We know through modern revelation that there are other inhabited planets. Have you ever thought about how exciting it would be to visit other worlds? Even the thought of communicating with other worlds is fascinating. We could ask them what diseases they have cured and what technologies they have developed. We could also ask them about their belief in deity and whether they have heard of the Atonement. It would be exciting to compare notes.

Chances are that such communication will never take place because of the vast distances separating us from exosolar planets (planets outside our solar system). Until we discover Star Trek Warp Core technology that enables us to propel humans at speeds exceeding the speed of light (something that is theoretically impossible according to Relativity), back and forth visitations are improbable. And until we develop a faster than light form of communication, active 2-way interstellar communication is also improbable. Other worlds are just too far away.

The Lord positioned his populated worlds far apart for a wise purpose. Can you imagine how disruptive it would be to the Lord’s plan if we contacted other telestial, mortal worlds like ours? They might tell us that their prophets are saying that the Son of God was crucified on another world. We might reply, “Yes. That happened here 2000 years ago!”

Or what might happen if we contacted a post-judgment telestialized or terrestialized world? They might say something like: “You guys better keep the commandments or you will end up where we are.” I am not even going to speculate on contacting a celestialized world because I don’t think it is possible. Imagine if we tried to reach a celestialized planet by space travel. Our spaceships would burn up on approach because it could not withstand the glory of a celestialized world. And if we tried to communicate with them they would know it beforehand and jam our incoming transmissions.  

Ok, I am having fun with this, but the point is that the Lord doesn’t want us to know much about His other worlds right now. When the Lord showed Moses this earth, Moses asked the Lord to tell him things “concerning this earth, and the inhabitants thereof.” The Lord agreed. Then the Lord showed Moses other worlds which He had created. Moses got a little greedy and asked the Lord to tell him things concerning other worlds in “the heavens, and then thy servant will be content.” The Lord replied with a gentle rebuke: “Moses, my son, I will [only] speak unto thee concerning this earth upon which thou standest.” In His infinite wisdom the Lord withheld information about other worlds.

Our knowledge about other worlds will likely be limited while in mortality. I am fine with that. When the Lord returns He will reveal mysteries in the heavens and earth. I can wait. Until then we will have to rely on our limited scientific knowledge and imagination.
 
 
In the January 2009 special edition of Scientific American there is a scathing report on evolutionary psychology (EP). The report raises concerns about the way evolutionary psychology is being carried out and the truth claims it is making. The article was written by Dr. David Butler, a professor of philosophy at Northern Illinois University.

I should point out that Butler believes that our mental capacities evolved, however, he is skeptical of the truth claims being made in EP. He says that many of the “grand and encompassing” claims lack rigorous empirical evidence. The claims may be correct, but EP does not have sufficient evidence to back them up.

Here are the four concerns he raises.

1. We cannot know our ancestors’ psychological traits.
EP claims to understand the adaptive problems that our Pleistocene ancestors faced. An understanding of these adaptive problems is essential to understanding how the human mind evolved. Yet, Butler points out, the paleontological record provides few clues about the challenges our early ancestors faced. It also says very little about their social interactions which would have played a major role in shaping how the human mind evolved to cope with social challenges. Without knowing the social and physical challenges they faced, we know very little about their psychology. If we do not know the psychological starting point, we cannot know how evolution shaped their minds.

2. Evolutionary psychologists are limited in their use of comparative methods.
To better understand how and why our adaptive mental traits evolved, one must do comparative research (i.e., compare the development of similar traits in a nearby species). However, Butler points out that our nearest living ancestors do not possess many of the same psychological traits that make us uniquely human (e.g., verbal language). Thus we lack crucial evidence needed to uncover our psychological evolutionary history.

3. EP is stuck in the Pleistocene era.
Butler says that EP relies too heavily on the Pleistocene era when describing the evolution of human psychology. He quotes the oft used statement “our modern skulls house a stone age mind” as evidence of this problem. He says “The idea that we are stuck with a Pleistocene-adapted psychology greatly underestimates the rate at which natural selection and sexual selection can drive evolutionary change.” For instance, the more recent agricultural and industrial revolutions presented challenges that greatly shaped human psychology. We are not locked in a stone-age mindset.

