BYU and the Reconstruction of the Legend of the First Vision

Last year Richard Bushman generated a bit of a stir when he said,

I think that for the Church to remain strong it has to reconstruct its narrative. The dominant narrative is not true; it can’t be sustained. The Church has to absorb all this new information or it will be on very shaky grounds and that’s what it is trying to do and it will be a strain for a lot of people, older people especially. But I think it has to change.

He later clarified his meaning (here and here) to make clear that he simply meant that we need to bring new information into the way we tell the story of the Restoration, which the Church has begun to do (e.g. Gospel Topics essays, The Joseph Smith Papers, etc.)

This year's Gospel Doctrine curriculum focuses on the Doctrine and Covenants, and although the First Vision isn't actually in the D&C, it is the focus of Lesson #3. My observation is that we still have a lot of work to do to reconstruct the story of the First Vision. The story has been told from the exclusive vantage point of Joseph Smith's 1838 telling with added layers of popular interpretation for so long that historical inaccuracies are practically baked in. The problem is that the inaccuracies are almost as beloved as the vision itself. During the recent lesson in my own ward, I looked for opportunities to insert gentle historical correction. However, the traditional story (and associated interpretations) was presented (and reflected by the class) so strongly that I chickened out for fear of doing more harm than good.

With that as background, I want to draw attention to a publication by the BYU Religious Studies Center that I think represents a solid step in the right direction. In 2012 BYU's RSC published a book titled, Exploring the First Vision, which is now available online (and also at Deseret Book) [1]. Much of the book provides defense against various adversarial arguments. However, for the purposes of this post, I believe the most significant chapter is James Allen's essay, "Emergence of a Fundamental: The Expanding Role of Joseph Smith’s First Vision in Mormon Religious Thought." (Actually, this essay was originally published in 1980. It's a shame that it has had so little influence.)

In his essay, Allen discusses some of the history surrounding the USE of the First Vision and traces how it changed from a relatively minor story in Church history to a central pillar of the Restoration. In the process, the First Vision went from story to legend, and he dispels some of the historical inaccuracies that have become attached to it. Forgive me for quoting two long paragraphs, but I think they are important (emphasis mine).

As they began to use Joseph Smith’s first religious experience for various instructional purposes, Mormon teachers and writers were also creating certain secondary but highly significant historical perceptions in the minds of the Latter-day Saints. There was no intent to distort or mislead, but what happened was only one example of a very natural intellectual process that helps explain the emergence of at least some basic community perceptions. It seems to be a truism that whenever great events take place, second- and third-generation expounders tend to build a kind of mythology around them by presuming corollary historical interpretations that often have little basis in fact. In this case, the deepening awareness of the vision, along with a growing community sensitivity for how essential it was to Mormon faith and doctrine, created an atmosphere in which other historical inferences could easily be drawn. These included the ideas that (1) over the centuries, considerable “rubbish concerning religion” had accumulated that only revelation could correct; (2) most, if not all, Christians believed in the traditional Trinitarian concept of God; (3) the Christian world denied the concept of continuing revelation; (4) Joseph Smith told the story of his vision widely; and (5) he continued to be persecuted or publicly ridiculed for it, even to the time of his death. Such historical interpretation, much of it misleading, soon dominated popular Mormon thought. The challenge for individual believers, including Mormon historians, would be to separate the essential truths of the vision experience from corollaries that may not be so essential to the faith.

Once the vision assumed its predominant place in Mormon writing and preaching, it became much more than Joseph Smith’s personal experience—it became a shared community experience. Every Mormon and every prospective convert was urged to pray for his or her own testimony of its reality—in effect, to seek a personal theophany by becoming one with Joseph in the grove. Latter-day Saints did not forget the importance of the angel Moroni, but gradually the First Vision took precedence over the visit of the angel as the event that ushered in the Restoration of the gospel. It was only a short step from there to the expanded use of the vision as a teaching device whenever the doctrine of God or the principle of revelation played any part in the discussion. As the years passed, the list of lessons, truths, principles, and historical interpretations taught or illustrated by the vision grew longer. Each writer or preacher saw it as fundamental, but each also had his or her own private insight into what it could illustrate or portray.

This is admirably honest, sensitive, and straightforward. The next time I need to make a corrective point, I will start my sentence with, "I read a fascinating book on the First Vision that was published by BYU's religion department a few years ago. I learned..."

Now I just need a way to make the point that the First Vision wasn't as strange or unique as we think it was.

