SURT notes 1.2.4 p.89

(The idea that time isn't real is an obstacle to understanding God. We try to associate the Aristotelean unmoved mover with the Newtonian observer outside space and time, and we end up with an absurd, omni-God.)

Time is meaningless in a block universe, and is meaningless to an observer outside of time.

Devaluing time is tied to privileging mathematics as reality. The ideas that math is reality and that understanding universal laws will allow us to know all that is, was, and will be is not science. It is philosophy or metaphysical assumptions, and probably not sound, at that.

We do better to put the Newtonian paradigm in its place, to drop the block-universe picture of the universe, to recognize the reality of time all the way down, to dispense with the notion of a framework of natural laws outside time, to admit that the laws of nature may change, and to deflate the claims of mathematics to represent a uniquely privileged channel of insight into reality.

(Dropping the omni-God requires a lot less intellectual stretching and rationalization than maintaining it. We do have to let go of the false comfort of a God in control of everything. A God living in nature with us, however, matches our lived experience better. Saying we are of a substance with God is not the same as saying we know, or can comprehend, everything about God.)

The Big Bang broke the laws as they currently are. Our evidence is that many natural laws aren't constant in time.

We have accepted conceptual maneuvers that disguise contradictions in the cosmological narrative.:

1. Newtonian prediction from initial conditions and laws has been generalized too far, from systems where it applies to the whole universe.
2. Sometimes we assume current conditions in the universe apply throughout time (cosmological presentism). (This can be subtle, I think)
3. We have to have immutable natural laws to be able to do science.
4. Reductionism in cosmology--we can understand all of time and space by studying small parts and extrapolating.

"All of them are tainted . . . by circularity."

. . . consider what the cosmological discoveries of the last hundred years might . . . mean once we relinquish the impulse to reconcile them with the tenets of the time-denying and mathematics-worshipping tradition that we dispute.

The hypotheses of the book:

. . . time is real . . . everything changes . . .mathematics is useful . . . because it abstracts . . . , not because it affords us privileged insight into timeless truth.

According to the predominant view of theories attempting to unify gravity with the other three forces,

The structural explanation is much more likely to help explain the history of the universe than the history of the universe is to explain the present structure.

Accepting the opposite would turn physics into a more narrative science, like history and evolution and social sciences, than the purely theoretical science we have often imagined it to be.

There is better reason to believe today in a succession of causally connected universes than there is to believe in a plurality of causally unconnected universes.

Accepting the multiverse (causally unconnected) prevents the need to deal with the reality of time.

String theory deepens the problems of the unreality of time and the ascendancy of mathematics rather than resolving them.

SURT notes 1.2.3 p.75

What is Natural Philosophy?

Here are some of its enduring characteristics . . .

Its first hallmark is to take nature as its topic: not science but the world itself. . . . Science and natural philosophy have the same subject matter, but not the same powers and methods.

A second characteristic . . . is to question the present agenda or the established methods in particular sciences.

Natural philosophy tries to distinguish what scientists have discovered about nature from their interpretation of these discoveries. [interpretations are more often biased] . . . The cost for relying on [preconceptions] is an unacknowledged blindness: the progress of science requires that they be occasionally identified, resisted, overturned, and replaced.

Natural philosophy can be useful in the early stages of change, but later you need new data.

We deal with problems that are both basic and general. We do so, however, without depending on metaphysical ideas outside or above science.

When we reenvision science (or religion) there are problems with introducing ideas beyond the realm of the testable. No untrammeled speculation (nothing supernatural). The goal is to discuss foundational matters without relying on foundational doctrines (or dogma in the religious context). Natural philosophy isn't science, but it can change science. (It isn't revelation, but it can shape revelation.) Expectations shape the path.

Natural philosophy is different from the detailed daily science of a field. Daily science can gradually force change of fundamental assumptions and frameworks.

Philosophical or theological discourse can point to new possibilities, even though they can't establish validity.

Such a change may be motivated by the hope that it will throuw surprising and revealing light on well-established facts and suggest a shift of direction: a new way of looking at the familiar, offering a path into the unfamiliar.

That experiment changes theory implies that speculating on theory is worthwhile so long as it could effect experiment. (Theological speculation is useful when it influences how we practice religion.)

Meta-discourse is more often interdisciplinary and able to question field specific orthodoxies. (Science and religion can help each other ask better questions, even when they can't give each other answers.)

Reform is the typical mode of change. Revolution is the limiting case of extreme change. (I can contribute to revolution through persistent reform.)

Institutions and ideologies that foster criticism and revision allow more constant social change:

An institutional and ideological ordering of social life can have, in superior degree, the attribute of laying itself open to criticism and revision.

Some conditions for freedom and for adaptable societies:

Practical progress requires freedom to experiment and to recombine not just things but also people, practices, and ideas. Moral emancipation demands that we be able to relate to another as the context and role-transcending individuals that we now all hope to be, rather than as placeholders in some grinding scheme of hierarchical order and pre-established division in society. Neither of these two sets of requirements is likely to be satisfied unless we succeed in building societies and cultures that facilitate their own reconstruction, weakening the power of the past to define the future and diminishing the extent to which crisis must serve as midwife to change.

(Are you creating the need for crisis?)

Having an ideology or institution that can be fixed is more important than having one that is right. "Corrigibility supersedes finality." We can be fully committed to an organization that values correction even if it is sometimes wrong. (When an organization ceases to allow for substantial change, how should we relate to it?)

We can engage in such an order, even single-mindedly and whole-heartedly, without surrendering to it. In the midst of our ordinary business, we can keep the last word to ourselves rather than giving it to the regime. In this way, the social world that we inhabit becomes less of a place of exile and torment; it no longer separates us from ourselves by exacting surrender as the price of engagement and isolation as the price of transcendence.

(If Mormonism is correctable, I can belong and be independent. The false dichotomy of blind faith vs. rebellion is broken.)

An institutional and ideological framework of social life that is endowed with this power to facilitate its own remaking enjoys an evolutionary advantage over the rivals.

(God is not dead, but fundamentalism will always die. Dogma will eventually change to something more substantial, or it will also die.) Our available choices evolve as our institutions and ideologies evolve.

Natural philosophy should revisit fundamentals, connect fields, discuss big picture ideas, not just details.

Popular science is where natural philosophy is currently done.

 The popularizing books have become a secret form of the vanished genre, a crypto natural philosophy.

In this respect, the arbiter of science is practical success: success at guiding intervention and at correcting perception.

(The arbiter of Mormonism should be the same. "By their fruits . . .")

Its assumptions about the workings of nature can be both parsimonious and accommodating because they are likely to be compatible with a range of different conceptions of how part of nature is organized.

(With orthopraxy as judge, orthodoxy can be accommodating.)

There is always more than one consistent view of reality.

Science can't avoid assumptions, so assumptions need to be explicit and evaluated explicitly. The bigger your claims, the more significant your assumptions are likely to be. Most scientists will not recognize their assumptions. (Most receivers of revelation will not recognize the assumptions that color their interpretation of the revelation.)

