Big Bang

Again the lines of science and religion are crossing in this post.  But since this is my blog I can do whatever I want. :)  It's who I am, in reality I'm a gospel nerd as much as I am a science nerd. And they go together quite beautifully in my opinion.  So that is my disclaimer, choose to read or not, and I do invite you to comment.

"Anyone who has studied the inner workings of the human body has seen God moving in His majesty and power.  ..Some think such marvelous things happened by chance or resulted from a big bang somewhere.  Ask yourself - could an explosion in a printing shop produce a dictionary?"

-Russell M. Nelson, Quorum of the Twelve Apostles

I define myself as an open-minded skeptic.  (Those two adjectives are not antagonists, I promise.)  I don't personally believe in the Big Bang Theory.  I must admit I need to learn more about it.  But I am a big believer that truth is logical.  The things I believe - both in science and in religion - make sense.  To allow us to learn, grow, and do many good things by our free will, God gave us many tools - most notably our brain.  The Big Bang theory doesn't make sense to me.  Mostly, the evidences that they have found and attributed to this theory don't seem very conclusive at all to me- there are many many ways these things could be interpreted, but sometimes scientists take the observances and try to assimilate it into a theory that they already have.  Naturally that's the most logical thing for them to do.  I just keep in mind that science doesn't have all the answers.  We keep learning more and more, and if at any time someone states that we know it all about any particular thing, I would think them a fool.  Even with something like our own bodies - we know a ton about them and how they work.  But we still don't know or understand it all.

Internationally renown Astrophysicist George F. R. Ellis explains: "People need to be aware that there is a range of models that could explain the observations….For instance, I can construct you a spherically symmetrical universe with Earth at its center, and you cannot disprove it based on observations….You can only exclude it on philosophical grounds. In my view there is absolutely nothing wrong in that. What I want to bring into the open is the fact that we are using philosophical criteria in choosing our models. A lot of cosmology tries to hide that."

http://big-bang-theory.com/

 

From another leader - the Prophet on the earth today (literally today, April 1, 2012, President Thomas S. Monson:

"Where did we come from?  Why are we here?  Where do we go?  Answers to these are not discovered in academia's textbooks or on the internet.  They embrace eternity.  Where do we come from?  This query is inevitably thought if not spoken by every human being."

He told a story of a man who became convinced that death was the end.  But then all that crumbled and he came back to his faith.  What made the difference?  President Monson explains:

"His wife died.  With a broken heart, he went to the room where lay all that was mortal of her.  He looked again at the face he loved so well.  Coming out he said to a friend - 'it is she, and yet it is not she.  Everything is changed.  Something that was there before is taken away.  She is not the same.  What could be gone, if it be not the soul?'  Later he wrote - 'Death is not what some people imagine. It is only like going into another room.  In that other room we shall find the dear women and men and children we have loved and lost.' "

So I guess it comes down to this.  The science attempts to explain how things happen.  The gospel tells us why.  I think that is the point that the Church leaders have been trying to get across.  Don't try to turn to science to answer the why questions.

Evolution and Faith

I attended a great meeting tonight.  It was put on by the Institute of Religion (LDS church), and they invited two UVU professors to talk about science and faith, who happen to also be members of the Church.
Dr. Heaton and Dr. Ogden did a very nice job of explaining how they balance their religious faith and science.  Dr. Ogden introduced himself like this:
"I am a husband.  I am a father.  I am a brother, a son, a nephew.  I'm an Evolutionary Biologist.  And I'm a Mormon."  (Sounds like all those profiles on mormon.org.  I love it.)
He emphasized that he searches for truth everywhere, it doesn't matter the source.  He said that he can understand how some other faiths could have real problems with incorporating evolution into their belief systems.  But Mormons don't.  Our doctrine and official standing of the Church allow evolution and religion to coexist for us.  (See my previous posts on Evolution, including the cool Coexist sticker at the bottom featuring science and religion.)

"Yea, seek ye out of the best books words of wisdom; seek learning, even by study and also by faith."
- Doctrine & Covenants 88:118

When I was searching for this Brigham Young quote, I ran across this article that deals with two Republican presidential nominees.  I do not wish to get into the realm of politics on this blog, but the writer makes correlations between the fact that the only 2 Republican presidential candidates who believe in evolution and climate change also happen to be the only 2 that are Mormons.  This is not a coincidence.  Here is the quote I was looking for:

“In these respects we differ from the Christian world, for our religion will not clash with or contradict the facts of science in any particular… whether the Lord found the earth empty and void, whether he made it out of nothing or out of the rude elements; or whether he made it in six days or as many millions of years.”
- Brigham Young, 2nd President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Our scriptures are full of references to learning and even science.
"The glory of God is intelligence, or, in other words, light and truth."
- Doctrine & Covenants 93:36

