Panel Discussion with All Presenters

Speaker 1

As the culmination of our conference today, we’re going to ask all the panelists to come down here in front for a moment of of grilling and meditation on what we’ve accomplished here. So if they would come forward, we’ll rearrange the chairs in just a minute and we’ll start our questions.

Speaker 1

Well, there they are, the Mormon Engineering Establishment. Through the day, Scott has been collecting questions from, I guess, members of the panel and others who have come up to him. And so I’m going to ask one to get us rolling, and then you’re invited to chip in.

Speaker 1

It was, I think, implied in some of the things that William Pickett was just speaking about, but the question is about the methodologies of truth. We’re joining together here two cultures that we’ve made every effort today to blend and make compatible, but we also sense that there are some different ways of going about things. That in the church we talk about spirit and righteousness and inspiration and revelation and in In the scientific and engineering field, it’s all sort of hard facts, hypotheses, experiments, redesign. It all seems much more material, and the word spirit, except in Latter-day Saint circles, would rarely enter into a conversation of how you gain truth or solve problems. So the question for the panel is um are these two forms of truth so disparate that you really shouldn’t attempt to bring them together, or are there also resonances and similarities in the way of finding truth?

Speaker 2

I have a blog called Convergence of Science and Religion in which I’m drawing parallels between traditional Mormon teachings and the achievements of science. And I’ve identified around 25, 27 parallels between science and Mormonism. And it’s interesting to see the the Eventually, I hope will converge. One which has converged already was concerning the Lamanites, which originally was thought to be the primary Ancestor of the American Indians, but science is showing through DNA analysis that that is not true, that the original people to the North American continents came from Siberia. And so recently the church has changed the wording, not part of the scripture, but the wording to the introduction of the Book of Mormon to state that the Lamanites are one of the ancestors, but no longer stating that it’s the principal ancestor. So this is one example that we have actually seen the beginning of a convergence between church teachings and science. The 25 or 26 parallels that I have identified are just probably a drop in the bucket compared to what we could have, but there are some very interesting parallels between science and religion that indicate. the possibility at least of a commonality.

Speaker 3

I would like to say that there’s three communities here. One is uh religion, another one is science, and the third one, which is the the um uh topic of this conference, is engineering. And the reason that I break out science and engineering into separate communities is because they look for truth in a different way. Where science tries to find a natural explanation for things and tries to look for things or the most simplest explanation. Engineering tries to find as many possible ways for a thing to happen and tries to replicate it. And then it will later on pick the ones that seem to work. and then work towards optimizing that. And so as a way, as engineering, we’re Looking at engineering as a way of perhaps finding out how God might have created the earth and how God might have created us. And we can do that through the different kinds of technologies and the exercises that we go through in active engineering in a creative way. Whereas science is kind of a reverse engineering. You’re observing things and going backwards from there.

Speaker 4

So, how do we get to truth? I think that begs the question of what truth is. For me, truth is a, I understand it relationally. truth is to a community as knowledge is to an individual. How do I I’m I’m you know, general terms, I’m also a fan of the Alma Thirty two description of how we get to truth, which I think aligns quite well with The scientific method. How do scientists come up with their hypotheses? Well, that’s inspiration by definition. However, that works, I’m going to call that inspiration. I’m going to call that revelation. I’m going to call that wisdom. And that’s good enough for me.

Speaker 5

Well, I would just say that I do believe in the Mormon idea that That all of the spiritual properties that we read about in the scriptures can be explained through some natural means. And so although I admit that in my everyday life in front of my computer developing software, I don’t frequently think about how I might implement a Revelation program or something like that. I do think that in little small steps we can approach a greater understanding of our universe and perhaps the way spirit functions and the way the way our body interacts with our spirit. And other things that heretofore have been thought of as completely metaphysical obviously are rejected by The Mormon idea that spirit is matter. And so I do think that in some grand way that doesn’t frequently Happen in my everyday life, that there will be a greater understanding that we will achieve over time.

Speaker 6

To kind of echo what Lincoln said, I think that It depends, the answer to the question depends entirely on what you mean when you talk about religion and science. And for me, the answer to that question is more about what’s the most practical. Is it practical in further empowering us to fulfill our desires towards a fullness of joy to consider religion and science respectively as something that’s compatible? And I think that the answer for the people on this panel is that yes, that is the case. But of course, if you have some preconceived notion of what science is versus what religion is, and those are by default not by definition not compatible, then the question is is answered in the negative. So it kind of defe depends on how you choose to define these two things that we’re trying to, you know, look at relationally.

Speaker 7

I find it kind of interesting. We get down toward the end of the table here, and all the good answers have been taken. That from my perspective, I do not see a conflict between science and religion. I think they’re absolutely compatible. In the things that I’ve seen.

