If the Yarmulke Fits ...

This Christmas past I received a volume of essays by Bernard Lewis [From Babel to Dragomans (OUP, 2004)]. The fifth such essay, Palimpsests of Jewish History (pp.53-59), was "originally presented as a paper to the Tenth World Congress of Jewish Studies, and published in their series Jewish Studies, vol. 30 (1990), pp. 7-13" [p. ix]. The following exerpt (pp. 58, 59) from this paper struck me as particularly apposite to what seems like a perennial argument:

The lack of Jewish historiography for this long period must be seen not as a failure but as a rejection. It is not that they failed to produce historians; it is that they did not want historians and they did not want history. ... Maimonides even went so far as to denounce the study of history as of no moral or intellectual value and a waste of time.
During this long period from antiquity to the beginning of modern intellectual curiosity, the leaders and spokesmen of the Jews, those who enjoyed prestige and exercised power among them, relied on transmitted authority. Those who rely on transmitted authority are usually reluctant to subject the process of transmission to critical scrutiny. There is an important distinction between what one might call official historiography , the purpose of which is to legitimise and strengthen authority, and critical historiography, which sometimes intentionally, sometimes unintentionally, may have the effect of undermining authority. Official historiography needs some sponsoring agency - a throne, a church, a city. These were the sponsors of the historical writings of Islam and Christendom, which provided a function and a livlihood for historians. There was no such sponsorship among the Jews, but on the contrary, as I tried to suggest, a certain suspicion of historians and of what they might do.
...
I would rather think that the purpose of teaching history should be critical and accurate self-knowledge, self-awareness, consciouness of one's place in history, personal and communal, without which we are all blundering amnesiacs. It is quite impossible to understand Jewish history without at the same time understanding the societies of which Jews in every aspect of their lives, including their religious life, were a part. Because, make no mistakeabout it, if we are not prepared to confront the past, we shall be unable to understand the present and unfit to face the future.

Although Lewis' words could just as well be directed towards the advocates of the so-called faithful history he also has a timely warning for those who have a secular agenda (p.57):

In this secular religion there is little room for tolerance - less than in either Christendom or Islam; there is little prospect for long term survival. It is a more demanding religion, or was until very recently, than either Christianity or Islam, and less tolerant of dissent, deviation, or unbelief.

Finally, there are probably no better words than those of W.B. Yeats to describe FARMS, Signature and their imitators, for all of whom the cardinal rule of historiography is never to question ones own presuppositions:

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all convictions, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Meat Your Irony Needs

Just when I thought that Americans were starting to get a grip on irony, I saw this ...

http://www.meridianmagazine.com
Saturday, 7 January, 2006.

Sacred Time and the Liturgical Year

Mormonism in no small measure possesses a well-developed concept of sacred space. We differentiate between our meetinghouses and the outside world, and within our meetinghouses our chapels, baptisteries and sacrament tables each command a special degree of reverence. We also have temples, which are almost like Russian dolls in terms of the way in which they present a hierarchical sacralisation of space. Similarly, we speak of the sacred grove, a specific location made sacred not by its dedication to the performance of repeated sacramental events, but by virtue of its being the locus for a unique, and for LDS, foundational intrusion of the numinous into the mundane.

On the other hand Mormonism pays scant attention to the idea of sacred time. Granted, there is the Sabbath, within which is the Sacrament Service, and within that the celebration of the Sacrament of the Lord’s Table. But the Sabbath is a lone tree in a temporal desert. Indeed, beyond the special supplements which are provided in the back of their manuals for a couple of Primary classes, Christmas and Easter do not even command special lessons within the correlated lesson materials, much less are special orders of service prescribed for the days themselves.

On a lesser level, even events significant within restoration history increasingly seem to pass unmentioned. Whereas the restoration of the Aaronic Priesthood was once widely commemorated with a special Sacrament Meeting this seems not to happen very much anymore. Likewise, the Church’s Annual General Conference, used to run across the anniversary of the formal organisation of the Church, however, if this now falls on a weekday Conference is scheduled for the following weekend. This last innovation makes perfect practical sense, nevertheless, it does illustrate the relative lack of importance which LDS attribute to time as a vessel for the sacred.

