Creative thoughts

I apologize, this is probably going to be offensive to some people....

Although it isn't my intention to cause offence, I just had some thoughts I wanted to share after conference.

Elder Nelson made an interesting analogy.  "You can't blow up a book store and get a dictionary".  That made me think of something else.  You can't blow up a bakery and get a batch of perfectly frosted cupcakes either.  A lot of people who believe literally in the creation as it is outlined in the Bible and Pearl of Great Price have this mentality.  They think science is out to prove God doesn't exist.  They use illustrations like the bookstore, or the bakery, or the watch to explain their understanding of the Big Bang and to prove their point.  But here is what is wrong with those analogies.  What they are stating is that God created chaos just to organize it.  Or leaving a Divine creator out of it, that something which was already organized and had a purpose, was destroyed and then was randomly, magically formed again.  That is not what scientists mean when they talk about the Big Bang Theory.

Now, I'm not a scientist.  I'm a regular person, but I like to think I keep an open mind.  After all, God did command us to "seek learning out of the best books".  Part of mortality is learning, is it not?  We weren't placed here on earth to just follow blindly by faith, but to search for ourselves, to not be commanded in all things, but to try and discover the principles and laws that govern the universe.  This is no more an evil cause than seeking to discover how the body works.  We can't just say, God created the body and leave it at that.  If we did, there would be no advances in medicine.  Or saying, God didn't give us wings and so we aren't meant to fly.  And yet we have discovered the physics that make flight possible.

I like what Stephen Hawking said in his book A Brief History of Time, and I'm going to quote a few passages, so bear with me!

"[Some] would say that God, being omnipotent, could have started he universe off any way he wanted.  That may be so, but in that case he also could have made it develop in a completely arbitrary way.  Yet it appears that he chose to make it evolve in a very regular way according to certain laws." Pg 11

"Science seems to have uncovered a set of laws that, within the limits sent by the uncertainty principle, tell us how the universe will develop with time, if we know its state at any one time.  These laws may have originally been decreed by God, but it appears that he has since left the universe to evolve according to them and does not now intervene in it.  But how did he choose the initial state or configuration of the universe?  What were the 'boundary conditions' at the beginning of time?  One possible answer is to say that God chose the initial configuration of the universe for reasons that we cannot hope to understand.  This would certainly have been within the power of an omnipotent being, but if he had started it off in such an incomprehensible way, why did he choose to let it evolve according to laws we could understand?  The whole history of science has been the gradual realization that events do not happen in an arbitrary manner, but that they reflect a certain underlying order, which may or may not be divinely inspired." Pg 122

"Einstein once asked, 'How much choice did God have in constructing the Universe?'….If we do discover a complete theory [to explain the universe], it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason--- for then we would know the mind of God." Pg 174-75

We know there are eternal principles and laws that even God needs to obey.  Whether He set them in place, or whether He merely obeys laws as they were predicated from the very beginning, we know they exist.  Justice being one of them, mercy being another, unclean beings not being able to dwell in His presence and need for an atoning sacrifice to name just a few.  I like what Hawking said about order, the universe evolving in a regular way.  God has stated that His house is a 'house of order'.  Wouldn't it then stand to reason that a perfect being would have order in all aspects of his being?  Maybe we just don't understand these laws fully yet, and we may never while we are here on earth, but that doesn't negate the necessity of discovering and learning about them.

To simply say, God created the universe and we can't question it, is a cop-out to me.  Not saying we should question it to the point where we decide the universe didn't need a creator, but rather looking for God's place in it.  This is very hard for some people to fathom, because God has made himself undiscoverable through science.   A man may only come to know God by faith and prayer, by the burning in the bosom from the Holy Ghost, declaring the truth of all things.  You can't look at the universe scientifically and say, oh yes, this proves God exists.  There is no way.  But once you have discovered for yourself by personal revelation that God truly exists, you can then look upon His creations and receive further testimony of His divinity.

But I believe that it is ignorant to accuse scientists of not being God-fearing people just because they are trying to discover the origins of the universe, and the origins of man.  It is silly to make critical statements of principles you don't understand.  Most people who haven't studied evolution view it merely as a monkey turning into a human.  Nick and I had a conversation with one such man on a plane a few years ago, who said, "Look at me, do I look like I came from a monkey to you?"  Let me explain it this way.  It would be like a professor of calculus teaching a lecture to his students.  Then, a man walks in off the street and goes into that class, stands at the front and starts teaching what he thinks calculus is.  When the professor tries to correct the man, he merely becomes defensive and says he knows what he is talking about because he saw a program on TV once where they talked about math.  Of course all of the students in the room realize the man is an idiot, but the man then goes on to tell all of his friends and associates of the occurrence, and they adopt his same way of thinking, agreeing wholeheartedly that the professor had no right to try and correct him when he knew for a fact he was right.

This is the problem with people, they like to make unintelligent comments about things that they haven't studied in depth for themselves.  They merely form an opinion based on what they have heard, and stick with it, rather than seeking it out for themselves.  Evolution is a real thing, with evidence proving it so just as there is evidence to prove the existence of gravity.  The simple fact that we need to produce a new flu shot every year is evidence that things evolve.  Now, how evolution fits into the creation, we don't understand.  God has not revealed that.  Which is why there are so many people torn between evolution, and creation.  Which was it?  I can't answer that, but I can say I know what I believe.

Just remember that next time you are going to make an uninformed comment.  You wouldn't dream of telling someone of another faith what they believe, because you understand just how offensive it is when people do it to you.  (Forgive me, I am speaking as though my readers are LDS).  I know how much it hurts me when I hear people saying "Mormons aren't Christians" because I do believe in Christ.  If those people would only learn for themselves what we believe, they wouldn't make such offensive and ignorant comments.

Of course, everyone is entitled to believe what they will believe.  All I am trying to say is, there are mysteries in this universe that we don't completely understand, but it doesn't mean we shouldn't try to.  And if you don't understand a principle or thought process, don't criticize it until you are well informed.