Shortly after, they answered a call to gather. They left their loved ones in the Italian Alps and traveled by coach and rail and steamer to London and then to Ellis Island, where an official changed their surname. Further, by rail and river to Florence, Nebraska. There, they joined the Ellsworth handcart company and walked across the plains, over the mountains into the Salt Lake Valley.

The trek took most of a year, and Michael and Marianne buried an infant son on the way. My firstborn has his name. In Utah, they manufactured charcoal and cultivated silk, working off the debt we all owe to the Church’s Perpetual Emigration Fund. They never learned English, but they handed down the values that drove their journey.

Today I teach English to multilingual students (among others), and I think—I hope—that I feel Marianne’s pleasure. Her devotion and that of my parents and their other forebears have taught me that human endeavor is sacred and family ties bring joy.

I’m Mormon, or should I say I’m here, because of polygamy. My distant grandmother, Jane, was the seventh of eleven wives. Her husband, Milo, fathered 56 children. I find this shocking. But Jane was widowed early in her journey from England to Utah; when she married Milo, she must have been grateful for the protection and care of a new family. I both wonder at their sacrifice, and pity them unfairly, as though I understand it. Those poor women, I say. I hand my husband the broken vacuum cleaner. He smiles: those poor men.

It’s natural for me to see devotion as a pathway of rigor and bravery and meaning. “A religion that does not require the sacrifice of all things never has power sufficient to produce the faith necessary for life and salvation,” taught Joseph Smith, who gave everything for Mormon faith. Those words thrill me, and why not? Don’t we love what we would die for? Don’t we hope to more perfectly live for it?

That hope helps me view problems in Mormon history—persistent, ambiguous, discouraging—as reflective of imperfect people trying, yet sometimes failing, to do God’s will. It is the same with patriarchy and insularity, which I find equally troubling—yet also softening, even diminishing, in a process I trust will continue.

My view improves as I consider the wonder and triumph in Mormon history—persistent, affirming, encouraging—and reflective of covenant people trying to do God’s will. These qualities have their echo in so many forgiving, affectionate Mormon people who wrap themselves in faith, love, duty, integrity, good humor, altruism, compassion, and desire.

I have found that negotiating faith and doubt requires a painstaking self-honesty. The Book of Mormon missionary Amulek captures some of my feeling. “I said I never had known much … of the ways of the Lord … but behold, I mistake, for I have seen much of his mysteries and his marvelous power … Nevertheless, I did harden my heart … I knew concerning these things, yet I would not know.”

Like Amulek, I have at times resisted faith. Yet as I’ve chosen to turn toward Christ, to believe and accept him, his response recalls the promise to Isaiah: “Then shalt thou call, and the Lord shall answer. Thou shalt cry, and He shall say, Here I am.”

Thus I’m convinced that knowledge involves the heart as well as the mind, and above all involves the dignity of choice. I believe God’s touch in my life is real and personal and powerful, that he knows my name and desires my company, as he does of all who walk the earth. But I also believe it is up to me and my faith to recognize this, to search for and respond to him; and that he will respect my choice to do so or not.

I’m Mormon because of the Book of Mormon. I don’t yet know if this book is what many have claimed it to be—factual, historical record? Fantastic, inspiring collection of stories? Something of both?

But working closely with literature has helped me live with ambiguity and navigate tensions between factuality and truth. It has helped me see that extracting meaning and understanding from text is arduous, worthwhile, and fascinating.

So if I have trouble accepting the book as exactly what it claims to be, I find joy in discovering—again and again—that the Book of Mormon does what it claims to do.

And that is to bring me to Christ, in ways so tender I can hardly express them. “Come unto Christ and be perfected in him … by his grace,” teaches Moroni. As a small person with great need, I rely on that grace every day as I try to bridge the gap between what I am and what I long to be.

I’m Mormon because of the simplicity and beauty and spiritual sustenance of the weekly sacrament.

I’m Mormon because it has blessed my family—strengthened our bonds, taught us forgiveness, increased our reach, given us laughter, and brightened our hope.

I’m Mormon because of story. The story is that of a crucial journey from a fallen, even desperate state to one of reconciliation, of joy and knowledge, transcendence and peace—a journey both daily and eternal, a journey infused with divine love. This is a story not unique to Mormons, but a story of humanity—captured and reflected in the world’s most compelling and beautiful literature. Mormon faith provides a pathway for the reality of this story.

I’m Mormon because it’s a quest. Every day, a devout Mormon prayerfully asks: how should I direct my energies on this day? How shall I manage this uncertainty? How might I achieve success in this good endeavor? How may I be of help to my fellow travelers? To engage these questions over a lifetime seems to me a sacred privilege. Indeed, Mormonism was founded on the answer to a heartfelt question.

I’m also Mormon because they’ll have me, despite my resistance, my pride, my kicks, my doubts, my shortfalls, and my need. Like Christ, whose “arm is stretched out still,” Mormons take all comers. They understand we are all God’s imperfect children, relying on grace, trying to make our way in a perilous world. They’ll help if they can. They’ll smile as they do.

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Heidi Beus Naylor grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She received an undergraduate degree from Brigham Young University and an MFA from Boise State University, where she teaches writing and literature. Her fiction and features have appeared in The Washington Post, The Jewish Journal, Portland, The Idaho Review, Sunstone, New Letters, and other magazines. She holds a current fellowship from the Idaho Commission on the Arts. Heidi and her husband, Patrick Naylor, are the parents of three sons.

Posted May 2013

Yet my testimony does not remain ever the same; it grows in strength as the years bring additional evidences through reflection and study and prayer.

I was not born in the Church; my early training was received through the schools of the world; amongst the Methodists, Wesleyans, Presbyterians, and in the Church of England I have been by turns a pupil. But even during those periods of first tuition I had a knowledge of the divinity of God’s work as taught and practiced by the Latter-day Saints, for my parents had previously learned of the gospel, and were then awaiting the reorganization of the branch of the Church in the region of our home. This was in due time accomplished, and soon after my years had filled the allotted number, I was baptized by my father, who was an Elder in the Church. Jeers from schoolmates and scoffs from neighbors came to me as a matter of course. Our family being alone in the professions of the gospel there, to me it seemed that we had always been the recipients of such unkind attentions, which however served to strengthen my faith.

My testimony of this work dates back to the limits of my earliest memories. Since reaching the years that bring with them the powers of judgment, I have never been without an assurance of the divinity of this cause, and therefore I claim no honor for having gained such knowledge. I regard it as the greatest gift of God to me on earth; for though it is a natural endowment, I am none the less certain of its divine origin. I cannot remember a time when I did not live, yet I know that my life is a gift of our heavenly Father, so also is my testimony of His will.

Do not conclude that my faith has never been assailed; that it is like a greenhouse plant nourished through artificial culture, and alive only because protected from the blasts that wither and the frosts that destroy. I call to mind many periods of sore temptation and trial, when snares of the wily adversary have been set with alluring baits of mis-called science, and that which men style wisdom. Sophistry, doubt, and the craft of misbelief have surged in threatening torrents about the delicate roots of the feeble plant of my faith; yet, through the protecting care of the All Merciful, these dark rivers have been made to yield nutriment and impart strength to the rising stem and its sprouting branches.

I know that these vicissitudes are not yet over. A retrospect of my faith’s feeble growth gives me thankfulness, but the thought of the future brings fear lest after all the sapling should be uprooted. Did I not know that there is One who will temper the elements and adapt the conditions to my weak and immature growth, despair would bring destruction. Yet by prayer and works I may hope for the continued support of Him who is the source of my testimony and the author of my life – our Father.

(James E. Talmage, “How I Gained My Testimony of the Truth,” Young Woman’s Journal [March 1893], 258-259. Brought to our attention by Ardis E. Parshall, and reproduced here, with her kind permission, from keepapitchinin.org: http://www.keepapitchinin.org/2010/10/21/in-his-own-words-james-e-talmage-1893/.)

I say stand by your testimony. When you have received it from the Lord, let it be your guide. It will be no handicap to you in your researches, your studies, your explorations and investigations. It will not detract from your reputation for learning, if you deserve any such reputation, provided you stand by the truth. (Conference Report, April 1929, p. 48. Thanks to Kristopher Swinton for bringing this to our attention.)

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James E. Talmage was born in Hungerford, Berkshire, England, on 21 September 1862. Baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints at the age of ten, he emigrated with his family to the United States in 1877.

Talmage received the first diploma ever issued by the Scientific Department of the Brigham Young Academy and, thereafter, studied chemistry and geology at Lehigh University, in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and at The Johns Hopkins University, in Baltimore, Maryland. In 1896, he received a Ph.D. from Illinois Wesleyan University.

Talmage taught at the Brigham Young Academy, served as president of Latter-day Saints’ University and the University of Deseret (later the University of Utah), and, from 1897 to 1907, was professor of geology at the University of Utah. He also served as director of the Deseret Museum. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Microscopical Society (London), the Royal Scottish Geographical Society (Edinburgh), the Geological Society (London), the Geological Society of America, the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and as an Associate of the Philosophical Society of Great Britain (or Victoria Institute).

He was the author of a number of books that continue to be popular and even revered among the Latter-day Saints, including The Articles of Faith (1899), The Great Apostasy (1909), The House of the Lord (1912), and Jesus the Christ (1915).

In 1911, Talmage was called as a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. From 1924-1928, he presided over the European Mission of the Church. He died on 27 July 1933.

The testimony above was written when he was thirty years old, nearly two decades before his calling as an apostle.

Posted February 2013

“No one has a crystal ball.” Those who make this statement, even with resignation, are most often trying to assure themselves that we are all on an equal footing, because no one knows the future. Everyone must plan as best he or she can without that advantage. Interestingly, however, the statement is only partially correct. It is true that no human in and of himself has access to the future, but heavenly beings do. In the Doctrine and Covenants we learn that angels “reside in the presence of God, on a globe like a sea of glass and fire, where all things for their glory are manifest, past, present, and future, and are continually before the Lord” (D&C 130:7-11). Divine beings, it would seem, do have a crystal ball of sorts that allows them to see the future. God particularly has the power of prescience and from time to time manifests it to mortals in the form of prophecy. By prophecy I mean those insights God shares with us about the future.

I am intrigued not only by God’s ability to foresee the future, but also with His desire to share what He knows to his faithful followers. By doing so, He prepares them for what is to come.

God’s display of his prescience, however, has another purpose. He uses it as a means to prove that he is God and can be relied upon. When he called Abraham out of Haran, he assured him, “My name is Jehovah, and I know the end from the beginning; therefore my hand shall be over thee” (Moses 2:8). With these words, the Lord assured Abraham that with Him there are no surprises and, therefore, He could protect Abraham from anything untoward.

A millennium later, the Lord tried to bolster flagging Israel’s faith by appealing to the same power. Using history as his text, he said, “I have declared, and have saved, and I have shewed, when there was no strange god among you: therefore ye are my witnesses, saith the Lord, that I am God” (Isaiah 43:12). His words pointed them back to previous prophecies that had been fulfilled. He pointed out that Israel could not credit them to some other god than He, for, at the time, they worshiped none other.

Showing that He still had the ability, He went on: “Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it”? (Isaiah 43:19). He then prophesied to them right there and then. In the process, He even named their future deliverer, the Mede Cyrus (Isaiah 44:28; 45:1). Castigating Israel’s lack of devotion to Him, He went on: “I have declared the former things from the beginning; and they went forth out of my mouth, and I shewed them; I did them suddenly, and they came to pass. Because I knew that thou art obstinate, and thy neck is an iron sinew, and thy brow brass; I have even from the beginning declared it to thee; before it came to pass I shewed it thee: lest thou shouldest say, Mine idol hath done them, and my graven image, and my molten image, hath commanded them. Thou hast heard, see all this; and will not ye declare it? I have shewed thee new things from this time, even hidden things, and thou didst not know them. They are created now, and not from the beginning; even before the day when thou heardest them not” (Isa. 48:3-7).

In these verses, we see God using prophecy, with which He alone can empower a prophet, as the means through which He verifies and authenticates His position as the God of Israel and of the nations. Thus, by using explicit statements about the future, Jehovah proved to the Old Testament people that He, and He alone, was God. There was a moral corollary; they should trust, worship, and obey Him alone.

