I am religiously multilingual. I grew up in a devout Mormon family, I learned all the Mormon songs, heard all the Mormon stories, and read all the Mormon scriptures. I identified as a Mormon, and I still do. When I was in elementary school my best friends were all Mormon. But during that traumatic shake-up that happens to kids as they transfer from elementary school to middle school I missed my footing and fell out of favor with the other Mormon kids. For about the next decade, I didn’t have a single close Mormon friend I saw on regular basis, and the Mormons I did get along with most were those on the margins. Throughout the formative years of middle school, high school, and college the people I trusted, depended on, and interacted with outside of regular church meetings were almost exclusively with non-Mormons. And during regular church meetings? I was very lonely.[ref]I have close Mormon friends today, but that’s a recent development over the last 5 years or so.[/ref]
The upside of the loneliness was that I learned a religious version of code-switching. I’ve always had a keen interest in religion and politics and all the controversial topics you’re not supposed to discuss in polite company, and I spent all my time talking about those issues with non-Mormons. So I picked up some of the vocabulary, paradigms, values, and cultural touchstones of the Catholics, evangelicals, Jews, agnostics, and atheists around me.
One of the biggest impacts of religious multilingualism is that it changes how you view your own faith. The first realization is the most basic: you start to see how many of the unspoken assumptions about what you think and how you behave are not universal, but are particular to your own religious and cultural background. You start to realize just how much variety there is to the way different people view the world.
Along the way, you may also catch glimpses of your own religion reflected back to you in the eyes of others. This is a strange experience. It’s like vertigo or an out-of-body experience to see what is most familiar and close to your identity appear suddenly strange and distant. It’s a kind of radical dissociation, like what happens when you repeat an ordinary word until meaning and sound of the word separate. Try it, if you’re curious. The word “tub” is fun to use. Just start repeating it to yourself, out loud, at normal speed. Give it a couple of minutes at most, and suddenly you’ll feel like you’re making sounds instead of words.
Every now and then when I’m sitting in Elder’s Quorum and we’re saying a prayer I can’t help but look around at all the other guys in the room and think: “This is weird.” We’ve all got regular jobs with regular people and we know how to get along just fine in the regular world. But every Sunday we keep coming back to this brutally ugly meetinghouse, sitting in these weird pseudo-rooms made by moving giant curtains to subdivide a carpeted basketball court attached to a chapel, and we pray in front of each other like it’s the most mundane thing in the world. It is, by the experience of most of the American people, not a normal way to behave. For the non-religious the whole project is bizarre, and even for religious Americans the particular habits of Mormons—like our lack of formality or professional leadership—are definitively abnormal.
None of this is to say that I love my weird religion less. On the contrary, there are some things I appreciate about Mormonism that I wouldn’t have noticed without the experience of being religiously multilingual. High on that list is the fact that, as a general rule, Mormons proselyte with a positive message. That might seem obvious, but a Mormon living in the Bible Belt will soon be disabused of that notion. I’ve been told that I’m going to Hell simply for being Mormon on more than one occasion, and when I tried to join a Bible group on campus (because Institute seemed far away and, frankly, non-Mormons often know the Bible much better than we do), the leader staged what I can only describe as an intervention to try and rescue me from “Joe” Smith’s nefarious clutches. So, as it turns out, there are actually other ways to go about it. Of course individual Mormons fall short from time to time, but as a people we have nothing like the countercult movement, and I’m proud of that.
Being religiously multilingual has helped me be a better Mormon in other ways as well. As I’ve learned more about other faith traditions, I’ve grown to view them with respect and admiration. Treating other religions this way is an intrinsic aspect of the Mormon view on truth. Joseph Smith said that “One of the grand fundamental principles of Mormonism is to receive truth, let it come from whence it may,”[ref]Discourses of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p. 199[/ref] and his successor Brigham Young reinforced that sentiment as well: “I want to say to my friends that we believe in all good. If you can find a truth in heaven, earth or hell, it belongs to our doctrine. We believe it; it is ours; we claim it.”[ref]Journal of Discourses, vol. 13, p. 335[/ref] Mormon scholar Terryl Givens[ref]Terryl Givens is my father.[/ref] described Joseph Smith’s belief in his calling as “an oracle of God, subject to moments of heavenly encounter and the pure flow of inspiration,” but also wrote that Smith was “insatiably eclectic in his borrowings and adaptations.”[ref]The Woman in the Wilderness: Mormonism, Catholicism, and Inspired Syncretism, p. 14[/ref]
This puts a very different light on the Mormon teaching that our church is “the only true and living church upon the face of the whole earth.”[ref]D&C 1:30[/ref] I do believe that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the one true Church, but to me that means something fairly narrow and limited. It means we’re the one authorized, formal institution. But it doesn’t mean we’re perfect, doesn’t mean we’re better, doesn’t mean we know it all, and doesn’t even mean we know the most. Mormons have no monopoly on truth. That is plainly evident from our leaders and in our scriptures. For example, Doctrine and Covenants section 49:8—a revelation given to Joseph Smith—talks about “holy men ye know not of,” cementing in scripture the principle that God is quite busy interacting with a lot of people other than Mormons to accomplish His purposes. Apostle Orson F. Whitney said the same thing in 1928 when he said that: “God is using more than one people for the accomplishment of His great and marvelous work. The Latter-day Saints cannot do it all. It is too vast, too arduous for any one people.”[ref]Orson F. Whitney, Conference Report, April 1928, p. 59[/ref]
I’ve become a huge fan of Krister Stendahl’s Three Rules of Religious Understanding and in particular rule number three: “Leave room for holy envy.” This isn’t a rule that I think Mormons have always fully grasped, but—as the quotes in the previous two paragraphs illustrate—it has always been a part of who we try to be.
