theory of Capt. Symmes" in connection to a report of some kind of sink hole. However, the story appears to have been reprinted from a New York publication, so whether the LDS readership would have understood this reference is a matter of speculation, as far as I can tell.
I don't know whether Joseph actually espoused the hollow Earth theory, but a part of me likes to think that he did. He had a creative and hungry mind; I'm willing to grant him some space to speculate and think out loud, without feeling like I have to conform my every opinion to his.
Let's do a thought experiment. We'll imagine 6 different parallel universes where Bob and Jane have been trying to have a child but not had success yet.
Universe 1: After years of trying, Jane conceived at last and eventually gave birth to a baby boy.
Universe 2: After years of trying, Bob and Jane tried in vitro fertilization. One embryo implanted, and Jane eventually gave birth to a baby boy.
Universe 3: After years of trying, Bob and Jane each submitted a gamete for analysis of the genome. From this information, a synthetic embryo was manufactured and then implanted. Jane eventually gave birth to a baby boy.
Universe 4: After years of trying, Bob and Jane had a synthetic embryo made (as in #3). It developed in an artificial womb, after which Jane and Bob had a baby boy.
Universe 5: After years of trying, Bob and Jane had their genomes sequenced and a computer simulated meiosis. Based on the results, a synthetic embryo was made and it developed in an artificial womb. Jane and Bob had a baby boy.
Universe 6: In this universe, bodies don't produce gametes. Rather, embryos mysteriously already exist in the earth. Bob and Jane identified a human-forming embryo, initiated its development and raised their baby boy.
Question: Is there any real difference between these boys? Won't each look and act a little like his parents? Can't each grow up to be a policeman, marry and have a family of his own, etc?
The most recent issue of BYU Studies has an article by Samuel Brown, "Believing Adoption," (paywall) where he reflects on adoption theology, a feature of the early Church. As a matter of course he considers questions of pre-mortal spirit birth vs adoption. Drawing on his understanding of Joseph Smith's view, Brown holds that:
In the premortal world, God desired the further progression, development, and happiness of the intelligent spirits who surrounded him. In an act of intense metaphysical and sacerdotal power, Elohim claimed these intelligences as his own—he “adopted” them, organizing them into a celestial kindred. Recognizing the ontological affinities between himself and the uncreated spiritual beings who became his children, God brought us out of our earliest existence and into the relationship that represented our development as spirit children. Joseph taught that we are all self-existent in some fundamental way but that we are interdependent, and God’s great creative act was acknowledging and embracing that interdependence.After further discussion, including acknowledgment that spirit birth has enjoyed support from General Authorities, he concludes:
Some may feel that adoption theology takes away from the possibility that humans and God are conspecific, that they are ontologically similar to each other. It is natural to see references to being the “literal” children of God as requiring a spirit birth model of divine parenthood, but that is not entirely true. While the theology of spirit birth makes it somewhat easier to imagine ontological similarity between God and humans, nothing about adoption requires ontological difference. There is nothing necessary about the connection between spirit birth and ontological identity. In fact, a basic interpretation of Joseph Smith’s teachings on this point suggests that God saw entities who were less mature, rather than ontologically distinct, and he sought to enable their greater maturity. I believe that we are, in some crucial way, con-specific with God, and that he has adopted us. We are not just his pets or his creatures; the relationships of adoption are the relationships of beings who share some important level of identity and reciprocity. That relationship is literally real and eternally potent regardless of whether we conceive it as celestial gestation or premortal adoption.
[The scriptures] teach that we are more than creations of God; they teach that we are the literal spirit offspring or children of God our Father. What difference does this doctrinal distinction make? The difference is monumental in its consequence because our identity determines in large measure our destiny. For example, can a mere creation ever become like its creator? Can a building ever become an architect? A painting a painter? Or an invention an inventor? If not, then those who believe we are creations of God, rather than His spirit offspring, reach the inevitable conclusion that we do not have the capacity to become like our creator, God.Later he continues:
Science has taught us that a complex genetic code transferred from parent to child is responsible for the child attaining the physical attributes of his parents. If this be so, is it illogical to assume that spirit offspring receive a spiritual code giving to them the divine characteristics and potential of their parent—God—thus making them gods in embryo? No, it is but a fulfillment of the law that like begets like. This is the same truth taught by the prophet Lorenzo Snow:It appears that Elder Callister would disagree with Brown and advocate spirit birth.