A question naturally arises, “Just how does God interact with the future?” Does he know the future and express it, or does He engineer the future and share what He makes happen? In other words, does the future exist for God as something already concrete and unchangeable which He can see? In that case, prophecy would be God sharing His vision with the Saints, allowing us to see from His height the inevitable course of events flowing within the stream of destiny. Or is the future something fluid that God creates? In that case, God knows the future because He has predetermined the course it will flow and shares His plans with us.

Joseph Smith gave us some insights into the question. He announced that for the great Jehovah, “the past, the present, and the future were and are, with Him, one eternal ‘now.’” Does the phrase “one eternal ‘now’” mean that time is static for God—that everything that has existed, does now exist, and ever will exist actually abides with God right now? Does the “eternal now” freeze events into a predetermined, unbreakable whole? The Prophet went on to say that Jehovah “knew of the fall of Adam, the iniquities of the antediluvians, of the depth of iniquity that would be connected with the human family. . . . He was acquainted with the situation of all nations and with their destiny” (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, 220).

On the surface, the Prophet’s comments make it look as if God interacts with the future as an observer, but that is not the case. In the same discourse, Joseph Smith said that Jehovah “ordered all things according to the council of His own will.” The phrase suggests that God shapes and directs history within the parameters of human agency. That makes prophecy God’s sharing with humans His “ordering” of all things. Thus, it seems that God creates the channel in which history flows. History, therefore, is not inevitable or fated until God makes it so. The revelation of God in Isaiah reinforces this view.

But does God still share with his people what will happen? Having studied prophetic and apocalyptic literature for much of my academic life, I am impressed that He still uses the power of prescience to direct and prepare his people for the future.

The Restoration is full of examples of prophecies fulfilled. One of the more dramatic is God’s disclosure to Joseph Smith on Christmas Day 1832 concerning the upcoming Civil War. The Lord declared that the wars of the last days would begin with “the rebellion of South Carolina, which will eventually terminate in the death and misery of many souls” (D&C 87:1). He had already hinted at this event in March 1831, saying: “Ye hear of wars in foreign lands; but, behold, I say unto you, they are nigh, even at your doors, and not many years hence ye shall hear of wars in your own lands” (D&C 45:63). Though it took three decades before that prophecy was fulfilled, as foretold, it was one of the bloodiest wars in history and started with the rebellion of South Carolina.

That prophecy went on. It declared “that war will be poured out upon all nations” (D&C 87:2). Indeed, one of the prophetic themes of latter-day scripture is that “peace shall be taken from the earth” (D&C 1:35; see also 29:23; 43:31; 43:31-32; 56:11) and there shall be “wars and rumors of wars” (JS—M 1:23; D&C 45:26; 63:33). Since 1832, the world has not only seen the Civil War but two brutal world wars and scores of lesser wars. Today, rumor is full of the prospect of nuclear war looming on the horizon.

There are, fortunately, other prophecies that bode well for the righteous. One of these is God’s assurance that “this Gospel of the Kingdom shall be preached in all the world, for a witness unto all nations, and then shall the end come, or the destruction of the wicked” (JS—M 1:31. See also D&C 10:49; 14:10; 18:28; 35:15; 38:33; 42:63; 90:11). When these prophecies were first uttered, some of the Church’s detractors felt they were nothing short of delusions of grandeur, but look at the breadth of the Church’s reach today.

In association with that the Church’s spread is prophecy concerning temple building throughout the world (see for example, Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses, 3:372; 10:254). We are living in the age where temples can be found on every continent, in many nations, and upon the isles of the sea—and their numbers will continue to grow.

But the Lord through prophecy also tells us that the world will not be converted. Indeed, until after the Millennium opens, the Church is not destined to be popular. God’s word tells us that the Saints will be found “upon all the face of the earth,” but that “their dominions upon the face of the earth were small, because of the wickedness” that will prevail (1 Ne. 14:12). It also tells us that, “among the nations of the Gentiles,” there will be those who “fight against the Lamb of God.” Nonetheless, the Saints have little to fear, for “the power of the Lamb of God” will descend “upon the saints of the church of the Lamb, and upon the covenant people of the Lord, who are scattered upon all the face of the earth,” and they will be “armed with righteousness and with the power of God in great glory” (1 Ne. 14:13-14; compare D&C 45:66-70).

I wish I had time to elucidate the many prophetic statements that have been made to us by a loving Father, but space does not allow that. I can say in sum, however, that God has not departed nor is he asleep, but continues to direct his Church though living prophets who have access to his Spirit. There are no surprises coming (see D&C 106:4-5) and, therefore, I find great comfort in God’s prescience and knowing that he speaks through living prophets today. Though the future is full of evil portents, the scriptures combine to give a tremendous assurance to the faithful that God governs history and has protected and will protect His saints. For me, no scripture rings truer than this: “If ye are prepared ye shall not fear” (D&C 38:30). Knowing what is coming, we have no excuse not to be prepared and, therefore, we have no reason to fear the future.

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Richard D. Draper (Ph.D. in ancient history, Brigham Young University) is an Emeritus Professor of Ancient Scripture at Brigham Young University, where he continues to work with other professors in producing the fourteen-volume BYU New Testament Commentary Series. He is the author of several books and articles, including Opening the Seven Seals: The Visions of John the Revelator (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 2006) and The Savior’s Prophecies: From the Fall of Jerusalem to the Second Coming (Salt Lake City: Covenant Communications, 2001).

Dr. Draper has served as Associate Dean of Religious Education, Associate Manager of the Religious Studies Center, and Graduate Coordinator for the College of Religious Education.

In the Church, he has served as a bishop, on the high council, and, three times, as a scoutmaster (thus making his calling and election sure).

He and his wife, Barbara, have served a mission at Brigham Young University-Hawaii and at the Polynesian Cultural Center on Oahu. They are the parents of six children and the grandparents of fourteen.

Posted February 2013

Joseph Smith begins his story in his matter-of-fact way, setting out carefully the reason that he is writing this history and the facts about his birth and family. Then he moves from the matter-of-fact to the ironical, even the satirical, as he describes the state of religion at the time—the behavior of the New England clergy in trying to draw people into their congregations. He tells about reading the Epistle of James. He doesn’t try to express his feelings. He gives a description of his feelings instead, which is a very different thing. Look at verse 12:

Never did any passage of scripture come with more power to the heart of man than this did at this time to mine. It seemed to enter with great force into every feeling of my heart. I reflected on it again and again, knowing that if any person needed wisdom from God, I did; for how to act I did not know, and unless I could get more wisdom than I then had, I would never know; for the teachers of religion of the different sects understood the same passages of scripture so differently as to destroy all confidence in settling the question by an appeal to the Bible. (JS—H 1:12)

I am not good enough to write a passage as good as that. That is beautiful, well-balanced prose. And it isn’t the prose of someone who is trying to work it out and make it nice. It is the prose of someone who is trying to tell it like it is, who is bending all his faculties to expressing the truth and not thinking about anything else—and above all, though writing about Joseph Smith, not thinking about Joseph Smith, not thinking about the effect he is going to have on others, not posturing, not posing, but just being himself. The passage continues as follows:

At length I came to the conclusion that I must either remain in darkness and confusion, or else I must do as James directs, that is, ask of God. (JS—H 1:13)

Notice the coolness: “At length I came to the conclusion.”

I at length came to the determination to “ask of God,” concluding that if he gave wisdom to them that lacked wisdom, and would give liberally, and not upbraid, I might venture. (JS—H 1:13)

Notice the rationality of it, the humility of it, the perfectly good manners of it.

So, in accordance with this, my determination to ask of God, I retired to the woods to make the attempt. (JS—H 1:14)

Just imagine what a TV commentator would make of this sort of thing.

It was on the morning of a beautiful, clear day, early in the spring of eighteen hundred and twenty. It was the first time in my life that I had made such an attempt, for amidst all my anxieties I had never as yet made the attempt to pray vocally. (JS—H 1:14)

Do you see how the tone is kept down, how matter-of-fact it is? Notice the effect of a phrase like “to pray vocally.”

After I had retired to the place where I had previously designed to go, having looked around me, and finding myself alone, I kneeled down and began to offer up the desires of my heart to God. (JS—H 1:15)

Plain, matter-of-fact, truthful, simple statements in well-mannered prose. This is no posture. We are not thinking of Joseph Smith; we are just waiting, waiting, waiting to hear. Do you see how beautifully this is built up, how the tension is built up by his being so modest, so well mannered?

I had scarcely done so, when immediately I was seized upon by some power which entirely overcame me, and had such an astonishing influence over me as to bind my tongue so that I could not speak. (JS—H 1:15)

He is telling us about something terrible. But he is not trying to make us feel HOW TERRIBLE THIS IS. He is telling us that it happened.

Thick darkness gathered around me, and it seemed to me for a time as if I were doomed to sudden destruction. (JS—H 1:15)

He felt he was going to be killed. But there is no excitement, no hysteria about this. He just tells us. Notice in particular the coolness of the phrase “for a time.”

But, exerting all my powers to call upon God to deliver me out of the power of this enemy which had seized upon me, and at the very moment when I was ready to sink into despair and abandon myself to destruction—not to an imaginary ruin, but to the power of some actual being from the unseen world, who had such marvelous power as I had never before felt in any being—just at this moment of great alarm . . . (JS—H 1:16)

Notice the expression “of great alarm.” What would a posing sensationalist do with that? What kind of explosion would he devise, I wonder?

I saw a pillar of light exactly over my head, above the brightness of the sun, which descended gradually until it fell upon me. (JS—H 1:16)

“A pillar of light exactly over my head,” “above the brightness of the sun,” “descended gradually”—note the modifiers, the exactness. What he is trying to do is tell us what happened. He goes on in the same tone. He doesn’t get ecstatic. He doesn’t run over. He just goes on telling us just what happened in this astonishingly cool, and at the same time reverential, way. This is a visit of God the Father and God the Son to a boy of fourteen. But he is not in undue awe. He doesn’t stare. He is not frightened. He was perhaps terrorized by what happened before, but he is not frightened of this. He doesn’t lose his self-confidence, and at the same time, he is modest.

And then the humor: he returns home, leans up against the fireplace, and his mother asks him what is wrong. He answers, “I have learned for myself that Presbyterianism is not true” (JS—H 1:20). We have to remember that his mother had joined the Presbyterian Church shortly before this. How do you assess that as a conversation between a fourteen-year-old and his mother? All mothers know that sort of thing really happens to them with their teenagers.

The whole man is involved in this account, but the whole man isn’t posturing and appealing to you to believe it. He is merely stating it, stating it with the whole of himself. The conviction is behind it. The emotion is there in perfect control. It is in the rhythm, the superb rhythm of that piece, and we won’t get that unless we read it aloud. There is an extraordinary alternation of short and long sentences. Some of the sentences are long indeed—magnificent sentences—periods much better than Samuel Johnson could write. So there is this combination of a firm, convinced rhythm and a matter-of-fact statement drawing on all the resources of early nineteenth-century prose to produce a piece of prose better than anything Coleridge ever wrote.

Now there is no passage in mystical literature or in any other kind of literature concerned with visions that I know of which is like this, and therefore I am not prepared to give credence to other “mystical” passages outside the scriptures—I know the difference. I am thinking about St. Bridget, who lived in Sweden in the fourteenth century, and whose life I have studied in some detail; she had her ecstatic visions. I am thinking about St. Teresa, that great Spanish saint who wasn’t quite sure whether Christ was her Lord or her husband. They don’t compare with Joseph Smith. They attitudinize; they get into postures, contortions of mind, in expressing themselves. Not so Joseph Smith. . . .

I am asked sometimes, “Why don’t we have any great literature now?” And we don’t, you know; we may kid ourselves or other people may try to kid us that we do, but we don’t. There were Homer, Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare, and Goethe; and there it seems to have stopped. There seems to have been no supreme figure since then. But I tell you there was one: Joseph Smith. . . .

Think of Joseph Smith as a man who speaks to our time from eternity.

(Taken from “Joseph Smith as a Writer,” in Arthur Henry King, Arm the Children: Faith’s Response to a Violent World [Provo: BYU Studies, 1998], 288-293.)

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Born in England to Quaker parents, Arthur Henry King (1910-2000) graduated from the University of Cambridge in 1931 and went on to earn his doctorate from the University of Lund, in Sweden. He taught English and English literature for fourteen years at the universities in Lund and Stockholm.

