Adventures in Mormonism

Last week, I received (via Amazon) and read The Year of Living Biblically by A. J. Jacobs. Jacobs, a self-described Jewish agnostic and an editor at Esquire, had previously written The Know-It-All (in which he described reading the Encyclopedia Britannica from cover to cover). In this case, however, he was not only reading the Bible, he was attempting to follow all the commandments and injunctions found in it.

The book is a delight. I admired Jacobs’ honesty, particularly about his own failings and struggles, his empathy with the various religious groups he encounters even (especially!) when he strongly disagrees with their beliefs and practices, his willingness to introduce great upheaval in his personal and family life just to find out what this Bible stuff is all about, and his courage to adhere to his lists of commandments — the bulk of which come from the Mosaic law — even at the risk of social awkwardness.

Plus the book is really, really funny.

Day 124. January 2. We’re back in New York. I’m not supposed to make New Year’s resolutions — probably a pagan ritual — but if I did, here’s what mine would be: I have to start thickening my skin. It’s right there in Ecclesiastes: Don’t pay attention to everything everyone says about you; you know you’ve talked trash about other people.

Today I was reading the Amazon.com reviews for my encyclopedia book (I know, not biblical), and I ran across one that was very strange. The reviewer said she looked at my author photo and discovered that I’m not really that ugly. In fact, I’m kind of “normal looking.” Which I guess is sort of flattering. Normal looking.

But she didn’t mean it as flattery. She said that I’m normal-looking enough that I have no excuse to be socially awkward, neurotic, or best with an inferiority complex. So I should shut my normal-looking trap and stop complaining. This is the most backhanded compliment I’ve ever received. It sank me into a bad mood for three hours. The Bible is right; I have to toughen up.

And I must, absolutely must, stop self-Googling. It’s a horrible habit that I still haven’t kicked in my biblical year. …This is alll very unrighteous, very vain. I should think instead of the well-being of my family and my neighbors — and on God.

I should be more like Noah. It took Noah decades to build his ark. Can you imagine the mockery he must have received from doubting neighbors? If Noah were alive today, he wouldn’t be wasting his time checking out what blogs said about him. He’d be down at Home Depot buying more lumber. Starting today, I’m going to be more like Noah. Toughen up. (pp. 151-152)

Read it. ..bruce..

One of the intriguing aspects of reality, as far as we are able to analyze and perceive it to date, is that it depends upon a relatively small set of dimensionless parameters. Here is a listed set, taken from the paper “Dimensionless constants, cosmology, and other dark matters” by Max Tegmark (MIT), Anthony Aguirre (UCSC), Martin J Rees (Cambridge), and Frank Wilczek (MIT) (Phys.Rev. D73 (2006) 023505):

And here are the derived physical parameters:

I got to this paper via an article in New Scientist (subscription required for full article) by one of the paper’s authors (Max Tegmark) who feels that our universe itself is a mathematical construct:

Here, I will push this idea to its extreme and argue that our universe is not just described by mathematics - it is mathematics. While this hypothesis might sound rather far-fetched, it makes startling predictions about the structure of the universe that could be testable by observations. It should also be useful in narrowing down what an ultimate theory of everything could look like….

So here is the crux of my argument. If you believe in an external reality independent of humans, then you must also believe in what I call the mathematical universe hypothesis: that our physical reality is a mathematical structure. In other words, we all live in a gigantic mathematical object - one that is more elaborate than a dodecahedron, and probably also more complex than objects with intimidating names like Calabi-Yau manifolds, tensor bundles and Hilbert spaces, which appear in today’s most advanced theories. Everything in our world is purely mathematical - including you.

Tegmark also feels that this hypothesis leads inevitably to the conclusion that multiverses exist that embody different combinations of dimensionless parameters; we just happen to be in one in which life as we know it can evolve. I’m impressed that Tegmark et al. in the “Dimensionless parameters” paper were willing to include “design” as one explanation for the “fine-tuned for life” values of the parameters, though (rightly) stating that physicists prefer the others:

So why do we observer these 31 parameters to have the particular values listed in Table 1? Interest in that question has grown the the gradual realization that some of these parameters appear fine-tuned for life, in the sense that small relative changes to their values would result in dramatic qualitative changes that could preclude intelligent life, and hence the very possibility of reflective observation. As discussed extensively elsewhere [list of footnotes], there are four common responses to this realization:

1. Fluke: Any apparent fine-tuning is a fluke and is best ignored.
2. Multiverse: These parameters vary across an ensemble of physically realized and (for all practical purposes) parallel universes, and we find ourselves in one where life is possible.
3. Design: Our universe is somehow created or simulated with parameters chose to allow life.
4. Fecundity: There is no fine-tuning, because intelligent life of some form will emerge under extremely varied circumstances.

