 I'm very pleased to introduce our final keynote speaker, Richard Bushman. He retired as the Governor Morris Professor of History at Columbia University in 2001, and then came out of retirement in 2008 to accept a position as visiting Howard W. Hunter, Chair of Mormon Studies at Claremont Graduate University. He is the author of Joseph Smith, Ruff Stone Rolling, and the co-general editor of the Joseph Smith papers. He chairs the board of directors of the Mormon Scholars Foundation, which fosters the development of young LDS scholars. With his wife, Claudia Bushman, he is the father of six children and 20 grandchildren. He has been a bishop, a stake president, and patriarch, and is currently a sealer in the Manhattan Temple. His talk is entitled, From Humanity to Fulness, the Mormon Way. Please welcome Richard Bushman. To sort of make a connection I'd written in this, my opening paragraph, these words, there is something liberating in the very name of this group. It seems to be an invitation to think beyond ordinary human limitations. And then I said, I plan to join their ranks tonight. But after hearing this day of papers about the rights of sentient machines and words like polygenders, and that I might live to 150 years if I wait long enough, I realize I'm a very timid conservative Latter-day State. Probably don't belong here at all. I have thought of various subtitles to my somewhat obscure formulation from Humanity to Fulness, the Mormon Way. To clarify my intent, I thought of adding questions such as, is science eternal? Or are there laboratories in heaven? From those clues you might deduce that I want to reflect broadly on the relationship of science from the Mormon view of the world. And that is indeed my aim. I'm not at this point interested in the more common approach to the relationship of science and religion, epitomized in the title of Andrew D. White's 19th century treatise to the history of the warfare of science with theology. There's plenty of that in Mormonism, in the conflict over the DNA evidence about Indian origins or the nature of the papyri from which the Book of Abraham was translated. Conflicts like this need to be attended to. Mormon should never bury discomforting scientific facts. But these controversies tend to fade over time as the strong positions taken by the antagonists are modified and adapted. No one that I know of worries about the age of the earth, a question that really troubled religious people 150 years ago. A few Latter-day Saints are still concerned about organic evolution, but not many. 75 years ago was a major conflict, no more. These issues demand attention, but turn out to be less consequential in the long run than they seem at the time. I am interested more in another aspect of the science-religion relationship that is speculative and controversial, but not contested. It is playful and provocative rather than argumentative. I'm thinking of the strain of Mormon thought running from Parley Pratt through Bre H. Roberts that sees Mormonism and science as not only compatible but harmonious and mutually reinforcing. These thinkers, among them John Witzo and James Talmage, believed that Mormonism was uniquely capable of assimilating the scientific worldview and, in fact, the two Mormonism and science shared basically the same view of the physical universe. Parley Pratt struck this note in the first chapter of the key to theology. Theology is the science of communication he began, meaning by communication and revelation from God, but is also the science of creation, of life, of faith, and spiritual gifts. And finally, the science of all other sciences and useful arts, philosophy, astronomy, history, mathematics, geography, and, of all matters of fact, in every branch of art or research, those are his words. He drew no boundaries between science and religion. Theology was a science, and science was theology. Pratt did not get very far in explaining how this worked out in practical terms, but he participated fully in the 19th century's enthusiasm for science. Ellen G. White, the leader of the Adventist movement in the second half of the century, shared that enthusiasm. The word science appears over 1,800 times in her writings, most of the references in the spirit of Pratt. Everything religion, religious, was a science. And true science, always they say true science, was entirely compatible with religion. Mary Baker Eddy wrote in the same vein under the title of her masterwork, Science and Help, with key to the scriptures. Despite the conflict over evolution, the mid-19th century was a time when the promise of science in the hopes of religion could be envisioned as intertwining and mutually reinforcing. That picture darkened as the century wore on. The deep conflict between the evolutionary conception of human origins and biblical ideas of creation came to appear more severe than was comfortable. By Andrew White's time it was possible to reconstruct a historical tradition of ongoing warfare from the time of Galileo to the present, with a religion opposing scientific truth at nearly every important juncture. A pernican conception of the solar system, the geological estimations of the age of the Earth, and finally the descent of the human species with many lesser conflicts along the way, such as vaccination for smallpox. At every turn, religion appeared to have opposed scientific truth in defense of its dogma and its ecclesiastical power. By the turn of the century, 