Dawkins vs. the Book of Mormon

I remember walking down the streets of Santa Maria in southern California as a week-old missionary. One afternoon a twenty-something in a convertible with his friends drove by and shouted,
"The Book of Mormon isn't true because it's written in old English. They didn't talk that way when John Smith wrote it!"

Elder Root, a sturdy, dark-haired, Canadian held his hands out and looked at the sky, "I guess it's not true! Thanks for letting us know!"

I've heard the archaic English argument several times since then, most surprisingly from the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins. Dawkins used this as his opening challenge to the Book of Mormon in an interview with Brandon Flowers on a Norwegian talk show last week.

There are plenty of legitimate questions to ask about the veracity of the Book of Mormon (and the existence of God) but that one is the religious equivalent of challenging an evolutionary biologist by asking, "if humans evolved from monkeys then why are monkeys still around"?

Yes the Book of Mormon was translated into archaic English not current in 1830. This was a choice (conscious or not) of the translator Joseph (not John) Smith to match the style of the the King James version of the bible. In fact the KJV itself was translated into archaic rather than contemporary English for the time, taking the Book of Mormon's linguistic style further back in time. "Thou," "thee," "verily," and "it came to pass" were nary heard on the bonnie streets of London in the 17th century. The translators chose to use old-sounding language to lend reverence and mystery to the text.

So why does such a shallow question resonate with such a highly intelligent man? Why doesn't he choose one of the many sophisticated and relevant arguments against the book?

One answer might be that he doesn't care. This may have been the first anti-Mormon observation he encountered, and since he knew from the beginning he wasn't going to believe in the book, this argument seemed like a slam dunk. But Richard Dawkins does care, to the point of writing books about why people believe in God.

I think that Dawkins has fallen prey to the fallacy of the single cause (also causal oversimplification). Dawkins believes that people believe in God for only one reason: to explain mysterious processes (lightning, earthquakes, the human mind etc.). In this worldview, because science explains (or will explain) all natural phenomena, it eliminates the need to invent God. Dawkins is an excellent evolutionary biologist (though I side with Gould on matters of contingency and morality) and his scientific explanations for seemingly impossible natural patterns are good and sound. From Aurora Borealis to human consciousness, we are learning more and more that seemingly impossible complexity and beauty can arise naturally, making it less compelling to say "there must be a God, otherwise how could an ... angler fish exist?"

Cool fish no doubt, but not the primary reason I believe in God. (Photo credit: THEODORE W. PIETSCH/UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON)

While Dawkins has effectively shown how asymmetric natural pressure can push us up "mount improbable," how has he overlooked other foundations of faith? I think that because he believes his position is so obviously correct, he can't empathize with the believer. This assumption of ignorance or irrationality has rendered him culturally autistic, unable to imagine the minds of believers to explore the basis of their belief. Because of this, he hasn't touched on the thousands of other reasons why people believe in the reality of a spiritual world.

I believe in God (and the veracity of the Book of Mormon) because of personal experience and the sensations of joy, gratitude, wonder, and universal love I feel when I consider and investigate these topics. Part of my belief does stem from an inability to explain certain mysterious events in my life (see my post on Coincidence) and as such that part of my belief is vulnerable to explanation. I like that. I like being vulnerable to new information and understanding. I like how doubt provides a humble and empowering lookout from which to examine my beliefs.

For the record I believe that evolution by natural selection is the mechanism by which all animals (including humans) arose, and I believe that God knows each of us and desires our happiness.

So Dr. Dawkins, if you read this, consider these two links my rebuttal. Here's a post my cousin Brigham wrote about Why we need the Book of Mormon. And here's a song my friend Matt and I wrote up at Toolik Field Station on the North Slope a few years ago called The Mormon Code. Matt is from North Carolina and had heard that Mormons owned the Nintendo codes and that we funded the church by selling them to school children.

This picture was in the background slideshow at the talent show while we played the song. In case you were wondering, we won the talent show that year. And the year after. And the year after that.

Shaggy Manes

Becca and Dana, two of my new labmates found some Shaggy Mane mushrooms (Coprinus comatus) growing outside our trailer this afternoon. Since the ephemeral fungus doesn't last more than a day and given there were too many for them to eat, they let me in on the secret.

It was good I collected a pound or two because it's been a while since the Abbott family has been grocery shopping. We were down to pickled asparagus, dried peaches, condiments, and prenatal vitamins. We made two wild mushroom dishes with scavenged ingredients: a toasted dijon mustard mushroom sandwich, and a green chili cream of mushroom soup (we found some bread ends and a can of chilis behind the stale marshmallows).

As I fried the shaggies Rachel observed, "They smell like European B.O."
"You're totally right," I marveled as I glanced down to double check that I wasn't wearing some German's football jersey.

 While we cooked, Ingrid set up a parking lot with the assortment of forty year old matchbox cars Grandma gave her. In the prayer she said, "Thank you for this day, thanks for all these cars, amen."

As we ate Rachel shook her head and said, "Henry deserves better than dried peaches and asparagus." He seems pretty happy with what he's getting for now though.

