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Monday, March 01, 2004
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A short article entitled The Quest for Consciousness: A Neurobiological Approach is online at Scientific American. Three recent books examining the best present scientific understanding of consciousness are reviewed. The article is also a short introduction to the field of evolutionary psychology, a young field that merges brain science and psychology in a firmly evolutionary approach to consciousness. When the researchers in this field iron out the wrinkles in their theory, it will revolutionize more than psychology. Consider how central altered states of consciousness are to religion generally and to Mormonism (as one example and as the primary topic of this weblog). Dreams and visions, demon possession and exorcism, feeling overcome by the Spirit or sorely tempted of the devil, even simple prayer confirmations--all these phenomena are amenable to study under the general banner "altered states of consciousness." The visions and other conscious sensory phenomena that often accompany epilepsy and even migraine attacks are a simple example of the link between the brain, consciousness, and sensory stimuli. The problem, of course, is that not all apparent sensory stimuli correspond to objective real-world objects or causes--the brain sometimes creates its own stimuli (e.g., dreams or psychotic perceptions) but as individuals we may have difficulty distinguishing authentic from self-generated sensory experience. As data and theory continue to advance, the range of experiences explainable by this field will continue to expand. As research and theory confirmation in this field move into the mainstream over the next couple of decades, expect as much religious push-back as was (and is) directed at organic evolution.
For a hands-on introduction to the field, go to the Center for Evolutionary Psychology website, including their Evolutionary Psychology Primer.
12:28:09 AM 
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Wednesday, February 25, 2004
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 The Play's the Thing
There was an interesting discussion over at Times and Seasons a couple of months ago asking (more or less) why there aren't more Mormon superstars in the arts and sciences? Given the LDS stress on education and achievement, one might expect a bit more, although in certain fields -- business, law, sports, politics -- Mormons do seem to be well represented.
There's a nice article on this theme by John and Kirsten Rector over at Dialogue, entitled What is the Challenge for LDS Scholars and Artists? (There was a link to this in the earlier T&S post, but I missed it.) I thought the Dialogue article is a nice, balanced consideration of the question. The top three reasons they give for the alleged shortage are the LDS insistence on spending time with spouse and family; the LDS dedication to "conventionality, orthodoxy, and adherence to authority"; and the LDS weakness (not unique) for dogmatic thinking. I would add that these same factors go far toward explaining LDS success in the other areas I mentioned above. A conservative mindset stressing family, orthodoxy, deference to authority, and focused thinking will take you a long way on the road to success in business, politics, law, and sports. Nor does it hurt if you're interested in climbing the LDS priesthood leadership ladder, not generally known for elevating creative thinkers or iconoclasts.
On the other hand, how many of us would trade the average anonymous-but-happy Mormon life (first spouse and four kids in three-bedroom home with two-car garage) for one of academic or artistic celebrity (fourth spouse and one step-kid in two-bedroom condo three blocks from campus or studio)? Okay, you can fiddle with the numbers if you like, but stereotypes aside, I can't say I'd change my lifestyle choices, conventional though they may be, if some magic genie dangled before me the prospect of becoming a bona fide footnote to history. I have some sense of what one gives up to get there and I just don't think that's a choice I would make. I know where we all go in the long run, and I'm quite content to get there by my own little path. Anyway, here's a sample paragraph from the Dialogue essay:
To be sure, we as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints do not have the market cornered on dogmatism or close-mindedness. Just as there can be dogmatic Mormons, there can be dogmatic philosophers, scientists, atheists, liberals, conservatives, and so forth. But because there is so much in the storehouse of insights the restored gospel provides, we as members of the church can easily be lulled into believing that we have all the significant answers. We may not feel any need to question or re-examine our viewpoints, nor approach the world around us in an open, self-questioning, inquisitive way. To the extent that we are dogmatic, we limit ourselves as artists and scholars.
