Ten Mormon Science Issues
[by Clark Goble] For my initial discussion for the Bloggernacle Times I thought I’d
start by asking just what issues in science and religion are
of
interest to Mormons. I should start by mentioning that I’ve been
discussing science and religion issues for years now, at least since I
was an undergraduate in physics and mathematics at BYU in the early
90′s. I’ve been a member of the mailing list
href=”http://eyring.hplx.net/”>Eyring-L since it was first created
in the early 90′s to discuss issues of science and Mormonism. After
much discussion, debate, and inquiry, I’ve come to the conclusion that
there are few really significant issues in science that directly concern
our religion. That may come to a shock to some, but overall I think
there is relatively little overlap.
Now there are a few big topics, of course, the most obvious being
evolution. That’s a topic that pops up in blogs fairly frequently.
The
other group blog I contribute to, The Millennial Star, had a
href=”http://www.millennialstar.org/index.php/2005/02/03/and_now_for_a_t
opic_on_which_we_can_all”>thread on it just last week, and Times and
Seasons had a
href=”http://www.timesandseasons.org/archives/000260.html”>long thread
on it a few months before that. I’ve written about it
href=”http://www.google.com/search?q=site:www.libertypages.com%20evoluti
on”>quite a bit on my blog, with a few of the comments being
href=”http://www.libertypages.com/clark/evolution.html”>summarized on
one page. Other blogs, such as
href=”http://ldsscience.blogspot.com/”>LDS Science Review, have
discussed it frequently as well. However, outside of evolution, I
suspect people might have a harder time coming up with science issues.
Over on Eyring-L, Lorin Hansen recently posted a list of important
issues in science and religion for Mormons. I think that for my first
post I’ll list some of these issues, perhaps adding a few to his list.
Then over the coming weeks I’ll go through each of the issues with an
introduction to the topic. Hopefully I can do this without even
needing
to mention evolution.
(1) The Nature of Spiritual Reality: Mormons obviously
believe in spirits and that we existed as thinking beings in some sense
before our birth. What is the nature of this spiritual “stuff”? I
don’t just mean the nature of our existing as spirits, but the nature
of
spirit stuff in general from a scientific point of view. Is this
problematic scientifically? Do spirits have mass? Can they be detected
upon death? Lots of questions here.
(2) The Nature of the Soul: Fairly closely related to (1),
but
with a focus on what makes a person a person. Clearly this is a
contentious issue as one can see by all the blog activity on abortion
and
href=”http://www.millennialstar.org/index.php/2005/02/10/gov_romney_and_
stem_cell_research#comments”>stem cell research. What is it that
makes us who we are?
(3) Religious Ways of Knowing vs. Scientific Ways of Knowing:
When scientific claims and religious claims conflict, how do we resolve
them? What is the scientific way of knowing and does it innately
conflict with religion? Is religious knowing unreliable?
(4) The Origin of the Universe: A topic actually very
similar
to the evolutionary one, only taking place in the realm of physics rather than
biology. Strangely, a topic far less controversial than evolution, yet a
place where I think there are more problems for LDS theology than
evolution ever could have. Why cosmology is so overlooked as a matter
of controversy in place of evolution never ceases to amaze me. Perhaps
physicists simply have a better reputation than biologists?
(5) Scientific Evidence and Book of Mormon Historicity: Not
just the recent debate over Nephite DNA. There are also issues of
swords, horses, and other such matters.
(6) Scientific Evidence and the Old Testament: Some critics
like to apply a double standard to Mormons, but there are many issues
in the Old Testament as well. Probably more, truth be told.
(7) God and Time: What is the nature of time? Is God within
time or outside it? What does it mean when the scriptures say “time is
no longer?” What about higher dimensions?
(8) Religion and Quantum Mechanics: Is there an issue? Is
there any relation? Why do people bring them up together? (You can
probably tell my bias here.)
(9) God and Physical Law: What are miracles? Are miracles
problematic scientifically? How do you tell whether an event is a
miracle or something natural? What does it mean to speak of the
natural
versus the supernatural?