Notes:
1. In other words, the book is available from the most orthodox publishers there are, aside from the correlation department itself.

---

Continue reading...

Adoption, Creation, and Spirit Birth: It's All Matter

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.

Now let's look at a talk by Elder Tad R. Callister titled, "Our Identity and Our Destiny," published earlier this year in Religious Educator. The talk is mainly a defense of the LDS concept of exaltation (i.e. godhood), but in setting up his argument Elder Callister says,

[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:

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.

It appears that Elder Callister would disagree with Brown and advocate spirit birth.

I don't have a dog in this fight because it is of such a speculative nature, but let's take Elder Callister's reasoning to its logical conclusion. If physical attributes are a function of the arrangement of matter (e.g. genetic sequence, or organization of whole body), then it is plausible that spiritual characteristics are similarly a function of the arrangement of spirit matter (whatever that is). Our ability to manipulate physical matter is crude, which is why we rely on our reproductive systems to make offspring. Basically conception and gestation are just a process of organizing matter. But as technology and our ability to directly manipulate matter improves, the scenarios in the above alternate universes become increasingly possible. Presumably God has this kind of power and is, as Jesus said (perhaps hyperbolically), "able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham." If God has that kind of ability when it comes to the physical, why not the spiritual also?

Thought of in this light, in my opinion the distinctions between spirit creation, spirit birth, and adoption largely evaporate. It all boils down to the method of organization (i.e. whether that organization is primordial, or how God does it). Our destiny, to use Elder Callister's term, is a function of both the arrangement of our physical and spiritual matter, and God's relationship with us. I don't see how it makes any difference how that organization happened.

---

Continue reading...

Let Us Speak of Bowels, and the Fullness Thereof

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

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

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

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

---

Continue reading...

Lead Heads

The Guardian's George Monbiot:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Back to Drum:

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

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

---

Continue reading...

What the Big Bang Means for Mormons

Since we're on the topic of the Big Bang, I want to highlight an article from the FARMS Review (now Mormon Studies Review) in 2004: The Big Bang: What Does It Mean for Us? by Hollis R. Johnson, an emeritus professor of astronomy at Indiana University. The essay is a response to an evangelical critique of LDS doctrine, but it serves as a nice accessible introduction to cosmology. You should read the whole thing, but I'll give you the nickel version.

To understand the evangelical critique, you have to know that the original formulation of the Big Big bang envisioned the initial state of the universe as infinitely dense and infinitely small, known as a singularity. This fit nicely with creation ex nihilo, and also implied that if God exists in space and time, then he was a product of the Big Bang.

This notion of singularity has had a lot of staying power in the popular understanding of the Big Bang, but Johnson points out that science has moved on and the singularity has been discarded. For one thing, the notion of a singularity is at odds with quantum mechanics because it would violate the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. (I presume that this holds for black holes as well?) This and other questions gave rise to inflationary cosmology, and the concept of the multiverse.

So what does the multiverse mean for our theology? Well it supports the teaching that matter (i.e. energy) is eternal. It's less clear to me what it means for God or our future in this universe, but Johnson thinks it's premature to take a strong stand on these things anyway. He chastises critics for assuming any particular scientific model as the final truth, especially when dealing with a topic as large and mysterious as cosmology. His frustration with theologians comes through in these two gems:

Creation from nothing is clearly a fantasy devised by certain theologians, perhaps in a misguided attempt to glorify God by making of him a fantastic magician.

How long is eternity? Theologians can speculate forever, while scientists continue to provide a factual time line.

The straightforward and unapologetic explanation of cosmology makes this essay one of my favorite FARMS Review essays.

Note:

I found a minor mistake that is hardly worth bringing up, but I'm going to anyway. Footnote 7 says: "Note that numbers in an exponent simply show the number of zeros after (+) or before (-) the given digits. For example, 10⁵ means 1 followed by 5 zeros (100,000), and 10^—9 means 1 preceded by a period and 9 zeros (.0000000001)." The first part is correct, but the second is not. 10^—9 = .000000001; one preceded by eight zeros.

---

Continue reading...

Theology and Non-Mortal Biology

A new article in Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought has attracted attention in the bloggernacle. The article, "Toward a Post-Heterosexual Mormon Theology," by Taylor G. Petrey, is a discussion of how LDS theology might one day incorporate homosexual relationships. However, even if homosexuality is not a topic that interests you, this article is still worth reading if you ever think about how mortal biology fits into the grand scheme of things. Two of the main topics treated are reproduction and gender. Let's look briefly at each one.