"Teach ye diligently and my grace shall attend you, that you may be instructed more perfectly in theory, in principle, in doctrine, in the law of the gospel, in all things that pertain until the kingdom of God, that are expedient for you to understand;
"Of things both in heaven [astronomy, meteorology] and in earth [geology], and under the earth [volcanism, oceanography]; things which have been [geology, paleontology], things which are [biology, geology, chemistry, okay, every aspect of science], things which must shortly come to pass;"
-Doctrine & Covenants 88:78-79, examples added

I love being a member of this Church, seriously.  I second what Dr. Ogden said about why he believes in it - he chooses to.  He's experienced too many things that are outside himself - outside his own molecules and matter, etc.  I feel exactly the same way.  Until you truly feel the Spirit, you won't know what the heck we're talking about.  It's a fully tangible, physical, real phenomenon that comes from God.  It's beautiful and awesome.

I too am a seeker of knowledge and truth - wherever it may be.  And I have a blast doing it. :)

Science following religion

In church today we were talking about the "straight and narrow" path back to God.  In other words, the first principles and ordinances of the gospel (Faith, Repentance, Baptism, Gift of the Holy Ghost).   Some people think that having such a narrow path to the Kingdom of God is too restrictive and our Church (and I'm sure others as well) is criticized for being too demanding.
A girl in class brought up a cool analogy of a stream.  A stream with a wide bank would be shallow and slow moving.  But one that is more narrow will be faster - giving more freedom and power.  I fully believe that having boundaries is the real way to have freedom.

So to expand on this great analogy, I thought of the human circulatory system.  I just learned (again) recently about the Autonomic Nervous System and its two divisions:  Sympathetic ("fight or flight") and Parasympathetic ("rest and digest").
When you have a scary or threatening situation, your body goes into fight or flight mode and a number of things happen physiologically.  Pupils dilate, the erector pili muscles contract (those are what make hairs on your arms stand up when you're cold and such), the heart rate speeds up, glucose is mobilized, bronchioles dilate so more air gets into your lungs.  All these things happen in order to give your body the ability to quickly respond to whatever threat you may be experiencing.

Another thing the Sympathetic Nervous System does is constricts the blood vessels.  This may seem counter-intuitive, but it's just like the river analogy.  With a smaller vessel, the blood moves around the body more quickly, so oxygen and nutrients are able to get around faster so your body is ready for action.

The spiritual equivalent to this that I thought of is that we have a "narrow" path to the kingdom of God, and we have boundaries, standards, etc. in order to allow us to respond quickly in this time of crisis.  The world is getting increasingly more wicked and it can be pretty scary.  There are influences everywhere trying to get us to give up faith, virtue, and values.  We are in a crisis.

For instance, some of the boundaries deal with things that can be addictive and debilitating - we are to completely avoid drugs, alcohol, coffee, any addictive substances including pornography (yes, it's actually physiologically addictive, look up the research on it if you don't believe me).  All those things can dull our senses and make us less able to react to crises.  Just ask any addict.

If we had no boundaries, life is much more haphazard and frustratingly chaotic, just like in parenting children.  A good set of boundaries allow children to have freedom within limits which is very calming and freeing for a child.  The chaos of having no boundaries would be like a body with no blood vessel structure and the blood was allowed to just roam freely.  We would last probably less than a minute under those conditions - our cells would quickly die without a consistent source of nutrients.

Glad that Someone is looking out for us.  Scientific, health, medical, etc. discoveries have often come after the fact and proven exactly why the standards are for our benefit.  In the 1800's when the Word of Wisdom came out, no one knew tobacco was bad for you or why they should stop using it.  Now of course we know very well.  Likewise with pornography.  Most "professionals" believe that it's okay to do sexual things as long as it's in private.  They even encourage it in young children.  Well now the research is starting to come out about some harmful effects of this.  Pornography addiction is as strong as cocaine addiction, but even worse because you can't just get it out of your system like you can with a physical drug.

Another interesting instance of science following God is with brain development.  I found it really cool when I learned a few years ago that the prefrontal cortex of the brain - where all the higher functioning like reasoning, predicting consequences, and planning takes place - isn't fully developed until about age 18 or 19 (I think) in women, and age 21 for men.  Right out of high school many guys get into stupid relationships, financial schemes and legal problems.  But in my Church, men are called on missions at age 19 and come back at age 21.  God had the timing right all along - men come back with fully functional brains and great spiritual experiences under their belt to help guide the rest of their lives, and are much more able to make wise decisions in marriage, career, etc.  We LDS women sometimes receive a bad stigma for only wanting to date an "RM" (returned missionary), but here are some darn good (and scientific) reasons why!

