Dave's Mormon Inquiry

You and Your Righteous Religious Mind

Psychology has come a long way the last couple of decades. Instead of seeing us coming into the world with a mind like a blank slate, psychologists and cognitive scientists are discovering through cleverly designed empirical research that we are born with a preloaded mental operating system. It predisposes us to see the world like emotional, opinionated, tribal human beings rather than like rational, logical robots. You can get the whole story, with special emphasis on how moral systems and individual moral convictions are formed, in Jonathan Haidt's new book The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion (Pantheon Books, 2012 | publisher's page | official book page).

Cafeteria Correlation

Karl Giberson's Saving Darwin: How to Be a Christian and Believe in Evolution (HarperOne, 2008) relates Giberson's journey from fundamentalist Christian student to still-believing but no longer fundamentalist physicist. Chapter 5 of the book critiques the sources of Young Earth Creationism (YEC), primarily George McCready Price's The New Geology, published in 1923, and Whitcomb and Morris's The Genesis Flood, published in 1961. As Price's book is also a source for LDS YEC beliefs — which for some bizarre reason still seem to guide Correlation in approving statements made in LDS publications — the chapter seems particularly helpful for Latter-day Saints seeking to understand LDS views on science and evolution.

What Historicity Means to Christians

We all know what "historicity" means to Mormons and the issues that term points to, but what does it mean to conservative Christians? The June 2011 Christianity Today editorial "No Adam, No Eve, No Gospel" is a good discussion of what the issues are for conservative Christians.

A Writer on Science and Religion

In this final installment of this month's series of posts on religion and science, I will present a different take on things from the perspective of a celebrated writer. Marilynne Robinson won a Pulitzer Prize in 2005 for her novel Gilead. She also delivered the Terry Lectures at Yale in 2009, resulting in the book Absence of Mind: The Dispelling of Inwardness from the Modern Myth of the Self (Yale Univ. Press, 2010), from which I draw the following quotations and summaries.

Science and Religion: Enemies or Partners?

For the next installment in this set of posts, let's consider the relation between science and religion. In a mildly tedious but well-organized book, When Science Meets Religion: Enemies, Strangers, or Partners? (HarperCollins, 2000), Ian Barbour lays out four basic forms that the relation between science and religion can take: Conflict (either science or religion is correct, but not both); Independence (science and religion refer to different domains or aspects of reality); Dialogue (where discussions about method, metaphysics, and metaphor can enlighten both scientists and theologians); and Integration (natural theology or theology of nature approaches try to unite some or all aspects of science and theology). Which of these views or models correspond to the LDS approach?

An LDS View on Science and Religion

Continuing the conversation begun in my earlier post (God and Science), let's look at the Encyclopedia of Mormonism entry titled "Science and Religion." It provides a good summary of what might be termed the conservative LDS position on the topic.

God and Science

The conflict between science and religion is generally overstated. But it is certainly true that science is the matrix that most people of our day -- believers or not -- use as the basis for understanding the natural world we live in. Atheists and agnostics stop there; believers add a supplemental layer of faith to their view of the universe that includes a doctrine or idea of God and that reflects a view or theory of how God acts (or doesn't act) in the natural world. So does science strengthen our faith or threaten it? Is it easier or tougher to be a believer in the age of modern science than, say, the time of Hellenistic philosophy and paganism or the early modern era of demonology and witch-hunts?

Theology in the Wake of Evolution

It's not easy being a theologian in the 21st century. One of the main reasons is that science provides credible, non-theistic explanations for many of those "where did we come from?" questions that religion once had all to itself. Evolution seems to pose a particular challenge. John Haught, a professor of theology at Georgetown, tries to tackle the problem head-on in his book God After Darwin: A Theology of Evolution (Westview, 2000).

Teaching Evolution

At Mormon Insights, a post on the do's and don'ts of teaching evolution to college students.

The author:

I am a happy and content Latter-day Saint who teaches evolution at a non-LDS university. In fact, I have taught evolution in various forums and institutions for 30 years.

