Dan Peterson's outdated mode of science

[_Philo Sofee]

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeterso ... sions.html

“Certainly science has moved forward. But when science progresses, it often opens vaster mysteries to our gaze. Moreover, science frequently discovers that it must abandon or modify what it once believed. Sometimes it ends by accepting what it has previously scorned. The simplistic idea that science marches undeviatingly down an ever broadening highway can scarcely be sustained by the historian of ideas.”

And religion continues arguing about the same old stupid excrecensce such as is God one or many? It has led to no new discoveries or mysteries that better our lives for literally millenia.
Science doesn't march undeviatingly, but it certainly does march to new knowledge, unlike religion which is still stuck in ancient thinking of my God is bigger and better than yours! Dr. Peterson all the while denigrating science from a modern ship on the Nile taking pictures with a camera and posting information on the internet. But science is a wishy washy sort of almost thing to him.........hell, he doesn't even have to find scribes and copyists to spread the silliness of his "Interpreter" magazine! He can use modern science to get it out fast to the entire world in a mere day......

Update. Elsewhere on Dr. Peterson's blog, he links to a new article by LDS apologist/scholar Blake Ostler which amply demonstrates what I say about the lack of religious movement anywhere but in circles. They just keep on regurgitating the same old same old...... http://blakeostler.com/docs/logicalincoherence.pdf

[Guest]

It's interesting to watch us go through our separation from the LDS Church. How we have changed! So many emotions and life lessons to go through, each on his own journey. I haven't stopped thinking about God, but my ideas of Deity have changed so much. Just the other day I was marveling at the oddness of going back to the Hebrew Bible expecting to find today's God. Oh, I know people say there is only one God, and, for the sake of human community, I am willing to go along with that. But, really, the God concepts of so many people are mired in outmoded thinking. What's the point of seeking a modern understanding of God chiefly in the simple ideas of Iron Age minds?

I am not saying that the Bible has no value. It has value, but it needs to be placed in the proper perspective. It is one of many sources one can consult to explore these kinds of ideas. One should embrace many ideas and sources. Philo updated his idea of God after reading Plato. Joseph Smith was updating the God concept for his people, albeit in an oddly archaizing way. Ought we not to update our ideas regarding cosmogony and theology in the light of modern physics?

My problem with churches is that they impose organizational strictures on the search for truth. Maybe I don't gain more from reading McConkie than Sagan. Why should I assume that I would? What benefit is there in having others erroneously assume they will? Churches are dying partly because their approach to truth and meaning is outmoded. They insist that new generations should prioritize the same things as past generations. They resist finding new ways of guiding their members to meaningful lives.

The LDS Church is in dire need of new priorities and approaches. What they are marketing now is failing.

[_Dr Exiled]

I think it'll be tough for them to move forward until they admit that god never spoke to Joseph Smith via a rock or rocks (whether one believes in seer stones or the urim and thumin). Mormonism is forever tied to the history it cannot escape or deny. The best move is to have a radical change after admission of and then running from the past.

[_moksha]

Dr. Peterson points out that science is forever reformulating ideas by testing and retesting. Science is not stuck on the mantra of "gimme that old time knowledge".

I think Dr. Peterson makes a valid argument about science not being content with a burning of the bosom as a means of empirical testing.

[_Symmachus]

I am not sure what the point of the quote is. If I were a believer, the idea that scientific models shift and new discoveries are always possible (after all, anything is technically possible) would be cold comfort against the icy fact that "Enish-go-on-dosh" is gibberish and not Egyptian.

But putting it side by side with the Blake Ostler piece: Ostler claims that "traditional Christianity" (whatever he means by that) is "logicallly inconsistent." To that, I say: the mystery of the Trinity may confound our minds now, but "science frequently discovers that it must abandon or modify what it once believed. Sometimes it ends by accepting what it has previously scorned. The simplistic idea that science marches undeviatingly down an ever broadening highway can scarcely be sustained by the historian of ideas.”

Have some faith. For, as the great philosopher Kiwi57, a frequent commentator at Sic at Non, reminds us:

A great deal of "meaningful knowledge" can only be revealed. This means that such knowledge is forever out of reach of those who are too narrow-minded to give it serious consideration.