Reproduction

Petrey begins his discussion of reproduction by noting that we have competing notions of how spirits are created. Joseph Smith emphasized the eternal nature of intelligence (D&C 93:29–33), and it appears that notions of "spirit birth" came later, following his death [1].

The ambivalence on this point is a persistent tension in Mormon thought. That is, the doctrine of spiritual birth stands at odds with the doctrine of eternal intelligences, and to this day Mormonism has not resolved this tension. On the one hand, “spirit birth” is a divine reproduction that mirrors human reproduction, requiring a male and female partner; and on the other hand, “spirit birth” is a more metaphorical “organization” that bears little resemblance to reproduction as a result of sexual intercourse.

Sometimes it is emphasized that we are "literally" children of God. Adding in the word "literally," however, doesn't clear up the questions. A friend of mine had parents who divorced when he was young, and his mother re-married soon after. As far as my friend was concerned, the second man--what we would call his step-father--was his father, period. My friend wasn't LDS, but we could imagine that he was and that this reconstituted family was sealed together in the temple--an imaginary situation that reflects a common reality. Under these circumstances, was the second man literally my friend's father? What does that question even mean? The problem here is that fatherhood (and by implication, childhood) has several fascets to it, with a source of genetic information being only one of them. That's why we have to tack on words like 'biological', 'adopted', and 'step' when not all of the fascets are contained in a single relationship.

To say that I am a spirit child of God is to say something important. But like Petrey seems to, I have trouble connecting it too closely to mortal biology--as though spirit gametes fuse to form a spirit embryo containing spirit DNA from each parent, which then implants in a spirit womb and grows until one day it is ready to come out--with all of this somehow happening inside an immortal physical body. Here I see a connection to Petrey's discussion of sealing as building kinship. Whatever else may be involved (or not) in both my spiritual and physical creation, I see my relationship with God, along with my future potential and eternal destiny, as the defining feature of my existence--both past and future. I'm not wedded to any particular explanation of how that relationship came about. "I know that [God] loveth his children; nevertheless, I do not know the meaning of all things [1 Nephi 11:17]."

Petrey also notes that it seems strange that mortals pair to bring spirits into mortality, but that somehow it requires two immortal bodies to create spirits, which are two stages back in progression. In connection with this, I've noticed a similar puzzle: according to some commentators Adam and Eve were physically created by the union of two immortal bodies. This would seem to imply that immortal reproductive organs have a dual usage--creation of both physical bodies and spirits, depending on...well, who knows what?

Gender

The article devotes several pages to a discussion of gender. Although we are taught that gender is an eternal part of our identity, the word itself has a somewhat ambiguous meaning, and it isn't clear how it maps onto the premortal life. This is part of a larger problem hinted at above: The closer spirit form and creation is tied to mortal biology, the sillier it starts to sound in light of what we know about biology (especially genetics), and a sort of predestination seems needed to solve some of the consequent problems [2]. Further, Petrey notes:

The whole question of the relationship of the premortal spirit to the mortal body is at stake in the claim that “gender” belongs to both equally. If any of the particularities of one’s genetic and environmental circumstances may be said to not preexist with a particular spirit in a deterministic way, why then is sexual difference the exception? To assert that “gender” is more fundamental to one’s identity than these other contingent features begs the question: Of the many different features of human identity, why does sexual difference—whatever that may refer to—occupy a privileged place in the account of the eternal nature of the human being?

In other words, we know a lot about how genes determine hair color, skin color, and so on. Can any of these features be said to correspond to our premortal spirit, and if not, then why gender? And although it is easy to dismiss intersex individuals as exceptions to the rule (victims of "pranks of nature," to use the term of a couple of Church leaders), such an attitude papers over the multiple layers and plasticity of sexual development [3].

Petrey is not the first to notice these kinds of issues [4], but I think he has done a good job of explaining and expressing them. I don't expect any change in the way the Church approaches the issues discussed in the article, but at a minimum it serves as a good reminder that as clear as we think our doctrines are, they are embedded in a matrix of unnoticed assumptions and unanswered questions, some of which are probably the result of having a doctrinal structure that was mostly in place before the foundations of the sciences as we know them. And you never know--many people concluded that the priesthood ban didn't make sense, and that it had a dubious history, years before it was ended. Although its removal was a matter of revelation, it appears that scholarship helped to clear the path for the revelation [5]. I like to think that D&C 9:7-8 operates for both individuals and institutions, and that seems to be what Petrey is aiming for.

