from humanity to fullness the mormon way

8/12/2019 From Humanity to Fullness the Mormon Way

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From Humanity to Fullness the Mormon Way:

Is Science Eternal?

April 5, 2013

I was happy to receive an invitation from Lincoln Cannon to address the transhumanism

conference. There is something liberating in the very name of this group. It seems like

an invitation to think beyond ordinary human limitations, to speculate about what may

be, to peer into the future. Encouraged by their theology, Mormons of a certain stripe

delight in this kind of free thinking, and I plan to join their ranks today.

I have thought of various subtitles to my somewhat obscure formulation: From

Humanity to Fullness the Mormon Way. To clarify my intent, I have added the subtitle:

Is Science Eternal? It could have been: Are There Laboratories in Heaven? From those

clues you might deduce that I want to reflect broadly on the relationship of science to

the Mormon view of the world, and that is indeed my aim.

I am not at this point interested in the more common approach to the relationship of

science and religion epitomized in the title of Andrew D. Whites nineteenth-century

treatise,A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology.1 There is plenty of that in

Mormonism in the conflict over the DNA evidence on Indian origins or the nature of the

papyri from which the Book of Abraham was translated.

Conflicts like this need to be attended to; Mormons should never bury discomfiting

scientific facts. But these controversies tend to fade over time as the strong positions

taken by the antagonists are modified and adapted. No one that I know of worries

about the age of the earth, a question that troubled religious people 150 years ago. A

few Latter-day Saints are still concerned about organic evolution, but not many.

Seventy-five years ago it was a major conflict but no more. These issues demand

attention but turn out to be less consequential in the long run than they seem at the

time.


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I am interested more in another aspect of the science-religion relationship that is

speculative and controversial but not contested. It is playful and provocative rather

than argumentative. I am thinking of the strain of Mormon thought running from Parley

Pratt through B.H. Roberts that sees Mormonism and science as not only compatible but

harmonious and mutually reinforcing. These thinkers, among them John A. Widtsoe

and James E. Talmage, believed that Mormonism was uniquely capable of assimilating

the scientific world view and in fact the two, Mormonism and science, shared basically

the same view of the physical universe.

Parley Pratt struck this note in the first chapter of his Key to Theology. Theology is the

science of communication, he began, meaning by communication revelation from God.

But it was also the science of creation, of life, of faith, and spiritual gifts, and finally the

science of all other sciences and useful arts: philosophy, astronomy, history,

mathematics, geography, and of all matters of fact, in every branch of art, or of

research.2 He drew no boundaries between science and religion. Theology was a

science, and all science was theology.

Pratt did not get very far in explaining how this all worked out in practical terms, but he

participated fully in the nineteenth centurys enthusiasm for science. Ellen G. White,

the leader of the Adventist movement in the second half of the century, shared that

enthusiasm. The word science appears over 1800 times in her writings, most of the

references in the spirit of Pratt.3 Everything religious was a science, and true science

was entirely compatible with religion. Mary Baker Eddy wrote in the same vein under

the title of her masterwork Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures.4 Despite the

conflict over evolution, the mid nineteenth century was a time when the promise of

science and the hopes of religion could be envisioned as intertwining and mutually

reinforcing.


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That picture darkened as the century wore on. The deep conflict between the

evolutionary conception of human origins and biblical ideas of creation came to appear

more severe than was comfortable. By Andrew Whites time it was possible to

reconstruct a historical tradition of ongoing warfare from the time of Galileo to the

present, with religion opposing scientific truth at nearly every important juncturethe

Copernican conception of the solar system, the geological estimations of the age of the

earth, and finally the descent of the human species, with many lesser conflicts, such as

smallpox vaccination, along the way. At every turn, religion appeared to have opposed

scientific truth in defense of its dogma and its ecclesiastical power. By the turn of the

century, instead of promising a productive collaboration in the pursuit of truth, the

words science and religion evoked images of mortal combat with the soul of the

world at stake.