For twenty-eight years, he served on the British Council, which supervises overseas educational and cultural affairs for the British government. He was twice decorated by Queen Elizabeth II for this work.

In 1966, he joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and, in 1971, he joined the faculty of Brigham Young University. Following his retirement from BYU, he presided over the London England Temple of the Church.

Posted February 2013

Patterns are particularly important to those who, like me, come from a background of autism spectrum disorder. I am on the mild end of the spectrum, with a case of attention deficit disorder (ADD) that has never been formally diagnosed but is very evident to those familiar with the symptoms. The poor social skills and consequent shyness that characterized my childhood and youth were the least of my problems. The greatest were the unpredictability of the world and people around me due to my lack of understanding of cause and effect.

When—as is typical of those with ADD—all stimuli hit the brain with equal weight, all clamoring for equal notice, an adult finds it difficult to maintain the focus necessary to complete a sustained task. For a child, it is all but impossible. With a bright, inquisitive mind that loved to absorb new knowledge, I did well in all aspects of school except for those that involved listening attentively, following sets of directions accurately, and predicting likely outcomes—all part of what most people consider common sense. Instead, a written or spoken fact might send me on a tangent of thought to a different subject entirely. While I was processing and visualizing ways to fulfill step one of the instructions, steps two and three floated past me unheeded. As for the standard four pictures to order into a simple story of cause and effect, I could arrange them in any order to illustrate any number of highly imaginative stories, all of which I found equally plausible.

Identifying patterns became my means of preserving sanity. Letters in specific patterns stood for words, and words in specific patterns stood for ideas and forms of action. By studying ideas and actions in books, I could safely investigate the world and its inhabitants. Gradually, I learned from a combination of books, instruction from my ever-patient parents, and trial and error how to interact with others and how to sort my billions of bits of knowledge into usable experiences. The process has taken a long time; until I turned about twenty-five, I felt essentially as if I were a lost child still struggling to understand an alien world. Even now, as I pass my sixtieth birthday and can no longer skip down the sidewalk due to two total knee replacements, my acquaintances often place me considerably younger than my years due to my outlook and mannerisms. Perhaps I still adhere to the formative patterns of my youth.

My graduate studies in folklore first introduced me to the deep patterns dubbed archetypes by the pioneering psychologist Carl Jung. He defined them as the most fundamental patterns embedded in the human soul and postulated a “collective unconsciousness” that housed them within humanity. As evidence of their existence, he pointed out parallels in folk tales, religions, mythology, customs, traditions, and particularly symbols that spanned cultures around the globe. One such archetypal symbol is the mandala, or quartered circle, prominent in many traditional forms of folk art. Another is the tree of life. Archetypes also include characters, such as the “great father,” who may be a wise, kindly, nurturing mentor in his positive aspect and an evil, manipulating, destructive magician in his negative aspect. They also take the form of themes, such as the story of the earth’s miraculous creation and the common descent of all human beings from the same set of parents.

Being patterns, archetypes immediately attracted my attention. Much of what I learned about them from my teachers rang true and solidified my impression that they were of eternal significance. The fact that they had endured for millennia in all parts of the world testified that they held great power and meaning for human beings in general. On the other hand, they seemed too powerful to be comfortable. The austerely formalized archetypes of Greek mythology seemed abstract enough to deal with. But I found them totally repulsive when exposed in their primeval near-nakedness in the stories of modern writers such as Isaac Bashevis Singer and Federico García Lorca. Even when barbarically costumed in the elaborate trappings of nineteenth-century Wagnerian operas such as Der Ring des Nibelungen, I could barely tolerate them. They seemed inexorable, unyielding, oppressive, hopeless. After completing my thesis on the archetypal characters and themes in Richard Wagner’s Ring saga, I let my study of archetypes lapse and pursued a satisfying career in editing scholarly books and articles.

However, archetypes are everywhere and are not so easily escaped. Movies ranging from David Puttnam’s Chariots of Fire through George Lucas’s ever-popular Star Wars to Pixar’s Brave are full of them. So are all the classic novels, whose lasting appeal stems directly from their adept use of archetypes. So, to some extent, are the more forgettable movies and books, whose clumsy attempts to subvert these powerful patterns for the sake of novelty are precisely what make them forgettable. Archetypes underlie the raw, untamed wilderness settings of Jack London; the brooding, emotional tales woven by the Brontës; the stark, semimythical works of Herman Melville. But it was when I discovered them buried deep within the placid, enlightened, ultracivilized world of Jane Austen that I truly came to understand them.

All archetypes have both a positive and a negative side, usually characterized by light and darkness. For the instruction of children, most folklore embodies both sides of an archetype by bringing the main character into life-threatening brushes with dark forces but allowing him or her to escape, with help from positive sources, into a “happily-ever-after” of safety. In a world where adults are expected to have adopted the principles of morality and integrity representing the valued way of life, stories that illustrate the dark side of an archetype may seem to wield more power. As in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, they illustrate what can happen when one is enticed by the dark side of an archetype to abandon these principles. The fear factor thus serves to keep adults from straying. Far fewer stories for adults deal as powerfully with the positive side of an archetype by illustrating what happens to those who reject the dark side and embrace the light.

Jane Austen’s novels, I eventually realized, are full of both negative and strongly positive archetypes—so positive and so intrinsic to her portraits of young rural Englishwomen and their associates that many fail to recognize them as archetypal patterns. Her characters seem utterly true-to-life and very distant from the formalized savagery of mythology, folklore, and certain genres of fiction. Nevertheless, they include animus and anima figures, great fathers, great mothers, enemy brothers, saviors, traitors, and archetypal figures of many other kinds. Her novels obviously specialize in the coming together of animus and anima but explore other themes as well, including fall and redemption, betrayal, and—my personal favorite—the hero journey. If her orderly, domesticated world was built upon the beams of archetypes, I wondered, was mine? To my delight, I found that it was—thanks to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Although archetypes appear in human art, literature, and mythology, they are not human creations. They come directly from a loving and provident Heavenly Father and are an essential part of his divine purposes. This assessment is by no means considered academically correct. I once broached to Joseph Campbell, the great name in scholarship concerning the archetypal hero journey, the possibility that one of the many hero-savior stories that he considered near-parallels might be true. He laughed, made a polite joke, and turned away dismissively. Even at Brigham Young University, my teachers remained safely within the traditional academic parameters and never so much as speculated beyond them for their eternal source or purpose. I still see plainly every day that people of all academic levels live unheedingly among archetypes, unaware of the power and love that they represent.

While the physical creation of the earth unfolded, we, our Father’s children, underwent an intensive period of schooling to prepare to inhabit it. With so much at stake for our future, our Father did not release us into an earthly garden of pleasures, temptations, and consequences with nothing to help us. He established careful plans to disseminate and redisseminate His truths among his children on earth (the various dispensations of the gospel), directed the writing of a “book of remembrance” (the scriptures), and appointed messengers (the prophets) to remind us constantly of these things. And for the benefit of those who might never encounter the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Bible, or a prophet during their mortal lives, He schooled us well in the crucial archetypal patterns: a great father and mother who love us, creation of this earth expressly for our well-being, our enemy brother who betrays us for his own ends, our Savior and loving brother who sacrifices all to redeem us, and our own hero journey through the dark mists of mortality back into the light of our eternal home (see Mosiah 3:15; Moses 6:63).

So what has the Great Father provided for His children born into Jewish homes? The example of Moses, an archetypal hero who answered the call to adventure and brought his people the elixir of one God, His law, freedom, and a promised land. What has He provided for those born into Muslim homes? The sunnah (example) of Muhammad, who answered the call and brought his people the knowledge that “there is no god but the God,” who will always extend mercy to those who obey him. For those born into Confucian or Taoist homes? The models of Confucius and Lao Tzu, who, in their disparate ways, taught adherence to the order of heaven. Into Buddhist homes? The pattern of the Buddha, who developed the Eightfold Middle Path to an enlightened life. Into Hindu or Jain homes? A myriad of avatars of Krishna, bearing a myriad of elixirs, all meant to better the human condition. Into unchurched or pagan homes? Prometheus, Beowulf, Maui, and other mythological heroes of all kinds, all answering calls and retrieving elixirs for humanity. Into agnostic or atheistic homes? Superman, Batman, the Avengers, the Lone Ranger, Luke Skywalker—all human heroes after the divine model.

Is Jesus Christ just another human creation, then? Absolutely not. He was and is the pattern after which all the others are modeled, however imperfectly (see 2 Nephi 11:4). Human beings have an intrinsic need for heroes and savior figures; if none are available, we will create them after the example deeply engrained within us. We are all heroes currently engaged in the cycle, having answered the greatest call to adventure: to emulate our Savior. Jung’s “collective unconscious” was our Heavenly Father’s very conscious effort engineered to guide us, using threads of folklore that, if followed, would lead us to the more substantial “iron rod” of truth, whether in this life or the life beyond it. “Happily ever after” is no cop-out from reality; it is reality of the highest kind and is the preprogrammed destination for all of us, if we will only follow the many guides that lead to it (see Alma 33:19–20).

Are all seeming archetypes equally sound? No. Like any other medium, they can be distorted and counterfeited. Satan has been doing so from the beginning. He has proliferated mythologies of superhuman beings without principle who subvert their own rules of conduct and strike down at whim any who displease them, who contend with each other for power and use human beings as pawns in gigantic, meaningless games of chance. In other words, he projects his own warped agenda onto his Father and ours. And for the time being, he may seem to have the upper hand, since God’s plan depends entirely upon our freedom to choose. All Satan needs to do is multiply the poor choices and use them to obscure the truth until we run out of time in our probation period. Even if he cannot corrupt us entirely, he can cause us to waste our resources in useless or harmful worldly pursuits.

But he cannot obliterate the truth. It is there; and for those who hark back to their premortal training, it shines like a gold thread in a multicolored fabric. We were all taught to recognize it. If we let the other colors in the fabric distract us from it or choose to ignore it, it is not because we lacked the background, the opportunity, or many spirit helpers to guide and exhort us. Above all stands the example of the Savior, who in every way precisely emulated the divine pattern while in His mortal state, bearing His own burdens and all of ours in the process. Look among all the other savior figures on earth for another who accomplished this overwhelming task, and you will look in vain. Of all those heroes who tried to return from the jaws of death bearing the elixir of eternal life in the presence of God the Father, Jesus the Christ is the only one who succeeded. He offers it to us freely, asking only that we exert the faith necessary to receive and act upon it.

Is it possible, then, for ordinary mortals to emulate the Savior of the world? Emphatically, resoundingly yes. It may well take longer than a lifetime for most of us, but it is possible. If a lost, flawed, chronically confused child such as I can find, amid the chaotic tangle of mortal existence, the fine gold threads that lead to the iron rod, so can anyone else. Years of investigation have convinced me that there is no easier or surer route to eternal life than the rod, which is open for all of humankind to use. I pray that we may all use it steadfastly so that we may each complete our journey successfully and return as heroes to our heavenly home.

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Elizabeth Wilkinson Watkins received a B.A. in archaeology and an M.A. in humanities from Brigham Young University. She entered a career in scholarly publications at the age of nineteen and has been involved with that work ever since, with the exception of a year and a half spent on an LDS mission in France and French-speaking Switzerland and eight years spent as a full-time mom. She has edited books in a large number of fields, including music, art, biography, comparative religions, law, politics, medieval Arabic philosophy and medicine, and especially history—United States, western, and Mormon. She has also written and published articles on United States and world history, essays on scholarly publishing, and several novels.

Elizabeth has worked in publishing at Brigham Young University with the former BYU Press, Scholarly Publications, BYU Studies, and the Neal A. Maxwell Institute’s Middle Eastern Texts Initiative. She has written and edited for the National Center of Constitutional Studies and the newly founded James Madison Institute in Provo, Utah. She has also had the opportunity to work as a researcher and writer on the Joseph Smith Papers biographical project and on Brigham Young University’s Education in Zion project. And she has enjoyed the remarkable blessing of loving her profession and the increased knowledge and understanding it has always given her.

