Is Mormonism And Science Compatible? Attn Bcspace

[Robert F. Smith]

I have serious doubt that this Kerry Shirts is the same Kerry Shirts you interacted in years past. At least he comes across quite different in his thinking than the Kerry Shirts I have known. I had thought earlier to ask the questions: "Who are you? And what have you done with the really Kerry Shirts?", but for whatever reason I decided against it. There is a chance that I could be wrong.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

Or, he could be putting us on . . .

[Robert F. Smith]

Hi. Haven't posted in a while, but thought I'd share a little personal project somewhat related to this topic (and going beyond it).

www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0e3dLtZxHg

It's a bit long. May be best to watch before bed when it's quiet.

Most images understood to be clearly in the public domain. I tried avoiding using material that might require permission, but I don't claim any ownership (though I created the text and fractal images using tools).

non-LDS investigator

Exquisite.

[Calm]

Hi. Haven't posted in a while, but thought I'd share a little personal project somewhat related to this topic (and going beyond it).

www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0e3dLtZxHg

It's a bit long. May be best to watch before bed when it's quiet.

Most images understood to be clearly in the public domain. I tried avoiding using material that might require permission, but I don't claim any ownership (though I created the text and fractal images using tools).

non-LDS investigator

Just took a quick look at it for now. Looks impressive.

[thesometimesaint]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanism

[Calm]

Isaac Asimov says so

I have read a great deal of Asimov's fiction, not so much his nonfiction...at least not lately as I haven't been able to get a hold of it, plus much of his nonfiction work is out of date now so my understanding of his philosophy of life and science is based primarily on interpreting it from his fictional work. In his Foundation and Robots series, his vision ends with the judgment that the next step in the evolution of Man should be in the direction of an unification of heart, mind, body and soul (in the nonreligious sense) with all other life and nonlife forms in existence (Galaxia: "a living organism which contains all the lifeforms and other non-living material in the galaxy"). He describes this as an awareness of others while still being selfaware of one's independent state as a unique entity (a very short summary of my interpretation of his books). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaia_(Foundation_universe). On a depressing side note, IIRC his reason for promoting this type of ultimate living organism including mankind was that it was the only way mankind could survive a potential threat from the unknown outside of the galaxy that might in the future encounter mankind as opposed to it was the best form for fulfilling of all man's positive desires and potentials.

This oneness is consistent with some Eastern religious thought of the Divine and also lines up well in my opinion with the anticipation of oneness in the Celestial Kingdom with God and other celestial beings. These celestial beings may include celestial beasts as is described in D&C 77 ( http://www.lds.org/s.../dc/77?lang=eng ) and since even Earth is described as having a spirit, it would seem also to possibly include celestial objects that we would currently define as nonliving. God would seem to be fully aware of the earth and all else as described in scriptures and LDS doctrine, thus his ability to command the elements and achieve acts that are viewed as supernatural to mankind, but appear to be based on knowledge and the ability to order (see for example Abraham 4:31 "And the Gods said: We will do everything that we have said, and organize them; and behold, they shall be very obedient"). And it has as the reason for such oneness that it is the best way to achieve the fulfillment of joy and positive potential of man (and I would think everything else as well), not only a more charitable view than Asimov's (defining charity as pure love) but also in my view a more practical one in the pragmatic sense...not only will mankind survive and evolve, but he will do it in the most effective and allencompassing way possible.

Obviously the idea of oneness is not unique to religious experience, but in terms of effectiveness, I think religious communities have at times been very good at working toward a sense of oneness among the community itself as well as expanding it to others. I think the LDS doctrine of all mankind being of one family, the children of God, all with the potential to achieve this celestial state of oneness in postmortality but also capable of becoming one with each other and God in the here and now to a significant amount is a beautiful and 'evolved' doctrine, raising up humans not only as individuals but as a community to the divine or if you would prefer, the ultimate in evolution is seen as within man's grasp now, not just in the far distance future. And because it is possible now, then we should be working toward it rather than concentrating on selfish endeavours that place our own well being above all others. Instead we have as a goal the well being of family which is extended to every human being existing now, in the future and in the past.