Mormon thinkers, however, did not follow other religionists into this battle. Rather

than despairing of science, early twentieth-century Mormons embraced it more

enthusiastically than ever. In his 1915 manual for the Melchizedek Priesthood quorums,

John Widtsoe explained that a rational theology,the title of his book, is based on

fundamental principles that harmonize with the knowledge and reason of man. In

1915, of course, the knowledge and reason of man meant science. Widtsoe, a

scientist himself, was sure the principles of his religion and science harmonized.5

By modern philosophical standards, Widtsoe did not probe very deeply into the relation

of these two systems of thought, but he was carried along by an immense confidence.

Man must learn of the universe, precisely as it is, or he cannot understand his place in

it,Widtsoe wrote.6 The words precisely as it is imply a complete openness to fact

whether religious or scientific. Widtsoe was sure he could accept anything that came

along in scientific or personal investigations and build on it. In fact, his view of eternal

progression, the great Mormon doctrinal innovation at that time, was of intelligence


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gathering information. The primal entity was imbued with will. It was by the exercise

of their wills that the spirits in the beginning gathered information rapidly or slowly,

acquired experiences freely or laboriously. His description of original spirits sounds

suspiciously like an amoeba emerging from the slime: The exercise of the will upon the

matter and energy within reach, enabled the intelligent beings, little by little, to acquire

power.7

Both Widtsoe and Roberts based their confidence on the Mormon doctrines of what

Widtsoe called eternalism. By that he meant that Mormons did not postulate a

creation out of nothing, the critical act of God on which belief had been based for

centuries. Instead Mormons believed that matter, energy, and intelligence were all

eternal and had been simply organized by God. As Widtsoe put it, The Gospel holds

strictly to the conception of a material universe.8 That put Mormonism in the camp of

science as contrasted to traditional theologies which had imagined a metaphysic that

was entirely extraneous to science. Within this material universe, Widtsoe placed a God

who had learned and was learning like all other intelligences.

In the beginning which transcends our understanding, God undoubtedly

exercised his will vigorously, and thus gained great experience of the forces lying

about him. As knowledge grew into greater knowledge, by the persistent efforts

of will, his recognition of universal laws became greater until he attained at last a

conquest over the universe, which to our finite understanding seems absolutely

complete.9

It was easy for Widtsoe to believe science and religion were compatible because God

himself was a scientist. He had achieved his position through interacting with the forces

around him until he gained sufficient knowledge to regulate the universe.10


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Roberts elaborated Widtsoes perspective in the early chapters of The Truth, the Way,

the Life, his thwarted attempt at a Mormon summa theologicacompleted by the early

1930s but not published for 60 years. Roberts hoped to follow Thomas Aquinas in

attempting to build a theology purely by reason starting from ground zero. Aquinas had

said that if you will grant that something exists, he would bring you to God using only

the tools of reason. Roberts did not strip away quite so much in his construction but he

did want to start with common knowledge. How can we reason but from what we

know, was his starting point.11

By what we know,Roberts assumed with Widtsoe the

facts as they were generally understood by science and common experience, with no

theological premises about God or revelation.12

From that base he worked his way through commonly accepted astronomical findings to

the solar system and the stars. Mormons reading the early chapters sense at once that

he is building toward the notion of superior intelligences existing in some remote sphere

who generously choose to communicate with their lesser brethren on earth. That was

indeed where Roberts was headed, but in pursuing that track, there came a point where

he knew he must go beyond the facts as they are commonly accepted to get to his

destination. He steps beyond what we know, meaning scientific knowledge, to what,

can only be known with approximate certainty and is only to be found out by the

process of ratiocination. Such things can be known, as he put it, up to the point of

moral certainty,by which he meant what common sense feels must be true or how

things had to be.13

This method allowed him to conjecture about millions of other planets inhabited by

benevolent beings, but there again he must stop. He has extended the bridge between

scientific knowledge and Mormon theology as far as he can by ratiocination. From there

on, his conjectures become mere possibilities. Here is how he put it: Surely what we

have observed about the universe and the probability of millions of other worlds than


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our own being inhabited by great intelligencesgreater than those of our worldwould

tend to the conception of the possibility of their sending forth a revelation as we have

supposed.14

That is the climax of his ratiocination: the possibility of revelation from

benevolent, superior beings on other worlds. From there on he moves to the biblical

tradition of revelation.

I admire Robertss grand theological enterprise. He nobly undertook to construct

Mormon theology from the ground up. He followed a path that only a Mormon could

have trod, because Mormonism embeds God so completely in the physical universe.