January 2013

Surely there has never been a time when heartfelt feelings about religion were viewed with more skepticism than in our day. Feelings are seen as barriers to reason. The search for knowledge must be conducted dispassionately because emotion can cloud objectivity and lead us astray. But while my professional life has been lived in the world of science, as the child of a musician—and from twenty years as a singer in the Mormon Tabernacle Choir—I have experienced another home in the world of the arts. And how could an artist deny the power of feelings and emotion? The genius of artistic creativity would be impossible without them.

Thus it is that I am unashamed to admit that feelings play a large part in my belief that in 1820 a teenaged boy living in upstate New York knelt in prayer in a grove of trees to seek light and knowledge from our Father in Heaven. Joseph Smith’s prayer was answered with a glorious vision in which he saw and spoke with God the Father and His son, Jesus Christ. As a result of that vision and others to follow, Joseph was eventually led to a stone box hidden on a hillside. Within the box were golden plates containing the engraved record of a civilization that existed somewhere upon the American continent between 600 B.C. and 400 A.D. These plates had been expressly preserved to come forth in our day. With God’s help, Joseph translated the record and published it in 1830 as “The Book of Mormon.” The book’s most remarkable feature is its account of a visit of Jesus Christ to the Americas following his resurrection.

This is the point where the skeptic will doubtless pause and say, “How can an educated person possibly believe such things?” Indeed, only this afternoon I encountered an article expressing this very reaction from evolutionary biologist and atheist Richard Dawkins, who opined that anyone who could believe in Mormonism is a “massively gullible fool.”

Marginalized to the class of gullible fools, what have I to say for myself?

First of all, if there is one thing of which I am absolutely sure, it is of the existence of a God whose spiritual children we are and who hears and answers our prayers. My evidence? Certainly it is nothing that an evangelist of nonbelievers would accept. It is simply the warmth that I feel when I approach Him in prayer, the insights and inspiration He gives to me, and the tangible support I have felt throughout my life whenever I have called upon Him.

All I can say to someone who doubts this reality is that you will never know until you kneel down and try it for yourself. Ask Him if He is there, and then listen. Be patient. If you are sincere and express a willingness to believe in Him, He will answer. You will have to take a leap of faith and trust your feelings, but if you do so, your confidence that He lives will grow to the point where it can reach a kind of certainty. While this will never qualify as proof in the scientific sense, you can nevertheless be very sure of it.

But what of Joseph Smith? How can I have confidence in such a story? How can I believe that a man who thumbed his nose at the religious establishment of his time, told stories of golden plates that were later conveniently returned to an angel, and introduced the controversial practice of polygamy [a practice which, by the way, I believe served as an Abrahamic-like test of faith, and which I fervently hope will never be asked of the church again]—how can I believe that such a man could have been called of God? The short answer is, “I have read The Book of Mormon many times and found it to be the surest testament that Joseph’s story is true.”

Google “Book of Mormon” and you’ll find all kinds of assertions as to why it cannot possibly be true. I’m sure I have read just about every argument there is. But to me, what the arguments continually fail to account for is how an uneducated young man such as Joseph Smith could possibly have produced a religious book of such great depth. Consider this:

The best available scholarship suggests that what Joseph described as translation took place as he put special stones inside of a hat and pressed the hat to his face. He would then dictate to a scribe. He first used a pair of stones he referred to as “the Nephite interpreters.” These were with the plates when he found them and have since come to be known as the “Urim and Thummim.” Later, he used a “seer stone”—a small oval-shaped stone a little smaller than a hen’s egg. Pressing the hat to his face apparently helped him eliminate outside distractions and focus his spiritual awareness. Whether he saw the words he dictated or simply expressed impressions that came to him we cannot know for sure, but while focusing in this way, he dictated for hours upon end.

Yes, in our day this sounds like superstitious nonsense and makes it easy for people like Dawkins to dismiss the whole thing with the wave of a hand. Joseph’s father-in-law, Isaac Hale, thought that he was pretending and that it was all a conspiracy to extract money from gullible people. Taking the story upon its surface, I can sympathize with that reaction. However, here’s the problem:

If Joseph was pretending, if he was making it all up as he went along, or even if he had spent a great deal of time beforehand working out what he was going to dictate to the scribe, how could he possibly have produced—speaking with his face buried in a hat and without asking to review the manuscript—a book of over 500 pages that would have any sense of coherency? Add to that the presence of sophisticated ancient literary devices such as chiasmus, or the powerful imagery and exposition of Lehi’s dream of the tree of life, or a detailed knowledge of ancient olive tree cultivation demonstrated by the allegory of the olive tree, or the profundity of King Benjamin’s speech, and it is even more baffling. These are but a few examples. Scholars have pointed out many remarkable complexities in the book that would not be apparent to the casual reader.

I have reviewed and rewritten the words of this short testament many times. I cannot imagine working it through in my mind, then dictating it once from memory and leaving it to stand with only minor grammatical corrections.

Given Joseph’s wife, Emma’s, later recollection that “Joseph Smith could neither write nor dictate a coherent and well-worded letter; let alone dictating a book like the Book of Mormon,” other theories have been proposed. It has been suggested that he must have obtained a manuscript from someone else or written the text in advance while borrowing heavily from other sources. But here, too, a major difficulty arises. Joseph dictated the first 116 pages of the Book of Mormon to a man named Martin Harris. Harris pleaded with Joseph to let him take the pages home to show to others, including his wife, who were skeptical about what was going on. After Joseph reluctantly allowed him to do so, the pages were lost.

Joseph was devastated. After a time he began again, but rather than repeat the same material, he translated from what was described as a separate account of the same time period taken from a different section of the plates.

“A likely story,” one may say. Joseph knew that he could not reproduce the precise text of the lost pages and so he manufactured an excuse as to why it came out differently the second time. But the point is that this clearly contradicts the theory that he was dictating from a manuscript. If that were so, the lost pages would not have presented a crisis. Joseph would simply have read them off again.

Regardless of the precise nature of the process, the bottom line for me is what was actually produced. For the serious reader the book defies easy categorization. Give it a cursory glance as did Mark Twain and you can simply pass it off as “chloroform in print.” But give it the benefit of a close, prayerful reading, and you’ll find unexpected depth.

Yes, there are chapters and verses that mirror the Bible. There are even a few verses with close parallels in the New Testament. With the exception of the section on the visit of Jesus Christ, it would seem that these verses must have come from somewhere besides the plates since ancient American prophets would not have had contact with the old world at the time. Perhaps in some cases both the Book of Mormon and the New Testament were drawing upon earlier, common scriptural sources. But elements that seem to have been influenced by sources outside of the plates may also tell us something about the translation process. Perhaps it was not as literal as many would like to think.

In any case, elements that appear to have come from the Bible or the times and culture in which Joseph lived are seamlessly interwoven with events and descriptions that, to me, ring true as authentic ancient history. In this mixture, my artistic sense sees similarities to an impressionistic painting. Monet, for example, created works that transcend the literal scene. They are as much atmosphere as depiction. When I view them it is as though I am sensing something half remembered and ever longed for.

In the same way, I can see the Book of Mormon as the product of a kind of spiritual impressionism. That is not to imply that it is not based on the actual record of an ancient civilization. But just as Monet transformed literal scenes into something more, so might the Holy Spirit have helped Joseph to combine echoes of the religious life of an ancient civilization with inspired insights from the Bible and his own experience to form a work that both surpasses the verbatim translation and integrates teachings important to the founding of a modern-day church.

Let the critics quibble over individual brush strokes. For me, the whole of the canvas—from “I, Nephi, having been born of goodly parents” to “And when ye shall receive these things, I would exhort you that ye would ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true”—is a spiritual masterpiece. And its major focus, even while recounting events of war and conflict, is always upon the life and mission of our Savior, Jesus Christ.

By a process that may seem strange to us but is not so foreign to the world of the past, Joseph Smith produced a new scripture that is especially suited to the needs of our day. The Book of Mormon both affirms and clarifies the mission of Jesus Christ and the teachings of the Bible. My testimony of its truth does not rest upon whether there were horses or elephants in ancient America (two examples of issues raised by critics—horses and elephants are among animals that, while only briefly referenced in the book, are not proven to have existed in the new world during Book of Mormon times). Details that Joseph may have gotten wrong are trivial given all that he got right.

I always have to return to his own description of how the book came about, and, fantastic as it may seem, it continues to make the most sense to me. He described the translation process as “the gift and power of God” and I can think of no better explanation than that. And as with the Bible, the Book of Mormon is best appreciated and comprehended by prayerfully seeking help from our Heavenly Father.

Yes, those golden plates may at first sound far-fetched. But what other writing medium would likely survive for centuries buried underground? The Dead Sea Scrolls—another set of ancient records hidden in hopes of preservation—were written upon animal skins. Many of these disintegrated over the years, leaving only fragments. Absent the good fortune of an unusually dry ambient climate they would not have survived at all.

And we are not limited to Joseph Smith’s word that the plates existed. Three witnesses testified that they were shown them by an angel of God, and Joseph showed them personally to eight others. Though critics have worked hard to discount these witnesses, I have found nothing that convinces me they should not be taken at face value—especially given that the three who saw the angel became disaffected and left the church (two later returned) and yet went to their graves affirming the truth of their witness.

Furthermore, my convictions are not limited to the events of the early nineteenth century; more light has shown upon us through the intervening years. We have loved and appreciated every president of the church. The strengths and inspiration of each have always seemed to match the needs of their time and there has never been a hint of insincerity in our beloved hymn, “We Thank Thee, Oh God, for a Prophet.” But the church is nonetheless an institution led by mortals doing their best to listen for God’s direction. It is not perfect, although it is sometimes difficult to resist a natural desire for it to be so. And I suspect that important changes have sometimes had to wait until the people as a whole were ready to receive them.

Have I convinced you that my words are true? Not likely unless you were already convinced. But I do hope that I have at least helped you to better understand how intelligent, educated people can believe such things, and perhaps even prompted you to inquire further. If you want to understand what Mormons really believe, the first thing you should do is read The Book of Mormon. The most important question is whether or not this book comes from God, and I believe that it does.

Several years ago my father was commissioned to write a choral piece to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the birth of the prophet Joseph Smith. Dad conceived of a dialog between the chorus, representing the modern day church, and a soloist, representing Joseph Smith. It was my privilege to compose the text. Towards the end, the chorus sings these words to Joseph, speaking of our Savior, Jesus Christ:

So as He appeared unto you,
We know that we, too, shall see Him,
Whether in this life or in the world to come.
And we shall fall at His feet and worship Him;
And shall testify with our tears of our love for Him;
And shall smile as we look on His tender face in gratitude.

One of the things I love most about Mormon doctrine is that we don’t believe people will be condemned on judgment day simply because they were unable to find or embrace God’s truth in this life. If not here, everyone will have a fair opportunity to learn about, understand, and accept the gospel of Jesus Christ in the afterlife. [That's what our practices of proxy baptism and other temple work are all about, but that's a subject for another day.]

I believe that one day, each of us¬—Mormon and non-Mormon alike—will be a participant in the scene I have described above. And on that day, all will know that what was only vaguely perceived or not discovered at all by many here upon earth is in fact the central truth of the universe: God, our Heavenly Father, lives. Our Savior, Jesus Christ, is real.

May we all one day greet one another in their presence and rejoice in the opportunity they have given us to learn from our experiences here upon earth!

And finally, when all is said and done, it is my conviction that our Heavenly Father has left the choice to believe as an exercise of individual free will. Scientific proof of beliefs about God and realities beyond the physical world will not come in this life, nor is it meant to. Confirmation from our Heavenly Father is only given upon terms of faith. “…Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you” (Luke 11:9). Our choice to believe is our knock upon God’s door. Once that is accomplished, we need only ask Him to open.

If you choose to believe, you will find many convincing reasons to do so. If you choose not to believe, you will doubtless find many reasons for that, too. But I am glad that I have made the choice to believe. God has blessed me greatly; this choice has led me to great happiness in this life and great hope for the life to come. I would urge any who read this to perform the “experiment” of choosing to believe. I am confident that if you are sincere in your efforts, the result will be the same for you.

