Finding a cure for Alzheimer's

For the last 8 months or so, I've been part of a research lab on campus.  Our lab studies acetylcholine receptors, which are proteins in the body whose function has to do with both movement and cognition, among other things.  In our research, we study the effects of another protein, beta-amyloid, on the acetylcholine receptor.  Beta-amyloid is a protein whose misfolding causes much of the pathology and neurodegeneration seen in Alzheimer's disease.  When beta-amyloid folds the wrong way, it causes other beta-amyloid copies to fold improperly as well, amplifying the degenerative effect.  We hope to characterize beta-amyloid's effect on the acetylcholine receptor to better understand the pathology of Alzheimer's.

Of course, this is only a piece of the puzzle.  Alzheimer's is a problem that encompasses many molecular players in the brain, which is why so many scientists are working on it right now.  With the scope of the problem so wide, it's hard to feel like your work is making a difference.  In fact, it may not be; it's possible that the key to curing Alzheimer's is something my current lab isn't associated with right now.  Even when labs develop drugs or other therapies that look promising for the treatment of Alzheimer's or other neurodegenerative diseases, there's still the problem of getting them across the blood-brain barrier (BBB), which excludes many molecules from entering the brain (for a good reason, of course, but it makes drug research difficult).

A couple weeks ago, for my advanced neuroscience class, we read a couple journal articles about the difficulties in getting drugs across the BBB and several ways of getting around it.  Some of them seem to do more harm than good, but more recent techniques show promise.  One of these techniques involves introducing a pathological protein like beta-amyloid with an immunologic adjuvant (an adjuvant is something that stimulates an immune response).  The adjuvant both activates the immune system and disrupts the BBB so that beta-amyloid can get across.  But why do we want to put a disease-causing protein in the brain?  Well, while the BBB is disrupted, the immune system is making antibodies against beta-amyloid.  Normally, this wouldn't matter, because if the antibodies can't get into the brain where the problem is, nothing gets solved.  But because of the adjuvant, antibodies for beta-amyloid are introduced into the brain.  And, theoretically, if we could properly introduce these antibodies without overly raising levels of beta-amyloid, it would be like a vaccine for Alzheimer's.  A VACCINE.  FOR ALZHEIMER'S.

Yep.  You heard me right.

Before anyone comes up with conspiracy theories about why this promising technology isn't already being distributed to everybody, understand that there's more that has to be done before this kind of a thing is ready to be safely and effectively used in humans.  But if this is modified to the point that it reliably and repeatedly works, it would solve one of the most expensive and debilitating medical problems in this country.  Not only solve it, but prevent it.  I haven't read much more about it since then, but it's very possible that the blood-brain barrier will be a major research focus of mine for my scientific career.  Whatever I end up doing, I want my research to help alleviate suffering.  I may just be working on a small piece of the puzzle for the rest of my life, not contributing in any noticeable way to any major problems.  But if something I discover helps somebody else to discover something that changes the world, I'm okay with that.  Because I did my part.

Cognitive enhancement

A few months ago, in my behavioral neuroscience class, one of the students was giving a presentation on "nootropics".  I had never heard this word before, but I listened with increasing interest to information about several drugs that supposedly improved attention, focus, intelligence, and even creativity.

I was no stranger to a couple of them.  I had heard of the ADHD treatment drug known as Ritalin (methylphenidate) and had known a couple of friends who had been prescribed the drug.  For a short time in high school, I was diagnosed with mild ADD and took moderate doses of Adderall to increase my focus.  The drug's initial effect was immediately noticeable:  I had intense focus throughout the day, and was more interested in some of the class material at school than I otherwise would have been (we were learning about Emily Dickinson in English that day, and...well, let's just say she's not my muse).  I also experienced the loss of appetite, feeling of stimulation, and mild insomnia that the doctor had told me was pretty likely.  Over time, I started to notice Adderall's effect less and less.  Later, I would only take it on the day of a big test or other important event; and eventually I ceased using it entirely.

This student's presentation caught my attention because it had never crossed my mind that thousands of people with no mental deficiencies whatsoever take these drugs in the hope of becoming smarter, more creative, or more mentally fit than their peers, coworkers, and competitors.  The concept of swallowing a substance to give myself an intelligence boost was intriguing.  I wrote my post about creativity shortly after this experience, spurred on by the idea that a drug might be able to make me more creative.

Noticing the excitement many people have about these "revolutionary" drugs, Hollywood's started to pander to the public's idea of smart pills.  Lucy and Limitless both toy with the idea of a drug that can unleash untold mental power (though the idea that we only use 10% of our brains is completely untrue and ridiculous).

I followed my interest in this topic until I decided to make it the subject of my undergraduate honors thesis, so I've done a fair bit of research into the objective cognitive effects of some of these drugs.  Spoiler alert:  they don't live up to the hype.  Many studies have found a significant enhancement of one or more cognitive skills by Ritalin or Adderall in healthy individuals, but the effect is usually small.  Often, when there is an effect, it is most dramatic for those who started out as low performers; proficiently intelligent people usually didn't benefit and sometimes experienced impairment with increasing doses.

Despite the evidence against the characterization of these substances as "smart drugs", many experts and ethicists push to make pharmaceuticals like these available to anyone who wants them, ADHD diagnosis or not.  Others think that widespread availability will just lead to more social inequality:  the rich will find it easier to get their hands on smart pills, and will simply become more successful while those who are unable to obtain them continue to suffer.  I'm still somewhat divided on the issue, and I'm not sure exactly what position I'll end up taking in my thesis.  Common drugs like Adderall and Ritalin aren't without their side effects; dependency is possible, and one aspiring medical student spiraled into psychosis, addiction and eventually suicide on nothing but Adderall, collected entirely under prescription by licensed psychiatrists.  Still, college students across the nation illegally obtain Adderall from peers to cram for exams or pull all-nighters to write a paper.

More recently, several drugs have come on the market that supposedly have a less severe side effect profile.  Modafinil, an FDA-approved treatment for narcolepsy, and cholinesterase inhibitors, for the treatment of Alzheimer's, are gaining underground popularity as the new generation of neuroenhancers.  Anecdotal evidence is rampant regarding individuals' experiences with these drugs and others, detailing the positive effects and the success stories.

Smart drugs are an interesting ethical issue to debate.  If a drug existed that was proven to have a significant positive impact on whoever took it, and exhibited little to no risk, would you take it?  Would you want friends and family members to take it?  How would you feel if anyone and everyone could take it?  Would you want to limit its distribution in any way?

Comment with your thoughts if you're interested.

Ecotheology: Why don't we discuss it very often?

As I stated earlier, the topic of caring for the earth is rarely a subject of public religious discussion.  I don't remember it being a topic of any Sunday school lesson or church talk in my memory; and to my knowledge, environmental consciousness has never been the subject of any general conference talk in my lifetime, though several LDS church leaders have made statements about it.

Caring for the environment is something that a majority of people have to be on board with before it can be really successful.  It doesn't do to have an extremely vocal, radical minority who are complete conservationists when the rest of us waste resources like it doesn't matter.  There are many possible ways that Americans could be motivated to be more caring towards the earth; and while our society is becoming increasingly secularized, I think that religious motivation can still inspire many people to action on this matter.

Admittedly, I speak mostly from personal experience; since it was digging deeper into my religion's teachings about the value of the earth and its inhabitants that finally made me care about this when I didn't before.  But I've found at least a few teachings in several major world religions that can inspire believers to be more unselfish; not only towards other people but towards all life on earth.  Nearly every religious tradition has examples of loving, unselfish people who sacrificed much so that others could avoid suffering.  Whether the exemplar is Buddha, Mohammed, or Jesus, there's no reason not to extend that example of compassion to all life.  So why isn't there more effort to promote the idea of caring for the earth through the religious atmosphere?

Honestly, I don't know how well the idea would take, especially in American culture.  I consider caring for the environment to be a commandment from God, but if leaders of churches were to actively encourage their congregations to conserve and give back, I don't know if it would have much effect.  Church members might agree with these teachings, try hard to be environmentally conscious for a couple weeks or a couple months, and then the movement would fizzle out and die.  I think many of us would just feel guilty about it without really doing anything.  It would take the focus off of other, perhaps more important, things.  So as nice as the idea sounds to me, I can't see it working very effectively.