[_Physics Guy]

What's the point of seeking a modern understanding of God chiefly in the simple ideas of Iron Age minds? [emphasis added]

I guess I also don't see the point of seeking God chiefly in Iron Age thought. But if we back off from "chiefly", I think it's cool to have ancient sources.

Human life was mostly more difficult and more dangerous in ancient times, but life can sometimes get difficult or dangerous now, too. In those kinds of times I find it's maybe worth hearing from ancient people, because I think they knew trouble better than we do. Somehow it's also in times of trouble that my interest in God tends to pick up.

So I see a real value in ancient religious texts. Just not an exclusive value. On a lot of points they just didn't know jack back then. If you recognize this, though, you're inoculated against most of the potential downside of respecting ancient texts.

On the OP:
It's true that science doesn't just steadily and inevitably progress. But it does at least tend to keep moving, and in the long run the motion tends toward progress. The constant jigging around that science does, with its little fads and pendulum swings, is probably actually important, because it maintains the expectation of change and that helps keep us from settling into ruts. So leave the issue of progress aside, and just look neutrally at change. Does religious thought change? Well, it does. It probably doesn't change as much as it should, and it's less inclined to admit that it changes, but it does, and that's good.

[_Kishkumen]

I love the ancient texts, but LDS thought about the significance of ancient texts is pretty shallow. Joseph Smith saw the ancient as a playground for his own theological creativity, just as some Gnostics did. This is consistent with the Hellenic culture of myth. Everyone knows the basic story, but each artist and each generation will tell the story in a new way. That is what Smith did. In a sense, that is what Nibley was doing too. FARMS, at its best, expanded the Mormon mythos. The Toscanos attempted the same in their book Strangers in Paradox. These kinds of efforts are wonderful, in my opinion. But the dominant LDS approach to the scripture is to set it in stone and turn it into a restrictive code. It is this kind of rigid reverence for antiquity that kills cultures.

The other extreme is also destructive. Antiquity anchors a culture's identity and vision. I say this not in a restrictive sense. Remember, the past and the future both are realms of creativity. The ancient narrative is not the letter that kills so long as creativity is the spirit that gives it life. What it provides is a sense of rootedness and stability in the midst of change. I think that, ideally, a culture holds a perfect tension between dreams of past, present, and future. Unfortunately, too many people imagine the past as a video recording, when memory is too patchy and malleable, the power of narrative too strong, ever to condemn us to the hell of perfect recall.

[_Simon Southerton]

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeterson/2017/05/science-world-illusions.html

“Certainly science has moved forward. But when science progresses, it often opens vaster mysteries to our gaze. Moreover, science frequently discovers that it must abandon or modify what it once believed. Sometimes it ends by accepting what it has previously scorned. The simplistic idea that science marches undeviatingly down an ever broadening highway can scarcely be sustained by the historian of ideas.”

The DNA essay begins in the same predictable apologetic way, by portraying the science on Native American origins as tentative, changeable and not well understood.

“Basic principles of population genetics suggest the need for a more careful approach to the data. The conclusions of genetics, like those of any science, are tentative, and much work remains to be done to fully understand the origins of the native populations of the Americas." - DNA essay

The fundamental science surrounding American Indian origins is anything but tentative. For over 100 years there has been broad scientific agreement that Native Americans are essentially all descended from Siberian ancestors who entered via the Bering Strait during the last Ice Age. This is based on extensive research in genetics, anthropology and archaeology.

What HAS proven to be tentative and changeable are the views of Mormons in response to the science. For the last 60 years LDS scholars have reinterpreted the Book of Mormon story, shrinking its claims so that it fits more comfortably with the science.

[_Kishkumen]

And that is the error of the apologist's way--to insist that his preconceived ideas, propped up by fallible people of earlier times, must prevail in the end, despite a mountain of evidence to the contrary.

Drop it, apologists! It is a pointless distraction in a preciously short life to insist that Noah's Ark totally works so long as Jesus shrank the animals to make them fit inside.

[_Choyo Chagas]

...
Noah's Ark totally works so long as Jesus shrank the animals to make them fit inside.

and put them to silence for the sake of poor noah

.