A Christian Look at Intelligent Design

I was clearing out highlighted posts from my too-full Google reader (does anyone else have this problem?) and came across a series of posts on ID at Tough Questions Answered: A Christian Apologetics Blog. The two fellows who run the site (one of whom was formerly LDS) obviously disagree with Mormonism when it comes up, but they do so nicely. How refreshing.

Religion as a Learning Community

From David Ford's Theology: A Very Short Introduction:

Religions are learning communities which benefit from interactions with other learning communities, and they also need to cultivate their own educational institutions. There have been devastating consequences when religious communities have had negative attitudes to study, scholarship, and intelligent faith, or have failed to face intelligently major questions, discoveries, or developments. There have also been extraordinary achievements when intelligent faith, deep learning, and imaginative wisdom have come together.

Altruism: An Underrated Virtue

As reported yesterday, altruism might give you that special something. Or it could just be the great feline conspiracy at work.

The undeluded believer

LDS Science Review gathers links to responses to Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion. In "A Mission to Convert" at the New York Review of Books, an evolutionary biologist writes, "The most disappointing feature of The God Delusion is Dawkins's failure to engage religious thought in any serious way." He further comments:

Dawkins when discussing religion is, in effect, a blunt instrument, one that has a hard time distinguishing Unitarians from abortion clinic bombers. What may be less obvious is that, on questions of God, Dawkins cannot abide much dissent, especially from fellow scientists (and especially from fellow evolutionary biologists).

Intelligent Design: Coming to a Theater Near You

Get Religion has a nice post on the new documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. It stars Ben Stein, the face you instantly associate with the following phrase: "Bueller? Bueller?" The point of GR's post is that the media is largely ignoring the documentary despite a strong showing at the box office — apparently because the message of the documentary doesn't resonate with the left-leaning media, whereas any stupid thing Michael Moore or Al Gore puts out gets instant coverage and even critical acclaim. I'm no fan of ID, but I think rabid evolutionists that want to shut down discussion of alternative ideas don't deserve the deference they get from the media. Anyone seen this movie yet?

Back From the Brink

"Study says near extinction threatened people 70,000 years ago" at Yahoo News. Apparently nasty African droughts pushed the taxed human population down to about 2000 struggling souls. So were God and His angels on high thinking, "Get it together people, or we're going to have to send down five billion spirits as cats?" Or was this all just a part of the Plan? Makes me want to go dig up The Seven Daughters of Eve from my backroom bookshelf and read it.

Mormons and Science

For this week's online essay, go read "The Mormon Retreat From Science," the editors' introduction to a collection of essays published by Signature in 1993 under the title The Search for Harmony: Essays on Science and Mormonism. The editors are Gene Sessions, a historian, and Craig Oberg, a microbiologist, both at Weber State University. The essay chronicles the open-minded attitude towards science of 19th-century LDS leaders like Joseph and Brigham; the expressly pro-science view of early 20th-century LDS leaders like Talmage, Widtsoe, and Roberts; and the increasingly anti-science tilt of recent LDS leaders, most notably Joseph Fielding Smith and Bruce R. McConkie.

Augustine Contra Fundamentalism

I'm about halfway through Francis Collins' The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence For Belief (2006). Collins is a brilliant geneticist who is also the head of the Human Genome Project. I checked the book out from the local library about six months ago but couldn't get into it at all. This time I'm actually listening to the CD version during the daily commute so there's nowhere to hide, and I'm enjoying it much more than I would have anticipated. Maybe God's Universe got me warmed up to scientific apologetics. Anyway, I'd like to share a choice quote that Collins offers from the sophisticated St. Augustine.

God's Universe

Just finished God's Universe, a short book by Owen Gingerich, a noted Harvard astronomer. The book reprints the author's three lectures at the William Belden Noble Lectures, an annual event at which a noted scientist or public intellectual addresses Christian issues of the day. The book is much like the recent Francis Collins book The Language of God, except that it is much shorter and it is written by an astronomer rather than a biologist.

