Joseph Smith – The Science Seer! (Evidences)

This video reviews the amazing work Dr John Lamb has pulled together showing how Joseph Smith had many revelations with scientific principles that were outlandish in his day but fit perfectly now with 21st century scientific understandings.

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So in this Evidences video I’m going to talk about scientific principles that Joseph Smith had revealed to him well before they were discovered by scientists in modern day. Fascinating material. In fact, I was really inspired by this from attending an Education Week lecture series by Doctor John Lamb. He’s been a chemistry professor, just retired. He’s 36 years at BYU, phenomenal, lots of awards and what was so exciting about it is he just wrote a book and so I thought, “Oh, I can do a video on this now!” Joseph Smith’s 21st Century View of the World:Truths He Knew Before the World Accepted Them. So it’s a lot better than my education week notes, for trying to do a video anyway, in getting into the meat of things. So very exciting, I highly recommend though going to that Education Week class. If you’re ever able to get down there, it’s phenomenal. One of the best I’ve ever seen of anything in my life. Just fantastic.

I’m going to share parts from the book throughout the video on the different topics. I’ll also link in the in-screen two other videos that will be great on this, the video on Explosions of Light After 1830, and Science and Religion: Seeing with Both Eyes, which would be great companion videos to this. So okay, so let’s start out, Doctrine and Covenants section 121. Joseph’s in Liberty Jail and the Lord reveals to him that there will be a bunch of scientific principles that will be revealed, essentially in this dispensation, that had never been known throughout the history of the world, and it’s interesting he’s getting this in Liberty Jail as though that was to be a comforting thing for the saints. That’s fascinating.

Doctor Lamb says this, “Surely we’d all agree that knowledge of the gospel itself can comfort and inspire, but can so called secular knowledge do so as well? It should. That is, when you consider that all truth comes from God. He doesn’t make the distinction between sacred and secular truth. To Him it is all truth. In this work as we pursue various topics together, I trust that you will find examples wherein both sacred and secular knowledge can be both a comfort and inspiration to you as it has been to me.”

Then he says “The coming forth of the gospel truth in latter days has been paralleled by an explosion of scientific truth. In certain respects, these two fields of knowledge have found harmony since Joseph Smith’s time in ways that only now are we coming to appreciate. This is the underlying theme of this work [his book]. We are blessed to live in a day when knowledge is expanding, and the veil of darkness, which obscured our vision of the true nature of the world and our place in it for so many centuries is being lifted. We shall see in this work on several key points, Joseph Smith was remarkably prescient in his understanding of the natural world, anticipating the science that we have now come to understand in the 21st century.”

Okay, let’s look at God’s universe revealed. Moses 1:28 and 29 “And he [Moses] beheld also the inhabitants thereof, and there was not a soul which he beheld not; and he discerned them by the Spirit of God; and their numbers were great, even numberless as the sand upon the seashore. And he beheld many lands, and each land was called earth, and there were inhabitants on the face there.” Now, Doctor Lamb talks about how in Joseph’s day, the Milky Way was considered to be the universe. So we understand that as just one of zillions of galaxies today, but at their day they thought that was it. That was the entire universe.

That is what scholars thought at that point in time. So if you look today, it’s fascinating. In fact, astronomers say you can see probably 10,000 stars or so with the naked eye, but telescopes have been able to enhance our understanding of this, and things had been changing quite dramatically. In fact, the big catapult of this was the launch of the Hubble space telescope. It’s 348 miles above the earth, rotating around the earth like a satellite, and it was launched in 1990, and one of the things that we found out, as an example, is prior telescopes, especially Joseph’s day and and since then, they thought that there were these clouds that they were just clouds essentially of dust and stars in the Milky Way. What we found out from the Hubble telescope particularly was that these were other galaxies. So now I want you to look at this little picture here on the screen. This was a 10-day long exposure.

The Hubble telescope pointed at the darkest patch in the sky they could find and did a 10-day long exposure to zone in on this specific spot and look at what they found. Just numerous galaxies in just that little spot. Phenomenal. 200 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy, and how many galaxies are in the universe? The estimates are pretty wide. Between a 100 billion to 2 trillion. That’s the range, and even some scientists are even talking about multi-verse, stacking of universes possibly, or even galaxies within black holes. Phenomenal things being talked about. “In his television series Cosmos, a scientist who is not a believer in God, Carl Sagan, tries to help the viewer understand the enormous number of stars that modern science has revealed through instruments like the Hubble telescope. Lo and behold, these state that the number of stars in the known universe is greater than the number of grains of sand on all the beaches of the planet earth.”