There is no thought of a God outside of time and space with footing in eternity.

Robertss God governs from a planet within a solar system somewherein the vast

expanses of the sky. He is every bit a part of the universe we know. Roberts went

beyond Widtsoes abstracteternalism to demonstrate how Mormons might concretely

envision a material god within the world science has constructed.

I am less concerned to test the validity of this theology than to point to it as the

inheritance of modern Mormon transhumanists. Even though they have largely been

forgotten, Roberts and Widtsoe are your ancestors. They make your speculations

possible even though their views of science and religion receded after the 1930s. It

became increasingly apparent, especially as the evolution debate heated up in the

church, that science and Mormon theology were not always going to be peaceful

bedfellows. Writing in 1940, Lowell Bennion adopted the view of science and religion

now most common among Mormons. Though an admirer of Roberts, Bennion did not

see science and theology as occupying the same sphere. Weaving science and religion

together to create a unified picture of the universe was antithetical to Bennions

thought. Religion was one approach to life, and science, philosophy, and art were

others. No person can comprehend the whole of life in its beauty, depth and breadth

through a single one of these human interests to the exclusion of others,Bennion


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wrote. Science and religion occupy different realms, each with its own purpose. Let

each field of human endeavor speak for itself!he wrote, emphasizing his point with an

exclamation mark. They may conflict, but each must be allowed to perform its own

functions, harmonized by granting each its due rather than integrating them. Science

gives us a description of the world in which we live, thereby enabling us to reckon with

the forces at play. Religion is focused on the meaning, purpose, and why of life. It

helps man to aspire to the more abundant life of God. His plea to his student readers

was not to give up religion when conflicts arose, but to respect the good that could

come from each approach.15

I sketch in this historical background to remind transhumanists of their theological

heritage as Mormons. Probably few modern Mormons share Widtsoes and Robertss

confidence in the full compatibility of science and religion; on the whole we are more

with Bennion. But I think that Mormon transhumanists still are interested in exploring

the possibility of continuity, by which I mean a path leading from our current scientific

and engineering to the powers of godliness. Is there a smooth curve between here and

there, between humanity and fullness? Is intellectual progression in the hereafter in

some way a continuation of science as we know it now? These are questions Roberts

and Widtsoe would appreciate.

We all know the theology that fosters this aspiration. Besides the doctrine of eternal

progression as propounded by Widtsoe and Roberts, there is the scriptural assertion

that the same sociality that exists among us here will exist among us there (D&C 130:2).

Mormons commonly believe that heavenly life is an exalted continuation of earth life.

Why should that sociality not include scientific investigation? Hence my initial question:

Are there laboratories in heaven? Furthermore, Joseph Smiths assertion that God was

once a man, perhaps the prophets greatest heresy, encourages us to think that along

the course to godliness, human achievements are not trivial.


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The suggestion of laboratories in heaven, however, may dampen our enthusiasm for

continuing scientific inquiry. We may talk of making and governing worlds, but we dont

necessarily think of test tubes and electron microscopes in the afterlife. Will we have to

run experiments in heaven to learn how to make worlds? Will there still be research

centers producing scientific papers that are published after peer review in scientific

journals? Will we still have to collect data, form theories, debate among ourselves, and

only gradually settle on standard models? We pause when we take the analogy this far,

and it is this hesitation that I want to explore in the remainder of my talk.

No Mormon contests the scriptures that say my ways are not your ways. We hold with

Jacob that it is impossible that man should find out all his ways (Jacob 4:8). Human

knowledge comes nowhere near Gods knowledge. Gods science permits him to create

universes. He can organize matter, manage big bangs, perhaps lots of them, and devise

worlds that foster human life. His science must be light years beyond ours. We are in

elementary school; he is at the farthest reaches of graduate school and beyond. My

question is what will happen when our pitiful human science confronts his advanced

divine science? Even if we allow that we are on a path that leads from our current

science to divine knowledge, how will we deal with the gap between the two when we

come into the presence of God?

