Mormon Thought and Engineering Vision

A conference was just held on March 7, 2009 called Parallels and Convergences: Mormon Thought and Engineering Vision.  The premise of the conference is a discussion of “Latter-day Saint perspectives on the attributes of God and the potential of man.”  God is thought of as the engineer of the our bodies and the world.  And man is understood to have a potential to become as God.  The question is “Where does engineering fit in the convergence of these two realms?” The conference addressed such issues as “materialism, free will, models of spirit matter, quantified morality, spiritual underpinnings for a space program, the New God Argument, God as a perfect engineer, technical interpretation of Mormon physiology, transhumanism, Gaia and the paradisiacal Earth, and technical advancement leading into the millennium.”

 The keynote address was presented by Terryl Givens, entitled No Small and Cramped Eternities.  This talk is available on video and I thoroughly enjoyed it.  I would like to give a summary of his talk.  My summary may be a little disjointed because I am just kind of listing off the major points he hit.

Givens starts by taken about humanity and our place in the world.  Man is much more advanced than any other living thing on earth and differs from other species not only in degree but in kind.  “Man is not merely an evolution but rather a revolution.” Man is a creator as well as a creature and could more aptly be named Homo Erector than Homo Sapien.  Yet traditional Christianity has usually discouraged the exploration of man’s possibilities as well as an inquiry into the deep questions of the universe.  Even John Milton, who had the ambition to justify the ways of God to man, set limits on the kind of inquiry in which we could engage.  In Paradise Lost, Book VIII, Rafael says to Adam: “Solicit not thy thoughts with matters hid, Leave them to God above, him serve and feare... To know what passes there; be lowlie wise: Think onely what concernes thee and thy being; Dream not of other Worlds, what Creatures there Live, in what state, condition or degree, Contented that thus farr hath been eveal'd Not of Earth onely but of highest Heav'n.”(Lines 167-168, 173-178)  What was God doing before creation?  He was preparing Hell for people who asked such questions, said Augustine.  There has been a taboo on the deep question for hundreds of years.

 This taboo was broken by the likes of Joseph Smith and the brothers Parley and Orson Pratt.  Parley P. Pratt could be thought of as the first Mormon theologian.  He continued in the thoughts first expounded by Joseph Smith and expounded them in a way reminiscent of Paul to the teachings of Jesus.  Post-Redemptive Theology almost seems like an oxy-moron, but in Mormonism there is more of an answer as to what man is being saved for.

 Thomas Dick, the Scottish philosopher, notably sought to fuse science and religion upon seeing a lack of the “expansive views” in traditional Christianity.  He believed that angels would study mathematics, chemistry, physics, biology, and all the sciences.  A similar thought was followed by Parley P. Pratt in his work Key to the Science of Theology.  What Pratt and Joseph Smith taught was an even more extreme anthropomorphic God bound by natural laws.  By naturalizing deity, the sacred and the profane collapsed into one sphere.  This opposed William Taylor Coleridge’s insistence on the “heterogeneity of matter” necessary for anything miraculous.  Pratt erased the distinction and made the divine accessible to reason.  It become a monistic cosmology.  After Pierre-Simon Laplace had famously told Napoleon that he no longer needed God to make sense of the creation, Pratt put God back into the universe but as a part of it.  Science was seen to encompass theology rather than, at most, coexist with it.  Givens said this may be “the most significant reconceptualizing of religious cosmology in Christian history.”

 This brings about a discontinuity between Mormonism and creedal Christianity.  But this discontinuity establishes continuity between the material and eternal.  Orson Pratt, a great scientist and mathematician taught that the study of science is the study of something eternal.  Parley P. Pratt boldly asserted “an immortal man, perfected in his attributes in all the fullness of Celestial Glory is called a god.”  This was a heretical idea to many religious thinkers, but Pratt was not interested in “passing muster with the guardians of Christian orthodoxy” and never condescended to apologies for Mormon heterodoxy.