In fact, Doctor Lamb at Education Week he actually showed us the math behind this, and it’s real. It really is true. “It is rather astonishing to think that Joseph Smith understood the scope of the universe in the early 1800s well before science had revealed it. Just before his time, scientists like Kant and Herschel in Europe and Benjamin Franklin in America had been speculating about the existence of multiple worlds, but Joseph went further and his works are revelation. He made claims about the number of stars and planets that were outlandish and unsubstantiated in his day, and which held him up for possible ridicule. He even claimed that there were countless inhabited planets, an outrageous proposition for the science of his day, but one which is now considered a serious possibility by respected scientists. In fact, until just a decade ago, we couldn’t even answer this question.”

“New technologies have made it possible to look for planets around other stars. And guess what? There are planets around nearly all of them, with several thousand planets discovered by the date of this writing [his book] in 2018. And to narrow the search further, what if we were to limit our research only to planets that orbit their stars in just the right place that they might have liquid water and therefore, life? Researchers now estimate that billions of stars in our own galaxy have not just any planets, but planets in the so-called habitable zone capable of supporting life.”

Okay, let’s look at Doctrine and Covenants section 88 about kingdoms in space. “All kingdoms have a law given; and there are many kingdoms; for there is no space in which there is no kingdom; and there is no kingdom in which there is no space, either a greater or lesser kingdom. And unto every kingdom is given a law; and under every law there are certain bounds also and conditions … Behold, all of these are kingdoms, and any man who hath seen any of the least of these hath seen God moving in his majesty and power.” So, no kingdom in which there is no space.

So in Joseph’s day, this passage might have sounded rather grand. It probably didn’t make sense to anyone, especially the scientific community. They thought that, especially when you look out in space and see all these different objects, that there was this massless foggy material called the “luminiferous aether” that was there. “Nature abhors a vacuum,” Aristotle famously said, and also they thought that there needed to exist for light to pass, to travel through as a wave to make its way between objects in space. Also the atom, they saw as just basically filled completely. They were just starting to learn about the atom, but they thought there is no void within an atom, which would upset Aristotle as well.

So it’s fascinating to see our science catching up with this concept now. So first of all, space is everywhere out there. When we look out there, it’s very empty. In fact, the closest star to our sun, which is Alpha Centauri is four light years away. One light year is 6 trillion miles. So how fast, how long a light travels in a year. So think about that. 24 trillion miles plus away, and then so if you were to look at it, the universe is 99.9999% empty space. Our galaxy is about a hundred thousand light years across. Think about that, one light year, six trillion miles. The nearest galaxy to us, I love to look at this in my telescope, the Andromeda galaxy, two and a half million light years away. That’s the nearest galaxy to us. What about the atom? Empty. Empty space. There’s the nucleus in the middle, but it’s about 1/100,000 of the atom.

That’s fascinating. So fluff, empty space, fascinating. Now we know this. So 99.999% volume of the atom is empty space. As Doctor Lamb kept putting, “Aristotle loses again.” So here’s what Doctor Lamb says, “So in a nutshell, even the tiny percentage of the universe occupied by matter itself is almost completely empty space. It turns out the universe we know is composed mostly of nothing and that’s something no one imagined in Joseph Smith’s day. In his day, to claim there is no kingdom in which there is no space seemed to make no sense. Today it surely does.” Now, no space in which there is no kingdom.

Doctor Lamb said “As a scientist, it seems pretty clear to me that Joseph was using the word ‘kingdom’ in a very generic sense to refer to any physical realm of existence, be it in outer space or inner space, be it a galaxy, a planet, or an atom. What then does he mean when he states that there is no space in which there is no kingdom? Joseph taught that there are many things in the universe beyond what we can perceive with our natural senses. One of these is the so-called Spirit of God. He speaks of this spirit or light as a substance that ‘proceeds forth from the presence of God to fill the immensity of space’. There’s certainly plenty of room for it between the atoms and the stars. What does science now teach us about the space within atoms in the galaxies? Lots. Much of it speculative at this point.”

