My two weeks of guest blogging is about over. I wanted to thank you all for invigorating discussion and thought that you have spurred me to during this time. I want to thank Steve Evans for inviting me to join you. I’ve had a good time.

So for my last blog consider this scripture: [Read more...]

There is no universal recipe for living.
Carl Jung, p. 300 D. Bair

I was feeling very burned out. My classes had been demanding. I was working on three research projects and none of them were going as planned and I was plagued with setbacks and frustrations. I needed some time off. For a long time I had wanted to climb Mauna Loa on the Big Island of Hawaii. [Read more...]

The Scriptures contain all truths necessary for our salvation. And while what they contain is all true, they do not claim to be the only source of truth. For example, they say very little about such things as evolution, the Schrödinger Equations for quantum mechanics, or Gödel’s incompleteness theorem, or even how to bake a tempting devil’s food cake. We are therefore left to sort out many truths on our own. Nowhere is this challenge more apparent than in the scripture’s silence on the status of robots. Of course much of Ezekiel can be read profitably as a prophecy on the rise of robots in the last days. However, their status in the eternal scheme of things is murky at best. Therefore we are left to other sources of truth to explore the nature of robot consciousness, robot ethics and the use of robots in home and visiting teaching. And as far as I can tell these topics will not be soon covered in our auxiliary lessons (this despite my repeated calls to Church Correlation that we spend a year using Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov, and Roger Heinlein in Sunday School). Nevertheless, in anticipation of our church education becoming more interested in these important matters, I’ve prepared a set of lessons on robots for use in our Sunday Schools. Here is an example: [Read more...]

Many theologians have become interested in the implications of Darwinism for Christianity and religion in general. Within our church the debates about evolution have often been centered on figuring out just what the church’s position on evolution actually is. It’s confused because there are abundant negative statements by general authorities, including church presidents, who believed that evolution has its roots in the devil himself. Darwinism in this view is completely incompatible with Mormonism. These debates, I believe, have distracted us from thinking deeply about the implications of Darwinism for our unique and powerful teachings. [Read more...]

Steven L. Peck is an Associate Professor in the Biology Department at Brigham Young University where he teaches the History and Philosophy of Biology. He blogs on issues of Science and Faith at ‘The Mormon Organon’ (sciencebysteve.net). Nothing he says should ever be taken seriously by anyone, anywhere, at anytime. He is a long time fan of BCC and is thrilled to be a guest blogger for the next couple of weeks, (although he fears they may regret this invitation).

Right now we are all situated in a life. We stand in relation to many things: other people, hierarchies of social power, natural and ecological processes, familial relationships, economic connections with people in a global economy, etc. On top of that we have a historical context that places us in a certain place and time and embeds us in both a cultural setting and a pile of accidental ways of doing things and manipulating the world around us. These things allow us to live biologically and find meaning in the things we do. We also stand in relation to ourselves. This is a weird thing to say I suppose, and I’ve decided to spend my two weeks over here at BCC exploring some aspects of what I mean by this through the use of parables, robots, poetry and prose. (My sense is that while we have done a good job as Mormons of using parables we have vastly underused robots and their metaphors.) [Read more...]