Pre-Fall Limbo

Busy, busy, busy.

Part of what the LDS church does to keep its members anesthetized from the influences of the world is to keep them busy. Every member needs a testimony, a friend, and a calling. This produces semi-permanent spiritual (and mental) adolescence. You never grow up. Bears hibernate every winter, but wake up each spring; Mormons serve and worship away their busy lives never knowing what lies outside the Mormon bubble.

I had a testimony. I had some friends. I had a couple of callings. I didn't have any time to go looking for trouble. In addition, shortly after we got married, we had a baby. Then another, and then another. Kids, cute as they may be, are parasites. Or maybe it is mutually beneficial because they do give back lots of joy. But the sleepless nights I will never get back are permanently damaging, I think. Either way, kids take a lot of time, too. So between work, family, church, and some cherished "me time," I didn't much time to think about anything, let alone the mysteries of God. I admit, there was a lot of spiritual stagnation during that time, but I was definitely far from losing faith in God or losing my testimony.

I kept serving in my callings. Notice the plural there. For several years, I had two, concurrent callings and for a non-trivial amount of time, there were three. It was exhausting. I don't know how bishops do it. I am certain my service hours came nowhere near what a good bishop would put in, but I was very relieved that I was released before I cracked.

I stayed in limbo for a while, not thinking much about the things on my shelf, just carrying on (enduring to the end?)  It's possible that I would still be in that same state had either some questions been answered to my satisfaction and nothing else upset my equilibrium. But the nature of the beast is to keep moving.  So off the wall the shelf fell....

A Public Plea for Sensibility

Riots in Libya (Mohamed Abd B Ghany/Reuters)

In the wake of the violent protests against the US spread over much of the Muslim world, here is my plea for humanity and sensibility. Some things that all human-kind should embrace or we doom ourselves to extinction by war.

1. Keep your inflammatory remarks and/or insults to yourself.
2. If somebody does insult you or your beliefs, ignore them, don't strike back.
3. There is no, repeat NO, justification for one human to kill another.
4. There is no need for violence.

Several things went wrong (in the recent past and in times long past). Shouldn't we, as human-kind be big enough to look past shortcomings in others and drop our grudges?

Having watched 'Innocence of Islam,' the alleged tipping point for all these protests, I have to say that I was uncomfortable with the terrible light it portrayed Islam's prophet. I think that the author of the video should be embarrassed for creating such a work. It's only purpose was to insult and provoke those who believe in Islam. Shame on you. There are better ways, more peaceful ways, more effective ways to spread your ideas. Just because your freedom of expression is guaranteed by the US constitution, doesn't mean that you should use your right to denigrate others' beliefs.

Then I move on to the violent protesters. Shame on you. The four US citizens you killed in Libya had nothing to do with the video in question. They didn't make it; they didn't promote it; they were most likely as embarrassed of it as I am. Why would you kill innocent bystanders? They were striving for peace and diplomacy and you respond with murder. Then there have are dozens of others killed around the world as the protests spread. I understand your anger. Nobody likes to have the beliefs they hold most dear to be mocked like this in public. But this does not justify violence. Grow a thicker skin and turn the other cheek. Let's face it, there are some hateful people in the world, but that does not mean we need to sink to their level. Rise above and don't give them the reaction they hope for. After so many of the 'extremist Islam' attacks in the world, much of the non-Muslim world links terrorism with Islam. While this may be an unfair association, violent reactions like this only reinforce that stigma.

South Park's Joe Smith

Several years ago, the TV comedy cartoon 'South Park' made fun of the Mormon prophet in what might be considered to be every bit as inflammatory as this video. I watched it myself and was sad that people could be so rude to others. I did not take up arms to protest. I killed no one. In fact, I think the majority of the Mormon believers just decided that they would ignore the video altogether. If not turning the other cheek, ignoring the initial blow. Today, many Mormons have probably forgotten about the South Park cartoon, especially in the wake of the Broadway musical hit 'The Book of Mormon,' which was written by the same people. My point here is that there are other ways to deal with an insult. Peaceful ways.

As a plea from one human to another: let us live in peace; stop the violence.

Why Evolution Is True

During my couple of years of good scripture study habits, I also made it a habit to read from 'good books' to learn 'Of things both in heaven and in the earth, and under the earth; things which have been, things which are, things which must shortly come to pass.'  One of these books was Why Evolution Is True, by Jerry Coyne.  Coyne built a very strong argument (based on Darwin's argument, of course) showing why evolution must be true.  As I read it, his argument seemed to be mostly fine without God's involvement, but what I had the most trouble with was the incredibly small, nay, preposterously small probability that evolution could have created human kind.  I said in my head, "Yes, but God must have nudged us in that direction."  I had been taught all my life that there was a God and I still believed despite what any book or any person said.

Looking back I see that adding another preposterously small probability to the first seemed to calm my troubled mind.  Now I just see a very strong case of the primacy effect telling me that despite all of this evidence that God had no hand in human evolution, he still did it.

Charles Darwin

The book did seem to raise some more questions though.  I thought I understood evolution before.  I think I did, mostly.  What I didn't understand is how natural selection causes evolution.  Human kind was not created overnight.  It took a million tiny steps to get here.  Not a million random steps, but a million naturally selected steps (the best of steps possible.)  I think at this point I kind of started believing that the story of Adam and Eve could not be taken literally; they were a myth or legend.