. . . a major scientific system represents . . . a frozen natural philosophy, just as an established institutional and ideological regime amounts to a frozen politics. . . . it becomes . . . entrenched against challenge.

(Correlation is at the same time a useful aid for diffusing knowledge and a frozen theology, entrenched against change.)

We need antidotes to our biases: "Natural philosophy . . . can provide an antidote to metaphysical bias, when such bias is disguised as empirical truth."

Natural philosophy can confront disparate fields and methodologies. Major changes in thought will also change practice. (Applying scientific methods to religion and vice versa can check our biases. Religious and scientific methods will not replace each other, they will remove unreal roadblocks that resulted from institutionalization.)

The point will rarely be to replace the procedures of one science with those of another; it will more often be to remove the impediments that a methodological prejudice imposes on a substantive reorientation.

Analogy can start you on new ways of thinking.

We desire speculative ideas with real consequences, not just detached analysis of science. (Mormon Transhumanism is not simply speculative theology. We practice theology to help us act, and right theology is vindicated by its fruits.)

Its proposals grow in interest if . . . they express physical intuitions and anticipate pathways of empirical inquiry.

But speculations, even vindicated, are foreshadowing, not the final word.

[Speculation] can help draw around the canon of established science a larger penumbra of untapped intellectual opportunity.

Math is a tool, not the judge of right and wrong.

If mathematics were everything that those who believe in its premonitory powers make it out to be, natural philosophy would be both less useful and less dangerous than it is.

 

SURT notes I.2.2 p.67

Once we free ourselves from the superstitions that prompt us to see the study of society and history as weak biology and biology as weak physics, we are free to recognize these analogies and to learn from them.

Prejudice against other disciplines doesn't make us better scientists. History and social science have a richer tool set than physical sciences.

In this pursuit, the mind can stock itself with intellectual resources, richer than those that the traditions of physical science make available, with which to confront the tasks of natural philosophy. They are resources with which to reimagine the relation of laws, or other regularities, to states of affairs, of history to structure, and of the repetitions to the new.

Math is useless:

It is futile to look, as natural scientists are accustomed to do, to mathematics for inspiration in the solution of these problems. What we find in mathematics is a peerless body of conceptions of the most general relations among features of the world, robbed, however, of all phenomenal particularity and temporal depth: a lifeless and faceless terracotta army.

Math will be useful after we know what it needs to describe. Math doesn't tell you what reality is.

Laws of economic systems are falsely universal:

What the economists took to be the universal laws of economic life were, by the terms of this criticism, only the laws of one particular "mode of production": capitalism. The were, in the conventional language of today's philosophy of science, effective rather than fundamental laws. The false universality claimed on their behalf rendered them misleading even for the historically specific domain to which they properly applied.

Stable institutions are interruptions of the struggle over terms of social life.

The harder they are to challenge and to change, the more they assume the false appearance of natural phenomena.

If that is how it has "always been", it takes on the appearance of eternal law. If we take a different view of institutions, we will be able to make small changes in them more continuously and easily without crisis.

The idea that structures of society represent artifacts of our own creation . . . failed to develop. . . . It was stopped from such an evolution by its juxtaposition . . . with ideas that limited its reach and compromised its force. These compromises were the illusions of false necessity. Three such illusions have exercised paramount influence.

The first illusion has been the idea of a closed list of alternative institutional and ideological systems. . . .

The second illusion has been the idea that each such type is an indivisible system, all the parts of which stand or fall together. . . .

The third illusion has been the idea that higher-order laws of historical change drive forward the succession of indivisible institutional systems in history. . . .

Institutions favor these illusions, I think. They preclude the need for substantive change and at the same time set the current institution apart as inevitable and better than everything that is past.

In fact, the fundamental laws of history do not exist. History has no script. There is nevertheless a path-dependent trajectory of constraints and causal connections that are no less real because we are unable to infer them from laws of historical change. We can build the next steps in historical experience only with the materials--physical, institutional, and conceptual--made available by what came before. However, the force and character of this legacy of constraint is itself up for grabs in history. By creating institutional and ideological stsructures that facilitate their own revision and diminish the dependence of change on crisis, we can lighten the burden of the past.

(Joseph Smith put lots of things in place to allow for continual change. Why do we saddle ourselves to ideologies that resist that change?)

In the subsequent history of social theory, these three necessitarian illusions have ceased, increasingly, to be believable. Yet students of society continue to use a vocabulary that relies on them and to display habits of mind formed through their use.

The illusions of the closed list of alternative institutional systems and of their indivisibility have sometimes survived, in a climate of half-belief.

Such effective [not eternal] laws, however, emerge and evolve together with the formations themselves. No fundamental laws stand behind them guiding their co-evolution. It is a view reminiscent of ways of thinking long established, although also unexplained, in the life sciences, but, to this day, foreign to physics.

(We've seen firsthand the evolution of religious law adapted to the day, but still want to identify anything we don't want to change as eternal and timeless. Maybe none of it is timeless.)

Declaring private property and free contract as the winners of evolution gives a veneer of inevitability inconsistent with real history of social structures.

The past matters, but it doesn't rule:

We must acknowledge the reality of constraint and the power of sequence that help explain the prevailing arrangements and assumptions. We must acknowledge it, however, without conferring on such influences a mendacious semblance of necessity and authority.

(As Gods we must recognize that the adjacent possible is constrained by the past, but not set up artificial constraints for it.)

We must reestablish the indispensable link . . . between insight into the actual and exploration of the adjacent possible. On this basis, we must exercise the prerogative of the programmatic imagination: the vision of alternatives, connected by intermediate steps to the here and now, especially alternative institutional forms of democracy, markets, and free civil societies.

We can change society and history consciously, but nature can't consciously change itself--unless we learn to do it:

The institutional and ideological regimes melt down periodically in those incandescent moments, of practical and visionary strife, and become, at such times, more available to reshaping. So, too, nature passes through times in which its arrangements break down and its regularities undergo accelerated change. A difference is that we can hope to change forever the character of the structures and their relation to our structure-defying freedom. Nature, so far as we know, enjoys no such escape.

(I have the impression that many conservatives recognize the need for businesses to adapt and be agile to succeed over time, but don't want their governments or religions to do the same. Those should not be contextually true, but absolutely correct for all people and for all time. Is this insistence the reason that significant change requires revolution? How much are radicals who say they won't accept measured change really responsible for problems they create through radical action? How much of their revolutionary excess would be blunted by institutions with mechanisms for continual change? I think a lot. I think to succeed as Gods we will have to learn to live in continual change.)

The Problem of Pain

The following post was published on The Transfigurist on 4/26/2016

The problem of pain is not in its logic. It only defeats false Gods, or Gods unconstrained by the realities of the nature we live daily.

