Parallel Lines and Broken Symmetry

Broken Symmetry

When I took this picture I was trying to capture the vanishing effect of two parallel lines. But the road wasn't quite straight, and the effect is interrupted by nonsymmetric elements such as the break in the green plants on the left and the log a little beyond that. There are further subtle imbalances that make the image just slightly asymmetric.

There is something in our nature that looks for this symmetry and balance in the universe and tries to find meaning in it. Some have taken this to the extent that they think that the only true forms are the ultimate reality in the universe. Everything, they assume, is a reflection of the perfect forms. It is in a sense a very comforting approach to the world since it appeals to that part of us that looks for perfect conformity to what we know.

But this approach seems a little odd to me since it fundamentally assumes that the true reality of existence is not found in existence. That reality is only a reflection of reality. That the universe does not adequately demonstrate what it is.

Recently I was attended an astronomy seminar where we discussed recent progress in the area of cosmology. One researcher mentioned how she had been trying to fit certain data to a Gaussian profile, but after an insightful question by a colleague she readdressed the problem with a different approach. She found that the data would fit a slightly asymmetric Gaussian, which would explain in some small way why the universe appeared the way it is.

And this brings us back to parallel lines and broken symmetries. Sometimes in our search for meaning we think that everything; the universe, each other, what it means to be perfect, or even God himself, must conform to our ideas of what is perfect and proper, or what appeals to our sense of balance and symmetry. But if we look hard enough we will see that nothing ever conforms to what we think things should be like. Everywhere we look the universe will remind us that what we think is perfect and symmetrical is not how things really are. Even though it did not turn out the way I wanted it to, I like the picture I took because it reminds me that in reality there are no parallel lines.

Alternate Punctuation for Alma 37:46

Today I was reading in Alma 37 in the Book of Mormon and noticed that if the punctuation was changed slightly in verse 46 then it would highlight an interesting parallel structure that otherwise is broken up by the current punctuation. Originally there was almost no punctuation in the first transcript of the Book of Mormon and John Gilbert, the typesetter, was the one who put it all in for the first edition. He did an incredible job, but this may be one case where he may have unintentionally set the punctuation so that it broke up the natural parallel structure of the text. Below I have the text of verse 46 with the current punctuation. There are two sentences, and it creates a break mid verse.

O my son, do not let us be slothful because of the easiness of the way; for so was it with our fathers; for so was it prepared for them, that if they would look they might live; even so it is with us. 

The way is prepared, and if we will look we may live forever.

Now I will change the punctuation, turn it into three sentences, and highlight the inherent parallel structure of the verse.

O my son, do not let us be slothful because of the easiness of the way. 

For so was it with our fathers; for so was it prepared for them, that if they would look they might live.

Even so it is with us, the way is prepared, and if we will look we may live forever.

If a new period is added after "...the easiness of the way" that sets apart the following parallel structure and if we move the phrase "even so it is with us" into the last sentence we have:

Fathers → Way is prepared → Look → Might live

Us → Way is prepared → Look → Live forever

This structure is so much more interesting and enlightening.

Knowledge: The Stuff of Rational Thought

Recently I was involved in a comment thread under an article about religion. I know, it's not a very smart thing to do, but there was one commenter who was berating everyone for their lack of rational thought, while at the same time exhibiting a distinct lack of rational thought. I couldn't resist. I called him out on his fallacies and I was rewarded by being called "muddled-headed" and a "moron". He has yet to respond to my further inquiries. But he did give me substantial fodder that may result in 2-4 blog posts.

"Rational thinking is not dependent on knowledge."

This statement came from one of his replies. From one perspective this seems like a non-controversial statement. Someone's ability to think rationally, the actual mechanism of thinking, is not dependent on knowing certain facts and data. For example, if I wanted to give all of my students a pencil I could rationally plan that out and get the pencils. My ability to rationally think through that problem does not depend on my knowing how many students are in my class. Even if I think there are 15 students, when in reality there are 150, knowing the incorrect number of students may change the way I approach the problem and may cause problems, but that does not impact my ability to rationally think through the problem.

On a larger level, if I thought that the American Revolution was all about "Taxation without representation", and then after reading some books I acquired more knowledge about the causes of the revolution I might change my views about what caused the revolution, but that won't change my ability to think through the new data and reach a new conclusion.

Also, if someone is presented with some new data, it would seem that their ability to incorporate that knowledge depends not on having the knowledge, but on their ability to reason and think through the data. Thus it makes sense to say "Rational thinking is not dependent on knowledge."