Despite this, studying the value of God's creations has brought a great deal of fulfillment to me.  In the early days of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, founder Joseph Smith said, "Love is one of the chief characteristics of Deity, and ought to be manifested by those who aspire to be the sons of God. A man filled with the love of God, is not content with blessing his family alone, but ranges through the whole world, anxious to bless the whole human race."  While learning about how much earth and its creatures are really worth, I felt this kind of love in a way and with an intensity I never have before.  I think anybody who sincerely searches to have this compassion can feel it too.  I hope this knowledge permanently changes the way I live my life, and I hope it does for you.

Ecotheology: Religion and the environment

Ecology is a rarely mentioned topic in religious teaching, at least in my experience. I don't remember participating in a Sunday school lesson about why we should take care of the environment, and I don't remember our environmental responsibility being a subject of any talks in sacrament meeting (the LDS Sunday service) or general conference (a worldwide semiannual LDS gathering). Several church leaders in the past have spoken about the need to care for the earth, but it's far from being a major topic of Mormon discussion. I'll focus more in my next post about why I think that is.

This post will focus much more on the LDS perspective of environmentalism. I haven't given as much time to study this topic among world religions like I have with animal consciousness, so I'm sticking to what I'm familiar with right now. But I hope the principles I mention here will be widely applicable to many faiths and traditions.

Religious arguments of environmental ethics are often grounded in doctrine regarding the creation of the earth and its purpose for existing. The biblical creation story, common to several major world religions, makes it clear that mankind has dominion over the earth. Some theologians have interpreted that dominion to mean ownership and inherent human privilege, when others have seen it as a call to responsible stewardship. Book of Mormon scripture teaches that "the Lord hath created the earth that it should be inhabited; and he hath created his children that they should possess it" (1 Nephi 17:36).

LDS scriptures gives a unique perspective as to the spiritual identity of the earth and all things on it. I mentioned a scripture in my last post (Moses 3:5) which teaches that all animals and plants have spirits and were created spiritually before they were created physically. Later in the book of Moses, we read about a revelation given to Enoch that gives a remarkable level of personification to the earth itself. "Enoch looked upon the earth; and he heard a voice from the bowels thereof, saying: Wo, wo is me, the mother of men; I am pained, I am weary, because of the wickedness of my children. When shall I rest, and be cleansed from the filthiness which is gone forth out of me? When will my Creator sanctify me, that I may rest, and righteousness for a season abide upon my face?" I don't know if I believe that the earth itself has a spirit and a consciousness; but if it does, we're giving it plenty of reasons to be pained and weary.

In a nutshell, believing that the earth is something worth caring for is a motivation to be an environmentalist. But even those who take a humanocentric view of the universe have reasons to care for the earth. One of the main reasons is sustainability. It's a simple fact that several of our major resources are, though abundant, finite. If we continue to be wasteful, ignorant, and greedy, we will run out at our own peril. It might not happen during our lifetime, but we're sad examples of compassion if we leave a legacy of waste to our children and grandchildren. In the Doctrine and Covenants (other LDS scripture), the Lord states: "For the earth is full, and there is enough and to spare; yea, I prepared all things, and have given unto the children of men to be agents unto themselves. Therefore, if any man shall take of the abundance which I have made, and impart not his portion, according to the law of my gospel, unto the poor and the needy, he shall, with the wicked, lift up his eyes in hell, being in torment" (104:17-18). We have enough, if we use it wisely. If we don't, and if we don't care about the state we're leaving other unfortunate people in, there will be consequences, here and in the hereafter.

My opinion on this matter is very much similar to the opinion I have of animal rights and welfare. We don't have to be complete ascetics and abstain from all the luxuries of life and technology, and we don't all have to be environmental activists (I don't plan to be). I think we'll make much more progress if we each improve our own lifestyle and strive to conserve than if we seek to change things through protest and lobbying. Changing the way we do large-scale industry will definitely have big effects, but changing the way the American household uses energy will too. There's plenty of people fighting for environmental change in the public square, but my preferred approach is personal. Whether we're religious or not, each of us has many reasons to conserve the precious and finite resources we have on the only earth we have.

Further reading:

Righteous Dominion and Compassion for the Earth, by Elder Marcus Nash of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints
Scriptures and statements from church leaders about the environment
Mormon newsroom: Environmental stewarship and conservation

Ecotheology: Animal consciousness and vegetarianism

This will be another series, but probably only 3 posts long this time.  I'm kind of doing this to wrap up a process I just finished, which was writing a great questions essay for the honors program at BYU.  The "great question" I wrote about was:  "Are humans the only animals with a consciousness?"  It's been a long process and a long journey, and it's affected me more than I thought it would.  The essay requires students to approach the topic from three different academic disciplines; one of my three was theology.  I found a lot of interesting materials detailing the position of several major world religions on the status of animals, and what I found still surprises me.  If you're interested, the full text of my final draft of the essay can be found here (it's a couple dozen pages, so set aside some time).

In a nutshell, animals know and experience a lot more than most people realize.  Apes especially, but dolphins, elephants, and African grey parrots (among other species) have done remarkably well in tests of self awareness, intelligence, learning, memory, planning, and creativity.  Individuals of multiple species have consistently shown the ability to recognize their image in a mirror as themselves, showing that they have a level of self-concept that many people categorically deny animals.  Chimpanzees and other great apes display remarkable proficiency in American Sign Language; several lab subjects have attained a vocabulary of several hundred words.  Dolphins have found ways to solve problems that no one had shown them before, suggesting evidence of planning and creativity.  And several African grey parrots, in research situations, have developed a habit of answering questions deliberately wrong because they were bored of the testing procedure.  I won't cite evidence here; references are available in the text of my essay.

What does theology say about the status of animals?  Most people are familiar with the Hindu and Buddhist doctrine of reincarnation, which basically demolishes any spiritual barriers between us and the other creatures.  Countless stories exist in theological legend about animals conversing with or instructing humans, including the biblical story of Eve being deceived by a serpent.  A closer look into the Hebrew text of the Old Testament suggests that God gave spirits to the animals, and Mormon theology is quite explicit about that (see Doctrine & Covenants 77:2 and Moses 3:5).  Historically, Christian religions have been most disposed to deny the consciousness or spirit of animals, but theologians like Andrew Linzey, an Anglican priest, seek to overturn Christianity's disrespect and feeling of dominance towards the rest of God's creatures.  I could go on, but suffice it to say that if you're religious, you have a lot more reason to believe in animal consciousness than you thought (check out Lisa Kemmerer's book "Animals and World Religions" if you want to learn more).

So why should we care?  One thing I really enjoyed about Kemmerer's book is that it included an appendix detailing the current status of animal cruelty in the American meat industry today (the book was published in 2012).  Before reading this, I was familiar with several activists' accounts of how animals were treated in slaughterhouses and such, but I simply assumed that it was a thing of the past.  Not so.  I won't go into detail, but current practice isn't much different from what it historically has been.  There's enough evidence to pretty solidly debunk Descartes' idea that animals don't feel pain.  There's plenty of suffering still happening to billions of them.  And if you study theology deeply enough, it gives you a reason to care about it, no matter what religion you belong to.

Outside of this blog post, I don't plan to become an animal rights activist.  Frankly, I don't know how effective any efforts will be to get the meat industry to change the way they do things.  But we can change how much we support the industry; namely, by changing how much of their products we buy and consume.

This is Graham Hill, an environmental activist of sorts.  This short TED talk is aimed towards people who have thought about being vegetarian before, but didn't think they would be able to do it completely.  In Hill's words, "Imagine your last hamburger."  For me, I think going vegetarian would be doable but difficult.  I don't know if I could ever go vegan; I enjoy dairy too much.  The reason I enjoy Hill's approach is this:  when I've heard other people's arguments for vegetarianism in the past, it frequently seems to be couched in language that suggest we should accept vegetarianism completely or not at all.  Go big or go home.  Hill realizes that this sort of rhetoric is counterproductive; what about all the people who see and agree with the good reasons for it, but don't want to go 100% (like me)?  All-or-nothing vegetarians are wasting their time and effort on them.

So he offers an alternative:  be a weekday vegetarian.  Monday through Friday, no meat.  Saturday and Sunday, eat what you want.  After all, he says, "If all of us ate half as much meat, it would be like half of us were vegetarian".  He doesn't cite any of the reasons why most people go vegetarian (check this out if you want to see the best ones), this talk is primarily to offer people an option besides complete vegetarianism.  This is something I plan to try out when I'm back in college.  Feel free to join me if you'd like.