I’d like to think that I’ve also been able to use my multilingual perspective in ways that have been constructive for other folks as well. Many years ago when Facebook groups had discussion boards, I was part of a particularly large group where the longest running-thread was titled “Protestants vs. Catholics” (or something similar). I often enjoyed participating in that discussion as the third leg of a tripod: Christian, but neither Protestant nor Catholic. No one ever really wins a debate of that nature, of course, but I think that changing the dynamic from simplistic one-on-one to a more fluid and stable three-way conversation sometimes improved the tenor and expanded the breadth of the discussion.
These, then, are the three primary benefits of religious multilingualism: an increased capacity for introspection, an increased capacity to learn from others, and an opportunity to engage more effectively in ecumenical discussions. Each of them, I believe, can be applied at the macro level to Mormonism as a whole just as I have seen them work in my own life.
One of the big surprises for the world travelers who came to Salt Lake during the 2002 Winter Olympics was that there were all of these conventional-looking white men and women who, at the drop of a hat, could hold forth in Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Dutch, German, Tagalog, Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese, and dozens of other languages.”Mormons Project Image As Diverse as Olympics,” wrote the New York Times. This is a natural consequence of the Church’s ambitious missionary program. There are about 50 languages taught at the Missionary Training Center (MTC) in Provo[ref]About the MTC[/ref] and the Church also runs MTCs in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Ghana, Guatemala, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, the Philippines, South Africa, Spain, and the United Kingdom.[ref]Wikipedia[/ref]
It’s obvious when you think about it: lots of Mormons serve missions, and so lots of Mormons speak foreign languages. Mormons don’t just learn the language when they live in foreign countries. They learn and come to love the culture. Talk to any Mormon missionary—even those who served stateside and didn’t learn a new language—and they will almost invariably be able to tell you about the best local cousine and speak with adopted pride about local traditions and history from wherever they served, be it Alabama or Albania.[ref]Yup, we’re there. I checked.[/ref]
All of this international exposure and cultural multilingualism means that Mormons—and especially American Mormons—have an opportunity and an obligation to try and separate our cultural heritage from the essence of Mormonism. If instead of a young American farmer named Joseph Smith, God had restored His church to a young Indian or a young Japanese farmer, what would the institution look like today? What part of what Mormon missionaries export is essential Mormonism and what part is Wassatch Front culture? These are murky and sensitive questions, but important ones.
The process of attempting to distill religion from culture is uncomfortable and can never yield truly definitive results, but it is important in understanding ourselves and reaching out and engage with a global audience. In years to come, it may very well be that one of the most important consequences of our global missionary effort is not what we teach to others but what, by seeing our faith refracted back in different languages and cultures, we learn about our own religion.
Of course it’s not just our own religion we should learn about, but the religions, traditions, and cultural insights of the people of the world. This is a matter of scriptural injunction for Mormons: “study and learn, and become acquainted with all good books, and with languages, tongues, and people.”[ref]Doctrine and Covenants 90:15[/ref] I also find it very interesting that the topic of faith crises is so prominent in our discussion these days, and is linked in our scripture to the command to learn: “And as all have not faith, seek ye diligently and teach one another words of wisdom; yea, seek ye out of the best books words of wisdom; seek learning, even by study and also by faith.”[ref]Doctrine and Covenants 88:118[/ref] We may come to learn that when it comes to faith crisis in our secular age, the best way out is through. The solution is not insularity, but greater exposure and the inoculation that comes with the habit of being exposed to many, many new ideas and developing the skill of synthesizing what we learn that is new into our traditions and beliefs.
Now that I’ve covered briefly how Mormons can use our cultural multilingualism to achieve greater introspection and learn from others, let’s consider the third benefit of multilingualism, engaging beneficially in ecumenical discussions.
The relationship between Mormonism and the broader Christian community has always been fraught. Mainstream Christian denominations have reacted to Mormonism’s stark claims to being the only truth Church by refusing to recognize Mormon baptisms. Mormons are occasionally miffed about that without realizing that Mormons don’t recognize anyone else’s baptisms either! The biggest sticking point in this relationship, of course, is that many other Christians denominations assert that Mormonism is not Christian at all.
Mormons, who unambiguously view themselves as Christians, are torn by conflicting desires to enter a broader ecumenical community and to maintain their distinctiveness. Mormon scholar Armand Mauss writes about this as the tension between assimilation and differentiation in, for example, The Angel and the Beehive . Early Mormons like the Pratt brothers emphasized Mormon distinctiveness, but more recently President Hinckley (who led the Church until 2008) oversaw a period of engagement that downplayed the more revolutionary teachings of Joseph Smith and emphasized common Christian doctrines.
Although clearly important, this emphasis on the relationship between Mormons and mainstream Christianity has distracted attention from a different set of bridges that Mormons could be building. In an age in which it often seems as though traditional religious voices are declining in prominence and importance, Mormonism may be uniquely positioned to enter into dialogue with rising secular voices, shifting the emphasis from intra-Christian discussions to inter-faith discussions where “secularism” is considered a faith group in its own right. That’s a controversial classification, of course, but other than that nomenclature there isn’t really that much to debate: secularism is clearly more than the mere absence of religion. In our society, secularism entails a suite of philosophical commitments (such as to materialism/physicalism and analytic reductionism) and cultural attitudes that function in ways that are broadly equivalent to a religion, and it is a religion with which Mormonism is uniquely positioned to interact with.