We were born in the image of God our Father; He begat us like unto Himself. There is the nature of Deity in the composition of our spiritual organization. In our spiritual birth, our Father transmitted to us the capabilities, powers and faculties which He possessed, as much so as the child on its mother’s bosom possesses, although in an undeveloped state, the faculties, powers and susceptibilities of its parent.
You have probably seen the following quote from Joseph Smith before, delivered at an 1843 conference in response to a speech by Orson Pratt:
There is no fundamental principle belonging to a human system that ever goes into another in this world or in the world to come; I care not what the theories of men are. We have the testimony that God will raise us up, and he has the power to do it. If any one supposes that any part of our bodies, that is, the fundamental parts thereof, ever goes into another body, he is mistaken (History of the Church, 5:339)I'm currently reading Samuel Brown's book, In Heaven as It Is on Earth: Joseph Smith and the Early Mormon Conquest of Death, and chapter 2 contains a discussion of the material continuity of the body. It turns out that there was already a large discussion within Christianity on what the emerging findings of science (especially chemistry and biology) meant for the resurrection. It was already apparent that living organisms constantly exchanged matter with their environment. Would the resurrected body be composed of the same matter as the mortal body, or would the structure only remain the same? According to Brown,
...Smith allowed the possibility that a body might contain surplus matter, that perhaps “vegetable” matter could be excluded from the resurrection body. However...no significant part of the material body could disappear. However circular the reasoning, Smith would not abandon the requirement for material continuity. Like many of his lay peers, Smith believed that to allow a reshuffling of physical material threatened a death powerful enough to destroy personal integrity and the promise of postmortal community.If Joseph's position was scientifically untenable then, it is all the more so now. But I like the boldness with which early church leaders tackled conceptual problems. Just a few years previous to Joseph's statement quoted above, Parley Pratt had taken on the same issue in the Millenial Star (although coming to a different conclusion). After acknowledging that objections to the resurrection on the grounds of overlapping claims to matter were superficially plausible, he turned his displeasure to a certain class of defenders.
While, on the other hand, these objections have been met by superstition, bigotry, and ignorance, not with a design to enlighten the understanding or to inform and convince the judgment, but with an endeavor to throw a veil of sacredness over the whole subject, as if it were a mystery to be believed without the possibility of understanding it.
Perhaps a few sentences like the following have been sufficient to smother all further enquiry:-"Ignorance is the mother of devotion." "Don't let your mind think on such subjects, it is a temptation to infidelity." "It is wicked to enquire into such things." "All things are possible with God," &c.
What, if anything, should we do about tornadoes? James P. Pinkerton at The American Conservative thinks that the mainstream media are too wrapped up in sentimentalism and green ideology to be interested in practical solutions.
So these are the two dominant media narratives: sweetly sentimental and greenly ideological. And it’s a safe bet that the green agenda will resonate in the MSM long after reporters have lost interested in heartwarming stories from plucky survivors.I'm willing to grant that the MSM can be a little ridiculous in the way they cover tragedies. And of course we'll have lots of tornadoes whether or not the globe continues to warm. So what about this science-based discussion?
It might prove to be the case that climate change is the greatest threat that humanity faces. Maybe the American people can be persuaded that the changing climate is a more urgent problem than terrorism, or poverty, or joblessness. Maybe, also, the Chinese and Indians can be persuaded to forgo economic growth by reducing their carbon footprints. And even poorer peoples, too.
Yet even so, it still couldn’t hurt to give some consideration to shorter-term threats, such as people being killed, and places being wrecked, by tornadoes.
That is, whatever the future of climate-change efforts, we could have a dynamic, science-based discussion about reducing the lethality of tornadoes.