My OK Go fanboy post

So, a few months back my brother wrote a fan post on his blog for one of his favorite artists, Sara Bareilles.  Now, Sara Bareilles is talented and all, and I do respect her as an artist.  But I choose to write about musical groups that don't put my man card in danger (and I'm only writing that because my brother hates it when I talk about man cards).  So, OK Go.

Some of you may be aware that OK Go recently came out with a new music video.

Yeah.  Awesome.  I know.  I've shared it with a few people over the last few weeks, and about half the time, they're like, "Who's OK Go?"

WHAT THE HECK, PEOPLE.  And most of the other half says something like, "Wait...weren't they those people who danced on the treadmills and stuff?"

Yes.  Yes they were.  But PEOPLE.  They have done SO MUCH MORE cool things since then (which was 2006, by the way.  8 years ago).

Like this.

And this.

And freaking THIS.

PEOPLE.  They built a mile-and-a-half long instrument, and they're playing it with a car.

WITH A CAR.

Oh, and they do almost every single one of their music videos in one continuous camera shot, with the exception of the car video, and End Love, which was probably stop-motion photography.

They're coming to Salt Lake in two days, and I think it goes without saying that I can't wait to see them.

One thing that impresses me about the band is that several of these projects have brought together dozens of people to try and do something that's never been done before.  But the main reason I love OK Go so much is because they take creativity so far beyond the limits of what anybody thought a band could do.  I'm pretty sure at some point during the making of one or more of these music videos, somebody came up to them and said, "Um, isn't this pretty much impossible?"  "This is never, NEVER going to work."  "You've tried this, like, 40 times already, why don't you just give up?"  "Why are you buying 280 guitars and 55 pianos to make this music video?"

And they just do it anyway.  They never say it, but everything they do sends the message that creativity doesn't have limits.  There shouldn't be anybody who says, "You can't do this."  There shouldn't be anybody who says that something you created has broken the rules of creativity.  Because there are none.

Skepticism and deception: Finding the right balance

As a Christian person, I'm still trying to find the right midpoint between extreme skepticism and extreme gullibility.  Two questions are relevant in my mind:  How skeptical does the Lord allow us to be, and how skeptical does the Lord need us to be?  One scriptures that comes to mind is Matthew 10:16:  "Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves:  be ye therefore wise as serpents and harmless as doves."

I was first introduced to this scripture on my mission in a somewhat different context, but I think it has significant meaning when applied to the issue at hand.  The word "serpents" in Christian scripture is most often a symbol for the adversary and/or his followers.  To me, then, this scripture means that Christ is commanding His apostles to possess the same intellectual skills as their greatest enemies.  They are to examine evidence, search for truth in as many valid ways as they can, and be unafraid to reject an idea that might be wrong (but be equally inclined to embrace an idea that is correct).

But the "harmless as doves" ending seems to reject the intellectual cynicism that is characteristic of many skeptics.  Some would argue that the attitude of a skeptic is one of his greatest skills; that the ability to be a skeptic, occasionally summoned, is far less valuable than the consistent habit of being a skeptic.  This echoes the words of Eliezer Yudkowsky (who I've mentioned in this post and this post), who said of rationality, "It's dangerous to be half a rationalist."  By this, he means that it's hazardous to someone's intellect to selectively practice methods of rationality.  Particularly, it's dangerous to apply the flame of curiosity and skepticism to everyone else's beliefs without turning that flame on your own ideas to assess them for credulity.

When I first read those words, I was reminded of something I thought about on my mission after talking about anti-Mormon literature with my companion.  I remember thinking, "You know, I bet somewhere out there, there's a piece of anti-Mormon literature that if I read it, I would leave the church."  I kind of left it at that, not really wanting to think about it more deeply.  Later on, I realized that that idea itself wasn't the problem, it was the fact that I simultaneously held that idea in my mind with the contradictory desire to not ever read anti-Mormon literature.  If I knew that there was information that would make me scrap my beliefs, but decided against that realization to stay away from the information, wasn't I avoiding truth?  Wasn't that the bigger problem?

While writing this series of posts, I realized that, in order for this cognitive dissonance to actually be a problem, it had to be the case that if any given information made me reject my current belief schema, it was because it was true information.  In other words, if it's possible for false information to make me turn away from my beliefs, then the cognitive dissonance is just the fear of being deceived.  I think it's entirely possible for me to read something that contains sound factual evidence, but to be misled by the interpretation an author claims from that evidence.

So, I could turn the flame of curiosity and skepticism up to 100% and aim it at myself and everyone around me.  I could spend hours reading everything that's ever written about Mormon beliefs or Christian beliefs, from apologists and antagonists alike.  I could spend every minute questioning and doubting instead of believing, but I'm not going to.  Why?  Because I think it would be far too easy to commit a type II error.

Let's say our null hypothesis is "Mormon/Christian doctrine is not true" (remember, null hypothesis include the word "not").  A type II error is failing to reject a false null hypothesis; in this case, rejecting Mormon/Christian doctrine when it is actually true.  I think if I tried to be as skeptical as possible, with my infantile skills of evaluating truth, someone smarter than me could easily deceive me into a type II error.  And in this case, weighing the consequences makes a type II error far more dangerous.  If I make a type I error, the consequence is me being a lifelong member of the church and being about as happy as I am now.  If I make a type II error, the consequence is me being a spectacular rationalist/skeptic (or so I think), but being deceived, which holds far greater consequences.  To put it simply, I'm not taking that risk.

But I don't want to be blind to truth.  I think God wants us to know all truth, wherever it is.  People might want to keep us from truth, but God doesn't.  As a developing skeptic and a developing disciple, I think it's best to increase my skills of both in parallel.  The more I learn, the better I'll understand how to find truth, the better I'll be able to discern fact from fiction, the better I'll be able to determine what a collection of facts implies, and the better I'll be able to make the right call about something and avoid type I and type II errors.  As I move forward in life, I'll  gradually turn up the flame of curiosity and skepticism so that I can find out what is really true.  But because I do it slowly, I won't subject myself to a level of curiosity that will mislead me.  I won't be hard on my own beliefs until I'm ready to do it without fooling myself.  And that, I think, is the right balance.

Skepticism and deception: Why does it seem so easy to be deceived?

"For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect."

-Matthew 24:24

Did you ever read that scripture and think, "Well, that's not fair!"  The elect of God are supposed to be those who are most devoted to Him, those who are His most faithful followers.  Why should it even be possible for them to be deceived?  If the best people on the earth are led away, what hope do the rest of us have?

The "if it were possible" qualifier makes it somewhat ambiguous.  There are arguments from several denominations for and against the possibility of the very elect being deceived.  To be honest, I'm not sure which side is right.  Frankly, I don't think it's within our ability to define who "the very elect" are.  But the issue of deception is, I think, an issue of what heavenly communication really is and what it is not.  It is what divides communication with God from communication with the adversary.

Having been raised in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, I remember at various times having conversations with members in which they mentioned certain methods of communication that the devil could not imitate.  I'm not well studied enough to know where they got this information from, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was a sort of cultural meme.  But while writing this series of posts, the idea somewhat intrigued me; that we supposedly can know of communication methods that are "off limits" to Satan.  I hope you'll forgive me if I go into some statistics terminology to explain my thoughts about it.

In statistics, there exists an idea called the null hypothesis.  It is a claim that usually includes the words "is not" or "does not", which can be assessed for validity by statistical methods.  Examples of null hypotheses include "vaccines do not cause autism" and "global warming is not occurring".  With respect to the null hypothesis, one can make either a Type I or a Type II error.  A type I error occurs when a true null hypothesis is rejected, whereas a type II error occurs when we fail to reject a false null hypothesis (we don't say "accept" in statistics; statistics is devoid of acceptance).

Coming back to the general topic, we might say a relevant null hypothesis is "The adversary cannot communicate by method X".  A type I error, therefore, would be an incorrect assumption that he could indeed communicate a certain way when in fact he could not.  A type II error would be incorrectly assuming that he could not communicate a certain way when in fact he could.  Suffice it to say that, if I was attempting to deceive a great number of people, I would try to get them to commit as many type II errors as possible.  In other words, I would try to falsely convince them of ways that I supposedly could not communicate, or methods of deception that I could not or would not use.

This is not a blog post about how to avoid being deceived.  I don't know nearly enough about that to justifiably talk about it, though the scriptures provide a good starting point.  It is also not a blog post about why seemingly good people are deceived, for the same reason.  I don't know for sure if there are ways that are absolutely and definitely barred to the adversary in all cases, and I don't know how we would safely know if there were.  I'd like to think there are, and I believe that there are.