Speaker 8

I guess I don’t personally see a conflict either. However, I think Mormonism in the first half of the 20th century was willing to look at these issues. But I think since World War II, I think there’s been a hesitancy to look at this rapprochement between Science and religion. So, I guess right now I’m somewhat pessimistic. However, hopefully, the pendulum will swing back to the era of B. H. Roberts and John A. Widstow and James Talmud.

Speaker 9

As the rebel scientist and not engineer. I think that if we sometimes say that there’s no conflict between science and religion, we’re not looking hard enough. That said, I am a firm believer in truth and And I remember as a young physics student at BYU, I approached one of my physics professors and said, Have you read this uh book? The same book that I mentioned earlier, you know, Parley P. Pratt’s book. And he hadn’t, and he gave me this little spiel about compartmentalization. That as a scientist, sometimes he stores knowledge over here, and then as a faithful Latter-day Saint, sometimes he stores knowledge over here. And I remember actually being very not pleased with that response. I’m not one to assert compartmentalization as an appropriate thought process. Rather, if I see conflict or things that appear to be conflict on the surface of it, I want to want to engage it. But we also have to be careful that what we perceive as scientific truth may not be really scientific truth, and that it should not necessarily overwrite or or correct revelation. Now it might correct our understanding of certain revelation, as was mentioned over there. And additionally, I look forward to my theology to inform directions that I look for scientific inquiry. that it says there are certain really nice things that uh we believe are possible and uh You know, given our current scientific understanding, these things don’t seem to be possible. But then the religion says, yes, yes, maybe they are. Brother Pickett’s comments about faster than light travel. And so this gives us something that’s really exciting to look at. That exceeds and goes beyond the scope of what science might uh lead us to look for. Thank you.

Speaker 10

We’ve been talking a lot about conflict, but I want to kind of turn this question in a different direction. Instead of talking about whether or not there’s a conflict between an ontological conflict, you know, whether or not science is really true. Religion is really true, and how they can both be true. But just for example, real quick, Star Wars Phantom Minutes, I use for Dr. Bushman. Terrible movie in the first place, but the worst part of it is when it explains the force with mediocre. And so in this movie, you have this beautiful, you know, almost semi-religious spiritual thing going on. And in this movie, it’s Midichorean. Science solves it all. And for me, Star Wars was really bad for that. And so, the question I have for you guys is: is it, for you guys, could there be a conflict? Do you guys see a conflict, not in an ontological conflict, but where there’s a certain religious sense that is being destroyed when we start trying? To explain it by the science.

Speaker 11

I guess my attitude is. Not so much. I mean, when I find a uh a naturalistic explanation for uh for things, then I’m actually pretty excited about it. Um so no, it wouldn’t bother me.

Speaker 6

My understanding of, yes, this is a concern for me, and my understanding of what theology is, what we’re doing when we do theology, is that we’re presenting We’re presenting our philosophies in an aesthetic manner, and that to a particular community these aesthetic presentations resonate. And that it’s that aesthetic experience of theology that’s the important part of it. And so I don’t think that you have to. And again, this is why I, in the conclusion of my talk, this was kind of the point that none of this stuff can Take the place of the aesthetic of God in our lives. And why we named this argument, the New God argument, sort of this theological symbol. As what symbolizes it, but underneath that, the argument is presented entirely in secular terms. And so, yes, that’s definitely a concern for me, but I think that I resolve that personally by my particular understanding of what theology is, what it is that we’re doing when we present theology. And it’s about that aesthetic resonance.

Speaker 5

Well, what you said kind of reminded me of something I’ve read, and I can’t remember who did this, but he called This idea of you say that that the force is nothing but midichlorians is this term he called nothing buttery. which was basically reducing the something that’s very mysterious and grandiose and inspiring into something that’s That may be true but rings false because it just seems like it’s so much less than what’s really going on. And I would say that we should always couch our explanations of even if we’re explaining some spiritual phenomena, we should always couch them in by saying that This is giving the explanation and saying, this is one way of talking about it, or There are other levels upon which this could be approached, you know, not just that this is nothing but this. You know, it’s always You could always describe walking to work as, you know, I went from point A to point B, or you could say I stepped on the sidewalk at that particular GPS coordinate, you know, and you could explain a number of processes in a multitude of ways. And it’s just important that we don’t reduce our explanations. I think it it ends up not giving the full truth when you don’t explain it with the or try to at least leave those possibilities open.

Speaker 4

Your question resonates with me quite a bit. I’m very concerned about the aesthetic of religion. I value it highly. It creates an enormous amount of meaning in my life. I share some of the same sentiments that Joey and Carl have mentioned. But to kind of summarize with an example, My my wife, Dorothy, could be described as a bunch of red blood cells and Um some some you know appendages and you know some dead skin coming off of the top of her scalp and That doesn’t attract me, but I do enjoy making love to my wife, to put it bluntly. And so, yes, both of those things are there. And they’re both important because someday I may need to have a very technical understanding of red blood cells to keep Dorothy alive. And I value that. In the meantime, I’m not going to treat her like a pile of red blood cells.

