mormonsandscience

Well, I finally had a chance to watch Expelled, Ben Stein’s movie on anti-intelligent design sentiments in academia.  

This movie was a major undertaking for Stein.  It was not a major undertaking in the sense of production costs etc - in fact, it was a fairly basic production in the sense of including mostly shots of Ben walking around interviewing scholars.  It was a major undertaking in the sense of launching a frontal assault on evolutionary dogma in higher education.  It is good that Ben is an actor and not an academician.  If he were an academician he would have been completely ostracized by the academic community for making this film.

I was not surprised by anything in this film.  As a university and college instructor for the last 8 years, I know the hostility facing proponents of intelligent design.  But this hostility is not limited to intelligent design.  There is an undercurrent of hostility and intolerance towards scholars who espouse conservative views contrary to the liberal agenda dominating higher education.  The godless liberal agenda is firmly entrenched in academia and science.  This means that people who question evolution and bring intelligent design into the classroom run the risk of being ostracized and denied tenure because they are seen as operating outside of “true science.”  

The opponents of intelligent design that Stein interviewed for the movie basically stated that they could never accept intelligent design as scientific.  For them anything that points to God is not science.  Like 17th century scholastic scholars who refused to look through Galileo’s telescope for fear of seeing anything that might make them question an earth-centered solar system, the atheistic scholars in the video refuse to consider evidence suggesting that intelligent design might be at work in the universe.  The thought that we might be able to scientifically evaluate the merits of an intelligent designer is revolting to them.  

Some of the anti-intelligent design scholars who agreed to be interviewed for the movie are Mike Schumer, Daniel Dennett, and Richard Dawkins.  I have read books by Schumer and Dennett – they are accomplished scholars.  I respect what they have achieved and I think they are generally good people, that is, until they start trash talking believers.  Their harsh attitudes toward intelligent design are, I think, a result of feeling as though science is under attack by religious fanatics.  They fear that if anything resembling God makes it into science then we will regress to the Dark Ages.  I have even heard these sorts of arguments from Latter-day Saints - interesting, indeed. 

Stein’s movie adequately portrays the state of conflict in science today.  There are the non-believers who feel that they must defend science against religious fanaticism, and then there are the believers who feel they must defend their faith against scientific atheism which is overstepping its bounds.  There is more to this conflict, but that about sums it up.  True to his humorous side, Stein manages to capture this conflict in an entertaining manner.  The entertainment comes from brief clips portraying conflict, censorship, and dominance.  I had some good laughs watching these.  

With the intelligent design (ID) debate raging, I think that now would be a good time to discuss the merits of ID.  In the next three posts I will address three questions: (1) What is ID?  (2) Is ID any more or any less scientific than evolution? and (3) Should ID be permitted in education?  I will attempt to answer these questions in an objective manner, but first I have a little reading to do.

My employer is a leader in healthcare delivery and outcomes.  Because of its reputation as a leader, medical professionals from around the country come to its semi-annual conference on quality improvement.  I recently attended this four week conference. I heard from at least 20 professionals who talked about a wide variety of challenges facing health care.  The last presentation impacted me the most; it got under my skin, so to speak, and for a good reason.  

The final presenter’s goal was to show how transparency in healthcare organizations improves outcomes.  She showed a video of parents with children who are suffering from cystic fibrosis.  The parents in the video were concerned that their children were not receiving the best possible care for their cystic fibrosis at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital. 

The organization with data on which hospitals are delivering the best outcomes is the national Cystic Fibrosis Foundation (CFF), but the CFF was not talking.  The foundation did not want to release data on which hospitals were producing the best outcomes and which were producing the worst.  This secrecy is a major concern given that the difference in survival years between the best and the worst cystic fibrosis treatment centers was 17 years!  That means that children from the best treatment centers were, on average, living 17 years longer than children from the worst treatment centers. 

The parents fought with the foundation until it gave them what they wanted – the name of the hospital with the best outcomes in cystic fibrosis care.  After discovering which hospital offered the best care, the parents and medical staff from Cincinnati visited the best care facility to learn what they were doing and what worked well.  This information was then incorporated into care programs at Cincinnati’s children’s hospital to improve the outcomes and prolong the lives of children suffering from cystic fibrosis in Cincinnati, Ohio.  

Watching the video and seeing young kids who were suffering from cystic fibrosis was heartbreaking enough; what made it even more heartbreaking was seeing their parents struggling to get the CFF to reveal the hospital offering the best care.  The thought that a lack of transparency in healthcare outcomes is reducing the lifespan of children suffering from cystic fibrosis is distressing.  You would think that we should be “pulling out all the stops” when it comes to helping these children.