So far that statement seems perfectly logical, but if we think about how we actually interact with knowledge and data, that formerly rational statement begins to unravel. My response to that statement was, '"rational thinking is not dependent on knowledge" is akin to saying "breathing is not dependent on air".' Just as breathing requires something there to be breathed in order to make sense, rational thinking requires knowledge in order to work. Knowledge is the stuff that is rationally thought about.

But the connection is deeper than that, because there is some knowledge changes the way we think. This happens both on an individual level and on a societal level. As pointed out by Thomas Kuhn in his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, there comes a point where certain data does not fit with our paradigm forcing us to change the way we think about the world. But we may still argue that even a paradigm shift does not change to underlying processes that make our thoughts rational.

For anyone who has learned something profound, we know that what we consider to be rational thought changes throughout our lives. There is certain knowledge that when obtained changes the way we interact with the world. It in effect changes our rational thinking. These experiences are usually profoundly personal. These are the moments when old knowledge takes on new and added meaning, and connections are made between seemingly disparate facts.

In these special cases rational thought does not operate passively on our knowledge, but knowledge and rational thought become co-operative, evolving simultaneously. The original statement given above assumes a certain staticity and independence to rational thought, as if it could operate in a vacuum. But this view leads to an ontological quandary that cannot be resolved without additional data and an evolution in our manner of thinking.

Amaron Misquoted Scripture

You may not remember who Amaron is, partly because he only contributed five short verses to the Book of Mormon. He is perhaps most famous for being Omni's son (who has a whole book named after him, even if he didn't write 86% of it). We don't know anything about him because he wrote so little, but he did manage to misquote a famous scripture.

There is a famous prophecy that appears several times in the Book of Mormon that reads:

"Inasmuch as ye shall keep my commandments ye shall prosper in the land; but inasmuch as ye will not keep my commandments ye shall be cut off from my presence."

In one form or another this same prophecy appears 19 times in the Book of Mormon, plus one final time when Mormon records the fulfillment of the prophecy. But in his brief contribution, Amaron managed to misquote the prophecy. He quoted it as:

"Inasmuch as ye will not keep my commandments ye shall not prosper in the land." [Emphasis added]

All other versions give it as:

Keep commandments → Prosper

But Amaron gives it as a negative statement:

Don't keep commandments → Don't prosper

But if you look at the original prophecy, the promise is that if they did not keep the commandments then they would be cut off from the presence of the Lord. This is not necessarily the same as "not prospering". I have seen several modern saints who have made the same mistake, and it is an easy one to make. But we must be careful about the promises made by the Lord. They are very specific and they are phrased in a certain way for a reason. Sometimes we may be like Amaron and inadvertently misremember a scripture because we think it is functionally equivalent, but upon further reflection we realize that there is a very specific reason for the wording of certain prophecies and scriptures.

The Checklist Generation: Conflating Culture with the Church

I was recently reading something by a former member of the Church who was relating their experience as a member. As they reported they came to the realization one day that all the commandments and rules in the Church were just one big checklist. This "stunning" realization lead them to question their faith, decide that it was a bunch of drivel and they promptly left the Church. They were now explaining how they have since "found Jesus" and were now engaged in an outreach to other members of the Church to "save them from their false idols". From their description it would seem that all Mormons are given a specific checklist they must follow and when they have checked everything off they believe that they can bound away merrily into eternal exaltation.

This characterization of LDS doctrine struck me as particularly odd considering we are taught that we must only rely "upon the merits of Christ, who [is] the author and the finisher of [our] faith." The commenter related how he felt so liberated after he freed himself from the "deception taught by the church" that we are save by our works, typified by the checklist of commandments. After reading his comments I came away wondering if we were ever members of the same church, and where in the world he got his ideas about LDS doctrine.

I do recognize that some people reduce the gospel to a set of things to get done; read your scriptures, say your prayers, do your home/visiting teaching, don't murder anybody. But more often than not we hear admonitions to not treat the gospel, or any of its parts, as a checklist. Which makes me wonder how this man managed to go most of his life without ever hearing those admonitions, let alone end up thinking that the Church actively teaches the checklist gospel.

To try and understand where these ideas come from I used Google Ngram Viewer to look at how the frequency of the word "checklist" changed over time. What I found was both a little surprising, but at the same time understandable.
As can be seen in the graph above, "checklist" was used very infrequently before about 1935. In that year there was a rather famous plane crash that could have been averted if the pilot had used a checklist. Since then the use of "checklists" has grown, especially in the 1960's and 70's. What surprised me was the drop is usage after 2000, though this may be due to it being replaced by the phrase "to do list" (interestingly enough the word "list", as a noun, has also seen a steep drop after 2000, also interesting is the fact that "checklist" displaced "check list" in the 1960's).