Speaker 3

I think in my case, I look at my Heavenly Father as my father. And I look at my own father and I think, you know, we go out and we go camping, we do stuff together. And I want to know my Heavenly Father. I think if I could get to the point where he’s one of my best friends, where I can really talk to him, and I can talk to him on a similar level that he is, and rather than being just an embryo or a child. down at the bottom that he has to talk down to, but eventually get to the point where maybe I can I can discuss things, then I could feel of him as my father. And that’s kind of my motivation.

Speaker 2

Many scientists are trying to remove the need, or they recognize that there is no longer a need for God. They say that science is learning so much and that scientists are able to do new things that we don’t really need God anymore because science can do these things. For example, Scientists have created artificial cells, very primitive, but artificial cells, and artificial DNA. We’ve cloned animals and we’re on the verge of cloning, if not already, cloning humans and creating life. So, why do we need God to say when the scientists and science can do these things? God is no longer needed. And if we have the traditional Christian viewpoint, of God being a deity who can create matter and this implies eternal laws from nothing. And I would go with the scientist that we don’t need God because scientists is able to do the things that historically have been Attributed to God, and the justification for God was that He could do these things that we couldn’t do ourselves. But with science more and more learning more and doing more and more of these things that were attributed to God in the past. From the viewpoint of traditional Christianity, we don’t need God. I would go with the scientists. But from the Mormon viewpoint, where we recognize that God is a deity, who takes eternal elements and eternal laws, understands those laws and is able to use the laws and to control the laws to accomplish his purposes. In other words, he becomes a God of the user of eternal elements and eternal laws, rather than the creator of these elements and these laws. Then we do need God. We will always need God. He’s our Father in heaven. He created this world for the sole purpose, literally for the sole purpose. That His spirit children could have the experiences of mortality, could have the resurrection through the atonement, and could have all that He has to give, which is eternal life. So he’s a user of elements and he’s a user of laws and he’s a user of the universe and he’s a user of the cosmos to accomplish his purposes. He’s not a creator, he’s not the first to create these things, but he’s a user of them.

Speaker 8

Yes.

Speaker 12

Yeah, one of the recurring themes during the conference, whether it’s been in the form of a great filter or singularity, one of the themes is that our technological progress is pushing us toward an amplified human dynamic. that will ultimately result in a massive dystopia or an unparalleled utopia. And the hinge seems to be the net tonnage of human benevolence. on the planet. And so my question is whether you think that the tools to increase that net tonnage of human benevolence can come from technology itself? And if so, what do they look like?

Speaker 2

A lot of personal opinions on that one. I believe that technology can take us to a degree, but not all of the way. We can read in the book of Revelation, I don’t recall the chapter in the verse, but the two reasons given in the book of Revelation why God won the war in heaven. Actually, the battle in heaven, and Satan lost, was first the atonement, and secondly, the testimonies of the saints. Which I interpret to mean that the people, the spirits who followed Christ and who followed the Father, had a degree of righteousness, and the Savior, through his atonement, And his acceptance of his role as the Redeemer provided the way that the righteous spirits and their righteousness overcame Satan. Now, this is lay one and one. It’s not in the scriptures, it’s not in the teachings of the church, but I personally believe that during the millennium, Satan will be bound because the people have become so righteous. That they are no longer tempted by Satan. And their righteousness, as in the pre-existence, their testimonies will have bound Satan during the millennium. And this I believe is something that technology cannot do for us. Technology can extend our life, can do many parallels to what the scriptures teach. But personal righteousness and personal testimony in the atonement, I believe, will not come through technology, but will come through our choices as free agents and our choices to follow the Lord and to follow the Savior and to accept His Atonement. And to let his atonement come into our lives each day.

Speaker 1

I think part of the question was. Is there a technological approach to increasing benevolence? Wasn’t that not part of it? I mean, we know the gospel and the churches and good people. but can technology help with this critical issue of using technology for benevolent or malevolent ends?

Speaker 4

Technology certainly can change our Compassion, degree of compassion, it certainly can change our emotional state, our happiness, our well-being. Those things are starting to happen. Those behaviors correlate to patterns in the brain that neurologists can monitor and they can stimulate parts of the brain and have certain behaviors happen. People are getting prosthetic devices implanted in their brains to help with situations where they aren’t. These things are happening, and more of them are going to happen. But we can only ever choose an enhancement such as to enhance our compassion, our benevolence, within the context. of the benevolence or compassion that we have presently. We can only make choices within our present context. So yes, I do think technology will help, but it will never force us Well, it could force someone if it’s used improperly. But generally speaking, somebody is going to need to be making decisions on how to use that technology. or at least trying to avoid mistakes. So a mixed answer there. Yes, technology can help, but we need to make those decisions within the context of an unenhanced or only presently enhanced body.