In my opinion, what is equally distressing is our increasingly lack of transparency with the Light of Christ.  Every step that science (and society in general) takes toward godless secularism is a step away from the enlightening power of the Light of the Lord.  That same Light that inspired great discoveries in scholars like Newton, Boyle, Faraday, Einstein, and Salk has the potential to reveal promising treatments and cures for devastating diseases like cystic fibrosis.  The more we humble ourselves before the Lord and seek His guidance through prayer, the more secular knowledge we will receive through the enlightening power of the Spirit of the Lord.  On the other hand, the more we move towards secularism, the less we benefit from this enlightening power.

By increasing transparency in healthcare and improving our transparency with the Light of Christ we will advance our understanding of diseases and ultimately enhance the quality of people’s lives.  We will also, as Orson Pratt stated, help science move “higher and higher until [it is] crowned with the glory and presence of Him who is eternal.”  A wonderful goal, indeed.

Do you know who Phyllis Burgess is?  You should.  She is an elderly woman who went to a Prop. 8 rally in Palm Springs to voice her opinion against gay marriage. 

Like Daniel in the lion's den, Phyllis stood calmly among an angry mob of gay marriage activists.  They shouted at her, hissed at her, pushed into her when she tried to speak to a reporter, and knocked the cross that she was carrying to the ground and then stomped on it in a fit of rage.  Throughout all of it she remained resolute and calm and even told the angry mob that she loved them.  

This sort of activity brings to my mind the mob activity the Saints faced long ago.  The more these activists protest in hateful ways against those who profess traditional Christian values, the more they show their true colors, and I am not talking about the colors of the rainbow.  Their true colors show them to be potential converts to the great and abominable church of the devil, that organization which seeks to persecute the Church of the Lamb of the God and its followers.    

Given her age, Phyllis looks to be a member of what Tom Brokaw calls the Greatest Generation.  The Greatest Generation refers to our seniors who sacrificed so much to halt the tide of Nazi fascism that swept across Europe during WW II. When times were tough and everything looked bleak, they stood up to one of the fiercest tyrants the modern world has ever known.  Their courage liberated an entire continent and returned peace to billions of people.  Their efforts took guts and tenacity, the sort of guts and tenacity we see in people like Phyllis Burgess. 

Click here to view the video of Phyllis confronting the protestors.

After the passing of Proposition 8 banning gay marriage in California, homosexual activists have been out in full force.  They have organized marches around the Lord’s temples (SLC and Las Vegas most recently) and harassed Californians who support Prop 8, so says my sister who lives there.  It seems that people who accuse members of the church for being hateful for embracing the gospel truth regarding the sanctity of marriage have become themselves agents of intolerance and intimidation.  

These activists did not appear overnight.  They have been infiltrating the regulating bodies and the legal system of our courts, changing policies and viewpoints in an attempt to normalize same-sex relationships.  I first noticed these developments back in 2001 when they planted some operatives in the American Psychological and Canadian Psychological Associations’ (the APA and CPA).  The outcome?  Both associations normalized same sex relationships and embraced gay marriage, all in the name of science and progress.  Moreover, they claim that psychologists who teach or say anything counter to their pro-gay resolutions are acting in an unethical manner.

I was once a card carrying member of both associations.  I am no longer a member of either association, and will remain so for a long time to come.   

A few years ago homosexual activists were also successful in ramrodding gay marriage down Canadians’ throats.  The issue was never put to a vote among the electorate; it was decided in the dark, smoke filled rooms of the House of Parliament, and pushed through by the defection of one conservative party member to the liberal party.  That’s right, the vote of one activist agent in the Canadian House of Commons forced the reality of legalized gay marriage into the lives of millions of Canadians.

Do gay marriage activists realize that they are working for the great and abominable church of the devil?  According to Elder Bruce R. McConkie, “To be in opposition to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on moral issues is to link arms with Satan and to fight against God. On this point we must speak plainly and bluntly—there is no middle ground; men are either for him or against him, and those who are not for him are against him” (The Millennial Messiah: The Second Coming of the Son of Man [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1982], 144.)

Let’s not confuse the activists with individuals who are sincerely struggling with same-sex attraction; the latter need our love and support.  Yet the activists also need something from us, they need our prayers so that they may realize the error of their ways.  There is another thing that we should be doing during these perilous times, that is standing fast in the face of persecution from gay marriage activists and all other detractors.  As we do so we can take heart in the inspired promises of the Standard of Truth, uttered by the prophet Joseph Smith:

“No unhallowed hand can stop the work from progressing; persecutions may rage, mobs may combine, armies may assemble, calumny may defame, but the truth of God will go forth boldly, nobly, and independent, till it has penetrated every continent, visited every clime, swept every country, and sounded in every ear, till the purposes of God shall be accomplished, and the Great Jehovah shall say the work is done.”