Options 1, 2 and 4 tend to be preferred by physicists, with recent developments in inflation and high-energy theory given new popularity to option 2. (Tegmark et al., Phys.Rev. D73 (2006) 023505, pp. 1-4)

No great theological or philosophic intent to this posting, other than I tend to lean towards the “Design” answer. My intended college major during my senior year of high school was astrophysics; that came to a halt upon reading an article about the bartenders and cab drivers with PhDs in astrophysics, but I remain interested in the topic. On the other hand, as someone who has done real-world simulation work (cruise missiles, large space structures, the Space Shuttle flight simulators, and tectonic processes on Venus), I’m keenly aware of how model definition and parameter selection directly leads to your results. ..bruce..

As I’ve mentioned before, one of my sources of both frustration and amusement during my 40 years as a Latter-day Saint has been the sheer number of people who either misunderstand or deliberately misrepresent LDS history, beliefs and practices. So it is always a delight to run across a well-written article by someone outside the LDS Church who not only under understands LDS culture and doctrine, but who provides new insights.

Such an article is “A Mormon President? The LDS Difference“, written by Laurie Maffly-Kipp and published in The Christian Century. Maffly-Kipp is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill), and one of her areas of specialty is Mormonism. She clearly has done her homework; I’ve never seen someone outside the LDS Church (or few within it) so clearly articulate the balance of authority and independence within the Church:

Yes, the prophet can receive revelation. But this power is couched within a set of concentric circles of revelation and authority: the prophet receives revelation for the church, bishops receive revelation pertaining to their wards (local churches), and fathers and mothers receive revelation relating to their families. Most important, Mormons—like Protestants—attach great importance to the agency of the individual believer, who is expected to pray and receive guidance for herself. This set of interconnected responsibilities makes for clear lines of authority, to be sure—few agencies are as efficient as a local Mormon ward in action—but it also means that leaders cannot, in theory, overstep the bounds of the authority bestowed on them by virtue of their office.

In practice, then, LDS religious authority is diffused and regulated in quite orderly ways; indeed, one might say that this flow is both more controlled than in many Protestant churches and more democratically distributed than in Roman Catholicism. Mormons are taught from a very young age that their purpose in life is to exercise their own spiritual agency and to maintain a right relationship with God. The church hierarchy, of course, has a major role in facilitating that growth, but not the only role. Higher education is valued for both men and women, regardless of one’s career path. Healthy living and moral values are extolled not simply as exercises in discipline, but as keys to individual progress. Considerable emphasis, in other words, is placed on the individual cultivation of personal agency, a fact that may help explain the resounding business success of someone like Mitt Romney.

Nor do LDS Church members in good standing bow to church officials at every point; the authority of many church teachings is, in fact, somewhat ambiguous. There are a number of incontrovertible teachings, of course (such as: Joseph Smith was a prophet; sex before marriage is forbidden), but these are surprisingly few in number. Many other decisions are left to the dictates of individual conscience. One need only ask 10 church members about whether Mormons are allowed to drink caffeinated soft drinks to encounter a wide range of interpretations.

I strongly recommend the article, and I plan to keep a look out for other articles and books by Maffly-Kipp. ..bruce..

This touching (and well-written) article — from Jennifer Pemberton, a woman who is not LDS but who has LDS relatives — got me thinking about Hell, something else that divides us from most conservative Christians. She talks about the conflicts between her grandmother (not LDS) and her great aunt (LDS) over religion, and her great-aunt’s final health decline and death:

Aunt Ruth died a week later. My grandmother was inconsolable — a complete surprise. “There’s no relief,” she said over the phone. “We can’t say, ‘She’s with the Lord now.’ I can’t help but think of her burning in hell, and there’s nothing we can do about it now.” How could I console her? “We don’t know that,” I said. “More likely she’s with Wendell and Richard and Grandpa. It’s one big family reunion up there for the Mormons.” I shouldn’t have included my grandfather in the mix, but she let it slide.

“I hope you’re right,” she said, with a laugh.

“At least if the Mormons are right, we’ll all be safe,” I said.

We were joking again, irreverent at the most inappropriate times — the only way we knew how to make sense of things.

“It wouldn’t hurt to invest in a pair of that holy underwear,” I added. “Just in case.”

Just about the same time I ran across this article, I also ran across this video mashup of Jack Chick’s ‘Titanic‘ tract using footage from James Cameron’s movie by the same name. Between the two, I was struck anew at how stark much of conservative Christian theology is regarding the concept of Hell and the significant (and often radical) differences in the LDS concept of Hell. (More after the jump.)

