Human Becomings (part 1)

(image used with permission from http://www.tryangle.fr/y-aura-t-il-des-mormons-dans-le-futur)

I'm excited to write this post. This is the real reason I study science, I believe in God, I go to school, work, church... the reason I love, the reason I live. This is the "why" that justifies "what" I do. It's a little abstract, and I may be drawing correlations between unrelated things, but to me, it makes sense. It is my schematic connection that makes the world go 'round. I'm talking about my answer to the three questions,"Who am I? Why am I here? What is my destiny?"

As you may have noticed, I am interested in evolution. The reason organic evolution interests me is that it helps answer one of those three questions raised above, "Who am I, or better put, where did I come from?" Of course, I don't think it answers the question entirely, but it's a good start for it explains the origins of my body, an important component of who I am. I believe that my mind, as part of my body, is also the product of evolution. Evolution explains quite well many of the quandaries of human existence and the conflicts, both internal and external, that we experience.

As a missionary I often indulged in "deep" doctrinal conversations and debates with my companions, and these discussions provided my first opportunities to explain, albeit in a very naive and reductionist way, my budding worldview and philosophy of human origins and destiny. My early explanation went something like this:

Pretend this [my hand at eye level] is a ship travelling close to the speed of light. Einstein described a scenario in which a ship could travel "to the future" by exceeding the speed of light, and then halting to allow the light to "catch up to it," where those on board could watch as the events from the time the light barrier was broken to the current/future time would transpire at an accelerated speed, like a "sonic boom" of light...

By this point, my 19 year old friends would often have the same expression as Keanu Reeves' What If meme.

This assumes that superluminal speed is possible, and once achieved, those on board would not simply cease to exist and could return to normal time and space. But what if, once the ship broke that barrier, it was surprised to find another previously unknown dimension full of ships and beings from other times, some very ancient, who had done the same thing? Obviously we would not now know of such a dimension. In essence, it would exist outside the visible/observable universe. (Einstein was very clear that nothing in the universe can travel faster than light, and in the universe there are no privileged frames of reference.) Would this not satisfy many of the demands of godhood? In particular, omnipresence could be possible through a connection of these different ships which broke the barrier at different times to complete a timeline of the universe, connecting very young civilizations to very old ones. And if normal time and space could be re-entered from any of these access points, then causality could be interrupted, and is that not the definition of omnipotence? And if these beings could speak to one another, and compile their shared knowledge, would that not approach a sort of omniscience? And if we allow all these as possible, is it not also possible that this is how God became God, And how we may one day become gods as well? 

After such a conversation, my first companion, Elder "Ike" Carr of Portsmouth NH, reminded me of a scripture unique to Mormonism, found in the Doctrine and Covenants section 131 vs 6-8, a favorite of his father (a chemistry professor), which reads:

"6 It is impossible for a man to be saved in ignorance. 

 7 There is no such thing as immaterial matter. All spirit is matter, but it is more fine or pure, and can only be discerned by purer eyes; 

 8 We cannot see it; but when our bodies are purified we shall see that it is all matter."

I did not realize the theological ramifications of this scripture at the time, and did not have the vocabulary to describe its significance, but I have since learned that there is a word for this kind of worldview: metaphysical naturalism.  Opposed to methodological naturalism, which is a common assumption of the scientific method (the supernatural may exist, but it is not observable, and therefore not of interest to science), metaphysical naturalism assumes that the supernatural does not exist at all, and hence the entirety of the universe is explicable by natural causes. It is often associated with the most militant forms of atheism, and never (to my knowledge) associated with religion, with this one exception.

It occurred to me that this was a theological gold mine--a paradigm capable of integrating science and religion. It was this recognition that allowed my mind to explore the realm of science without fear of what I might find, because ultimately it all was one.

That was an exciting time in my life. I saw new horizons of knowledge and possibilities open up to me for the first time. I devoured this new knowledge. Nothing was off limits. I began to read books by authors whose very names were a hiss and byword among other faithful Mormons and conjured up the worst possible descriptions in our vocabulary (atheists, darwinists, intellectuals, liberals!), as well as authors who were not known to me but should have been (Gould, Diamond, Singer, Sagan, Orwell, Wilson).