Speaker 5

Just briefly, I would just say that I believe sort of Slightly punting on your question, but I believe that technology can be used as a tool, but only a tool among other principles. And we sort of part of what we wanted to do with the Mormon Transhumanist Association was meld the principles of technological power and scientific knowledge. With some of the religious concepts that we value, which are things like faith, hope and charity, love for mankind, benevolence, those kinds of things. So we see those as tools that are just as viable and just as important as technology. But I do believe, like Lincoln said, that technology is a real big help and a crucial part of all that.

Speaker 7

I think technology will help to a certain extent, but I think what you’re asking, it will not be the answer. The answer for more compassion is the raising of children in a loving nuclear family and being taught By their parents, those principles, and those things that they learn in the first five years are going to stay with them forever

Speaker 8

I guess I see the explosion with alternative forms of communication as being a tremendous asset. You look at blogs, and you look at if somebody gives a controversial speech in conference these days Pretty soon somebody’s got a chat room set up or a blog set up, and frequently those are much more interesting than Sunday school and the priesthood also. So I think the church is going to have trouble maintaining their monolithic top-down structure with a lot of the communication things that are going on. And I think this may be this Again, this will also be a method for them to perhaps develop greater depth to our theology.

Speaker 9

At first, I was tempted to respond that technology is basically agnostic with respect to compassion. But then I was reminded of the scripture where it says that if you are not equal in temporal things, you cannot be equal in spiritual things. And whether that’s technology or just basic standard of living, I’m not sure. As far as the millennium goes, I’m just more or less of the opinion that God’s going to wipe out all those that can’t abide a terrestrial law and then start start at that ground level. And that would come from uh from teaching correct principles. Now I I will differ um from the position here that uh we won’t be able to maintain a top down position. Reading the parable of Xenos, I’m actually of the opinion that Our technology has enabled the church to maintain its size. One of the problems with the apostasy of the primitive church was that the apostles could not maintain communication, could not maintain the the contact that they needed with the various churches, and as a consequence, they were allowed to diverge and move away without without correction or reproach, and hence the apostasy. But nowadays we have a great capacity to maintain doctrinal coherency at a fundamental level because we have the Internet and we have printing. and all the things that allow us to communicate very, very, very effectively.

Speaker 1

Yeah, a question here, you haven’t asked but yesterday. Right. No, you right there.

Speaker 10

last night in the advance of uh human exploration in the universe in the sense that I think it’d be a fantastic idea that uh we’ll have people check Unfortunately, I think it’d be a bummer deal that the second coming will come. And if I’m stuck on that, I miss the whole thing. That’s a momentous event, and you’re Checking Saturn’s moon, and next thing you know, you missed the biggest event in Google Stopped.

Speaker 14

has been going into multiple war worlds, so I don’t know if any of you saw Venus kissing the moon Friday night, but that’s an interesting thing. Us in s some of the discussions where you’ve been trying to uh discuss the compatibility of Mormonism with uh science and and engineering, whatever they are. You uh some of you have used the word truth. Uh are you is do you consider that there is an absolute truth? Uh like uh for

Speaker 9

Well, as a materialist, I define truth as the Doctrine Covenants does. Truth is as things are. Does that does that does materialism preclude the idea of abstract concepts? You know, where you mentioned, you know, one plus one not necess doesn’t necessarily have to equal two. Well, we can create mathematical mathematical languages and systems where we can define a self-coherent system of rules and laws, but these aren’t These aren’t actual actual entities in the universe, but really more just abstract concepts. And s so for myself, I just I uh tend to restrict myself to the physical universe. And uh and if I can come up with a language that allows me to talk about it conveniently so much, but I’m not going to use the language to define truth. I the language becomes a tooth tool for me to describe truth. And if it doesn’t do it that well, then I look for a differently a different tool.

Speaker 6

One quick clarification is that the the 93rd section doesn’t it defines truth as knowledge of things as they are, past, present, and future, which I think is an important Distinction from saying truth is things as they are, because knowledge is a subjective experience, as described in Alma 32, that is based on the practical outcomes of application of that knowledge, whether that knowledge provides good fruit. And um and so, you know, I mean um given that, I would say that I I don’t uh understand truth in an absolute in the absolute sense of maybe tradition the traditional canon would have us believe because of my understandings of truth from a unique Mormon perspective.

Speaker 4

Yeah, I I share uh Joseph’s perspective there. Truth from a pragmatic perspective appeals to me quite a bit. Truth from you know there may be an absolute truth. I’m confident I don’t have direct access to it. So in the meantime, I’m going to do what works, what brings happiness to my community, to myself, try to work out the differences in the conflicts between those things. I think there’s a sense in which we participate in the atonement of Christ by trying to do that and work out those differences. And so there may be an absolute truth. I know I don’t have access. I’m not even sure that. God necessarily has absolute access to the absolute truth. I mentioned before, I’m okay with a finite God. So you’re you’re an engineer, not a scientist. I don’t think scientists require absolute truth either. In fact, the objectivity that the scientific method is pursuing I would describe not as an objectivity that’s in contrast to subjectivity, but an objectivity that is abstracted across multiple subjects. So it’s a shared subjectivity, a communal Subjectivity, and that’s what we call objectivity. There’s no necessary absolute truth, even for science.