1900, instead of promising a productive collaboration in the pursuit of truth, the word science and religion evoked images of mortal combat with the soul of the world at stake. Mormon thinkers, however, did not follow other religious into this battle rather than despairing of science. Early 20th century Mormons embraced it more enthusiastically than ever. In his 1915 manual for the Melchizedek Priesthood Chorums, John Whidsoe explained that a rational theology, the title of his book, is based on fundamental principles that harmonize with the knowledge and reason of man. In 1915, of course, the knowledge and reason of man meant science. Whidsoe, who had a modest scientific education himself, was sure the principles of his religion in science harmonized. By modern philosophical standards, Whidsoe did not probe very deeply into the relation of these two systems of thought, but he was carried along by an immense confidence. Here are his words. Man must learn of the universe precisely as it is, or he cannot understand his place in it. The words precisely as it is imply a complete openness to fact, whether religious or scientific. Whidsoe was sure he could accept anything that came along in scientific or personal investigations and build on it. In fact, his view of eternal progression, the great Mormon doctrinal innovation at the time, was of intelligence gathering information. The primal entity was imbued with will, was Whidsoe's argument, here is his words. It was by the exercise of their wills that the spirits in the beginning gathered information rapidly or slowly, acquired experience freely or laboriously. His description of original spirit sounds suspiciously like amoeba emerging from the slime. The exercise of the will upon the matter and energy within reach and enable the intelligent beings little by little to acquire power. Both Whidsoe and Roberts based their confidence on the Mormon doctrines of what Whidsoe called eternalism. By that he meant that Mormons did not postulate a creation out of nothing, the critical act of God and which belief had been based for centuries. Instead Mormons believed that matter, energy and intelligence were all eternal and had been simply organized by God. As Whidsoe put it, the gospel holds strictly to the conception of a material universe. That put Mormonism in the camp of science as contrast to two traditional theologies which had imagined a metaphysic that was entirely extraneous to science. Within this material universe, Whidsoe placed a God who had learned and was learning like all other intelligences. In the beginning, which transcends our understanding, God undoubtedly exercised his will vigorously and thus gained great experience of the forces lying about him. As knowledge grew into greater knowledge by the persistent efforts of his will, his recognition of universal laws became greater until he attained at last a conquest over the universe which to our finite understanding seems absolutely complete. That's the end of his words. It was easy for Whidsoe to believe science and religion were compatible because God himself was a scientist. He had achieved his position to interacting with the forces around him until he gained sufficient knowledge to regulate the universe. Robert's elaborated Whidsoe's perspective in the early chapters of the truth, The Way and the Life, is thwarted attempt at a Mormon Summa Thea logica completed by the early 1930s but not published for 60 years. Robert's hoped to follow Thomas Aquinas in attempting to build a theology purely by reason starting from ground zero. Aquinas had said that if you will grant that something exists he would bring you to God using only the tools of reason. Robert's did not strip away quite so much in his construction but he did want to start with common knowledge. How we can reason but from what we know was a starting point. Phrase a report repeated over and over again. How can we reason from but what we know? Phrase I've heard a lot of something like it today. By what we know, Robert's assumed with Whidsoe the facts as they were generally understood by science and common experience with no theological premises about God or revelation. From that base he worked his way through commonly accepted astronomical findings to the solar system and the stars. Mormons reading these early chapters since at once that he's building toward the notion of superior intelligences existing in some remote sphere who generously choose to communicate with their lesser brethren on earth. That was indeed where Robert's was headed but in pursuing that track there came to a point where he knew he must go beyond the facts as they are commonly accepted to get to his destination. His steps beyond what we know, meaning scientific knowledge to what can only be known with proximate certainty is only to be found out by the process of radiosination, as he said. Such things can be known as he put it up to the point of moral certainty by which he meant what common sense feels must be true or how things had to be. This method allowed him to conjecture about millions of other planets inhabited by benevolent beings but there again he must stop. He had extended the bridge between scientific knowledge and Mormon theology as far as he could by radiosination. From there on his conjectures became mere possibilities. Here's how he put it. Surely what we have observed about the universe and the probability of millions of other worlds that our own being