Adventures in Mormonism

Indeed, many observers assert that aliens would be bad for believers. Jill Tarter, director of the Center for SETI Research, once wrote that finding intelligent other-worldly life “will be inconsistent with the existence of God or at least organized religions.”

That quote is from the Wired article, “Christian Theologians Prepare for Extraterrestrial Life” by Brandon Keim (dated 6/13/08). The article itself is in response to an interview with “Vatican chief astronomer and papal science adviser” Gabriel Funes on extraterrestrials and religion (see “The Extraterrestrial is My Brother“). Here’s part of the interview:

LOR: And [the discovery of extraterrestrial intelligent life] would not be a problem for our faith?

FUNES: I believe no. As a multiplicity of creatures exist on earth, so there could be other beings, also intelligent, created by God. This does not contrast with our faith because we cannot put limits on the creative freedom of God. To say it with Saint Francis, if we consider earthly creatures as “brother” and “sister,” why cannot we also speak of an “extraterrestrial brother?” It would therefore be a part of creation.

Of course, from a Latter-day Saint point of view, this is old news. LDS theology and scriptures from the start took a vast, expansive, and non-geocentric view of the universe, including its population. Joseph Smith’s inspired revision of Genesis — in particular, Moses 1, which is a preface to the Old Testament version of Genesis 1 — makes this clear from the start. Here are some selected quotes from Moses 1 (given by Smith in June 1830, just 3 months after the Church was formally organized):

[God speaking to Moses:] And, behold, thou art my son; wherefore look, and I will show thee the workmanship of mine hands; but not all, for my works are without end, and also my words, for they never cease. Wherefore, no man can behold all my works, except he behold all my glory; and no man can behold all my glory, and afterwards remain in the flesh on the earth. . . .

. . . and [Moses] said unto himself: Now, for this cause I know that man is nothing, which thing I had never supposed. . . .

. . . And the Lord God said unto Moses For mine own purpose have I made these things. Here is wisdom and it remaineth in me. And by the word of my power, have I created them; which is mine Only Begotten Son, who is full of grace and truth. And worlds without number have I created; and I also created them for mine own purpose; and by the Son I created them, which is mine Only Begotten. . . .

. . . But only an account of this earth, and the inhabitants thereof, give I unto you. For behold, there are many worlds that have passed away by the word of my power. And there are many that now stand, and innumerable are they unto man; but all things are numbered unto me, for they are mine and I know them.

And it came to pass that Moses spake unto the Lord, saying: Be merciful unto thy servant, O God, and tell me concerning this earth, and the inhabitants thereof, and also the heavens, and then thy servant will be content.

And the Lord God spake unto Moses, saying: The heavens, they are many, and they cannot be numbered unto man; but there are numbered unto me, for they are mine. And as one earth shall pass away, and the heavens thereof even so shall another come; and there is no end to my works, neither to my words. (Moses 1:4-5, 10, 31-33, 35, 37-38)

So by mid-1830, LDS doctrine — as given by what was (and is) considered restored ancient scripture — declared the vast size of the universe and that the Earth was just one among an uncounted number of worlds, with a strong suggestion that these other worlds were and are inhabited as well.

This doctrine was re-emphasized just six months later (December 1830) in the ongoing scriptural expansion of Genesis when writings attributed to Enoch were given. Enoch has a vision where he ascends into heaven and sees the wickedness of all the earth:

And it came to pass that the God of heaven looked upon the residue of the people, and he wept; and Enoch bore record of it, saying: How is it that the heavens weep, and shed forth their tears as rain upon the mountains?

And Enoch said unto the Lord: How is that thou canst weep, seeing thou are holy, and from all eternity to all eternity? And were it possible that man could number the particles of the earth, yea, millions of earths like this, it would not be a beginning to the number of thy creations; and thy curtains are stretched out still; and yet thou art there, and thy bosom is there . . . how is it thou canst weep? . . .