I can imagine three responses. The first is what I call the textbook approach. By this I

mean that the vast accumulation of divine science will have been recorded in books, and

we must study them to catch up. We can imagine Richard Feynman sitting in the library

for the next thousand years reading textbooks, perhaps emerging from time to time to

play Brian Greene and explain to the rest of us what he has learned. Under the

textbook model, scientific exploration as we now practice it will give way to scientific

study as boys and girls in high school and college do it. We wont need laboratories or


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theorists to push us into new realms. Human science will come to an end as we bow

before divine science and humbly try to catch up.

The second model I am labeling investigative learning. On this view, we will indeed be

light years behind God in our knowledge but to catch up we wont revert to

studenthood again and learn from textbooks. We will learn in laboratories rather than

libraries. The best way to enhance our knowledge will be to keep on investigating with

teams of scientists exploring every corner of the universe to figure out how it works.

The job of discovering and disseminating will continue much as it does now. Scientists

will continue their labors to acquire knowledge of creation by experimenting, theorizing,

debating, and testing. This is the divine pedagogy. God doesnt tell us everything he

knows. He helps us to learn it for ourselves.

This is an appealing model but it has one shortcoming. It leaves us with the feeling that

all the while we are struggling to find out, the answers are already there in the back of

the book. If only God would give us a break, his angels could tell us everything we need

to know. We labor away on projects that were carried out eons ago. Our learning is an

exercise like a high school chemistry lab. We are not really discovering new knowledge

but learning old knowledge for ourselves. Science is more like a guessing game where

we try to dope out what the masters of the universe already know.

This problem can be partially overcome by a third model, what I am calling plural

science. Under this scheme, our science is truly our discovery. It approaches the

understanding of matter and energy in its own way. It has the potential of

understanding everything, but is distinctively our own. Elsewhere there may be other

sciences that go a long way toward understanding the same phenomenon in other ways.

Each of these sciences has advantages and virtues that are its own and so are worthy of

developing. They all hold the promise of bringing us godly power in their own ways. So

rather than halting our investigations when we reach the other side we will be


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instructed to carry forward our researches and elaborate our science as far as it will

stretch.

We may practice comparative science under this heading, holding conferences to learn

from each other about differing solutions to particular problems. We wont abandon

our earthly science in favor of other sciences, because we will value the virtues and

potentialities of the earth approach. We will feel a divine mandate to learn all we can by

our own lights and indeed have divine support in our undertaking. To the question is

science eternal, we would have to give a qualified answer. The project of science is

eternal, to figure out how the universe works and can be managed. But the approaches,

the formulas, even the mathematics, may take different forms to reach similar ends.

Our science will be one variety, a species, of a universal inquiry.

I am rather partial to this third model because of its compatibility with the Mormon

belief in many revelations coming to people all over the world. Everywhere God seems

willing to bring us along in our own way, allowing us to cultivate our own fields and

draw close to him as best we can within our own cultures. The radical idea of many

gods invites Mormons to think pluralistically. We are in some sense united in one grand

cause, the cause of the divine order, but the end we seek is not uniformity but fullness.

We want to pursue the potentialities of our various natures, to achieve fulfillment in our

own ways. We pray that spiders and hummingbirds will fulfill the measure of their

creations and hope the same for all our brothers and sisters around the globe. Why not

for many populations on many worlds perhaps in many universes, each one following

the Spirit of God to a fullness?

You can see that I have taken full advantage of the transhumanist license to speculate

freely. Probably only in a congregation of Mormon transhumanists could such thoughts

be voiced. It had to be Mormon because we are the ones to narrow the distance

between God and man and thus to sponsor B. H. Robertssattempt to go from what we


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know to what God is in one smooth motion. It had to be transhumanist because we are

charged in this organization to explore this very boundary between human science and

divine achievement.

But my concluding question has to be: Is this serious or is it just fun. It is certainly fun

to let our minds roam in these realms, just as science fiction is fun or missionaries have

fun pondering the mysteries. Is it also serious? Or to put it another way, does it make

any difference how we think about the relationship of science to our religion? Is

anything important at stake?

I think there is a serious question underlying my excursions today. And that question is

the one I voiced at the beginning: Is science eternal? Are scientists today discovering

truths that will last, that give us access to elemental truthsor to put it more

dramatically, are scientists exploring the mind of God? Does He think scientifically?