The problem of pain is in the gut wrenching sadness of watching a parent lose a child and thinking of your own precious children. Of watching a man or woman lose the love of their life. Of watching families uprooted, homeless and cast upon the whims of unwilling strangers, thinking of the time you were jobless, homeless, and on the road with two kids, whatever stuff you could fit in a sedan, and only safe because of the luck of belonging to a family able to help. Of visiting your neighbor and smiling and talking like good neighbors do, but noticing empty cupboards in their tiny, broken, rented home, knowing your kids--who may be limited in where they go to college by what scholarships they can get--will be going to college (or its future counterpart), but who knows where these childhood friends will go from this tiny town with one in six adults unemployed. Of walking by the friendly old man who is always out giving candy to kids on Halloween, with a smile and happy words, and seeing his perpetual rummage sale--and realizing how poor many of your neighbors must be for his to be even a marginal business--selling stuff you wouldn't even donate to a second hand store or give to a friend.

That is the problem of pain. When I don't shut it down or blame it on somebody so I can pretend it's fair, or at least deserved, I see it for what it is. It is evil. It hurts. It hurts even when it doesn't hurt us. We hurt and we rage at injustice. At an unjust universe. At an unjust God. Yeah, even the Gods that might be real. They aren't stopping the pain. They aren't fixing the problems. Even if they might fix them later--balancing out all that wrong on some imagined scale of eternal justice--that doesn't do squat for here and now. What's unrighteous about that anger? Anger at big, powerful people, comfortable in their positions, with enough resources to fix things if they cared enough? You want to know how I'll react if you tell me that anger's unrighteous? Probably you don't, but I probably wouldn't react much. Everybody says dumb things. It's a pain, but usually not much. I've survived worse.

But when my heart hurts, when I see happy kids with deprived futures, when I see kind, uncomplaining people with no hope or purpose but to get by until they die, when I feel irreparable loss--big or small--sometimes I either cry or scream, or both. Maybe not on the outside, but maybe so. And it doesn't matter that our Heavenly Parents have an answer. Especially not since that answer seems to be that the universe is unjust and uncaring--even the one they live in. It's just pain. There is no fix. There is no right answer.

One thing that makes it better for me? We cry together. We scream and rage against that pain together, and we say NO! NO PAIN HERE! NOT IF I HAVE ANYTHING TO SAY ABOUT IT! And sometimes we do have a say, so we do something. But sometimes we don't, so we still scream. We still cry. And we love each other, because that's all we can do. We create that out of the uncaring universe. Maybe we have to live forever with the problem of pain. Whatever explanation we give, it's still pain. But every loving being we make in this universe--as parents here, or as Parents hereafter--makes the universe care that much more.

Image Credit: Wellcome Trust

How I wish my students would read science: a case study on Gender Ideology

I have wondered about the issue of Gender Dysphoria, and when several of my friends and acquaintances posted links to a position statement by the American College of Pediatricians, I was interested. Even as a public LGBTQ ally, I continue to be sceptical of positions that fail to recognize the predominant biological sex binary. I was encouraged as I began reading the ACP position that it distinguished between the clinical definitions of sex and gender, since we often don't understand this distinction because of less specific definitions of the words in common speech. Here I'm going to model stream of consciousness how I read a scientific argument like that made by the ACP, and the kind of thinking I try to model for my Biochemistry students as we work through scientific arguments. We usually don't pick such ideologically controversial topics, but there is still plenty of ambiguity in Biochemistry.

Initial Impressions

The American College of Pediatricians webpage looked like a valid organization of health care professionals. (I believe it is, even with what I later discovered about the group).

The first point highlighted the predominant sexual binary and its import for continuation of the species. Both facts that concord with my prejudices and understanding. While we don't need every individual to reproduce for survival, we need most individuals to reproduce. But the ACP paper failed to even acknowledge that sex is determined by many more genetic factors than those found on the X and Y chromosome, and they identified all variation from the binary as a disorder. This very black and white oversimplification made me uncomfortable.

At point 2 they recognize the sociological and psychological contributions to gender. Gender is significantly defined by culture and psychology (some have argued completely, but I suspect this doesn't reflect a typically more ambiguous reality). That gender is significantly culturally defined also agreed with my understanding and biases. But once again their statement is black and white, not recognizing any genetic or epigenetic component to gender identity. This increased my discomfort.

The first sentences on point 3 made me uncomfortable--implying a very strong separation between mind and body, psychological and physical problems, that I'm not sure is justified scientifically. In the remainder of the point they identify gender dysphoria as a recognized psychological problem by citing the DSM-V, a diagnostic manual which tends to contain the broad consensus standards by which American psychologists work. This inclined me to believe that gender dysphoria is a problem, and increased their credibility in my emotions.

With point 4 they state something that seems self-evident to me, and a reason I think puberty delaying drugs should be approached with _extreme_ caution. They said that puberty is not a disorder, and delaying it is a disorder. While I still was uncomfortable about the lack of nuance (delaying puberty is sometimes a smaller problem than the alternative), it further inclined me to believe them.

At point 5 I thought, if only 98% of gender dysphoric boys and 88% of gender dysphoric girls resolve their gender dysphoria after puberty, we really shouldn't give them puberty delaying drugs that come with real health risks (points 6-8). But the words "as many as" gave me pause once again. Why are they saying "as many as"? If there is a number, you should look into it. If there isn't a number, you should be dubious of the claims.

Then points 6-8 seemed to be continuing a rhetorical trend that made me uncomfortable. 6 implies that all children who delay puberty will choose to undergo sex changes. It took me a minute to think about it, but while delaying puberty is partly for the purpose of making later sex change less difficult, it is explicitly for the child to have more time to mature and make a very difficult, life-altering decision. Yes, the child is still too young to make a fully mature decision, but at least the child is an older teen rather than a young teen or preteen. And it isn't the puberty delaying drugs with the health risks, as at least one of my friends understood after reading the ACP statement. It's the cross-sex drugs. If this is a scientific statement, they should be justifying these claims with numbers, or make it clear that they are speculating and give justifications for their extrapolations. What is their evidence that children who delay puberty invariably choose sex-change and its associated risks instead of resolving their gender dysphoria and undergoing late, but otherwise normal, puberty? They don't provide links for this, so it looks a lot like a slippery slope argument, and further reason for concern.

Point 7 then compares suicide rates among cross-sex adults over an unspecified period of time with what will happen to children who undergo the same procedure much earlier and after delaying puberty. It is reason for concern, but it is apples and pears (related, but not the same). They do provide a reference to the peer reviewed article, which is good, but they don't even provide a link. And the journal it is published in is in the Public Library of Science. That means it is free online. Why, in such an important statement, would you not take the minute required to provide your readers with a link to the original research? This made me look at the other references more closely. While the references are sound, none of them provide clickable links, despite many of them being freely available online. This is disturbing in an organization that claims professionalism.

But I had only done some of this analysis by the first read through. I had noticed numerous red flags, but all the things that accorded with some of my prejudices, and the proper science-speak on other points, made me inclined to believe the the ACP conclusion in point 8 that using drugs to delay puberty is probably harmful. I wasn't comfortable with calling it abuse--especially since I was aware of a study that found that children who delayed puberty were just as happy in their 20s as their peers who did not, so I had memories that gave pause to claims of abuse. But I though, we probably shouldn't be delaying puberty for most cases of gender dysphoria if it only helps such a small percentage of the already small percentage of children with gender dysphoria.

