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Good news everyone! Three hours of Sunday church service and weekday church meetings are paying off in more than spiritual ways. All that instruction is making us religiously smart, so says recent research by the Pew Forum on religion and public life.

Pew research shows that “Atheists and agnostics, Jews and Mormons are among the highest-scoring groups . . . of religious knowledge, outperforming evangelical Protestants, mainline Protestants and Catholics on questions about the core teachings, history and leading figures of major world religions.” On a test of 32 religious questions, “Atheists and agnostics average 20.9 correct answers. Jews and Mormons do about as well, averaging 20.5 and 20.3 correct answers, respectively. Protestants as a whole average 16 correct answers; Catholics as a whole, 14.7. Atheists and agnostics, Jews and Mormons perform better than other groups on the survey even after controlling for differing levels of education.”

Way to go everyone! Perhaps this study will help convince the evangelical community that Mormons are religiously informed people. You see, by and large they think we are deceived members of a cult.

Case in point: The evangelical response to Glenn Beck’s recent revival in Washington DC. Christiannewswire.com is skeptical about Beck’s ability to create a religious revival in America because of his religion, Mormonism. The website brings up many of the old arguments against Mormonism. Here’s a sampling.

1. Our country was founded on Judeo-Christian values. Mormonism is not a Christian denomination but a cult of Christianity.
My response: According to latter-day scripture America was founded for the purpose of bringing forth the Book of Mormon and the restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ (aka Mormonism).

2. The country needs to get back to the simplicity of the Bible. The reason our country is in bad shape is that ministers for the most part do not share the truth. Many endorse false gospels including Mormonism.
My response: America is a better place because of the Restoration (aka Mormonism).

Blaming Mormonism and accusing Mormons of not being Christian has been going on for a long time. These sorts of accusations have been a major stumbling block for many evangelicals, thus keeping them from the blessings of the Restored gospel. Removing these stumbling blocks from evangelicals’ minds seems a big a task, kind of like taking down the Iron Curtain, but we all know what the Lord did to that barrier. 

I welcome the day when the evangelical community declares that members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (aka Mormons) are Christian. The Pew study will hopefully help in this regard. In this world of increasing secularism, America will be better off if evangelicals and Mormons set aside their differences and unite in the cause of promoting traditional Christian values.
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Stephen Hawking's new book titled The Grand Design hit the bookshelves on Sept. 7th, 2010. Since its release it has become a lighting rod for religionists. How can Hawking engender the wrath of believers who 22 years ago applauded his God-friendly message in A Brief History of Time? What is going on?

In his 1988 book A Brief History of Time, Hawking discusses his lifelong dream to discover the Grand Unifying Theory (GUT) of the universe. GUT is a scientific theory that unites all laws and theories of physics. He declares that when we discover the GUT, we will know the mind of God. This declaration created warm fuzzies in the minds of religionists who viewed Mr. Hawking as a genius and fellow believer on a mission to uncover the handiwork of the Creator. With Hawking’s latest book, however, warm fuzzies have been replaced by sharp criticism. 

Here’s one source of the criticism. In The Grand Design Hawking declares that understanding complex theories of physics makes it "[un]necessary to invoke God." Believers are in a tizzy over this statement, claiming that Hawking has dismissed God. Hawking has not dismissed God – he is staying true to the tenets of science by giving a scientific explanation that does not invoke God. Anytime we claim that something happened because God did it, we are giving a theological explanation, not a scientific one. It is good to acknowledge deity in science; it is not good to invoke deity in scientific explanations. 

Moreover, hearing that it is unnecessary to invoke God is a good thing because it minimizes our reliance on what are called “God of the gaps” explanations. “God of the gaps” involves resorting to “God did it” explanations when we don’t have an adequate scientific explanation for natural phenomena. Getting rid of such explanations is a good thing because it means that we are moving closer to the truth. However some believers like “God of the gaps” explanations because they represent a validation for their faith (“See here! Science can’t explain this phenomenon, so it must have been done supernaturally. There is a Creator!”) Here’s some advice for these folks: Don’t let your faith be driven by what science does or does not discover.

A second criticism of The Grand Design involves spontaneous creation. Hawking declares that “The Universe can and will create itself from nothing…. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the Universe exists, why we exist.” He continues, “It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the Universe going…. Because there is a law such as gravity, the Universe can and will create itself from nothing.”

For those who accept the false doctrine of creation ex nihilo (creation from nothing) and believe that there has been and always will be just one god, and that he created the entire physical universe, yes, the notion of parts of the universe existing without supernatural intervention is very problematic, but not if you’re LDS. 

From latter-day revelation we’ve learned that the elements of the physical universe are co-eternal with our God. So, yes, in a way our God did not have to “light the blue touch paper and set the universe going” because it was already going.

As I point out in Truth & Science, restored gospel truths can go a long way in helping to reconcile science and religion.
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Christian religions across America are concerned about the effects of education on religiosity, and with good reason – past research shows a negative correlation between level of education and religiosity. In other words, data show that as level of education rises, level of religiosity drops. Here’s some data for all Christian religions.
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However, there is one Christian religion that bucks this trend. For this religion there is a positive correlation, meaning that as education level rises, so does religiosity. That religion is Mormonism. This unusual positive correlation between education and religiosity among Mormons even made it into the Wiki article on “religiosity and intelligence”. Here’s some religiosity data for Mormons.
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Why does Mormonism buck the trend that exists among other religions? I think that latter-day revelation on the importance of learning plays a role. The Lord has instructed us to “seek ye out of the best books words of wisdom; seek learning, even by study” (D&C 88:118). He is not just referring to scriptures here; He is referring to all good books. Christian religions that reject latter-day revelation have not accepted this instruction from the Lord - they have not gotten the message that the Lord wants us to continually learn. 

The LDS faith is also unique in the sense that it lays all its cards on the table. It encourages people to thoroughly explore its doctrines of salvation and the lifestyle it engenders among its members. It encourages people to study the Book of Mormon and revelations from the prophets – go ahead and scrutinize the teachings, ask questions in church classes, and talk with others about church doctrine. With regard to the doctrines of salvation, there is nothing to hide.

The fact that educated Mormons score relatively high on measures of religiosity suggests that they are finding harmony between what they’ve learned in their studies of the gospel and in their studies of science, philosophy, arts, and literature. If this harmony did not exist, measures of religiosity would certainly be lower among educated Mormons.

I have found much harmony between my religious and secular studies; these have strengthened my testimony. At the same time, however, I have found some inconsistencies, particularly between science and religion. Inconsistencies have not created a faith crisis in my life, nor should they. Inconsistencies between secular and religious learning should not be shunned – they should be sought out and explored with the understanding that secular knowledge is continually evolving, as is our knowledge of the mysteries of the kingdom of Heaven.

Acknowledging inconsistencies between secular and religious learning is an important step in moving closer to the truth of all things.

Sources of graphs: Princeton Religion Research Center
Other sources: The Consequential Dimension of Mormon Religiosity, by Stan L. Albrecht; Secularization, Higher Education, and Religiosity, by Stan L. Albrecht and Tim B. Heaton.
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