Darwin Day

Tomorrow is Charles Darwin's birthday.  My school celebrated "Darwin Day" on Wednesday with a seminar during the lunch hour and an evening event including a speaker, panel, and yes, even birthday cake.

Being the nerd that I am, I attended all of it and was probably one of very few students not required by a teacher to be there.  I overheard a lot of students complaining about having to go, and the fact that the place was packed proves that they were being coerced.  Otherwise those seminars are full of faculty and staff, but pretty devoid of students - except yours truly.

Earlier this week, I was discussing evolution with a couple other Biology Ed majors.  The big thing that stuck out to me in our discussion was that people think they have to choose between evolution and religion.  One of my classmates told about a girl that was completely turned off to science altogether because of evolution.  I think that is probably quite common.  And it's sad.  I don't believe that science and religion or a faith in a Supreme Being should be mutually exclusive or that in order to be a good scientist, you need to be atheist.
But that is exactly the question I posed to the panel - are they mutually exclusive and do you need to be atheist?  The panel had 2 BYU professors on it who responded and then an atheist philosopher who argued every point the others made, and in fact, they went off on a tangent about the Book of Mormon and lack of DNA evidence tying the Native Americans to the middle east and it started an argument.  It wasn't my fault, I swear.  So obviously the BYU people think it's fine to have both science and religion, and the atheist said bluntly that it definitely makes it easier to be atheist and believe evolution is how the natural world works.

Dr. Heath Ogden was the one who gave the speech prior to the panel and he pointed out that only 40% of Americans accept evolution, but that a bunch of religions (including The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that I belong to) have stated that they have no problem with science.  I mentioned in my question that I don't get the vibe that this kind of open-mindedness is returned by the scientific community.  I feel like the people on the panel were the exceptions to the rule, and that many scientists are more like the philosopher was.  (This goes back to my post on Darwin as Dogma.)

One of them did point out, however, a few good examples.  Many contributers to evolutionary science are religious.  Then there is the poignant exaple of Richard Dawkins and Francis Collins.  Dawkins is an atheist who said "you can't be a good scientist and religious."  I remember seeing this quote when I was searching for general science quotes last year and that really got me thinking about how scientists see religious people.  The panelist said that in response to this, Francis Collins challenged Dawkins "show me how you've been a better scientist than I have," to which Dawkins had no response.

The philosopher on the panel said that it's definitely easier to be an atheist because of Darwin.  Before then it was pretty impossible.  As it turns out, this man was regurgitating a quote by Dawkins:
"I could not imagine being an atheist at any time before 1859, when Darwin's Origin of Species was published"  "...although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist".
-- R. Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker, W.W. Norton, London, pp. 5,6  (http://community.beliefnet.com/go/thread/view/43991/22490045/Einstein,_Hawking,_and_the_Mind_of_God?pg=11)


The day after all this, I went to a meeting put on by the Wildlife and Botany Clubs about research and internships, and Dr. Ogden wants to do research on how to teach evolution to help people accept it.  I went and met with him Friday because I want to help with this.  Turns out he's LDS too and so we might take the angle of finding out how LDS people view evolution, what teaching methods would be effective in increasing acceptance of evolution, etc.  I'm really excited to get to help with this research.  I hope to prevent having my own students decide to hate science because it tries to rob them of their faith.

I love how this Coexist logo includes science with all the religions!

Darwin - Dogma?

Disclaimer: These are my thoughts and opinions with my current level of knowledge and understanding, which I'm the first to admit is not great.  I'm certain as I learn more I will weaken or strengthen, toss out, or completely change my views.  Please comment with your views, but please keep in mind my admitted ignorance and keep your words kind. :)

Is it just me, or do some evolutionists (and atheists, for that matter), seem to just be another group of religious fanatics trying to convert you to their beliefs?  It seems like anyone who dares question any of Darwin's theories as scientists currently understand them is ridiculed as a heretic.

In Physics last summer, my teacher introduced science as something where you do not accept ANYTHING based on someone's say so.  It all has to be evidence based from your own experience.  He also said that scientists are a funny bunch.  When a colleague creates something (a new theory), the acceptable way to respond is to attempt to destroy their creation.  If it withstands the skepticism and repeated testing and experimenting, then it is deemed of value.