Notes:

1. Blake Ostler, "The Idea of Pre-existence in the Development of Mormon Thought"

2. Such explanations don't really explain anything, either. See The Spirit as a Homunculus.

3. See Duane Jeffery's article, "Intersexes in Humans," for a nice LDS-oriented discussion of this topic. It seems to have held up well since it's publication in 1979. See also Jeffrey Keller, "Is Sexual Gender Eternal?"

4. For example, see Kent Condie, "Premortal Spirits: Implications for Cloning, Abortion, Evolution, and Extinction."

5. Edward Kimball, Lengthen Your Stride: The Presidency of Spencer W. Kimball, p. 219-220.

On May 25, Mark E. Petersen called President Kimball's attention to an article that proposed the priesthood policy had begun with Brigham Young, not Joseph Smith, and he suggested that the President might wish to consider this factor.

---

Continue reading...

John Welch's Reading List

As described in my last post, John Welch recently gave a talk at BYU about science and religion, at which he distributed a list of suggested reading. Thank you to "mapman" for sending me a copy, which I have made available here.

Looking over the list, I see a number of interesting books and articles that I look forward to checking out. Of course no list can be comprehensive, but I was a little surprised and disappointed to see some works left off of the list, such as articles by Duane Jeffery, David Bailey, or Steven Peck. (I note that Welch, the editor of BYU Studies, included only a single article from Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought. And an ad for a free trial-subscription of BYU Studies [1].) It's also curious that among the entries from the Encyclopedia of Mormonism, "Organic Evolution" and "Origin of Man" are not included.

Actually, after looking through the list some more, I can't help but wonder if Welch farmed the compilation out to an assistant, or if he's actually read all of the articles. First I noticed that the section, "Selected Physical Science and Mathematical Articles in BYU Studies," also contains biological articles. "Big deal," you say, "you're just being pedantic." OK, fine; maybe so. But beyond that, can somebody explain to me why the "Beta-Lysin" article by Donaldson was included on the list (or why it was published in BYU Studies in the first place)? I have a hard time believing that Welch read that article and decided that it made a worthy contribution to relating science and religion.

Several of the works have been highlighted in posts on this blog. They are listed below with links to my posts.

• Boyce, Duane. "Of Science, Scripture, and Surprise." FARMS Review 20:2 (2008).
• Eyring, Henry J. Mormon Scientist: The Life and Faith of Henry Eyring. Salt Lake City: Deseret, 2007
• Grandy, David. "Ideology in the Guise of Science."FARMS Review 19:2 (2007).
• Sherlock, Richard. "Mormonism and Intelligent Design." FARMS Review 18:2 (2006).
• Welch, John W. "The Power of Evidence in the Nurturing of Faith," in Echoes and Evidences of the Book of Mormon.
• Widtsoe, John A. Joseph Smith as Scientist (1920). (Also here.)
• Bushman, Jess R., "Hutton's Uniformitarianism," BYU Studies 23:1 (1983).
• Walker, Steven C., "Selling the Soul of Science for a Pot of Message: Evangelizing Atheism in The God Delusion," BYU Studies 47:1 (2008)

Enjoy!


Notes:

1. BYU Studies articles older than two years are available for free.

---

Continue reading...

Anti-Uniformitarianism or Causes Without Effects

Mormonism has a long history of viewing miracles as being in accordance with the laws of nature. Brigham Young said:

The providences of God are all a miracle to the human family until they understand them. There are no miracles, only to those who are ignorant. A miracle is supposed to be a result without a cause, but there is no such thing. There is a cause for every result we see; and if we see a result without understanding the cause we call it a miracle.

Similarly, Parley P. Pratt wrote:

Among the popular errors of modem times, an opinion prevails that miracles are events which transpire contrary to the laws of nature, that they are effects without a cause.

If such is the fact, then, there never has been a miracle, and there never will be one. The laws of nature are the laws of truth. Truth is unchangeable, and independent in its own sphere. A law of nature never has been broken. And it is an absolute impossibility that such law ever should be broken.

Uniformitarianism

With this in mind, I want to highlight a 1983 BYU Studies article, "Hutton's Uniformitarianism", by (retired?) BYU professor of geology Jess R. Bushman. Uniformitarianism is sometimes misunderstood, but Bushman explains it clearly.