Looking Further

I still had to relieve my concerns with the red flags. I made myself look further. The comments of another interested party on Facebook helped, but it turns out it isn't hard to discover something about the ACP by a simple Wikipedia search:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_College_of_Pediatricians

This group consists of 60-200 members--except that's an estimate because they don't publish how many members they have, just the credentials of a few. That's compared to the American Association of Pediatrics 64,000 members. So it comprises at most 0.1-0.3% of American pediatricians. So this statement is officially supported by only a very small percentage of pediatricians.

I read the follow up clarifications on points 3 and 5. Instead of 2 and 12% of male and female children that don't resolve gender dysphoria, it may be 30 and 50% that don't resolve after puberty. Most likely it's somewhere in between, maybe 1 in 6 males and 1 in 4 females. Where are the recommendations of the ACP for those children? Are those children simply broken and not valuable? The ACP position is clearly that they are broken.

I then went to the "about" page and read it. The ACP makes it clear that they are starting from an ideological position: "We expect societal forces to support the two-parent, father-mother family unit and provide for children role models of ethical character and responsible behavior."

Scientific Merit

At this point, I would hope it is clear to any of my students that the ACP position statement is of dubious scientific quality. Before concluding that my beliefs are scientifically justified, I should be going to other sources. The Wikipedia article suggested a likely one, so I looked it up. Here it is, Just the Facts about Sexual Orientation and Youth from the American Psychological Association. Just having skimmed a few parts, it's a much more useful read--broadly informative, more nuanced, and less dogmatic in its claims. Clearly more focused on caring for the child rather than asserting an absolute societal norm.

So while I don't think I disagree with any of the facts presented in the ACP position paper, and I agree with the recognition of gender dysphoria as a problem, I am back to believing that the best way to address the problem is to give parents and health care providers tools and choices. They are working directly with the children, so give them best tools available and the right to do their best to help their children as they see fit. Do you imagine the parents care more about a sexual agenda than about their own children? Maybe a few, but I doubt many. I'm sure they will sometimes make mistakes, and that cultural norms sometimes hurt children, but we've been ideologically hurting 2-30% and 12-50% of these children for generations without any possible help for them. I'm glad that doctors are trying to help this small population, and hopeful that over time they will figure out the best ways to do it based on empirical observation more than on ideology.

Interacting with the Disaffected from Mormonism

I continue to be a believer in Mormonism. I don't think many people who know me question this, even if as practicing Latter-day Saints they think I could be more committed to my ward or the LDS church, even if they question my understanding of doctrine or faith, or what it means to follow God, or even if they know my sins and failings. Doubters and unbelievers don't hesitate to identify me as believing, if they think about it. Yet I have spent some significant time and energy over a period of years interacting with and learning from many who question and criticize Mormonism at different levels, some who leave or have left, and a smaller fraction of those who have become critics of Mormonism or religion generally. A friend asked me for advice on interacting with friends who are also critics of Mormonism. Here's my advice:

Do your best to muddle through as lovingly and sanely as possible.

But now for an answer that is really a personal reflection. What do I try to do? What do I succeed in doing? I have several answers. Here is a list as they come to mind:

• I spent time getting to know what critics were talking about. I read critical and apologetic material, and I read scholarly material. I read and enjoyed the softer scholarship of Hugh Nibley (I like his peer reviewed stuff on the ancient world really well, too), as well as the alternative framings of Mormonism provided by writers like Eugene England and some scientist saints in stories and testimonies like those posted in Mormon Scholars Testify, and before that in the book Expressions of Faith (My dad's testimony is included. His and Paul Cox's are two of my favorites.) 
• I also read some "New Mormon History" somewhat randomly. I didn't know people who could recommend the best stuff. Now you can find great recommendations like this top 10 list discussed in Rational Faiths podcasts.
• I listened to lots of podcasts to learn more about LDS history and doctrine. In the process I learned a lot about LDS culture, and the intimate details of the stresses people feel as members of the LDS church. It's worth listening to people's stories. Perhaps worth more than listening to the interviews with experts, but I loved many of those, too.
• I started engaging with the disaffected. I like this term, because I think it describes so many of us so well. We have lost affection for the LDS church, perhaps Mormonism generally, and maybe even religion and God. The degree varies. I still feel a lot of affection for all of these things, but not as much love and trust of leaders and institutional structures. But I am much more than acquaintances with people along a multidimensional spectrum of disaffection.

I suppose now I'm getting to how I engaged and how I engage with the disaffected.

• I don't engage much, now. I engaged most when I was trying to figure out what I thought on dozens of issues. Now it's mostly just with loved ones.
• I try to be willing to validate emotions. I'm convinced emotions are real and matter. When a person feels betrayed or angry, that is really how they feel. There are real reasons for it or causes of it. Their perception is a valid reality whether I share that reality or not. I don't get to say people are wrong for experiencing their own experiences.
• I try to be informed and validate factual observations that are unflattering to Mormonism. If you are my close friend, I might even tell you I think something you think is evil is evil.
• I try to assume the best of every party--present or not, public figure or private individual. I want people to think I'm thoughtful, loving, principled, etc. So yes, I spin news and arguments to make everyone look as good as I can.
• I share and write criticism when I feel like I need to. But when it's criticism, I sit on it for a while to see if I really feel like saying it and if I can say it in more understanding ways.
• I share and write apologetics when I feel like it. I hope I'm rarely insensitive, but I like explaining ideas I think are valuable and comparing them with alternative ideas.
• Mostly with all of this I just tell my story. Sometimes my story is an attempted logical argument. Sometimes it's an emotional plea. But I try to show real respect that others can have different, morally justified, stories.
• When I disagree and feel like it needs to be said--maybe because I imagine there is an impressionable audience--I try to disagree pleasantly and not worry about winning a debate. I try to bow out considerately and let others have the last say (except to maybe show that I heard and understand what they said)--most of the time. I'm convinced that's as effective as debating for influencing people in most settings.
• I post my thoughts mostly on blogs where people have to actually go a little out of the way to read my full thoughts. I love it when people listen to me or read my words, but they need space for their words, too. They also need space to not care about me. Especially since, you know, I'm a white, heterosexual, educated, lifetime Mormon, American male. That doesn't mean my voice doesn't count, but my life is pretty well represented in the Bloggernacle. I need to be willing to step out of the spotlight, however much I love an audience.

I love several disaffected Mormons. Not just like. So I'm sensitive to their feelings. I love many whole-life committed LDSs. So I'm sensitive to their feelings. I don't always act sensitively, but I feel remorse when I realize a slight. I muddle on and keep trying to love both groups. Sometimes it's easier for me to love one more than the other, but mostly I'm just learning how to be comfortable perpetually in between.

Hard Questioning

I wrote most of this a couple of years ago when I was unsettled by this topic. I still think most of these thoughts are accurate. I'm less invested in the outcomes, since I no longer see myself as having a future of potential influence within the standard structures of the LDS church. Partly because I feel these things less, I'm finally ready to share them and hope that others will recognize these same issues and enact changes that will make Mormonism even better. I plan to keep working to improve the things in the world that God seems to be leading me towards, and I'll keep doing what I can to build Zion.