4. Some EP truth claims rest on shaky empirical evidence, and always will.
EP claims that it has uncovered human psychological adoptions. Much of the data supporting these claims were gathered with paper and pencil surveys (questionnaires). Forced choice questionnaires do not provide sufficient evidence to substantiate claims about how psychology adapted to social and physical environmental challenges. Thus, “the evidence needed to substantiate accounts of adaption…is scarce. And this isn’t the kind of evidence that is likely to materialize; such evidence is lost to us, probably forever.”

I have found that the same sort of arguments may be used against common descent. Specifically, as far as common descent is concerned, we cannot know exactly what took place back when organisms were supposedly evolving from one species into another because we were not there. Our evidence for common descent is largely driven by the historical fossil record. Try as we might to paint a picture of what happened, we cannot be certain. Moreover, decisive evidence that evolution across life forms will always be lacking because of the long period of time required to observe these supposed processes at work.

One final thought. Butler is not suggesting that EP close up shop. He is just pointing out its limitations and cautioning it from making unsupportable truth claims. In the same way I am not suggesting that common descent scientists stop their work. I am just pointing out its limitations and cautioning it from making truth claims that lack definitive evidence.
 
 
When I was finishing my PhD in Theoretical Psychology at BYU in 2003, a new psychology class arrived on campus – evolutionary psychology. At the time I was too occupied with completing my dissertation to check out what evolutionary psychology was about. I did my own investigation later on when I had more time. I was not impressed with what I found. 

In a nutshell, evolutionary psychology attempts to explain and predict human behavior using the principles and mechanisms underlying evolution. At a first glance this seems like a justifiable endeavor, especially for evolutionists. However, serious doubts about evolutionary psychology have recently been raised, not only among skeptics like me, but among die hard evolutionists as well.  

The Scientific American January 2009 special edition on evolution contains an article exposing four research fallacies in evolutionary psychology. It even goes so far as to call the new upstart discipline a “pop science”. Being labeled “pop evolutionary psychology” by Scientific American is not a good thing if you are a budding evolutionary psychologist.   

My beef with evolutionary psychology takes a different form. I am concerned that using evolution to explain human behavior reduces human actions to the lowest common denominator in the animal kingdom – hedonism. Hedonism is the idea that everything humans do is driven by the selfish desire to maximize pleasure and avoid pain. Hedonism is closely allied with natural selection because many of the things that bring pleasure contribute to our survival (e.g., food, sex). Indeed, hedonism may be seen as a catalyst for a species to engage in certain behaviors that facilitate its survival in a specific environment.

Here’s the Big Problem, folks: Hedonism combined with natural selection creates a volatile mixture known as Social Darwinism.

Social Darwinism originated with the English scholar Herbert Spencer (1820-1903). It is the belief that humanity advances through the principle of “survival of the fittest” (a term coined by Spencer). The crux of Social Darwinism is that in a society with limited resources, for one person to succeed, another must fail. This thinking has its roots in Darwin’s natural selection wherein the weak die and the strong survive. Recent events at a hospital in Illinois suggest that Social Darwinism is present in our society.

Jill Stanek is a registered nurse who worked in labor and delivery at Christ’s hospital in Oak Lawn, Illinois.  She “blew the whistle” on acts of barbarity committed against newborn infants in that hospital before an Illinois State Senate Hearing in 2001.  Here is an excerpt from her testimony: 

“I am a Registered Nurse who has worked in the Labor & Delivery Department at Christ Hospital in Oak Lawn, Illinois, for the past 5-1/2 years. Christ Hospital performs abortions during the second and even third trimesters of pregnancy.”
“The abortion method being called into question that Christ Hospital and other Illinois hospitals practice is called ‘induced labor abortion.’ This abortion technique sometimes results in infants being aborted alive. In the event that an infant is aborted alive at Christ Hospital, she or he is given no medical assessments or care whatsoever, but is left to die...and is given what my hospital calls ‘comfort care.’ Comfort care is defined as keeping the baby warm in a blanket until the baby dies, although until recently even this was not always done. The baby is then offered to the parents to hold until he or she dies.”