[God replies:] Behold, I am God; Man of Holiness is my name; Man of Counsel is my name; and Endless and Eternal is my name, also. Wherefore, I can stretch forth mine hands and hold all the creations which I have made; and mine eye can pierce them also, and among all the workmanship of mine hands there has not been so great wickedness as among thy brethren. (Moses 7:28-31, 35-36)

That last verse makes it clear that not only has God made worlds without number, but that many of them are inhabited. And the nature of such inhabitants is made even clearer a year later, in a revelation to Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon given on February 16, 1832 (and recorded as section 76 of the Doctrine & Covenants):

. . . and we heard the voice bearing record that [Jesus Christ] is the Only Begotten of the Father — that by him, and through him, and of him, the worlds are and were created, and the inhabitants thereof are begotten sons and daughters unto God. (D&C 76:23-24)

So we see that by early 1832 — nearly 180 years ago and almost a century before Edwin Hubble proved that galaxies other than ours existed — LDS scriptures and revelations explicitly and repeatedly stated the existence of incomprehensible numbers of extraterrestrial worlds, at least some number of which, like the Earth, are inhabited by “begotten sons and daughters unto God.”

Next up: do all of those “begotten sons and daughters unto God” on other worlds look just like us? ..bruce..

For those who did not read my previous posting (”New light on Book of Mormon origins!“) closely enough, let me state plainly: it was a satire. It was, however, satire with a point, and (IMHO) a very sharp one at that. (Sadly, I predict that this information may show up — as a serious argument — on some anti-Mormon websites, as has happened elsewhere on the net with other satirical efforts.)

That post came about because I happen to be re-reading Arrian’s The Campaigns of Alexander at the same time that my wife and I — in our nightly joint reading of the Book of Mormon — are working our way through the ‘war’ chapters in Alma (Alma 45-63). In fact, the pattern for the past few weeks has been that I come to bed, read a chapter out of Alma out loud to my wife, and then (as she turns over to go to sleep) I read quietly out of Arrian for a while before going to sleep myself. Night after night, I was struck at the points of similarities between the two accounts — not the overall narrative, obviously, but much of the details and incidental points.

And while my previous post is written satirically, make no mistake: all of the similarities I list between Arrian’s Anabasis Alexandri and the Book of Mormon are real, and there’s quite a few more, to boot (which I will continue to add to the original post).

For me, the question is: how could a 19th Century farm boy with little education — and with no access whatsoever to the century-plus of movies and TV shows that we take for granted — so accurately describe various aspects of pre-Christian era warfare as they would appear and be chronicled in an ancient historical document? It really is quite striking how much Arrian’s account of Alexander’s campaigns sounds like Mormon’s account of Moroni’s and Helaman’s campaigns.

I have read both the Spaulding manuscript and Views of the Hebrews, and have seen the attempts (profoundly unconvincing, in my opinion) to draw parallels between them and the Book of Mormon. Jeff Lindsay just wrote about an even more laughable attempt to draw general (categorical, not detailed) parallels between the Book of Mormon and works of fiction, such as The Lord of the Rings. The Book of Mormon reads like none of these.

I have also seen the rather contorted efforts to show that Joseph Smith somehow could get access in upstate New York to various obscure, rare, or even not-yet-extant works (atlases, translated documents, etc.), often available only in Europe at the time of the Book of Mormon’s translation, in order to put passing references (e.g., “Nahom”) into the Book of Mormon. I don’t remember whether it was Wilfred Griggs or Kent Brown who — in reference to such efforts — joked about wanting to write an article, “Joseph Smith in the British Museum: The Lost Years”, so I gave both of them credit in my footnote.

And, of course, there are the efforts to explain the Book of Mormon as somehow being a natural production of Joseph Smith’s background, 19th Century Northeast America. Others have done a far better and more scholarly refutation of such claims than I can; my point is that, again, Mormon sounds far more like Arrian than like anything coming out of the early 1800s in upstate New York.

I appreciate the dilemma of those seeking a purely naturalistic explanation for the Book of Mormon, but it’s a dilemma of their own choosing. It reminds me very much of pre-Corpernican efforts to account for movements of the planets — with the unnegotiable foundational premise that the whole universe revolved around the Earth. This model ended up going through tremendous contortions, epicycles upon epicycles, but with this difference: the pre-Corpernican epicycles actually predicted planetary motion with great accuracy. In my opinion, the various naturalistic ‘models’ of the Book of Mormon fall apart once you move outside of their careful set of special pleadings. The simplest, most consistent, and most effective explanation of the Book of Mormon is the one Joseph Smith — and the book itself — gives.

