Adventures in Mormonism

[While digging through my family history files for something else, I found a copy of the eulogy I gave at the funeral of Avard "Andy" Anderson, my father-in-law, some sixteen years ago, in August 1992. Since I've already posted my own father's eulogy on line, I wanted to post Andy's eulogy as well.]

All too often, we measure status in the Church — and standing before the Lord — by positions held, particularly those held lately. We sometimes talk of Church careers and promotions, as if the Kingdom were a business. When we gather together, we find ways subtle and overt to let others know what callings we’ve had, feeling self-assured if we’ve held what are commonly called “high” positions, and feeling self-doubt if someone much younger has held higher positions.

By such standards, Avard Anderson — my father-in-law — was not a “success”. He spent over twenty-five years traveling through the US and Canada, building smokestacks. He never stayed in one place very long, living and working in over 100 different locations during that time. When he finally retired, he settled here in Orem and spent the rest of his life enjoying time with Nora, their children, and the ever-growing stream of grandkids. Throughout the nearly fifty years since Dad and Mom were married, he was never called as a bishop, never appointed to serve on a stake high council, never asked to be a member of a stake presidency.

And yet…and yet I think Dad has laid up for himself a reward in heaven which any of us would be thrilled to have. During all those years, he usually lived far from the population centers of the Church, at a time when total Church membership was barely a tenth of what it is today. He served in a succession of branches and small wards, providing leadership and support to the members there. He was always ready to show Christ-like service to all he’d come in contact with, and when he felt it was appropriate, he’d bear his humble, honest testimony — and more than a few people heard it, were touched, and were baptized. He, Mom and the kids faithfully attended their meetings wherever they lived, even though at times they lived 20 to 30 miles from the meetinghouse, and the meeting schedule back then was far less convenient: Priesthood and Sunday School in the morning, Sacrament in the evening, and Primary, Mutual, and Relief Society during the week. All this was done not to impress others, gain appreciation, or to somehow qualify for higher callings, but because it was the right thing to do — and Dad felt he owed it to the Lord to do the right thing.

I think of Dad as a Johnny Appleseed, planting seeds and nurturing branches, setting an example and quietly serving others, doing his part to help keep things growing until the Church membership grew large enough to sustain its own growth. Many of the branches he served in are now wards; many of the wards, stakes; and there are many, many people throughout the US and Canada, of all religious persuasions, who know, remember and love Avard Anderson. O, that we all could have such a legacy!

A lesser man might have felt pride and self-satisfaction; Dad, in his humility, was concerned about what he saw as his shortcomings and mistakes. He spent the last few months of his life expressing his love and appreciation for those around him and bearing his testimony to his many visitors. At night, lying in bed, he prayed blessings on those he loved and mentally reviewed all he had learned in the temple, wanting to be prepared for what awaited him in the next life.

I have few doubts about who was there to meet Dad when he crossed over: family and friends who have gone on before, descendants yet to come, and — as promised in two separate blessings he received during his last weeks — the Savior Himself. I’m also quite sure that Dad will again be doing there what he did so well here: quietly serving and bearing testimony. As his nephew Mike noted last night, Dad is following the pattern of his life: going ahead to set things up, then sending for Mom and, eventually, the kids. While such a promise as Dad’s — to be met by the Savior — would be tremendous comfort, I will be content if it is Dad who meets me when I pass through to the other side, because I am sure that where I find one, I will find the Other.

– Bruce F. Webster, August 12, 1992, Orem, Utah

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..

For none of these iniquities come of the Lord; for he doeth that which is good among the children of men; and he doeth nothing save it be plain unto the children of men; and he inviteth them all to come unto him and partake of his goodness; and he denieth none that come unto him, black and white, bond and free, male and female; and he remembereth the heathen; and all are alike unto God, both Jew and Gentile. (2 Nephi 26:33)

Many, many years ago, on a visit to Utah, I attended church with an acquaintance of mine. This man was a professor at BYU and had a PhD from Harvard, of which he was quite proud. After the high priest group meeting was over, he turned to me and said, “You know, during the lesson I was looking around the room with interest. On the one hand, here were men with advanced degrees and significant accomplishments: scholars, professors, successful businessmen. On the other hand, you have men who are third- and fourth-generation farmers. I marvel that the same Gospel can encompass us all.” My response was simply, “Well, maybe from where the Lord sits, there isn’t any real difference.”

My acquaintance was not amused. As I said, he was quite proud of his Ivy League degree and did not care to be lumped in with farmers.

I have reflected on that exchange many times in the quarter-century since it happened. I think we all succumb to my acquaintance’s temptation from time to time and in different ways. The condescension of men is something quite different from the condescension of God; ours is made in self-justification, self-praise and self-satisfaction. Whether it is our intellect, our education, our orthodoxy (or heterodoxy), our skepticism (or our faithfulness), or even our sacrifice and suffering, we find reasons why we’re somehow better, wiser, more thoughtful or more authentic than those around us (or, at least, those of whom we don’t approve). And we are all of us wrong. From where God sits, there is no real difference between us; the gap between His attributes and ours, between His perfection and our sinfulness, is so vast so as to render our differences insignificant in the face of our need to simply repent and rely utterly upon Him.

And he spake this parable unto certain which trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others:

Two men went up into the temple to pray; the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican. I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess.

And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner.

I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other: for every one that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted. (Luke 18:9-14)

I believe we are not only guilty of chauvinism regarding our personal characteristics, our accomplishments, or our self-selected social/intellectual group, we are guilty of temporal and cultural chauvinism as well. We often assume, consciously or not, that God is more, well, nuanced with us in these ‘latter days’ than with, say, the Israelites in 7th century BC Judah because we are more sophisticated and educated. In fact, we often limit what we believe God could have told such people simply because of the historical setting; for example, God could not have really told Nephi details about the birth and life of Jesus Christ and so it must be a late addition to the Book of Mormon. (Unspoken but lurking beneath such assertions is the assumption, “Well, God hasn’t told me anything in such detail, so how could He have done so with Nephi or anyone else for that matter?”) Again, from where God sits, there is no measurable difference in our cultures, philosophies, and levels of education — the fact that we have iPhones, the internet, The Ensign and Dialogue, and that the Israelites did not, is meaningless in the context of the infinite gap between us and God.

Mormons – People who believe: … 3. That the only difference between them and God is a few years of training.
— Orson Scott Card, Saintspeak (1984).

God knows personally and watches over all His children on the “worlds without number” that He has created and continues to create; He perceives this entire universe in real time. We, on the other hand, struggle to balance our checkbooks and remember our own kids’ names or what we were doing 3 months ago. And yet we presume to judge and criticize one another, and to justify ourselves, over what are in an eternal and Godly perspective trivial differences. We are like toddlers arguing over who has more or larger freckles while a global war rages around us and threatens us all.

This day, Easter, we celebrate the true condescension of God, that infinite and eternal atonement that bridges that infinite gap, resurrects us from the dead, and brings us back into the presence of God. It is a gift beyond all comprehension and deserving, and our reaction to it should be less like the Pharisee and more like the publican. We are all sinners and unprofitable servants — we are all truly “alike unto God” — and yet Christ atoned for us anyway. Today, of all days, we should remember and ponder upon that. ..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..