Uniformitarianism, or cause and effect, is a very important and basic concept in geology. The heart of the concept is that there is order and regularity in the operation or functioning of natural laws. This consistency is what gives significance to cause-and-effect patterns. What we see happening today helps us to identify the results of natural processes which were active million of years ago. We observe ripple marks being formed by wave action on beaches today; when we see similar ripple marks in ancient sandstone, we use cause and effect or uniformitarianism to suggest that the ripple-marked sandstones were once part of an ancient beach....

Violent events such as volcanic eruptions, which are convincing evidence that not all change occurs slowly, are still part of uniformitarianism change so long as there is a pattern of cause and effect that reflects the orderly function of natural laws.

Uniformitarianism is traditionally contrasted with catastrophism.

Catastrophists support the idea that the earth is just a few thousand years old, and they are determined to discredit the evidence of slow gradual change. They insist that rates of erosion, for example, were much more rapid or violent in the past than they are today. Catastrophists ignore the cause-and-effect relationship which indicates that if you change the rate you also change the results. For example, if the rate or energy of stream erosion is increased to that which occurs with a destructive flood, it produced thicker and coarser deposits with numerous erosion channels within the deposits. On the other hand, very fine grained evenly laminated sedimentary deposits indicate that deposition occurred in low-energy quiet water. The rock record contains evidence of not just the type of process but also the rate at which it occurred.

Bushman's descriptions are probably accurate enough today, but they belie some of the historical excess and nuances of these competing approaches to geology. (Bushman notes that Charles Lyell was the source of some of that excess.) The rest of the essay presents uniformitarianism as it was described by James Hutton, followed by some supporting statements from Mormon tradition and scripture, including the quote above by Brigham Young.

Causes Without Effects

Modern criticisms of uniformitarianism are usually religious in nature. In fact, two such articles have appeared in the Ensign [1], and similar writings exist elsewhere in LDS literature. Donald Parry, the author of one of these articles, described uniformitarianism as follows:

Uniformitarianism...proposes three primary concepts: (a) there were no processes (such as geologic processes) operating in the past which are not operating now; (b) there are no processes operating now which were not operating in the past; and (c) process rates have not changed.

To be fair to Parry, there have been some historical excesses in defining and applying uniformitarianism, as noted above. But notice the contrast between the descriptions offered by Bushman and Parry. Bushman's definition focuses on concern for cause-and-effect relationships; Parry's definition is an obvious intellectual straight-jacket.

Parry's version of uniformitarianism is easy to reject, and that serves the purpose of his article, which is to support the reality of a global flood. But he and other similar critics usually excuse themselves from doing the needed rearrangement of cause-and-effect relationships. This allows them to cast doubt on science without engaging it. If I may invert Brigham and Parley's critique, their miracles are causes without effects.

The Earth Divided

To use a different example, let's consider the division of the continents. According to one Biblical interpretation, following Noah's flood the continents were separated as indicated by Genesis 10:25.

And unto Eber were born two sons: the name of one was Peleg; for in his days was the earth divided; and his brother’s name was Joktan.

The observed distances between the continents today requires that this separation--which allegedly occurred a few thousand years ago--was a catastrophic event. A number of scientific lines of evidence support the idea that the continents have joined and separated over time, and the theory of plate tectonics describes how the movement of the continents is possible. However, these movements have been measured and are on the order of inches (or centimeters) per year. Superficially, it appears that we have a simple choice to make based on whether we are willing to believe that movement of the continents has always been slow. Why couldn't a catastrophic or miraculous event cause quick separation?

Can a rock change its stripes?


We need to look deeper [2]. Mid-ocean ridges are mountain ranges on the ocean floor where seafloor spreading occurs as tectonic plates move away from each other. The Mid-Atlantic Ridge runs north-south between the the Americas on the west, and Europe and Africa on the east. At these ridges magma is released, cools, and adds to the crust. Magnetic minerals within these volcanic rocks align with the earth's magnetic field and are frozen in place as the lava cools. Periodically the Earth's magnetic field reverses, and these reversals are reflected in the alignment of the magnetite in the crust. Mapping of the ocean floor has revealed that mid-ocean ridges are sandwiched between symmetrical bands of rock with differing magnetic polarity. These bands can also be dated radiometrically and compared to other volcanic rocks on land, and scientists have found that there is good correspondence in the magnetic polarity of land and ocean rocks of the same age. These ages also show that the magnetic field reversals occur on the order of tens of thousands of years. This is strong evidence that the movement of the continents has been a slow and gradual process.