Biblical Cosmology

One problem with trying to understand the Bible is that its writers thought about the universe in much different terms than we do. This point comes out quite clearly in a couple of passages in The Future of Christianity, a modernist religious critique of conservative Christian beliefs. Here's the author's description of what we can call the biblical cosmology, although it wasn't unique to what became the books of the Bible:

The biblical view represented most clearly in the creation story in Genesis 1:1-2:4a is that of a flat earth, covered by a dome to which the sun, the moon, and the stars are attached. The waters of heaven are above that dome or firmament. In fact, it is the opening of the windows of that dome that results in the falling of rain or snow upon the earth below.

Beneath the earth are the waters upon which the earth rests and the underworld, basically a tunnel through which the sun travels on its nightly journey from the west, where it sets, to return to the east in time for the next sunrise. The heavens are beyond the dome of the sky and serve as the permanent abode of God and his angels.

This biblical cosmology raises some interesting questions for modern believers.

Evolution Sunday

Today is Evolution Sunday. I didn't hear an evolution sermon in my LDS congregation this morning and I'm guessing you didn't either, but if you need one there's a list of thirty of forty evolution sermons posted online. LDS resources you might consult should you prefer something less sermon-like: the BYU Evolutionary Biology page; the article Seers, Savants and Evolution: The Uncomfortable Interface by Duane Jeffery; and, at All About Mormons, several articles drawn from McConkie's Mormon Doctrine and from the Encyclopedia of Mormonism.

A Scientist, Two Popes, and a Prophet

For this week's online essay, go read "Nonoverlapping Magisteria," a widely-cited 1997 essay by Stephen Jay Gould. Here is its central thesis:

The lack of conflict between science and religion arises from a lack of overlap between their respective domains of professional expertise—science in the empirical constitution of the universe, and religion in the search for proper ethical values and the spiritual meaning of our lives. The attainment of wisdom in a full life requires extensive attention to both domains ...

The Selfish Meme

For a particularly interesting online essay, go read The Spell of the Meme (click here for a nicer pdf version). The essay is by lapsed atheist and professor of historical theology Alister McGrath, offering a pointed critique of Daniel Dennett's latest book, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon (2006). He takes Dennett to task for his rather liberal use of the problematic concept of the meme in his "natural" explanation of religion. For several interesting posts on Dennett's book, see entries at Issues in Mormon Doctrine (first entry here).

Note: I've been getting increased spam and troll comments lately, so I turned the comment queue ON for a few days. Expect short delays before your comments post publicly. On the bright side, some comment typos will now magically disappear before posting.

Science Is Good For the Soul

A science article reports the latest estimate of the age of the Universe as 13.7 billion years, "give or take a few hundred thousand years." Now that's a long time. In addition, this news has now penetrated the Jello Curtain, as I'm quoting this AP story from the SL Trib. The story summarizes cosmic inflation and pre-inflationary quantum fluctuations as a key to the present lumpiness of the Universe as we know it. Not only are stars clumped into galaxies, but galaxies come in clusters or sheets too — a fact that was particularly hard to explain at one time. As summed up by a Columbia physicist quoted in the article, "Galaxies are nothing but quantum mechanics writ large across the sky.''

DN on Evolution

Since ID and evolution are Big News this month in Utah, you might enjoy this: The Deseret News weighed in with a nice article summarizing the position of various denominations and religions on the suddenly topical evolution question. It starts by noting the very recent publication (by a couple of LDS scientists) of an expanded version of the notorious 1992 BYU Evolution Packet, which was (according to the article) also distributed to all CES teachers in 1999. I wonder if there was a cover memo that said, "Ignore all statements on evolution by Joseph Fielding Smith and Bruce R. McConkie, and restrict your remarks about evolution to the substance of the authoritative statements reproduced in this packet." Just curious. Oh, about those other denominations ...

OSC on ID

For this week's online essay, go read Creation and Evolution in the Schools, by Orson Scott Card at Meridian Magazine. It's got something for everyone, and OSC himself tries to come down somewhere in the middle. Against "Designists," he notes: "But when you purport to teach science in school, the subject you teach had better be science, and not somebody's religion in disguise." Against "Darwinists," he says: "That's the problem with both sides in this squabble. They are both functioning as religions, and they should stop it at once." I'm not sure the article really makes clear what OSC's own position is on evolution or ID.