Joseph Smith’s King Follett sermon presents two “catastrophes” for creedal Christianity.  The first is the humanizing and contemporalizing of God.  The second is the idea that a man may become a god.  Given’s thinks that this is the world’s best hope for a naturalistic theology.  One of Mormonism’s great strength’s is that is an alternative to the materialist/supernaturalist impasse.  Many philosophers, both religious and non-religious, found such an idea attractive including John McTaggart, William James, and Thomas Nagel.  Both John McTaggart and Thomas Nagel had a firm belief in the human soul or what Nagel called the “datum of the human soul.”  William James saw the finite God as the only solution to the philosophical problems of Christianity.  James even asserted that if it is proven that an absolute god cannot exist, a god such as that of David, Isaiah, or Jesus can exist.  Givens says positions like these should be of “acute interest to Mormonism.”

The “datum of the soul” this the starting point for the theology of King Follett.  Theosis, or the potential of man to become like God is the “most exciting possibility Mormonism holds out to us.”  But this very idea has been discouraged for most of recorded history.  The oldest recorded creation story from Mesopotamia, Atrahasis, tells of gods making man to forget his origins that he might not aspire to return to his place among the gods.  Turtullian rejected the idea of preexistence because it makes man to be an eternal being like God.  This sort of equality is not allowed, therefore man must be “born.”  Naturally, the prospect of deification could have both vainglorious and pure-hearted appeal.  But Givens suggests that with infinite power also comes “infinite vulnerability” as is seen in Enoch’s “weeping God” or Christ’s own suffering through the Atonement.

Parley Pratt’s universe was one seething with activity: angels ascending and descending Jacob’s ladder and progressing from one degree to the next.  He held this view in common with earlier thinkers like Philo of Alexandria and Father Origin.  This concept of the living universe was one of “flux” consistent with Malthus, Hegel, and Darwin.  Pratt’s theology was one of unfettered optimism and boundless possibilities.  He thought not to focus on the negative or on death but rather to embrace a “doctrine of equality” in which man could become as God the Father.  Pratt thought it the nature of the God’s to multiply their species and do all things necessary to that end.

Givens ended quoting G.K. Chesterton saying that there is such a thing as a “small and cramped eternity.”  But Givens suggests that the theology of Joseph Smith and the Pratt brothers involves no such small and cramped eternities.  In their teachings it is not blasphemy to suggest that man can become as God but it is rather the highest tribute payable to God that he has prepared the means whereby man can become as he is.

Happy Pi Day

I could not let this March 14th pass by without paying tribute to this wonderful number.  Have you ever wondered pondered the numerical value of the circumference of a circle divided by its diameter.  If you think such thought is irrational, your right!  The value is pi and it cannot be expressed as a whole number or as a fraction.  That is one of the beauties of this "number."  It you express it as a decimal it goes no forever and ever Amen.

Pi Day was founded by Larry Shaw, a physicist at the San Francisco Exploratorium.  It was first celebrated in 1988.  And though the value of Pi is a constant, and invariable throughout the universe, it was the Federal Government that finally christened this blessed day.  This year Congress passed a non-binding resolution, HRES 224 recognizing March 14th as "National Pi Day!"

I like Pi too because it has an attitude.  You can get pretty close to it but you can never grasp precisely what it is.  He's sort of cool to hang out with but just don't try to get to close.  Maybe you can call him 3.14 or 22/7 but even then you still haven't nailed him down.  Pi escapes once again.

Just to add a cool literary reference.  In Carl Sagan's Contact, the extraterrestrials tell Ellie that the "creator" of the universe built a secret message into Pi.  Starting at decimal point 10²⁰ in base 11, the numbers stop varying randomly and start producing ones and zeros in a very long string.  The string's length is the product of eleven prime numbers and the ones and zeros, when organized as a square, form a perfect circle.  This is all fiction of course but still a wicked use of Pi in a novel.  Go Carl!

On a personal note I very grateful to Pi for the ability it gives me to design and make calculations.  As a final tribute I leave you with a "poem" written by nature herself...