On my mission in Alabama, I met a few sincere, concerned, loving Christians who fully believed that we were being misled and compassionately attempted to help us learn of our mistake.  Some of them acknowledged that we were good people and were trying to do what was right, but that we were missing necessary elements on the path to salvation.  I never asked them this, but I sometimes thought, "If my only problem is that I believe something that isn't true, is that enough for me to miss out on salvation?"

I don't believe in a God who withholds salvation from the merely deceived.  To do that, especially to someone who was trying their best to do what they thought was right, would not be merciful nor just. I really would not be able to see any fairness in the situation of someone being told in the afterlife, "You did your best, but you just believed the wrong things.  Sorry."  Deception, coupled with vices, can inflict terrible damage, but I just can't see how deception by itself is enough to keep anyone out of heaven.

Skepticism and deception: The extreme of skepticism

Yes, I am aware that I wrote "skepticism" twice in the title.  Too bad.

In this post, we swing the pendulum to the opposing apex and examine the character of those who resist belief to almost everything.  As in the last post, I could target people will not even begin to give a shred of belief to something unless confronted with peer-reviewed, incontrovertible evidence, but I likewise do not believe anyone like that exists.  So this is my definition of the extreme skeptic:

1.  When presented with new information/ideas, the skeptic will compare it to what he already knows, and base his response upon the new information's similarities to the known information.
2.  The skeptic will view evidence for and against the validity of the new information.
3.  The skeptic will formulate an opinion based on evaluation of the evidence gathered.

I hope, thus far, that I have painted a fairly neutral picture of the attitude of the skeptic towards new ideas.  When most people hear the word "skeptic", they think of a caustic, opinionated antagonist who usually reacts to others' beliefs with disdain, like the Pharisees of Jesus' day (although "disdain" would be somewhat of an understatement).  There are definitely a lot of skeptics like this, but I think the "best" skeptics, the most practiced skeptics, have separated themselves from this attitude.

Good skeptics realize that it's not worth making an emotional show about something they believe is wrong unless 1) they think they have solid evidence behind their opinion and 2) they believe that the false information is damaging enough to warrant attacking it.  If they lack these things, they will try their best to be neutral until they have enough truth to back up an opinion.  In short, they follow the Litany of Tarski:

If the box contains a diamond,
I desire to believe the box contains a diamond;
If the box does not contain a diamond,
I desire to believe that the box does not contain a diamond.
Let me not become attached to beliefs I may not want.

At this point, I'll go ahead and admit I really like the idea of skepticism.  As a skill, I think skepticism is valuable.  But I also believe strongly in my faith, and the evidence I have for that belief is difficult, if not impossible, to transmit to others.  The main purpose of writing this post is for me to give my best answer to the question, "Why is complete skepticism a bad idea?"

In a way, this is the same question as "Why does God require faith?"  Faith is the act of moving forward with something when you don't have solid evidence that it's true.  The complete skeptic will not take part in this.  He will evaluate evidence and study viewpoints, but he will not give himself over to something, even temporarily, until he knows for sure that it will have a return.  He is unwilling to sacrifice something of real value.  But what is the true value of a cause if one is unwilling to sacrifice part of himself for it?  What is it worth if you're not willing to give up something that you might not get back?

If the cause you're putting faith in is untrue, it's probably not going to yield a valuable, unique return for long.  But with some causes, the only way you can ever find its truth is to sacrifice.

Skepticism and deception: The extreme of gullibility

In this post, I could talk about the complete extremity of the spectrum of belief, composed of people who unquestioningly and immediately believe 100% of what they are told.  But I don't think it's practical to go that far, partially because I really hope there's not a soul on this planet that's like that.  So this is how I will describe the extremely gullible:

1.  Their first instinct, upon hearing new ideas/material, is to believe it.
2.  They do nothing to suppress that instinct.
3.  They require little to no proof to maintain their beliefs.

Even this is irrational to expect of someone, but I bet there's a few people floating around that fit this description.  So why is it dangerous to have a knee-jerk belief response to new information?  Besides making you an easy target for scammers, this habit disables you from determining what information is important and what is not.  Truth is a stubborn thing, and absolute truth is going to stand up to any and all attempts to debunk it, even if it takes time.  But grabbing on to whatever ideas are currently popular is a shaky strategy at best.

Truth is the best foundation upon which to live your life, because by definition, it doesn't change: "Truth is knowledge of things as they are, and as they were, and as they are to come" (Doctrine & Covenants 93:24).  That's a good definition of truth whether you're religious or not.  Fad fades.  Trend dies.  But truth is the thing that will not move; and if you know where you want to be and build on truth, you won't move either.

But I'm drifting off topic.  The other form of gullibility I want to discuss is excessive trust in people.  This I find much more tolerable, for this reason:  in a perfect world, everybody should be trustworthy and dependable.  Even if we fail, we should give our best to keep our promises to others.  I believe this is part of what will make heaven heavenly:  we will be part of a society in which we can put complete trust in everyone we interact with.  But excessive trust in new information is risky regardless of morality, because often people are just wrong, despite their best intentions.  Usually it's harmlessly wrong, but sometimes it's dangerously wrong.

In many ways, I look up to people who tend to trust those around them.  They're looking for the good in people, and they live by the philosophy that everyone is motivated by the just and true.  If they put themselves around the right people, their innocent trust probably won't get them into trouble.  If they get unlucky, they might get hurt, and they might learn to doubt others' intentions.  But I'd rather be somebody who trusts too much than trusts too little.  People who trust no one miss out on too much.  For lack of a better ending, here's one by Ernest Hemingway:

"The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them."

Skepticism and deception: Introduction

I've been meaning to write about this for a while, but it took some time to gather the thoughts I wanted to include.  I've wondered a lot the past couple months about what place skepticism should take in my life.  I started reading this webcomic called Carbon Dating that is, of course, for total incurable nerds.  Unlike some webcomics, Carbon Dating has a developing story and recurring characters.  The main character, Rob, is a science journalist, whose job is to find and report on new and developing scientific findings.

In doing so, Rob often comes across a lot of pseudoscience or "quack science", products or ideas meant to appeal to people who really don't need a lot of evidence to be convinced of something.  A couple characters in the webcomic are meant to represent the gullible target audience of pseudoscience, who at their best are attracted to medical products whose only benefit is the placebo effect, and at their worst get scammed and ripped off by false advertising.  The underlying plug from the author is to not believe everything you're told, even if it looks like it's backed by solid evidence.  Sometimes the author gets up on his soapbox about skepticism and promotes material from the skeptic community, of which he is an active part.  Readers of Carbon Dating often get referred to stuff like this:

This is Michael Shermer, a well-known contributor to the skeptic community.  The video is his theory why many people have a knee-jerk response to believe something they hear.

Why am I attracted so much to skepticism?  There's a few reasons.  Of course, I don't want to get duped by something that's obviously wrong.  But while there's plenty of stuff out there that has a laughable lack of evidence and rationality behind it, to me it seems like there's more and more that's very well covered up.  I feel that the technological age is making it easier and easier for evidence to be fabricated.  In addition, skepticism is important to a career as a reputable scientist, and while I don't intend to be the best there is, I want to be proficient at a good way of finding truth, scientific or otherwise.

Does that mean I'm instantly mistrusting of anything that comes to me?  No.  I'm trying to find a good balance between skepticism and gullibility, and this series of posts is part of my finding.  In the next couple of posts, I'll outline both extremes of the spectrum and talk about why I think they're not a good idea.  After that I'll try and aim closer to what I'm looking for.

On emotional excitability, or lack thereof

Yesterday I took some time to evaluate myself and see how I was doing, a practice I enjoy taking part in every so often.  In doing so, I decided to read a couple journal entries from during and before my LDS mission.  What surprised me is how different it sounded, how not-like-me it sounded.  I'm well aware that I changed a lot during my mission, and I feel that I've changed at least as much since the completion of my mission.  But one defining characteristic of the changes I've been through has been a gradual decline of my emotional excitability throughout my life.  With the possible exception of the last few months, this has largely been unintentional and has gone mostly undetected.  I don't necessarily consider this a loss, but yesterday I was wondering why much of my emotional excitability has faded.  This post is somewhat of an attempt for me to gather my thoughts about it.  The easiest way is for me to approach it autobiographically.