That we fail at this goal, miserably at times, does not negate the fact of the goal's existence or that many faithful LDS and others (religious and nonreligious) who share a similar goal are working toward it or that the Church as a whole is working hard to create the best community to achieve this goal. Though again while it may fall short, I think leaders and the "rank and file" are in general learning how to do this better and better, especially since I believe God reveals to us more and better ways to achieve this (line upon line) as we develop more and better skill at using what we already have been taught.

Nor do I think one should toss aside the religious imperatives that contribute to the realization of this goal simply because there are nonreligous imperatives that promote this goal as well. Anything that encourages charity, a sense of brotherhood and self-sacrifice for others should be supported to the best of our abilities, in my opinion.

Edited July 24, 2012 by calmoriah

[Hamilton Porter]

Gee, where to start? Richard Dawkins says so, Stephen Jay Gould says so, Isaac Asimov says so, Victor J. Stenger says so, Ernst Mayer says so, Douglas Futuyma says so. There is no God behind evolution. This is precisely why Daniel C. Dennett has called Darwin's idea the MOST DANGEROUS (for religion). There is no design, direction or God for evolution. I will find details in all these authors if they are needed. I know this sounds like I am simply appealing to authority. I'm not, even Ken Miller shows the evidences about this.

Ken Miller believes human evolution was INEVITABLE, i.e., we are not here by chance. So does Simon Conway Morris at Cambridge, so does Francis Collins, head of the NIH. We don't need God for evolution to happen because the laws of natural selection themselves exhibit a divine character.

[CASteinman]

I have read a great deal of Asimov's fiction, not so much his nonfiction...

Plus +1

[CASteinman]

Ken Miller believes human evolution was INEVITABLE, i.e., we are not here by chance. So does Simon Conway Morris at Cambridge, so does Francis Collins, head of the NIH. We don't need God for evolution to happen because the laws of natural selection themselves exhibit a divine character.

Seems paradoxical to me.

Is this deism of sorts?

[Maidservant]

First let me disclose that I read this thread through about page 6 or 7 and had a whole bunch of posts collecting in my "multiple quotes" that I was going to answer point by point, some to offer challenge, some to offer support. But that began to be a monstrous task, ha ha, and also I didn't read further last night before going to bed, but this thread has been on my mind and I have woken up to it again this morning.

To the OP. And as I understand there is a question if this is actually Mr. Shirts. But nevertheless. I have always respected your way of looking at things and learning. However, in the way you have expressed yourself here, you seem to have made the conclusion for yourself that whatever is subjective is faulty, and that "point of view" can have no real place in the configuration of what truth ultimately is. In this conclusion, you are not alone. Many have it. But for me and some others, "point of view" and subjectivity is integral to truth. Why? For me, because to be human, to be alive, is the truth. To have human experience and struggle, to successively cast off the dark and reach for the light--is human, is truth. And I have never met an *objective* matter that satisfied me to really fulfill that definition, since all things are mediated by perception--the paradigms, the language we agree to collectively or fashion individually.

Similarly, I do not sort my knowledge into "science" and "religion". I never have. For me it is all human endeavor. Also, people often bring up the 2+2=4 as being truth and that you can't discuss how 2+2=5.6. This irritates me, ha ha. For example. Numerals and numbers are interpretations. We use base 10. In binary, I'm thinking, (I'm no expert), 2+2=4, is meaningless. Also is 1+1=2? What about marriage? That is a 1+1. What does that give rise to? Look at an apple. Is it one? The answer is unequivocally YES. Until you start counting seeds, then one may be infinity with the amount of apples that could arise as posterity to one apple. Numbers are mysterious, magical and, I think, fundamental. As soon as something comes into existence, it has the count of one. Numbers are rather stable in terms of humans ability to consent to what they do, but even numbers are malleable. And oddly enough, the Hebrew way of approaching religion (and maybe from others I am not familiar), numbers were necessary to understanding God. And indeed necessary to decoding Genesis, for that matter.