I read books which I knew would challenge my beliefs, like The Origin of Native Americans: Evidence from Anthropological Genetics. And when the evidence of the Asian ancestry  of Native Americans was laid out clearly, unambiguously in front of me, I accepted that I could no longer believe in the mainstream Mormon narrative of continental geography, a doctrine taught explicitly by Joseph Smith and many of his successors, which taught that the Native Americans of both North and South America were descended from the house of Israel and that the story of how they arrived is contained in the Book of Mormon.

I also began to read books which I knew would help me to strengthen the link between science and religion (Finding Darwin's God and Only a Theory, by Kenneth Miller, Mormon Scientist, memoir of Henry Eyring); however, it soon occurred to me that I was learning a new language, and that my Mormon vernacular was starting to slip away. I could no longer hold "normal" conversations with my Mormon friends about scriptural topics, mostly because these conversations are based on a literal reading of the text as historical fact, and, except in certain circles, there is little room for hermeneutics and critical analysis.

In the fall of 2010, I enrolled in a course called Science and Religion from the division of humanities and philosophy. We began the course by taking assessments of our religious and scientific literacy (not to brag, but I was the only student in the class who passed either of them in any semester the class had been taught...) As a class, we would prepare by reading assigned articles and chapters from Stephen Prothero's Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know--and Doesn't, and Michael Ruse's Evolution and Religion: A Dialogue, and then debate with each other. It was one of the most stimulating classes I had in college. Also during this semester, a new lecture/debate series began at ASU led by physicist Lawrence Krauss called Origins. I was able to attend the first event, called the Great Debate: Can Science Tell us Right from Wrong? The panelists included Peter Singer, Sam Harris (of the New Atheists' "Four Horsemen" fame), neurobiologists Steven Pinker and Patricia Churchland, and philosopher Simon Blackburn.

Harris spoke first, and used the opportunity to promote his most recent book, The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values, in which he argues that the is-ought problem attributed to David Hume does not exhaust the reach of naturalism (or science) into the realm of values and morality, historically the domain of ethics and religion. (This is also known as Hume's Guillotine, which is a refutation of the classical naturalist fallacy, essentially arguing that just because something is, that does not imply that it ought to be so.)  Harris argues that "good" is simply that which produces the greatest happiness in the minds of conscious creatures (essentially a teleological/consequentialist/utilitarian argument for the 21st century).

All of the presentations I heard that night impacted me, but I find myself coming back to this one again and again. I took notes of course, and that night shared what I had heard with my wife. She later told me that night was also a pivotal moment in her intellectual development (the beginning of the end, so to speak, for her worldview shaped by the traditional Mormon narrative) as it was for me. 

I had never heard of the term "Transhumanism" at this point, but I was soon to find out that I was,  unknowingly, a firm believer in it. 

The Hope

This year we celebrated our 2nd annual passover meal with my father's side of the family. Shauni and I have been celebrating the festival ever since we were married, but it has been very special to celebrate with family who are Jewish. We had a Haggadah for everyone at the table, and we took turns saying the blessings, re-telling the story of the Exodus, and learning why the timeless themes of the passover are still so applicable to us today.  At the end, we drank a toast (just grape juice for us), faced east toward Israel, and exclaimed, "La Shana H'baha V'Yerushlayim!" (Next Year in Jerusalem!). After the festival, I was reminded of the words of Hatikvah, the Israeli National Anthem and longtime hymn of the Zionist movement which began in the 1800's. The melody of this song has haunted me ever since the third grade, when I first heard it.In English, the hymn reads:

As long as in the heart, within,
A Jewish soul still yearns,
And onward, towards the ends of the east,
An eye still gazes toward
Zion;

Our Hope is not yet lost,
The hope of two thousand years,
To be a free people in our land,
The land of Zion and
Jerusalem.