I remember little about what it was like to be a child, and I feel most people my age will relate.  But from my parents' description of my personality, I was very expressive about almost everything that happened to me.  It was very easy for someone to tell how I was feeling at any given time.  I was also quite extroverted and had very little inhibition about sharing my opinions or thoughts about something.  I think this is pretty common among children today.

This trend continued throughout most of junior high school.  I was more withdrawn in the occasional environment where I felt less comfortable (physical education, for example), but for the most part, especially around those I knew well, I continued to be expressive and outspoken, with little care for what other people thought about me.

Sophomore year of high school was different for me.  I had gone to a junior high school that most people in my area didn't, so when I returned to the high school that most of my childhood friends were going to, I knew a lot less people.  My default became introversion, a habit I broke out of only when I was around people I knew well.  Around this time I began to notice that most other people's ups and downs seemed more intense than my own.  I concluded that it was because I had never really been through anything difficult; and because I had never known the sorrow of hardship, I didn't really know how to appreciate the joy of wellness.

This conclusion lead to some interesting behavior on my part.  I often wondered why my life was so easy (I still do sometimes).  Being a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, I had often been taught that if we had not had extremely trying experiences up to that point in our lives, we would someday.  I began wondering when all my trials were going to come, and if God was just "saving them up" to unload a barrel of crises on me when he saw fit.  I would occasionally pray for trials, just because I knew they would come sometime so it might as well be now.

After a couple years of nothing hard really happening, I decided that one of two things must be the case:  either I was so spiritually strong that nothing that happened to me seemed like a trial, or I was so spiritually weak that God was just babysitting me through life until I was able to handle something remotely hard (I didn't realize at the time that reality was probably somewhere between those two extremes).  I also wondered where my motivation to do good was going to come from, since I never had to apply self-discipline or a work ethic to overcome any obstacles.

My first year of college brought a lot of changes.  Like most people, I knew hardly anyone in the singles ward I attended at BYU.  Most of my first semester free time was spent either associating with a few close friends or doing things by myself.  After a few months of this, I realized I was missing something.  Second semester I tried to get a lot more involved, and it worked.  Our ward did a mini-version of the Lion King for a stake activity we had, and I played Pumbaa.  It was the corniest thing in the world, but for some reason I still don't understand it was one of the best experiences I had in my life.  I made some really close friends that semester, and I was happier than I had been before.  As a bonus, anytime I listened to music from the Lion King, it brought back all the memories and feelings from that time in my life.

One of the first things that I learned about my mission was that I would experience greater happiness and joy than I had ever experienced before (Preach my Gospel, page v).  Knowing how amazing college was for me, I looked forward to when that was going to happen.  Sometimes I had great experiences that seemed like they "qualified" for my happiest experience ever, but after thinking about it for a while I decided that college was still better.  I started to doubt somewhat if anything that great would ever happen.  An experience I had about halfway through my mission crushed all doubt whatsoever (the last one described in the linked post).  I may only be able to say that I had one experience that "topped" all the happiness that I had ever felt before, but I unquestionably did, and I can't deny that.

I mentioned that I've changed a lot since the end of my mission.  Part of that was when I spent a summer in Oklahoma selling pest control, but that doesn't have much influence on what I'm discussing here.  The main thing that's changed in the last few months has been how much I've pursued intelligence to the exclusion of several other things in my life.  I've recently been exposed to several works of fiction that quite realistically depict the protagonist being able to do things that other people can't, largely because they can keep their emotions in check and use their intellect to solve problems.  It's fiction.  I know that.  But I can't help it affecting the way I think.  I know a lot of difficult decisions are coming up for me, both planned and unplanned, and my current opinion is that I'll deal with them a lot better by using my head and not letting emotions cloud my judgment.  I don't know if that's the best way to go about doing things.  But I don't plan on changing unless I feel that regaining my emotional excitability (or extraversion for that matter) is something I should do.  Right now, being "left-brained" feels like part of who I am.  I guess it's only a matter of time before I figure out whether it's worth the cost.

Rationality

I was introduced to rationality by Eliezer Yudkowsky's Harry Potter spinoff known as Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality.  The work functions partially as an extended advertisement for the science/art known as applied rationality.  Applied rationality is the effort to evaluate one's methods of decision-making, removing all irrational methods, and replacing them with rational methods based on cognitive science, decision theory, probability, studies on human nature, and various other categories of knowledge.  In short, you're trying to take the stupid out of your decision-making.

Rationality appeals to people who 1) are intelligent, 2) have realized they are intelligent, 3) have decided that they want to make their intelligence one of their defining factors, and so 4) the obvious next step is to use your intelligence to learn how to make yourself smarter.  It's more than just deliberately exposing yourself to mental challenges to prove yourself, just like weightlifting is more than just heading to the gym and spending inordinate amounts of time pumping iron.  For almost every skill, there's a certain technique to it that has been learned and refined by those who have excelled in the past.  In almost every case, knowing the technique is necessary to get ahead.

The surface value of rationality, from my perspective, seems to be that it helps rid people of cognitive biases that cause them to make improper judgments some of the time.  This is done by identifying the presence of a certain cognitive bias and knowing how to bypass it.  I don't want to describe any of the cognitive biases we've already found, but reducing or eliminating these seems to be the mental equivalent of replacing a faulty part of a decently-working machine, causing it to perform better.  Rationality also consists of evaluating the beliefs and opinions we have about the world, and using a fact- and evidence-based approach to determine how rational our beliefs really are.

lesswrong.com is the main resource for those who want to learn more about rationality.  I found much more on here about removing deleterious mental processes than culturing new beneficial ones, but I'm sure more reading will uncover more fruit.  There's a LOT written on here, and I could spend a huge amount of time reading all of this.  I'm not as excited about this as I was a month or two ago, but I'm always interested in sharpening the way I think.  Posts like The Twelve Virtues of Rationality sometimes makes it seem like commitment to rationality can border on the religious; and while I don't intend to make this pursuit my main goal in life, I could easily spend more time on it than I should, to the detriment of other more important things.

Ten people who have influenced me

I have to state a caveat before I begin.  These are not necessarily the top ten, they are the ten that have influenced me in a way that is easily identifiable.  It's entirely possible that there are people who have influenced me more than people on this list, but in ways I can't identify or remember as well.  Numbers 2-10 are listed roughly chronologically, and I have grouped together people who have influenced me in similar ways.

1:  Jesus Christ.

There is a lot I could say here, but the most important thing is that nothing that matters in my life would ever last if it wasn't for what Jesus Christ did.  I don't know how something that happened 2,000 years ago can be such a powerful and direct strength to me, but I know that it is.  I know that my character and my greatest desires are directly attributable to the power that comes from Christ's atonement.

2.  My dad.

Throughout my teenage years, my dad never stopped letting me know the kind of potential he knew I had.  He never stopped letting me know that I was capable of more than I was doing.  He cared about my success.  My response was somewhat of a delayed reaction, but because of his example, I've gained a desire to reach my highest potential.  Thanks, dad.  I love you.

3.  Oliver Sacks.

Oliver Sacks basically gave birth to my love of neuroscience.  For those who haven't seen the movie Awakenings, it's about his work with a group of patients suffering from a Parkinson's-like neurological disorder in which they are unresponsive to almost anything.  Sacks figures out how to treat their condition, and remarkably many of them "wake up" and are able to live normal lives for a while.  Unfortunately, the medication used to treat their condition eventually wears off, and they become unresponsive once again.  Oliver Sacks told stories that opened my eyes to how truly amazing the brain is, and it made me hungry to learn more.

4.  Carl Sagan.

Carl Sagan makes science an art.  His description of the wonder of modern science and the discoveries we've made borders on poetry.  Often, science is viewed as an extremely left-brained, analytical, and objective pursuit of life, which it frequently is.  But Sagan paints a picture of the beauty and awe inherent in the way the world and the universe and life work.  I love science, and I'm going to spend the rest of my life doing it, but anytime it gets too black-and-white, Sagan brings the color flowing back in for me.

5, 6, and 7:  Lawrence E. Corbridge, King Benjamin, and James Watson.

These three people set into motion an extended experience that was really what made my LDS mission, and much of my life since then, meaningful for the best reasons.  I've summarized this experience in a previous post, but I'll elaborate a little more here.  Lawrence E. Corbridge gave a talk/speech entitled "The Fourth Missionary" that explained the difference between doing the right thing because you're supposed to and doing the right thing because you want to.  As a missionary, I had mainly the former attitude at the time I read this talk, but I wanted to do the work out of desire.  Corbridge's talk inspired me that such a change was possible, and convinced me that it was something I needed to look for.