So I say these two things so you will know that as I offer some other challenges, I realize I am already coming from a very different place than you are, so it may be that we can never understand each other. But just to mention, that the way you have set up your frame of looking at the world, you are certain, so very, very certain that you have the correct FRAME and thus the bits within that frame should fit. And when they don't, it's painful, but you aren't prepared to question your frame as being insufficient. Well, so I say .

You offer "evolution" as the linchpin of whether or not Mormonism is compatible with science. This is based on Genesis as an origin story. And evolution as an origin theory.

Genesis is not an origin story. It has been taken as an origin story. But continued engagement with Genesis (in all its forms) leads one to see many other things. It was never prepared as an origin story. This is what I have learned, anyway. Not to mention things like Moses 1:34 " . . . Adam, which is many." Our need to use Genesis as an origin story and our misunderstanding of what it was prepared for is a spiritual weakness and also a knowledge weakness. We don't have a lot of instruction on the tools that were used to prepare it, thus we don't have the tools to enter the spiritual journey of Genesis. Except that these things are revealed bit by bit to seekers, and I'm sure you yourself are in possession of many insights.

So if Genesis is not an origin story, then there is nothing to contradict evolution.

Evolution is unconvincing to me on its own weight. I see a world of paradigm. And in that world of paradigm, or even WITHIN the paradigm that evolution calls for, for myself I am unconvinced. Trust me, this leaves me wide open to derision from both Mormons and non, etc. This isn't an "evolution" thread, but what do you think of the universe as a program? What do you think of the experienced universe as a multi-user multi-modal interface?

Evolution IS a child of religion. Religion posited the question of origin and brought its answer (and we have to look farther and wider into history than Genesis for this religiosity in that question and in the development of the answer). Darwin may have freed himself from the answer, but he was still chained to the question. The "question" is a very deep paradigm. We have to account for ourselves on this planet. We HAVE to have had a beginning. Since one of the parameters is already that we HAVE to have a beginning, we can only find answers of one sort or another that bows to that parameter. Which means we are blind to any other thing we could find or fashion, were that parameter removed.

It is observable that human beings give birth to other human beings. What causes us to look for any other explanation, by any other name (religion or science)? To look for any other explanation is to leave the simple, to create a religion.

It is true that matter is observable in the universe and so much effort has gone into crafting a story, looking for the answer of HOW consciousness arose from matter. But it is all founded upon the postulate THAT matter is first and consciouness second. But we cannot slay that postulate dragon, or no one cares to.

Consciousness is just as observable and proliferate. So why haven't we simply taken the observation (without weighing it down with religiosity and history) of consciousness and ask how matter arose from it?

It's an arbitrary choice. Which, by the way, I have made the other one. Consciousness first.

To discuss the planet and rocks and water and leaves and even our own bodies as some kind of "nature" is a PARADIGM, an extremely tough and durable one. But a rock, a leaf is an ARTIFACT. Just as if we travelled to a new place and found something that we weren't sure what was, but we knew it was a technology and that someone built it, and then we started to extrapolate what the people, society and culture were like that made that. The planet is MADE, BUILT, an ARTIFACT. It has nothing to do with God or worshipping or religion, and everything to do with coming across a technology of which we cannot say who made it, but we can for sure say someone did, and to then reach for our humanities training to try to extrapolate about the culture that made it. To think any differently than this, to put a leaf in a different category than a cell phone is an arbitrary choice and a function of the religious paradigm we have inherited of which we still haven't broken free of the most deep and entrenched portions of that paradigm.

Having said all this, let me say that I am in the same place you are at, more or less, based on your expressions such as why doesn't God just come and tell us the truth and for me, also, to show that he even loves me, and wants to be around me. Honestly this is exactly how my conversations with God are going these days. I am calling him to account for this game we all seem to be playing, and I don't want to play any more. It's much deeper than the "conflict" between science/religion or among varioius religions. I have learned quite a bit, but every answer seems to have another question behind it and I am spiritually exhausted. I have even considered, well, can I go back to where I just believed or thought *such-and-such* that was much simpler? I find that I cannot do that either. The funny thing is, that I also have experienced it as God leading me to this position of break down. I think HE is not satisfied with chains in my mind. I think he has a sense of urgency for us to "get it"! So I just take it one day at a time. I love the church and the union of people it is creating. I love Joseph Smith and to me he is a spiritual hero no matter what paradigm you're working with. (He was a paradigm buster!) But this whole POINT of being in this MORTAL WORLD, or whatever--I have just reached the end of my frustrated rope, and not only am I ASKING, or SEEKING, or KNOCKING at the door, I am darn near busting it down, pounding with both fists. It feels both like God is just on the other side saying, so close, daughter! And also like no one is really there, like when kung fu panda read the dragon scroll and it was a mirror of himself.