“If the parents do not want to hold their dying aborted baby, as is most often the case, it is left to nursing staff or support staff on the floor to hold the baby until he or she dies.  And, until this past December, when staff did not have time or the desire to hold the baby, the baby was taken to our Soiled Utility Room and left there alone to die.” (Source: Illinois Right to Life Website)

Jill Stanek was fired from Christ’s Hospital for testifying. She described her experience in this videotaped interview with Bill O’Reilly.
The idea that it is acceptable to leave newborn babies to die because they are unwanted or less healthy than other babies is reprehensible to most folks. How can people justify this sort of thing?  It's simple. From an evolutionary standpoint it is natural for a mother cougar to kill some of her kittens (due to limited resources) to ensure the survival of the others. Because humans are just another species in the animal kingdom that is influenced by laws of nature, it is acceptable for humans to kill unwanted offspring to increase the survivability of other humans. This is the type of scholar-babble you get from leading evolutionary psychologists like Steven Pinker who used the same argument to explain why Andrea Yates drowned her five young children in a bathtub in 2001. (Source: The Wedge of Truth: Splitting the Foundations of Naturalism.)

A final thought. Christ’s Church is sponsored by the United Church of Christ, a pro-abortion organization that has strongly supported the legalization of abortion since 1971. It is hard to believe that these horrendous acts took place in a hospital named after the Lord. I think the scripture found in Matthew 7:22-23 applies here. 

“Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works?  And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.”

PS. On August 5, 2002, President Bush signed the Born Alive Infants’ Protection Act into Law. Jill Stanek attended the signing ceremony.
PPS. As far as I can tell evolutionary psychology is still alive and well.
 
 
I am sure you have seen the LDS Church film Testaments. If Testaments were made today with the same producer and director, it would have a North American backdrop (not central America) and the actors would be clad in Buffalo furs (not loin cloths and thin dresses) – so says Testaments filmmaker Keith Merrill.

In a recent presentation at the Book of Mormon prophecies conference in Midway, Utah, Merrill said that he now believes that BofM events took place in the area of the United States. He said that he cannot wait to redo the film and put buffalo in it (instead of an exotic monkey named “Chio”?). 

How would this film be received by the LDS community? It would be difficult to pull off because so many Latter-day Saints are used to the paradise, jungle imagery in Testaments. There is less glamour in history’s portrayal of the ancient native American lifestyle than there is in history’s portrayal of the ancient Central American lifestyle. Conditions in North America were much harsher than they were in Central America. Visit some Anasazi ruins in Southern Utah or look at some earliest photos of native Americans and you get an idea of the struggles North Americans faced long ago.

So if Merrill had his way, we might see an plain looking Laneah sitting on the ground, wearing buffalo furs, gnawing on piece of dried meat while Jacob pulled critters out of her hair. And Kohor’s caravan might be comprised of corn, furs, and dried fish rather than fruit, jewelry, and precious stones from the sea. Regardless of whether these images are a true representation of how things used to be, I think that a North American Testaments would have to be somewhat consistent with our anachronistic expectations of what life was like for ancient North American societies. 

Why did Merrill change his mind on the location for BofM events? He was persuaded by recent DNA evidence gathered by Rod Meldrum. Meldrum argues that scientific DNA evidence points to Nephites and Lamanites living in the same area where the church was founded. If the evidence was enough to change Merrill’s mind then perhaps it is somewhat convincing, to say the least. 

If you want to see the evidence in favor of a North American setting, I suggest viewing Meldrum’s DVD titled “DNA Evidence for Book of Mormon Geography” (available for purchase from Amazon - click here). If you want to read a critical perspective on this theory from LDS scholars, I suggest reading the critique of Meldrum’s DVD by FAIR (Foundation for Apologetic Information and Research - click here). 

I have always believed that Central America is the setting for the BofM, however, I am willing to change my mind if the evidence definitively points to North America (I am skeptical though). Location aside, what is important, as Testament’s filmmaker Keith Merrill points out, is not the location - it is our testimony that the BofM is true. 

I couldn’t agree with him more.
 
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