Adventures in Mormonism

In a ruling that likely surprises no one except for the Texas department of Child Protective Services, the Texas Supreme Court has ordered that all 440 children removed from the FLDS Yearning for Zion compound be returned to their parents:

The Texas Supreme Court has ruled that the children taken from a polygamist sect’s ranch should be returned to their parents, saying child welfare officials overstepped their authority.

The high court on Thursday affirmed a decision by the appellate court last week, saying Child Protective Services failed to show an immediate danger to the children.

The ruling directs a lower-court judge to reverse her decision putting the children into foster case. The appeals court ordered the judge to return the children to the parents soon but it is unclear exactly when that will happen.

While I don’t agree with FLDS doctrine or culture, I do think that it’s pretty clear that TCPS seriously overstepped its authority and profoundly botched this whole issue.

Here’s the actual Texas Supreme Court decision (PDF; hat tip to The Volokh Conspiracy).  ..bruce..

I never knew Thomas R. (”Tom”) McGetchin personally. Terminally ill with cancer at age 43, he had left his position as Director of the Lunar & Planetary Institute in July of 1979 — just seven months before I started work at LPI — and had died a few months later in October of 1979. But almost all the scientists and staff then at LPI knew him and had been very much affected by both his life and his rather premature death.

When Tom McGetchin left LPI, he and his wife Carle went to Hawaii to stay with their close friends, the McCords, for Tom’s final months of life. Tom kept a journal during this time, and while I was at LPI, I got from my office mate, Caroline, a xeroxed copy of one of his handwritten journal entries. It affected me very much, so much so that I quoted from it at the end of my father’s eulogy nearly 20 years later.

Here’s that journal entry:

[Sunday, July 22
Honolulu - McCords]

Geez Hawaii is a beautiful place and the McCord’s front porch is just one of the good places on this earth; good memories mixed with spectacular views and the kissing of a climate — whatever it’s doing whether sunny or raining — it’s just mellow.

Reading, sleeping, talking and thinking lots — about how short life is regardless of how you cut it, cancer aside. There are a few decades we have which just swim by in the blind procession of days. What matters? From where I sit, I see several really simple and important things.

• shaping your stone well; that’s your part in civilization
• loving — other humans matter most
• taking the next step; it’s always hard

Shaping your stone means quietly doing your job, as well as you can. Your identity will soon be lost to history but your stone, if well shaped and polished will fit into the structure we call civilization and hold its weight, as time sweeps past us and others build upon us. History is full of greed, horror and the worst in mankind — but humaness is built of well shaped loving lives. What we do matters and if there is beauty in the world it is because many quiet souls have shaped their stones well and the cathedral of life is beautiful after all.

Loving matters most — friendships are what make living good and full or empty. Giving and being real, the good and bad, but sharing it all in loving acceptance and without judgment. We are so similar under the skin and we need each other.

Taking the next step, is about the hard part of life. It’s about courage and it does mean trying to do what’s next, even though it’s painful. It also means taking the next step, not the next 10 at once, but the important (essential) thing is to keep moving, even if however slowly it seems.

What death and life mean are beyond knowing for now. I don’t believe we blink out like a light but that could be egotism or false hope. It doesn’t matter for now; for now

there is my stone to chip and polish, souls to love and be truly myself with and always the next awkward step to take.

Tom’s words have stayed with me in the nearly 30 years since I first read them and continue to influence my outlook on life.

This all comes up now because I received an e-mail last night out of the blue from Tom’s sister, Bow. She had googled her brother’s name and ran across my eulogy for my father (posted on one of my other blogs). She wrote me to ask how I had known Tom, which gave me the privilege of explaining — thirty years later, to someone who knew and loved Tom very much — how his insights had affected my life, even though I never knew him personally.

That is a note of life’s grace that I think Tom would have appreciated. ..bruce..

The Lord knows if I had lost a rib for each wife I have, I should have had none left long ago.

– Brigham Young

A very funny quote from an excellent post by Jared over at LDS Science Review. Go read the whole thing.  ..bruce..

Orson Scott Card has an outstanding column over at Mormon Times on what he calls “deep religion“:

I had unknowingly tapped into their religion at a level so deep that they didn’t even understand why my comments made them so upset. Yet they didn’t think it was their religion — they thought Plato was just a philosopher, and that their religion was founded on scripture.

What I learned at that point was that people aren’t always aware of their real religion, the deep beliefs that they hold with such intense faith that it doesn’t occur to them that other people might not share them.

Be sure to read the whole column; it’s both excellent and relevant.

Back in 1971, as a freshman at BYU in the Honors Program, I was (thankfully) required to take — in place of the usual ‘freshman English’ class — a five-credit class on ‘Composition and Reasoning’. We met 3 days a week with an English professor, studying composition and writing, and 2 days a week with a Philosophy professor, studying logic, reasoning, and philosophy. Our major papers were graded by both professors — that is, they were graded not just on how well we wrote, but whether our logic was sound. One of the most important lessons I learned in that class was the importance of going back to fundamental premises — and how often, in regular human discourse, those fundamental premises are unvoiced, unexamined, and often simply unconscious, as per Card’s observations in his column.