10:35:14 PM
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Monday, January 26, 2004
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Joe Hill was a labor organizer who was executed by a Utah firing squad in 1915. His interesting life story is here. PBS recently did a 90 minute documentary on Joe Hill; the short summary of that documentary contains interesting commentary on the anti-labor stance taken by the LDS Church in the early part of the 20th century, a period during which the Church was transforming itself from a despised, persecuted church into a respected, patriotic church. Thomas G. Alexander, BYU historian, is featured in the documentary. An interview with Prof. Alexander contains some fascinating comments on early 20th-century Utah politics and the Senate hearings on whether Reed Smoot would be allowed to take his seat in the Senate. D. Michael Quinn, formerly a BYU historian, is also featured. The interview with Dr. Quinn comments on politics, religion, and polygamy as the background for understanding Joe Hill's activities in Utah.
These interviews are the first discussion I've seen of the interesting relationship between the LDS Church and the labor movement. Here's a sample from the Quinn interview: LDS church leaders were very American in their attitudes toward the effort to unionize. . . . [L]eadership groups throughout the United States, almost without exception, were anti-union. They regarded unions as destructive of social order. . . . [F]rom a very early period, from the 1870s onward, the LDS church leaders were condemning the labor movement, as an engine of sedition. Church leaders already had a clearly defined anti-union policy and rhetoric.
4:49:04 AM
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Thursday, January 22, 2004
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A popular saying ( attributed to John Gager) is that magic is a term used to describe someone else's religion. But magic is more than just a slur on religion--it was central to human beliefs about the world for millenia. Both religion and science, by comparison, are modern developments that emerged from a world permeated by magical beliefs. Reflecting on the past (magic) helps us understand the present (religion and science). How did a religious worldview replace the magical worldview? Only recently have scholars been willing to take magic seriously enough to study it. The seminal work is Religion and the Decline of Magic (Charles Scribner's Sons, 1971) by Keith Thomas. From a short review by Philip Greven of Rutgers: Thomas enables us to understand the extent to which Puritanism sought to delimit the magical elements of religious belief and yet, paradoxically, proved to be peculiarly susceptible to magic and witchcraft. The remnants of Puritan religious culture in New England were the backdrop for the emergence of Mormonism in the early 19th century.
In a longer article entitled Civility and the Decline of Magic, Alan MacFarlane, a social theorist and a student of Thomas, summarizes the bulk of Thomas' book as illustrating the gradual erosion of the magical worldview and the birth of modern science. Yet, he quoted Thomas as admitting that the most difficult problem in the study of magical beliefs is thus to explain how it was that men were able to break out of them. Actually, some didn't--magical beliefs mingled with religious beliefs for many years, and even now questions about the status of supernatural events and explanations in relation to religious belief remain controversial.
With this introduction, Quinn's Early Mormonism and the Magic World View (Signature Books, 1987; revised and enlarged edition, 1998) becomes more comprehensible. It was the first extended application of the "religion and magic" paradigm to Mormonism, but the theme and the approach were already well established. The Introduction to the 1998 edition of Quinn's book is online at the publisher's website. Long on detail but short on any kind of interpretive model, Quinn's book benefits from the framework laid out by Thomas. One approach to Quinn's material, for example, is to ask whether it was easy or difficult for Mormons to abandon the magical views they brought to Mormonism as they developed more modernist religious and scientific beliefs.
2:59:37 AM
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Wednesday, January 21, 2004
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Come all without, come all within,
You'll not see nothing like the mighty Quinn.
--- Bob Dylan
If that tune doesn't ring a bell, you're probably too young to really understand polygamy, but you can still try. Go read the online copy of D. Michael Quinn's essay entitled LDS Church Authority and New Plural Marriages, 1890-1904 (also here in 10 parts with pop-ups). This article, published in Dialogue in 1985, really blew the lid off of post-Manifesto polygamy.
It also kind of blew the lid off of Quinn's career at BYU, which apparently had not seen nothing like D. Michael Quinn. For a revealing essay on Quinn's experience as a Mormon historian, go read the full online text of his autobiographical essay On Being a Mormon Historian (and its Aftermath), a chapter in a collection of essays entitled Faithful History (Signature Books, 1992).
11:52:20 PM
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Friday, January 02, 2004
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I note with sadness the apparent passing of the Kolob Network (used to be here), quite possibly the most promising, yet embryonic, clearinghouse for online postings of and links to papers in Mormon Studies. To fill the gap just a bit, I have beefed up my "LDS Resources" links on the left sidebar with several sites that feature online papers. The 12 sites following LDS.org and the RLDS site all feature a variety of Mormon Studies papers; only the FARMS sites require registration for access to some of the papers. I will post notices or comments on particularly interesting papers that appear. Please email me if you are aware of other sites or papers that would be of interest to other readers.