So, no, I don’t think Joseph Smith somehow got hold of Rooke’s 1812 translation of Anabasis Alexandri and drew upon it in writing the Book of Mormon. I think that Joseph Smith translated a genuine ancient document, and that the Book of Mormon and Anabasis Alexandri sound a lot alike because they share a common focus, milieu and era. ..bruce..

No, really.

Courtesy of Dave Barry (yes, that Dave Barry) comes this link to a website that promises — for a fee — to send e-mails and do electronic delivery of documents to a list of people once the Rapture occurs:

You’ve Been Left Behind gives you one last opportunity to reach your lost family and friends For Christ. Imagine being in the presence of the Lord and hearing all of heaven rejoice over the salvation of your loved ones. It is our prayer that this site makes it happen.

We have set up a system to send documents by the email, to the addresses you provide, 6 days after the “Rapture” of the Church. This occurs when 3 of our 5 team members scattered around the U.S fail to log in over a 3 day period. Another 3 days are given to fail safe any false triggering of the system.

We give you 150mb of encrypted storage that can be sent to 12 possible email addresses, in Box #1. You up load any documents and choose which documents go to who. You can edit these documents at any time and change the addresses they will be sent to as needed. Box #1 is for personal private information such as “passwords” and letters to be sent to your closest lost relatives and friends.

We give you another 100mb. of unencrypted storage that can be sent to up to 50 email addresses, in Box #2. You can edit the documents and the addresses any time. Box #2 is for more generic documents to lost family & friends.

The cost is $40 for the first year. Re-subscription will be reduced as the number of subscribers increases. Tell your friends about You’ve Been left behind.

First off, let me be clear: I’m not mocking this site. In fact, it strikes me as a logical step given a firm belief in a pre-tribulation Rapture — at least as long as you believe that those ‘left behind’ still have a shot at repentance. And if you do, it seems to me that the fact of the Rapture itself — not to mention the tribulation that would follow it — would probably do a whole lot more to cause folks to repent than getting a post-Rapture e-mail from someone who was taken. But if I earnestly believed in a pre-tribulation Rapture and post-Rapture repentance, I might well look into this. (Besides, the site itself seems to indicate that this can also be used to give key information to those left behind, e.g., accounts, passwords, and so on.)

I have no proof one way or the other whether this site is serious or a joke; a ‘whois’ investigation turned up little information other than that the domain was registered via godaddy.com. Only time will tell.

Of course, the LDS view is different. We believe in an post-tribulation Rapture (though we seldom call it by that name) that will occur at Christ’s coming. We also believe that those caught up to meet Christ at his coming will then come back down to earth — still mortal — and start the long task of cleaning up the mess we’ve made of things down here.

faith-promoting story — Any story that makes you feel glad you’re a Mormon, even if you can’t bring yourself to believe it.

– Orson Scott Card, Saintspeak: A Mormon Dictionary (Orion Books, 1981)

Of course, the question is — is there some equivalent notification system for Latter-day Saints? A “don’t tell anyone, but I’ve got to attend a meeting at Adam-ondi-Ahman” system? The problem with that is that not only do Mormons have a hard time keeping secrets in the first place, we tend to make up more than actually exist (”faith promoting rumors”).

Beyond that, the Church itself is so well wired and organized that it already has the infrastructure to get out any notification worldwide in a matter of hours. Besides, the meeting at Adam-ondi-Ahman will probably be broadcast via satellite.

Other suggestions or comments? ..bruce..

[I belong to a private e-mail list for attendees of an invitation-only technology conference that has meeting annually for nearly 25 years. Early in May, as the news was breaking about the Texas raid of the FLDS YFZ compound, some comments were made by a few posters, drawing some rather uninformed and incorrect correlations between the FLDS Church and LDS Church culture in general, citing as sources (a) a former LDS Church member and (b) a non-LDS person who had lived for some time in Utah. I ended up making two posts to that list, which I reproduce here in slightly edited form.]