“First, just in the last few decades, scientists have postulated that huge amounts of dark matter and dark energy must exist.” Now, dark matter, what is it? We don’t know. That’s why we call it dark matter, but we know that it’s there from science perspective. There isn’t enough mass in the stars, planets, gas, and dust in each of the galaxies to essentially have the gravity hold the galaxy together. So there’s this mass that must be made up. So scientists have postulated, there’s a lot of extra mass that we can’t see, we can’t even detect it with an instrument, so they just labeled it dark matter. Now dark energy, when you look, especially with the help of the Hubble space telescope, you see galaxies moving away from each other. Gravity should be pulling them together. They’re moving away and they’re accelerating. So they talk about this energy that we can’t see. It’s dark, dark energy that’s there as well. Now look at this pie chart. Scientists have postulated today, this is about the mix, 68.3% dark energy, 26.8% dark matter, and about 5% ordinary matter.

Doctor Lamb said this in his book: “It turns out that if scientists are interpreting the observations correctly, dark matter and dark energy must make up about 95% of all that there is in the universe. What a disappointment. All this time we thought we had a huge progress in understanding the natural world and it turns out we have been looking at only 5% of it all along. What we are learning from these developments is that just because our senses and our instruments fail to detect things, just because we can’t see them, doesn’t mean they don’t exist. In fact, science takes it on faith that they do exist because we can see their effects. Perhaps we should be more willing to give the claims of religion the same benefit.” And I love what he says here. “Dark matter and dark energy presumably exist … spread throughout creation at varying concentrations and various places … probably all around you at this very moment, even though you can’t see them or feel them … invisible to us because they don’t interact with normal matter the way normal matter interacts with itself.”

“They would pass right through you without you even knowing. Joseph Smith taught that the spirit world was not in some distant spot in the universe, but right here and around us. For a long time after, this idea was ridiculed as completely incompatible with scientific knowledge. No longer. Not only do we know there’s plenty of space for other kingdoms besides our own right here, but now physicists themselves are talking about previously unknown materials residing right amid what is all around us.” And now he’s careful. He says, “I’m not proposing that dark matter is spirit or the spirit world is made of dark matter. What I am saying is that whereas Joseph’s religious claims of a spirit world right here previously made no sense scientifically, now these claims are perfectly compatible with science.” Okay, now each kingdom is given a law, certain bounds and conditions.

What’s fascinating, I’ll let you, you can look at this slide, but basically what they’re saying is there are all these laws that science has figured out, but there’s a big disconnect between large objects and small objects. It’s really interesting, and it shouldn’t be that way, but it is. And so every kingdom has laws and there are certain bounds and conditions. Just like the verse says, fascinating. We now understand this, and he says at the end there, “This insight expressed in scripture at a time when none of the science was understood or even imagined.” Okay, now lastly of those verses that we were talking about, anyone who has seen the least of these kingdoms has seen God moving in His majesty and power. So think about this, a grain of sand, the least of these, has more atoms than there are stars in the universe, not the galaxy, the universe.

Phenomenal. Now think about our bodies. In fact, here’s what Doctor Lamb said, “Befitting a child of God, your body is the most complex system in the world and the whole universe. The more we learn about the cells that make you up and the biochemical processes that make you function, the more awe-inspiring you become. Every cell in your body is an amazing little world of its own with gates and walls, with sophisticated chemical factories, with a central government and a complex communication system.” Okay light, let’s talk about light. So there’s a couple of great scriptures on light. Now there’s 456 times where light is talked about in the standard works, 195 of these in Latter-day Saint scripture. “Modern scripture and revelation clarify the nature of light significantly over what we can learn from the Bible. One particular salient verse in the Doctrine and Covenants, ‘The word of the Lord is truth, and whatsoever is truth is light, and whatsover is light is Spirit, even the Spirit of Jesus Christ.'”

Section 88:67, “And if your eye be single to my glory, your whole body shall be filled with light, and there shall be no darkness in you; and that body which is filled with light comprehendeth all things.” Section 131 verses 7 and 8, “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. We cannot see it; but when our bodies are purified, we shall see that it is all matter.” “This passage defines spirit, and light as one aspect of spirit, to be a material substance. Calling it ‘fine’ implies that it is made up of very fine particles. The fact that it is seen with purer eyes fits well with the concept that spirit is like light in its character, hence the close relationship between the two.”