Some more traditional approaches to Christianity employ the concept of a Liturgical Year in order to structure the believer’s encounter with time and endow the otherwise undifferentiated passage of days with a significance which draws one the better to Christ. This is explained with admirable clarity in the introduction to Monsignor Peter Elliott’s Ceremonies of the Liturgical Year According to the Modern Roman Rite (2002),


In the mind of the Christian, each passing year takes shape, not so much around the cycle of natural seasons, the financial or sporting year or academic semesters, but around the feasts, fasts and seasons of the Catholic Church. …
All of the great moments of the Liturgical Year look back to the salvific events of Jesus Christ, the Lord of History. Those events are made present here and now as offers of grace, yet they bear strong presentments of eternity.

Elliott further reminds us that,

To recall the past and remember is a universal human experience. We naturally celebrate past events in our own lives …. [and the] natural human focus on a "great event" was the cause and beginning of the development of the Liturgical Year. Just as the Passover in Egypt was the key to the Jewish calendar, so the Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, at the time of Passover … was the cause and beginning of Christianity, Christians and the Church.

[Furthermore,] … the whole annual cycle encapsulated salvation history. Through festival and fast, believers could relive and enter the events of the Savior, celebrated and made present in the liturgy and sacraments. …

The Liturgical Year thus suggests the sovereignty of the grace of Christ. We say that we "follow" or "observe" the Liturgical Year, but this Year of Grace also carries us along. Once we enter it faithfully we must allow it to determine the shape of our daily lives. It sets up a series of "appointments" with the Lord. We know there are set days, moments, occasions when He expects us. Within this framework of obligation, duty and covenant, we are part of something greater than ourselves. …

What is remembered is not merely celebrated, but re-lived or made present again, re-presented or re-played…. it also shows us how our Liturgical Year is much more than a series of anniversaries.

In so doing the Liturgical Year re-orients the worshipper along temporal lines of longitude which lead to the sacred, and it invites them to experience the life of Christ to a greater degree than would otherwise be possible.

We may well ask why LDS have such a diminished approach to sacred time. Two answers come to mind: The simplest of these is the low, evangelical style of Protestantism which provided the religio-social context for the restoration. Nevertheless, both Methodism and Presbyterianism formed a part of Joseph Smith’s early religious environment and both treat with the Liturgical Year to at least some degree. Alternatively, a potential argument may be found in the phenomenon of the temple.

This rationale behind the latter possibility can be illuminated somewhat through a reading of Mircea Eliade's The Sacred and the Profane (1957). Eliade addresses the relationship between sacred time and the world of ritual, arguing that whenever cosmogonic myths were ritually recited or reinacted the participant somehow accessed primaeval time, and, thereby, reactualised the creation of the world. Indeed, it is with more than a little justification that Eliade contends, that man periodically needed to re-enter sacred time in order to ensure the very continuation of profane or historical time.

Although periodic excursions into sacred time may have been thought necessary in order to revitalise normal time it remains the case that the timing of ritual was no haphazard occurrence, rather, rituals either punctuated the calendar at expected intervals or were driven by occasional necessity. Hence, both in their capacity to sacralise the year and provide an entrée into the infinite both the Liturgical Year and cosmogonic ritual represent alternative means of achieving much the same thing.

The temple is a massif on the spiritual landscape of Mormonism and amongst other things it provides a sacred space for the re-enactment of cosmogonic myth. As such it provides a means of granting the worshipper access to the events of primaeval time and the opportunity for communion with the infinite. Consequently, it could be argued that since Mormonism follows this route there is no need to celebrate a separate Liturgical Year in order to potentiate the capacity of both the individual and the believing community for engagement with the divine.