Two months ago nothing scared my 20 month-old son.  But as his awareness of his surroundings has increased over the last few weeks, he has grown increasingly weary of weird looking things like spiders and strange sounding things like my electric razor.  This change was especially evident during Halloween.  As most parents know, ghosts, ghouls, and goblins elicit some interesting and funny responses from kids.  Sure, we try to comfort and assure them that the ghost is not real, and the older kids seem to get it, but what about the younger kids?  

Studies suggest that toddler-age kids have difficulty distinguishing reality from fantasy, notwithstanding assurances from adults.  Belgian developmental psychologist Jean Piaget discovered that many kids have difficulty discerning fantasy from reality before 7 years of age.  I imagine that the younger kids are, the more they struggle with this.  This means that for a 2 year-old child, the ghost hanging above the porch at the neighbor’s house on Halloween night was real, no matter what Mommy said!

Other studies support Piaget’s assertion.  A recent study in the British Journal of Developmental Psychology found that when 3-5 year olds were asked to distinguish real characters such as knights and Michael Jordan from fictional characters such as monsters and dragons, they did so correctly less than 40% of the time.  Their ability to discern real from fictional characters dropped as age decreased.  

All this suggests that younger kids actually see monsters, ghosts, and goblins as being real, but this is only a problem during Halloween, right?  Wrong.  Children are bombarded with fictional content on television that, while innocent to adults, may create dilemmas for younger minds that are unable to discern reality from fiction.  This means that if a 3 year-old sees someone get killed in a movie, he or she may think that it actually happened, regardless of a parent’s assurances.  It is thus important for parents to avoid letting young children watch images on television that may upset their delicate minds, at least until they are able to tell fact from fiction.  Fortunately, most young children 2-5 years-of-age prefer playing to watching grown-up shows.

The counsel to avoid exposing young children to potentially troubling images on television is consistent with the words of Jacob who reminds us that the feelings of our children are “exceedingly tender and chaste and delicate,” and that we should avoid subjecting them to things that may unduly disrupt their delicate minds.

Here we go again with more monkey business regarding evolution.  Another article presenting arguments in defense of evolution has appeared on a pro-evolution LDS blog (here).  Only this time the article is by a high octane researcher from Berkeley.   They have pulled out the big guns with this article.  The article defends the science behind evolution using both recent scientific discoveries and comments from prominent Latter-day Saints.  

There is much in the article that I agree with, especially the fact that the church has not issued a formal statement against evolution; this is true.  In fact, to the best of my knowledge the church has never issued any formal scientific statements, and for good reason.  The church is in the business of saving souls, not making scientific discoveries.  Galileo said it best when he told the Catholic Church, which was meddling in scientific affairs during the 17th century, that the purpose of religion is to teach us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go.

Notwithstanding the mounting evidence in favor of evolution, I want to be clear about one thing – God did not use evolution to create mankind.  I don’t have elaborate scientific evidence to support this claim nor do I have a quote from a prominent general authority.  What I do have is the plain and simple truths of the gospel and the basic definition of evolution.

By definition, evolution refers to changes in the genome through (1) environmental selection a’la survival of the fittest, and (2) random mutations in the genome.

Regarding the first point, it is conceivable that God could have manipulated environmental circumstances that caused lower life forms with desirable genomic qualities to survive while others died.  In fact, I personally believe that He did this to prepare the earth for other species.

Regarding the second point, it is NOT possible that God allowed random mutations in the genome to evolve to the point of creating mankind.  There are way too many changes and possible combinations for Him to leave this to chance.  His house is a house of order, not randomness.  Moreover, we are created in His image which means that there was ONE possible outcome to the creation of mankind, not billions through random events.

By definition, evolution requires randomness and God did not use randomness to create mankind.  Those who advance the idea that God used evolution to create mankind are thus no longer talking about evolution; they need to come up with some other name or stop calling it evolution.

Finally, the article assails some beliefs held by YEC (young earth creationists).  It asserts that YECs embrace beliefs that are inconsistent with church teachings (Note: I am not a YEC).  By attacking YECs in this way, the evolutionists are leaving themselves open to similar criticisms. One such criticism may be: believing that God used evolution to create mankind is inconsistent with a fundamental tenet of evolution, namely that the existence of mankind is to explained without referring to the supernatural.  Darwin wrote to his friend Charles Lyell, “I would give absolutely nothing for the theory of natural selection if it requires miraculous additions [from God] at any stage of descent.”