I recently came across a quote from Carl Sagan on Facebook which took particular care to disparage the beliefs of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and – what is sadder – accuse the Church of deliberate fraud related to its founding. I was moved to make a version of the following comment there, because I felt I could not remain silent in the face of this unwarranted calumny.

I respect and love Carl Sagan, a brilliant man and staunch secular humanist who spent a good portion of his energy promoting adherence to scientific, empirically-proven realities rather than what he saw as superstitions. But I am also a member of this “peculiar people,” The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and there are good reasons for that. Many people say to me, “You can’t be both, you can’t believe in science and in creationism because blah blah yadda yadda,” and I say that you absolutely can. But it is essential to keep both sides in separate boxes, and not try to force one into the other. It doesn’t work. I love watching our knowledge of the macro-universe and the quantum universe expand and unfold, and feel a powerful sense of the numinous as Carl described in Cosmos:

“Our feeblest contemplations of the Cosmos stir us — there is a tingling in the spine, a catch in the voice, a faint sensation, as if a distant memory, of falling from a great height. We know we are approaching the greatest of mysteries.”

But I have other feelings that belie the “hydrogen atoms evolved to consciousness” concept, more in line with the idea that if there is nothing else out there, it would be a tremendous waste of space as related in “Contact” and elsewhere; William Wordsworth related a similar sense of awe and the distant memory in other words:

“Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;
The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,
        Hath had elsewhere its setting
             And cometh from afar;
        Not in entire forgetfulness,
        And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
             From God, who is our home.”

Ode on Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood

People these days – even members of other Christian faiths – seem to find it both fun and socially acceptable to throw shade on the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for its “unorthodox” beliefs, but as a convert to that faith of almost 60 years, I find its tenets to be the most logical, the most sensible, the most inherently believable of any religion on the face of the earth. If you are going to begin by professing a belief in a creator, you have to ask yourself the hard questions, starting with “what’s the point?” and Latter-day Saint doctrine answers those questions clearly and consistently. When we zoom back in from contemplating the majesty of an ever-expanding universe, and zoom out from exploring the mind-bending complexity of sub-atomic interactions, we have to look at humanity and wonder why we are even here. [Oh, I hear the chorus of humanists, including all my children and my secular forefathers screaming “No we don’t!” but that’s certainly their privilege.] I refuse to believe that the whole thing is simply dust that exploded so hard that it began to ask questions about itself.

In much the same way as a point is a one-dimensional projection of a two-dimensional line (and all the way up to squares and cubes and hypercubes), what Latter-day Saints understand as the “Plan of Salvation” is a way for us as mortals to begin to understand eternal realities. Everything about the Church’s doctrine – from its foundational belief in Jesus Christ, to the Book of Mormon and how it came to be, to continuing modern revelation from prophets and apostles – all of these things are means of a Creator to tell us where we came from, why we’re here, and what happens when this temporary, carnal existence comes to an end. Yes, the humanist crowd will say “nothing, just enjoy the beauty of existence while you’re here and do as much good as you can…” which is all well and good, but once you get a glimpse of what else is out there, that pales in comparison to an eternal destiny. I know this right down to the quarks in my body, and I will testify of it to anyone who asks.

Science and religion don’t mix in practical terms, but I beleive that with a broader view they most definitely do. We just don’t see the whole picture now, and as Paul said, we are looking at our world “through a glass, darkly.” If we could see clearly, we would see that all truth can indeed be circumscribed into one great whole. My sense of awe in the physical universe is only heightened by spiritual truths that I hold dear, and vice-versa; the more I learn of the world that surrounds us, the more grateful I am to Him who is responsible for all of it.

Now, there will be many who will undertake after this (and as many have done in the past) to pick apart my convictions with good and well-considered arguments, and demonstrate to me how I am simply deluded by a cult, and point out all my logical fallacies, and claim that I’m a heretic for not believing in the Triune God, and etcetera to the lemniscate… but that is their privilege. I have stated what I believe, and I am not good at polemics. I know what I know, and I understand what Joseph Smith meant when he said “I had seen a vision. I knew it, and I knew that God knew it, and could not deny it, neither dare I do it; at least I knew that by so doing I would offend God, and come under condemnation.” ❤

The Old Wolf has spoken.