How the Council of Nicea Changed the World

LiveScience for March 31, 2008 reported on the impact of the Council of Nicea on Christianity.

That summer, 318 bishops from across the empire were invited to the Turkish town of Nicea, where Constantine had a vacation house, in an attempt to find common ground on what historians now refer to as the Arian Controversy. It was the first ever worldwide gathering of the Church.

Tracing Your Ancestry: Computer Program Accurately Analyzes Anonymous DNA Samples

ScienceDaily for September 23, 2007 reported that

A group of computer scientists, mathematicians, and biologists from around the world have developed a computer algorithm that can help trace the genetic ancestry of thousands of individuals in minutes, without any prior knowledge of their background.

Parallel: People Were Raised from the Dead (not a resurrection)

In Mormon Belief: People Were Raised from the Dead (not a resurrection) I discussed the LDS belief that Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, that is, brought him back to life after he had died. Lazarus was not resurrected, only brought back to life. I also mentioned that Jesus gave the power to His disciples to raise others from the dead. In Darwin’s Surprise I linked to an article explaining that scientists have succeeded in activating extinct viruses. Because a virus is a simple entity while a person is a complex organism, scientists still have a long way to go before they might be able to restore life to a dead person. But, activating an extinct virus is an amazing feat!

I've been thinking about bringing a dead person back to life. I don't understand very well the differences between a living person and a dead person, but the scriptures do give a partial idea from the religious paradigm of what would have to happen to have a dead person brought back to life. First, in Mormon Belief: Two Creations of the Earth I explained that before the earth was created physically, it was created spiritually in Heaven. I think of the spiritual creati0n being a blueprint for the physical creation. Second, in Mormon Belief: Spirit Offspring of God I explained that from a religious viewpoint, the basic difference between a person and an animal is that the person is a combination of a physical body and a spirit body, the spirit body being an offspring of God, while an animal has no spirit offspring of God. These two requirements would have to be met to have a person raised from the dead.

The first requirement is automatically satisfied, I think, because the dead person was once a living person and thus has a spiritual counterpart or blueprint. The second part would be satisfied if God "assigned" or permitted His spirit offspring to re-enter the physical body in such a way that the combination was once again a living soul (see Mormon Belief: The Soul is the Combination of a Spirit & a Body).

Will scientists ever be able to bring people back from the dead. This is just a guess, but I would say "probably", if God allows His spirit offspring to reenter the body.

Parallel: Humans Have a Soul

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints teaches that the human soul is quite different than the souls that are envisioned by other Christians. As I explained in Mormon Belief: The Soul is the Combination of a Spirit & a Body, LDS believe the soul is a combination of a spirit offspring of God and a physical body that acts as a tabernacle for the spirit.

I explained in Soul Search that a few scientists are conducting experiments to see if energy of some kind does leave our bodies at the time of death. So far, the experiments have been inconclusive. My interpretation of the scripture in Mormon Belief: The Soul is the Combination of a Spirit & a Body about spirit matter leads me to believe that that spirit matter is different than mortal matter and is governed by different laws than the mortal laws of nature. Because of this, I don't believe the instruments used by scientists in these experiments will detect the presence of spirit matter or spirit energy. However, I could be wrong about this.

Soul Search

Sub-title: Will natural science pin down our supernatural essence?

Discover for June 12, 2007 published an interesting article that discusses out-of-body and near-death experiences and experiments that try to determine if such experiences are real.

At the University of Virginia Health System’s Division of Perceptual Studies, or DOPS, scientists are studying an array of anomalous phenomena, including near-death experiences, out-of-body experiences, and memories of past lives.

Parallel: All Things are Governed by Law - Part 1

In Part 2 of this post, I discuss the relationship between God, Himself, and the natural laws that govern our existence.

In Parallel: The Earth was Created From Existing Matter I explained that LDS believe the earth was created from existing matter, and this implies that that matter was governed by existing laws. In Mormon Belief: All Things are Governed by Law I explained that from the viewpoint of the religious paradigm the Cosmos is governed by an influence from Jesus Christ and that influence is the "law by which all things are governed". This is a religious way of saying that the Cosmos is governed by natural laws.

The article Laws of Nature, Source Unknown explains that scientists accept natural laws as the basis of creation and organization of the Cosmos but that they aren't in agreement about the source of those laws.