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Robert Milton (“Robb”) Cundick, Jr., earned a BA in Biology and PhD in Medical Biophysics and Computing (now known as Medical Informatics) from the University of Utah. From 1970-72 he served a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Germany. Since graduation in 1978 he has pursued a career in medical software development, having worked at Technicon Instruments, Inc. of Tarrytown, New York, and the Department of Medical Informatics at the University of Utah, where he worked closely with Dr. Homer Warner as a chief developer of the medical expert system Iliad. For the past sixteen years he has developed research database applications for Huntsman Cancer Institute in Salt Lake City. He also teaches a course, “Decision Support Systems,” for the online Medical Informatics program at Northwestern University. From 1990 through 2011 he sang 2nd Tenor in the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, and he currently serves as webmaster for the Choir’s internal and public websites. He is married to the former Laurel Soderborg and has five children and eight grandchildren.

Posted January 2013

Jesus taught: “whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance; but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath” (Matthew 13:12). Steeped in the redistributionist philosophy of Japanese upbringing, I was a little taken aback when I first read this passage. But I have increasingly found this principle operative in my own life. I now enjoy a portion, though I once had none.

This has been a remarkable journey. I was born a Buddhist by heritage, raised in an atheist family, and educated in the most secular of all secular societies. There was nothing in the world around me that would encourage spirituality, let alone belief in God.

The Lord found an ordinary teenager on a small island of the Japanese Archipelago. He placed a copy of the Holy Bible in his way, inspired in him a desire to read the book. When the time was ripe, the boy found a copy of the Book of Mormon in a doctor’s office, soon received his own copy from missionaries who happened to come by his house; having kept the promise to read the book, he called the mission home while attending school in Tokyo some 700 miles away.

The old Tokyo mission home, where I took my first missionary discussions in 1972, was demolished some time later to make room for the construction of Asia’s first Mormon temple. The old Japanese house on a busy Tokyo street where I attended my first Mormon service was sold by the Church to raise funds for the Temple construction. My occasional visits to the Tokyo Temple, and to the area of Tokyo where that house once stood, seldom remind me of the physical setting in which my earnest soul searching began. Too many things have happened since to care where it all started.

The theophany claimed by Joseph Smith did not challenge me in the least. If Moses could talk to God, why couldn’t Joseph do the same? Nor was I disturbed by any other supernatural occurrence associated with the origins of Mormonism. I believed that Jesus had performed many miracles. If he performed them two thousand years ago, why wouldn’t he perform them now? It was evident to this 18-year old boy that these claims, however extraordinary, could not be used against the truthfulness of Mormonism. Couldn’t the same accusations be made more broadly against Christianity?

The message was logical and consistent. If there was apostasy, there must be restoration. Man cannot establish the Lord’s church; man must be authorized by the Lord to do so. Authority is a concept universally applied in worldly organizations, including universities; how amazing it is that religious organizations hardly mention the word! Likewise, the doctrine that everyone is given a chance to hear the Gospel made sense, as did the doctrine of continuous revelation. If God is fair, how do we account for the millions who have died in ignorance, including my own heathen ancestors? If God spoke through the prophets in ancient times, why doesn’t He do so now? The Mormon message went even further: we are entitled to personal revelation, and can find for ourselves the truth of all things.

I was overwhelmed by the idea that God is both personal and corporeal, someone I could intimately approach in prayer. I was intrigued by the explanation offered by a missionary that the people drawn in a painting hanging on the wall of the old Tokyo mission home represented Adam and Eve. I had assumed that the story of Eden was fiction, and that man was the outcome of evolution. But somehow what the missionary said sounded congruous. If true, not only was I a literal spirit son of Heavenly Father but also I was a literal descendant of the common parents of the human race.

Adam became part of the coherent message. If Adam had not transgressed, there would have been no need for redemption. Adam and Christ go hand in hand; there couldn’t be one without the other. If one denies Adam, it logically follows that one must also deny Christ. I don’t know how the dinosaurs and the cave men would fit in this picture or how much of the Biblical stories should be taken literally. I have only learned to set aside these and other similar issues to another time and place.

I accepted the message with conviction. But baptism was only the beginning of a life-long process of spiritual reconstitution. Among other things, I needed to more fully come to grips with two of the most fundamental tenets of Mormonism: the Book of Mormon and Jesus Christ! I accepted both on faith; and I intellectually understood what they were about. But when the Book of Mormon or Jesus Christ was preached from the pulpit, it did not generate much personal excitement. Occasionally I thought there was too much hype in Mormon meetings about these things; sometimes what I heard sounded rhetorical.

Part of the reaction was cultural. I felt uneasy or even cultish about venerating the writing of a human hand and deifying a historical individual. Finding what appeared to be grammatical or syntax errors in the Book of Mormon did not help, nor did the self-declaration of divinity and perfection by Jesus Christ. In Japanese culture a great man never calls himself great in contravention of modesty. The Book of Mormon offered doctrinal insights in some passages, but it was largely a collection of interesting stories. I accepted Jesus as the savior of the world, but principally it remained an abstract idea.

My spiritual reconstitution, still an on-going process, has involved efforts on two fronts. The first is to examine the life and teachings of Jesus Christ; the second is to make a systematic study of the Book of Mormon. The two are interrelated, with one reinforcing the other. A careful reading of the New Testament, especially the Book of John, has generated a sweet conviction that Jesus was perfect in everything he said and did; His every word and action embodied what a perfect person would say or do under the circumstance. Modern Mormon scholarship has uncovered traces of ancient Hebraism in the Book of Mormon, which one cannot easily dismiss. Once it is taken seriously, the complexity of the book, with multiple layers of authorship, becomes evident. I determined that fiction could not have produced the transparency and power with which individual authors spoke.

The Prophet Mormon, for example, became no less real than the Apostle Paul, my other favorite author from the scriptures. Mormon was a fourth century AD prophet-general who abridged the first century BC record called the Book of Alma. The book is mostly about the Prophet Alma, but almost a third is devoted to a military general named Moroni. Mormon evidently thought much of Moroni. Mormon must have seen in Moroni a model for himself—a disciple of Christ who was a military leader in an age of great wickedness. Moroni is described as “a man of a perfect understanding,” “a man whose heart did swell with thanksgiving to his God,” “a man who did labor exceedingly for the welfare and safety of his people,” and “a man who was firm in the faith of Christ” (Alma 48:11-13). But how did Mormon know that? The only answer I can think of is that he, recognizing his own traits in Moroni, was describing himself.

Some five hundred years later, in another era of great wickedness, Mormon named his own son Moroni. In the concluding book, the son Moroni quotes his father’s teaching about faith, hope, and charity (defined as the pure love of Christ), concluding with the admonition that we should “pray unto the Father with all the energy of heart, that [we] may be filled with this love, which he hath bestowed upon all who are true followers of his Son, Jesus Christ” (Moroni 7:47-48). Moroni joins with his own admonition that we should “come unto Christ, and lay hold upon every good gift” and “be perfected in him” (Moroni 10:30, 32). To me, these sound like real people telling me what they know to be true, having experienced it themselves. These and other Book of Mormon authors have taught me how one can attempt to become a follower of Jesus Christ, my Savior.

The Bible has shown me that Jesus is everything He claimed to be; the Book of Mormon continues to teach how to make that knowledge a living force in my life.

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Shinji Takagi has taught economics since 1990 at Osaka University, Osaka, Japan, where he was made a full professor in 1995. Born and raised in Japan, he studied at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania on a scholarship from the Grew Foundation (established in honor of Joseph C. Grew, US Ambassador to Japan during the ten year period preceding the outbreak of war in 1941) and subsequently obtained a Ph.D. in economics at the University of Rochester in New York. Professor Takagi has authored or coauthored over 150 journal articles, monographs, book chapters, and other publications, most of which are in the English language. His textbook on international monetary economics, currently in its fourth edition, is a long seller in the Japanese academic market, where nearly 30,000 copies have been sold. He has lectured at nine universities in Japan and the United States, and worked for or consulted with seven national and international public agencies. He has alternated his residence almost equally between Japan and the United States in his adult years; his work has taken him to over forty countries on six continents during a professional career spanning thirty years. Professor Takagi’s favorite pastimes include visiting ancient Buddhist temples in Kyoto and Nara to enjoy their gardens and surroundings, eating Japanese soba noodles at authentic soba restaurants, and accompanying his wife to visit pottery kilns in various parts of Japan. They have four children and an increasing number of grandchildren.

Posted January 2013

Looking back, the continued impression of otherness has turned out to be blessing in disguise. I may have felt a bit like an ugly duckling between the swans when one of my teachers at secondary school (a devout Lutheran) singled me out in the classroom for being a member of a “Sekte”(a term with a very negative connotation in German culture, yet still commonly used in public to classify minority religions). Nevertheless, this encounter and a few similar experiences have profoundly impacted my own perspectives, both spiritually and scholarly.

Above all, I learned that I could stand my ground in face of opposition as long as I had a firm foundation. Nevertheless, when it came to my religion, which was so obviously objectionable to others, there was only one conclusion: The Mormon story had to become my own or I wanted no part of it. I was barely a teenager when I began a journey of study and serious reflection. I paid frequent visits to our city library and read every single book I could find that touched on the subject of Mormonism, including a small repertoire of anti-Mormon literature. I attended worship services of other churches and left out no opportunity to engage in discussions with various street preachers, testing my religious conclusions at the time with a critical audience.

I decided to “awake and arouse [my] faculties” (Alma 32:27) and followed the steps towards acquiring faith as outlined by the prophet Alma in the Book of Mormon and experienced in quiet and very personal ways that the word of God has the power to “enlarge my soul” (ibid, verse 28) and “enlighten my understanding” (ibid). And yes, the faith taught to me by my parents and grandmother has become my own. All of this being said, I cannot point my finger to any particular moment when I concluded, once and for all, that God existed, that He was a loving Father in heaven, and that He saw my place in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. My relationship with God has been an ongoing journey.

The sense of otherness also led me to look beyond the surface. The answers to scholarly questions, but also to the great questions about the meaning of life, are all too often not found by casual thinking or relying on public opinion. Mormon scripture encourages me to “study and learn, and become acquainted with all good books, and with languages, tongues, and people” (Doctrine and Covenants 90:15). To this day, when approaching a challenging subject, I prefer to gain a broad perspective and investigate systematically, seeking for truth for its own sake.

In process of years, my impression of otherness has increasingly given way to a deep feeling of being connected to society and to humankind at large. I suppose that much of what drives me toward Mormonism at the very core would be familiar to most any other human being. The Book of Mormon states that “men are, that they may have joy” (2 Nephi 2:25). The search for joy and happiness, so it seems to me, is a universal human urge, and it is certainly the aim of my personal religious practice and worship.

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Ralf Grünke is a political scientist. He received a bachelor’s degree from Brigham Young University, a master’s degree from Friedrich Alexander University in Erlangen, and a doctorate, magna cum laude, from Chemnitz University of Technology. As a doctorate candidate, he was granted a merit-based stipend by the Hanns Seidel Foundation for two-year, full-time participation in a research group on political extremism. He has since left the world of academia and, today, works as a public relations professional.

Posted January 2013

Then said Jesus unto the twelve, Will ye also go away?
Then Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life. And we believe and are sure that thou art that Christ, the Son of the living God. (John 6:67-69.)

I believe that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has the words of eternal life, and I find the spirit of God here. I believe that this church helps me be a better person. I find good people outside this church who do not seem inclined to join, but who may be better than I am at showing love to others. It may be that God has another path for them, but He hasn’t found it necessary to tell me.

When it became known that I planned to go to the University of Utah, a well-intentioned ward member took me aside and warned me that the professors there would try to steal my testimony. I took an historical geology course from Dr. William Lee Stokes, head of the Geology Department and an active church member. By this time I accepted the abundant evidence for evolution, but wondered if there was room for compromise. Could this Earth have been made of parts of other planets where these fossilized animals had lived? Dr. Stokes answered, Only if the parts were the size of continents and had been added to the Earth without greatly distorting them–both unlikely prospects. It seemed to me then that if you needed to create bodies for mankind, a good way to do it would be through evolution.

I earned a Ph.D. in experimental nuclear physics and began teaching. Some asked me how an otherwise intelligent person could believe in God. On the contrary, I find it reasonable to suppose that at least there might be a god, and I make the argument for this from large numbers. There are an estimated 400 billion stars in our Milky Way galaxy ,with perhaps 20% of those, or eighty billion, being more or less like the Sun.