Dismissing the accepted time period for the continental movements as mere uniformitarianism without explaining these findings just won't do. If South America and Africa were ripped apart by a catastrophe, or even a miracle, the resulting gash in the Earth's crust would have to be filled with something--presumably with the magma underneath. Under such a scenario we would expect the magma to cool more-or-less simultaneously, and the magnetic polarity of the newly formed crust should be uniform. Furthermore, the new crust should give a uniform radiometric date. But this is not what is found. To ignore this contradiction and maintain a catastrophic separation of the continents is to decouple cause and effect by asserting that a catastrophic event caused the effects of a gradual process.

Conclusion

When viewed as concern for cause-and-effect relationships, it becomes clear that the principle of uniformitarianism provides a foundation for reasoning that extends into everyday life. Instead of an arbitrary assumption born of human arrogance, it is a practical guide in a lawful universe, which is why Bushman sees ties between uniformitarianism and LDS theology. This view also reveals most criticism of uniformitarianism to be scientifically empty rhetoric that subtly undermines the basis for belief in a lawful universe.

---

Notes:

1. The Flood and the Tower of Babel and The Gospel and the Scientific View: How Earth Came to Be

2. See This Dynamic Earth, especially here and here.

---

Continue reading...

Velikovsky in Collision

"Velikovsky in Collision" (1975) is the title of an article written by Stephen J. Gould that gives a general assessment of Immanuel Velikovsky (1895-1979). You don't hear much of Velikovsky these days, but he was apparently rather popular (and always controversial) in his day. His notoriety came from his publications which attempted to explain Biblical and other historical oddities by invoking catastrophic earthly encounters with other planets. Mainstream scientists derided his ideas, which made him a hero among scientific insurgents.

Gould summarized Velikovsky's methodology.

He begins with the working hypothesis that all stories reported as direct observation in the ancient chronicles are strictly true—if the Bible reports that the sun stood still, then it did (as the tug of Venus briefly halted the earth's rotation). He then attempts to find some physical explanation, however bizarre, that would render all these stories both mutually consistent and true. Most scientists would do exactly the opposite in using the limits of physical possibility to judge which of the ancient legends might be literally accurate.... Secondly, Velikovsky is well aware that the laws of Newton's universe, where forces of gravitation rule the motion of large objects, will not allow planets to wander. Thus, he proposes a fundamentally new physics of electromagnetic forces for large bodies. In short, Velikovsky would rebuild the science of celestial mechanics to save the literal accuracy of ancient legends. [italics added]

Gould went on to lay out several general critiques of Velikovsky's treatment of geology. One of them deserves particular note because Velikovsky's name often appears along side the term "catastrophism."

Third, the inference of worldwide events from local catastrophes: no geologist has ever denied that local catastrophes occur by flooding, earthquake, or volcanic eruption. But these events have nothing to do, one way or the other, with Velikovsky's notion of global catastrophe caused by sudden shifts in the earth's axis. Nevertheless, most of Velikovsky's "examples" are just such local events combined with an unwarranted extrapolation to global impact. He writes, for example, of the Agate Springs Quarry of Nebraska—a local mammalian "graveyard" containing the bones (according to one estimate) of nearly 20,000 large animals. But, this large aggregation may not record a catastrophic event at all—rivers and oceans can gradually accumulate vast quantities of bone and shell (I have walked on beaches composed entirely of large shells and coral rubble). Also, even if a local flood drowned these animals, we have no evidence that their contemporary brethren on other continents were the least bit bothered.

I wish I had a better handle on the history of catastrophism in geology. Charles Lyell revolutionized geology by popularizing the method of interpreting past changes to the earth using known geological processes, an approach known as uniformitarianism. In contrast, catastrophists appeal to large-scale or global disasters. My sense is that catastrophists tend to have a bad name, not because large-scale catastrophes never happen, but because they are invoked without sufficient evidence in order to save whatever pet theory the catastrophists are pushing. Having said that, uniformitarianists may have been a little too hardened at times in the past. Modern geology is apparently not as rigid. (For what it's worth, doing a Google search on uniformitarianism or catastrophism brings up a lot of creationist websites.)

Gould concludes,

The Velikovsky affair raises what is perhaps the most disturbing question about the public impact of science. How is a layman to judge rival claims of supposed experts? Any person with a gift for words can spin a persuasive argument about any subject not in the domain of a reader's personal expertise.... But what it is a person who knows neither astronomy, Egyptology, nor geology to do—especially when faced with a hypothesis so intrinsically exciting and a tendency, shared, I suspect, by all of us, to root for the underdog?