Okay, Section 88, verses 6 through 13 talks about “He that ascended up on high is also he who descended below all things in that he comprehended all things, that he might be in and through all things, the light of truth, which truth shineth. This is the light of Christ. As also he is in the sun and he is in the earth and all these things …” and it says, “And the light which shineth, which giveth you light, is through him who enlighteneth your eyes, which is the same light that quickneth your understandings, which light proceededth forth from the presence of God to fill the immensity of space–The light which is in all things, which giveth life to all things, which is the law in which all things are governed, even the power of God who sitteth upon his throne, who is in the bosom of eternity, who is in the midst of all things.”

“So in summary, modern revelation teaches us that light is a kind of spirit matter, that the two terms are often used interchangeably, that it is material composed of fine particles, that it fills the immensity of space, that it is in all things and gives them law and life, and that it constitutes the very power of God, emanating forth from him to all his creations.” Okay, there’s three things about light to talk about just quickly. Particle or wave? So I’ll just flash this up on there. You can read the whole thing if you want. The wave model was considered the winner in Joseph’s day with the understanding of quantum mechanics and things can only be broken down so far, called quantized. That became applied to light and they called it photons, these particles, and so light was determined to be a particle, just as Joseph said.

Now we also, science today has agreed it can be considered a particle and a wave by some observations, but definitely particulate in nature. So kind of fascinating there what Joseph said about that. Now I love this. Joseph, more light than the eye can see. Look at this spectrum on the screen here. So what we see is only a broad spectrum of the kind of light that exists. Most kinds of light are invisible to us. It’s fascinating to think too that we actually glow like a light bulb if you could see with infrared light. And then look at, it turns out that everything in the universe radiates light of some energy, even things that are very cold. Fascinating when you think about the scriptures we just read. Okay, now this is my favorite one. This is absolutely fascinating, and I won’t go into the chemistry here.

Doctor Lamb did it in his class, heavily, but about electromagnetism and all these discoveries that they found and to understand the working of the atom here, but the key part of this was the discovery. Look at the last line there. “Furthermore, in the 20th century, we came to understand that light, in the form of photons, is the carrier of this force. It is the means by which particles exchange information with each other so that they can interact with each other the way they do.” Light is what actually makes us to be able to understand things. It’s phenomenal. So think back on that verse, D&C 88, “And the light which shineth, with giveth you light, is through him who enlighteneth your eyes, which is the same light that quickenth your understandings.” Doctor Lamb says, “I’d probably read this verse many times before it finally struck me that this seemingly obscure and rather odd statement made perfect sense from a modern scientific point of view.”

“It says that the same light which we see with our eyes also works in our brains to allow us to think and to understand. Is that true? Yes, by the principles of modern science, but it didn’t make a whole lot of sense in Joseph Smith’s lifetime.” So then in the book he talks about how just the process of seeing a flower and how it all works with this chemistry and the photons of light carrying it to your brain and understanding. Then he says “All the steps in the process, from the origination of the light in the flower to the final processing in your brain to recognize that it is a flower, involve the same natural principle– electromagnetism. The chemistry of emitting and absorbing light, the transmission of that light through space, and the transmission of electrical signals through nerve and brain cells are all electromagnetic processes working on a common principle.”

“If you look back at that verse in section 88, you will notice that this concept is perfectly consistent with what is taught there– the light we see with our eyes is the same as that which enlivens our brains and allows us to think. Joseph didn’t know these things at the time; no one did, because the principles of electromagnetism that govern the behavior of photons and electrons, atoms and ions, hadn’t yet been discovered.” Okay, let’s talk about the God of nature. So lots of fun stuff here. So, there’s two particular principles found in traditional Christian theology important for our discussion here concerning this. “Number one, God is found outside of nature. He exists above it and independent of it. He created a natural law but can contravene it at any point he wishes. And number two, God is utterly unknowable. He is beyond the capability of the human mind to understand.” Now look what I’ve underlined here. Joseph Smith’s day, almost every denomination of Christians thought like this.