Astronomers believe that planets are usually formed along with stars, and if we suppose that each star has one earth-like planet (the Sun had three: Earth, early-Venus, and early-Mars), then there are eighty billion earth-like planets in our galaxy. (I ignore non-earth-like planets as too much of an unknown.) Life arose on the Earth after only 200 million years, almost as soon as it could. This suggests that life should be common, occurring wherever conditions are right. That life more complex than simple bacteria-like cells did not occur before the Earth was 3.8 billion years old suggests that this step was more difficult. Indigenous complex life may be relatively rare on these planets.

Particle physicist Murray Gell-Man’s Totalitarian Principle states, “Everything not forbidden is compulsory.” Applied here to an infinite number of worlds, the principle means that anything that can happen with a world and its inhabitants must happen sometime, somewhere. Of course we do not have an infinite number of possible planets, but a large number–and we can make it far larger by considering that there are hundreds of billions of galaxies in the visible universe. I suggest that if it is possible for an intelligent race to arise and to become like gods, it probably has already happened somewhere, sometime. I say happened because we are latecomers. It seems to have taken 4.5 billion years for man to arise on Earth and for us to reach our current stage of progress, but the universe is three times that old, 13.75 billion years.

Consider the progress humankind has made in the last hundred years. What might we do in a thousand years, or in a hundred thousand years? Will we be able to make ourselves immortal? Quite possibly. If civilization stretches into millennia, will people become more righteous, or will we kill ourselves? In his book The Better Angels of Our Nature, Steven Pinker shows that world-wide violence as measured by murders per capita has steadily decreased over the millennia and more certainly over the last few centuries. That is hopeful. If we had a million years, could we become god-like? I suggest that the answer is yes, and if it is possible, I suggest that it has already been done, since, as has been said, we are latecomers.

I have been blessed with an abiding faith (detractors might say with a persistent blindness). Ever since I was a young teenager, whenever I wished to, I have been able to reach out and feel what I interpret to be the peaceful burning reassurance that God lives. Usually that reassurance comes immediately, although sometimes I must wait. My earliest recollection of this reassurance came in a Sunday School class as the teacher related Joseph Smith’s first vision. It was in the old 32nd Ward building, in Pioneer Stake, in Salt Lake City. The back half of the building had two stories, and we were in an upstairs classroom, seated around the perimeter of the room. The teacher, Sister Drechsel, told us that Joseph was only a little older than we were when God appeared to him. As she told us the story, the peaceful, burning reassurance of the spirit whispered to me the refrain, “It is true, it is true!” Sixty years later I still picture a glow filling the room and I feel the reassurance of the spirit as I relive this memory. As time passed, I had several experiences that reinforced my belief. I will relate a few of them.

I was about fifteen when our Boy Scout troop camped for a week in Little Cottonwood Canyon. I was with an older group that helped shepherd the younger boys. As the camp ended we got everything packed up and were waiting for cars to come from the city to take us home. Since we had a couple of hours, four of us decided to take a short hike without the younger boys while we waited. Jim was about my age, Jay a year or two younger, and John two years older. After obtaining permission from the adult leaders, we followed a stream into a narrow canyon thirty or forty yards wide. We walked up the canyon and soon came to a glacier covering the floor of the canyon, and saw that the stream flowed out of an ice cave in the face of the glacier. We wanted to explore the cave, but we would have had to wade in the stream, and the cave ceiling was low. It did not look too promising, so we climbed on top of the glacier. We decided to hike up the glacier a bit and then return to camp, but we soon came to a stack of tools, a couple of shovels and a pick, beside a fifty-foot rope that hung down the side of the cliff–and, of course, we had to investigate.

The rope tested strong enough and anchored well enough to hold, and it looked like there was some rubble and maybe a mine entrance near the top of the rope. John decided to go up and have a look, but he wouldn’t go into the mine, of course, since that might be dangerous. Well, there wasn’t anything to see at the top of the rope, and there wasn’t room for more than one there. Jim and Jay were soon up the rope, and they all jumped over to another ledge where the rubble was, and maybe a mine. I waited at the bottom, thinking that going up might be a bad idea. But what could go wrong? I could climb up, have a look around, and then we would go back to camp. Not wanting to miss out, I went up. The rope was anchored to a bump that jutted out from the cliff, and as I stood on this bump, the other boys started yelling at me, but I couldn’t understand them. I jumped over to them, and as my foot left the rock from which I jumped, that rock came loose and fell down to the glacier below.

It turned out that the other boys had been yelling to me not to jump, since they didn’t think that they could jump back to the rope safely–the landing area was small (smaller since my jump), and there was no way to safely stop if you overshot. On the other hand, we thought we could trace out a route up the several hundred feet to the top of the cliffs with the hope that going down the other side would be easier. After a very fervent group prayer, we felt we ought to go up and over, so we did. John had a ten-foot length of rope, but otherwise we had no climbing equipment. I believe we had canteens. It became a spiritual experience in that we reached for a hand hold, and finding none, prayed harder, and then found a hold. As we worked our way up a chimney, we had to take turns climbing because of the loose rocks we dislodged. On one occasion, the climber above me started again before I was out of the chimney. I heard a rock rattling down the chimney and looked up to see a double-fist-sized rock hurtling towards my head. I thought I could hang on tight and lean outward and let it hit me in the chest or I could hug the cliff and it would probably hit my head. I hugged the cliff. The rock hit just above my head and bounced out into space.

It took about three hours, but we made it to the top, and as we had hoped, the other side was much less steep. As we trotted down a deer trail, Jay tripped and cartwheeled off into space. He later told us that he saw a rock coming at him and that he felt if he could just grab onto that rock, he would be all right. He caught the rock and came away bruised and badly shaken, but alive. Had Jay not caught that rock, he would have plunged another forty feet onto a jumble of granite boulders. Some may say that we deluded ourselves and that the good outcome was the result of a series of coincidences, but we felt that God was watching over us and helping us.

I was a missionary in Germany when the Berlin wall was built. Elder Henry D. Moyle, counselor in the LDS Church’s First Presidency, visited the wall with Elder Theodore Burton, European Mission President, and others. Elder Burton related to us missionaries that Elder Moyle said that the Berlin wall would fall, and the time would come when missionaries would be so busy teaching those on the east side of the wall that those on the west side might need to wait before they could be taught. At that time the Communists looked very powerful and immovable, and I expected the wall to stand for fifty years or more, but the prophecy has already been mostly fulfilled. The wall has fallen, and missionaries are quite busy teaching those on the east side of the wall, but they still teach those on the west side. This is consistent with my experience that inspiration generally comes as impressions that we must then put into words, and we do not always get the words just right. Since we are fallible, that seems reasonable to me.

I believe I received a revelation that left no room for misinterpretation. Once as a missionary I was put with a companion who had a very different idea than I had about what we ought be doing. Things had been getting worse for weeks when he did something that left me completely and utterly frustrated. When I was alone, I knelt in prayer and told the Lord that I did not see how I could continue on. I heard a voice tell me not to worry, that the matter was being taken care of. The voice was so real and immediate that I opened my eyes and looked around to see if I was still alone. I was. That afternoon a telegram came transferring me to work on a different task with a different companion.

Some might explain away the experiences I have related as coincidences and selective memory where I remember experiences that confirm my belief and ignore experiences that do not. A common explanation for answers to prayer is that we pray until we get something that we can interpret as what we wanted, but I have an example that counters that. While teaching physics and astronomy at the local university, I served in various capacities in the Clinton Oklahoma Branch (now Clinton Ward), including seven years as Branch President. The Branch covered about 5,000 square miles. There were members in all the far corners, but most of them lived in three towns along I-40: Weatherford, Clinton, and Elk City. The church building is in Clinton, but my family lives in Weatherford, so we travel fifty miles round-trip to church. Some travel twice that far. The long distances make church attendance a trial of faith. I was Branch President during the late 70s and early 80s, the years of the “oil boom.” Attracted by oil-field jobs, new members strained the capacity of our phase one building. We even had classes in the baptismal font and in the furnace room. Attendance was high enough to qualify us to add some classrooms and a real chapel to the Clinton building, or we had almost enough to build phase one buildings in Weatherford and Elk City. I greatly favored the second choice and had the support of my counselors and of the Stake President in this. We saw it as a way to mitigate the distance problem.

We got some portable classrooms, and that helped until a fellow from the building department in Salt Lake showed up. He looked at the portable classrooms and announced that they had to go. “They project an image of impermanence; we don’t want that.” I felt terribly frustrated. A few more weeks of good attendance and we would qualify for the other two buildings. I prayed that the building representative would have a change of heart and help us rather than hinder us. An image came to my mind of our three daughters walking together down the aisle of a real chapel, with organ music in the background. Suddenly I knew that we should build the chapel. Still concerned about driving distances, I interviewed each active member and asked for their input. Almost without exception they answered that they had been driving the distance for many years and a few years more wasn’t going to make a difference. While we were building the chapel, the oil boom went bust, and so many members moved out that had we had buildings in Weatherford and Elk City, we would have lost them. I believe that I had an answer to prayer that certainly wasn’t what I wanted to hear.

I believe that God lives, and wonder of wonders, He concerns Himself with our welfare.

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Biographical note:

I fulfilled an eight-year obligation with the Utah National Guard. I also served a mission in West Germany, and was there when the Berlin Wall was built. I graduated from the University of Utah in 1965 with a B.A. in physics, and then attended Oregon State University where I received an M.S. in physics in 1968 and a Ph.D. in experimental nuclear physics in 1971. I spent one year as a visiting assistant professor at Louisiana State University before coming to Southwestern Oklahoma State University. I have taught over 8,000 students during forty years at the university. I have just retired and am now an emeritus professor at Southwestern.

I have written about a hundred popular-level articles on subjects from Nobel Prize winners to nuclear weapons. I was the technical editor for two encyclopedia volumes and for a set of children’s encyclopedias. I have conducted numerous observatory viewing sessions for area public schools and the general public and have been guest speaker on such topics as astronomy, nuclear war, and the dangers of too much UV. My wife JoAnne and I have three daughters who are now grown and have families of their own.

Posted December 2012

We’re all in this together, but we do have different worldviews. Understanding one another will both increase our mutual respect and broaden our own thoughts, almost always in a beneficial way. We can and should learn from each other’s experiences; this is a key sentiment of both science and the Mormon faith. Both have a strong emphasis on teaching and learning (often in a classroom setting) and in sharing our best estimates of what is true and real, with the goal of helping others to gain an improved understanding. For this reason, I have chosen to express my thoughts in this testimony (a statement of what I consider to be true) and I will express the few aspects that are unique to my experience rather than the innumerable common beliefs which you and I share. That is the nature of this venue. I hope you understand that I write in the spirit of love and education and not divisiveness.

One thing that makes me relatively unique is that I am a devout and active member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (aka a Mormon or LDS) and an astrophysicist working in planetary science (though I’m certainly not the only person who matches this description). For this reason, I feel to talk specifically about my personal thoughts on science and religion, with some discussion of astronomy and planets around other stars towards the end.

Latter-day Saints have a different mindset and thought process when it comes to evaluating religion and it is one that scientists can appreciate. We come to religion (and life) asking “Is this true and good?” That is the paramount criterion for judging our spiritual experiences. This is in contrast with many other Christian faiths; for example, some religions embrace “sola scriptura,” meaning “by the scriptures [Bible] alone,” recognizing that the Bible is clearly one of God’s main methods for communicating truth to men. For me personally, the LDS emphasis on the search for truth has been an enormous blessing in both my spiritual and academic lives, both of which often focus on my search for truth. I like the practical definition for truth given in the Doctrine and Covenants (a part of the LDS scriptural canon that includes revelations from God to the founder of the LDS Church, the Prophet Joseph Smith) Section 94, verse 23: “And truth is knowledge of things as they [really] are, and as they were, and as they are to come.” (See also the Book of Mormon, Jacob 4:13, Alma 32:35).

In my life, I have come to learn that there are two major ways of obtaining truth: reason and faith. The first, reason or logic, often employed using the scientific method, emphasizes obtaining truth through objective mechanisms; objective here means something that is independent of the individual. Gaining truth through faith works differently, focusing more on gaining an empirical understanding that is unique to every individual and leads to subjective knowledge.