The funny thing about the book, though, was that as 'troubling' as it was to my religious beliefs, it really felt right in my brain.  For the most part, it made sense.  Several years later, I can see even more clearly how much sense it made.

I should probably go back and read the book again to see if my viewpoint has changed any.  Or maybe I should just read the original tome, On the Origin of Species.  Or for an overview of the book, you can see a great review with notes on Why Evolution Is True.

Problems With The Good Book

I freely admit that before I went on my mission at age 19, I had never read the Bible all the way through.  I had read The Book of Mormon several times, most of The Doctrine and Covenants, parts of The Pearl of Great Price, and parts of the Bible (I think I had read most of The New Testament, but only small portions of The Old Testament.)  Add to 'the quad' the missionary training manual, Jesus the Christ, Our Heritage, Our Search for Happiness, and True to the Faith, and you have ALL the reading material that missionaries are allowed.  Some mission presidents would also suggest reading The Miracle of Forgiveness, but I think that is just cruel and unusual punishment for a missionary and is a good way to get him or her to want to give up and go home.  But I digress.  Even with that limited set of reading materials, I still didn't make it through the Bible on my mission.  It's not that I wasn't dedicated to my spiritual nourishment, but maybe we can assume I was also trying to learn a new language.

Some time after my mission I got married.  Kids and work and life used a lot of my time and some of my spiritual nourishment habits, weak as they may have been, atrophied a bit.  Periodically, I would try my hand at a newly instituted daily routine of scripture study or personal prayer.  Sometimes they would last, mostly they didn't.  But I did continue to go to church and was a very happy, well-adjusted true believing member of the LDS faith.  I did not have much on my questions 'shelf' yet.  Nothing noteworthy that I can remember anyway.

It was not until I finally got time and then a good strong habit of daily scripture study that I made it through all of the standard works, one after the other.  I had lots of questions.  I asked people I could trust for their opinions.  I discussed some of the weird things I found with my wife.  Some questions got answered, some didn't.  In the end, my shelf was much heavier than it was the year before.

Some of my questions were along these lines:

1. Why do the accounts of the creation in Genesis, Moses, and Abraham differ?  And why does the account in the Endowment differ even more?  I can see Genesis and Abraham both having flaws, because they were translated.  But Moses and the Endowment were both revealed directly to Joseph, so they should both be 'perfect.'
2. I believe that science has shown that evolution is true, but how does that work with Creation then?  This is a real conundrum.
3. What death before the fall of Adam?  How could evolution have worked if there was no death?
4. Speaking of Adam, how do we get the diversity of the human race from two people?  Don't tell me that God cursed Cain to be a black man....
5. Again, how do we account for human remains that are older than 7000 years?  Are you really going to say that radio-carbon dating is a fraud?
6. How could the great flood have happened at all?  So many questions here...

1. Do you know how fast the flood waters would have to accumulate in order to cover the entire earth in 40 days?  Remember that volume increases with the cube of the radius.  Assuming the earth was shaped differently (fewer mountains) water would have to accumulate at a rate of more than 3 inches per *minute* for 40 days straight.  And that is if the highest mountain was only 15000 feet.  To flood today's earth it would take closer to 6 inches of rain per minute.  And that is over the WHOLE earth, not just some localized flash flood.
2. And where did all this water come from?
3. Where did the water go?  (Can we say water cycle here?)
4. How is it possible that two of every kind of animal (and seven of every clean beast) could fit on an ark.
5. Maybe he left some animals off the boat.  But then where do we get the sheer diversity of animals on the earth in the last 5000 years?  Even evolution cannot provide for so many creatures in such a short time.
6. What about the animal food?
7. What about the animal poo?
8. What about the diversity of the human race?  All from eight people now.
7. Why did the patriarchs live for so long? 400-800 years was a 'normal' lifespan.  Two hundred years ago, 60 years was a long life.  Now with medical and scientific advances, we might push that out to 90 for me.  I know a lot of good Mormons who have never touched tea, coffee, alcohol, etc., and are not headed toward that 200-400 year life-span that Brigham Young was talking about.  How did they live so long?
8. The God of The Old Testament was a very vengeful, jealous, racist God.  He said so himself.  He showed it with his actions:  merciless genocide, striking people down, sending plagues, floods, requiring human and animal sacrifice.  Is this really the same God as the 'Love they neighbor as thyself' God of The New Testament?
9. Either the title High Priest means something different in the Old and New Testaments than it does in the restored church because otherwise the children of Israel never did really have to live without the Melchizedek priesthood (as was taught to me in my youth.)  And the sealing/binding powers that were restored via Elijah?  He must have had the higher priesthood because that is not Aaronic stuff.  Along these lines, they had the Melchizedek priesthood in the Book of Mormon so they must have just gotten it from Lehi while they were still in Jerusalem then, right?

I probably had other questions too, but I can't remember them all right now.  But that was a good start.  The problem with many of those questions was that as I tried to answer them, the answers I found only brought up more questions.  I was starting to feel the shelf getting heavier.  But I stayed strong.

Religion Sucks?

Let's get started with a smash-up high thought.  This web comic was shared with me a few days back and I think it really resonates with what I am currently feeling about religion.  Kudos to theoatmeal.com.

After you have read it (two or three times), consider this question: is your religion really making you a better person, or do you act like any of the characters portrayed in the comic.

Really, I think the title should have been "Does your religion make you a better human," but that doesn't have quite the same ring to it.