So, the other day I had an interesting conversation about religion with a guy I work with. He is a self-proclaimed agnostic/atheist. We spoke for an hour about different aspects of religion and faith. He contests that faith is not logical or empirical; that the concept of revelation is but a circular argument that cannot be contested or verified by logical means. The second point that he made is that there are no universal moral laws. He asserted that a law, to be a law, must be absolutely and irresistibly followed, as in the law of gravity. I tried my best to explain where and how faith comes but my answers seemed insufficient. Don't be thinking badly of this guy though. The conversation was very amicable. But the conversation got me thinking. I hope that I'll be able to convey those thoughts in words.
For the past year I have been studying the impact of methamphetamine on dopamine terminals in the brain. METH causes a reversal of the dopamine transport and also acts on the vesicular monamine transporter 2 which increases dopamine both intra- and extra-celluraly. Dopamine is highly reactive and quickly forms reactive oxygen species which damage the nerve terminal and can lead to long-term dopamingeric loss. Now, that seems all well and good, though slightly irrelevant to the paragraph immediately preceding this one. The point is this - a year and a half ago if someone had told me this information I may or may not have been inclined to believe them. They could be pulling garbage out of the air for all I knew. Not until I began investigating for myself was I able to understand many truths about how METH acts on dopaminergic neurons. I know that these things are truths now because I have seen the data, I have experienced it for myself. And just because I don't understand every aspect of neural transmission fully doesn't mean that I give the whole subject up completely. It just means that there is more work to be done; there is more to be studied, more to investigate.
The scientific method is not really just for science. It is a method of uncovering truth, in whatever category it may be labelled. My favorite chapter in the Book of Mormon deals with the concept of experimenting with religious truth. A prophet named Alma, teaching on the American continent prior to the birth of Christ counseled, "But behold, if ye will awake and arouse your faculties, even to an experiment upon my words, and exercise a particle of faith, yea, even if ye can no more than desire to believe, let this desire work in you, even until ye believe in a manner that ye can give place for a portion of my words." (Alma 32:27). Alma counsels us to do the same thing that scientists the world over do daily, to allow our desire to know truth propel us to action and experimentation. He goes on to outline how to control for a religious experiment and how to ultimately find truth. Finding spiritual truth is much like finding scientific truth, one must start at the bottom wrung of the truth ladder and ascend step by step. I was able to understand METH's actions quickly only because previously I had put A LOT of time, effort, and desire into understanding science. Truth is never found without sincere, honest work. The same is true for the knowledge that I have of God - His existence, His Son, His plan. I know these things in a very real sense because I experimented and found truth. There is much more spiritual truth that I have left to acquire but my lack of knowledge in some things cannot erase my surety of others. I promise that anyone who desires to know of the truthfulness of God's existence and love and how it transforms lives can, if they will but muster the courage and desire to want to believe and let that desire work in them until it drives them to spiritual experimentation which always yields spiritual results.
The second point my friend made was that there are no absolute moral laws. I think the point that he was trying to make is that a law, in order to be classified as a law, must be universal. He suggested that in order to be universal, we must not be able to disobey a law. He cited the law of gravity as such a law. No matter how we try, we are always subject to the laws of gravity, we cannot choose to disobey it. I would tend to agree with the argument that law must be universal. The laws of God are more than societal implementations given by heads of state to control the masses. Let me give another example. There is a health law that just about everyone in the modern world understands. You would be hard pressed to find someone who didn't know that smoking a pack of cigarettes a day increases your chances of getting lung cancer astronomically. Yet, a hundred years ago this health "law" wasn't known. Regardless of the fact that no one understood the law they were still impacted by its reality. This is the universal aspect of the law. Unlike the law of gravity, smoking is a choice. If I choose to smoke, I accept the consequences of that action. If I choose not to smoke I reap the benefits of the law. The laws of God are the same way. Our agency, or the ability to choose, is vital to the plan of God. Therefore, His laws allow us the ability to choose but not the freedom to determine the consequences of our choices. In the end, when we choose to follow Him we find happiness and joy and when we choose not to follow him we find sadness and misery.