inhabited by greater intelligences greater than those of our world would tend to the conception of the possibility of their sending forth a revelation as we have supposed. That is the climax of his rational excursions, the possibility of revelation from benevolent superior beings on other worlds. From there on he moves to the biblical tradition of revelation. I admire Robert's grand theological enterprise. He nobly undertook to construct Mormon theology from the ground up. He followed a path that only a Mormonite suggest could trod because Mormonism embeds God so completely in the physical universe. There is no thought of a God outside of time and space with a footing in eternity. Robert's God governs from a planet within a solar system somewhere in the vast expanses of the sky. He is every bit a part of the universe we know. Robert's went beyond Witzo's abstract eternalism to demonstrate how Mormons might concretely envision a material God within the world science has constructed. I'm less concerned to test the validity of this theology than point to it as the inheritance of modern Mormon transhumanists. Even though they have largely been forgotten, Robert's and Witzo are, of course, your ancestors. They make your speculations possible even though their views of science and religion have receded, did recede after the 1930s. It became increasingly apparent, especially as the evolution debate heated up in the church, that science and Mormon theology were not only always going to be peaceful bedfellows. Writing in 1940, Lowell Benion adopted the view of science and religion now most common among everyday Mormons. Though an admirer of Robert's, Benion did not see science and theology as occupying the same sphere. Weaving science and religion together to create a unified picture of the universe was antithetical to Benion's thought. Religion was one approach to life and science, philosophy, and art were others. Here are his words. No person can comprehend the whole of life in its beauty, depth, and breadth through a single one of these human interests to the exclusion of others. Science and religion occupy different realms, each with its own purpose. Let each field of human endeavor speak for itself, he wrote, emphasizing his point with an exclamation mark. They may conflict, but each one must be allowed to perform its own functions, harmonized by granting to each its due rather than integrating them. Science, as he said, gives us a description of the world in which we live, thereby enabling us to reckon with the forces at play. Religion is focused on the meaning, purpose, and why of life. But Jared is talking about how to find meaning. It helps man to aspire to the more abundant life of God. His plea to his student readers was not to give up religion when conflicts arose, but to respect the good that could come from each approach. I sketch you in this historical background to remind transhumanists of their theological heritage as Mormons. Probably few modern Mormons share Witzos and Roberts' confidence in the full compatibility in science and religion. On the whole, we probably are more with Benion, but I think that some Mormon transhumanists still are interested in exploring the possibility of continuity, by which I mean a path leading from our current scientific and engineering efforts to the powers of godliness. Is there a smooth curve between here and there, between humanity and fullness? Is intellectual progression in the hereafter in some way a continuation of science as we know it now? These are the questions Roberts and Witzo would appreciate. We all know the theology that fosters this aspiration. Beside the doctrine of eternal progression is propounded by Witzo and Roberts. There's the scriptural assertion that the same sociality that exists among us here will exist among us there. Mormons commonly believe that heavenly life is an exalted continuation of birth life. Why should that sociality not include scientific investigations? Hence my initial question, are there laboratories in heaven? Furthermore, Joseph Smith's assertion that God was once a man, perhaps the prophet's greatest heresy, encourages us to think that along the course to godliness, human achievements are not trivial. The suggestion of laboratories in heaven, however, may dampen our enthusiasm for continuing scientific inquiry. We may talk of making and governing worlds, but we don't necessarily think of test tubes and electron microscopes in the afterlife. We have some hesitations about caring at that far. Will we have to run experiments in heaven to learn how to make worlds where there still be research centers producing scientific papers that are published after peer review in scientific journals? Will we still have to collect data, form theories, debate among ourselves, and only gradually settle on standard models? We pause when we take the analogy this far, and it is this hesitation that I want to explore in the remainder of my talk. No Mormon can test the Scripture that says my ways are not your ways. We hold with Jacob that it is impossible that man should find out all his ways. Human knowledge comes nowhere near God's knowledge. God's science permits him to create universes. He can organize matter, manage big bangs, perhaps lots of them. And devise worlds that foster human life. His science must be light years beyond ours. We are an elementary school. He is at the farthest reaches of graduate school beyond. My question