The kitchen drain clogged from cleaning the mushrooms' dirty bits but I got it flowing again with a science-fair volcano by pouring some baking soda and vinegar down there. 

Utah State Police Blotter

Though we love the frontier charm of Fairbanks, it's hard not to miss the peace of placid and pastoral Logan Utah (the safest city in America two out of three years). I get Utah State University's weekly bulletin and happened to click on the police blotter last week. Read to the end to get all the lurid details: wild tug of wars, suspicious breath mints, rumors of skateboarders, and Redbull Girls indiscriminately distributing caffeinated beverages in the USU Police Blotter.

The Equinox Marathon

A marathon is not a good event for the procrastinator. Yet, here I am, two weeks away from race day, four runs into my training schedule. I guess I have been doing a lot of standing at the lab lately, and that uses your legs and core muscles right? At least my shoes are broken in from the last (and first) marathon I ran, the KSL News in Salt Lake six years ago. For that one, my brothers Nate and Joe told me the day I got home from my two-year mission, that they had signed me up for a marathon in three weeks. The course was all down hill and I stil couldn't walk down stairs for a week afterward. The Equinox in Fairbanks is billed as the second hardest in the U.S. and looks like this:

I was going to go for a long run tonight but it took us longer to dig the potatoes, then we had band practice, and then we had to eat the potatoes over at the Gianni's. Now it's sprinkling and I really should watch War of the Worlds so I can take it back to Redbox tomorrow. Anyways I still have almost two weeks and I should be fine, I did watch quite a few of the running events in the Olympics.

Be Bigfoot at your own risk

One summer night in 2003 Brittany and I were looking for a watch I'd lost next to Diversion Dam up Provo Canyon. A Bigfoot pounced out of the darkness at me and I bolted a quarter mile in full scream before realizing that Bigfoot doesn't wear white sneakers (or thinking of Brittany). As I walked back to collect the broken pieces of my dignity, the Bigfoot took off its head and I I recognized the guy who cleaned the popcorn machine at the Wynnsong theater. He was wearing a ghillie suit, just like this Bigfoot for whom it didn't go so well: Man killed while trying to create Bigfoot sighting.

On a different subject, my mother in law just turned 70 and Rachel's whole family was up here for the celebration.

Here are some more pics on Facebook.

Only touch dead birds with your right hand

This morning I hiked out to lake 395 and passed by a dead owl. 

Thinking an owl talon would make a pretty cool talisman, I pulled out my Leatherman and cut off one of the feet. An impossible number of plump maggots erupted from the severed limb and I dropped the rotting bird on the tundra.

Then I remembered that I had a big gouge in my hand from falling into the Copper River last week. The greasy forgotten-turkey smell on my hands made me wonder where else my open wound had been.

I'm up at Toolik with an Australian film crew shooting a documentary on tipping aspects of the climate system. Yesterday we sampled and shot the Stinking Bluffs, a 100 foot tall eroding permafrost cliff and I stuck my hands into the 50,000 year old mud. Since I lived through H1N1 I wasn't too worried about the mammoth flu or other Pleistocene plagues.

Then I looked back at the wriggling bird carcass and realized that it wasn't even an owl, it was a Northern Harrier - a cool bird in its own right, but no owl.

 After rinsing my hand off in the lake I went over to the Kuparuk River to sample some ice-wedge degradation that Mike told me about yesterday.

While I was looking for the best place to collect water, a bull caribou trotted over. He came within 20 yards (which surprised me since the Slope is crawling with bow hunters right now), sniffed my draft and ambled away towards the road. After filling my bottles I saw that the bull had stopped traffic in both directions crossing the Haul Road between two trucks of hunters.

"I guess that was the last video anyone will ever take of that one," I mourned, hoping I wasn't the cause of his arrowy death. To my surprise, the two groups of hunters just sat there, neither side knowing who should take the shot (plus you can't shoot from the road). The bull walked calmly between the bumpers and onto the tundra on the opposite side. Once he was walking away, the "it's getting away" instinct shook the hunters out of their stupor and they piled out of the pickups like maggots out of an owl's leg. They gave chase but the bull immediately and effortlessly put 100 yards between them. He tilted his head back in that caribou way and looked really please, as if he was thinking, 

"I hope some cows saw that."

Hold my hand like a North Korean

The dental office we clean gets Time Magazine, so every Monday and Wednesday I try to complete my tasks faster than Rachel so I can get a few articles in. A couple months ago the cover article was on Kim Jong Un, North Korea's new Supreme Leader.

North Korea doesn't have the internet (just a state-run intranet), they still have a Propaganda and Agitation Department, a full half the population is in the military, and ten percent of the country's 22 million starved to death in four years of famine in the late 90s (while I was worried about getting in enough Nintendo time between my four older siblings). The number of dead is unknown but varies from 800,000 to 3.5 million. More on North Korea.

Bill Powell's article talked about how Kim went to school in Switzerland, and how, since he was a distant third in line to ascend to power, he spent a lot of time playing basketball and rollerblading. Then his oldest brother got caught with a fake passport trying to go to Disneyland Tokyo and his father decided the second in line was too girly so ... enter Kim Jong Un. After seeing the picture below I wrote this song:

Hold my hand like a North Korean