So, Joseph’s revelations were concerning the nature of God. “Joseph’s theology concerning the nature of God brings him back into the natural universe and makes him a participant in, rather than apart from, nature.” They also talked about the so-called “God in the gaps”. “… as science reveals more about the true workings of nature, there is less and less need for a God to explain the parts of nature we don’t understand. As the gaps diminish, so does the need for God … restored Church recognizes no such gaps … The Father we worship is not above nature, but one with nature, and every natural law He reveals to us through science is simply another step in understanding Him and His ways.” And look on the next page here, just the underlined, “In Christian theology, the God who exists above nature may be seen to intervene into the natural course of things … supernatural event has occurred, a miracle, because it’s supernatural, the root meaning being above nature.”

“Can you see how this description of the world would be frustrating to scientists? The very basis of the scientific approach assumes that nature is underpinned by immutable laws that apply in all places and times. Scientists and others see this as a reason for finding religion insupportable … Joseph Smith’s theology … we find God existing in nature.” And to finish this he says, “Do members of the restored Church believe in miracles or not?” Yes, but in our own unique way. We believe that God has the power to make unusual things happen, but not because He sidesteps natural law. When asked how a miracle happens, traditional theology might claim it as a mystery by which is meant not only that we don’t know, but also that we can never know because we cannot probe the mind and acts of an inscrutable God. Latter-day Saints don’t believe in mysteries in the same way.”

“How a miracle happens may be a mystery, but only in the sense that we have not been told how the miracle is performed and what laws of nature were used to make it happen. And this difference in our understanding of miracles results directly from the different way we understand the nature of God.” I love this. He shared this from John A. Widtsoe in his book, Joseph Smith As Scientist. Three points: “In Mormon theology, there is no place for immaterialism. Science knows phenomena only as they are associated with matter. Mormonism does the same. Two, in his conception of God, Joseph Smith was strictly scientific. He departed from the notion that God is a being foreign to nature and wholly superior to it. And three, a miracle simply means a phenomenon not understood in its cause and effect relations.” “The teachings of Joseph Smith that God exists in nature while acting as its supreme governor by way of natural law are in perfect harmony with the scientific approach to the world.”

Okay, so let’s talk about time for a minute. So you probably know these familiar scriptures, D&C 130 verse 4 and Abraham 3 talking about time, God’s time versus man’s time being different by quite a bit, but I love this especially when it talks about W.W. Phelps quoting Joseph Smith in The Times and Seasons. Joseph says, look at the very end there, the length of time going on in this system, almost 2,555 millions of years. “Clearly Joseph had no problem thinking of creation, not in terms of thousands of years, but billions.” And I’ll say just that at the time, the Christian community really believed in the literalness of the Bible. That creation happened over seven days and the earth had been around for about 6,000 years. That was the common thinking. Now geologists were starting to explore and think much longer than that, but definitely not churchmen, essentially. Christian understandings even today actually for many, will still take that approach.

So if you look at this, “Joseph had kept the word ‘day’ in his re-translation of Genesis found in the book of Moses, but in the parallel account in Abraham he found the word ‘time’ to be more appropriate than ‘day'” on there. And the critical nature was just the process, or at least step, and it can be however the length of time needed to be, but an orderly process. “There is another interesting aspect of time we learned long after Joseph’s death and opens up insights into the nature of time itself. This newly discovered aspect of time influences how time appears to different observers in our universe. It is not as simple as the differences between planetary orbits or the rates of planetary revolution. Instead it deals with the differences in the way time appears to progress from one observer to the next.”

You may remember this called the Einstein’s theory of relativity. The rate at which time passes is relative to the observer who measures it. So it’s fascinating to consider that and the science he gives, Doctor Lamb gives examples of that. He says “It’s clear that both science and Joseph Smith’s theology speak of time as relative in certain senses, and on this point both sides can certainly agree. In Joseph’s day, much was understood about the difference in time between planets as related to their orbits and rates of rotation, but the more advanced concepts related to geological time and Einstein’s ideas were yet to be discovered. The relatively few references to time in Joseph sermons and revealed scriptures are certainly forward-looking and compatible of 21st-century scientific theories about time and space.” Okay, cosmos and chaos. Now, this one is a little crazy, but so 2 Nephi 2 verse 11, needs to be that there’s an opposition in all things Lehi says on there.