This insight was of great use for me in subsequent years in the intense discussions (read: flame wars) that took place on the pre-Web internet/online communities (USENET news groups, bulletin board systems, and on-line services such as BIX). I found that by pushing the topic back to fundamental premises, I could usually uncover the real sources of disagreement. Of course, I also found that a lot of people didn’t like to go back to their fundamental premises, usually because (a) they had never thought about them and didn’t want to start thinking about them now, and/or (b) they began to realize that their fundamental premises were not logically consistent with each other and/or with some of their more conscious beliefs.

Likewise, through the decades of raising our 9+ children (the ‘+’ being our ’semi-adopted’ daughter, the daughter of a close friend who lived with us for a full school year while in high school), my wife Sandra and I naturally had many, many discussions about religion with them. Some of our children, as they grew older, drifted (or ran) away from the Church and the Gospel, usually saying that they had no need for ‘religion’. My rejoinder was that whether they were LDS or not, whether they were Christian or not — heck, whether they were atheist or not — they all still had ‘religion’ of some kind, viz., their answers (or lack thereof) to the ‘terrible questions’:

• Who (and what) am I?
• Where did I come from?
• Why am I here?
• What happens after death?

I told them that whether they accepted the Gospel and/or the Church, their lives would be better off and more cohesive if they consciously answered those questions for themselves and then lived accordingly.

Even today, I find that much of what passes for political, religious, and even scientific discourse suffers from the same problem: lack of discussion of the fundamental underlying premises (which may well be what led Card to write this particular column). Without such discussion, the discourse usually becomes futile, unproductive, and often quite nasty. Yet I often find that people don’t want to go through the effort (and sometimes pain) of determining their fundamental premises and/or reconciling their espoused and conscious opinions with those premises.

I have long thought that logic and reasoning should be a required class no later than middle school and should be repeated in high school and college. We worry (and rightly so) in our educational system about literacy and numeracy, and even about computer skills, but fail to realize that the ability to construct — and take apart — a logical argument, as well as to recognize the variety of logical fallacies, is every bit as important, particularly in today’s world. (And as a side note, the training I received in logic and reasoning in that Honors class was of tremendous value when I switched my major to computer science later on in college.)

Logic and reasoning are also, in my opinion, important in religion. Contrary to popular belief, there is nothing inherently illogical about religion or religious belief itself; all belief, all knowledge, all logic and reasoning goes back to fundamental and axiomatic premises (such as the ‘terrible questions’ above). Indeed, many attacks on religion themselves come from unexamined, unvoiced, and/or undefended premises (”One just doesn’t get gold plates from an angel” — “Why not?”) or from a foundational premise that can only lead to a reduced set of conclusions (e.g., Fawn Brodie and Dan Vogel both having as an a priori assumption that Joseph Smith could not have been a genuine prophet).

This, of course, doesn’t mean there isn’t a lot of sloppy and/or illogical thinking within religion and religious belief, including within the Church. But my own training in logic and reasoning has only served to strengthen my testimony over the years and, I believe, has left me far less susceptible to the “Oh, I just learned something unpleasant about [name major Church figure, doctrine, program or local leader here] and now I’m leaving the Church” syndrome. Beyond that, in my examination of other religions, I have found LDS doctrine and thought to be more logically consistent and cohesive, and that it just makes far more sense.

The anchor of my personal testimony comprises the fundamental spiritual experiences, occasionally profound but usually mild and quiet, that have filled my life starting at the time of my conversion over 40 years ago. But the chain that holds me to that anchor is forged from the steel of logic and reasoning — and a strong and firm chain it is. ..bruce..

The best way to build a large, complex system that works is to evolve it from a small, simple system that works.
– Information technology maxim (cf. Gall’s Law)

The most complex and difficult intellectual work performed by humans to date is the design, development, testing and deployment of large-scale information technology (IT) systems. Such systems can have literally astronomical numbers of discrete internal states, changing through hundreds, thousands, or even millions of such states per second. As such, many such development efforts end in failure [PDF], and the ones that do get deployed always have defects, sometimes very large numbers of defects (think Windows Vista). I know, because this is what I deal with on a professional basis — both helping to rescue large troubled IT projects and acting as an expert witness in lawsuits that involve failed or disputed IT projects. And prior to that, I helped to develop and architect large, complex IT systems.

As such, I have no problem with the concept that God would use various evolutionary mechanisms (including, yes, natural selection, geological time-scales, and random mutations) in preparing a world for us to live in. For me, such as approach is more efficient, less difficult, and less error-prone than an ex nihilo creation of the (quite literally, at least for us) incomprehensibly complex biological/ecological/physical environment in which we live. (In fact, one very fascinating area of computer science uses evolutionary concepts for creating more efficient software and hardware.)