If the laws of physics are to have any sticking power at all, to be real laws, one could argue, they have to be good anywhere and at any time, including the Big Bang, the putative Creation. Which gives them a kind of transcendent status outside of space and time.

On the other hand, many thinkers — all the way back to Augustine — suspect that space and time, being attributes of this existence, came into being along with the universe — in the Big Bang, in modern vernacular. So why not the laws themselves?

At the present time, the LDS version of the religious paradigm is in agreement with the scientific paradigm about the existence of natural laws but not about the source of those laws.

Parallel: The Dimension of Time

This is a fascinating parallel even though I don't understand it very well, and apparently scientists don't understand time very well either. The two aspects of time that I find interesting are that time seems to be unidirectional, and that time will disappear.

First, I'll comment on the direction of time. The scriptures don't directly discuss time itself. I searched the online scriptures at lds.org for various phrases containing the word "time" and only found the two scriptures I posted in Mormon Belief: Time pertains to Mortality. There are many uses of the word "time" in the scriptures, but those uses of the word "time" are in a different context. I think, though, the scriptures give a strong implication that time is unidirectional, always going forward. The scriptures have a strong focus on repentance, that we must change our behavior to become more in harmony with God's will. The context is always that we must repent, and then in the future become more like Christ. There is no implication that as we repent we can go back in time and relive our past.

In You Can't Travel Back in Time, Scientists Say I posted that some scientists say backwards travel is impossible (play the video) because it would violate the principle of causality and, in addition, would require unimaginable amounts of energy. This scientific view of negative time-travel being impossible is in agreement with the scriptural view of time. Other scientists, though, say that backwards travel is theoretically possible but is not practicable.

Next, concerning the disappearance of time, as I pointed out in my previous posts, we believe that when this world is recreated as an immortal world via the Atonement of Jesus Christ, time will cease, for in eternity there is no time. Because some scientists speculate there is no time, there is a form of a parallel between the religious and scientific views, although the religious view of no time pertains to an immortal world and the scientific view of no time pertains to a mortal world.

If science does discover how to travel in time, since from the scientific viewpoint time is a dimension, it will be interesting to see if humans in that distant future are able to travel bidirectionally or just unidirectionally.

Earliest Evidence Of Modern Humans Detected

Science Daily for October 17, 2007 reported on evidence that early humans lived a complex life.

Evidence of early humans living on the coast in South Africa, harvesting food from the sea, employing complex bladelet tools and using red pigments in symbolic behavior 164,000 years ago, far earlier than previously documented, is being reported in the journal Nature.

Parallel: People will Live to an Old Age

I documented in Mormon Belief: People Will Live to an Old Age that during the Millennium all people will live to an old age, an age characterized as the age of a tree. The Lord did not reveal what that age is, although some LDS give a number such as 100 years.

Scientists are researching the aging process to learn ways to extend the life of humans. Even though the life expectancy of humans varies with the geographical area, it has been increasing due to improvements in diet, sanitation, disease control, and similar factors. According to Wikipedia, the average life expectancy in 1950 was approximately 53, and in 2002 it was approximately 65.

The recent announcement that manipulation of a gene has caused mouse skin to become like the skin of a young mouse gives hope that dramatic increases in life expectancy may occur. It is not known at this time if human skin can be made to become like younger tissue, and it is not known if such changes will be permanent and free of dangerous side effects. However, if science continues to make improvements in life expectancy, the Parallel of life expectancy may converge in the relatively near future. However, the scriptures also say that all people will live until they are old, and that Parallel will likely take longer to converge.

The scriptures also say that even with all children living to an old age, they will still die and be resurrected, for they are still mortal. The resurrection comes through the Atonement of Jesus Christ, and it is through the resurrection that people, animals, and plants will become immortal. The scriptures do not say exactly how the resurrection will happen, and I do not speculate on it except to say that I believe it is a state-change, a major change in our existence, in the matter that makes up our bodies, and is not just a lengthening of our time in mortality.

Parallel: The Creation of Life - Part 2

In Part 1 of this Parallel, I discuss "traditional" methods of creating life, such as cloning and the mixing of laboratory chemicals to create artificial DNA and artificial cell containers. In this Part, I speculate that stem cells might be used to create human embryos.

The recent announcement that scientists have successfully turned skin cells into stem cells has created a lot of attention and interest from the scientific and religious communities. The use of skin cells instead of human embryos for the generation of stem cells would bypass the touchy question whether the use of embryonic stem cells, which results in the killing of the embryos, is murder.

