OK this one is pretty speculative. More science-fiction than really philosophy let alone science. However it ties in to some requirements about Mormon theology, so it is worth a look. Basically Mormon theology requires there be no beginning to time. Clearly, given the laws of physics this is a kind of quasi-psychological time. (i.e. the experience of time) Yet how does one accomplish this if there is a big bang and thus beginning to the universe. As I've mentioned before one obvious way are Linde multiverses. Basically the idea that there are new "bubble" universes that form off of others. The problem of course is that by and large physicists don't think significant information can flow between them. (Some think that the formation of an universe and thus its laws are in part determined by the state of laws in the prior universe though) Yet, for LDS theology to work, there must be the ability to travel between universes. (i.e. significant information flow) Well this month's Prospect Magazine has an article all about this very subject. Escape from the Universe"
One interesting version of M-theory cosmology is the "ekpyrotic" (from the Greek for "conflagration") universe, proposed by Paul Steinhardt, Burt Ovrut and Neil Turok. It assumes that our universe is a flat, infinite membrane floating in higher-dimensional space. But occasionally, gravity attracts a nearby membrane. These two parallel universes race towards each other until they collide, releasing a colossal amount of energy (the big splat). This explosion creates our known universe and sends the two parallel universes flying apart in hyperspace.
The basic idea is to make a wormhole to travel this other universe. The problem is (and this is where the article gets of necessity very vague) is whether this would work. All sorts of odd speculation get thrown around from rotating black holes to negative energy. i.e. mostly hand waving. But it is interesting that these ideas are out there, even if not yet taken seriously.
I am not sure, in terms of theology, one needs bubble universes very often. Wouldn't they really only be theologically necessary if the entire universe were already fully occupied?
If all bubble universes have "big bangs" like ours, then there would need to be an infinite number of bubble universes since you can only go so far back in time with each one.
Thanks for the link. I haven't read it yet, and I don't know how physicists in general feel about ekpyrotic universes, but I am familiar with the concept from some recent popularized media. The idea that information (gravity) travels freely between these membranes, that there is a continued (infinite?) reoccurrence of “big splats”, and the consequent supply of time and matter seems to fill a lot of the requirements of Mormon theology.
Well, I thought the infinite regression was fairly obvious. Perhaps it is just me, but I think there is a connotation that the frequency of their occurance is fairly high. But I will ignore that point.
After your comment, I guess I am just wondering, in terms of your theology, what these new universes need to bring with them? I know you feel that they export basically the same physical laws as the original universe (hence your ideas on universe evolution). In what sense are divine entities exported, if at all? For your ideas of infintie regression to work, it seems some semblance of divinty must get imported in the creation of these new universes. Presumably this is due to the fact that they can either cause the creation of bubble universes or can take advatage of it. Would I be correct in assuming that this is where your ideas on free will get tied in?
The idea that they have similar laws isn't mine. It was an idea propounded by Smolin with the concept that small variations would lead to evolution of universes getting rid of the anthropic principle.
I'm trying to stick to minimal requirements although I'd hope that God would have more control over universe formation than what Smolin asserts. However I honestly don't know. I'm trying to have as few speculative assertions as possible. But it does seem like Mormon theology needs an infinite past to make sense and these recent speculative notions in physics seem to fit the bill. What the reality is, well that is of course a different matter entirely.
My feeling right now is that one ought be fairly cautious, especially with physics this speculative. Until a real theory of quantum gravity is available it is all just hand waving. Both quantum loop theories and M-theory still have fairly significant problems.
As a semi-frequent visitor to these pages with absolutely no relationship to the LDS, I have to say that posts like the one above confuse the hell out of me. Aren't science (speculative or otherwise) and theology (Mormon or otherwise) operating within completely non-overlapping notions of truth? To over-simplify completely, one seems to have nothing but questions (and only provisional answers) and the other claims to have all the answers (regardless of the questions). Or am I being unfair?