There are at least three different levels upon which one may object to these arguments. Firstly, although the paths described above can be seen as mediating different styles or depths of engagement there is no reason why they should be thought of as being in any way mutually exclusive – in other words, one can both have one’s cake and eat it. Secondly, the temple ritual is available year-round. Its availability is in no real sense dictated by the calendar and it has no connection with the passing of the seasons, the revolutions of the heavenly spheres nor the serial events of Jesus’ life and mission. Lastly, the temple experience is limited to a minority of members who are deemed both old enough and worthy enough to participate. By contrast, the more public enactments and celebrations of the Liturgical Year are available to all.

I feel that this last point in particular carries no little weight. As Elliot reminds us concerning his own, Catholic, experience:

Even the most casual members of the Church recall their Catholic identity when the time comes around each year for the observance of Christmas and Easter. On those days, many fallen-away Catholics know that the Lord awaits them, and where He waits, even if they do not feel inclined to respond to this invitation. But the Liturgical Year and its vivid rites gently open other doors for them to return to the life of grace. …

The future orientation of the liturgical year is best appreciated in the light of pastoral opportunities. The attentive celebrant of the liturgy and sacraments assists the faithful to celebrate Christian time by remembering past events that embody a saving offer of grace here and now.

This past year I have seen the numbers in my ward swell over Easter, however, talks and lessons which studiously ignored the most important day in the Christian calendar presumably did little to either draw these people to the Church in the first instance, or back to it.

One last objection could relate to the dates which are fixed for such celebrations. Some LDS would doubtless complain that the Christ was not born on December 25^th, nor that the date of his death and resurrection should be determined by a somewhat arcane system of astronomical reckoning. The truth is that no deep cosmic significance attaches itself to the date, so much as to the act, of commemoration. By way of precedent LDS Sabbath services in Israel and in Egypt are scheduled for Saturdays and Fridays respectively. Consequently, LDS should be able to feel free to observe the dates of the either the Western or the Eastern calendars, depending on which applies in the local culture.

The Liturgical Year represents an important opportunity for Saints to draw closer to their God. It also provides us with the opportunity to draw closer to our communities. Having said this one of my previous Wards used to hold a carol service on Christmas morning. I should love to see that practiced more widely as a partial antidote to the preoccupation with presents and treats which displaces our commemoration of Jesus’ birth.

But then, the most sacred day in the Liturgical Year is quite properly Easter Sunday. The significance of this day is amplified when we jointly recall the events which transpired during the week which led up to the resurrection. This period is properly referred to as Holy Week and it commences with Palm Sunday and the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem. One can only live in hope, I suppose ...

Has Satan Hijacked John Pratt ?

The trouble with satire is that in order to be successful it must expose the absurdities which inhere in its subject. As such it has much in common with caricature. This is fine as far as it goes, but sometimes the native absurdities of our world are so patent, and so overwhealmingly egregious that even a Swift or an Orwell would have to dispair of ever improving on what the raw material itself presented.

I only say this by way of introducing the latest gem which Meridian Magazine has seen fit to foist upon the world. It is possibly the greatest peice of autocaricature to have been produced in, well days, actually. This little gem goes by the unassuming title of Has Satan Hijacked Science? and is from the redoubtable pen of one John P. Pratt.

To cut a needlessly long story short Brother Pratt is worried that the Prince of Darkness may have donned a lab coat and ghosted a few articles in Nature in order to lead we humble seekers after truth astray. If so, then it would follow that the Lord of the Flies (D. Melanogaster?), must have braved peer review. In this one way at least we may distinguish between the Father of Lies and the aforementioned Pratt.

The methodology adopted by the author in question is to put himself in Old Nick's shoes, or should I say "hoofs", in particular he suggests ...

Now let's suppose that you were Satan. What would you do to get people to sin, that is, to disobey the commandments of God?"

I suppose that this is something like asking "What would Jesus do?", except in reverse. Nevertheless, after suggesting a few unexciting possibilities (notable exceptions are cannibalism and bear baiting) he makes his gambit ...

But what about science? Is there any way that you could use science to help meet that goal of enticing people to sin? Let's explore that possibility.