3.1415926535 8979323846 2643383279 5028841971 6939937510 5820974944 5923078164 0628620899 8628034825 3421170679 8214808651 3282306647 0938446095 5058223172 5359408128 4811174502 8410270193 8521105559 6446229489 5493038196 4428810975 6659334461 2847564823 3786783165 2712019091 4564856692 3460348610 4543266482 1339360726 0249141273 7245870066 0631558817 4881520920 9628292540 9171536436 7892590360 0113305305 4882046652 1384146951 9415116094 3305727036 5759591953 0921861173 8193261179 3105118548 0744623799 6274956735 1885752724 8912279381 8301194912 9833673362 4406566430 8602139494 6395224737 1907021798 6094370277 0539217176 2931767523 8467481846 7669405132 0005681271 4526356082 7785771342 7577896091 7363717872 1468440901 2249534301 4654958537 1050792279 6892589235 4201995611 2129021960 8640344181 5981362977 4771309960 5187072113 4999999837 2978049951 0597317328 1609631859 5024459455 3469083026 4252230825 3344685035 2619311881 7101000313 7838752886 5875332083 8142061717 7669147303 5982534904 2875546873 1159562863 8823537875 9375195778 1857780532 1712268066 1300192787 6611195909 2164201989 3809525720 1065485863 2788659361 5338182796 8230301952 0353018529 6899577362 2599413891 2497217752 8347913151 5574857242 4541506959 5082953311 6861727855 8890750983 8175463746 4939319255 0604009277 0167113900 9848824012 8583616035 6370766010 4710181942 9555961989 4676783744 9448255379 7747268471 0404753464 6208046684 2590694912 9331367702 8989152104 7521620569 6602405803 8150193511 

In Memory of President Jim Weipert

Today my former Mission President, Jim Weipert, died of cancer.  This all happened very quickly from the time he was first diagnosed.  He was one of my greatest mentors and I owe a lot of who I am to him.

I first met President Weipert in the MTC before either of us had even been to Paraguay.  We were excited and anxious to start working in this unknown place.  The last time I saw him was in Paraguay, one year after my mission.  I stayed with them in their home for about a week.  

The picture on the right is us at Abundancia, a Nivacle Colony in the Paraguayan Chaco.  Right before we took this picture he grabbed me by the arm and pinched me really hard and it hurt really bad!  He was a pretty crazy guy to be honest.  He was always trying to physically injure us in creative ways.  I remember hearing at some point he kept a high-pressure bee-bee gun and periodically shot the Office Elders.  The man was hilarious and really fun.

He taught me how to work, not just work hard but work effectively.  He new how to be successful and really wanted us to learn the skills we would need to succeed in life.  I also learned from how not only to seek after truth and righteousness but to fight for it.  His always taught action.  I came to understand that you can't give up on anyone but that you have to fight for them and never let go.

This was a great man and the world is better because of him.  Paraguay is a better country because of him.  His life is especially significant to me and I will always be grateful to him for the life he lived.

Crazy Pills

In the movie “Zoolander”, Ben Stiller plays a famous male model fighting to keep his place of supremacy in the fashion world.  Derek Zoolander takes the world of fashion by storm with his revolutionary new “looks”.  For all his looks he purses his lips and furrows his eyebrows.  He does the same thing for every look (Blue Steel, Farrari, Le Tigra) and then just calls them different names.  His latest look, Magnum, is the latest and greatest of all.  He refuses to show it to anyone until it is “perfect”.  When he finally lets Magnum out of the cage it ends up being the same as all his other looks, except that he turns his head to the left.

 

Everyone falls in line with the Derek Zoolander craze, until he loses the Male Model of the Year Award to another up-and-coming model, Hansel (Owen Wilson).  Derek’s fans drop him in an instant and flock after the new fashion wonder.  Then Zoolander makes a dramatic comeback, landing a big fashion show appearance, and the public falls in love with him again.  All this time, Hollywood, media, and public are infatuated with Zoolander’s genius and “versatility”.  The villain of the film, Mugatu, played by Will Ferrell, finally gets frustrated out of his mind and drops the bomb: “The man has only one look... Blue Steel? Ferrari? Le Tigra? They're the same face! Doesn't anyone notice this? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills!”

 

I had a conversation with my mom a while ago about her school district’s policies and their effects on her teaching.  She teaches a class of all Spanish-speaking students but she never gets the opportunity to teach them any English because she has to shove them through standardized tests every other week.  Her class size has doubled and she can’t share any of her students with other teachers because it is state law to have the Spanish-speakers in a ESL class where they never even have the time to learn English.  Each department of the district requires teachers to spend several hours on their topic: so many hours of reading, so many hours of drilling, etc.  The sum of all these requirements amount to more hours than class is in session.  So when my Mom finishes telling me all this I have to ask: “Doesn’t anyone else notice this?”