Objective truth can be agreed upon by a group of people and is “outside” of any one individual. You and I and billions of others can agree: there are stars, they are shiny and are seen at night. Objective truth has the fantastic power that it can be immediately applied to everyone: I guarantee that if the atmospheric and lighting conditions are right, you can go outside tonight and see the stars. Science can be applied in powerful ways (e.g., engineering) allowing for the development of new technologies (though this is not the only goal or outcome). Science is best when it avoids or characterizes biases and uses rigorous statistical evidence to identify objective truth. (Throughout this document, when I refer to science, I mean the “hard” or physical sciences, those which have the strongest ability to identify and rigorously prove universal objective truths.) For all its positives, just because science works and works well does not imply that it is the only method for obtaining truth.

The hard sciences have a rule of identifying hypotheses that are objectively testable by experimentation of cause and effect (e.g., Popperian falsifiability). We use statistics and control groups to identify correlations and make them unique, respectively. However, even in very controlled and apparently clear-cut circumstances it is sometimes difficult to rigorously prove hypotheses with much certainty (and actually it is usually only technically possible to disprove alternate hypotheses). Despite the zeal of those who have fully embraced science as the only way to interact with the world, strict objective methodology is not possible in most aspects of real life. I agree that it is used less often than it should be (especially by the media, which care more about hype than reality or truth), but there are countless everyday circumstances where scientific methods are inconclusive at best and inapplicable in general. This is because, among other things, 1) there is no “control group” for most problems, 2) many systems are chaotic in the scientific sense of the word, i.e., they have literally unpredictable outcomes, and 3) humans are irrational and emotional and predicting deductively their behavior is a fruitless exercise. There’s no mathematical treatise on how a specific friendship will develop (some suggestions maybe, but certainly not the rigor we require in physics). There’s no predicting the details of the stock market. You can’t set up a scientific experiment to test different geopolitical policy options. There’s no equation that can identify who you should marry. And on and on. Science cannot do it all (though it should be consulted when possible).

(In fact, most non-scientists are often shocked when they learn how much of scientific progress is actually governed by emotion, intuition, and irrational feelings, even in the most objective problems. While good scientists have a mindset of self-skepticism to make sure their work is more than simply a reflection of their own biases, in the end scientists are people and are governed by subjective thoughts and experiences, even in their most objective endeavors.)

Therefore, to augment our intellectual interaction with the world around us, we need something more than science. About that, there should be no question. And, frankly, hard science gives us very little insight on how we are to fill this gap. How do we manage? Well, we draw upon our personal knowledge and experience: how we were raised, our own insights into how things work, cultural values and expectations, the expertise of those whom we respect, etc. I’ll call this personal knowledge “subjective,” meaning it is based on individual knowledge that cannot generally be transferred to another person. Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about what I call “experiential” knowledge, knowledge gained by experiencing something that goes beyond the facts encountered; this is one form of subjective understanding that can lead to truth. Ideally, we would test these assumptions in the most objective way possible, but usually we just do the best we can and figure things out (for ourselves personally) as we go along.

Faith, properly defined and exercised, is a powerful route to obtaining subjective knowledge of the truth. It is an empirical method, meaning that it is guided by experimentation and focused on actual experienced results (as opposed to theoretical outcomes). A general definition of faith (applicable even outside the religious sphere) is that of an expectation that something is true (e.g., Hebrews 11:1). How strong this personal, subjective expectation is depends on a lot of factors, but having faith implies that there is some non-zero level of expectation, but that the expectation is not 100%. (When we have direct patent evidence that something is true, it becomes “knowledge.” See Alma 32:34; this whole chapter is a fantastic treatise on faith.) One common example used in the scriptures to illustrate faith is that of planting a seed (Alma 32, Matthew 13). When you plant a seed, you don’t know for sure that it will grow, nor do you know if it will eventually be successful and bear fruit. (Keep in mind that the scriptures were written in ancient times, when, I suspect, seeds had lower probability of success than the seeds we would today buy at a store.) Without faith in the idea that there is a possibility that the seed will be successful, there is no reason to plant the seed; the expectation that planting and investing in the seed could eventually yield a satisfactory return on investment is faith. In my opinion, it is this meaning that Joseph Smith had in mind when he said that faith is “the moving cause of all action” (from his excellent Lectures on Faith). With this definition, you can see that even the most irreligious are constantly using faith. My scientist colleagues may frame this same concept in terms of probabilistic expectation values or Bayesian priors; I think this captures a similar feeling to this general definition of faith.

LDS theology has a unique understanding of faith. We define faith as a principle of action (doing something, often without direct evidence that it will yield a positive result) and which is distinguished from “belief” which is a more passive “this is what I think.” It is important to recognize, however, that everyone uses the words faith, belief, and knowledge differently.

While faith as a principle can lead us to truth, there is a specific kind of faith that is most powerful: faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. In the LDS Church, faith in the Lord Jesus Christ is identified as the first principle of the gospel (the gospel being the set of teachings necessary for producing salvation) and this is true in many other Christian churches as well. When we have an expectation that Jesus Christ is real and true (in the supernatural and not historical sense), we initially aren’t 100% sure that His teachings and His gospel will work. There is no objective reason for us to identify something He taught as true or real and to, therefore, adopt it in our lives. Let’s pick a specific principle to make this concrete: having faith in the Lord Jesus Christ means that you have an expectation that appealing to the Atonement of Jesus Christ will allow you to obtain forgiveness for past misdeeds about which you feel seriously guilty. The process required for gaining God’s forgiveness is called “repentance” and I won’t go into the details here, but it is much deeper than simply uttering “Father, forgive me.” Without faith, there is no expectation that the burden of guilt for something you have done and feel sorry about can be lifted and that you can feel forgiven. With faith in Jesus Christ, you give yourself an expectation that, if you repent in the way He has designated, He truly can heal you and forgive you. I have experienced this directly in my life and can confirm that the Atonement of Christ is real, in that it has had a real effect on my life and happiness and that it can have a real effect for you too if you have faith in Him and properly repent.

This method of putting faith into action by doing something based on an expectation instead of knowledge (or even apparently contrary to observed knowledge) is called “exercising faith.” The promise is that, when we exercise faith, God will give us to know that the principles in which we are exercising faith are true. This confirmation comes as a subjective feeling called inspiration or personal revelation and it comes from the Holy Ghost, also known as the Spirit. It usually comes as the result of both exercising faith and asking God, through heartfelt and sincere prayer, i.e., asking God to give us true knowledge.

Rarely will this result in a vision or an audible voice. There is an ability to recognize personal revelation (defined as [subjective] truth that comes from God) that needs to be developed. . . . I’m still working on mine. Although I can describe some basics here, if you are sincerely interested in how to do this, you need to get in touch with someone who can help you. I would be willing to talk with you directly, if you think that would help. In the LDS Church, when there is a desire to learn more about how to receive subjective religious/spiritual knowledge, especially if you are not currently a member of the church, the best reference is the LDS missionaries: young men or young women who have put their lives on hold to go out and help others to understand the principles of gaining subjective spiritual confirmation regarding the Gospel of Jesus Christ. If you meet with them, I hope that you will have the humility to look past their youth to the eternal principles and truths they will convey.

When I pray for guidance, I usually get a feeling (often a reminder of an answer or feeling I have previously had) that I need to do something or change something in myself. The feeling may not be qualitatively different from what seems to you as your own personal idea, although it is often much more spiritual and deep. I have experienced revelation from God many times myself and testify that God does hear and answer prayers for our benefit.

I have put forth the idea that faith in Jesus Christ is the most powerful method for obtaining truth. To gain a truth by this method, you first have to have an idea of what the truth is (Lectures on Faith) and be guided by someone more experienced in that truth (e.g., Acts 8:26-39).

So, how do we know, how can we know, which of the thousands of interpretations of religion to investigate for truthfulness? I admit, this is a daunting problem as simple metrics like “Which religion has the most members” or “Which religion is oldest” or “Which religion has people who appear to have the most firm faith” may or may not correlate with the truthfulness of that religion (and for many religions, there is no single answer to even these straightforward questions). Undoubtedly there is some truth and value in practically all religions, though I don’t think it is unreasonable to say that some religions have more truth than others.

Interestingly, it is this very question that founded the LDS Church. A young man in upstate New York named Joseph Smith was in an area receiving a spiritual “upheaval” which he described as a “contest of religions and a tumult of opinions.” Recognizing his need for forgiveness for past mistakes and his utter inability to determine which Church was the one to join either by study or by the Bible alone, Joseph came across a powerful scripture in the New Testament book of James, chapter 1, verses 5 and 6. It reads, “If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally and upbraideth [chastises] not, and it shall be given him. But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed.” The advice is to communicate with God (in what is called prayer) with an expectation that God will answer and with a true willingness and intent to do whatever God says.

The claim of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is that it is the only true and living Church (D&C 1:30). The “only true Church” part means that it encompasses more divine and saving truth than any other religion. The “only living Church” part means that it is actively receiving more truth through the direct guidance of Jesus Christ to a living Prophet, equivalent to a modern day Moses, Peter, or Muhammad. We do not believe that we have a monopoly on truth, that other religions are fruitless, that we have exclusive access to God, or that people cannot be happy elsewhere. We do not believe that anyone will be condemned for not living in accordance with truths that they did not know; through God’s grace, such will be forgiven as He sees fit and will eventually (potentially in the next life) have the opportunity to learn and accept all truths necessary for ultimate happiness. However, we know that learning and accepting our unique truths as soon as possible will allow people to become better, happier, and closer to God.

Therefore, we invite all men and women to learn more about Jesus Christ. We plead with those who will listen, hoping that they will open their minds and their hearts to gaining spiritual knowledge through faith in the principles of the gospel. We exhort others to familiarize themselves with our unique and powerful doctrines, which confirm the truthfulness of the Bible and expand our understanding of our purpose on this Earth and how we can return to our Heavenly Father (i.e., go to heaven). We send tens of thousands of young men and young women into around a hundred countries to declare the truth and to follow Christ’s injunction to “go ye to all the world and preach the gospel to every creature” (Mark 16:15).

(I will note that I have used the word we to suggest that I am speaking for the Church itself, but I am not an officially endorsed spokesperson. For an official point of view—which I believe will not be substantially different—go to mormon.org or lds.org or talk to the missionaries.)

One of the best ways to exercise faith in order to gain a knowledge of whether the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and its teachings are true is to learn more about the Book of Mormon. Its purpose is to testify of Christ and to allow us to gain a spiritual confirmation that He lives and loves us. Through the process of studying the Book of Mormon, you can determine whether or not the LDS Church is true.

Let me describe my knowledge and testimony about the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon.

Scientists should be expert skeptics (e.g., Feynman’s Caltech graduation address) and, as a scientist and a debater, I am a trained and expert skeptic. I know all about biases like confirmation bias, fallacies like post hoc ergo propter hoc, statistical uncertainties, expectation values, systematic errors, and other relevant aspects of skepticism and objective scientific proof. I believe that virtually all pseudoscience is incorrect and/or misguided and am extremely skeptical of “science” that doesn’t come with a well-written peer-reviewed journal article. In fact, those who have submitted astrophysics journal articles where I was selected to be the peer reviewer would corroborate that I provide extensive, thorough, multi-faceted reviews.

So, I’m often savvy to issues that arise from the Atheist (used in the sense of the philosophy that denies anything supernatural) Skeptic concerning religion. When it comes to the Book of Mormon, however, I just can’t find any serious argument against its reality, but see dozens or hundreds of reasons to accept it. I am clearly biased by my upbringing and by the fact that I have received subjective, spiritual, and emotional confirmation from God that the Book of Mormon is true. I believe I have a strong ability to mostly step outside of my biases and present nearly objective evidence (though I understand if you doubt this ability), following the scientist’s objective rules, and in that role, the Book of Mormon continues to stand as inexplicable without invoking the influence of God.

The key question is, “Where did the Book of Mormon come from?” The goal of the skeptic is to show that there is a plausible naturalistic explanation for its origin. I won’t go over the various theories here, but none of them stand up to serious investigation.