But if we could pretend for a moment that tornadoes were threatening Washington, DC, and not some place in flyover country, we could then start thinking about next steps, beyond warning and basement-building.The links are in the original piece. The first is a link to an online physics discussion forum and, while I didn't read all 6 pages, in my perusal I didn't find anything much more than arm-chair speculation. The second link is an interview with a tornado scientist where the last question addresses this question, and the answer is extremely vague--probably because of the enormity of such a task. The third link is to some guy's patented idea for shooting a water mist over a city to cool the air. Folks on that physics forum appear to be of the opinion that misting the air would only make things worse. I think it's also fair to ask whether that's a wise use of water in a place already under drought stress.
We could, and would, think about actually stopping tornadoes. Ideas for stopping tornadoes are, in fact, abundant. Yet in the wake of this deadly tornado, the media will offer little, if any, discussion of such ideas. Why not? Why this lack of interest?
Perhaps it’s because, as we have seen, media bandwidth has been allocated to narratives of sweet sentimentalizing and green ideologizing. Either the storm proves the moral worth of Sooners, or else it proves the need for action on climate change. But that seems to be all. In other words, new action to stop tornadoes from killing is sort of beside the point; it’s certainly outside of the twin narrative.
...new technology will always confound the conventional wisdom. Such confounding is the nature of scientific revolutions, and it would help if the media, the great collective maker of conventional wisdom, could make room for that reality. That is, if the media could add a third narrative idea—the idea that we can apply science to solve deadly problems, even in the short run.So let me get this straight. Renewable energy sources that reduce our contribution to CO2-mediated warming are the fevered dream of green ideologues, but if we would just put on our thinking caps we might find a way to stop tornadoes and save people now.
Good Republicans don't worry about climate change--except as a liberal plot to destroy freedom. That's the stereotype you get listening to conservative media outlets--or liberal outlets reporting on conservatives. But a National Journal article suggests that, much like the effects of climate change, quiet but real shifts are beginning to occur within the party.
Mother and daughter Roberta and Michele Combs are pillars of the Religious Right. Roberta, president and CEO of the Christian Coalition America, got her start in Republican politics working with celebrated strategist Lee Atwater. Michele, who was named Young Republican of the Year in 1989 and worked as a planner for events such as George W. Bush’s inauguration, is the coalition’s communications director. With their white-blond bouffant hair, penchant for fuchsia lipstick, soft South Carolina accents, and sterling conservative bona fides, the Combses are familiar presences in the ruby-red heart of the GOP establishment.Took it over? That's kind of like saying the air took over the land when the tide ran out. Nevertheless, the article paints a picture of increasing concern about the climate among Republican operatives and politicians. They just can't be too vocal about it yet.
That’s why it’s so surprising to many that they are tackling climate change. But both women see global warming, and clean air and environmental protection more broadly, as issues that tie into their core conservative mission of protecting family values.
“This is an important issue for the Republican Party,” Roberta Combs says. “At one point in time, this was a Republican issue, but Democrats took it over.”
Already, deep fissures are emerging between, on one side, a base of ideological voters and lawmakers with strong ties to powerful tea-party groups and super PACs funded by the fossil-fuel industry who see climate change as a false threat concocted by liberals to justify greater government control; and on the other side, a quiet group of moderates, younger voters, and leading conservative intellectuals who fear that if Republicans continue to dismiss or deny climate change, the party will become irrelevant.One thread I want to pick up on comes from the opening of the article, which introduces climate scientist Kerry Emanuel.
Kerry Emanuel registered as a Republican as soon he turned 18, in 1973. The aspiring scientist was turned off by what he saw as the Left’s blind ideology....Back then, Emanuel saw the Republican Party as the political fit for a data-driven scientist.Emanuel sees an inversion taking place, at least with respect to the climate, which reminds me of something Kevin Drum wrote a couple of weeks ago.
On the right, both climate change and questions about global limits on oil production have exited the realm of empirical debate and become full-blown fronts in the culture wars. You're required to mock them regardless of whether it makes any sense. And it's weird as hell. I mean, why would you disparage development of renewable energy?
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.”Also:
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.
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.
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.
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..."
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.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.
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.
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!
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.(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.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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.
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.Is it just me, or does it seem like those countries don't need a lower violence threshold?
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.
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.
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