Gould never really answers the question.

For more critique of Velikovsky, see here.

Postscript:
Velikovsky apparently had a fan among the writers of the Church's Old Testament institute manual.

Although the majority of geologists, astronomers, and other scientists believe that even this long period is not adequate to explain the physical evidence found in the earth, there are a small number of reputable scholars who disagree. These claim that the geologic clocks are misinterpreted and that tremendous catastrophes in the earth’s history speeded up the processes that normally may take thousands of years. They cite evidence supporting the idea that thirteen thousand years is not an unrealistic time period. Immanuel Velikovsky, for example, wrote three books amassing evidence that worldwide catastrophic upheavals have occurred in recent history, and he argued against uniformitarianism, the idea that the natural processes in evidence now have always prevailed at the same approximate rate of uniformity. These books are Worlds in Collision, Ages in Chaos, and Earth in Upheaval.

---

Continue reading...

Everything I Know About Epistemology, I Learned From The Ensign

(Having never taken a serious interest in philosophy, that's probably pretty close to the truth.)

Elder Gerald Lund (of the Seventy) has the distinction of having written the only article for a Church magazine that uses the word "epistemology." The article is "Countering Korihor’s Philosophy" from the July 1992 Ensign (written before he became a General Authority). I originally found it as a missionary and have kept my copy since then.

The article first introduces some philosophical terms.

"Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of reality. It tries to answer the question 'What is real?'"

"Axiology is the study of ethics and values."

"Epistemology is the study of how we know what is real or true."

Elder Lund then lists and briefly explains some systems of epistemology: authoritarianism, rationalism, pragmatism, and empiricism. Of course he also adds revelation. He also explains that our metaphysics, axiology, and epistemology interact and inform each other.

Having provided this helpful primer, it's time to kick some Korihor rear-end. The article lays out Korihor's philosophical foundations and how Alma responded to them. It provides a fresh view of Alma's confrontation with Korihor, and I wish there were more of these kind of articles.

I do have two main reservations: First, in my opinion the swipe at humanists is not entirely warranted. I think that you can be a good Mormon and still find a lot of agreement with secular humanists. And if you are like me, you don't entirely disagree with some of the modern Korihor-like statements quoted in the article because they don't lend themselves to easy categorization of true or false.

Second, the article gives the impression that confounding Korihor-types is as easy as following the included chart.

No matter how clever, how sophisticated the philosophies of an anti-Christ may seem, they are not true. They are riddled with contradictions, errors, and false assumptions. The gospel, on the other hand, is truth—truth that has stood the test of centuries, truth that can withstand rational examination, truth that is pragmatic and practical, truth that can be confirmed through personal experience. A believer need not apologize for his or her beliefs, for these beliefs withstand every scrutiny much more efficiently than do the doctrines of Satan.

That sounds a little hubristic to me. If you think that you are going to destroy the arguments of a thoughtful atheist using this article, you are probably in for an unpleasant surprise. Imagine that Alma and Korihor were talking about UFOs, Zeus, or something else that you do not believe in (that others do) and you begin to see the problem. My point is simply that when push comes to shove, Mormonism does not rest on impeccable philosophical arguments and consistent logic. It has vulnerabilities that can only be shielded with faith. I am reminded of a statement by President Ezra Taft Benson:

Our main task is to declare the gospel and do it effectively. We are not obligated to answer every objection. Every man eventually is backed up to the wall of faith, and there he must make his stand.

---

Continue reading...

Rejecting Concordism

I occasionally stroll over to American Scientific Affiliation to have a look at some of their free articles. The ASA is an organization of Christians interested in science, and their arguments and discussions over science and religion are frequently transposable to an LDS context. Although I'm not really sure who he is, I have enjoyed the more recent articles written by Paul Seely.

Today I want to highlight "Concordism and a Biblical Alternative: An Examination of Hugh Ross’s Perspective" (pdf). It is a book review and opens with discussion of the Flood, but my interest here is with the discussion that follows beginning on page 42 under the heading, "A Biblical Approach to Science and Scripture."

Concordism is the expectation that scriptures and science/history should match. This is a natural expectation; why would we expect anything else? Seely lays out some reasons why we should expect otherwise, and some of his arguments are quite at home in Mormonism. His main points are as follows:

1. In giving man dominion over the earth, God delegated discovery of natural truths to all people (i.e. believers and unbelievers) and therefore does not give such details in his revelations.