In my book I discussed embryonic stem cells, and I said I opposed their use because I didn't know if the killing of the embryos was murder or not; If I were to err, I wanted the error to be on the side of saving lives. From the LDS view, a living person is the combination of a physical body and a spirit-offspring of God. This combination is the human soul. The scriptures don't say when the spirit enters the body, that is, when life begins. Our living prophets haven't answered that question, either. And, science hasn't defined when life begins. Even if science were to define the beginning of life, that definition would have no meaning in the religious view of life, since scientists have no knowledge or recognition of a "spirit" inhabiting our bodies. Any scientific definition of when life begins may or may not be when the spirit actually enters a body such that the combination becomes a living soul.

If stem cells derived from skin cells do behave as well as embryonic stem cells, their use could conceptually avoid the use of embryonic stem cells.

Now for a little speculation. I've been wondering if stem cells obtained from skin could be used to create human embryos and thus life. In a technical sense, those embryos wouldn't be new life, since the stem cells were living and brought the "spark of life" (what ever that means) from a living person. But, from another viewpoint, the embryos would be new persons if God allowed His spirit offspring to enter the bodies such that they became new souls.

Parallel: Mutiple Universes - Part 4

In the past three parts of this Parallel, I've discussed "states of existence" as a parallel to the scientific concept of multiple universes. In this, the final part of this Parallel, I'm discussing a state of existence that is a closer parallel to a multiple universe, because it concerns the final state of the earth.

In Mormon Belief: The Earth will Become a Celestial World I explained that the final destination of this earth is to become a celestial home for those of God's children who inherit that degree of glory. The concept behind this is that the Lord creates worlds with his long range goal in mind: eternal homes for his children. This mortal state of existence that we are in now is a temporary state to provide a home for us as we experience mortality as part of our eternal progression.

In Mormon Belief: Other Worlds I explained that the Lord has created "worlds without number"as homes for his children. I am not saying that all of those worlds will become celestial, but the verses from Section 88 do tell us that this world will become celestial. Section 76 of the Doctrine & Covenants says there will be three kingdoms for God's children: Celestial, Terrestrial, and Telestial. I assume that the "worlds without number" will become the final homes for persons in all three kingdoms. As a side note, there is no reason to believe that all of the worlds created by God are inhabitable. Since God does his work via natural laws, I would expect that most of the worlds created would not be inhabitable.

I explained in Mormon Belief: Two Creations of the Earth that there were two creations of the earth, one spiritual in Heaven and one mortal. This means our earth has already experienced one change of state.

This view of the earth changing state from a spirit state to a mortal state to a celestial (no death) state is quite different from the scientific view of the earth. We should not expect our scientists to have a view that is different from the view they currently have, because the domain of their research is the mortal world. They have no way of getting information from other states. They currently have no instruments that can detect energy from spirit matter or resurrected matter.

Parallel: Mutiple Universes - Part 3

In Part 1 and Part 2 of this Parallel, I've talked about states of existence. I've been discussing the change from mortality to immortality in the Mormon Transhumanist Association blog, and I was just thinking that *states* and *state-change* are technical terms that may not have the same meaning to persons with a liberal arts background that they have to persons with a technical background. So, I thought I'd try to explain those terms in a non-technical way by reposting my comment in the MTA blog about states of existence. Sometimes expressing a concept in a different way helps to clarify the concept.

In technology, a *state* is a set of significant conditions. Changes from one state to another state are significant changes. For example, a computer that is turned off is in a different state than a computer that is turned on. In my posts, I'm using *state* to refer to a condition of existence, including the type of matter used in bodies and the natural laws that govern that matter.

In the spirit world before birth, we were spirits and had bodies composed of spirit matter. There were natural laws that governed spirit matter. We were in a spirit state of existence. Now, we are in mortality and are in a different state. Our bodies are composed of different matter, and there are, I assume, different laws that govern mortal matter. After the resurrection, we will, I believe, be in a third state. Our bodies will be composed of resurrected or immortal matter, and there will be laws that govern that matter. We began in the spirit state. Then we went into the mortal state. At death, we return to the spirit state. Then at some time, we will go to the resurrected state, and we will stay in that state forever. Because each state has its own set of natural laws, I don't believe the changing from one state to another is just a matter of biological, technological, and ethical evolution. There is more involved, and I don't understand it very well. The scriptures teach that the Atonement of Jesus Christ is the key to the changing of these states.

