Hello all,
I noticed this comment when I was on a Youtube video.

The line that strikes me is:
I cannot see how, even within their own discipline, they could maintain their cognitive dissonance.

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I went to BYU (Mormon-run university) as a believing Mormon in the 70s. I had many science professors who did extraordinary twists to make Mormonism fit with evolution and with their particular discipline. They all bashed all other disciplines of science because those disciplines, if legitimate, could or would make Mormonism very unlikely to be valid. Their coping mechanism was to have no friendship with any other science professor, because that might punch more holes in their cognitive dissonant wall. I did not survive that onslaught, because it poked too many holes in too many places, so I became an atheist. Big Bang cosmology, quantum mechanics, evolution, DNA, etc. have made huge strides since then. I cannot see how, even within their own discipline, they could maintain their cognitive dissonance. This caller illustrates that to me. He's struggling like crazy to make this all fit, even in the narrow approach he is looking at.
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~~~~iceman9090

We are emotional creatures attempting to act rationally.

I take your point, EB but from my observations of the species of late I have to go with irrational creatures attempting to use emotion to justify irrationality. I can't take much more of the human condition.

I understand. I'm coming to terms with my culture as a reflection of being the end of many dead people's means. We are the great, great, great, great, great (and maybe some more) grandchildren of the push to improve our condition. Humans are stuck between a nature (that isn't Godly) and a hyper rational left brained leaning world that our ancestors sacrificed and strove for.

Always the way. If what you wish to be proven true just can't, then it is useful to attack that which can. Like even here there are those who put down science illogically.


Mormons are actually capable of facing facts, of course, but they see no advantage in doing so as only Mormonism is offering the CK as the ultimate reward. Science doesn't even attempt to compete with Heaven, let alone offer one for some reason, and serves up nothing but the fruits of their exploration.


Add to that the fact that not only your career and income as a professor hinges on being able to mesh Mormonism with science, but your marriage and family and social life may as well, and it's a wonder somebody's head doesn't explode attempting that.


And that ladies and gentlemen, is the same reason the Creation Museum in Kentucky has dinosaurs boarding the Ark.

+Done & Done:
What is the CK?

~~~~iceman9090

CK is the place where you don't get a TK smoothie.

Celestial Kingdom, the highest of the three degrees of glory in Mormon Heaven---the term and idea Joseph seems to have lifted from some Swedish religioso of the 1700's. Imitation IS the sincerest form of flattery, right? Well, then, no one flattered more than Joseph the Smith.

I know nothing about science professors bashing other science disciplines, or not having friendships with other science professors. That sounds implausible to me, and how would this student know such a thing in the first place?

I had only one professor who went into evolution in any detail, a Dr Murphy, and his presentations were in total accord with the scientific viewpoint on evolution. I took a geology seminar course that simply presented the world as 4.5 billion years old. No mention was made of a 7,000 year old earth, nor was there the slightest attempt to make apologies for LDS "doctrine".


That said, I do wonder about the cognitive dissonance within the student body. I particularly don't understand how young women at BYU don't have their heads explode from the dissonance and the hard-coded sexism in the Mormon worldview. That was something of a problem when I was there in the sixties and seventies, and it has to be a lot worse now.

+Brother Of Jerry:
"I know nothing about science professors bashing other science disciplines, or not having friendships with other science professors. That sounds implausible to me, and how would this student know such a thing in the first place?"

==Perhaps that is what he has observed while being there. I know that while I was at university, I would witness professors interacting with each other but my witnessing was limited.

You could ask him. I cold provide the link to the youtube video.

"I had only one professor who went into evolution in any detail, ..."

==Does this mean he is an old earth creationist?

"That said, I do wonder about the cognitive dissonance within the student body. I particularly don't understand how young women at BYU don't have their heads explode from the dissonance and the hard-coded sexism in the Mormon worldview. That was something of a problem when I was there in the sixties and seventies, and it has to be a lot worse now."

==I thought the standard answer was:
Women have their own role in mormon society and therefore, there is no sexism.

~~~~iceman9090

I knew a professor when I was at BYU who taught geology. I wasn't his student, but we attended the same ward (I was married and lived off-campus).

I spoke to him one day after church and asked him how he squared his geology with scripture. He said, "I have two sides in my brain. One side is for geology, the other side for religion."

+nli:
"I knew a professor when I was at BYU who taught geology. I wasn't his student, but we attended the same ward (I was married and lived off-campus).

I spoke to him one day after church and asked him how he squared his geology with scripture. He said, "I have two sides in my brain. One side is for geology, the other side for religion.""

==I don't understand. I am a nevermo.

What is the conflict between mormonism and geology?

~~~~iceman9090

Mormon scripture claims that the earth has a "temporal existence" of only 7k years (See D&C 77:6). The science of geology requires close to a million times longer than that. That's where it starts, anyway.

Geology says the Earth is 4.5 billion years old.
Mormonism says the Earth is 6000 years old (D&C 77:6-7)

+lurking in:
I see. So mormonism is equal to young earth creationism. It’s the James Ushher thing

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Ussher
There was an Irish Bishop named James Ussher (1581-1656). He did the calculations and came up with an age of 6006 years. He based it on the ages of the people in the Bible and roughly estimated when they were born. You can find the same estimates on some YEC websites.

~~~~iceman9090

nli Wrote:
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> He said, "I have two sides in my brain. One side is
> for geology, the other side for religion."

He must've had his corpus callosum clipped.

Ha! Good one!

I think that is what happens in baptism and confirmation. The HG apparently does just that. Snip snip. Luckily for some it didn't take.

RMs who learned a language were given two years' worth of credits in that language. This made it a no-brainer for me to minor in Spanish and I only had to take two Spanish lit classes. I had no qualms regarding this mission bonus.

BUT!!! How come I didn't get some religion class bonuses! How come I had to take a crocking religion class every semester despite having spent two glorious years knowing EXACTLY where the mission home was located!? And just like Jesus, in fact EXACTLY like Jesus, I fathered no children during my ministry. How many of you can say THAT!?

Given? I had to pay sixty dollars. What a deal though. Then I had to take the Spanish lit class and a Spanish creative writing class which was a highlight of my life. That was gold for me. The teacher was amazing. We got twenty odd words to turn into a story. My best one included "grandes hazanas sanguinarias."

I converse in Spanish every day now in my career. The mission turned out to be a great thing for me, and, like a physician, "First, I did no harm" which means all the people I baptized left immediately after. They thought they were getting financial aid if they joined. Obviously that wasn't going to happen.

The main reason I didn't leave BYU after realizing the con I was in the middle of was that the religion credits weren't transferable. Managed a lot of good times anyway. It's what you do.

I never paid for the Portuguese credits and am not sure why. I vaguely recall that there was a requirement to take an additional course to qualify, and I wasn't interested. I had too many courses that I needed or wanted to take already.

I don't use the language regularly, but I do work to keep it up. It has come in handy in several unusual situations. Once I was in China on business, and met a Japanese engineer, He did not speak English, I did not speak Japanese, neither of us spoke Chinese, but he had been a construction supervisor in Brazil and spoke pretty good Portuguese. So that is what we used to converse.

I don't know if all my families left or not. I visited one city 30 years later and the wife from one couple was in the phone book, likely a widow by then. I did not have the nerve to call. If they had stayed, my apostasy would be awkward. If they had left, I would owe her an apology. Lose-lose situation.