 

For years now the United States Congress has been pressuring companies such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac et al to make housing more affordable.  In 1999 the Clinton administration urged the companies to expand the mortgage loans to low-income buyers.  Institutions in the primary mortgage market requested that they ease their requirements on the mortgages that they would buy.  So began an era of subprime lending.  So people moved into homes that they couldn’t pay for.  Housing prices were inflated.  Borrowers eventually began to default and the bubble burst.  Housing prices dropped backed down.  So the conventional economic wisdom is to have the federal government solve the problem.  The solution?  Try to keep the prices up.  Inflate the bubble more.  Where does the money come from?  Paper.  Then congress holds hearings and grills Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for doing exactly what they had pressured them to do earlier.  Just like Ferrari, Blue Steel, Le Tigre, these are the same policies that have been enacted in the past and they have never worked.  They’re just called different things every time.  Doesn’t anyone else notice this?

 

I’ll bet lots of people notice.  But other things get in the way.  Just like Derek Zoolander and Hansel were the craze of male fashion, certain ideas take precedence over reality.  And cursed be the poor wretch who points out an obvious fact that everybody knows but nobody wants to believe.  All around are problems to be solved in government, in business, in education.  Some solutions are evident and some not-so-evident.  Some people don’t know the answers but pretend they do.  Some people do know the answers but pretend they don’t.  Why?  Are we uneducated?  That’s probably not the problem.  The problem may not be that people are uneducated but that they are miseducated. 

 

It may take some time to teach math to a child who has never seen it before but eventually he will get it down.  If you take two apples and put them with another two apples you’ll have four apples total: 2+2=4.  What if the child is taught that 2+2=5?  It will probably be much more difficult for the child to “grasp” the concept.  He cannot ever really grasp it because it is false.  What if many children are taught together that 2+2=5?  Maybe some children will ask questions because it makes more sense that 2+2=4.  But they are scolded or mocked for thinking contrary to the authority of the teacher.  Maybe some other students will make fun of any doubters and this taunting will be encouraged.  No one in the class will understand why 2+2=5 and some may even know that 2+2=4 but everyone will be afraid to say so.  Most importantly, everyone in the class thinks that everyone else understands that 2+2=5 then any dissident would be completely alone.  And that is a terrifying prospect.  What keeps people in delusion is the thought that there must be something wrong with them and that they are the only ones who notice.

 

Every now and then it might be necessary to take some “crazy pills” and see the things that you think no else notices.  You may be wrong or right but speaking out is the only way to find out.  You may find some who pull you aside and say “I thought I was the only one who had noticed this.”  Then you can start spreading the crazy pills around because to stand up against the rest of the class you just might have to be a little crazy.

Presidential Election: Looking Back

We are going to have a new president... Barack Obama.  So I didn't vote for him.  I was a Ron Paul supporter.  But since he wasn't running anymore I voted for John McCain so that we wouldn't have one party controlling the Legislative and Executive branches.  Now that it's over I have some thoughts.

First, kudos to John McCain for his concession speech.  I think he showed real class and honor.  He isn't being a sore loser and he is shouldering the responsibility to unite the country.  Well done John.  I have always liked John McCain as a senator so I am happy that we get to keep him.

Second, congratulations to Barack Obama.  He wasn't my choice but I hope he does a good job.  I am also enamored by the significance of having a black man as president.  Racism has been an ugly stain on the history of this country and this is a nail in the coffin of that kind of bigotry.

I want to support our next president but that does not mean supporting everything he will do.  I want to help him be a good president and that will often mean that I will disagree with him.  So here we go.  This will be interesting

Show Me The Money

I am sitting in my room only hours before the beginning of my senior year of college and the end of summer. Summer was great by the way, probably my best so far. I have mixed emotions but I am excited for the school year. It should be pretty interesting. And I’m excited to graduate.

I was pretty pleased with myself earlier because I was able to get my textbooks at such a low price. Even though I rate my experience at ASU positive overall I never cease to be amazed at their power to rip us off. I was just looking at my student account and saw all kinds of fees and charges for who knows what. That’s why it feels so good in a way to boycott them in some way. It’s like sticking it to the man as it were.

You see I have these ideals markets. I think they should be free, open, and honest. I like to see a product or service, think about the price and negotiate it if possible. If I feel like something is worth my money then I pay for it. If I don’t feel like I would get my money’s worth then I don’t buy it. That’s what I do with food, gas, clothes, etc. What bothers me is when money seems to fly from my pockets without my knowledge or approval. It really annoys me when I am charged for things I don’t even really want.