Mormonism has long held, for example, that there is no conflict between science and religion. Brigham Young taught that “Our religion will not clash with or contradict the facts of science in any particular,” and he even viewed that as a distinctive element of Mormonism that set it aside from other Christian denominations.[ref]Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses, vol 14, pg 116[/ref] Mormons have also long taught a kind of metaphysical monism that, while not necessarily identical to physicalism, is certainly more akin to it than to traditional Cartesian dualism. “All spirit is matter,” reads a canonized revelation to Joseph Smith.[ref]Doctrine and Covenants 131:7[/ref]
Mormons also reject the conventional Christian idea that God created the world ex nihilo, which means “from nothing.” Instead of God creating by conjuring something out of nothing, Mormons believe that the world was created by organizing materials that were already present. More importantly, Mormon scripture contains hints that some kernel of the human soul itself is fundamentally uncreated: “Man was also in the beginning with God. Intelligence, or the light of truth, was not created or made, neither indeed can be.”[ref]Doctrine and Covenants 93:29[/ref]
The precise philosophical implications of these beliefs are unclear, especially since Mormonism has no official theology and no authoritative theologians. But some general trends are clear. The first is that, in a sense, Mormons reject supernaturalism. Instead, we embrace a variant of Clarke’s Third Law: Sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from miracles. How far Mormons run with this notion is a matter for individual deliberation, but the extreme position that posits God as a kind of super-evolved person is not inconceivable. And that is a definition of God that even Richard Dawkins could learn to live with.
And, even without precisely working out the theology, the Mormon perspective does have relevance to important topics like the Problem of Evil. How does one reconcile why bad things happen to good people? The most prominent response involves citing free will, but if you believe that God created human beings out of nothing then that explanation doesn’t work very well. Sure, we’re free to act out according to our sinful natures, but if God made us then He made our natures. Why didn’t He make them better? Discarding the doctrine of creation ex nihilo doesn’t solve the Problem of Evil in one fell swoop, but it does have a significant and meaningful impact on the conversation.
It is, however, not an ecumenical conversation. The Problem of Evil is an example of a theological problem that is of interest to anyone who believes in a creator God and also serves as a linchpin in many atheist arguments. And so, rather than jumping into the Protestant vs. Catholic debate as I did many years ago, I have to wonder if Mormonism might be able to fill a similar role in the more general religious vs. secular discussion going on in our world. It would be a stretch to say that Mormonism has a foot in each domain, but it is at least in the unique position of being able to survey both landscapes from where it stands.
This may seem like an absurd position, so I want to spend just a little time on it. Lots of faiths can adapt to secularism by simply downplaying supernatural claims and reducing everything to symbolism. Mormonism is as capable as any other denomination of taking that route. There is nothing unique to Mormonism in that strategy. There’s also nothing interesting or useful in that strategy. Assimilating religion into a secular worldview does nothing good for either religion or secularism, and history shows that religions which go down that road gradually fade and die.
Instead, what Mormonism offers is the prospect of maintaining the vitality of historical religious propositions in a secular environment. To be clear: I’m talking about Mormons who believe a man named Jesus Christ walked the Earth 2,000 years ago, performed various miracles, died, and was resurrected. The Mormon difference isn’t to deny that miracles can happen, it’s to imagine that miracles do not violate the laws of physics but operate at a higher level. This is weird, yes, but quantum mechanics is weird. Again: the best way out of the religion vs. science conflict is through.
It is also worth noting that the idea of synthesizing religious and secular views is not a new one for Mormons. One of the greatest examples comes from Orson Scott Card’s greatest work The Speaker for the Dead. The book recounts how, after exterminating humanity’s rivals in the events of Ender’s Game, Ender created a new, secular religion. The religion is secular in the sense of not making any supernatural claims or even discussing God, and it is clearly modeled on the cultural place Mormonism actually occupies in American society. Mormonism is at once scoffed at by traditional religions for being irreligious in its conceptions of deity and by secular society for being overly religious in its belief in angels in the age of railways. Similarly, in Card’s writing, the religion of the Speakers is viewed with mistrust both by the futuristic Catholic Church and the dominant secular society. It’s an uncomfortable and strange place that Mormonism occupies, but also a potentially fruitful one.
Perhaps the biggest thing holding Mormonism back from this kind of bridge-building between religious and secular society is our own reticence. One of the reasons Mormonism seems weird is that in trying to emphasize our commonality with other Christian denominations we sometimes refuse to speak up clearly and plainly about beliefs that would emphasize our distinctiveness. And, since we suddenly go silent exactly where people are most interested in what we believe, it’s no surprise that the vacuum gets filled with tangential, obscure, or false versions of what we believe. Being more willing to speak explicitly about uniquely Mormon beliefs is an important part of being seen as less weird or, at least, being seen as weird for the right reasons.[ref]This is a big part of what inspired my parents, Terryl and Fiona Givens, to write their first book together: The God Who Weeps: How Mormonism Makes Sense of Life .[/ref]
Mormonism, both because of our unusual doctrine and our far-flung missions, is truly multilingual. We can and should use this trait to better understand ourselves, better learn from our neighbors, and more productively engage in the great religious discussions of our day, which is happening not within the overtly religious community, but between secular and religious philosophies.
Great piece. But I can’t help but feel like this is a portrait of what you wish Mormonism was than what it is. I could ask at length about how “the only true and living church” “doesn’t even … know the most,” but I don’t think that would be a fruitful discussion due to all the wiggle room created by the confluence of “true” and “living”. So, to pick a particular:
“Our religion will not clash with or contradict the facts of science in any particular”
There is a scientific consensus that same-sex parents are as likely to be good at raising children as parents in traditional marriages. The church claims to advocate for “hospitalization and medical care, fair housing and employment rights, or probate rights” of same-sex couples, but does not support same-sex parents.