Speaker 3

And kind of building on top of that, we realize that the closer we look at things, as you know, in quantum mechanics, if you the there’s a the Heisenberg uncertainty principle where you find out that uh you get to a certain point and you can you can query some things at the exclusion of others. and you find out that the actual act of observing the thing changes it. And as an engineer, I firmly believe that we have the opportunity to create truth. There’s truth that’s out there that’s already there, but we also have the opportunity to create it as we go along.

Speaker 2

My oldest sister was an atheist, and I was talking with her one day about honesty and integrity and kindness and love. She told me that she believes in those things not because they have come from a God, but because they are necessary for the continuation of society. That history has shown, whether we want to call this an absolute truth or a relative truth, I don’t really care. But history has shown, and we can give examples, that people, when they’re honest and kind and loving, and charitable and helpful. continue, but people, when they become self-centered and selfish and taking advantage of other people, they become destroyed from within. So I think of this I think of those attributes as it as absolute, but other people may call them relative, I don’t know. But they work.

Speaker 15

Just about all of you have gone back for scriptural warrants for quotations from general authorities that support the pursuit of science. They’re almost all early. um nineteenth century or early twentieth century. Oh no no, and it seems to me that the sort of optimism about science for the willingness of race, um technology in the world um in that period corresponds with a sort of modernist Philosophy about truth and progress and human beings’ movement toward it. And it seems to me that a couple of you just now in the last five minutes have said truth is relative or truth can be created as we go along. It seems to me that that’s exactly the Post-modernist underpinning of some science and technology that the church reacts against, or tends, that Latter-day Saints, sorry, not the church, but that Latter-day Saints tend to react allergically to. And I wonder if Latter-day Science scientists don’t need to in some ways re-articulate or recombine these two notions of science, right? Because you also have talked about progress. these 19th century optimistic terms about the possibilities for what human beings can become. Is there a way that you can articulate those over and against the postmodernist postmodernisms that underlie a lot of of current things.

Speaker 16

So so are you saying that you’re asking is it possible to to revive a sense of an absolute truth, something that’s fixed?

Speaker 15

Right, or to at least address that sense among many Latter-day Saints that we need something fixed and that science and technology are destabilizing in that pursuit.

Speaker 2

I probably shouldn’t speak on this topic because I will embarrass myself. But using Newton and Einstein as examples, Sir Isaac Newton formulated the law of gravity and the concept of the universe. Einstein, through his theories, taught us that space, gravity, is really a change of the shape of space. And some people think of Einstein as sort of not, well, I can’t think of the word, but doing away with Newton, so to speak. But to me it’s really just a difference of viewpoint. Newton looked at it from his viewpoint on a high level and within his observations his theories and gravity and so forth made sense. Einstein looked at it from a different viewpoint. And his observations made sense, and as we have had later measurements through astronomy, then they have been verified. It’s not a question to me of one or the other, it’s just a question that they’ve looked at it from a different viewpoint and a different paradigm and effect. I personally believe that there are absolute truths because the universe and the laws of physics to me are absolute. But that’s just how I look at it.

Speaker 3

There’s one example that we’ve kind of talked among ourselves and in some of the papers that we put in that Ray Kurzweil brought up, and that is the computational power of a rock. Where a one kilogram rock, if you look at all the the Interactions of the electrons between all the particles in the rock and all of the magnetic fields and things like that, it’s the same kind of action that’s happening in a computer. though it’s all random and the rock isn’t really computing anything useful, there’s still a tremendous amount and what Ray ended up calculating or what he brought up is that the the actual calculation in all of the particles in a rock end up being more calculations Than all the brains on earth in just a one kilogram rock. Now that is absolutely astounding. And when I read that, the first thing that I thought was What is that rock calculating that needs all that computing power? That’s the first question that I asked. The second question is, what about the whole planet Earth and all the other matter in space? Look at all the computing power there. But I answered the first question from what I understood of the scriptures, and that is, the rock is calculating truth. And if you understand If you read the scriptures and you realize what truth is, truth is equivalent to light. If you understand what is happening in the rock, you know that the rock will receive photons that hit the particles. that excite an electron into a an inner shell on on the uh the particular atom, which then finds out that it can’t go to the inner shell because there’s already uh the space is taken, so it has to give off a photon, and it lets off that photon, and that photon that comes off of that rock tells us what that rock is. That is about as absolute truth as I can think. And this is happening to every single atom and every single object that we see in our environment, where the the the light that is emanating from God, filling the immensity of space, touches those objects, all the atoms that are in there, take that truth And they react to it and they bounce light back, and we observe that, and we’re able to detect truth about that object based on that light. Whether there is an absolute truth or whether there’s not, I think that’s just an astounding concept that it It brings me a lot of comfort to know that we have this around us and are able to observe this truth in that way.

