Mormon Naturalist: Introductory Post

Returning home after my freshman year at BYU, I shared with my mom a growing sense that if the only thing that existed was raw material (e.g. energy, matter) with inherent laws governing interactions within the material, then the action of law alone would bring gods into existence. Though she dismissed the notion on some doctrinal ground, this sense has developed in my mind. Looking back from where I am now (at the time of writing, a Ph.D student working on my dissertation in Evolutionary Biology), the forming of this sense in my mind seems to mark the beginning of my brand of naturalism. See: What is Naturalism?

While many Mormon scientists subscribe to a methodological form of naturalism, they inevitably back off just shy of being true to the belief as a matter of ontology regarding the universe, typically manifesting their supernaturalism by necessitating God’s involvement at some crucial step of creation. While some hypothesize on what they think the critical requirement was (initiating the big bang, establishing parameters for universal laws, forming DNA, engineering the first cell, etc.), others admit that they don’t know what or how God was involved, but nonetheless require it. Either way the lapse constitutes supernaturalism, and trudges dangerously close to the American embarrassment: Intelligent Design. I neither advocate this idea nor believe that a close look at the metaphysical underpinnings of Mormonism substantiate anything but unadulterated, ontological naturalism. See: Why Mormonism .

Already, most if not all philosophical naturalists are thinking, perhaps out loud in between bursts of laughter, that I must be a fool to think it possible to be a naturalist who believes in God. Let me be clear: I do not believe in God! Not if you are talking about a creator God, or going to describe God in any of the traditional supernatural, omnipotent, omniscient ways; this doesn't mean that there isn't someone that fits my understanding of a god. See: What is god? I believe that there is possibility outside of what we are able to observe scientifically (at least with our current technology!) for there to be more to existence than what we are able to observe when moving in only three dimensions while stuck in a temporal stream, and blind to all but what interacts with one of the four forces we observe. Is there another force that allows dark matter to interact with a darker (dark at least to us) and stranger form of matter or energy? Could the matter which composes our bodies be scaffolding for some type of darker matter which does not die with the rest of our physical body, perhaps occupying another dimension, perhaps not. Is it possible for something that doesn’t interact with the four observed forces to be found within one of the other dimensions predicted by string theory? What else is found in the ‘whatever-it-is’ that our universe is growing within? These thoughts are admittedly ‘out there’, and I do NOT plan to dwell on questions such as this anywhere in this blog. The point I am making here is that there is possibility within ontological naturalism for things to exist which cannot be observed from our frame of reference. Whatever spiritual truth there is, it cannot be attained by protecting it from scientific scrutiny by compartmentalizing it in a different region of our minds; all truth must be circumscribed as one great whole! I believe that among these spiritual truths with natural possibility is our continued existence after the death of our observed physical bodies. See: The Ultimate Spiritual Question.

Many people I have spoken with about related matters, particularly those in the scientific community, dismiss any talk about what cannot be observed because they see no utility in discussing something that we cannot know from science is true. I sympathize with this feeling, and I think this type of dismissal is often appropriate; but not always. As a scientist I subscribe to the validity of inductive logic even though there are underlying philosophical problems with inferring universal laws from an (always!) limited set of observations; a far greater number of observations will always remain unseen. I subscribe to science because I deem the assumptions of inductive logic to be correct, and because the alternative leads nowhere. Without it one must conclude that there are no universal natural laws that we can discover, that nothing in the world is reliable, that all technology may cease to work at any time, that the sun may not appear tomorrow, and all for no good reason. My scientific epistemology makes my world secure, and allows me to collaborate with others in discovering truth based on our shared observations (or sometimes observations not common, yet trusted). Likewise, I have an epistemology about discovering natural truths regarding “what might be” but cannot presently be observed. See: Epistemologies of a Mormon Naturalist. For lack of a better word, I will call it my spiritual epistemology (spiritual does not mean supernatural to me, but indicates truths which help me know myself better, including my past, present, and future). Even though I cannot fully explain why it is so, I believe (this is my first article of faith) that my deepest, truest feelings can lead me to truth about the unseen. See: The True Object of our Faith. I believe that this is a sense which must be learned through practice; that I in order to develop it, I must be completely open and honest with myself (something that is difficult to learn); that I must be true to myself; that I must accept and apply all recognized scientific truths to my spiritual understanding; that I must labor with at least the same intensity of mind to discover spiritual truths that I apply to scientific truths. Without this faith I would completely agree that any discussion about the unobservable is pointless and fruitless, but with it I believe we can all come to know absolute spiritual truth for ourselves.

I remember clearly the night I first faced the philosophical divide between my views as scientist Mormon (yes that is the intended order of those two words) and my views as a Scientist. See: The Great Philosophical Divide. It came during the summer I was preparing to teach my first course in Evolutionary Biology to a group of over 400 freshman students, and it launched me through a period of personal crisis which has begun to culminate in both the destruction and rebuilding of every doctrine I once believed, and the personal affirmation of the genius underlying the Mormon approach to religious thought. To be sure, typical Mormon doctrine and thought carries with it the baggage of all human religious (especially Christian) history, and manifests the limitations imposed by the ignorance of ages past, intellectual weakness, and culturally wrought blindness; but at the heart of Mormonism is a natural philosophy, and Naturalism as a philosophy provides the insights necessary to shed this baggage, exposing the underlying principles essential to the discovery and understanding of truth. The point of this blog is to provide a forum where I can develop my thoughts related to this process (doctrinal, political, philosophical,or otherwise) while offering them up for anyone who thinks they may benefit by reading. I do not necessarily expect to have an audience, but if I do, it will most likely be composed of other scientist Mormons; however, for whatever reason I find myself writing as if to my non-religious friends and associates, as if to help them understand my point of view; I will likely write as if both are listening.