2. When the biblical writers rely on human sources, mistakes may be incorporated into scripture. "The idea that inspiration will correct or avoid all factual errors in a biblical historian’s sources is not taught in Scripture nor borne out by the phenomena of Scripture."

3. "God’s revelation is organically related to the people to whom it is given and consequently is sometimes accommodated to culturally pre-ingrained ideas." Examples include the permissibility of divorce and slavery.

4. Such accommodation is needed in order facilitate communication, and even belief.

5. "God is not lying or erring, therefore, when his Word does not agree with the findings of modern science because the science per se which he has incorporated into Scripture is not a revelation from God but is simply an accommodation to the science of those times."

To Mormons most of this is uncontroversial, although the specific application may be. Things get a little more tricky when the teachings of ancient prophets are refracted through the revelations of Joseph Smith (e.g. Moses and Abraham). We have to wonder, do the revelations reflect (i) ultimate scientific/historical truth, (ii) accommodation to the ancient prophet's culture, or (iii) accommodation to Joseph's culture (or maybe a mixture of the three)? Committed LDS scholars are of divergent opinions on this question.

Seely again:

By the time of the writing of Genesis, the Israelites already had these ideas about creation, the flood, and the post-flood world deeply ingrained in their culture. As with their ingrained beliefs about easy divorce and slavery, these beliefs about early human history were too imbedded to be summarily contradicted. The original false theology in these traditions was radically revised in the light of the revelation given to Abraham and his descendants, and historical details could be altered in part, but the pre-embedded historical outline could not be changed.

These things were also ingrained in Joseph Smith's culture, and that may explain why our additional scriptures also do not contradict them (see 1-5 above). If Joseph had no reason to question the accuracy of these traditions (e.g. Biblical chronology was still thought to apply to human civilization until around 1860), should we expect his revelations to overturn or alter them?

Thus, Seely argues that we need not twist scripture or science to make them match, nor need we reject one in order to accept the other.

We are reading the divine revelation given to a people from a historically distant and far different cultural background. We need to appreciate the cultural context of those first readers and of God’s condescension to them. Instead of insisting that God and Scripture live up to our expectations that the Bible fit the findings of modern science, we would do better to accept and learn from what God has actually done, read the Bible strictly for the purposes for which it was given, and pursue science with an eye to uncovering the truths of creation to the glory of God.

[Note: For previous posts that touch on concordism, see my new category label, scriptural concordism.]

---

Continue reading...

Welch on Evidence and Faith

For some time now, I've been coveting the online essay of the week feature at Dave's Mormon Inquiry. I'm going to adopt a similar feature here that I will call "Essay Notes" (in keeping with my Book Notes and Quote Notes categories).

First up is The Power of Evidence in the Nurturing of Faith, by John Welch, from the FARMS book, Echoes and Evidences of the Book of Mormon. Welch gives some of his thoughts on the relationship of evidence and faith. The basic thesis is summed up in the title, that the role of evidence--in particular, in support of the Book of Mormon--is to maintain enough of a sense of plausibility to allow faith to become established and grow. Along the way he draws on the role of evidence in the law to argue that evidence is not a black-or-white thing, but something that has greater or weaker strength depending on a number of contexts, and that ultimately a subjective judgment must be made. For example, after listing various degrees of certitude required in different legal circumstances, he writes:

In a religious setting, no arbiter prescribes or defines the level of evidence that will sustain a healthy faith. All individuals must set for themselves the levels of proof that they will require. Yet how does one privately determine what burden of proof the Book of Mormon should bear?... Few people realize how much rides on their personal choice in these matters and that their answer necessarily originates in the domain of faith.

The essay does takes a faith-first approach; much of the essay seems to treat evidence as useful only insofar as it builds faith. But is it only a one-way street? Shouldn't evidence also inform faith? Welch seems to imply that it should, at least to some degree. For example:

Caution is also advised on the side of faith. Revealed knowledge must be understood and interpreted correctly. What has actually been revealed?... Moreover, the implications of revelation are not always clear.

And one that I have highlighted before (quoting Sydney Sperry):

Too many persons in every generation, including our own, hope for things—fantastic things—in the name of faith and religion, but give little thought as to whether or not they are based on truth.

As President Packer said, mixing these two things is like mixing oil and water. Although it is certainly not the last word, in my opinion Welch's essay is one of the better attempts in LDS literature.

---

Continue reading...