Speaker 4

Two quick comments in response to what I’m understanding of your question. First one regarding first one, just commentary on the fact how you started with the quotes thing. Yeah, there there do seem to be more quotes from Mormon leaders early on in Mormon history that are strongly supportive of science and technology than later on. But maybe that’s because we’re not as aware of the newer ones, they haven’t circulated as well and caught our attention. And it’s certainly not for their absence. For example, there’s a wonderful quote from President Hinckley from just a few years back where he’s talking about the marvels of modern technology as miracles. inspired of God endowed to humanity, something along those lines. And so they’re there, if you look for them Secondarily, regarding the postmodernism issue, I’m not an expert there, but I once listened to a person I consider to be somewhat expert On that subject. Jim Faulkner, who’s an LDS philosopher that I admire a lot, he was one of my teachers at BYU. Talks about postmodernism and its relationship to modernism not being one of so much negation. but kind of of awareness of our modernism. And I think that, that’s an important perspective to take in science and technology, is that we need to recognize that the technology we’re using is progressing to the extent that we say it is, to the extent that we look at it and say, that is progress. That is what we desire. That is what’s going to help us. And when we do that, we’ve defined progress. We can be aware that we’ve defined it, but I don’t see necessarily a problem with that. So my two cents on postmodernism, not very good perhaps.

Speaker 15

I would say that Jim is a fine example of someone who has sort of re-articulated the principles that he finds true in post-modern Sanitism in a way that Latter-day Saints can assimilate.

Speaker 5

That’s a job that still needs doing another I would just say that I share some of those early quotes that I do agree to have a sort of Like immaturity to them in the sense that they probably are overly optimistic about the rate at which some of the things that they envision can be accomplished. or about the mechanics or the details of how these things are going to bring be brought about. But I just love the optimism and enthusiasm and the fervor. That was expressed by early Mormon thinkers in the church. I just love that Parley P. Pratt even just thought that he could somehow codify the key to the science of theology, you know, which sounds so. Overly, you know, it sounds like an incredible undertaking that nobody could possibly succeed at. But I love that enthusiasm, and I just kind of gravitate towards those those times as I read them in church history. And I would just say that rather than kind of changing our concept of or changing Truth to make it more palatable to members of the church. I think instead we need to just Perhaps see truth in more probabilistic terms rather than as being all or nothing. As we seek out As we seek out corroboration of the things that we see, the behaviors we see in the world, we see that some ways of viewing the world tend to be more useful to us, tend to explain things better. And so if we could look at truth in those senses and say what kinds of theories or things do we apply that tend to help us to behave in our environments in ways that are desirable to us. So that’s kind of what I would prefer to.

Speaker 15

Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 6

I guess I I would like to slightly call into question one of the things you said about That the reason why early church leaders were so willing to make these flamboyant optimistic statements was because they were caught up in this spirit of the modernist kind of perspective of towards an absolute truth that we were kind of going towards. And personally, I mean in my personal, you know, sort of like development of my understanding of some of these things like the concept of truth, I think that Joseph Smith’s theology is liberating in the sense that postmodernism is liberating, in that what I mean by that is that There’s a reflexiveness to it, like he defines as truth in independent spheres is independent. So, the truth in this sphere is independent of the truth in this sphere. For every kingdom there is a law given. So Depending on where you are, there are different laws at play. And I think that these can kind of like reflection on these teachings can lead us to be reflexive, because that’s what postmodernism is about. What he’s talking about is like A sort of awareness of the social construction of these concepts, of the modernist concepts of truth. And so I think that With that being said, that’s why I think it’s okay to liberally sort of like pluck from these quotes, because these were in the context of people trying to work with Joseph’s theology. And, you know, I don’t disagree that they were caught up in this modernist perspective, so they had this idea, like, well, you know, we’re just going towards this absolute thing. But I think that It’s okay to incorporate that as is practical now, even with a more, maybe quote-unquote, more sophisticated or not understanding of what truth is.

Speaker 7

Just a short comment. The results in using lots of quotes from early church leaders may be, in fact, a result of programming. And that has to do with the search engines that we were probably using. And finding more sources for the same quotation. Of older members of the church than younger ones. But I was able to find Neil A. Maxwell and Ballard, and they’re out there. It’s just that I chose to use others because I thought they were probably a little more eloquent for what I was trying to say.