(10) History of the Relationship Between Science and
Religion:
Science and religion have often been seen as being at odds ever since the days
of
Galileo. What is the real history? Have they always been in conflict?
Is there a fundamental conflict today?
There are a few others that don’t fit easily into the above
categories. Things like whether there is life on other planets and how
to handle that theologically. Issues about whether apes and dolphins
are sufficiently intelligent enough so as to pose theological issues.
I’m sure I’ll come up with a few others by the time I’m finished with
the first ten.
Clark, I’m looking forward to hearing about “quantum religion.” Maybe that’s where we progress down the path of salvation in very, very tiny steps. A discussion of religious ways of knowing versus scientific ways of knowing also promises to be enlightening.
Comment by Dave — February 23, 2005 @ 11:48 am
Clark:
This is great. Are you going to deal with ‘mind’ in your No. 2, or is that going to be yet another topic?
Comment by William Morris — February 23, 2005 @ 12:14 pm
Great list. Question #7 is a joke, right? How can the almighty be constrained by anything, especially his own creation? I recall a portion of the BofM, that “constrains” G-d, but, I always discounted that as one BofM contributor’s limited understanding (“Mistakes” like that make the BofM much it more authentic to me). I want to produce an endowment based on the Matrix trilogy, comments to this post should provide excellent material.
Comment by Steve (FSF) — February 23, 2005 @ 12:40 pm
My initial discussions of each point will be fairly broad and try to bring up what the issues are and perspectives on them. That means I’ll not so much be focusing in on what the answers are. Further I’ll be avoiding as much philosophy as possible, sticking to what science says.
So #2 will discuss mind somewhat and will probably mention some of the philosophical issues, but simply point out that because they are philosophy and not science they aren’t really established. (Philosophy, in a way, is designed to show our understanding to be incomplete or that things are much more ambiguous than they appear) More or less though I’ll simply point out that it’s hard to bring up much of a connection. (A point I’ll likely return to quite often)
Comment by Clark Goble — February 23, 2005 @ 2:40 pm
I’m looking forward to your elaborations, Clark.
A few questions to go along with #2:
- Is God in space, as the Book of Abraham seems to indicate?
- Does God have immediate knowledge of distant events, in violation of Special Relativity?
- Does God have foreknowledge, with its accompanying potential paradoxes?
- Does God have an infinite information store?
- In what way is God corporeal?
Comment by Will — February 28, 2005 @ 2:08 pm
Points of Friction
Clark mentioned that cosmology probably has more problems for LDS theology than evolution, but for some reason doesn’t generate much controversy. I have some thoughts as to why that is.
Trackback by LDS Science Review — February 23, 2005 @ 12:25 pm
My understanding is that the BofM claims the Native Americans are desecdants of a displaced family from Jerusalem around 600BC. How can one family populate two whole continents in 2600 years? And what are we to make of the more than 10,000 year archeological record of Native Americans found trhoughout North and South America? Also, all your questions assume the reader believes in some supernatural entity controling everything, maybe we should get to the real underlying issue, the existence of “god.”
Comment by Jake — September 6, 2006 @ 8:43 pm
Jake, most scholarly Mormons believe that the Lehites were a small group that merged with the millions of indigenous peoples.
Comment by Clark Goble — September 6, 2006 @ 9:00 pm
I find it strange that a one man white Nephite show would survive the perils of geography and potentially violent Indian tribes and make his way up to what we now call upper state New York to deposit the gold tablets. That Smith introduced horses, swords and other questionable items as well as attempt to make the English of the BofM match the Old English of the King James version when that wasnt the way English was spoken in 1830. Couple all that with the latest DNA controversy and we have many unanswerable questions.
I think the book should include some disclaimers so that those of true Native American ancestry arent lead to believe that they are of Israelite lineage. Its bad enough that so many have died and have had their cultures decimated by our ruthless colonizing and in the name of Christianity. Its painful but we have to start somewhere and rebuild the truth based upon today’s known and undisputable facts.
Comment by David — September 7, 2006 @ 2:16 am