States of existence are a parallel to the scientific concept of multiple universes.

Parallel: Mutiple Universes - Part 2

In Part 1 of this Parallel, I discussed theories from science about multiple universes. Then, from the religious viewpoint, a different universe or state of existence was introduced, one that we call Heaven. In this post, I discuss information from the scriptures about two additional states of existence. This information allows me to conclude that the scriptures teach there are three basic states of existence, the second state being our mortal world that we live in and that is studied by scientists.

Before we look at the three states of existence, let us look in a general way at matter, the "stuff" of which bodies are made. In my post on Mormon Belief: Spirit is Matter, I quoted from D&C 131:7 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.

It isn't clear exactly what Joseph Smith meant in that verse, but one thing is clear: spirit matter is different from the physical matter in our universe. It is different, being "more fine or pure", and it is different in that it can only be discerned or viewed by "purer eyes". I will give my interpretation of those phrases. I believe that spirit matter is matter, in that it has mass and is controlled by natural laws, but I believe those laws are different than the laws that govern our mortal world. How are those laws different? I don't know. Because spirit matter can only be discerned by purer eyes, I believe that scientific investigations, as we currently conduct them, can not detect energy that is given off by the spirit matter.

Let us get a better understanding of spirit matter. In my post on Mormon Belief: Spirit is Matter, I discussed the experience of the Brother of Jared in which he saw the spirit body of Jesus, before Jesus was born in Bethlehem. Jesus' spirit body looked like a physical body except it wasn't flesh and bone. Clearly, Jesus as Jehovah, was in a different state of existence, another universe, than the Brother of Jared.

Next, let us look at an example of the third state of existence, resurrected matter. After his resurrection, Jesus appeared with his resurrected body to the apostles in the upper room. He didn't walk in through a door. Nor did he climb in through a window. He just appeared in the midst of them. He showed them his hands and feet, and he ate food to demonstrate that his resurrected body was real. Resurrected bodies are also matter, but the matter is different than spirit matter and different than mortal matter. Resurrected matter is glorified and perfect. It is not subject to disease, injury, or death.

The resurrection is not just a transformation of a mortal body to a resurrected body, since, in general, mortal bodies that are dead will have decomposed or been destroyed in some other way such that the atoms are scattered and have been used in the creation of other mortal bodies of plants and animals. The resurrection is, I believe, the recreation of a new body from resurrected matter but using the plan (DNA?) of the old body.

As evidence that resurrected bodies are different from mortal bodies, we have the story all ready related from Luke of the resurrected Christ appearing to his apostles without entering through a door or window; he just appeared in the room. In a similar fashion, when Moroni appeared to Joseph Smith in his bedroom, he (Moroni) "suddenly appeared at my bedside, standing in the air, for his feet did not touch the floor." And, the climax of all of Joseph's visions was the First Vision in the grove, where the Father and the Son stood before Joseph "standing above me in the air".

As I write this, there are spirit personages, mortal people, and resurrected personages existing in their own state of existence or universe. For the most part, these universes exist without a lot of physical contact with the mortal universe, but there may be times when spirit personages or resurrected personages appear in vision to mortal people. Of course, a lot of spiritual contact occurs via prayer and the promptings of the Holy Ghost.

Parallel: Mutiple Universes - Part 1

I realized yesterday that I've been doing posts about multiple universes but I've never posted the Parallel post correlating those posts with religion. So, here is the first part of the Parallel post for multiple universes. This parallel is in my book, and I hope my publisher won't be too angry with me for posting it in this blog.

In my earlier post about a parallel concerning the creation of the cosmos starting with energy, I described a concept from string theory that is called an Ekpyrotic Universe in which there are two universes that are close together. People in the two universes can't see each other, because the two universes are in different dimensions. After about a trillion years of coexistence, the two universes collide, resulting in an enormous explosion. That explosion, or big bang, ends the two universes and starts two new universes. Thus, if this concept is true, we have a neighboring universe that we can't see but that will eventually collide with our universe. Our universe began in a big bang, and it will end in another big bang when our universe collides with its neighbor universe.

Mormon theology teaches that God lives in Heaven. We can't see Heaven, but it is real, and I think of it as another state of existence or another universe. This post about multiple universes extends to the existence of another universe, Heaven, but it does not include a collision of those universes, as depicted in an Ekpyrotic Universe.