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I received a very thoughtful and civil e-mail from a reader of this blog, who told of his own brief experiences investigating the LDS Church and in particular of some issues he had with the concepts of temples, temple recommends, and temple ceremonies — and how restrictive and exclusionary LDS practices and doctrine regarding the temple appeared to be. He was somewhat encouraged by my posting on “Who gets saved?” but still had additional questions. I wrote him an e-mail reply late last night; I’m going to use a slightly edited and extended version of my response for this post.

The temples detailed in the Bible (Moses’s Tabernacle, Solomon’s Temple, and what is generally called Herod’s Temple [New Testament era]) all had restrictions on who could enter where and when — and restrictions far more strict than the LDS Church has for its temples. Let me focus on Herod’s Temple for now.

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[UPDATED 02/27/08: I was startled today to find that Jeff Lindsay has written a poem, "Flatland", inspired in part by this paper. And a wonderful poem it is; go read it.]

I have a half-finished post on the nature of eternity, but I realized that I really need to address some foundational issues with regard to it. And since I co-authored a paper on the subject (”Some thoughts on higher-dimensional realms”, Robert P. Burton and Bruce F. Webster, BYU Studies, Vol. 20, No. 3 (Spring 1980), p. 281 ff.) nearly 30 years ago, I thought I’d simply repost the paper, both in PDF format (as transcribed — not scanned — by BYU Studies) and as text that you can read here.

The gist of the paper is that there is evidence in the scriptures as well as in LDS sources (historical and doctrinal) that there are macroscopic physical dimensions outside of the 3D+time continuum in which we appear to reside. I did this as a University Scholar project my senior year (1977-78) at Brigham Young University; it was the first published writing I ever did (though certainly not the last), and so it’s a bit more awkward and stilted than I would write today. But it still brings together the sources that led me to this conclusion three decades ago, and my studies since then have only reinforced them.

The article itself appears after the jump. I have inserted some comments within brackets ([...]) when appropriate. Footnotes are also indicated with brackets ([1], etc.) and are given at the end of the article. Finally, I have noticed some typographical errors in the PDF transcription of the article (there are sadly quite a few) and have corrected these silently.

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I thought I’d start with beginnings, since they affect so much else.

Mormons reject the classic (and largely post-Nicene) Christian concept of creatio ex nihilo, that is, creation out of nothing, in at least two important senses: the existence of individuals and the ultimate framework for our current space-time continuum. Let’s focus on the first for now.

We believe that some essential nature of our personal being is eternal, indeed co-eternal with God. The arc of individual existence, in current Mormon terminology, goes like this:

intelligence: nowadays, this term is used to describe our core eternal being, the part of us that has always existed. This is generally considered to be individualistic — that is, you and I have always existed as separate entities — though a few within the Church have argued for more of a ‘raw bulk material’ concept (with possible recycling). Joseph Smith’s statement (in the King Follett discourse) was that “…God never did have power to create the spirit of man at all. God himself could not create himself: intelligence exists upon a self existent principle…”.

pre-mortal) spirit: at some point prior to this life, God encased our intelligences in ’spirit bodies’ (and thus became “the Father of spirits“). We know nothing about the process and we frankly know very little about the conditions there, though this doesn’t stop Mormons from rampant speculation and presumption, plus generating a fair amount of folk doctrine. It also should be noted that early LDS scripture and discourses on this subject did not make as clear a distinction between the terms ‘intelligence’ and ’spirit as is currently made in the LDS Church today (cf. the King Follett discourse above, as well as this passage from the Book of Abraham).

mortal being: we are born into this life with an impermanent bond between our spirit body and our physical body — in other words, we’re mortal and will die (breaking that bond).

(post-mortal) spirit: after death, we exist again as spirits for a period until we are resurrected.

resurrected being: resurrection permanently fuses our spirits with an immortal physical body.

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As a response to both on-going silly postings on the net and the PBS broadcast “The Mormons”, I’ve wanted to write about several subjects, including:

• LDS cosmology (the nature of the universe)
• LDS ontology (the nature of reality, including God and humanity)
• LDS epistemology (the nature of truth and ways of knowing it)
• the organization and functioning of the LDS Church

The challenge is that they are all interrelated, which is why you get so many goofy and misinformed postings about the LDS Church and its doctrine (as a parallel example, try to write intelligently on the Catholic doctrine of the immaculate conception of Mary without reference to original sin, St. Augustine, or the Fall). I’m not quite sure yet how I’m going to tackle all this — except that I may just pick an arbitrary starting point and go from there.  ..bruce..

In a previous post, I stated my objections to the portrayal of LDS Church disciplinary councils and procedures in the PBS show, “The Mormons”. I felt the same segment (about the excommunication of the “September Six”) left some misleading impressions regarding the role of education and intellect in the LDS Church — in particular, that the LDS Church somehow devalues, denigrates, or is afraid of education and intellect, or that Mormons who pursue the intellect end up leaving the LDS Church.

Actually, just the opposite is true.

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