[First post -- made 05/02/08]

I appreciate your efforts to shed light on the mess down in Texas. However, the next time you want to opine on and analyze LDS history, thought, and doctrine, you might try actually asking someone who has a thorough understanding of it and has studied it extensively in the context of both historical and mainstream Christianity.

Latter-day Saints (by which I mean members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 13+ million members worldwide, over 50% of those outside of the United States) are almost universally appalled by the various polygamous offshoots, most of which are quite tiny, insular and parochial in comparison. Note that support for such groups is grounds for denying a temple recommend (required to enter and participate in LDS temple ceremonies) and actual involvement is immediate grounds for excommunication. There is no sympathy, winking, or collusion between the LDS Church and these various tiny denominations; the relationship is frankly far more like that of the Roman Catholic Church and the various Protestant groups that arose during the Reformation, each side considering the other hopelessly apostate.

There is also very little similarity between the cultural and organizational behavior of the LDS Church vs. that found in these offshoots. Far from running around in suits and bonnets, and living in isolated communities, Latter-day Saints tend to be heavily integrated in their communities and cultures wherever they are found. There are over 27,000 LDS congregations worldwide, on every continent except Antarctica — and there may be one down there for all I know. Also note that the LDS Church has provided $750 million [correction: over $1 billion] in humanitarian assistance worldwide [PDF] in the last 22 years, the vast majority of which has gone to people who are not members of the LDS Church. All of this assistance has come either directly out of the pockets of the LDS members themselves or from the production of the LDS Church’s extensive welfare system, which itself is run largely from volunteer labor of LDS members.

Also note that many Evangelical Christians consider us too liberal in our lifestyle and behavior (we’re great fans of music and dancing, and our view towards abortion and related issues, while still conservative, is more liberal than that found in Evangelical — or for that matter, Catholic — circles). Anyone who seriously contends that Latter-day Saints are conformist sheep controlled by the Church hierarchy would be laughed out of the room by anyone who (like me) has actually served in an LDS bishopric. (Here’s Joseph Smith’s own observation: “There has been a great difficulty in getting anything into the heads of this generation. It has been like splitting hemlock knots with a corn-dodger [corn muffin] for a wedge and a pumpkin for a beetle [mallet].”)

As for education and intellect, I’ll cheerfully put up the LDS Church’s record against any other religion . For every Sonia Johnson (and there really have been only a few dozen such excommunications over the past 20 years), there have been scores of excommunications for extreme right-wing behavior and hundreds, if not thousands, of excommunications for involvement and participation in polygamous groups.

In short, trying to make statements or draw conclusions about the LDS Church based on the behavior of the FLDS group down in Texas is about like trying to make statements about Methodist and Baptists churches by the behavior of Jim Jones and the People’s Temple.

Finally, I will cheerfully admit — as will most Latter-day Saints — that the LDS-heavy culture in Utah does get a bit, ah, strange at times. A close friend of mine — who served as an LDS bishop over a mostly-Latino congregation down in El Paso, Texas — put it best, paraphrasing from “Hello, Dolly”: “Mormons are like horse manure. Spread them around, and they make things grow; pile them up in a heap, and they tend to stink.”

[Second post - made 05/05/08]

Most (though not all) modern LDS-derived polygamous churches descended from a group of seven Latter-day Saints (Mormons) who were excommunicated in the 1923-1941 time frame for practicing polygamy (the “Council of Friends”).The diagram at the bottom of this website gives you something of an idea of how most (though not all) of these churches are related. The FLDS Church is the largest of the surviving polygamous churches, most of which are either very tiny or defunct.

Still, the FLDS Chruch has only about 10,000 members total, most of whom were born into the FLDS Church and were never members of the LDS Church. The same is true of most of the other polygamous churches; they occasionally recruit outside people (Latter-day Saints or not), but tend to be largely descended from the original recruits (who were mostly Latter-day Saints) in the early to mid 20th Century. (Note that by contrast, the relatively small city of Parker, CO, where I live, has about 4000 Latter-day Saints in and around it, and there are about 130,000 Latter-day Saints in the entire state of Colorado.)