Parallel: A Common Ancestry

This is a parallel between science and religion that I hadn't thought of until I read a report about new genetic information disagreeing with the prevailing scientific view that races don't actually exist and are just social creations. That article triggered my mind to think about the Tower of Babel and the changing of the languages of the people.

First I'd like to talk about this issue from the religious viewpoint. Then I will talk about it from the scientific view.

Prior to the time of the Tower of Babel, all of the people spoke a common language and probably had common cultural customs. When the Lord changed their languages, he scattered them throughout "all the earth". I am not writing about the question whether that was all the planet as we think of it today or was just all of their known world, but people who have strong views about that question are invited to reply to this post and express their view. From the Biblical viewpoint, this was the beginning of ethnic languages and customs. Thus, we see that the people did have a common ancestry, and they did have common customs until they were were scattered.

Concerning the genetics of these people, there were eight people who left the ark and repopulated the earth. The three sons of Noah would have had genes in common with Noah but not completely identical to his genome. The three wives of Noah's sons would each have had their own genetic pool. Thus, we see that the grand children of Noah, and later generations, would have had some genes in common with Noah but other genes different than him. In addition, during the time between the flood and the building of the Tower of Babel, mutations to the genes could have occurred. I don't know much about genetics, and I don't know the likelihood of mutations occurring in a period of a few hundred years to perhaps a thousand years. In summary, the people living at the time of the Tower of Babel probably would have had a commonality in their genes plus variances due to ancestry and mutations.

So much for the religious view. Now, let's look at the scientific view. In recent years, many scientists have thought that genetically all people were the same and that there was no genetic basis for having different races. This is not to say that everyone had exactly the same genes but that the differences were not the bases for different races. This view was the basis of my post on We are 99.9% the same.

Recent research, however, has shown that there are genetic differences between races. One reason for this is that different races have different ancestries and thus different gene-pools. However, scientists are divided as to the magnitude of the genetic differences in races. Some scientists think "There is considerable structural variation in the human genome [genetic code], most of which was not previously apparent". Scientists at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute reported that "at least 10 percent of genes in the human population can vary in the number of copies of DNA sequences they contain". Other scientists, though, say the genetic differences are small. Stephen W. Scherer of the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, Canada said, "Taking all types of DNA variation into consideration and looking at the entire 'content' of the genome, I would now say we are 99.7 - 99.8 percent identical". In summary, there seems to be a genetic basis for believing that races are real, but the differences between the races may be relatively small.

Both the religious view and the scientific view give a basis for believing that the peoples of the earth do have a common ancestry of some type but that differences in language, customs, and genetic information have changed over time. This all makes sense to me.

When I first started thinking about the religious view giving Noah as the "father" of all persons living on the earth, I began to wonder if he lived far enough back to be the common ancestor of everyone. Genetic genealogists refer to this common ancestor as the MRCA, the most recent common ancestor, and they estimate that a MRCA would have lived approximately 2,000 years to 5,000 years ago, as I documented in What is a Most Recent Common Ancestor (MRCA)?. From the religious view, Noah would thus be our MRCA. That time-frame fits in with an estimated date of the Tower of Babel being approximately 3500 BC, and the flood being a few hundred years or so before that.

To parallel a point I made at the beginning of this blog, I am not asserting that science has proved that Noah was our MRCA. I am not saying that science has proved that God did change the language of the people and scatter them on the earth. I am merely showing that there is an interesting parallel between the scientific view of a common ancestor and the Biblical story of Noah and of his descendants who built the Tower of Babel.

Parallel: Early Humans Had Sophisticated Language Skills

Many Latter-day Saints believe that Adam and Eve were the first of the human race and had sophisticated language skills. This was briefly explained in Mormon Belief: Adam and Eve Had Sophisticated Language Skills.

In parallel with this, scientists believe that humans have sophisticated language skills because of the presence of the FOXP2 gene in the human genome. Until recently, only humans were thought to have that gene. However, as shown in Cavemen 'May Have Used Language', the FOXP2 gene was found in the Neanderthal genome, leading some scientists to speculate that the Neanderthals may have had sophisticated language skills. Since the Neanderthals are believed to have lived earlier than humans, although they overlapped humans, the discovery of this gene may extend further back in time the capability for sophisticated language skills.

The extension of language skills earlier back in time to the Neanderthals might give credence to the LDS belief that Adam and Eve were the first humans and had sophisticated language skills. However, there still remains the serious problem that the Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens lived much earlier than the traditional era of Adam and Eve which is believed to be approximately 6,000 years ago. The era of Homo Sapiens extends back to 150,000 years ago or so, and the era of the Neanderthals goes back to 400,000 years or so.