How do you see the relationship between science and theology? Can one be used to corroborate the other?
Michael Dorfman
That's a good question Michael. One I really ought provide a whole separate post for. However the short answer is that Mormonism fundamentally doesn't think there are non-overlapping notions of truth here. Indeed many early church leaders were quite emphatic about not separating religious truth from scientific truth and that our ultimate theology ought to embrace both. For a long time, especially in the early 20th century, Mormons strongly embraced science.
Of course the problem is that science is a moving target. However the Mormon notion of continuing revelation means that Mormon theology is, to a certain perhaps more limited extent, also a moving target. (Something that frustrates critics to no end) Mormons simply look at theology fairly differently than you find in Catholicism or Conservative Protestantism, despite some strong parallels between LDS theological tendencies and conservative Protestantism.
To get to your overly simple claim, I think both science and religion in practice claim to have some answers and some questions. So I don't think I agree with your dichotomy.
Actually I probably ought add something to the above.
There are probably three main positions within the Mormon community on the science/religion divide.
One adopts a position somewhat similar to Evangelical literalism which is deeply distrustful of science and places their reading of scripture above science. This movement started around the 1930's or so in opposition to evolution, which had been strongly embraced by many prominent LDS theologians of the time (who all tended to have a background in science, some significantly so). This movement peaked in the late 70's.
The other position, somewhat similar to Protestant liberalism, sees religion as primarily concerned with questions of why, relationships with God, and morality. It sees questions of how or what as properly outside the scope of religion. Thus they see no conflict between science and religion because they deal with different kinds of questions.
The final position, which has definitely been gaining ground at least since the 80's, is I think more of a return to the view of science in Mormonism from the late 19th and early 20th century. Perhaps primarily influenced by apologetics, it sees no conflict between religion and science and tends to see them as mutually inclusive ways of knowing. Further when there is a conflict they would feel that we simply don't understand well enough. This group is very willing to use the tools of science to understand religion and also thinks religion has a lot to say about science.
Fair enough. Let me put it another way.
How do you see the relationship between systems driven by revelation and those driven by controlled observation? The latter, of course, is constrained by the requirement for reproducible results. Is there a corresponding constraint on revelation?
What I am driving at, I suppose, is more of an question regarding the epistemological status of revelation, especially revelation-at-second-hand. To me, as a non-believer, this seems like schizophrenia-by-proxy: listening to the voices in someone else's head. Obviously, a believer would see it differently.
You've posted before on the relationship between faith and reason, and as you can tell from my comments above, I see them as orthogonal. Anyone can believe something reasonable-- what takes faith is to believe the completely implausible. But, if one is to follow Tertullian and say "credo quia absurdum", how do you decide *which* absurdum to credo? There's a whole lot of texts out there claiming to be inspired, and the process of choosing one would seem to require reason...
I think that there is a strong parallel between revelation, consulted carefully and rigorously and the scientific method. They aren't the same, of course, mainly due to questions of public phenomena and on demand reproducibility. There are some strong parallels however.
Ideally revelation strengthens ones belief as one continues to gather revelation on the assertion and also finds empirical confirmation. To a somewhat limited extent, Alma 32 is the prototypical scripture for this. (However as I've discussed here before, I think Alma 32 may actually be more limited in application than it is sometimes taken) In science we have the same thing. We have a hypothesis arrived at by educated guess which we hold "as if" true and then conduct tests against it. As we gather more evidence, our belief in the claim becomes strengthened.
Getting to the question of public phenomena it is clear that most scientific phenomena can be examined in a way most religious phenomena can not. However at the same time one can find others who conduct the same kind of religious inquiry and testing and thus there still is that community of inquirers possible in religion in a fashion similar to what happens in science. Whether religious people make use of such opportunities is, of course a different matter. But I think the potential is always there. Likewise in the midst of inquiry, one may find that a conjecture one held needs revision or even rejection. So I don't think religious inquiry is a "sure" matter anymore than scientific inquiry is. Yet just as in science there are many things most would claim to know I think there can be in religion as well.