I began searching the scriptures for stories of people whose hearts were changed to have desires to do good.  The best example I found was in the book of Mosiah in the Book of Mormon, when an ancient American king teaches his people about experiencing a change of heart by the power of the Holy Ghost.  I read his sermon multiple times over the period of a couple months, and James Watson, my missionary companion at the time, was my mentor and example through it all (largely without meaning to be, I'm sure).  Nothing happened abruptly, but I know that because these things helped me open myself to the influence of the spirit of God, He changed my heart and helped me have a desire to do good.  I owe more to that than almost anything.

8.  Don R. Clarke.

In many Christian denominations, services include the observance of the sacrament, also called the Lord's supper.  It is reminiscent of the last supper of Jesus Christ and His apostles, in which Christ gives bread and wine to remind His followers, then and now, of His crucifixion, suffering, and sacrifice for all of us.  In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, the sacrament is observed each week during Sunday services, and for those like me who have grown up in the church, it's easy to lose appreciation for the ordinance.  Elder Clarke helped to bring life back into this experience for me.  He gave me specific ideas of what I could do to make the sacrament meaningful each week, ideas that are summarized here.  As I apply his suggestions consistently, the effect has been gradual, but the sacrament has become a source of great spiritual power and strength in my life.  It keeps me safe from falling into old habits and helps me keep moving forward.  Near the end of my mission, I wanted to make sure there was a way to keep all of the incredibly valuable character developments I experience.  Because of Elder Clarke, observing the sacrament helps me to avoid losing any progress I've made.  Week after week, year after year, this has become a life-preserving spiritual resource for me.

9 and 10:  Eliezer Yudkowsky and Douglas Hofstadter.

I'd be surprised if anyone reading this knows who Eliezer Yudkowsky is.  Not only would that require my level of geekiness, it would also require my specific kind of geekiness, and given the readership of this blog, that's simply too improbable.  Let me sum up.  Eliezer Yudkowsky is the author of an online Harry Potter fanfic called "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality" (and yes, I can hear the laughter from here).  The Harry in this story is an incredibly intelligent young boy whose intellectual acuity is far beyond those of his peers, much like Ender Wiggin of Ender's Game fame.  Like Ender, Harry has a highly developed ability to read people, is extremely creative, and can make intelligent decisions rapidly.  Harry makes multiple references to Douglas Hofstadter, including his award-winning book "Godel, Escher, Bach", much of which I have read.  Harry uses principles of decision theory, science, mathematics, and probability, as well as his inherent skills, to get himself into and out of a variety of intense and difficult situations.

The story, while its plot is highly engaging, is in many ways a front for Yudkowsky to promote the idea of applied rationality.  I could spend a whole post talking about applied rationality, and probably will, but this post is dedicated to how it's influenced me.  I consider myself an intellectual by nature, and rationality has made me at least twice as much as I was before.  I spend a great deal of in-between time thinking about rationality, intellectual acuity, and how I can multiply my opportunities simply by being smart about the way I make decisions.  And I have to admit it's kind of a stimulant for me.  I definitely think about it more often than I should, and I definitely use it to compare myself to other people far more than I should.  Ways to conscientiously make yourself smarter are inherently addicting, especially for a left-brained person like me.  Practicing rationality has taken several of my unique traits and multiplied them, and it's starting to throw things off balance in a way I can't really describe yet.  In my current habitat of academia, this imbalance is largely working to my favor, but I need to take some time and consider how it's affecting other necessary areas of my life.  Other areas that I'm going to want to take part in someday, even if not right now.

Why I believe in God: Objections and responses

To close out this topic, I'd like to respond to further objections to the existence of God.  I've discussed a couple already (the lack of evidence and the existence of scientific counterexamples of creationist teachings), and there's one more that I'd like to address.  In doing this, I hope that it doesn't appear that I'm simply setting up a strawman argument and beating it to pieces.  Atheists and agnostics have real and legitimate concerns about God's existence and what has been taught concerning Him.  The religious community often does not have complete or even partial answers to these questions.  For example, the problem of evil is something both religious and non-religious people struggle with (although I won't address that topic here).  I'd like to be as complete as possible, so if any readers feel that other relevant questions are important to address, leave a comment and I'll do my best to answer it.

What if you weren't raised religious?

Since this is hypothetical, there's no way for me to be fully accurate in my response.  Also, this seems like more of a statement than a question to me, the statement being "the only reason you believe in God is because that's how you were raised".  But I'll do my best.  The short answer is that, all other things being equal, I don't know if I would have found God if religion wasn't in my upbringing.  Now for the longer answer.

Let's assume that as many other things as possible about my life, my experiences, and my personality are preserved.  Perhaps I am raised in a family of atheists who encourage me to excel academically and follow my dreams, whatever those may be.  They are good, moral people who help others and volunteer in the community.  They do not believe in God, but have no problem with people who do.  I have friends who are religious, and thus I am familiar with the idea of God and with mainstream Christianity.  I devote much of my time to doing well in school, since that is what I am good at and I want to get into a good college.

Somewhere along the way, during my teen years, several of my religious friends notice that I am not involved in religion and, with varying degrees of persistence, seek to help me see the reality of God's existence.  At this point I have not thought about whether their "god" really exists or not.  After some time, I decide to read some of their religious texts, mainly out of curiosity.  Much of it I find boring and devoid of meaning, but every now and then I find a story that teaches good principles.  I resist invitations to church services to all except the most persistent, since I don't want to appear as if I am planning on being a member of their church.  I resist invitations to pray for a long time, since it feels weird talking to nothing.  The first few times I try, I begin speaking briefly and then withdraw due to awkwardness.  During times of great happiness or distress, I sometimes reach out in my mind to see if anything is there to respond.

My impression of their doctrine and theology evolves along with my cognitive skills.  At first, I am likely to reject a belief or teaching if it seems too "weird".  Such teachings include stories of miracles, prophets receiving revelation, angels, and the atonement of Christ.  Later on, as I become more familiar with religious teachings, my interest might be hindered by discovery of intellectual discrepancies in their doctrine.  I bring these discrepancies up to my friends, and they try their hardest to answer them.  Some answers satisfy me, some don't.  The more my personality becomes analytical and intellectually based, the less likely I am to entertain much of their teachings.

I tried to mentally construct a hypothetical sketch of how I might feel during such a situation.  I don't think I know enough to make it conceivably accurate, and I think that depends a lot on whether God exists.  Surely God has to make Himself known somehow, and in my experience, much of that has been through thoughts and feelings (as I explained in the last post).  But I think the important thing to mention here is that God's existence is not dependent upon our acceptance of theism.  If God is real, it is completely possible for many people to disregard, disbelieve, or supposedly disprove His existence, but it is equally plausible that a belief in a nonexistent God can be widespread.

Why I believe in God: Evidence

Why I believe God is a reality, not just a plausibility

As a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I believe in the Holy Ghost as a God along with Jesus Christ and God the Father.  To me, the Holy Ghost is a being who lacks physical form, and is able to communicate to each of us what God would have us know.  In addition, the Holy Ghost (commonly referred to as the spirit) can help us feel when something is true and motivate us to do good.  Mormon doctrine teaches that the influence of the spirit is subtle and usually can only be detected if one is looking for it.

Thus, I try to make my life and myself an environment in which the influence of the spirit can be most easily felt and received.  In the past, I have had a variety of what I call spiritual experiences, in which I believe the Holy Ghost was present to some degree or another.  The vast majority of these have been simple and at a low level of intensity, often small enough that I am unable to distinguish between the effects of the spirit and my own feelings or thoughts.  However, several experiences have occurred in my life which I consider to be much more conspicuous manifestations of the spirit, to the point that I can no longer accept that they were produced by my own mental or emotional processes.  I will describe three such experiences.

The first occurred when I was around 12.  Like many Mormons raised in the church (especially in Utah), I had grown up learning church doctrine, history, and principles.  For the preceding couple of years, I had been giving a lot of thought to what I believed and realized that I didn't really know if it was the truth.  I worried about the possibility of entering the afterlife only to realize that I should have been a member of a different religion.  I had been taught at least a few times before this period that each person should strive to find the truth for themselves, and not have a certain belief system just because their friends, parents, or leaders professed the same.  This is often referred to as "getting your own testimony" in Mormon culture, and this was what I was trying to do for a couple years.  I remember feeling like my case was a minority, that there were not many Mormons who spent a significant amount of time wondering if their doctrine was true.  Because of this, I almost completely kept my doubts to myself.