One of the most amusing theories about the Book of Mormon is that it was plagiarized directly from other extant sources. Proponents of this untenable idea point to portions of the book that quote (or appear to quote) from other sources and use this to justify their straw man conclusion. The reality is that there are AT LEAST dozens of chapters and scores of pages that are completely original (though they usually draw on pre-existing themes, as would be expected from scripture whose purpose is to confirm the Bible). My testimony of the Book of Mormon comes from, in large part, the awesome sermons and discourses of these ancient inspired prophets. There’s Nephi’s vision of the Tree of Life, Nephi’s psalm, Jacob’s treatise on the Atonement, Nephi’s concluding chapters, Jacob’s Allegory of the Olive Tree, Enos’s repentance story, King Benjamin’s sermon, Abinadi’s testimony, the story of the people of Zeniff, the conversion of Alma the Younger, Alma’s discourses to Zarahemla and Gideon, Alma and Amulek’s preachings in Ammonihah and later to the Zoramites, Ammon and Aaron’s missionary preaching, Alma’s advice to his sons, Helaman’s teachings of his sons, Nephi and Lehi’s experience in the temple, Mormon’s frequently interjected commentary, Samuel the Lamanite’s prophecies, the story of Nephi preaching on his garden tower, Mormon’s mourning over his people, the origin of the Jaredites, Ether’s preachings, Mormon’s epistles to Moroni, and Moroni’s final words. And these amazing, doctrinally rich, and powerful sermons are dwarfed by the visit of Christ Himself and His teachings at the Temple at Bountiful.

All of these stories provide the substance of the Book of Mormon and practically their entire content is original in the Book of Mormon (though some of the prophets occasionally quote their scriptures, i.e., the Old Testament of the Bible). It is these beautiful chapters that cannot be explained away with any theory of plagiarism whatsoever. Anti-Mormon arguments avoid these sections like the plague because there is no alternative explanation for these most powerful sections of scripture. (And don’t even get me talking about the other scriptures authored by Joseph Smith: the Doctrine and Covenants and Pearl of Great Price). These are the parts of the Book or Mormon that particularly bring the Spirit into my heart, confirming the truth of the Book of Mormon.

If you want to argue against the divine authenticity of the Book of Mormon (from the atheist or non-Mormon religious point of view), start with these passages and not random phrases. If you sincerely want to know whether the Book of Mormon is true, start with these passages and ask God, the Eternal Father, if they are true, with sincerity, faith (the expectation that you truly can and will receive an answer), and real intent (meaning that you are open to acting on whatever answer you receive, even if it is not the one you expect) and He will manifest the truth of these passages unto you by the power of the Holy Ghost (Moroni 10:5). By that subjective, spiritual, and personal method, I know that the Book of Mormon is true, besides the objective reasoning, only a tiny part of which I’ve mentioned here (which further convinces me). One good place to start is chapter eleven from the book of 3 Nephi, which is the beginning of Christ’s visit to the people of ancient America. Chapter 17 is particularly powerful.

I think the evidence for the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon is overwhelming and that there is no plausible alternative explanation for its origin other than the divine origin given by Joseph Smith. As always, reaching this conclusion requires subjective judgment on what is acceptable evidence and how compelling it is. But by reading it yourself, exercising faith, and praying, you can gain a subjective truth that is deeper than any objective argument concerning its authenticity.

My conviction of the truth of the Book of Mormon is one of the main pillars of my testimony of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Though these pillars are based on subjective personal experiences, the knowledge I have of these is more real to me personally than the objective truths of science. Of course, each pillar inter-supports the others, but these are truths that, in my testimony, could readily stand on their own. The other pillars of my personal testimony are my knowledge that Heavenly Father lives and loves me and my family; that I have received forgiveness of my sins through Christ’s Atonement and that His Atonement is real; that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God called to restore His truth to the Earth; that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the only true and living Church on the Earth; that we are led by a prophet and apostles today who share with us God’s will (particularly through “General Conference”); that paying tithing (a charitable donation of 10% of your income to the Church) leads to financial protection; and that God has restored His authority on the Earth, which we call the Priesthood, and that it has actual power including the ability to give efficacious priesthood blessings.

Most active Latter-day Saints have similar testimony pillars; I am one of literally millions who can testify to the validity of these principles. We have gained our knowledge through subjective faith. You can too. I hope you will seriously consider planting the seed of faith in Jesus Christ in your life.

Now I will turn my attention to another unique aspect of my personal experience which I can share here, that of the LDS astrophysicist.

If there is one thing that I would want everyone to know about astronomy, it is to have a feel for the unimaginably immense distance and time scales that are seen in the universe. (This is one of my favorite visualizations of the size of the universe.) There are no analogies that are adequate to grasp an understanding of these scales: if the Sun is a pea a few feet away from the Earth (at this scale, the size of a grain of salt), then the nearest star is 120 miles away. The galaxy is millions of miles wide with billions of stars, most smaller than a pea in size. As we will discuss below, there are likely billions of billions of worlds like our own in the observable Universe. As mind-bogglingly large as this is, it may be only a microscropic fraction of God’s creations. Joseph Smith restored God’s revelation to Moses in the scripture we now call the Book of Moses, a part of the LDS scriptural canon contained in what we now call the Pearl of Great Price, although this is effectively a prelude to Genesis, the first book of the Bible. Before discussing the creation of this Earth, God tells Moses: “Worlds without number have I created… by the Son.” Even if you do not believe in God, the awe-inspiring size of the Universe serves to provide perspective that should bind us together as the human family. (I enjoy Carl Sagan’s “Pale Blue Dot” quotation in this regard.)

Heavenly Father is so amazingly infinite, why would He possibly care about someone as insignificant as me with all my comparatively nanoscopic problems? The reason is given in this same passage from Moses: “For behold, this is my work and my glory – to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.” Psalm 8 in the Old Testament shares a very similar message: “When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him? For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour” (Psalms 8:3-5). One of the top leaders of the LDS Church, President Dieter F. Uchtdorf, recently called this contrast a “Paradox of Man”:

“And while we may look at the vast expanse of the universe and say, “What is man in comparison to the glory of creation?” God Himself said we are the reason He created the universe! His work and glory—the purpose for this magnificent universe—is to save and exalt mankind. In other words, the vast expanse of eternity, the glories and mysteries of infinite space and time, are all built for the benefit of ordinary mortals like you and me. Our Heavenly Father created the universe that we might reach our potential as His sons and daughters. This is a paradox of man: compared to God, man is nothing; yet we are everything to God. While against the backdrop of infinite creation we may appear to be nothing, we have a spark of eternal fire burning within our breast. We have the incomprehensible promise of exaltation—worlds without end—within our grasp. And it is God’s great desire to help us reach it.”

Why does God care for us in the vastness of creation? Because we are His children and He loves us with an infinite love, as evidenced by Christ’s Atonement. Besides that, LDS theology confirms that, just as children one day become like their parents, we have the potential to become like God. That is, we have infinite potential. This makes us the most important and valuable of all the creations of the Universe. I like the pictures of beautiful nebulae and colorful star-forming clouds as much as anyone, but (like most astronomers), I put far more value on intelligent life. God does too. He has a plan for His children, called the Plan of Salvation or the Plan of Happiness, that allows us to grow and progress and become more like Him. This wonderful piece of LDS doctrine clarifies our role in the universe, where we came from before this life, who we are, and where we are going after death.

Besides organizing the Plan of Salvation for the whole human family, I testify that He knows each of us by name, understands us more deeply than we understand ourselves, answers our individual prayers, and is close to each of us. The claim that our Heavenly Father knows, cares for, and interacts with ALL of His children in every age, around the world, and then around the universe, tends to create two responses. The faithless see such a Grand Being as impossible because the very idea is unbelievable and/or incomprehensible. On the other hand, those who have taken the time and effort to establish a relationship with their Heavenly Father and who examine their lives for Heavenly Father’s influence discover numerous examples of His hand of guidance and arm of mercy and must admit to the truth that He knows them personally. I know that Heavenly Father is aware of and cares for me and for my family through the many ways in which He has blessed our lives. (And, believe me, I’ve corrected for observational and confirmation bias.) For me and others, the fact that God is able to be an influence in a personal way to billions upon billions serves to exalt God and verify His Omnipotence, Omniscience, and Omnipresence. (On the other hand, rejecting something just because you don’t know how it works is not particularly scientific; it is prideful and awful hubris which leads people to believe that the universe cannot possibly contain anything that much more impressive than themselves. [Perhaps amoebas feel the same way].)

While astronomers identified the terrific scale of the universe over the past century, one of the most interesting current developments is the identification of planets just like Earth around other stars. I am an astronomer who studies planets around other stars (extra-solar planets or exoplanets), and am currently working with the Science Team of NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope. In a short time from this writing (October 2012), Kepler will undoubtedly announce the discovery of a nearly Earth-sized, potentially habitable planet. In some ways, this will be a completion of the Copernican Revolution, which started the idea that the Earth was not the center of the universe or special by suggesting that the planets orbited the Sun instead. After identifying a few examples, it is the main goal of the Kepler Mission to then draw statistical conclusions about the prevalence of such planets in our Galaxy (with preliminary estimates already ranging from millions to billions). While Kepler will identify planets that are at the right distance from their stars to have liquid water, whether or not actual water is present requires a large host of other assumptions about the properties of that planet (primarily, that it has a small and well-behaved atmosphere). Although Kepler will bring us closer than ever to identifying planets just like our own in the universe, it will be ten to forty years until these assumptions can be seriously tested; these will remain only “potentially” habitable worlds for decades to come.

Still, with the imminent discovery of potentially habitable worlds and the decades-long search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) via direct efforts to search for intelligent signals, some groups, religious and secular, are thinking about the strength of the fundamental philosophical shift such discoveries may eventually have. Superficial investigations wonder if religions will crumble under such news, but I think that ignores the complexity of the question. I am saddened to say that there are undoubtedly many religions and individuals who will simply ignore any scientific progress on this problem, refusing to take the time to think about the philosophical and cosmographical implications for them personally. (Indeed, most of us don’t currently appreciate on an everyday basis the unimaginably huge universe and our ridiculously small part of it.)

In particular, LDS teachings have always affirmed that there are a grand multiplicity of worlds and that “the inhabitants thereof are begotten sons and daughters unto God” (D&C 76:24). As we discussed earlier about the Pearl of Great Price, God clearly reveals to Moses that He has created worlds without number through His Only Begotten Son. In this passage, He also explains that some worlds had already passed away, that some were currently going, and that others would yet be created. This is entirely consistent with the modern scientific understanding of planet formation: there are many habitable worlds in the galaxy (Kepler is going to give a precise estimate, but no one doubts that the answer will be in the millions to billions range.). New stars and planets are currently forming (and will form in the future); other planetary systems have died. Note that this was somewhat contrary to the predominant astronomical understanding of the early 1800′s, which usually imagined the universe as static and unevolving. Joseph Smith wasn’t the first to suggest the idea of large numbers of inhabited planets (see Prof. Michael Crowe’s excellent investigation of LDS thought in a historical setting in Extraterrestrial Life Debate: 1750 – 1900) or a continually evolving universe. Still, though, it is interesting that modern astronomy strongly validates the cosmological worldview presented in chapter one of Moses, a central theological tenet of the LDS church.

Although I have unique experience as a devout Mormon astrophysicist, in the end, I see no conflict between true science and true religion. While there are religious teachings and scientific results that sometimes appear to be in conflict, there are no fundamental principles of one or the other that require one to make a choice. Like most scientists that are presented with two seemingly incompatible sets of evidence (it happens regularly when you’re at the edge of discovery), I am content to wait until we can get more data. Actually, I cannot wait for the amazing and joyous opportunity I will have (presumably after this life) to learn true Astronomy, Physics, and Planet Formation from the Creator of the Universe. In the meantime, I will gladly contribute to the scientific endeavor to learn more about the worlds He has created and I am grateful for the talents, abilities, and inspiration He has given me that allow me to be a scientist.

I testify that He loves each of us individually, that Christ’s Atonement is real, that we can learn truth through confirmation by the Holy Spirit through faith in Christ, and that we are all brothers and sisters and children of God.

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Darin Ragozzine is currently a postdoctoral researcher in the Astronomy Department at the University of Florida. His research focuses on the orbital dynamics of planetary systems, particularly systems of multiple transiting planets and Kuiper belt objects in the distant solar system. He has co-authored several publications as a member of the NASA Kepler Space Telescope Science Team, which continues to be his main research focus. He has published other astrophysics journal articles as well, on topics relating to exoplanets and the dwarf planet Haumea.

Darin has a Ph.D. from Caltech in planetary science and a bachelor’s degree from Harvard in physics and astrophysics. He is currently serving in the Sunday School Presidency in the Gainesville 2nd Ward, in the Gainesville Stake of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Posted October 2012