There are also stark contrasts between how the FLDS Church (and some of the other polygamous churches) practice polygamy vs. how it was practiced among Latter-day Saints up through 1904. For example:

The FLDS practice the “Law of placing,” or assignment of marriages, combined with a high level of control of the membership. This contrasts greatly with the LDS. We have no arranged marriages and the average age for LDS marriages is 23. Throughout LDS history, free agency has been a ruling principle. In 19th century LDS plural marriages women were freely allowed to marry, divorce, and leave the community. My own great-great-grandmother, Elizabeth Clark Crouch, was in a plural marriage, and she divorced her husband and left the community with no ramifications. There was no danger of having her children reassigned to anyone else. It was more difficult for men to obtain a divorce, as it was believed that the men should provide economic and social support since there was no state welfare program and women had limited employment opportunities. Kathryn M. Daynes discusses the economic underpinnings of plural marriage in her book titled “More Wives Than One: Transformation of the Mormon Marriage System, 1840-1910.” . . .

Another difference with the FLDS church is their idea that more wives equals a greater chance of exaltation. While our critics like to claim we believed that, Brigham Young stated quite clearly that not everyone would, or should, practice plural marriage. Several members of church leadership–including apostles–were not polygamists. Some of Brigham’s more controversial statements, when read in context, seem to use plural marriage as an example to focus on the idea of being willing to follow God rather than whether or not you actually practiced plural marriage. If plural marriage were required for heaven, why did some members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, our top leadership group, not practice it?

If you would like to read more about fundamentalist Mormonism, I recommend the book “Modern Polygamy and Mormon Fundamentalism: The Generations after the Manifesto” by Brian C. Hales.

– Scott Gordon, fairlds.org (The FAIR Journal — email sent 5/4/2008)

There are some other stark contrasts as well. In the Utah Territory in the second half of the 19th century, when the practice of polygamy was at its peak, Brigham Young emphasized the need for advanced education for LDS girls and women. On one occasion he stated:

“We wish, in our Sunday and day schools, that they who are inclined to any particular branch of study may have the privilege to study it. As I have often told my sisters in the Female Relief societies, we have sisters here who, if they had the privilege of studying, would make just as good mathematicians or accountants as any man; and we think they ought to have the privilege to study these branches of knowledge that they may develop the powers with which they are endowed. We believe that women are useful, not only to sweep houses, wash dishes, make beds, and raise babies, but that they should stand behind the counter, study law or physic [medicine], or become good book-keepers and be able to do the business in any counting house, and all this to enlarge their sphere of usefulness for the benefit of society at large. In following these things they but answer the design of their creation. These, and many more things of equal utility are incorporated in our religion, and we believe in and try to practice them.” (Journal of Discourses 13:61; address given July 18, 1869)

LDS women (mostly plural wives!) were heavily involved in national and international women’s rights movements and traveled to the Eastern US to participate in and speak at women’s conferences. Only the first page of the just-linked article is available, but it does set forth the basic situation; also see An Advocate for Women: The Public Life of Emmeline B. Wells, 1870-1920 by Carol Cornwall Madsen (BYU Press/Deseret Book, 2006), as well as this transcript from the PBS Special, “The Mormons”. In 1872, LDS women (again, mostly plural wives) started their own intellectual journal, The Women’s Exponent, which was published for over 40 years.

For that matter, women in the Utah Territory were the second (after those in the Wyoming Territory) in the United States to receive the right to vote, in 1870. That right was stripped by Congress in 1887 in the effort to end polygamy and reduce the political influence of the LDS Church, but it was restored — 25 years ahead of the 19th Amendment — when Utah gained statehood in 1895. In fact, the actual language put into the Utah State Constitution was, “The rights of citizens of the State of Utah to vote and hold office shall not be denied or abridged on account of sex. Both male and female citizens of this state shall enjoy equally all civil, political and religious rights and privileges.” (1896 Utah State Constitution, Article IV, Section 1, “Equal political rights”).