Same-sex sex and parenting occur frequently and successfully in nature, but the church says “any other sexual relations, including those between persons of the same gender, undermine the divinely created institution of the family.” Science has concluded that some (not all) sexual relations other than married-hetero do not undermine the family, but are just as likely to lead to a good family.
A commitment to honor the facts of science is a big one. It takes the reins out of your hands, leading you places you didn’t expect to go. In some cases, like Mindfulness, religions got it right far before science. Mormons are better at getting around to agreeing with scientific conclusions than most faith groups. We can hope the hierarchy will come around on this particular soon.
Ryan-
I agree with that. To me, the Restoration is not finished, and we as Mormons have a lot of growing to do.
This certainly true, which is why I would characterize the decision to honor the facts of science as an act of faith, as in act of trust. However, I do not think that your particular example (same-sex parenting) is nearly as threatening as you think it is. Science is a slow, imperfect process and we are easily decades away from reaching anything like a high degree of scientific certainty about that particular question.
In principle, though, just to reiterate: you are right. Claiming that Jesus truly resurrected makes the Church open to historical analysis. (Obviously we can’t prove the case definitively yes/no from 2,000 year remove, but there are relevant records and documents.) Claiming that Mormonism won’t conflict with science has the same kind of effect. This is exactly what I mean about Mormonism bridging a gap between a religious and a secular worldview.
Being multilingual in not only religious language, but other fields, helps immensely in gaining a deeper understanding one’s own beliefs. Lissette and I are frequently having conversations about loaded terms and cultural baggage that comes with certain rhetoric in the Church. Just this last week she had to teach the Laurels the lesson “Why Is Jesus Christ Important?” When you start poking and prodding, you start getting beyond the frankly shallow answers we typically hear.
So this topic covers a lot of questions I’ve accumulated about Mormonism over my admittedly short study of Mormonism and Christian philosophy/theology in general. I’m gonna poke, but I’ll try to poke with love :)
“‘All spirit is matter,’ reads a canonized revelation to Joseph Smith.”
This belief would seem to legitimize non-believers asking why we can’t just make a soul-o-meter and detect spirits if all spirit is matter. One potential answer is that we just don’t have a sufficiently advanced detector yet, referencing for example how long it took humans to figure out that UV light or x-rays exist, but that seems like the same argument atheists make about naturalism: If we just wait long enough for science to catch up, we’ll find out we were right.
“Mormons also reject the conventional Christian idea that God created the world ex nihilo, which means “from nothing.” Instead of God creating by conjuring something out of nothing, Mormons believe that the world was created by organizing materials that were already present.”
This also seems to raise some issues, especially in light of what we know from science. We know the Big Bang happened, so the universe and all matter in it had a beginning. So eternally existent matter is out of the picture. That then raises the question, where did God find this already present material if he did not create it from nothing?
“The first is that, in a sense, Mormons reject supernaturalism. Instead, we embrace a variant of Clarke’s Third Law: Sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from miracles….The Mormon difference isn’t to deny that miracles can happen, it’s to imagine that miracles do not violate the laws of physics but operate at a higher level. This is weird, yes, but quantum mechanics is weird. Again: the best way out of the religion vs. science conflict is through.”
I have an innate resistance to this idea because it appears to be the same line of thinking that gave us the Thomas Jefferson version of Jesus. We take out all the supernatural–the healing miracles, the exorcism of unclean spirits, etc.–and we’re left with simply a great moral teacher. Mormons naturally keep the miraculous aspects, because without miracles Jesus’ story doesn’t make sense, but I still think it gives the tendency to downplay the miracles or try to find some reason they were misunderstood (i.e. casting out unclean spirits was really just healing mental illness). But I don’t think even that semi-supernatural version of Jesus works because the miraculousness of the miracles is so important to the picture of who Jesus was and is, and if Jesus is just really good at quantum mechanics or something, that’s really cool and technically miraculous since no human can do that, but I feel like we’re back at a Greek gods view of the universe: They’re God because they just have way more power over the physical universe than we do.
“How far Mormons run with this notion is a matter for individual deliberation, but the extreme position that posits God as a kind of super-evolved person is not inconceivable. And that is a definition of God that even Richard Dawkins could learn to live with.”
I’ve contemplated this possibility before. While it seems appealing at first since it would seemingly reconcile what we know from science and Christianity, I think it would actually be a big step backwards essentially, like I mentioned before, to a monotheistic version of the Greek gods: God is god not because he is transcendent and outside space and time, but because he’s just a lot bigger, a lot better, and a lot more evolved than we are.
“The most prominent response involves citing free will, but if you believe that God created human beings out of nothing then that explanation doesn’t work very well. Sure, we’re free to act out according to our sinful natures, but if God made us then He made our natures. Why didn’t He make them better? Discarding the doctrine of creation ex nihilo doesn’t solve the Problem of Evil in one fell swoop, but it does have a significant and meaningful impact on the conversation.”
I don’t know if this improves the situation. If God is working with pre-existing matter, and God is all-powerful, the question is just going to be ‘why didn’t God make the matter humans were made out of good?’ rather than ‘why didn’t God make humans good?’ However I may have misunderstood you because I’m trying to figure out what exactly removing creation ex nihilo improves.
Overall, I see the appeal you’re getting at: Mormonism can form something of a halfway house to meet between atheist materialism and supernaturalism. But I don’t know if that can be done and still be called Christianity as it has been practiced and understood for 2000 years. And I also don’t think a halfway house is always as appealing as we suspect. The great appeal of Christianity today, and in eras past, has been that it is so unlike the rest of the world.
