Don't Forget that the Universe is Strange

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Should Tea Be Allowed in Africa?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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