I put plenty of time into prayer and study of the scriptures, seeking to have some sort of spiritual impression or manifestation that would confirm my faith.  There were times when it seemed as if my doubt was alleviated, but it would later return.  I felt much like Joseph Smith, the first prophet of the Mormon church who also spent much of his youth wondering and searching for the truth (further information about Joseph Smith is available here).  I had a friend at that time who seemed spiritually in tune and someone I could share my thoughts with, so I decided that I would talk with him about it.

I decided to do so at a boy scout campout some time later.  After everyone else had gone to bed, I explained my plight to him and asked if he had had any similar experiences.  I don't remember him giving a direct answer to my question, but I remember the experience he related to me.  He told me about a dream he had in which he was alive during the second coming of Christ (Mormons, and many other Christians, believe that Jesus Christ will return to the earth as a resurrected, immortal being).  In the dream, angels were singing a common Christian hymn, "God be with you 'til we meet again".  He continued relating the story, but at that point my mind focused on the lyrics of the hymn.  At that moment, I felt an incredibly strong wave of emotion come over me.  I cannot describe it as any particular emotion, just strong.  I felt reassurance about my doubts and the wordless communication that my beliefs were true.

The second occurred during my time as an LDS missionary in Alabama.  Since my previous experience years ago, I had never doubted the truth of the church.  I did my best as a missionary to do what I knew I was "supposed" to do, but there came a time when being a missionary out of a sense of obligation wasn't enough, even though I knew it was what God wanted me to do.  I wanted to be motivated by desire, not just duty.  I felt that the missionary I was serving with (Mormon missionaries always live and work in pairs) was an excellent example of who I wanted to be.  He gave me a copy of a talk (Mormon jargon for "speech") he had read earlier on his mission that was given to missionaries by a leader in the Mormon church (the talk is here).  The focus of this talk was the difference between desire and obligation as motivating factors for missionaries, and the speaker described how to gain the intrinsic motivation to serve.

Over a period of several weeks, I studied this talk, as well as scriptures from the Book of Mormon that I felt were related to the issue.  I prayed many times for the true desire to do what was right, and to be happy and content in doing missionary work.  Unlike the other two experiences I describe here, no part of this experience for me was instantaneous.  I cannot pinpoint a time when any monumental change occurred.  But I do know that before this period, I was motivated primarily by obligation.  After this period and ever since then, I have been motivated primarily by a desire to please God.  Something changed in me that I had tried and failed to change in myself before.  It has never permanently left.  I do not believe it came from myself, or from any other person.  It came from the purifying influence of the Holy Ghost.

The third experience was also as a missionary.  I was in a different area with a different missionary at this time, and we were teaching someone we had met quite recently.  I enjoyed teaching this person because he was close to our age and someone we could relate to.  He seemed open-minded and willing to explore and find out if what we were teaching was true.  He had been raised as a Christian, and on this particular visit he asked us what was different about our faith.  We had a good discussion about a few of our unique beliefs, and he was once again accepting and willing to ask questions and learn.  At the close of our visit we asked him if he would pray, and he complied.  We closed our eyes and waited for him to speak, but for a good while he said nothing.  Finally he looked up and said, "Wow.  That has never happened to me before."

My first assumption was that he had prayed silently and felt the Holy Ghost telling him that what we had taught was true.  But he then explained that he was trying to speak and no words were coming out of his mouth.  He wasn't distressed, but wondered why such a thing would happen.  The other missionary and I were surprised to hear him say this, because Joseph Smith's account of his praying to know which church was true includes a description of a similar experience.  My companion urged him to try again to pray.  I don't remember the words he said during the prayer.  I may not have even been paying attention at the time, because at the moment he began to pray, I had the most amazing and powerful feeling of joy that I had ever experienced before.  When he finished the prayer, I looked up at him and the other missionary, and their expression suggested that the same thing had happened for them.  Nobody said anything for a while.  We didn't really know what to say.  We all knew what we had felt, and we all knew it was from God.  We stayed for a couple more minutes.  Nobody wanted to leave and disrupt the moment.  But we eventually departed, and thanked God for what we had experienced that day.

Why I believe in God: Empiricism and human chauvinism

The phrase "human chauvinism" is taken from an idea that Douglas Hofstadter describes in "Godel, Escher, Bach" (although he calls it "earth chauvinism").  I'm extrapolating Hofstadter's ideas into my own thesis here, but let me define human chauvinism as "the notion that humans have a monopoly on information-gathering".  To give you some background, I'll explain what Hofstadter means by earth chauvinism.

Hofstadter prefaces earth chauvinism with an extended analogy of messages, meanings, and how messages are interpreted by intelligence.  A message is compared to a record, the meaning is compared to the music isomorphically encoded within the record, and the interpreting intelligence is compared to a jukebox.  Hofstadter explains that different records could be played differently by different jukeboxes; thus, a single record would not have the same music (meaning) everywhere.  Likewise, the meaning encoded in a message is not invariable; it is not an intrinsic, unalterable property of the object.

In our minds, Hofstadter explains, "the ascribing of meaning to a message comes from the invariance of the processing of the messages by intelligences distributed anywhere in the universe".  We could say that a message's meaning is completely intrinsic if and only if every single intelligence in the universe interpreted it in exactly the same way (which is highly improbable).  Humans, of course, are used to the way that humans interpret messages, although a fair degree of variance does exist between cultures, languages, perspectives, etc.  Human chauvinism, or earth chauvinism, occurs when we assume that our method of interpretation is universal, simultaneously excluding the possibility of messages or meanings that cannot be interpreted using our method.

Breaking free of chauvinism is done by "imagin[ing] that there could exist other kinds of 'jukeboxes'--intelligences--which communicate among each other via messages which we would never recognize as messages".  Such speculation opens our minds to other methods of interpretation beyond those which we are accustomed to using.  The most simple level of "meaning-interpretation" for us is done involuntarily by the sensory nervous system, the five "jukeboxes" we refer to as sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch.  From this basic input, through the millennia, we have created additional, more complex jukeboxes such as science, philosophy, mathematics, and every other academic discipline known to man.

What does this all have to do with my belief in God?  For one, I think it highlights the irrationality of empiricism, the idea that knowledge comes completely from sensory experience.  To say that all information comes through the five senses is to say that there are no other ways of interpreting meaning or gathering information.  In a less extreme sense, to say that all worthwhile information comes through the five senses is to say that there are no other worthwhile ways of interpreting meaning.  It is to discredit the existence of countless plausible forms of information and truth simply because they are inaccessible to us.

To those who haven't figured out where I'm going with this, here it is:  a supreme being (or any intelligence for that matter) does not have to conform to our system of information-gathering in order to communicate with us.  The idea that no one has found any sensory evidence of a supreme being does not and cannot imply that such a being is nonexistent.  The only way that this conclusion could logically stand is if our sensory system was, in fact, the embodiment of all possible forms of information-gathering.  I find this extremely improbable.

At this point, one might ask, "If God doesn't have to communicate through the five senses, how will we know of his existence?"  My reply is that we need to break away from chauvinism and entertain the possibility of other forms of information transmission in the past and the present.  As a Mormon, I consider the most important of these to be the Holy Ghost, but I certainly am not limiting it to that.  I intend to give a sampling of some examples of alternative information transmission (that which I consider to be communication from God) from my own life, which leads me into my next post.

Why I believe in God: Evolution vs. creation

I recently finished watching the debate between Bill Nye and Ken Ham regarding the logical soundness of the creation model vs. the evolution model.  It gave me an opportunity to think about how I really feel regarding science and religion (although I have done so many times in the past), and this time I felt that I could share a few ideas I have relating to the subject of the existence of a higher power.  I will first describe how I believe that the existence of a higher power is not only possible but plausible, and then I will discuss why I personally believe in a supreme being.

Why God is "allowed" to exist

Evolution vs. creation:  How did life and matter come into being?

I don't want to spend too much time discussing the Nye vs. Ham debate (if you're interested, here it is).  There were several subjects, however, that Ham had a difficult time reconciling with Nye's points, and Nye requested elaboration on several topics multiple times that Ham never provided.  I feel that a lot of Ham's difficulty in the discussion came from the fact that he posits a literal interpretation of the Genesis text.  Ham, and all of the creationist scientists he cites, believes that the events of the creation took place in six 24-hour periods and that the earth, as well as the universe, does not far exceed an age of 6,000 years.  Much of Nye's evidence was pretty glaring in its challenge to the credulity of Ham's claims.