Great post. I enjoyed reading it :)
Please rush this new data you must have to the nearest courthouse! No opponent of gay adoption or gay marriage has been able to make that claim successfully in court. Those who’ve tried were torn apart by judges who require evidence. What court in the world do you think is going to approve anything kid-related unless there’s abundant evidence it’s safe?
A recent ASA amicus brief which reviewed the research found “There is a clear consensus in the social science literature indicating that American children living within same-sex parent households fare just, as well as those children residing within different-sex parent households over a wide array of well-being measures: academic performance, cognitive development, social development, psychological health, early sexual activity, and substance abuse. Our assessment of the literature is based on credible and methodologically sound studies that compare well-being outcomes of children residing within same-sex and different-sex parent families.”
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11113-014-9329-6
We already have generations of data supporting this conclusion, and you’re requesting decades more? Decades during which these kids won’t have the legal protections they need, not to mention the cultural legitimacy all families deserve? What magical doom-trait are you expecting to emerge in the fourth generation after great-grandpa had two dads?
I didn’t want to turn this conversation so negative, but claiming science is on your side here is so baseless and leads to such cruelty.
ps I had no idea the church was going to make a big gay rights announcement today. It doesn’t seem to have moved anything on the topic of gay parenting, however.
Bryan-
First off: none of your questions rubbed me in the wrong way in the least. Just so you know. I enjoyed your questions, and I’ll give you some thoughts in response.
I think the problem might be that you’re not willing to challenge naturalism enough. Naturalism presupposes that basic building blocks are essentially physical, yes? So it has an essentially physicalist view of “matter” that leads to your problem: isn’t it just a matter of time until we detect it?
Well, what if the basic building blocks are information instead of physical? That’s not exactly wild speculation, either. A recent PBS science article leads off with the question “What if the fundamental “stuff” of the universe isn’t matter or energy, but information?”
Thus, the concern you have is really not about Joseph Smith’s quote as is it about your assumption that we’re fundamentally talking about matter and energy because they are the things that re fundamentally fundamental. (Ha. See what I did there?) They might not be.
Again, I think the fundamental issue here is an overconfidence in what science can tell us. What was going on before the Big Bang? Is that even a question that makes sense? You might actually know much more than I do on this one, but as far as I knew no one really had a clue. In any case the “everything started with the Big Bang” view runs into pretty serious problems of it’s own. For example: how long did God wait before He decided to create the Universe in the Big Bang?
Yeah… it’s just not. This one is pretty cut and dry to me. It’s one thing to question that miracles occur (subjectively speaking). Mormonism doesn’t do that. It’s another thing to question the nature of the miracles that occurred. All Mormons are saying is that God doesn’t actually violate the rules. He follows them at a higher level. I think that’s actually somewhat standard, is it not?
For what it’s worth, I share you concerns on this one. I don’t believe that God is a super-evolved being. I was just pointing out the breadth of the Mormon perspective, which doesn’t completely rule out such a perspective.
Yeah, this is a misunderstanding. It’s not that God created us from pre-existing matter the way He did with the Earth. It’s that there’s some aspect to our identity that God didn’t create at all.
The reason I think being able to engage with secular perspectives is important isn’t really because I think we need a halfway house. It’s because 75% of young adults who leave Christianity to so to embrace secularism. I think Mormonism–which already fares much better than most Christian denominations at retaining youth–is uniquely positioned to better prepare our rising generations to be able to keep their heads above water in an increasingly secular world. To do that, you have to understand secular assumptions well enough to question them.
Like, for example, understanding that the matter/energy-is-fundamental assumption is just that: a particular assumption and not a universal truth. It’s important to be able to recognize secularism as a particular set of specific ideas rather than just mistaking it (because of how ubiquitous it is) for the objective basis beside which religion is a kind of optional add-in.
Ryan-
I stand by my position that the science is not settled, and I make too additional observations:
First, as much as I respect your passion, the hostility with which you approach the issue is itself a huge part of the problem for your contention that the science is settled.
Second, articles like this one present some very real methodological concerns about the studies you rely on. As a corollary, yes: that site is biased. Do you know what else is biased? Social sciences. Before you roll your eyes at that, you have to be willing to confront the research of Jonathan Haidt who has demonstrated overwhelming anti-conservative bias in social psychology and related fields. So you’re asking us to take the consensus of a group of people who are something like 95% plus social liberals on a social issue as the uncomplicated truth? You have to at least acknowledge that there are some problems with that position.
Finally, relying on the cruelty of anyone who disagrees with is obvious question-begging. If you are right, then yes: it’s cruel. If you are wrong, and if (for example) human children have a natural need for a mother and a father, then you are the one imposing a cruel regime that ignores the actual welfare and needs of children.
Maybe we should actually listen to kids–especially those old enough to have some distance and independence as they recount their childhoods–and here what they have to say about the impact of socially liberal policies on children. There are enough witnesses (like the ones I cited above, but there’s a whole other category when it comes to sperm-donor kids, etc.) who have given enough testimony that I think it would be cruel to simply ignore their testimony and sweep their voices under the rug.
There is no cost-free, risk-free, pain-free policy. That’s the ultimate great illusion we have to let go of.
Ryan and Nathan,
The following paper is critical for anyone who is concerned with the consensus of science on the effects of homosexual parenting:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0049089X12000580
Abstract:
In 2005, the American Psychological Association (APA) issued an official brief on lesbian and gay parenting. This brief included the assertion: “Not a single study has found children of lesbian or gay parents to be disadvantaged in any significant respect relative to children of heterosexual parents” (p. 15). The present article closely examines this assertion and the 59 published studies cited by the APA to support it. Seven central questions address: (1) homogeneous sampling, (2) absence of comparison groups, (3) comparison group characteristics, (4) contradictory data, (5) the limited scope of children’s outcomes studied, (6) paucity of long-term outcome data, and (7) lack of APA-urged statistical power. The conclusion is that strong assertions, including those made by the APA, were not empirically warranted. Recommendations for future research are offered.