So I don't know. But to me, to make a decision that Mormonism is folly and science/evolution is your peace as a human being--that is still the old game, one that in the world the way it is now we don't really have time for any more. All we have time for now is to love our husbands, wives, children, neighbors, strangers, enemies. That's all the time we have left for. The rest of these "truth" games I think are much lower priority in the time we have left. So I say.

Mr. Shirts. YOU are God. Don't give up on yourself and love yourself and the paradigms you choose and the life you create. Just keep taking the journey.

Edited July 24, 2012 by Maidservant

[Hamilton Porter]

Ken Miller:

http://scienceblogs.com/evolutionblog/2008/06/21/my-review-of-only-a-theory/

But as life reexplored adaptive space, could we be certain that our niche would not be occupied? I would argue that we could be almost certain that it would be — that eventually evolution would produce an intelligent, self-aware, reflective creature endowed with a nervous system large enough to solve the very same questions that we have, and capable of discovering the very process that produced it, the process of evolution. To argue otherwise would be to maintain, against all evidence, that our appearance on this planet was not the product of repeatable natural events. It would be to maintain, for no particular reason, that this corner of adaptive space was found once by the evolutionary process but could never be found again. Everything we know about evolution suggests that it would, sooner or later, get to that niche. (pp. 152-153).

Simon Conway Morris:

http://smu.edu/smunews/darwin/events/simon-conway-morris.asp

Francis Collins:

http://aigbusted.blogspot.com/2009/05/inevitable-humans.html

Accepting the Francis Collins / Simon Conway Morris / Ken Miller thesis means that God set in motion four billion years of savage, wasteful bloodsport to reach an endpoint that was foreordained.

[mfbukowski]

Actually a computer could operate on morals the same way it would operate on math. Define operations and axioms and voila -- the machine can produce "new" moralities from the set of moral operations and axioms.

This is not consciousness. It isn't even intelligent really. It is simply algorithmic.

That's not what I am talking about

First, we do not have operations and maxims defined for us- we define our own. Plus we deal with new situations on a daily basis which have not been defined before.

We can "tell" right from wrong. The computer would have to be able to write its own maxims.

Bioethics deals with some cutting edge questions- is it right to use embryonic stem cells- should we clone humans- etc that we have never had to deal with before and as it progresses we will have to define the morality for all of that.

Computers can't do that. And, as I said, if they ever did that, they would be "conscious". That might happen some day, but that is for the ethicists and moralists of the future to discuss.

The entire point that whoever programs the original computer has to put the original maxims into the computer - which requires moral assumptions the computer cannot make for itself.

[mfbukowski]

Godel Escher Bach an Eternal Golden Braid

Read it years ago when it came out

[mfbukowski]

Or, he could be putting us on . . .

Yes this is a distinct possibility now that Wade has brought it up. How could I be so dumb as to not see this before? I have to dash off a message to the real Kerry to see...

[mfbukowski]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanism

The term "humanism" can be ambiguous, and there has been a persistent confusion between the several, related uses of the term because different intellectual movements have identified with it over time

Your point?

[CASteinman]

The entire point that whoever programs the original computer has to put the original maxims into the computer - which requires moral assumptions the computer cannot make for itself.

Yes. The starting axioms set the whole ball rolling. The computer is unable to "imagine" rules out of thin air. It must have structure inserted into it.

[mfbukowski]

Or, he could be putting us on . . .

He's not

[mfbukowski]

Of course what one can see as a "childlike understanding" from "Kindergarten" can also be applied to a childlike kindergarten understanding of science.