I agree with this whole-heartedly.  I am very skeptical.  I want to learn everything for myself and figure things out until they click in my head and make sense to my being (aka spirit).
However, I feel like many scientists don't actually agree with this skepticism.  If anyone expresses skepticism about evolution in particular, they are not praised as a true scientist, but they seem to be ridiculed.  I read a quote from some guy a few months ago (forgive me, I only remember the jist of it), saying that science cannot exist with God.  He had some pretty strong words about the fools who believe in God and said that science very effectively disproves the existence of such a being.  I found myself wondering if this is the common view of the entire scientific community or if this guy was just a bit over-the-top.

I myself believe in Natural Selection, it's pretty dang obvious. But I don't necessarily believe it was the sole mechanism for creating the current diversity of life we enjoy on the earth.  So far I don't know enough, but I suspect that evolution CAN happen in individuals, not just populations, and be passed on to their posterity.  That may sound preposterous to most people, and maybe after further study I'll find that it is.  But isn't that what science is about?  Inferring truth and meaning based on what you currently know.

Geology is based heavily on uniformitarianism (spell checker doesn't like that word, but I think I spelled it correctly haha).  I think that Geologists are incredible scientists who are really rather like detectives.  It's super fun to try to figure out what happened to get a given land form to where it is today.  However I think that uniformitarianism is a bit too simple.  I think it could be foolish to take this tiny amount of data we have from recorded history, and apply it to billions of years.  The only constant is change.  I think Geology is great for figuring out how things happened but I don't necessarily believe that they took the amount of time they suppose.  I do think that geologic processes could have happened at different speeds during different times of earth history.  There are too many factors to assume things were always as they are now.

I think that Darwin effectively disproved the idea of the earth being only a few thousand years old.  But I think him jumping to the conclusion that this meant there was no God at all may have been a bit hasty.

My Microbiology teacher always called DNA the "Spirit molecule".  I could never tell if he was making fun of religious people or if he believes in something like that.  I think "spirit" is much smaller than DNA though.  Perhaps quantum physics is scratching the surface of something.  I think there are so many things at play on the sub-atomic level that we may never understand.  And call me crazy if you want, but I think spirit (and indeed, God) is in there- somewhere.

Thanks for reading.  Please comment. :)  And have a nice day.

The human brain and spirit

My father had a stroke at the end of June and lost all feeling and motion on his left side.  But he immediately started working on getting whatever movement and strength he could.  In the ICU the first week, a Physical Therapist came in almost every day and held his leg up for him and told him to push his own leg out.  He didn't have much ability, but even then he could use his muscles slightly.

7/3/2011 Dad strapped in the chair sitting straight up and reaching out because he feels like he's falling over (strong pusher syndrome)

7/3/2011 Needed to have others do everything for him

 This week I went to help him practice walking- he can pull himself up out of his wheelchair, and move his entire left leg (lifting and placing it, not dragging it as the original optimistic prognosis was) and walk while holding on to the railing in the hallway or even using a walker/cane thing.  We are there to support him in case he needs to sit down or loses his strength, but other than that, he does everything himself.  I am so amazed and impressed by his progress.  It's a miracle of the human brain being able to rewire itself after a massive cardiovascular accident and the subsequent tissue damage to a large portion of the brain.

12/1/2011 Dad sitting straight and just got done shaving his whole face and brushing his teeth by himself and is now ready to wheel himself out with little assistance.

Getting ready to walk- sitting in wheelchair, he grabs onto the railing, pulls himself up to standing, and walks while holding the rail or the hemiwalker

It is also a miracle of the human spirit- my dad's sheer determination to get his life back as much as possible.  He is so optimistic and hard-working.  I'm so glad that he has been blessed so much.

I'm continually in awe of the human body and it's complexity and sophistication.  When I took Human Anatomy last spring, all the things I learned made me think over and over, "I don't know how anyone could learn this stuff and not believe there's a God."  It's all too perfect and beautifully organized and orchestrated. :)  I find it so fascinating and amazing.

New Geekin' Science Blog

Yippee I have a new blog.  I like to geek out about science stuff and sometimes people just don't get it, ya know?  I guess I'm a freak, but I think the world and the living things on it are freaking amazing!  I love to learn new things all the time, and now I have a place to post them.
A little about me and what this blog will be about...

I am a college student in Utah and I plan to be a science teacher (Junior High or High School, teaching Biology and Geology hopefully).  I am also a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  I love science and learning lots of stuff particularly about the earth, how it was formed, why it is the way it is now, its prehistory, how plants and animals work, how they came to be, etc.  Surprising to some, science does not make me doubt my faith in God.  I think science and God go together quite nicely.  I bring this up because sometimes my posts will refer to my faith since it's a big part of my life, and I'm always finding ways in which the natural world/ science fit in beautifully with my beliefs, and I love to share this information with whomever happens to be willing to listen.

Okie dokie, so I hope you enjoy my ramblings, and feel free to comment!  I'd love to hear from people.