This actually happens all the time. This is one reason I am very skeptical and critical of most governments. I get my paycheck and hundreds of dollars are taken before I ever even see them. It bothers me because I have no choice in the matter. As far as the government is concerned, it wouldn’t bother me so much if I actually wanted to drop bombs in Iraq, keep hundreds of military bases all over the world, build hundreds of prisons, administer standardized tests, put more money into the pockets of billionaires through farm and oil subsidies, bail out irresponsible lenders and borrowers, build a fence on the Mexican border, wire-tap phone lines, torture prisoners of war, or support generations of families on welfare. But I don’t really want any of these things so I would rather not pay for them. But I have to. I also get a lot of money taken for social security and Medicaid. OK, that sounds nice but I’m afraid I have very little confidence that I will benefit from either of those services by the time I retire (unless the retirement age gets pushed back to 95). The whole system of taxation involves no freedom, no negotiation.

But it’s not just the government. Beware of any entangling financial agreements. A lot of home-owners recently learned this lesson the hard way: don’t get a flexible-rate mortgage. You get a loan, use a credit card and everything seems cool, until some clause in the fine print lets them jack up your rates. Or try insurance. Sure we’ll insure your house in New Orleans (by the way we don’t cover floods). Keep track of your money and how you use it because there are a lot of crooks out there. And I love ASU. OK, yes I want tuition, yes I want insurance. Wait, why am I being charged for the gym I don’t use. I already use another gym. I didn’t want plasma screen TVs in the Recreation center. I didn’t agree to that. Yet somehow I’m swindled into paying for it.

Luckily, there seem to be more avenues for free markets with globalization and technological developments. The internet rocks!! The textbook market is a broken market because it does not operate according to normal economic principles. First of all, the buyers don’t even choose their own product. Teachers choose books they will not use and will not pay for. Students buy books they don’t want and do not choose. So it’s already bad. Then there is the campus bookstore. The beginning of each semester is a financial drain the minute you walk into ASU bookstore, cursed be its halls. So I used the internet :) I got used books for lower prices than the used books at the bookstore. And I got used books for great prices. I spent about a third the price I would have paid at the bookstore if I had bought all used books (which is rare). My favorite purchase was the international edition I got from Taiwan. On the back it says: “This book cannot be re-exported from the country to which it is sold... The International Edition is not available in North America.” Hah! You can’t stop these freewheeling capitalists!

Amigos

My mom is a kindergarten teacher at Lehi Elementary about two miles from where we live. This year she will begin a new assignment. All of her students speak Spanish as their primary language. I’m not surprised she was asked to do this because she just got her Masters in Secondary Language Education – go Mom! I will need to help out I’m sure because she doesn’t speak Spanish… yet. I’ll see if I can help teach her at least some of the basics.

She is pretty excited and nervous about this job and that is to be expected. Helping young children learn English while they are still in Kindergarten should be very beneficial. Of course this whole thing is very political. The immigration issue is huge in Arizona. We’re in a border state. Unfortunately, even these little children get caught up in the middle of the whole thing. Often in politics decisions are not made based on practicality but prejudice. There is a lot of research concerning the best way to teach children who speak a foreign language. Every method has its pros and cons. But I’m not sure these are the factors considered during the legislative session. I suspect more people are worried about cultural and racial ideologies.

Driving around town you see several posters for some guy running for office that touts the slogan “America First.” So what does that mean? I understand it to mean English instead of Spanish, Country instead of Mariachi. But growing up in Arizona I always remember a Latin influence. We always celebrated Cinco de Mayo. I heard Mariachi all the time. I ate tacos and burritos more than hot dogs and burgers.

And what’s the big deal about Spanish? Spanish is a beautiful language. Do we think it would degrade are intellect if we integrated a little Spanish. Is it an inferior language? Of course not. It’s quite complex and has a very versatile vocabulary. Learning Spanish has helped me to understand legal and scientific terms of Latin origin. I even appreciate English better because I can recognize the etymology of several of our words. No one has to learn any one else’s language but it is certainly useful. Granted immigrants to the United States benefit much more learning English but I always had a goal to learn Spanish and I don’t think it can hurt.