Having been raised a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons), I admit that a good portion of my thought process during the debate was what it would have been like for Ham if he had approached the issue from the perspective of Mormon theology.  I am not implying that a debate between Bill Nye and a Mormon would be devoid of intellectual inconsistency on the part of LDS theology, but several specifically LDS teachings regarding the creation are, in my opinion, more in agreement with scientific evidence than those of mainstream Christianity (at least as set forth by Ham).

I don't consider myself an expert on Mormon theology, and much of what I say may be merely my own interpretation of LDS doctrine.  Take it with a grain of salt.  But here are some ideas I find plausible (meaning I am not presenting them as fact), some only loosely based on LDS theology, that may explain some of the events behind the creation:

1. God has created "worlds without number" (Moses 1:33), and they were not necessarily all created at the same time; in fact, they probably were not.  Thousands of planets could have been created before our world ever even began.
2. The six periods of time during which God created the earth are symbolically given the appellation of "days", and do not refer to 24-hour periods of time.  Thus, the creation could theoretically have taken thousands, millions, or billions of years by our time standards.
3. Adam and Eve were the first two human beings to inhabit the planet, but they may not have been the only two human or human-like beings on the earth by the time the Fall occurred and they were cast from the garden.  We don't know how long Adam and Eve were in the garden, and I find it reasonable that if the garden was separated from the rest of the world in the spiritual sense, it could plausibly be sequestered in an evolutionary biological sense.  The process of evolution of various life forms could have happened exactly as modern science describes it, including the evolution of primates to humans or human-like beings, while Adam and Eve remained in the garden.  (If this is the case, I don't have an opinion about how long any pre-Adamic human races remained, or if they intermixed with Adam and Eve's posterity.  I haven't really been exposed to enough evidence to formulate an opinion about either of these ideas.)

I don't pretend that these ideas reconcile all the difficulties between the evolution model and the creation model.  For example, I don't know how to reconcile the Biblical or LDS teachings regarding Noah's flood with several pieces of evidence Bill Nye mentioned during the debate, though I do not feel that there is no explanation.  But what I've learned about the factual process of evolution has not disturbed my perception of how the creation could have happened.  As far as the Big Bang and the creation of the universe in general, I am not enough a student of physics or astronomy to know much of the theory behind this, but I do find it plausible that the Big Bang or something like it could have been wrought by a supreme creator as well.

Prison break

Since mid-summer of 2013, I have been watching a show that aired from 2005-2008 known as "Prison Break".  Many of you may be familiar with it, and although I am not a TV watcher (even watching shows I enjoy only sporadically), Prison Break has been very entertaining for me.  The main appeal of the show for me is the protagonist, Michael Scofield, who is an extremely intelligent structural engineer who uses his talents to break his wrongfully convicted brother out of prison.  It soon evolves into much more than that, of course, but I enjoy the show because the characters use creative and intelligent ways to get out of difficult situations.  From this and other creative works I have read/watched, I have come to the conclusion that many of the works I enjoy the most share this same quality:  the characters prosper because of their intelligence.

But I'm getting besides the point.  The reason I wanted to write about this is to gather and possibly share my thoughts about some of the themes and ideas that Prison Break presents.  Prison Break does contain more mature themes and ideas, which is why I'm glad I watched it after my mission rather than before, because I am able to deal with and respond to them in a mature way.  Many of the minor events along the course of the story have been disturbing for me, but what troubles me more is the general themes of what the show seems to teach, although it's almost never explicitly shown.  I don't know if the producers/creators were attempting to send these messages through the show, but here is some of what I feel Prison Break is attempting to "teach":

1.  There is no way to absolutely know the truth about anything.

Later in the show, we become aware of a corrupt governmental entity known as "The Company", who has infiltrated essentially every aspect of society in a very realistic, believable way (the realism, I believe, is what makes the messages more powerful).  We find that the protagonist's brother, Lincoln Burrows, was convicted off of doctored evidence that was fabricated so meticulously by the Company that upon escaping prison, the brothers are completely unable to prove that Lincoln is innocent of any crime, even after finding that the man who Lincoln is purported to have killed is still alive.

The point the show seems to make is this:  in this day and age, information can be technologically corrupted to the point that nothing is reliable anymore.  Everything from the surveillance camera feed to the DNA information of the supposed murder victim was altered irreversibly by the Company and could not be accessed in its original form anymore.  Because of the realistic nature of the plotline, I have admittedly been affected by this idea.  For instance, in the political sphere (which I have a hard time with anyway), I have a hard time deciding who to vote for in part because I have no way of knowing whether a given party, candidate, or group has gone to a great deal of effort to make themselves appear outstanding and create "evidence" and "statistics" to go along with it, when in fact they do not intend to support the interests they claim.  This idea has far less power in the religious context for me, however, because I believe there are alternate methods of finding truth than any form of person-to-person communication.

2.  You can't trust anyone but yourself.

Throughout the show, but especially in the last season, the main characters find people they think they can trust, and are betrayed again and again.  Those they trust end up either getting killed, turning out to be from the Company, or decide to act for their own interests and not for those of the group.  This idea is a social embodiment of the first idea I described.  Just as any form of information can be altered, all semblances of personality can also be fabricated with a sufficient amount of skill.  Several Company agents construct extremely believable representations of innocent and benign citizens, only to instantaneously shed the facade as soon as they are able.

I feel that this point is somewhat overexaggerated in Prison Break.  Part of this, of course, is the fact that not everyone is trying to dismantle a multi-national group that has power over several world governments, so obviously they would not be endlessly tailed by extremely skilled individuals who were out to get them.  But even if the show doesn't convince you to become paranoid schizophrenic, it's hard to look at people the same way after you see something like that.  I don't dwell on the issue too long, but I can see this show causing a lot of other people to reconsider the integrity of the people they know well.  Maybe in some cases that's a good thing, but I feel that in most cases people are pretty close to who they appear to be, and the differences that do exist aren't going to be harmful for the people they know.

3.  Evil and corruption are ultimately inescapable and undefeatable.

The Company is extremely powerful.  Michael and his friends must work tirelessly and use all of their resources in their efforts to bring down the Company, and even then it doesn't seem like enough.  Every obstacle they overcome is met by another, still greater, one in its place, and throughout the show there is the lingering idea that even if they end up bringing down the Company, who's to say something like it won't just spring up into existence immediately afterwards?

I have to say at this point that I haven't finished the show, so I don't know if Michael and the others end up bringing down the Company or not.  They do get out of countless amounts of tight situations, which of course is important to the suspense quality of the show, but each time they seem to get a little closer into falling into the hands of the Company.  Even if they end up successful in their attempts by the time the show ends, I still think this message is continuously communicated to Prison Break viewers.  Those who invest a lot of time into thinking about this show might begin to wonder if they or anyone can ever overcome evil, chaos, corruption, or anything like it.  It's certainly because of my religious beliefs, but I know that this idea is just not true.

4.  Given sufficient motivation, every good person can always be corrupted.

This has a lot to do with point #2 I made, although the majority of the people who betray the protagonists are found to have been dishonest all along.  But in the last season, when the protagonists are trying to acquire necessary intel to bring down the company. several people working with them begin to want it for its monetary value, and several others get into positions where they must choose between fighting the Company and protecting those they love.  I do agree that money is one of the most universally corrupting forces known to mankind, and I feel that few people are free of that risk.  But I also believe that nobody is without help, as long as they desire to do good.  The success of the show, of course, is largely dependent upon a lack of religious material in order to appeal to a wider range of people.  God can help any man to overcome a temptation that would otherwise destroy him, if his desire is truly to avoid what corrupts.


These ideas have changed my perspective to some extent from watching the show, and I recognize that not all of that is good.  There have been several times when I seriously considered continuing to watch the show because of how it was affecting me, but I've found it pretty addictive (which is why I am extremely hesitant anytime someone tells me about a long-running TV show, even if it's not like this because I don't want to have to invest a lot of time into it if I get hooked).  I'm pretty close to being done with the series, and probably will finish it.  But I wanted to write this because I feel like collecting my thoughts will help me deal with these issues better.  I think the best thing for me is to remember that it's not real (despite how realistically it's depicted), and these ideas are just coming from people who are trying to express something that may be right or wrong.