Yes, let us do that. Come on everyone, lets see if you can squeeze into that old red leotard! Issues of costume aside, we are told by the one who knows that,

For many reasons, it not only appears that Satan is interested in science, he may well be attempting to hijack all of science and attempt to force it to become the foundation of his new official state atheistic religion.

Taking the bull by the horns, John Pratt leads off by defining science, and to be honest he does not do too bad a job of this, considering he is writing not simply for a lay audience, but for Meridian readers. Nevertheless, Pratt omits any mention that the goal of sience is to generate explanations. Also, just when it looks as though it might be safe to get back into the water Nikola Tesla gets a mention ("Danger, Will Robinson!") swiftly followed by the revelation that:

There are people who claim to see the human aura, see future occurrences, do remote viewing of current events at distant locations, go into the spirit world, visit the past, and move physical objects with their minds. All of these phenomena can be measured and studied and hence are part of science. If any of those claims were false, then science could do experiments to prove just that. But the fact that we have not yet invented a machine to measure some of them does not disqualify them in any way from being scientific.

Now, perhaps I am being just a tad narrow-minded but there is a strong implication here that John Pratt's faith extends into the realm of fantasy. This conclusion appears justified in light of his subsequent reversing of main sequence stellar evolution for no better reason than his own subjective response, tinged with bad theology:

To me, the brightest stars are the bright, old governing stars of our galaxy that have accumulated greatness through the ages. When I look at the dazzling constellation of Orion, I see some great stars for which I feel awe and even reverence. Someday they may "die" in a great supernova explosion, and as one star passes away, so shall another accumulate its recycled remnants. Thus, there is no end to the works of God, neither to his words.

And John believes that Satan really cares enough about denying the rest of us this somewhat unique aesthetic to have tricked all those gormless boffins into getting it all so wrong. But I am getting ahead of myself. John Pratt smells brimstone in the dirty doctrine of materialism that sneaked its way into science. He explains that,

Materialism is a doctrine that has been introduced into science, declaring (without a shred of evidence) that nothing else exists beyond that which can be observed, either by humans or instruments. If that were true, then it would follow that science is the study of everything that exists.

Pratt sees that this as implying the "false principle" that "Nothing exists which cannot be observed."

This is wrong on two counts. Firstly, materialism actually holds that only matter (loosely defined) exists. This principle should be understood in contradistinction to a belief in the existence of such things as the immaterial substance of Descartes' mind/spirit. Secondly, Pratt believes that materialism requires that everything which exists must be observable in some naive sense right now, and that if it is not immediately observable then it cannot exist.

The rejection of materialism is particularly worrisome coming from a Latter-day Saint who evidently feels qualified to pontificate on the pollution of science by Beelzebub. It is particularly worrying that Pratt is ignorant of D&C 131:7 which states that,

There is no such thing as immaterial matter. All spirit is matter, but it is more fine or pure, and can only be discerned by purer eyes;

In other words, Mormonism is thoroughgoingly materialistic. The declaration that all spirit is matter clearly implies that everything is matter. The only problem we have is observability. Pratt actually agrees with this last point, stating that,

How foolish it is to assume that something doesn't exist because we cannot see it or measure it.

Once again, two criticisms can be levelled in the light of this statement. The first of these is that Pratt has really only set up materialism as a straw man, which he expects to be able to knock down without any effort. The second criticism is that Pratt seems not to understand the trouble which attends attempting to prove a negative. But we really begin to get a picture of Pratt's world-view when he avers that,

Satan can fabricate all sorts of complete nonsense about the origins of the universe, the solar system, the earth and all of the creatures that live on it. None of these theories can be tested, but that does not stop him from proclaiming them as absolute truth. There are some cases where theories can be tested, such as doing genetic experiments on fruit flies to test theories that mutations can lead to improvements in a species. When all of these experiments fail, rather than discarding the false theory, in accordance with the scientific method, the results are simply ignored and the theory is assumed true in spite of the negative evidence. Satan's theories of the origin of the earth and life are almost entirely based on unfounded speculation, that often contradict all of the actual evidence.