Questioning and Getting Answers

What is the experience of questioning and getting answers in the LDS church? I really thought about this a lot a couple of years ago after listening to the interview with Hans and Birgitta Mattson on Mormon Stories. How does one learn more than has been taught, or unlearn a mistaken teaching? Few of us doubt the existence of mistakes in past and current LDS teachings, but what is the experience of learning more--or differently--than the current, dominant teachings?

Hans and Birgitta Mattson's experiences and my thoughts

From the experience of Hans Mattson, it is clear that general leadership is extremely busy with administrative functions. They have little time or energy for theological and doctrinal thought that is not related to policy or immediate action. They have to steal that time from their busy days just like the rest of us, and maybe more than most of us. Asking difficult historical or doctrinal questions of general authorities is discouraged by the culture, according to Brother Mattson (and my experience/perception). Most of us just don't have access. This is one of the drawbacks of a very flat structure where nearly everything is done at the local level. The very few general authorities just can't physically do much more than the essentials, and they have decided answering historical and doctrinal or theological questions is not usually essential. Unfortunately, access isn't the only obstacle. Sometimes leaders--at different levels in the heirarchy--actively discourage questioning and searching. Also culturally, we most often say that only one person is allowed to get revelation on troubling theological questions (or at least allowed to express revelations publicly). Unfortunately, this is the same person saddled with the most administrative responsibility. There are also many teachings that we should seek our own inspiration and not rely on the prophet for everything. We need to learn to trust ourselves. It's understandable that many mid-ranking leaders would wish to spare their potentially overburdened superiors from frivolous demands, but all actions have consequences. So what is the fallout if an ordinary member, who will never get to know the Prophet, seeks his or her own answer? This is what I've seen and imagined:

1. The new answer agrees with something already revealed, and everyone is happy. 
2. The individual is satisfied to keep a subversive or contrary answer private, and everyone is happy. 
3. The answer disagrees with current policy and is made public:
1. It is minor enough, or local leaders are tolerant enough that the breach is allowed to exist.
2. The person is alienated into leaving the LDS church, or at least decreasing activity.
3. The person is disciplined into silence or leaving. 
4. The disagreement with current policy or doctrinal perceptions is not of a kind that leaders and members fully recognize or understand, or it agrees with broader cultural norms so much that it gets ignored or accepted without conscious reflection.
5. The issue is passed up the line until:
1. It is stopped and the idea is silenced or disciplined.
2. The president of the church takes it under consideration and we receive new guidance on the subject that is then instituted as a top down policy. 

Seeking an Official Answer

What does a member do who wants an official answer? This has always seemed reasonable to me, since we are told that we should seek answers from God, that God only speaks to the whole world, officially, through His Prophet, and some of the things we want answers for effect the whole world. How can that member know if an answer is being sought, or if the best questions are being taken to the Lord in prayer? If there are discussions of difficult historical, doctrinal, or social issues going on among church leaders--if revelation is being sought--how can a member know it?

1. Trust it is happening, or that it isn't really important, because the Lord is at the head of the church.
2. Infer it from public statements or policy changes, or hear it through rumors of varied quality. 
3. Some lucky members can know what's being thought about from family and personal connections.
4. Ask church leaders, but at best receive an acknowledgement your question was noticed, and at worst be sent back to ask powerless local leaders.

Knowledge Accessible to Ordinary Members

Ordinary members, and even leaders not in the privy councils, don't know what is being discussed, how it is being discussed, who is discussing it, what information is available to those discussing, what questions are being asked, what revelation is being sought, etc. They don't know the members of the 12 or other high leaders. What can most members know about church leaders? They may have:

1. A personal testimony of the calling.
2. A sense that these are loving, well-intentioned men (when you have any personal contact with them).
3. Lots of stories of in the moment, personal, or administrative inspiration.
4. Official church publications.
5. Public speeches.
6. Public policy decisions and webpages, sometimes filtered through several layers of governance.
7. Several, infrequent statements, both scriptural and extra scriptural, that affirm the humanity, frailty, and fallibility of our leaders, and that we err when we expect them to be free from weakness or limitations.
8. Several, but more frequent, statements that leaders are inspired and following God.
9. Occasional teachings that God speaks according to our understanding and preparation.
10. Teachings that we should be seeking and acting on our own revelation.

Many people feel unheard, unrepresented, and even unwelcome within the LDS church. This seems like a problem to me. We aspire to be at one, to take the Gospel to the whole world, and to save all humanity, so when we fall short because of our own choices it seems like a problem.

Projecting Onto Leaders

I'm going to project, now, onto my church leaders. All of them grew up pre-internet. Almost all of them, and perhaps all, grew up in a world where Mormonism wasn't respected. Many governments around the world did not officially recognize the LDS church. They knew people persecuted--truly, legally persecuted--by the country they lived in because they were trying to live their religion. They all understand that the sacred is not to be made public, so they understand keeping secrets. They have seen the fallout of public disagreements on inflammatory issues. I imagine that all these things lead to a bias against openness--a wariness. It's also possible that leaders are nearly as open as ever, but the church has gotten so big that size has effectively closed off the workings of leadership from the average member. Whatever the reasons, leaders keep decision making processes opaque to the vast majority of members. There are real, human dangers to openness. Unfortunately, we are experiencing the real, human dangers of opacity.

The Ideals I Hope For

I believe the ideal is complete transparency. We all struggle to do our parts, just as the Prophet does his, and while we don't flaunt our weaknesses, we don't seek to cover them. We create ways for the voices of the poor and the alienated to be heard, and we become of one heart and one mind.

The reality is, you open up and it's likely someone will slam you. So how can we, as we move in and out of positions of influence in the LDS church, change the institution toward the ideal of at-one-ment without opening it to destruction in this world red in tooth and claw?

I hope we can each and all begin to accept the responsibility to change this Church and Kingdom of God into the society where we are truly at one. We have a great starting place--a vast community where people teach and learn and give. What can we do to make it a place where we are changing hearts towards the vulnerability of Zion? If we want a community of gods--gods who don't have to turn to authority for every answer, because at some point there will be no higher authority or more knowledgeable expert--what must we do?

I think many of the tools are at hand. I also think we will have to use them in unsettling ways for many currently in authority and out--from the bottom to the top. I hope we will get started, anyway.

The Religious Marketplace

I listened to a brief interview with Jonathan Haidt in which he was asked if religion does more harm or good. He hesitated briefly because his answer was yes and no. He observed that in places like the United States, where there is robust competition among the different religious sects, religious people contribute more to society in a number of measurable ways than their non-religious counterparts. In places where one religion has a dominant control of society, the resulting evils can be very great.

Are Utah Mormons better people because they feel like their religion is in competition, even though it is the dominant religion in the area? I think the answer is yes and no. When that competition inspires them to choose to be a light to the world, it's clearly yes--institutionalized gambling, that we know makes most of its money off of the poor, less educated, and vulnerably compulsive, is still illegal there, thank God. And I love their example of housing the homeless. But not all the examples are good, of course. Would they be worse people if they felt like they could control society more? I expect so.