-Naphtali Herz Imber, 1878

You may think it strange--a Mormon family celebrating Passover-- but something about the festival has always resonated with me. You may ask, "Why celebrate a Jewish holiday when you're not Jewish? Isn't the passover feast something that God commanded only the Jews to keep?" In response, I would say that I don't feel an obligation to God to keep the festival, or even an obligation to my ancestors to do so. It is out of love for my Jewish heritage, and love for the family I have recently reunited with, that I feel the desire to celebrate this remarkable holiday, and pass that love on to my children.

I'd like to explore some of the themes of passover, and relate them to recent experiences of mine. I'd also like to juxtapose these themes to those of Zionism, of which the Latter Day Saints have their own peculiar brand.

The first theme that comes to mind is, "Waiting vs. Working for Salvation." By salvation, I don't simply intend the spiritual kind from the Christian vernacular, but the temporal kind that, as slaves in Egypt, the Jews prayed for. These two approaches fueled the "faith vs. works" debate in Christianity that was at the heart of the Protestant reformation; they were hotly debated in the Jewish community after WWII when the partition and Jewish re-patriation of Palestine became a reality, and in my opinion they even appear in politics as an important distinction between the conservative and liberal approaches to governance. I know that last example sounds like a stretch, but allow me to expound.

I'm sure most of my readers are quite familiar with the "faith vs. works" debate, as Mormons are frequently the recipients of criticism from those who believe in salvation by grace alone (and grace by faith), and are also familiar with the defense of works as necessary to demonstrate faith and receive grace. So, I will pass over this issue (no pun intended), and address the next: waiting vs. working in Judaism. In my opinion, this is closely related to the expectation of the coming messiah, which Christians have a parallel in the expectation of the Second Coming.

The First Zionist congress, with Theodore Herzl as president, convened in the late 1800's with the express purpose of finding a new Jewish homeland, and adopted Hatikvah (The Hope) as it's official anthem. However, Palestine was not the first choice of new homelands, because of the political and religious problems involved in mass Jewish immigration there. Instead, Uganda, Canada, and the United States were all discussed as real alternatives, for in the eyes of the Jewish leaders. Anyplace where they could be free from anti-semitism and rule themselves was better than living in a diaspora under the Tsars, Kaisers, and Christian Kings of Europe.

After the Russian pogroms of the late 1800's and early 1900's, the intensity of the Zionist's' efforts increased, as many Jews left Russia for Western Europe and America (including my own ancestors, I believe), while some, a very few, made their way to Palestine to live in Jewish communities supported by Western charities and philanthropists. When the Bolsheviks began the October Revolution in 1917, many Russian Jews, identifying with other Russian serfs, saw the rise of communism as an opportunity to achieve equality with their compatriots, and joined the revolution, becoming major players and supporters of Lenin and the 3rd International (which later became the Comintern). One of those who became prominent inside the revolution was Leon Trotsky, born to a non-religious Jewish family, who was the first Peoples' Commissar, founded the Red Army, and was a trusted advisor to Lenin, nearly succeeding him after his death.

The story of Trotsky is sadly symbolic of all Jews who associated themselves with Soviet communism. Trotsky, and all the Jews in Russia, were eventually demonized as "enemies of the people" by Stalin, driven into hiding or exile with the all-too-real threat of torture in the Lubyanka, and death in the gulags or on the frozen plains of Siberia. In short, things became worse for the Jews under Stalin than they had ever been under the Tsars! Trotsky fled to Mexico, where he called for the organization of a 4th International in opposition to Stalin. He was later assassinated by a NKVD agent in disguise with an ice pick to the head.

The early 1900's were not good years for Jews in Europe, as is well-known. Telling the story of the Holocaust to high school students here in America is a mandate, and that is well! But the less well-known story of the struggles of American Jews around the time of WWII for their European brothers is also worth hearing. A couple of books I highly recommend to those interested would be: The Chosen, by Chaim Potok, and Exodus, by Leon Uris, both American-Jewish authors who witnessed and were personally involved in these events.


Yesterday was the 64th anniversary of the founding of the state of Israel (Yom Ha'atzmaut in Hebrew), and with the celebration of a new nation's founding is also a great sadness, because it is likely that without the death of the 6 million it would not have happened.

Happy Birthday Israel!