In contrast to many (most?) LDS, I believe that Adam and Eve were the first humans, and I also believe that the Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens lived much earlier than Adam and Eve. In order to explain this, I need to explain the LDS concept of a "human being". As explained in Mormon Belief: Spirit Offspring Of God, LDS believe that we are the spirit offspring of God. That is, from the religious viewpoint, a human is a combination of a spirit offspring of God and a physical body. Without the spirit offspring of God, the body is merely an animal, albeit an intelligent animal that can communicate, build fires, hunt, draw pictures on cave walls, etc. I believe that through evolution, God created the world and created physical bodies for his spirit children. The Neanderthals and early Homo Sapiens were prototypes, so to speak, of the bodies being created for Adam and Eve. When the time came for those bodies to be "used", God placed the spirits of Adam and Eve into them, and they became the first humans. Of course, this is a religious view and is not supported by science, nor should one expect it to be supported by science. For those interested, I discuss this in detail in the chapter in my book on a correlation between the Fall of Adam and evolution. The text of that chapter can be downloaded. Click on the Evolution/Fall of Adam link and then on the download link.

Parallel: The Creation of Life -- Part 1

Most members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints believe in God. As explained in Mormon Belief: Spirit Offspring of God, we not only believe in God, but we believe we are literally the spirit offspring of God. We believe that when Jesus taught us to pray to our Heavenly Father via The Lord's Prayer, he was referring to a literal relationship (Matthew 6:9-13). We believe that God created life and placed it on this earth. In Mormon Belief: God Created Life, I quoted verses from Genesis chapter 1 that support this belief.

The general public has long had an interest in the creation of life. The book Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus, by Mary Shelle, was written in 1818 and published in London. It is probably the most famous story in literature about the creation of life.

Scientists have also been interested in creating life. Cloning has been a successful technique to change the nature of organisms. The history of cloning history goes back to 1952 and continues to the present. The list of animals that have been cloned is long and includes sheep, monkeys, cats, dogs, cattle, deer, goats, horses, rats, mice, and water buffalo.

Cloning raises the question, "Is cloning the creation of life?" I expect that people will probably have differing answers to that question. My view is no. Cloning is only the creation of new life-forms, not of new life itself. Current cloning techniques involve changing the genetic material in an egg such that an embryo from that egg will have the new attributes. No new life has been created through cloning. The egg already had the "spark of life" (what ever that means), and cloning only changes the characteristics of the living organism that results from cloning. In a previous post, I referred to the work of Craig Venter and his group. They created artificial DNA and plan to introduce that DNA into the bacterium Mycoplasma genitalium with the hope that the chromosome will take over the bacterium. I agree that they have created an artificial DNA and if successful will have created new forms life that didn't exist before. In effect they will have bypassed the eons of time involved with evolution to create new forms of life. I do not agree that they will have created new life itself since the bacterium to be used in the experiment will already be alive.

In 2002, scientists duplicated the polio virus using laboratory chemicals. They injected the virus into mice to demonstrate the virus was active. The mice became paralyzed and then died. Scientists are divided over the question of viruses being alive. If viruses are alive, the duplication of the polio virus would be a laboratory creation of an existing life-form but would not be new life, i.e. life that didn't already exist.

In order to create new life rather than to just modify or duplicate life, scientists would have to create new life from elementary elements in which the "spark of life" did not already exist. In my book I referred to work at Harvard University, announced in 2003, in which scientists created from basic elements a crude form of a cell. At that time, they did not claim to have created life, only to have created a primitive form of something, a "container", that is necessary for life to exist. However, those scientists are now claiming to be on the verge of creating advanced or workable "containers" for new cells.

In this post, I'm making a distinction between "new life" and "new life-forms". I use the phrase "new life" to refer to new life that hadn't existed in any form. I use the phrase "new life-form" to refer to new "versions" of a particular life-form, i.e. new life-forms that have different characteristics than older "versions" of the same life-form.

Parallel: One World Follows Another

While reading in the book of Moses this afternoon, I discovered another parallel between an Ekpyrotic Universe and the scriptures. This parallel is related to the parallel for many worlds, but it concerns the sequence of the worlds being created rather than there being many worlds.