So, all of science has been perverted, twisted into a doctrinaire tissue of lies which defy testing. Are we not blessed that John Pratt can see through all of this, whereas the rest of us are left to grovel in ignorance. On the other hand, I find myself asking whether Pratt is aware that BYU has a strong Evolutionary Biology programme, and if so what he believes concerning the inspiration for its origins. Does this in fact mean that he who should not be named is on the faculty at the Lord's University? If so, someone ought to have a word to the HR Department! Well, maybe not, especially since every word of the last extract is in error and ignores everything that paleontology, geology and evolutionary molecular biology have to teach us.

Pratt's argument then subsumes another issue, the teaching of creationism in US schools:

Another "smoking gun" that strongly points to Satan's involvement becomes obvious when materialists use force to teach speculation as truth. That is, they pass laws that require teaching that science is based on atheism, and that the existence of everything can be explained without God.

It might be churlish of me to pick John Pratt up on such a small matter that the "law" in question is in fact the First Amendment of the US Constitutuion, which states: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion . . . .", and its history of interpretation in the courts. Secondly, although scientists regularly line up to testify against school boards and the like which attempt to introduce pseudo-science into the science curriculum (Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District being but the latest of these) that is typically the end of it.

Lastly, Pratt pairs atheism with materialism before lamenting that, "we have been taught that we are mere animals in a godless world" and this has inexorably led not only to a phenomenal US abortion rate, but run-away fornication and looting by "hurricane victims", presumably in New Orleans. And this downward spiral is due to the demonic incursion of materialism into science and the resultant exclusion of God from the realm of moral decision-making.

Pratt draws a long bow. His reasoning is little more than a smidge farcical and he lacks any historical or sociological perspective whatsoever. In particular he fails to recognise that the mere belief in the existence of God and an unseen world does not in itself produce moral individuals. Even a quick look at the crusades, mediaeval or modern, should disabuse one of that misconception. But what Pratt's world view lacks in understanding it makes up for in wilful ignorance.

Indeed, Pratt lures his reader into a shady netherworld of poor reasoning and lurid presuppositions, none of which is the least constrained by the facts. Rather he views the sciences, from astrophysics through zoology, through the lens of superstition. His writings feed an anti-intellectual consensus within popular Mormon culture which is characterised by the type of fear, doubt and moral revulsion, whereby the light of reason is extinguished.

If we take the trouble to compare Pratt's position with that of the late Henry Eyring I think that we may notice some less than subtle points of difference. Although Eyring here addresses evolution, he could as well be speaking of any of the myriad branches of modern science:

Organic evolution is the honest result of capable people trying to explain the evidence to the best of their ability. From my limited study of the subject I would say that the physical evidence supporting the theory is considerable from a scientific viewpoint.

In my opinion it would be a very sad mistake if a parent or teacher were to belittle scientists as being wicked charlatans or else fools having been duped by half-baked ideas that gloss over inconsistencies.

That isn't an accurate assessment of the situation, and our children or students will be able to see that when they begin their scientific studies.

So, if scientists are not "wicked charlatans or else fools having been duped by half-baked ideas that gloss over inconsistencies" we may be well justified in asking precisely to whom this particular label does apply. I hope that you will forgive me if I presume to say that I don't think we have very far to look.

Once again, the First Presidency has not only declared its confidence in the ability of science to uncover the truth, it has all but sent a "hands off" message to the meddlers,

Leave Geology, Biology, Archaeology and Anthropology, no one of which has to do with the salvation of the souls of mankind, to scientific research, while we magnify our calling in the realm of the Church.
[First Presidency Minutes, Apr. 7, 1931]

John Pratt's own brand of weird science and his silly accusations do nobody any favours. In particular they lend their puff pastry weight to nudging popular Mormon culture just that little bit closer to the edge of an intellectual and spiritual abyss, slipping into which would leave us smelling little different to any evangelical protestant sect. And with that thought I think I will go and be sick.