Regarding second hand revelation, I think you would find that most Mormons would tend to agree with you. We may trust a text because of primary revelation. But we really have to find out directly about a claim to say we know it by revelation. For instance someone may say they know the Book of Mormon is true and is the word of God, but because of the way Mormons view revelation and interpretation, it doesn't follow that they know every claim in the text. That's because they may misread the text or there may be an error within the text on some minor point.
This is quite different from say conservative Protestantism where (and perhaps my Evangelical friends can correct me here) primary revelation or personal revelation is considered secondary to the second hand revelation of the Bible. i.e. the Bible text and community interpretation is privileged over personal revelation.
The overly simple answer within Mormonism is that this is reversed. I don't know how common it is, but when I was on an LDS mission we were taught to tell people to not believe us or our claims but to go directly to God to find out for themselves. That sense of a blind trust in a text simply isn't found in LDS theology. Indeed as a practical matter personal revelation is really emphasized a great deal.
Of course there are structural and practical limits on that, otherwise there would be anarchy. And in a way the history of Mormonism is a history of the conflict between a bottom up religion based upon personal revelation determined by each individual and a top down religion based upon homogeneity and revelation to the leaders of the church. But the way that is resolved is probably beyond the scope of this short post. (I also don't think the way it is resolved is "static." i.e. as a tension it exists in a kind of organic dynamic)
As you say, I don't see faith and reason as orthogonal. And I suspect that does come out of my Mormon background. I see them as deeply intertwined and mutually dependent upon each other. If something is completely implausible then to be faithful is to not believe it.
Fascinating stuff, Clark. I hadn't realized that Mormonism emphasized personal revelation to that extent. Naturally, that significantly changes things (from an epistemological status.)
If faith and reason are not orthogonal (which seems quite possible in the case of personal revelation) what do we do when they conflict? Is the exemplar here Abraham or Galileo?
My own suspicion is that when faith and reason conflict the person will chose based upon what beliefs they feel most confident about. Of course that begs the question of how they ought behave, which may be more complex. Further given the fact that we all have limited evidence from which to judge our judgments of how to resolve conflict may be in error. Thus the need for continual further inquiry - a fairly Peircean point of view which may be partially why I find his thought so interesting.
Michael asked: "If faith and reason are not orthogonal (which seems quite possible in the case of personal revelation) what do we do when they conflict? Is the exemplar here Abraham or Galileo?"
Most active Mormons pay lip service to the supremacy of revelation, but that isn't how it plays out in real life. When faith and reason clash, generally faith will gradually give up turf until the two are no longer overlapping. In the Mormon church as in others, the religious realm shrinks as the secular realm grows. I think that's entirely appropriate, but, for me at least, there will always be places that reason can't touch.
Michael asked: "If faith and reason are not orthogonal (which seems quite possible in the case of personal revelation) what do we do when they conflict? Is the exemplar here Abraham or Galileo?"
Any conflicts I have noted I attempt to resolve by examining both scripture and science to verify the claims made. Some of my faith has been strongly verified by personal experience, and some science has strong evidence to support it. However, some scripture has several possible interpretations, and some science has logic and reason but little direct evidence. So far, I have found no conflict between what science knows and what God really meant as he gave the scripture. (Perhaps faith comes in here as well, but I really strive to be objective about both science and religion.)
A purely personal idea, here, to answer the original concern of a time-bound universe versus an eternal universe.
This involves the Mormon concept of the veil placed on our minds, as spirits born into this universe to take mortal bodies. This mortal existence is but a brief foray into mortality, from an eternal universe, and back into that eternal realm. Other LDS thinkers have ascribed an extra dimension in that eternal universe wherein God can view our whole life at once, *as if* time is a dimension accessible in the same way as x, y, z of our common experience. (Clark may have a link to something on this.)