is what will happen when our pitiful human science confronts his advanced divine science? Even if we allow that we are on the path that leads from our current science to divine knowledge, how will we deal with the gap between the two when we come into the presence of God? I can imagine three responses. The first is what I call the textbook approach. I admit this, I mean that the vast accumulation of divine science will have been recorded in books, and we must study them to catch up. We can imagine Richard Feynman sitting the library for a thousand years, reading the books, perhaps emerging from time to time to play Brian Greene and explain to the rest of us what he has learned. Under the textbook model, scientific exploration as we now practice it will give way to scientific study as boys and girls in high school and college do it. We won't need laboratories or theorists to push us into new realms. Human science will come to an end as we bow before divine science and humbly try to catch up. The second model I am labeling investigative learning. On this view, we will indeed be light years behind God in our knowledge, but to catch up we won't revert to studenthood again and learn from textbooks. We will learn in laboratories rather than libraries. The best way to enhance our knowledge will be to keep on investigating with teams of scientists exploring every corner of the universe to figure out how it works. The job of discovering and disseminating will continue much as it does now. Scientists will continue their labors to acquire knowledge of creation by experimenting, theorizing, debating, testing. This is the divine pedagogy. God doesn't tell us everything He knows. He helps us to learn it for ourselves. This is an appealing model, but it has one shortcoming. It leaves us with a feeling that all the while we are struggling to find out the answers are already there in the back of the book. If God would only give us a break His angels could tell us everything we need to know. We labor away on our projects that were carried out eons ago. Our learning is an exercise like high school chemistry lab. We're not really discovering new knowledge, but learning old knowledge for ourselves. Science is more like a guessing game where we try to dope out what the masters of the universe already know. This problem can be partially overcome by a third model, what I'm calling plural science. Under this scheme, our sciences truly are discovery. It approaches the understanding of matter and energy in its own way. It has the potential of understanding everything, but is distinctly our own. Elsewhere there may be other sciences that go a long way toward understanding the same phenomena in other ways. Each of these sciences has advantages and virtues that are so own and so worthy of developing. They hold all the promise of bringing us godly power in their own ways. So rather than holding our investigation when we reach the other side, we'll be instructed to carry forward our researches and elaborate our science as far as it will stretch. We may practice comparative science under this heading, holding conferences to learn from each other about differing solutions to particular problems. We won't abandon our earthly science in favor of those sciences because we will value the virtues and potentialities of the earth approach. We will feel a divine mandate to learn all we can by our own lights and indeed have divine support in our undertaking. To the question, is science eternal? We would have to give a qualified answer. The project of science is eternal to figure out how the universe works and can be managed, but the approaches, the formulas, even the mathematics may take different forms to reach similar ends. Our science will be one variety, one species of a universal inquiry. I'm rather partial to this third model because of its compatibility with the Mormon belief in many revelations coming to people all over the world. Everywhere God seems willing to bring us along in our own way, allowing us to cultivate our own fields and draw close to Him as best we can within our own cultures. The radical idea of many gods and fights Mormons to think pluralistically, we're in some sense united in one great cause, the cause of the divine order, but the end we seek is not uniformity, but fullness. We want to pursue the potentialities of our various natures to achieve fulfillment in our own ways. We pray that spiders and hummingbirds will fulfill the measure of their creations and hope the same for all of our brothers and sisters around the globe. Why not for many populations on many worlds, perhaps in many universes, each one following the spirit of God to a fullness? You can see that I have taken full advantage of the transhumanist license to speculate freely. Probably only in a congregation of Mormon transhumanists could such thoughts be voiced. It had to be Mormon because we are the ones to narrow the distance between God and man and thus to sponsor B.H. Roberts's attempt to go from what we know to what God is in one smooth motion. It had to be transhumanist because we are charged in this organization to explore this very boundary between human science and divine achievement. But my concluding question has to be, is this serious or is it just fun? It certainly is fun to let our minds roam in these realms just as science fiction is fun or missionaries have fun pondering mysteries. Is it also serious? Or to put it another way, does it