I don't have much more to say on it. I hope that when we find ourselves in any position of power that we actively seek compromise with those without or with less. I believe this means relinquishing some of our power and turning over a portion of real control to those who are differ from us and who are vulnerable. I can say right now that they will sometimes do things we don't want. But I truly believe it will make us better people and it will make for us a better world.

The Past: from Aspiration to Inspiration

Just published this on Rational Faiths. Probably slightly more polished there.

The Restoration Completed

I have very nearly finished reading every general conference talk given by the first four presidents of the LDS church: Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, John Taylor, and Wilford Woodruff. As I'm working through Wilford Woodruff, a trend has stood out to me because it is in such contrast to my current life. Here are some quotes from 4 October 1890:

Our Heavenly Father revealed from heaven, over sixty years ago, to the inhabitants of the earth, through the mouth of the Prophet of God, whom He raised up, that He had set His hand once more, for the last time, to prune His vineyard and to prepare the people of the earth for the coming of the Son of Man.

These are some of the principles that have been taught from the time of Father Adam down to that of every Patriarch, Prophet, Apostle--and even the Savior himself--in their day and generation, as the only Gospel ever revealed to the human family in any age of the world. There has never been but one Gospel; that Gospel is "the same today, yesterday and forever." That Gospel is the same that was taught by Adam to his children; which Elijah, Methuselah, and all the ancient prophets and patriarchs taught to their posterity, and the inhabitants of the earth.

Now words like these aren't really very different from things Joseph or Brigham said, but something significant changed in the practical understanding of these ideas. You see, with Joseph, he thought he was simply restoring past teachings that had been lost. In many instances that is demonstrably true--Joseph was bringing together ideas that existed but were no longer part of Christendom. But the practical effect of viewing himself as a restorer of things that had been lost was an intense newness to much of what he did. Joseph looked back toward a past that was either lost, or had never really existed, and his resulting teachings and actions were effectively a projection into the future of the world he hoped to create. To paraphrase him, if we end up in Hell, we will cast out the devils and make a Heaven of it. Practically speaking, Joseph was about creating the future, not recreating the past--whatever he said or thought to the contrary.

Brigham Young was much the same. For years he hung on Joseph's every word, and he never lost sight of that, but Brigham acted like most everything was still up for modification. He repeatedly changed the temple ceremonies. He changed who could get the priesthood. He said if Joseph were to translate the Book of Mormon again, it would probably be substantially different. He experimented with the structure of the United Order. Brigham looked to past prophets, and quoted them when it suited him, but he wasn't shy about using their teachings to promote his modern agenda.

John Taylor was interesting and a little dull. He spent much of his presidency in hiding, writing long general addresses to the church while he avoided arrest for polygamy. Polygamy overshadowed most other topics, and he frequently wrote about hanging onto Joseph's teachings despite the pressures to let them go. It was almost like he didn't have time or energy to do more than defend what already was against active attack from the outside. He probably didn't.

Wilford Woodruff largely ended the conflict with the outside world after the declaration ending polygamy (or beginning the end of polygamy), but it seems like a consequence of this was the need to show that the current church was still the same as the past church. In effect, revelatory innovation all but died at this point.

Living the Restoration

As with many others, I spent my youth looking to know Joseph, looking to understand the Restoration he began, and looking for the light he revealed about God and Jesus. Things long lost could now be understood! Listen to our living prophets, and all we need to live holy lives would be given us, if we listened carefully enough and obeyed as best we could. And like many others, I tried to balance the listening to prophets with listening to the Holy Ghost--something all the prophets told us we should be doing. I tried to balance personal and institutional revelation. At some point my experiences, study, and natural inclinations led me to recognize conflicts between my personal experience of God and goodness and various cultural norms. Later on I began to recognize differences between my own revelation and institutional revelation. I found that more and more of my real questions were not well answered by appeals to past prophets. I could find inspiration in their words. I could often interpret their words in ways that gave me useful answers. But the answers weren't really in their words. The answers were in other books I read with, for example, more detailed information about the history of life on earth, with more thorough, statistical analyses of parenting and relationships, with more specialized knowledge of social and individual psychology, or with more technical knowledge about likely future trends in technology and its influence on the future of humanity. Looking to past prophets was answering fewer and fewer of my unanswered questions.

What of looking to living prophets? Feel free to evaluate the evidence yourself, but I began to notice that most of what they taught referenced past prophets. This makes great sense to me, but it means that little that they teach answers my unanswered questions.

Now it would be wrong to say that I don't look to the past. I am constantly reading books that by definition are past knowledge. Many of the books I read and love aren't even recent. I still derive great worth from dead prophets--even thousands of years dead. But I have lost the religion of my youth. I have lost the wonder at finding everything important I wanted to know had been talked about by a past prophet. I haven't lost the desire to learn from history. I still think we must learn from it or suffer the same errors, but I no longer yearn for a magical past--the days of Adam when everyone had the unadulterated Gospel nearly straight from the mouth of God.

Still Longing for Zion

I haven't lost my longing for Zion. I have lost any hope that we can build it by recreating the city of Enoch or Mesoamerica after Christ's visit. That isn't our world. Our world is now, and our world is coming. We are shaped by the past. We are wise to look to the past. But I have lost the trust in the past I had as a youth. The trust I have left is really a hope--a hope that God is there, a hope that our Heavenly Parents really set us on a path to be like them, a hope that we really can partake of the Atonement and become one as children of Heavenly Parents.

I'm still a believer that the most important task of this life is to show we are morally good--especially loving--individuals. That's it. Love. Everything else is secondary, or as Paul put it, without Love I'm just a noise maker. But for me the best expression of that love is how I contribute to building Zion. And for me building Zion is about looking to the future. It isn't about getting ordinances (that I imagined were more constant than they ever really were) to all the world. It isn't about spreading sound bites about the nature of God to all the world. But I still believe in doing those things, because it is about covenanting with the world to take upon me their burdens. To live with them throughout eternity, knowing that I will sometimes hurt them and they will sometimes hurt me. It is about sharing what truth I have and looking to learn from their truths. And that covenant has never changed. It has never lost its value. God's promise to save his children--every single one who will be saved--has been around forever. At least I hope so. That's my faith in the past. That's why I long for a Mormonism that is more about living the restoration than about knowing what has already been done. A Mormonism that judges what is right by its fruits more than by what a past prophet has said.

Maybe it's a stage of life. I physically and socially can't be part of Mormonism the way I was as a youth. I can't serve in church the way I did from age 18 to 37, so I have to see Mormonism differently or simply accept that I'm a bad Mormon--and maybe I don't want to accept that. But I like to think that life pushing me to the fringe of Mormonism has given me added perspective. I like to think it has given me more empathy. I like to think it has given me clearer direction about how I, in my special life that Heavenly Mother and Father laid out just for me, how I am to show that I'm a loving being. How I am supposed to help build Zion. How I am to give my all to build up the kingdom of God. For me it seems to mean more imagining the future, inspired by the past, and less aspiring to the past.