(The abstract omits another failure that’s mentioned in the full text, which was that there are indeed studies that suggest worse outcomes of homosexual parenting.)
I was able to read it through my work for free. But even if you can’t, it’s worth the $40.
Nathan,
If God is a “sufficiently advanced alien”, but one that still operates within natural constraints, then wouldn’t you agree that he’s no longer transcendent? And wouldn’t you agree that belief in a transcendent God is very close to the core of orthodox Christian doctrines?
Oops- I should have said Nathaniel, not Nathan. I apologize. (My kingdom for an edit function!)
“In any case the “everything started with the Big Bang” view runs into pretty serious problems of it’s own. For example: how long did God wait before He decided to create the Universe in the Big Bang?”
Time itself came into existence during the Big Bang, so we can’t really ask how long God waited since time didn’t exist beforehand.
“It’s another thing to question the nature of the miracles that occurred. All Mormons are saying is that God doesn’t actually violate the rules. He follows them at a higher level. I think that’s actually somewhat standard, is it not?”
It really depends who you ask. I’m totally fine with God violating natural laws (He is God after all), but that seems to trouble some people. The most popular framing I’ve heard is that miracles are a restoration of natural laws before the Fall (no sickness, no blindness, no lameness, no death, peaceful natural world, etc.). I ascribe to both views since the former answers how (He’s God!) and the latter answers why (restoration), and I feel the latter view is valid but also partially an evasion of answering whether or not one believes God can violate natural law. I guess restoration could be viewed as different from violation, but in my estimation at very least God is not conducting his miracles in accordance with natural law as it exists after the Fall.
Like William, I share the concern that making God a powerful operator within natural law removes His transcendent nature and further brings into question his omnipotence. We’ve talked before about different definitions of omnipotence, but I think being constrained by natural law removes any chance of being called omnipotent.
I suppose we could answer that God could violate the laws but chooses not to. But then I wonder, if miracles are simply very powerful manipulations of physical reality, will humans not theoretically be able to perform every miracle Jesus performed with sufficiently advanced technology? That seems to fit in very well with Clark’s third law, but I don’t think that’d play nice with orthodox Christianity. Like I said earlier, Jesus as a very powerful physical operator seems to dim the miraculousness of his miracles.
“It’s that there’s some aspect to our identity that God didn’t create at all.”
Ah gotcha. I still think, though, that since God is omnipotent, the question will just shift from ‘why didn’t God make humans good’ to ‘why didn’t God fix these pre-existing aspects of our identity’? Or put another way, people will shift their worries from ‘why did God create us sinful?’ to ‘why did God let us into existence sinful?’ And either way the answer seems to be the same: human freedom. In the former case, God creates humans with freedom which by the definition must allow for non-good acts. In the latter case, God leaves our pre-existing identities alone in order to allow us to freely exist.
On a related note, the idea of eternally existent souls has been one on my mind since I read your parents’ book. If I recall correctly, your parents argue that, since souls have no end, we should rightfully suspect they have no beginning either. But I don’t actually know if that’s logically necessary. For example, the power of the First Cause argument is that we have to conclude some uncaused cause exists, despite the oddity of the notion, since infinite regress is logically impossible. But no such necessity exists for human souls. If God is the uncaused cause, everything else can have a cause in God, and therefore nothing else needs to be eternally existent by logical necessity.
Oh Nathaniel, with the old treatment of the 1950s housewife. “You’re just upset and not thinking straight, honey!”
William’s post seems to come from a calmer place, and I appreciate it. The social sciences are indeed biased, provided we ignore William’s article in a social science journal which opposes the supposed monolithic groupthink. Put the title of William’s article into google scholar and click “cited by.” Find the several articles picking it apart right back. The social science article I posted cites William’s critical article, which is appropriate as it’s 2 years newer. So, incorporating 2-year-old doubts, they find a current scientific consensus. (A consensus among social liberals, of course, so what’s that worth?)
You can’t claim your opponent is using flawed methodology when your rebuttal to dozens of peer-reviewed studies is four individuals with an agenda. One side has to put in at least minimal effort to appear scientifically sound. The other says: There are about 240,000 same-sex parented families in the US (a low estimate)… can we find at least 4 messed up kids with crap parents? It’s a statistical certainty, no matter what group of families you pick. How can someone with any understanding of stats take these things seriously?
If Mormons want to make a serious claim to follow where science leads: In cases where science leads them somewhere uncomfortable, an effort should be made by the many Mormon universities to sort it out, instead of sitting back, letting contrary evidence pile up and dismissing it as biased. At least show some BYU study supporting your case instead of 4 cherry-picked data points on a pro-life blog.
That what the 5th circuit court did when it listened to your 4 kids. There is no shortage of listening. By all means, dig into the data, collect your own. All the children of gay parents I know turned out fine, no better or worse than other kids. Their only outlying negative experience was being picked on by kids whose parents taught them homophobia. I have no high opinion of the social sciences, so I’ll admit that my opinion on the issue is more due to my personal experiences than their research which happens to agree. Who are these suffering kids of gays you know that have skewed you the other way? I would be very interested in hearing from them because I, unlike some, care about sample size, and scientific integrity.
William-
That is exactly the reason that I don’t actually buy into the “sufficiently advanced alien.” It’s not a conventional Mormon belief but it is something that–based on rejection of creation ex nihilo, for example–Mormonism can contemplate.
