Singular Saints

I’ve been tying to understand the magnitude of the current financial mess and came across some data from the US census which helped;  In 2006 there were 116 million households in the United States and the median income was about $50,000. Spreading the “bailout” evenly over that comes to $6000 per household.  It also means that in 2006 Americans made $5.8 Trillion in wages. I’m reminded of Gordon B. Hinckley’s advice a few years back about getting out of debt.

We’ll get thru this.

The creation vs. evolution argument, in it’s traditional form, is essentially an attempt to explain how we got here.  The problem is that both sides place some mutually incompatible conditions on their premises. The scientists insist on a God who is comprehensible to the human mind and the theists say god is unknown and unknowable.  Biblical literalists insist on the inerrancy of scripture and the time line which that enforces.

Dawkins claims that given enough time and stuff to work with it’s possible to create the earth and humanity without the need of outside intervention from a god.  Having taken the argument that far, he declares victory, for without the need of a god to explain the existence of the earth there is no further need of god, particularly a god who is scientifically irrational.

One of Dawkins’ points against the theists is that the creation argument just moves the stakes; if god did it, where did god come from?  He is particularly impressed with how powerful the anthropic principle is; our existence proves that conditions were right to produce us.

What Dawkins doesn’t do is consider the broader implications - that it could just as likely lead to the existence of God - particularly the god of the Latter-day Saints, who according to Joseph Smith, “… is a man like unto one of yourselves” but in a supremely intelligent and eternal state.

One of humanity’s greatest desires is to overcome death.  While it has taken us thosands of years to do so, we have finally begun to learn the fundamantal genetic principles of how to overcome the effects of disease and decay.  Given a few hundred more years, will we have also learned how to sustain ourselves as long as the sun shines and there is space in the universe to exist?  Once we have learned all there is to know and overcome death who will we be like and what will we do next?

I recently began reading Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion” and have been very pleasantly surprised by it.  I was expecting a rant against God, after all  Dawkins is the self proclaimed militant atheist, what I wasn’t expecting was one of most intelligent and thoughtful arguments in support of the Latter-Day Saint concept of God and eternal progression that I have ever read.

Before I get into the details, I’d like to offer a little background.  Over the years, Latter-Day Saints have been strongly criticized by other faiths for statements made by Joseph Smith in the King Follett Discourse and later by Lorenzo Snow (both of whom testified that they personally saw God):

“God himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man, and sits enthroned in yonder heavens! That is the great secret. If the veil were rent today, and the great God who holds this world in its orbit, and who upholds all worlds and all things by his power, was to make himself visible,—I say, if you were to see him today, you would see him like a man in form—like yourselves in all the person, image, and very form as a man; for Adam was created in the very fashion, image and likeness of God, and received instruction from, and walked, talked and conversed with him, as one man talks and communes with another… It is the first principle of the Gospel to know for a certainty the Character of God, and to know that we may converse with him as one man converses with another, and that he was once a man like us; yea, that God himself, the Father of us all, dwelt on an earth, the same as Jesus Christ himself did; and I will show it from the Bible.” - Joseph Smith

In 1840, Lorenzo Snow summarized Joseph Smith’s statement with: “As man is, God once was; As God is, man can become.”

Dawkin’s book is intended to show the fallacy of the idea of God and he does a remarkably effective job of dismantling the traditional view of deity. That is precisely why I liked his book so much.  The traditional view of God IS irrational.  It proposes a being who is incomprehensible, unknowable and resides an infinite distance away. Dawkins spends the first hundred pages of the book explaining why this traditional view is anathema to a thinking mind. He also proposes that the only rational explanation for the existance of the universe is Darwin’s theory of natural selection.  Along the way he points out the logical flaws and falacies of the intelligent design vs. natural selection argument and even takes a swipe at the virgin birth by asking what would happen if DNA evidence was uncovered that Jesus lacked a biological father.

If he had stopped there the book would have already been worth the cover price, but it goes further.  The clarity of his discussion of the implications of natural selection was very refreshing.

Now, before you think I’ll be burning my temple recommend in the parking lot of the church this weekend, let me bring a few other witnesses to the stand.

In the “The Life and Teaching of Jesus and His Apostles”, the Church Educational System manual for the Religion 211 and 212 college institute course it states this concerning Jesus Christ:

“He was the birthright son, and he retained that birthright by his strict obedience.
Through the aeons and ages of premortality, he advanced and progressed until,
as Abraham described it, he stood as one “ like unto God ” [ Abr. 3:24 ]”

That phrase “aeons and ages” caught my attention.  It’s implications are stunning in the light of Dawkin’s argument that given enough time even long odds can pay off when it comes to the creation of life by the process of “natural selection”.  What makes it even more interesting is our understanding of eternal progression. Bowen wrote; “One must progress or retrograde. One cannot stand still. Activity is the law of growth, and growth, progress, is the law of life.”  Brigham Young taught; “…there is no such thing as principle, power, wisdom, knowledge, life, position, or anything that can be imagined, that remains stationary—they must increase or decrease” (Young, JD 1:350). There is an organizing force in the universe. By definition life sustains and reproduces itself.  Given sufficient time, “aeons and ages” of improvement, the “natural” process would produce a supremely intelligent, eternal being, namely; a god.  Eternal progression and natural selection both tend towards either godliness or disorganization.