Along these lines, Carl and I have been kicking around the implications of Dark Matter/Energy as possibly being Spirit Matter that is behind the veil, since gravitational effects are the only way we know of Dark Matter as yet. This is consistent with Joseph Smith's statement that spirit is matter, only more refined or pure. Thus, my contention that the one aspect of spirit matter we can know is its ponderability, or mass, seen as gravitational effects, only, as yet.
Thus my view (highly speculative, of course, and open to 'further light and knowledge') is that this universe we are inhabiting at present is contained within an over-universe that is parallel with us, but unseen, behind the veil placed on our eyes/minds that also applies to our mechanical extensions of our senses, such as telescopes, x-ray detectors, and so on. This limitation is because we are time-bound, whereas the over-universe is one more (at least) dimension up on us, and time is not a linear constraint, as in the 'arrow of time' idea.
Tracy
Tracey, I’m all for parallel universes, however, the assertion that time is not linear is I think untenable. I had a post on this not to long ago. Clark though, has done a better job, especially with respect to the foreknowledge of God.
Both your links go to this same page Jonathan.
I tend to like non-linear time ideas, although I do think we have to be careful about the implications of this. (Note that discontinuous time is non-linear)
With regards to Tracy's view though it really doesn't resolve anything. Being in a higher dimension still has you move along the time axis. You can see this by doing a projection onto that plane from the plane you are in. (For those not familiar with mathematics think of it as a shadow from a three dimensional object onto a two dimensional object) So really multidimensional beings don't give you any big advantage.
More importantly it doesn't resolve the foreknowledge/free will conflict. I've discussed that a lot in the threads on Blake's book.
The first was at my site, the second was the one you linked to. You must have a default that sets the link to the local address if there is an error in the code.
Ah, I finally found what I wanted in order to answer the comments above. The following is a copy from a post I sent about our discussion a while back on Eyring-L, and is what I parenthetically referred to in my first comments here. This quote from Woodbury came from the link you gave us to the BYU site and the discussion on the manuals used by CES, as I remember.
I recognize your projection of 3D onto a 2D plane example, and think this may fit in with that, as it describes a possible way to look at what ultimately would require another dimension.
And I tried to find your comments on Blake's page, and wasn't too successful. Sorry. I'm not too sure how free will enters in here, unless it would be influenced by being able to see all of 'time' instantaneously, rather than sequentially, and so see consequences of our actions instantly. This may be part of the nature of the veil -- to be time-bound. And might there be *another* time axis -- 'eternity' from which we can view 'mortality' in its entirety? (Gotta *really* confuse the mathematicians! )
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Clark, I agree with your assessment of the description of relativity in reference to D&C 130. However, the following excerpt from Lael Woodbury's comments in that same section of the manual has some feeling of correctness *for me.* I'm not espousing this as doctrinal, just that for a subject that we, by our very mortal nature, automatically have difficulty understanding, this is *one way* of describing the situation. Other explanations may be put forth, to our edification.
Tracy
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Lael Woodbury:
“I’m suggesting that God perceives time as instantaneously as we perceive space. For us, time is difficult. Lacking higher facility, we are as blind about time as a sightless man is about space. We perceive time in the same way that we perceive music—sequentially. We explore rhythm, pitch, amplitude, texture, theme, harmonies, parallels, and contrasts. And from our perceptions we synthesize our concept of the object or event—the musical artwork—that existed in its entirety before we began our examination of it.
"Equally complete now is each of our lives before the Lord. We explore them sequentially because we are time-blind. But the Lord, perceiving time as space, sees us as we are, not as we are becoming. We are, for him, beings without time. We are continually before himâ "the totality of our psyches, personalities, bodies, choices, and behaviors.â" (Continually before the Lord, Commissioner’s Lecture Series [Provo: Brigham Young University Press, 1974], pp. 5–6.)
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