So it would seem that our obsession with checklist, to do lists and all sorts of lists is a recent cultural phenomena. In a more general sense the idea that we go through the motions without the corresponding faith and belief is nothing new. But to make the assertion that the Church has reduced salvation to a bland checklist of items, practices and commandments, is to mistake a current cultural phenomena for eternal doctrine. We should not blame the Church and discount its doctrine because of a cultural meme.

For those of us who are still faithful we can use this as learning opportunity to see how sometimes our current culture affects the way we see the doctrine of the Church. If we slip into the error of treating the commandments and ordinances of the gospel as items on a checklist we should realize that that is a result of our culture and we should work to remove that from our thinking.

Nephite Coins: Reading our preconceptions into the text

I didn't intend to write this much on this topic but I just keep thinking about it. Previously I wrote about how, taken out of context, a single verse could be used to argue that there should be no trees on temple grounds. That misconception was solved by gaining a little more understanding of the culture and language of the Bible. Then I wrote about the peculiarities of calendar systems and how that relates to understanding the scriptures. The point of these posts is to show how simple misunderstandings, mistranslations and preconceptions create problems that left unaddressed may begin to undermine a believer's faith.

The problem arises when a preconception or a misconception meets an inconsistency. For some this inconsistency precipitates a crisis in faith that leaves the believer wondering, "Is there anything else I was mistaken about? Perhaps everything else I was sure about is also false?" In the most extreme cases a person is left to doubt everything they once knew even if their ponderings can easily be mistaken for mental illness. But fortunately most people never get to that point and stay grounded in the realms of rationality.

At one point or another everyone will encounter something that does not fit with what they thought to be the case. There is not time enough in the world for me to address every single possibility. Ideally I should offer a surefire way of addressing each problem as it come up, but that is best learned by experience. What I can do is point out some common mistakes and how to resolve them.

The problem of Nephite coins is quickly becoming a classic example of how projecting our cultural preconceptions onto a text lead to problems. In Alma 11 Mormon pauses in his narration to explain the Nephite monetary system. It involves different denominations of gold and silver, all related to each other and to measures of grain. For years members of the Church, including Church leaders, have assumed that it referred to series of gold and silver coins. The chapter heading for Alma 11, written in the 1920's, mentioned Nephite coins, but in the latter half of the 20th century several Book of Mormon critics pointed out that coins were not used used in pre-Colombian America.

This prompted a reaction by some Mormon apologists to go looking for any evidence of coins in Mesoamerica. I remember a roommate, as recently as 2001, insisting that archaeologists had found metal disks "that are clearly coins". But despite the discovery of these metal disks no evidence of them being used as money (i.e. as coins) was ever found. Other evidence also indicated that pre-Colombian Americans never used coins, though they did use precious metals as money, just not in coin form. At about this time someone, I don't know who, took a long hard look at the text of the Book of Mormon and realized that Alma 11 never actually mentions coins.

Alma 11 only mentions various weights of gold and silver and never actually says that they were coins. For a bunch of people of European stock it was an easy enough mistake to make. The text talks about gold and silver in different amounts that are used as money and they thought, "gold and silver money == coins". It was a case of casting our modern preconceptions onto the text which resulted in Church member receiving yet another criticism from critics. In recent updates to the Book of Mormon the chapter heading to Alma 11 has been changed to bring it into agreement with the text.

But you can still find anti-Mormon websites who trot out the coin criticism. It is by far one of my favorite criticisms because it is such a beautiful example of a fallacious argument. Usually the argument begins by quoting an LDS scholar (John Welch and Daniel Peterson seem to be their favorites) who unambiguously stated that no pre-Colombian coins have ever been found in the Americas and then they say, "Aha! Even LDS scholars admit that the Book of Mormon is wrong!" But, as noted above, the text never actually mentions coins, so admitting there are no pre-Colombian coins does not mean LDS scholars are admitting the Book of Mormon contains an anachronism. Despite this, anti-Mormon websites try to milk it for all its worth, though some of the more "current" criticism ignore it since they realize it is a non-starter.

We can learn from this little adventure that when we read the scriptures sometimes we insert our modern biases into the text without realizing it. Then when it doesn't match with archaeological or other evidence we run into problems. We can avoid these types of problems by learning to read the text critically and pay attention to not only what it says, but to what it doesn't say. Another brief example, which I won't go into here, is that the Book of Mormon never actually says Ammon was herding king Lamoni's sheep. It just says "flocks" which doesn't necessarily mean sheep. There's something to think about.

A possible update to Arnold Friberg's painting. By the way, Arnold Friberg is a serial offender when it comes to anachronisms. Beware the "gospel art" and don't take it for the "gospel truth".

The Work of God and Man

The difference between the work of God and the work of man is

the work of God does not end with death.