Bryan-
I’m not so sure about that. Does physics become less awesome when you start to really understand it? I have a limited ability to answer that, since I’m not a physicist, but I have done some fairly sophisticated math (relative to the average bear) and so I’ve got some passing familiarity with the concept of using mathematical models to understand reality. And I have to say: I wouldn’t rush to the idea that working within laws (with total mastery and understanding) is any less powerful, inspiring, beautiful, or transcendent.
I don’t have strong feelings on this. In fact, my strongest feeling is that most religious people put far too much emphasis on things where all of our thoughts are pretty speculative. But, to the extent that I do think about it, I’m pretty open-minded to the idea that God works through law rather than around it.
I will also add that I think there’s once again a danger or viewing the issue through a particular secular lens that even a lot of religious people don’t realize they are using. For example, the idea of dividing spiritual/religious into one bucket and secular/physical into another. I’m not so sure that physical laws are ultimately divorced from moral laws in that way, and we might find out in the end that physical and moral law are part of one, cohesive system. In which case it would be a mistake to view Jesus as just a super-brilliant physicist, because that’s a secular view that sees him as master of a limited (physicalist) domain when the reality is that He is acting in accord with deeper laws that have moral components.
Just some thoughts. Again: I think it’s more important to avoid prejudging and getting stuck in a rut than having the perfect theology here.
God didn’t “let us into existence” in this view. We always existed. So it really does quite radically alter the Problem of Evil.
They said we should “suspect” and then you constructed an argument rebutting logical necessity. But… they didn’t say it was logically necessary. :-) You’re attacking a position that is stronger than the one they actually staked out.
Ryan-
I’m not sure what to make of the 1950s housewife comment. It sounds almost like an attempt by one man to accuse another man of chauvinism-by-proxy, which I would at least have to credit for ingenuity. Honestly, though, I just don’t want this to get nasty. I really do feel like your arguments, usually rooted so firmly in reason and evidence and science, are not taking that tack in this thread. For example:
You concede that your position is primarily based in anecdotes and then accuse me of being the one who doesn’t care about sample size and scientific integrity in the same paragraph. This is not the level of response that I’m used to from you Ryan, and I understand that when passions run high we all run the risk of veering from reasoned exchange into passionate diatribe. And diatribes are just not what I’m interested in.
My central concern is simple: citing research coming from a population that is overwhelmingly ideologically biased and prone to discrimination without conceding that those facts constitute any problem at all runs the risk of fundamentally conflating science with scientific authority. For that reason, I am not as convinced by the preponderance of the academic research as I might otherwise be.
The whole situation is a bit ironic. I don’t trust the research because of bias. It’s not primary to you either because you’re going on personal experience over research. Why then, if neither of us is centrally concerned with the research, is it such a linchpin in your argument if not because scientific authority is an awfully handy cudgel?
If you are curious about these other perspectives, however,and they do go quite a bit beyond crappy parents, I have learned a lot by following Chelsea Zimmerman’s blog: Reflections of a Paralytic. She has posted very interesting links and articles that convinced me that IVF (as practiced, not intrinsic to the technology) is a serious children’s-rights issue. Here’s one such article: Anonymous Donor Daddies, The Kids Aren’t Alright. Zimmerman introduced me to the movement of children who were conceived using donor sperm and who have now grown up to the point where they can express their views, and a lot of them are not happy. They feel that their rights were violated. The connections between these cases and gay marriage are not hard to draw, but obviously the issues aren’t identical. That’s not a bug, it’s a feature. People who oppose gay marriage genuinely tend to do so more because of auxilliary reasons (e.g. concern for children’s rights) rather than because gay marriage is per se a bad thing or a threat. Anyway, if you read that article (and follow some of the links), I think you’ll start to understand some of the life experiences that are quite different from your own.
Nathaniel:
The housewife comment had nothing to do with chauvinism. It showed a case of assumption that someone was rationally wrong based on nothing more than their emotional state. An opinion with strong emotion has nothing to do with the rationality of the position otherwise.
“You concede that your position is primarily based in anecdotes…”
No, my opinion is based on anecdotes. My rational position is based on the overwhelming evidence. As I said, “my opinion on the issue is more due to my personal experiences than their research which happens to agree.” I’m sure a person of faith can think of some rational positions vs emotional opinions they hold. Some agree, some not.
Why do you value a few bloggers’ anecdotes, bloggers whose politics you share, over an academic community’s body of research, when your politics differ? What would it take to make you believe someone whose politics you don’t share? Have you decided to never believe any social science conclusions? Is this an ad hominem fallacy?
Our politics differ significantly, but I read your data and your arguments, and think about them with my own brain. So, take your grain of salt, and dig into the data of your enemies. I wouldn’t be so persistent on this issue with you if I wasn’t confident you’d come around.
Ryan-
There are two issues.
First, I frankly haven’t read that much research. If you have some papers that you think are particularly important / good to read, then I will read them, but I really don’t have time to read a very large quantity. I’m sorry, I just don’t.
Second, this is not exclusively a scientific question. There are questions of value as well. You can’t assume that, for example, “harm” is an objectively defined attribute, or that “rights” are objectively observable from nature. This is why the testimony of a small number of people can be relevant. I’m interested in data, but not only in data. The discussion has to also go to these core issues of, for example, how we think of marriage. I’m opposed to the notion that it is a right for prospective spouses not because I think it should be seen as a privilege for spouses, but because I think it is actually a child’s right. That’s a shift in emphasis that doesn’t come from the data, but says a lot about the data. The whole idea that we try to make marriage (gay or straight) “safe enough” for kids is problematic. Children’s welfare is not a secondary consideration or a check on an adult privilege. Children’s welfare is the consideration.
