Mormonism: technology, astronomy, and physics
 

I was thinking about the liahona which is the unique instance of the scriptures describing a technologically advanced device. "Curious workmanship." We have prophets (Isaiah) who may be describing technology they have seen in vision, but nothing like Nephi holding a device in his hand.

Today one could buy a liahona for $100 (with two year contract). GPS and messaging.

What other religion talks about the physics of time, talks of the planet(s) where God resides, etc.

I see this as divesting ourselves of the magical world-view we see in many other religions (Catholicism for example), and entering a very grounded earthly view, where the objects of our senses (stars, planets, the earth, knowledge, technology) are real and permanent and to be dealt with and reconciled. Rather than the material world being a husk, soon to blow away, as we enter heaven in the clouds.

I like this viewpoint that is implied in LDS doctrine. Marvelous truth seems more around the next bend, than in a hazy indifferent distant realm.

but Hebrews were ignorant, impoverished nomads, without sophistication or intelligence, how could this be?

Hey, now.

The same could be said of Joseph Smith. Improverished, ignorant, nomadic.

But this Mormon worldview comes directly from Joseph Smith in the form of the Book of Mormon, D&C, and PoGP.

Come on. Mormonism grew up just as the Enlightenment was phasing into the Romantic period, and in the heart of America's second Great Awakening, probably its greatest religious revival. Like Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoyevski, and the Shelleys, Joseph Smith and his acolytes and other participants in America's great religious revival of the age were engaging in a back lash against the bleakness and materialism of the Enlightenment. As Fawn Brody has shown, Mormonism is a living breathing pastiche of early Nineteenth Century ethos, dogmas, prejudices, hopes and fears (I recently read an iinteresting article in the NY Review of Books I hoped to link here but was not on its web site about how during this period the idea that blacks bore the mark of Ham gained great currency in the United States, after it had been very obscure or in most parts of Europe non-existent for centuries; some hypothesize it was an ex post facto rationalization for slavery; characteristically Mormonism had its own variant of this common lore of the age).

It's thus not surprising that Mormonism is romanced by scientific ideas as well as mythologies of the past. Mormonism's schizophrenia--regarding itself loving science and free thinking and also being in a sense preserved in amber as a manifestation of old time religion literally believing in miracles, rigidly paternalistic and dogmatic, etc.--reflects nothing more than the time in which it grew up. As with individual humans its formative years left an indellible mark. What passes for greater enlightenment among parochial Mormons is just Mormonism's uniquely American quality.

Anyway, if you don't swallow all of the foregoing certainly you must see it's silly to pat yourselves on the back because Mormons "talk[] about the physics of time, . . . the planet(s) where God resides, etc." Such talk was commonplace in the world by 1830. If anyone started what would become a "major religon" today he'd probably use a lot of computer lingo in the litergy. Again, this just reflects Mormonim's unique history as a product--albeit to some extent a back handed one--of the Enlightenment includng the founding of the American republic.

so Mormonism is closest to the enlightenment which is closest to the Greeks and Romans.

Awesome. That's a religion I can get behind.

In a sense it is. It was conceived amid Enlightenment fervor, so of course it was shaped by the Enlightenment, even as it reacted against it. Our founding Fathers were similarly schizophrenic. They loved the sciences--like a brainy kid thrilling to a new awareness of the world and its origins. Yet, paradoxically, their facination with the past and nature led them back into the magic and mythology of the past--free masonry. To this day our paper money has those crazy symbols on it even long after free masonry has been totally discredited.

I assume you mean schizophrenia in something other than a clinical sense. They weren't dualistic, and they didnt' see themselves that way. They were simultaneously scinetists whose work was infomred by their faith and devoutly religious men with a modern deistic view of God. I am very comfortable with thier approach to faith and knowledge. Of course, you probabyl think I'm crazy.

I was referring to the tension discussed in the Mattew Arnold article I posted in the other thread. Your distinction, if real, is pretty subtle. I'll have to think about it.

I think we both may have generalized a bit too much about how religious were the founding fathers. Tom Paine for one was seemingly what Lobewski would call an atheist.

Paine was, but he was atypical, I believe. In fact, I think he was a bit of a nut, but that is just my opinion.