I recently had a conversation with a scientist who said that he didn’t need God. He was content without a God, and some spiritual experiences this man had had were demoted to “tricks of the brain.” And to this scientist I say, suit yourself. You have turned away from another source of Truth. However, you can’t claim that humans are stupid and nothing but evolved animals on one hand and then turn around and claim that humans are capable of perfectly understanding the universe and how it functions. It’s like claiming Apehood and Godhood in the same breath.
It takes humility to admit that we don’t understand everything about the universe yet. And yes, religion and religious experiences do fall in that category of things we don’t understand yet. No one can prove or disprove God; faith has always been involved in religious experiences and relationships with Deity. Why? My short answer is that God is merciful, and if we knew 100% that He existed then we would be 100% accountable for our misdeeds. Our ignorance is a merciful buffer.
And what does it mean to have faith in something you can’t scientifically prove? I would say that it is the same type of hope that I had to employ when I researched cosmic rays at the University of Utah—I couldn’t see the sub-atomic particles themselves, but the machines we would run on moonless nights (photomultiplier tubes and old computers, set high atop a mesa in the Utah desert) told me about them. We were able to learn a lot from that equipment. They benefited our search for Truth. I believe that God uses prophets like those machines. Neither conduit, the machine or the prophet, is perfect, but it doesn’t mean we automatically discount their information. If a prophet says that I, Jamie, will be happier by keeping the commandments, it is my responsibility to take up the experiment of seeing if that prophet—if the data—is correct. The results of this experiment are not easily quantified, but they do yield amazing results.
Yes, that's me with the bangs and the long hair, working in Unix, along with a page of notes from the first day of my job at HiRes. It was the best summer job ever. I did that for three summers (2001–2003).
I consider Religion and Science like I do a pair of eyes—the other adds depth and perspective, but close one and you may miss something that the other might have clarified. I love science. I love Truth. I want it. I want to study it. It is obvious from my studies that plants and animals and humans have evolved throughout the ages. How do Adam and Eve fit in with this? I don’t know . . . YET. I have some ideas. But I do know, based on my personal experiments in reading the scriptures, attending church, and praying to that Unknown God, that being a Latter-day Saint has brought an extreme amount of happiness, peace, and understanding to my life. It has been a successful experiment, one that I intend to repeat every day, every Sunday. There are aspects of my religion that I DON’T understand or that I DON’T agree with, but I, a regular human, do not claim that my logic or my understanding concerning those things is either complete or perfect. So I keep experimenting. I keep an open mind—and an open heart, which is often something that all those open minds need.
We have to learn about our existence line upon line, precept upon precept. God will give us more as we are able to handle Truth. If a scientist says, “I have had enough,” then God won’t force the issue. But He will “lengthen out [His] arm unto them from day to day . . . all the day long.”
I heartily recommend the experiment of testing God at His word. It is a personal experiment as well as a family experiment. An excellent discourse on faith, how to have it, and how to recognize results can be found here.
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| M81—one of my favorite galaxies. Image used with permission. |
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2 comments:
We know one another, but I'm posting anonymously here due to what I'm about to say.
You're probably one of the smartest people I know, when it comes to Physics, English, History, and plenty of other subjects. I have to take issue, however, with a lot of the logic you've applied in this post.
First, I don't think any respectable scientist would claim that "humans are stupid" or that "humans are capable of perfectly understanding the universe and how it functions." He or she would very likely claim that we have evolved, and we share a common ancestor with today's apes, but we are certainly very far from stupid. Scientists also understand that there is MUCH still to learn about the universe, and I'm going to guess that your atheist friend would be very ready to concede that. You're right, too, that admitting to that fact requires great humility.
Second, that equipment you used to research cosmic rays did not require "hope". The data they provided you with was quantifiable, verifiable, and reproduceable. You could send the data to a colleague on the other side of the country and she could trust that it was valid. Not because she hoped it was, but because the scientific method you were employing is based on solid evidence that provided measurable results and could be duplicated if need be.
Faith in commandments and their results, on the other hand, cannot be quantified, verified, or reproduced consistently. The results it ellicits may make you happy, or they may make you miserable. I know many people who fall on both sides of that fence (all very faithful members, mind you).
And lastly, you state that your test of faith leads you to greater happiness. That's great! I fully support you in following a path that you feel makes you happy. However, happiness has no direct correlation with truth. You cannot say, "X made me happy, therefore X is true," but that is essentially what your fifth paragraph is concluding ("I do know, based on A, B, C, that doing X has brought an extreme amount of happiness, peace, and understanding to my life."). Again, I fully support following the LDS faith if it makes you happy, and I trust that it does for you. It simply isn't enough evidence to conclude that 1) it will definitely make others happy, or 2) the truth claims behind it are in fact true.
That wasn't nearly as succint as I wanted it to be. It also wasn't meant to be mean-spirited, and I hope it didn't come across that way. I just wanted to speak up and share my opinion.
Thanks,
Anonymous
Hey Anonymous (J?), I am glad you commented. I always appreciate non-mean-spirited comments. There are definitely lots of holes in my blog post. It is analogical reasoning—it happened to me, therefore I am making a broad claim that it can happen to anyone. You might say that I did some cherry picking and had a false analogy, too.
I was primarily venting because of the frustrating conversation that I had earlier that day with the scientist, who actually did say that humans were stupid but who then proclaimed himself well-enough versed in science to make a judgment on whether or not God existed.
"Hope," I should clarify, was used in this post in a different way than how we normally used it—in the scriptures it is almost synonymous with faith (Alma Chapter 32:21: "Faith is not to have a perfect knowledge of things; therefore if ye have faith ye hope for things which are not seen, which are true.") What I meant was that since I couldn't see the cosmic rays myself, I had to rely on the testimony of the resultant data. The photomultiplier tubes actually only recorded the photons that resulted from the decaying cosmic ray particle, not the particle itself, so I had to depend on the computer's ability to reconstruct the path of the cosmic ray as well. Sorry if I'm giving too much information, but it really was the greatest summer job in the universe.
The process of faith—to me—is not exactly comparable to the scientific method, anyway, despite what I was saying. You start with a hypothesis, yes, but you're right, Anonymous: I think one's experience in searching for truth is so highly subjective and personal that there is no way to aptly quantify it. I'm becoming more and more of an existentialist just thinking about it. But I do think that anecdotal evidence has a place.
Faith does not necessarily equal happiness. I completely agree with you. Heaven knows plenty have suffered because of the things they believed. But I would say that faith can bring inward peace—not necessarily peace of mind, because life has its problems, but peace of conscience. We then can get into a discussion of what is peace and what is happiness, but we'd dive into the subjective again.
What I cling to in all of this subjectivity is the fact that multiple prophets have said, "If you keep God's commandments, He will bless you." That is a hypothesis that is worth testing out—to me. What I have given is anecdotal evidence, but I still believe that it is reproducible to some extent, in some form, for other people—for if there is a God, and He's no respecter of persons, then other people deserve a chance at peace just as much as I do.
Please feel free to respond.
Jamie
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