9:14:37 PM
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Monday, December 01, 2003
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Go check out All About Mormons, a site full of categorized articles on LDS topics. Many of the articles are pulled directly from the Encyclopedia of Mormonism (EoM)--if you are after an article from this semi-official treatment of LDS topics, there's a reasonable chance you'll find it somewhere on this site. Small sample: (1) Biographies of every LDS President (from EoM), as well as Oliver Cowdery, Thomas L. Kane, Parley P. Pratt, Emma Smith, and others, under the "Church History--People" tab. (2) Dozens of Church History articles drawn from the EoM. (3) An LDS Glossary and Vocabulary; for example from the letter B you find beehive symbol, blood atonement, and Book of Commandments, all linked to an EoM article on that topic.
9:20:24 PM
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Sunday, November 23, 2003
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I won't be posting again until Thanksgiving. In the interim, I'll point to two online articles from Sunstone's July 2003 issue on the topic of how the Church regards scholarship and scholars. Lavina Fielding Anderson wrote a critical piece entitled The Church and Its Scholars: Ten Years After, referring (in general) to the 1993 excommunications of six Mormon scholars, informally referred to as the September Six. Armand Mauss wrote a short piece defending the LDS actions entitled Seeing the Church as a Human Institution. And don't forget to click on the "Cartoons" link on the main page for a light-hearted take on the whole issue.
12:09:18 PM
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Thursday, November 20, 2003
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 Richard Dawkins
The Religion News Blog reports his latest remarks in Oxford Scientist Launches Sharp Critique of Religion. Sample: Despite the massive costs religion has imposed on human society, it persists because children do not question their parents’ beliefs, renowned Oxford scientist Richard Dawkins argued in a fiery lecture last night at Lowell Lecture Hall. I confess that I like Richard Dawkins, evolutionary writer and author of such popular books as The Selfish Gene and The Blind Watchmaker. And I like authors who publish good science books directed to a popular audience. And I am no fan of "creation science."
But I think his observations, at least on this theme, are starting to exceed the scope of his expertise. First, kids pick up all their initial beliefs and opinions, religious or secular, from parents, so that says little about why religion persists. And fervent scientists are as religious in their devotions (to science) as believers are to their respective sects, and obtain similar psychic benefits (a sense of meaning, a code of conduct, a community of fellowship). There are God-oriented religions, humanistic religions, secular religions, and private religions. He doesn't seem to sense that giving a label to God-oriented religion provides little or no social content for him to critique; his model could explain why English kids grow up to be soccer fans as easily as it explains religious attachments, so it's not really saying anything about religion, is it? For a little irony, go check out this shrine to Dawkins put up by one of his worshippers, I mean followers, I mean fans. Notice the scientific icons arrayed before the portrait of the sacerdotal authority figure. Hey, I like the guy. Just stick to the knitting.
8:59:59 PM
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Tuesday, November 18, 2003
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There's a pleasantly short little post over at FAIR entitled Dealing With Difficult Issues. The author gives seven suggestions for dealing with "difficult issues, noting that [f]aith, and what the LDS term testimony, can be a fragile thing. Sometimes we can run across information that challenges our long-held beliefs . . . . [W]e may question our testimony or wonder how our faith can survive intact in the light of the new information.Best point: Remember to focus on what you know. It is a common fallacy to think that we have to have all the answers. I'll buy that. There is "expert opinion" on both sides of every disputed issue, in religion or any other area of human inquiry. Weakest point: Remember that someone has already dealt with it. There are enough historians, apologists, and members in the Church to have heard every historical issue that you might deem difficult. This seems to invite the reader to have faith that "Mormon experts" have dealt with every question that might arise. You can have too much faith, you know. Paul counseled a degree of skepticism: "Test everything. Hold on to the good" (1 Thess. 5:21, NIV). We should take Paul's advice and ask more questions.
10:26:56 PM
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© Copyright 2004 Dave's Mormon Inquiry Weblog.
Last update: 3/3/2004; 12:38:48 AM.
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