Speaker 8

I think I pretty much disagree with everybody. And I don’t know, if President Monson were to call me, and I assure you he’s not. I would suggest he looks at the Joseph, I think Joseph F. Smith. Yeah, look at that model. I think that model, at least. Superficially, what I’ve learned about it seems to be a really good model. And they seem to have open and frank discussions between Joseph Fielding Smith, John A. Widstow, and B. H. Roberts. A lot of these discussions were held in open and church publications and whatever. And I think those kind of open conversations, has anybody read the En Sign lately? I mean, you just don’t have those kind of things. Has anybody discussed evolution in an intelligent fashion in any church magazine ever? At least not for 50 or 60 years, I suspect. In any case, I guess I think there is definitely a difference between early twentieth century Mormonism and what it is now, and I just hope the pendulum swings back.

Speaker 9

Yeah, well, I agree that Um some of the uh early uh things are there, but there’s also the later comments. Um but uh Going off what was said here, near the 70s or so, we started to run into problems where people were always quoting quoting general authorities and misconstruing sometimes what they were saying, and so much so that that there I think there became a cultural hesitancy. Among the general authorities, that they were didn’t want to be taken out of context and didn’t want it to be misquoted, and so they’re very, very careful about what they say nowadays. So that there’s a real care to be orthodox in their public comments. And public discourse has been fortunately abused by the general population of the Latter-day Saints. Now on the other hand uh I’ll also uh disagree or continue to disagree in the idea that I do believe in an absolute truth. Or, in that, if our knowledge of things as they are is reflective of things of our art as they are, then that would be truth. And if our knowledge is not reflective of what things are, then that would not be truth. But given that I may uh have a dispared view, that’s not a problem. One of the great things about Mormonism is that our uh Membership in the church is not defined by our doctrinal beliefs so much. I mean, we can have a great diversity of opinions and still be faithful practicing Latter-day Saints. We’re not going around apost or excommunicating people because of because of their beliefs generally. We don’t have any creedal tests, as it were.

Speaker 1

Yes. You mentioned how we don’t have creedal tests and we don’t go around excommunicating, but at least in the 90s, we’re the church leadership, in a sense, funding.

Speaker 6

Down church intellectuals, people professors, and excommunicating them?

Speaker 9

No, they weren’t hunting them down. What happened is that there were people who were actively promulgating what their opinion was as doctrine. And the church said, No, you can have your opinion, but you can’t profess it as being doctrine. And so there is a difference. And that was mentioned by Our keynote last night is that we can explore all we want, but we have to be self-restrained and recognize our role. It’s the role of the revelators of the church. Their job is to define what is appropriate for public discourse as doctrine. But the rest we can talk about as we please. Yes.

Speaker 17

This was originally put forward by Carl Youngblood. And I just wanted to make sure that I clear her on the uh transhumanism and Mormonism and where the two come together or where an advocacy might be.

Speaker 18

If I understand

Speaker 17

the transhumanist position, it sounds like it’s technology laden with ethics of technology and exponential growth. That’s a fundamental feature of what makes the transhumanist position moving forward.

Speaker 5

I would I would just uh I mean, I’ll let you get to the rest of the question, but I would say that um this is kind of the some of the ways that Kuruzweil explains these concepts in his book, The Singularity is Near, and he is recognized as one of the Foremost proponents of transhumanism, but they’re not like tenets in the sense that the transhumanist movement is very diverse and very not, it’s not a religion. We’re trying to use these concepts to just help to draw attention to some interesting parallels between Mormon concepts and transhumanist concepts, but they shouldn’t be seen as being Dogmas of some sort of transhumanism.

Speaker 17

Do you find that most transhumanism? Humanists, though, are pretty much gung-ho technology guys? Yeah, definitely, in a general sense. Absolutely.

Speaker 18

So that leads to my question then. Okay.

Speaker 17

Is your position or is it a position of the Mormon Transhumanist Society Association? That’s fine.

Speaker 17

That Mormonism or the gospel also should or that there’s a necessary technological component to it. And if so, How would you respond to, say, figures like Abraham, who has been exalted, but grew up as a basically a Bedouin in a pre-industrial, pre-scientific, pre-rational society?

Speaker 18

Have we had this discussion on a message word before? I don’t know.

Speaker 5

It’s funny because somebody else used this exact example of Abraham and um anyway, it just rang a bell, but uh I would just say that salvation is communal. Nobody ever got to Zion by themselves. You could try, work as hard as you possibly could, and can’t build a Zion on your own. feel that in the same sense that all the generations that we have witnessed or know about, who have passed away throughout the history of the earth, will be involved actively in The process of exaltation, and that part of our duty as we understand it as Latter-day Saints is to assist in bringing to pass the immortality and eternal life of these individuals as well. And that while while Abraham may have achieved a certain status in according to the scriptural understanding that we have, that he’s just tied up with all of the other things that are going on with the salvation of mankind, and that it’s not necessarily That his salvation is contingent upon everyone else’s, just like all of ours is.