Easter Wanderings

Prone to Wander, Lord

2001

He wanders far from crowds, on quiet paths,

Slowly, in dark thoughts of human weakness,

In shade of trees and guilt, in cold iso-

lation of an early winter morning

And narcissistic self-pity.  But one

Prone to wander is not prone to stop

For long.  Even in despair he’ll wander

Through this vale of fears, and shadows give way

To fields and the bright risen sun and hope

Of the new day—another chance to give.

Warm sunlight and chance encounters drive

Out cold as friends and couples walk through fall

Reds and yellows.  Authors, poets, and prophets

Turn dark thoughts and keep the wanderer company,

And family stories chase his blank, cold stare.

Maybe a smile, a greeting, or a tear

Wanders on the wanderer’s face, and prayer

Wanders into his heart as he wanders

Back to his home and to his Father’s rest.

I used to do a lot of walking. Now I'm on the brink of becoming a "soccer dad" (you can't get your kids to their friends houses without driving). But I think my mind and heart are still wandering toward home. It's nice that I don't wander alone much, anymore, and I hang my hat on my head and keep my heart with me, so I can always remember that where I'm headed is in many ways already here.

And here's a favorite hymn.
 

I Want a Revolution

I've wanted one for years. I heard about some historian that described a trend in U.S. History. Every 50 years there is a major social change. In 2005, I started wondering what this would be? We had the Revolutionary War in the 1770s, the national bank, Missouri Compromise, and Monroe Doctrine in the 1820s, the Civil War in the 1860s, women's suffrage in 1919, the civil rights movement in the 1960s. What would come in the 2010s-20s?

We have certainly seen an increase in rights for LGBTQ individuals. I applaud that, but I had hoped for changes that would directly benefit more than 3-5% of the population. Ten, and even five, years ago, I couldn't see a will to change in the American people. I feared we might have lost it with the subtle, scientific manipulations of entrenched powers using the tools of social manipulation that we increasingly understand. I still don't know the answer, although I'm more hopeful that we will see good changes in the next decade. Still, I don't usually write much about American history or policy, even when I share my opinions here or there. Where I really want the revolution is in Mormonism.

Now it's time for you to guess which authors are providing my inspiration. Surprise, surprise, it's a physicist and a philosopher of science--Lee Smolin and Roberto Mangabeira Unger. They want a revolution, too, in physics and cosmology. They don't want incremental change that is allowed by working within the established structures. They want to foster new ideas that will break us through into the next era of scientific understanding. What are some of the things they call for?

• Breaking patterns of funding that limit research to established areas.
• Providing unencumbered, multi-year support to highly promising, unconventional individuals and groups, and trusting them to work hard based on past promise.
• Fostering interdisciplinary, meta-discussion of fields, since a philosopher is likely to see things a physicist can't, and vice versa. Or pick any other group of disciplines.
• Shape institutions to test and support revolutionary change rather than only reinforce the status quo.

These are just some of their ideas. How does this inspire my Mormonism? I'll share a few thoughts.

• Expanded councils are awesome. People who were completely ignored now have a bit of a voice.
• Turning power over to local units for things that were once governed regionally or centrally is awesome. Mormonism excels when it distributes power and focuses on the individual.
• Empowering teachers through manuals that support good teaching practices, and encouraging peer instruction and personalization of messages is very close to best teaching practices.
• Encouraging individual study and personal responsibility for understanding the gospel and seeking the Spirit is right in line with what cognitive theory tells us are the most effective tools for learning.  
• Missionaries and Home and Visiting Teachers going into homes and dealing with families and individuals on a personal level has incredible potential.

All of this diffusion of power and distribution of responsibility comes with problems. We aren't born knowing all the things we need or how to do them. We don't have time for intensive training in pastoral care when we are already volunteering many hours on top of taking care of our families and our work. So a lot of basic, standardized resources are needed to teach clueless people like us the essentials of how to do our different jobs. Enter Correlation.

Now for the revolution I want. We have sound structures. We have a decent doctrinal and practical foundation for growth. Let's keep them, but let's remove the limits. Instead of the foundation being the ending point, where all ideas and decisions must pass the test of matching the incomplete and ill-developed ideas found in the missionary lessons and Gospel Principles manual, let's use those as the starting point they were designed to be. Let's stop dictating thought as we teach the basics. Let's give play to the charismatic and intellectual potential of Mormonism.

Let's welcome different ideas to the table at all levels, just as we are told they are welcomed at the highest levels. Let's invite people of good will who think differently than we do into our councils. Let's look for the thoughtful, loving agitators who might actually have a new idea worth listening to. Leave them on the sidelines, push them out, or make them wait until they are established in the church before they have a voice, and we will have lost 20 years of potential growth. Let's give them a real voice, and even if we don't do what they say, they will know they have been heard and that there is place for openness and change. Let's cheer our members on when they encounter doubt or pain. Embrace it and let it spread. We are strong enough to heal and to come out better on the other side. I'm not saying we should replace the prophets and the wisdom of age with radical or untested youth, but the church was started by radical and untested youths, and it wasn't such a bad thing. It might be good for us to seek more of that out today. I pray for it often.

Evolved Atonement

A Mind's Resting Place

It has been two and a half years since I wrote my most viewed personal post (almost 900 views as of today), Thermodynamics and Theories of Atonement. I want to write an update. I said then that each theory could be compared to an approximation of the reality of the atonement--some better, some worse, but many useful in their proper context. I am now ready to share my approximation of atonement. It is informed by my life of Mormonism. It is informed by my life of science. It is informed by my life in a family and a community. It is informed by chance and meaningful acquaintanceships, like the Indian Christian I met on a train into Baltimore who told me the saying, a sorrow shared is half the sorrow, a joy shared is twice the joy. It is informed by friendships and critiques that I have cultivated as I explored the meaning and hope of God and Goddesshood over the last three years. It is informed by Martin Buber, C. Terry Warner, Laura Buchak, Lee Smolin, Roberto Mangabeira Unger, Janna Levin, Alvin Plantinga, Nick Bostrom, Robin Hanson, Lincoln Cannon, and other thoughtful authors. It is informed by ideas of evolution, emergentism, technological optimism, and cosmology. Maybe I have arrived here by misunderstanding some or all of what these many people have written, maybe I have misunderstood my life and relationships, yet it is an understanding I have settled into--that gives me peace--that makes me desire to be more, and to live and love deeply. Maybe I can accept atonement. Maybe you will let me join you.

What Nature Requires

There is a particular class of possible universes I hope we live in. It is not the only possible class, but it is the only class that feels to me both plausible and hopeful. It requires that Gods:

• create worlds
• create children who create worlds
• maximize creative rates
• perpetually learn and explore
• work with diverse communities of beings
• eliminate behaviors that inhibit maximal creation including
• destruction of creative potential
• inefficient use of resources

These traits are very similar to traits that make a biological species successful, but something happens when you begin to extrapolate human potential into the vast reaches of space and time. Things that have small or local consequences begin to have global or universal consequences. Two tribes can fight a war. Two nuclear powers had better not. Two galactic civilizations with automated, self-reproducing weapons of mass destruction?