make any difference how we think about the relationship of science to our religion is anything important at stake? I think there is at least one serious question underlying my excursions today. And that question is the one that I voiced at the beginning. Is science eternal? Are scientists today discovering truths that will last, that will give us access to elemental truths or to put it more dramatically, are scientists exploring the mind of God? Does he think scientifically? On the one hand, we might say no. And no man knoweth his ways save it be revealed to him, Jacob says. Science is only partial of human truth. It is useful for instrumental reasons and makes us more comfortable on earth to applied science and it gives us a queer take on the universe, but it is not eternal. On the other hand, is it possible that God is revealing himself to scientists in the investigation? Is it not consistent with our belief that God would disclose his mind to inquiring humans via inspiration? Certainly, Roberts and Witso considered science to be true and by that I mean true like from God. Probably most educated moderns feel the same. Mormons generally believe that scientists are discovering how the universe actually works. Scientific truths come as close to absolute truths as anything we have, many would say. Choosing between these alternatives is of great importance because if we accept science as eternal, that is, as accurately describing how the universe works. We are by that admission validating human reason. We implicitly affirm that the best human thinking can acquire eternal truth not via a prophet but via a human inquiry through a collective of scientists. Once we open that possibility that human reason can discover eternal truth, we are in a different world. We don't have to accept every product of reason as eternal, every philosopher, every poet, every social scientist as speaking for God or revealing truth but we have to accept the possibility that humans are capable of discovering eternal truth. Truth is out there in the realm of human reason. It may be hard to find, it may be obscured and distorted, it may be buried in error but truth is there. This may be more of an admission than most Mormons care to make because it means if we are to know the truth we must read more than scripture. We must not just absorb but sift, evaluate, discern and judge the works of human reason. We must be on the hunt for truth all around us, not just in church. It is not enough to say we have the most essential truths, the basics for salvation and the rest can be learned in the librarians of the afterlife. The admission of truth and reason demands that we pursue it now just as scripture demands to be read and evaluated for its truth. We must seek out of the best books even by study and also by faith. It is a larger burden than most of us care to assume but we don't have to bear it alone. The search for eternal truth like the scientific enterprise itself is necessarily collaborative. We can spread the work around. A community of seekers can work on the problems we cannot assume ourselves. If my reasoning is sound this is serious business. We cannot at any time see this communal endeavor as trivial or incidental. It may be fun but it is also significant. As the scriptures tell us if there is anything virtuous, lovely or good to report we must seek after these themes. That is an essential part of going from humanity to a fullness in the Mormon way. Thanks. I get to assert moderators privilege and ask the first question. The models that you presented as possibilities are also significant. As possibilities all seem to presume a relatively abrupt entrance into the presence or libraries or laboratories of God. What do you make of the idea that if our scientific endeavors have anything to do with attaining godliness that that is actually a very gradual entrance into the presence of God. Does that change those models? I don't think so. I think that either way you have to confront the possibility that it's all waiting there in God's mind and we're just trying to pick up as much as we can as we go or we have to learn it by our experimentations or that we have a unique science of our own. So I actually deposit the idea of a gradual initiation into the mysteries of Godliness in my models. I think that's very much a Mormon way. Don't we say, you know, be forever before we'll become like God. So I think that's I think should be a foundation for our view of things. So you talked about how, you know, our science and the science of countless other planets and races having their own value and having their own approach and collaborating and adding to and all adding together to their own unique value. Do you think also that that would itself add to even God's knowledge and God's science? You know, you're raising the question does God have it all or is he learning more? I think the tradition of Robertson with so which I'm positing as your legacy here says God would go on learning to come to a point where you would no longer exercise your will and gain more information would in a way be a sad moment in life or in God's life even. So what form that knowledge would take, you know, it's beyond our conception, but learning, who wants to be in that kind of a heaven? It would be a dull spot indeed. We have a question from one of our online followers. Is religious deferential worship of a mystical deity evolving through expansion of knowledge of the