I’m not necessarily arguing for a “fire-and-forget” model (where God kick-starts things and then comes back later when the planet is ready), though I don’t rule it out, either; since God has created “worlds without number“, one would suspect He’s got the process pretty much down pat. Still, I think the creation account found in Abraham, which describes “the Gods” as preparing the earth and the seas to bring forth life at certain stages is as good a description as any in which the creation is shepherded towards a desired end, viz., an environment that is biologically, chemically, environmentally, and genetically compatible with the soon-to-be-mortal bodies of Adam and Eve. And, yes, that would include introducing human-compatible DNA (or that which would evolve into it) into the biological mix as early as necessary.

This is, in fact, why I not only have no problems with the varieties of hominid species in the fossil record, up to and including the emergence of Homo sapiens, but I would expect it. Why? Because a world that actually evolved Homo sapiens would be guaranteed to be 100% compatible with the mortal bodies of Adam and Eve. I could also make the argument (dismissed in some quarters, but still valid I believe) that without such an evolutionary track record, the ‘veil’ over our pre-existence memories would be less effective, since it would be so blindingly clear that we had come from somewhere else. (SF author J. P. Hogan explored this concept a bit — on behalf of an alien race — in his “Giants” series of novels.)

Now, this raises the issue of the “pre-Adamites” that B. H. Roberts and others explored during the first few decades of the 20th Century (and that Joseph Fielding Smith, and later Bruce R. McConkie, fought so hard against). For me, it’s not much of an issue. As Hugh Nibley points out (in “Before Adam“, a BYU talk given in 1980), we as Mormons believe in eternal life for a wide range of animal life — why would we deny it to intelligent, evolved hominids, however much they look like us? As Nibley also points out, the “story” — a written history, a record — doesn’t really start until Adam appears on the scene:

Do not begrudge existence to creatures that looked like men long, long ago, nor deny them a place in God’s affection or even a right to exaltation—for our scriptures allow them such. Nor am I overly concerned as to just when they might have lived, for their world is not our world. They have all gone away long before our people ever appeared. God assigned them their proper times and functions, as he has given me mine—a full-time job that admonishes me to remember his words to the overly eager Moses: “For mine own purpose have I made these things. Here is wisdom and it remaineth in me.” (Moses 1:31.) It is Adam as my own parent who concerns me. When he walks onto the stage, then and only then the play begins. He opens a book and starts calling out names. They are the sons of Adam, who also qualify as sons of God, Adam himself being a son of God. This is the book of remembrance from which many have been blotted out. They have fallen away, refused to choose God as their father, and by so doing were registered in Satan’s camp. “Satan shall be their father, and misery shall be their doom.” (Moses 7:37.) Can we call them sons of Adam, bene-Adam, human beings proper? The representative Egyptians, Babylonians, Greeks, and Romans, to name only the classic civilizations of old, each fancied themselves to be beings of a higher nature, nearer to gods than others who inhabited the land with them (and before them), or who dwelt in other lands. And yet they did not deny humanity to them.

Now we get to the issue of Adam and Eve’s bodies themselves — how were they created, what was their ‘pre-fall’ condition, and how did they transition into mortality? Frankly, the simplest explanation for me would be something equivalent to a combination of cloning (from evolved Homo sapiens bodies) and genetic engineering to induce the ‘pre-mortal’ (anti-aging, infertile, intellectually innnocent) state. The ‘tree of knowledge of good and evil’ could itself be genetically engineered to provide, if you will, genetic therapy that would transition Adam and Eve to a mortal, fertile, and intellectually enhanced state.

Which brings me to another issue. I’ve just described a hypothetical mechanism for the creation and fall of Adam and Eve using concepts and technology not that far removed from what we can currently achieve as humans. God, on the other hand, is a being Who created, comprehends, and perceived this entire universe and all that’s in it. I think it’s pretty arrogant for any of us humans — wherever we sit in the creation/evolution debate — to state categorically what God could or could not have done in creating this earth and placing us on it. My own posting here is not to state what God must have done, but what He could have done, and in particular why an evolutionary approach would make a lot of sense.

For exampe, intellectual honesty — and my own belief in God’s power — compels me to also admit that God could well have the cosmic equivalent of a Xerox machine (or, for fellow object-oriented development geeks, a Factory pattern) that He can use to stamp out new copies or instances of worlds — with whatever variations He chooses — at will, working from one or more pre-created ‘template’ worlds (that were indeed evolved). Indeed, I think that a lot of our post-mortal education will consist of unlearning many of our cherished personal beliefs and assumptions, accompanied by a lot of forehead-slapping (”I never even thought of that…”).

In sum, I think we in the Church set up for ourselves some unnecessary dichotomies and dilemmas, particularly on issues for which we have relatively little scriptural information — other than the most critical, namely that “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” ..bruce..