The Solution

How do Gods and Goddesses raise children who will meet all these criteria? Children who will create, who will explore, who will develop a diversity of knowledge and skills, who will get along with each other despite the diversity of knowledge, ability, needs and desires, who will not destroy one another or one another's creation, but will use the resources available to maximize creation?

These Gods and Goddesses will hurt one another. They will require resources that another desires, and have things required of them that they do not desire. There is no other way. They will know good and evil, but learn to choose the good. Not because it is required to exist, but because it is required to be a community of effective creators. It is required to keep mediocrity, selfishness, or cavalier unconcern from overrunning the cosmos. It is required to invite as much unorganized matter as possible into the fulfilling realms of creation, creativity, and love.

Atonement

What is atonement? Thank you, English, for giving me such an inspiring word for it. It is a condition of being one with another. It is going forward in covenant relationships, whether formal or unspoken, where our actions show us committed to the requirements of belonging to the community of Gods. It is a forward looking process, not a backward looking correction of harm and errors restoring us and the cosmos to some perfect state. There is no perfect state of Godhood. No eternal freedom from pain or sorrow. Godhood is a process, and remember that ours is a God who weeps--who feels the pain of his creatures even while he dwells in peace and glory. Atonement is a state of eternal compromise, continually striving to lift up all of creation, including yourself and the other Gods.

Is there any part of this atonement that requires forgiveness of sins? Certainly, but as much for the forgiver as for the forgiven. It isn't possible to be an effective creator while you desire to destroy or otherwise limit another who could help with creation. Is there any part of this atonement that is about being freed from Satan? Maybe. While Lucifer's premortal plan would have made us all one, it would have made us one in sameness, without the diversity needed for effective creation. We must be free of that. We must be free of habits, patterns, and actions that harm or limit us and others. If this is Satan's realm, then this atonement is about being free from Satan. Is the moral influence of Jesus's sacrifice part of this atonement? Clearly. He entered a life--and death--long relationship with the poor, the outcast, the sinner, and all who wanted to follow him in ushering in the kingdom of heaven. He resisted oppression and shared new truths. Is this atonement about meeting the demands of justice? Not in some cosmic truth sense, no. But it is about treating one another justly as we move into eternity together. Is it about restoring something past? Perhaps, but that is more the purpose of resurrection and similar processes. While resurrection and restoration are not atonement, they enable greater atonement through allowing us to connect with other Gods through time and space.

And lastly, is this atonement magical? Was Jesus's suffering for us truly unique and necessary? It almost seems there could be this atonement without it. But no. Jesus had to atone with every being in the cosmos. He had to know their pain so he could lift them up, working together into a future of love and creation. That's magic. And it's magic we can do, too.

Longing Love Poems

I haven't felt this way for more than 10 years now, but the words are still among the favorites I have ever written. For me the images and rhythms capture the feelings I felt. Perhaps you can sense them, too.

Hesitation
2000

I wouldn’t stop
sensing the moment or break
the flow of words between us that falter
on your lips, or on mine to await
a time and place to unblock
their expression, where feelings won’t catch
on some buried snag that holds
our hands hidden, frozen
in the cold air, not warm, locked
in each other to pause,
and think, and breathe, and rest.

Catching a Sunset
2000

My arms reach out to catch the sun before
Its last rays drop behind the mountain’s ridge,
So that the yellow sky will light with red
The western clouds for just one moment more.
I hold my breath to still the wind that would
Disturb the southern slate-blue clouds that fly
Dark holes within the dusk-blue summer sky,
And for a few quick heartbeats all is good.
But then my breath escapes my lungs, the night
Wind sends the clouds into the night’s dark realms,
And I pull back my hands whose blackened palms
Had held the sun before it slipped from sight,
And memory is left alone—to pray
The next day’s end will come and choose to stay.

My Jesus

I don't know what I think about Jesus, sometimes. I'm clearly a believer--a believer in his life, in the resurrection, in the atonement, in salvation and exaltation, in his hard moral teachings. But sometimes the ways I believe in these things seem so different from how I understood them before that some might not recognize them as Mormon.

I believe in the resurrection. I know it's unprovable historically, but I am pretty convinced the Book of Mormon is a historical narrative (not textbook), and that Christ's visit probably happened. At the same time, I'm nearly certain that Joseph Smith expanded on some parts of the original text he was translating/revealing, so I don't claim absolute certainty about much from the Book of Mormon. I just don't see evidence to suggest that the physical visit was an expansion without having first concluded Christ's visit was impossible. I also believe in the possibility of technological resurrection. I think Jesus knows how to do it, and it is a physical process (since it is restoring a physical body), so why can't we learn how to do it? We are expected to learn to be like Jesus in other ways, why not this one? Resurrecting people may not be the highest thing on my to do list, but I don't see why we should discourage anyone else from doing their best to be like Jesus--even if I agree that faith and repentance ought to be higher on the list. We can each work on more than one good thing.

I believe in the atonement. I believe that Christ suffered to bind us all together and cover our sins, if we would join him. But I have a hard time seeing it as something magical in the ways I used to. What I see is an existence where pain and harm will never go away, even for Gods, and so if we would be with our Heavenly Parents--if we would be Gods--we must accept this pain. We must feel the harm our choices, and even eternal life, inevitably cause. We must choose to go forward together in full knowledge that eternal rest does not mean freedom from pain--love comes at a cost. So every one of us must atone, just as Jesus did what he had seen his father do. Jesus's atonement is miraculous to me partly because it is such a powerful example of atonement, and also because choosing to stay together in relationships with those who sometimes hurt us is simply miraculous, to me.

I believe in miracles. I think most are probably faith-promoting stories that popped up later, just like I think most fantastic stories are today, but I find it presumptuous to claim certain knowledge of very much in the distant past, especially based on negative evidence. Such claims reflect more on the (dis)believer than on what really happened. So I choose to believe many of Jesus's miracles, with very little certainty. To use the terminology of biblical scholarship, as best I understand it, I believe a high christology of miracles, but I bring it almost down to earth. My God condescended perhaps further than most, or perhaps not as far since he never was as unreachable.

But one thing all my uncertainties and earthbound beliefs have not removed is those moments of longing for home with Jesus. One Sunday I was thinking about why I long to be like Jesus. Here are some of my conflicted thoughts:

I want honor . . . He had none.
I want home . . . He wandered.
I want understanding . . . He was questioned.
I want life . . . He died.
I want redemption . . . He suffered.
I want certainty . . . He submitted.
I want peace . . . He brought a sword.

Why do I long for this?
Yet I do.

My Wife's Sunday Wisdom (Softened)

Stop defending Patriarchy. It's animal instinct raised to social dogma. It's using your lower brain. It's not using your higher reasoning powers. It's the definition of the natural man.

It's not enough to say, "I'm a benevolent ruler." You need to use your power to give power to those without it. Sometimes at the expense of your own power.

Amen.