Dear Kerry- that is what is happening here. You need to follow this further and see what science can and cannot do.

[mfbukowski]

He'll figure it out.

It's clear he has not yet studied any philosophy. He will.

[ShawFanX]

You're thinking WAY too late......I'm using the Old Testament's commandments of GOD, none other.......... the horrendous behavior of Israel at God's request, nay command led to atrocities that make our modern day dictator's and politicians seem like ****** kittens chasing a ball of yarn.

1. You're not even attempting to engage my arguments or specific points in a logical, analytic manner.

2. You're simply wrong here. None of the known wars in all of human history combined come close to the democide, genocide, and war death toll of the last century.

3. As I understand the OT, there are both just and unjust wars present within those texts involving Isreal and its enemies. In some of those cases, the Lord commanded and justified certain wars that were, at times, not only large scale campaigns but genocidal in nature (at least on a city-state scale). I hesitate to second guess the Lord here. As it is the case that, at the second coming, all of the wicked, those tares that have been gathered out of the vineyard and bound, will be "burned as stubble" when the earth is "cleansed by fire" (by the energy released by the Lord's body itself when his full glory is unveiled in a telestial environment), what do you make of the refiner's fire and fuller's soap? We're talking about billions of people here, Kerry. That's called the "great and terrible day" of the Lord.

Do you have a problem with the eschaton? Does the Lord, being almighty God, have the right to both give and take life, upon his own eternal and lawful criteria? What about David's injunction from God to not leave a single living thing alive among the Amalekites? Men, women, children, camels, donkeys, everything? Was it perhaps that the Amalekites were a "ripe" people? Was the fruit already falling from the vine? It would appear that, from a scriptural perspective, when a people reach their spiritual and moral terminus (and we see this in the Book of Mormon repeatedly) the Lord may bring "speedy destruction" upon them unless they repent. He has at least two ways to do this, the fist being using the natural forces of the earth and elements, and the second being using other peoples to do it by removing his protecting and sustaining hand from them.

Sin, like ideas, has consequences.

I hesitate, as I said before, to second guess the Lord and play a game, as a puny mortal, of moral one-upmanship with him.

Edited July 24, 2012 by ShawFanX

[ShawFanX]

I am not defending Nietzsche I am defending my interpretation of Nietzsche which is itself very Nietzschean. He was a little before my time so I never met the man. Forget about it it is not important.

Well, I think its important to flesh that out, but its not relevant to the thread per se, so I'll do as you request.

[ShawFanX]

I think the idea of computer morals is very relevant. Computers do not understand morals and I believe, could not be programmed to make moral decisions.

If that ever happens which is possible, I think they would be "conscious". That would define them as conscious in my book

If Kerry ever figures out how to build Colossus, we may all be in for a bumpy ride...

[ShawFanX]

I discuss this claim in some detail here, especially 66-68.

http://maxwellinstit...21&num=2&id=773

I notice in this excellent dismantling of Hitchens (and a wonderful example of the importance an organization like NMI/FARMS and the critical relevance of an intellectually serious apologetic project alive and well among the Saints) that the extermination of the Amalekites was a response, perhaps which would be understood as pre-emptive or prophylactic, to an earlier attempted extermination of the Israelites themselves. In an ancient context, total extermination (in response to the attempted extermination of the Lord's chosen people) was understood as warranted.

All Kerry has to do here, of course, is cry "Presentism!" and consider the case closed, but as I said above, I try to avoid second guessing God and setting myself up as his moral interlocutor.

[mfbukowski]

If Kerry ever figures out how to build Colossus, we may all be in for a bumpy ride...

Non-shirley, you jest.

[ShawFanX]

He's not

[media=]

I really hate to say it, but this particular monologue, including the inflection and emphasis placed on words, reminds me eerily of Robert Tilton. It does sound like a militant atheist version of a tent and sawdust trail sermon.

Which is, after all, what evangelical atheism actually is.

[ShawFanX]

Non-shirley, you jest.

Yeah, I'm jesting, and please don't call me...oh, uh, that would be redundant, wouldn't it?