Anyway, those are my musings. Kind of a long post. Hope it wasn't too boring :)
4 comments:
You blow my mind! as if you were sitting in a 70's orange corner chair...tearing up while reading the ensign- nothing more than to say you really blow my mind :)
Kristen don't you just love them atheists? I have to give atheists a lot of kudos for the faith it takes to be one.
Your post was terrific and well written, I only had one point to add. As your friend said "The second point that he made is that there are no universal moral laws."
The problem with saying this is that he is disregarding one of the only things that we as humans have that sets us a part from all other living things here on this planet. We as human beings do, in fact, have a sense of right and wrong.
In the animal kingdom Darwinism runs in full force, survival of the fittest. There is no sense of moral law in animals. Mothers often eat their young, fathers kill their offspring so they don't have to compete with them later. In more intelligent animals it is often more apparent how they have a complete lack of morals, monkeys for instance will kill whole other troops for no reason. Not for food or to move into their territory but just because they are there.
We as humans on the other hand do things much differently. We do things because we "aught" too. Most everyone believes in programs that help feed the poor and protect the innocent, but when it comes right down to it, why? If we were concerned with survival of the fittest we would not let these blights on society steal from the system, in fact, the best thing to do would is to speed them on there way.
Now at this point your atheist friend would say that with education we learn what is the best thing to do, that helping people is really the best thing for society. But that's were their argument breaks down. If the world is overpopulated, polluted, starving, and for all general purposes hurt by population, the best thing would be to get rid of some of the excess. But we can't do that because it isn't right, because there is a moral law.
Now, all this being said, there are many people in the world who do think that killing people is the best way to solve their problems, but that is because this moral law is not a law like gravity is, it is a law of what we aught to do, not what we must do. It is still in fact a law though, all cultures and people know, in some sense or other, that some things you do because you aught too, and that there are other things that you aught not to do. As we study human history and ourselves we can see that this law of morality is within us.
To close a quote from my favorite re-formed atheist, "Atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning. . ." – C.S. Lewis
Kristen don't you just love them atheists? I have to give atheists a lot of kudos for the faith it takes to be one.
Your post was terrific and well written; I only had one point to add. As your friend said "The second point that he made is that there are no universal moral laws."
The problem with saying this is that he is disregarding one of the only things that we as humans have that sets us apart from all other living things here on this planet. We as human beings do, in fact, have a sense of right and wrong.
In the animal kingdom Darwinism runs in full force, survival of the fittest. There is no sense of moral law in animals. Mothers often eat their young; fathers kill their offspring so they don't have to compete with them later. In more intelligent animals it is often more apparent how they have a complete lack of morals, monkeys for instance will kill whole other troops for no reason. Not for food or to move into their territory but just because they are there.
We as humans on the other hand do things much differently. We do things because we "aught" too. Most everyone believes in programs that help feed the poor and protect the innocent, but when it comes right down to it, why? If we were concerned with survival of the fittest we would not let these blights on society steal from the system, in fact, the best thing to do would is to speed them on their way.
Now at this point your atheist friend would say that as people are educated they learn that helping people is really the best thing for society. But that's were their argument breaks down. If the world is overpopulated, polluted, starving, and for all general purposes hurt by population, the best thing would be to get rid of some of the excess. But we can't do that because it isn't right, because there is a moral law.
Now, all this being said, there are many people in the world who do think that killing people is the best way to solve their problems, but that is because this moral law is not a law like gravity is, it is a law of what we ought to do, not what we must do. It is still in fact a law though, all cultures and people know, in some sense or other, that some things you do because you aught too, and that there are other things that you ought not to do. As we study human history and ourselves we can see that this law of morality is within us.
To close a quote from my favorite re-formed atheist, "Atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning. . ." – C.S. Lewis
(fixed a bit of the awful grammar...) :)
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