In short, it’s hard to imagine a more dramatic contrast between the TV images and news accounts of the (apparently) highly-sheltered, controlled and under-educated girls/women at the FLDS compound in Texas and the broad, active, literate, and — for its era (we are talking about the 1800s) — quite liberated roles and activities of Latter-day Saint women in the Rocky Mountains during the last half of the 19th Century. ..bruce..

For we without them cannot be made perfect; neither can they without us be made perfect.

– Doctrine & Covenants 128:18

Forty-one years ago — in the spring of 1967 — my friend Andrew Bos introduced me to the LDS Church by asking me to go to Mutual with him, then to Sunday School, and then to Sacrament meeting. After a few months of that, Andrew prodded me to ask my parents if I could have the missionary discussions. To my surprise, it was my father — a Navy man since age 17 who smoked Marlboros, drank martinis, inhaled coffee, and swore, well, like a sailor — who was enthusiastic about my doing so. He said that he could think of no other church that he’d rather have me join (we were all inactive Episcopalians) and that he thought the Mormon Church was “the one church that would save Christianity” (his exact words).

Having received a powerful testimony of the reality of the Restoration during the missionary discussions and my own study and prayer, I went back to my parents some weeks later to get permission to be baptized (I was only 14). Again, it was my father who signed the slip, saying that if he could ever give up his cigarettes, liquor and coffee, he’d join the LDS Church himself. He never won that battle, though — in fact, it was his earlier failed attempt in 1967 to give up smoking that led to my own decision never to start — and he died a little over 10 years ago. But through the years he and Mom were always supportive my Church involvement, including paying for my entire mission.

Yesterday, I was able to return the favor to my dad, doing his baptismal and initiatory work in the Denver Temple. In fact, my sweet wife Sandra and I together did that work for a total of 40 of my ancestors, the majority of them within four or five generations. That work included six relatives whom I knew personally — my dad, my uncle Jimmy, Grandma and Grandpa Webster, and Grandma and Grandpa Fickes (my mom’s adoptive parents) — as well as my mom’s birth father (Grandpa Wiren), most of my great-great-grandparents along all lines, and some even further back than that.

While the temple is a sacred place for me, I am not prone to having ‘thin veil’ experiences. That was different yesterday. At the start of my initiatory session, I organized the 22 male names I had by lineage going back. For example, the six Websters were done sequentially (uncle, father, grandfather, great-grandfather, great-great-grandfather, great-great-great-grandfather); I organized the other lines the same way, as far as possible. As I went through the round of initiatory work for each of these men, I felt a deep and increasing soberness at the literal nature of the authority being conferred and the blessings being unlocked; I also repeatedly felt love and gratitude from specific individuals as the work for them was done.

As importantly, I realized that by doing this work, I had opened the door for them to turn again and bring blessings into my life. Pres. Kimball famously said that when the Lord seeks to bless us or answer our prayers, He usually does so through other people. What struck me at the temple yesterday is that the “other people” aren’t limited to those of us on this side of the veil. By doing temple work, particularly for our close ancestors, we multiply those whom God can use to bless us.

There is another blessing, too. I was the only member of my family to join the LDS Church 41 years ago, and through that time I have remained the only member in my immediate family (meaning my own parents and siblings, as well as aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, and all my ancestors). Through all those decades, I have felt the responsibility of being the first in all my ancestral lines to be a member of the Church and to hold the Priesthood, of having to set an example while lacking one of my own to draw upon, and I’m well aware of how often I have fallen short.

Leaving the temple last night, however, I felt a weight had been lifted. I have company, now — others in my family and family lines who have embraced the Gospel and accepted its blessings. I no longer feel like such an odd duck — at least, not for that reason — and it’s nice to know I have patriarchs in my own line who now hold the Priesthood. I have a compelling reason to go to the temple frequently — we’ve got 38 names cleared for endowments (we did my Grandma & Grampa Webster in an endowment session last night), as well as lots of subsequent sealings. And I’ve got hundreds of more names to submit once we’ve gotten these done.

And that sounds just wonderful. ..bruce..