These are philosophical concerns as much as scientific ones.
I am having difficulty getting past your statement, “I am religiously multilingual.” Until I was 8 or so, I attended the Christian Scientist church with my mother, my younger brother and sister. My father occasionally came. At 9 or so, my family attended the Anglican church (High Anglican, as my mother would emphasize). I sang in the choir, loved all the pomp and ceremony. I felt truly at home there. Our family woke up late one Sunday, and my father suggested we go to “his” church…the LDS church. From the start, I disliked it. It was noisy, and people talked in the chapel! My much beloved Anglican church was located beside the LDS church. Every time I would hear the bells chime from the Anglican church and the derogatory comments from some LDS members, I would cry and cringe. It’s close to 60 years later, and I wish with all my heart I could leave. But I can’t. I have too many spiritual experiences that indicate that the gospel is something I can’t deny. So I stay…uncomfortably so.
To further complicate matters, I sang with the United Girls Choir, attended Brownies at the Lutheran Church, attended the Baptist Church with my aunt. My father’s one sister was Pentecostal and my mother’s large family is diversely religious. Her youngest brother is a Pentecostal minister.
Even though I was “raised” Mormon, I can’t remember family home evenings, family prayer, discussions about the scripture…As a “baptized” Mormon, there was no great departure in how my family lived. My parents were honest, good people before they joined and after they left. They left because the LDS girls bullied me so badly that my parents moved. I had panic attack disorder which wasn’t even part of the DSM at the time. My mother was recuperating from an operation that just about killed her…she’d had it with the church…, and my father put his career on hold and moved the family to another province so I could have a new start. Interesting to note that he doubled the attendance of the Gospel Doctrine class! He and my mother tried hard…The church in our new city was wonderful. It was a Branch, and my Branch President who later became my Stake President “got” me, and thankfully I experienced some success.
Now, I am a casual church goer…I do believe in the Gospel, but I am having a difficult time with church folks. As much as I love the power of the priesthood, too many of the priesthood holders in the last 10 plus years have left much to be desired.
Try having as religious diverse background as I have, along with singlehood (the panic attacks weren’t resolved until my mid-40’s and then came depression!) and 3 degrees to boot (one a doctorate)…doesn’t exactly make for success in the LDS church.
Been well aware for years of the disdain for gays from LDS (I worked with many gay artists, mostly men) and of Joseph Smith’s polygamy. Doesn’t bother me. I hold on, barely at times, to some excellent memories of some brilliant, compassionate LDS people, and I tether myself to Christ, not people. And I survive, sometimes I even thrive.
I’m sorry that you’ve had such negative experiences with the Church, Judith. There’s a lot to admire in all religions, and it sounds like you’ve had great experiences in learning that first-hand. I believe the Church, like many Christian denominations, is learning how to approach the LGBT community with Christ-like love in ways that it hasn’t in the past.
Thank you for your response, Nathaniel. There are many issues we, as LDS people, cope with so well. But unfortunately, issues like LGBT and mental health are “uncomfortable” for many, and, as you said, we need to learn to deal with them in Christ-like ways. Elder Hugh Pinnock said many years ago that any issue can be resolved when people are willing to keep talking and to keep listening, respectfully. I believe that, and I hope we continue to move towards positive growth within the gospel beliefs.
Oh, and Bryan, this is relevant too: http://phys.org/news/2015-02-big-quantum-equation-universe.html
Obviously this is way provisional and doesn’t dispatch the Big Bang in one fell swoop, but it indicates that predicating a big article of faith on the notion that the universe was created at a singular point in time and that this creation is objectively observable may not be the right approach. The conventional Big Bang Theory is nicely Catholic (and was invented by a Catholic.) This version is much more harmonious with Mormonism. What if–just a thought experiment–it ends up becoming the dominant model in 10-20 years?
Just something to consider.
There are some points in this piece that I would question. I can’t speak for any Church but my own (I’m Catholic), but we assuredly did not stop recognizing Mormon baptisms because we were miffed at claims to be the one true church. (We make that claim ourselves.) Rather, we’ve had a set of criteria for recognizing valid baptisms for at least 1700 years, and Mormon baptisms simply don’t meet them. In other words, we never stopped recognizing Mormon baptisms because we never started in the first place.
(And yes, you have put your finger on something that has occasionally annoyed me in Mormons I’ve encountered online. They have a grievance about our position without realizing, or at any rate adverting to, the fact that their position is the mirror image of our own.)
One thing we can heartily agree on, though, is that being the one true church does not mean that we have nothing to learn from others, that we are always better in every way. Life is rarely so simple as that! I take for granted that there are many Christians in other communities, and indeed many people who are not explicitly Christians at all, who are closer to God than I. I believe that being Catholic (just as I’m sure you believe about your own church) gives me many advantages, but how well have I put them to use? Much is asked of those to whom much is given.
We can also very much agree that the whole ‘Faith vs. Science’ thing is a tired canard that really just needs to go away. I have degrees in chemistry and physics, and at no point did I learn anything that would bring my faith in God into question. Rather, what I learned gave me new awe at His creativity!
Finally, I must confess that the idea of uncreated matter puzzles me to no end. The arguments for God being the necessary ground of all other existence seem to me so compelling even apart from revelation on the subject that I can’t make sense of it. I’m tempted to say that a ‘god’ who didn’t create me (in the full sense) isn’t even very interesting. If such a demiurge existed, I suppose I would owe him the same sort of respect and gratitude I owe to my parents, but I wouldn’t worship him any more than I worship them. Such a being would not be God with a capital ‘G’. (That said, we can agree that Descartes took things much too far. I’m not a dualist in the Cartesian sense of the word.)