ultimate nature and the workings of the universe into reverential acknowledgement of the greater intelligence of a greater but ultimately obtainable state of being? Is that from Latter-day Saint? We don't know, it just says MTA 70778 Yes, yes. Well, I wonder what kind of Latter-day Saint he is. Because I thought I have run on sentences. Because my impression is that maybe there is no normative Mormonism, but certainly it's a very strong tradition that of course we're in this evolving mode of learning rather than sort of a mystical worship of God. So I think, I'm not sure we're moving into it, I think it's a maybe it's a tradition that needs to be revived from time to time, but it's been in Mormonism for a long, certainly since King Follett. I'm going to take another question and then I want to ask you a question. I was just wondering, I guess Whitstow died in 1954 and that was 60 years ago when that's sort of your last person you sort of mentioned here other than Will Benion and I was wondering if you could maybe comment on why we haven't had Whitstow. Well, I think the problems have got harder in the last 60 years. Whitstow's and Robert's confidence while informed seems nonetheless naive, it didn't begin to really cope with the real problems and though we object to all the opponents of evolution in the middle of the century they didn't make a point, there is some class there, there's something that had to be worked out and I think I've been very impressed by people here who have said I don't want to say something that cannot be based on evidence, you know there's a real sort of experimentalism view of things and I think once you get that sort of that serious point of view rather than just broad brush pictures you have to just be slower and it takes a lot of effort and I just think it's asking too much of any general authority even those who are maybe a trained physicist to deal with all the problems this group has had, this group has its own mission, its mission is to take the place of Robertson and Whitstow and I'm not just pandering, I mean I really blame it, oh my question to you is it came up in your talk, is your name Ryle? Yeah okay this this is a saved by works group it really believes that we can do anything you just give us a little time and enough research funds we can pull it off my question is is there any room for grace in your theology? yeah yeah this would be very much a personal approach to it obviously the fact that mine's a reluctant one perhaps implies that it really is and that's where part of my own reluctance has always come from is thinking about where that grace comes in and where it fundamentally comes down for me is it's much the same type of grace that I hint at in my father's talk about the spiritual redemption aspect and while we have to be endeavoring to repent and change it's an acknowledgement that we're only really able to do so because we're in a relationship with God who we feel has reached down and given us that hand of fellowship and I think as we look at least for me the potential of looking at trying to do everything it's fundamentally based for me on the idea that God has invited us to do so and given us the confidence that he will be there in some way and the way in which his grace will manifest itself I don't know and I can't assume it my wife often says we need to like bring him young say work is if prays if everything depended on God and then work is if everything depended on us but it's an acknowledgement that to me God is needed in all of it I guess is how I feel about it that God's grace is what A gives us the hope that as we are always groping in the dark for what's the next step that the next step is worth doing and that it's do a bull and that it's not just a vain effort I think it could be avoidance of Nile I just know for me it's very much there's a reason why it's Mormon and not just transhumanism that is a good statement, there's another statement over there very briefly we're fast out of time I think the critique we were given from an angelical friend and that is two biblical stories the first is the Tower of Babel and it involved a group of people and really the Tower of Babel is a technological story and you understand it these people had bricks, gosh dang it and they could make mud break bricks so they could build towers taller than anyone could before them and they were so full of their own technological prowess that they were going to build a tower to get to heaven and they were going to save themselves without grace so the Tower of Babel really is a story of works without grace and the failure of that approach the other story is from Noah's Ark it's whether these are myths or whatever they are that they're worth talking about and Noah's Ark is a story of salvation by grace and works because if Noah didn't build the Ark he would have drowned so he built it and the Ark is an analogy for the temple it's covered with pitch, kafar there's an atonement reference in there in Hebrew it's pitched with it's covered with sealed with oil there's an anointing analogy in there and through the anointing there's a messiah analogy in there salvation and the three levels become the three rooms of the temple and through the salvation of what they build they're saved and so if you don't end up saving yourself but if you don't have the grace you don't end up saving yourself and I don't see any reason the givenness of life is Adam Miller who put it thank you again