Speaker 1

Yeah, but the question is: he was not capable near. capable of this vast technological expertise. So uh that s sounds like the the technology is really far from essential in any form of I I I see that as

Speaker 5

Just briefly, and I’ll get it to Lincoln. I actually see that as an incomplete view. I think that actually perhaps the technology is essential in the sense that Salvation is the culmination of all of these dispensations, and that this dispensation does play a key role in the salvation of previous dispensations, in which beings like Abraham and others will probably take part. And so I do think that all technology ultimately is, is kind of an application of the truths that we’ve discovered as we’ve tried to work together as a society and civilization.

Speaker 1

So technology is kind of our special addition to this whole process.

Speaker 5

Yeah, that that’s how I would put it.

Speaker 17

And you hold that view even in the face of, say, or is it DNC 138 where it says that A Is a God, but he’s enthroned. 132. Sorry, you want to say that?

Speaker 3

I just have a comment that I don’t think Abraham was exalted or that he could have possibly achieved resurrection without the technology to do so. Now that technology to do so did not come from us. But as Brigham Young said in one of the slides that Bill Pickett mentioned, that these technologies are here for from all eternity to all eternity. some race out there has that technology, and our Heavenly Father has that technology and has been able to selectively resurrect people as they go along. But now it’s our turn to learn that, and we’re going to have to learn that. And probably the vast majority of the the people that will be resurrected from here on out will be part of that effort of us to learn that technology as well. Now I’m not a transhumanist. But uh I I’m guessing that probably the transhumanists have the same idea.

Speaker 5

Can I just say one brief little thing? I would also say that in general, like I see my transhumanism or my belief in these concepts as provisional. I’m totally okay if Christ comes down and changes a lot of my view of how things are going to come about, or if Many of the things that I thought might occur technologically occur in a means that is more traditional or or More conventional, but in the meantime, until I see it hat, see some external force making it happen On its own, I will do everything I can to exercise faith in helping to promote the best outcomes I can possibly envision with my limited human perspective. And so I don’t see this as you have to buy into this as either or, but just kind of in the mean, until we have some direct divine intervention, we should get to work.

Speaker 4

One of the things that came to mind when you brought up the Abraham question was Jesus on the cross. and Jesus being tortured, you know, the the the the whole scene of the dying God. For me, Jesus is no less of a God as the person who is being raised on the cross than he is as the resurrected immortal. Godhood, I don’t think, ought to be understood as being only one thing. Godhood is a complex thing, and I don’t think we even ought to con Think that we understand it entirely right now. Mormon scripture completely contradicts the idea that we understand it right now, anyway. When I think about God, I think of aspects of God. There is an aspect of God which is described in the scriptures as the Father. There is an aspect of God which is described as the Son, the Holy Spirit. They together are one God. The scriptures talk about God being in and through all things, that we’re seeing God now, but we don’t understand it. It talks about God in us, Christ in us. It talks about all of these things in the scriptures. So when we focus on one thing and say, Abraham was God, well, that doesn’t mean that he got there without technology, and that doesn’t mean that he got there with it. It means that God is more than just one thing. That there’s a complex idea here in the scriptures, and it ought to all be explored. And technology, I think, is only one facet of it, but an important one.

Speaker 2

The resurrection, for example, does involve technology because it concerns whether it’s a recreation or whatever of our physical bodies so that we will have with perfect matter again our physical bodies. But I don’t believe that in order for a person to be resurrected, that it’s necessary that that person understand how that technology works. For example, when I leave this room, I’ll go out into my car. turn the key and drive away. And I don’t understand very much about how automobiles work and the the engine and so forth, but I don’t really care either because I can use it I believe that people will be resurrected with very little, at least some people will be resurrected with very little knowledge of how the resurrection occurred in terms of the technology of the recreation or whatever happens for us to obtain this. this uh physically perfect body. But the event will still occur just as I can get in my car and drive away. So I would say that Abraham was the person who was able to be resurrected and to become a goddess you brought out. Without having the technical knowledge of how those things happened, even though the technology was sort of underlying all of the events because it concerned the physical body, which again is involved with elements and natural law and so forth.

Speaker 2

Just a comment, if I may add it to what Adam said earlier about the hesitation of the general authorities to speak out, one of the authorities said recently that, to put it a paraphrase in my own words, That their purpose as general authorities and as a church organization is to help the people to come to Christ as His disciples and through His atonement to find salvation. And they will leave science to the scientists. And so they have learned, I think, through experience that it’s best that they stay out of the questions that involve science, which are really speculative questions. and focused instead upon the basic primary purpose of the Church, which is our spiritual salvation and the physical things that go along with living a daily life. And they will leave science to the scientists, not trying to demean science, but just recognizing that there’s a role for the scientists to study the laws of nature. There’s a role for the ministers to Work with us on the spiritual level.

Speaker 1

I think we have to draw to a close. I’ll just say that the general authorities aren’t dabbling in science. We are. And it was lots of fun.

Speaker 18

I think we all want to thank this group of very stellar panelists for what they’ve shown us today.