In Parallel: Creation Started with Nothing but Energy, I introduced the idea of an Ekpyrotic Universe, a concept developed from the mathematics of string theory. According to that concjept, there is an unending series of universes. Each universe ends in a fiery explosion, an explosion that ends one universe and creates another universe. The name "Ekpyrotic Universe" was given to that concept by scientists because Ekpyrotic is a Greek word denoting a large destructive fire. Ekpyrotic refers to an ancient Stoic concept of the universe having an unending series of hot, destructive births, coolings, and rebirths.

In Mormon-Belief: Other Worlds, I gave a quotation from the book of Moses that as one world passes away another world will take its place.

And the Lord God spake unto Moses, saying: The heavens they are many, and they cannot be numbered unto man; but they are numbered unto me, for they are mine.

And as one earth shall pass away, and the heavens thereof even so shall another come; and there is no end to my works, neither to my words. (Moses 1:37-38)

I don't know if those verses should be taken literally, such that only one world would be in existence at a time, or if the verses should be generalized to allow many worlds to be in existence at any given time. The important thing, I think, is that those verses teach that the Lord creates an unending series of worlds being created.

Parallel: Creation Started with Nothing but Energy

Some of the most interesting parallels between science and religion are the parallels between a scientific theory known as an Ekpyrotic Universe and the Mormon view of creation. In my book on the debate between science and religion, I give a brief overview of an Ekpyrotic Universe, and I describe seven parallels between that scientific theory and Mormonism. In this post I will discuss two of those parallels, simple but elegant parallels that I find fascinating.

Very briefly, an Ekpyrotic Universe is a theory of creation that was derived from a mathematics discipline called string theory. According to an Ekpyrotic Universe, there are many dimensions and the cosmos that we see is only one of those dimensions. Nearby our universe is another universe. We don't see that universe because it is in a different dimension. Our universe is on a collision course with the other universe, and in about a trillion years, the two universes will collide, resulting in a terrific explosion, corresponding to the big bang. A new universe will be created by that explosion, and life will evolve on planet(s) in that universe. In another trillion years, that universe will collide with its nearby unseen neighbor, causing another big bang, and the cycle will begin again.

After a trillion years of expansion, the matter in our universe will be distributed throughout the universe, but the density of that distribution will be so small that the universe will be essentially empty of matter. The universe, however, will have high energy and great gravity, and it is that gravity that will bring the two universes together. The significant thing to remember from this overview is that at the time a big bang occurs, the universe will be empty of matter but full of energy. That is, the creation of a new universe, via a big bang, will be the result of energy.

The Ekpyrotic Universe was derived from string theory, and the basic concept in string theory is that all matter is composed of oscillating strings of pure energy.

So, we have a scientific theory that correlate creation with pure energy. How does this discussion relate to religion, you might ask? To answer that, let's turn to Genesis and read how God began his creation of the earth.

And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. (Genesis 1:2-3)

Notice that the earth was without form and was void or empty. Darkness was upon the earth. "And God said, Let there be light: and there was light". Light is pure energy. So, let's re-read those verses from Genesis and substitute "energy" for "light" and "no energy" for "darkness". Let us also substitute "empty" for "without form, and void".

And the earth was empty and no energy was upon the face of the deep (on what would become the earth). And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be energy: and there was energy.

Do you see the parallel? The heart of string theory is vibrating strings of pure energy. An Ekpyrotic Universe begins with pure energy. God began his creation by introducing energy into the creation-process. I expect that the people in the time of Moses didn't understand the concept of energy as we do. It was appropriate for Moses to phrase his revelation from God with the words "light" and "darkness", because the people could understand that.

Parallel: Many worlds with Intelligent Life - Part 1

The first planet outside our solar system was discovered in 1992, and in the subsequent 15 years, 252 additional planets have been discovered. Planets not in our solar system are known as exoplanets. Most of these planets are large gas planets and are orbiting too closely to their star to have the conditions for life. However, as scientists develop better technology, they are detecting smaller planets, some of which are believed to be rocky planets.

Great efforts are being made in the scientific community to discover exoplanets. As I reported in The State of Planet Hunting at the End of 2005, Alan Boss of the Carnegie Institution in Washington, DC predicted that by the end of the next decade, scientists will know which nearby stars have planets, and we will have the first images from sunlight reflecting off the atmospheres of some of the exoplanets.

Scientific discovery of exoplanets is a great parallel to the work of the Lord. As I stated in my W