On the one hand we might say no. And no man knoweth his ways save it be revealed

to him, Jacob said. [Jacob 4:8] Science is only partial or human truth. It is useful for

instrumental reasons; it makes us more comfortable on earth through applied science

or engineering, and it gives us a coherent take on the universe. But it is not eternal.

On the other hand, is it possible that God is revealing himself to scientists in their

investigations? Is it not consistent with our belief that God would disclose his mind to

inquiring humans via inspiration? Certainly Roberts and Widtsoe considered science to

be true, and by that I mean true like from God. Probably most educated moderns feel

the same. Dont Mormons generally believe that scientists are discovering how the

universe actually works? Scientific truths come as close to absolute truths as anything

we have, many would say.

Choosing between these two alternatives is of great importance. Because if we accept

science as eternal, that is, as accurately describing how the universe works, we are by


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that admission validating human reason. We implicitly affirm that the best human

thinking can acquire eternal truth, not via a prophet but via a human inquiry through a

collective of scientists.

Once we open that possibility, that human reason can discover eternal truth, we are in a

different world. We dont have to accept every product of reason as eternal, every

philosopher, every poet, every social scientist, as speaking for God or revealing truth.

But we have to accept the possibility that humans are capable of discovering truth.

Truth is within the realm of human reason. It may be hard to find, it may be obscured or

distorted, it may be buried in error, but truth is there.

This may be more of an admission that most Mormons care to make, because it means

if we are to know the truth we must read more than scripture. We must not just absorb

but sift, evaluate, discern, and judge the works of human reason. We must be on the

hunt for truth all around us, not just in church. It is not enough to say that we have the

most essential truths, the basics for salvation, and the rest can be learned in the

libraries of the afterlife. The admission of truth in reason demands that we pursue it

now, just as the scriptures demand to be read and evaluated for their truth. We must

seek out of the best books even by study and also by faith (D&C 88:118).

It is a larger burden than most of us care to assume, but we dont have to bear it alone.

The search for eternal truth, like the scientific enterprise itself, is necessarily

collaborative. We can spread the work around. A community of seekers can work on

the problems we cannot assume ourselves. If my reasoning is sound, this is serious

business. We cannot at any time see this communal endeavor as trivial or incidental. It

may be fun but it is also significant. As the scriptures tells us, if there is anything

virtuous, lovely, or of good report, we must seek after these things. That is an essential

part of going from humanity to a fullness in the Mormon way.


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I commend the transhumanists in this organization for asking where will science and

engineering lead us in another two hundred years. How do we extrapolate from the

past two hundred years into the centuries ahead? In my opinion, we are right to believe

that scientists are grasping the innermost secrets of matter and that engineers are on a

divine errand in helping us to live better on this earth and perhaps on other planets or

moons. Pratt and Roberts would commend this enterprise. Their Mormonism gives

these inquirers its full backing. To these endorsements I add my own.

1 Andrew Dickson White, History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom(New York: D. Appleton,

1896).2 Parley P. Pratt,A Key to the Science of Theology(Salt Lake City, Deseret Book, 1965), 11-12.

3

Gerhard Pfandl, Ellen G. White and Earth Science,Journal of the Adventist Theological Society, 14 (Spring2003), 178.4Many editions.

5 John A. Widtsoe,A Rational Theology; As Taught by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints(Salt Lake City:

Deseret News, 1915), iii.6 Widtsoe, Rational Theology, 7-8.

7 Widtsoe, Rational Theology, 17.

8 Widtsoe, Rational Theology, 11.

9 Widtsoe, Rational Theology, 23-24.

10 . Cf. Thomas G. Alexander, The Reconstruction of Mormon Doctrine: From Joseph Smith to Progressive

Theology,Sunstone5:4 (July-August 1980):24-33.11

B. H. Roberts, The Truth, The Way, The Life: An Elementary Treatise on Theology, ed. John W. Welch (Provo,

Utah: BYU Studies, 1994), 17.12

Roberts, The Truth, The Way, The Life, 1713

Roberts, The Truth, The Way, The Life, 90, 10214

Roberts, The Truth, The Way, The Life, 105.15

Lowell L. Bennion, The Religion of the Latter-day Saints, rev. and enlarged (Salt Lake City: L.D.S. Department of

Education, 1940), 17-19.

from humanity to fullness the mormon way

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