“If not so, my first born in the wilderness, righteousness could not be brought to pass, neither wickedness, neither holiness nor misery, neither good nor bad … it must needs remain as dead, having no life neither death, nor corruption nor incorruption, happiness nor misery.” So, Doctor Lamb talks about the law of thermodynamics, which there’s two big parts of that. The first law, total amount of energy is unchanged. It’s constant in the universe. And then the second law, this is the important one for this, is opposition in all things. The law states that every event that occurs in nature increases the amount of disorder in the universe. And he gives lots of examples in the book of this there, but how this also ties back to Lehi and what Lehi is saying on there. So, I’ll let you just look at this screen. You can pause it if you want. Mosiah 3:19, the natural man is an enemy to God.

Fascinating when you consider it in this respect, and so we look at this last page on this. “Clearly, as participants in nature, human beings are as susceptible to the workings of the second law of thermodynamics as everything else. Our physical selves and actions are by nature more prone to favor the forces of chaos than those of cosmos, the forces of destruction over the forces of creation. It takes an extra measure of power to fulfill the requirements to be a saint [the champion of order], and to overcome the natural man [the champion of disorder]. That power comes by way of the Spirit of God, which when infused into the equation, can overwhelm the powers of entropy [chaos] that pull us down. And this is the greatest gift that Christ has offered us in that He has the power to overwhelm the forces of darkness and destruction that dominate the natural process of death, both physical and spiritual.”

“He has the power to lift us beyond the reach of the second law into a plane of existence that allows not only for the absence of chaos in our lives, but to an eternal endowment of cosmos, or creative power. Good news of the gospel … taking on a profound new insight when seen in light of the laws of thermodynamics … These principles of thermodynamics were not known in Joseph Smith’s day. This law and its interpretation, in terms of the atomic nature of matter, was developed in Europe during the latter half of the 19th century, long after Joseph’s death. Yet in this respect, Joseph’s theology and science find common ground. Their teachings are complimentary. Furthermore, the clear expression of the doctrine of the opposition in all things in the Book of Mormon is one unique aspect of Joseph Smith’s view of Christian theology. It is unique in the sense that Joseph’s vision of the universe encompasses a heaven and heavenly beings, not divorced from the dichotomy of cosmos and chaos, but operating always in concert with the struggle between these opposing primal forces.”

Okay, the last big concept, and I’ll give you this amazing summary at the end from Doctor Lamb, opposition and freewill, and this is part of this 2 Nephi again, opposition in all things, but Lehi goes on and he says, “And if these things are not there is no God. And if there is no God we are not, neither the earth; for there could have been no creation of things, neither to act nor to be acted upon. It must needs to be that there was an opposition. Wherefore, the Lord God gave unto man that he should act for himself. Wherefore, man could not act for himself save it should be that he was enticed by the one or the other.” “Clearly the principles of opposition applies broadly among God’s creations and is the eternal principle upon which our very existence is based.”

“Yet the perfect goodness of a God outside nature generates a dilemma for an underlying principle in traditional Christian theology: that God created the universe from nothing and created each man and woman initially and completely at birth. Thus, the question arises: how could a perfectly good God intentionally create evil in the world and in man. This question has vexed Christian theologians for 2,000 years. By contrast, Joseph Smith solves this problem neatly: ‘The mind of the intelligence which man possesses is co-equal with God himself’, and Joseph Fielding Smith clarifies that by ‘co-equal’, Joseph means co-eternal. Thus, each person has always existed in some form and thus can act independent of God’s will. Man cannot point to a primal creator as responsible for his choices. We cannot blame God for our imperfect choices. Furthermore, according to Lehi’s teaching, good and evil have always existed and are part of the underlying fabric of the universe, as fundamental to the universe as time and matter themselves. God exists, and we exist, only because the opposites he describes are at play.”

Now I’ll just flash this up on the screen for a second. Look at this. The creation story itself, opposites or contrasting alternatives, fascinating. Lots of things: light and dark, sea and dry land, man and woman, life and death, interesting. Even the principle of opposition in science at the bottom, you’ll see this broadly apply positive and negative charges, north and south poles on magnets as an example. So he spends a lot of time in the book on this.

Okay, now the last couple parts of this, the electrons have been found to have uncertainty and unpredictability, which was astonishing and not part of the science of Joseph’s day, and in fact, in Joseph’s day it was thought to have really have been that if you knew the formulas, you could basically predict all that was going to happen on there. You just needed to know the equations and the math essentially, but it created kind of a deterministic or predestination and essentially took away free will and accountability in some ways and robbed people of faith and religion in that sense. And it’s noteworthy that therefore the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith take a stand in favor of free will going against the then current scientific view. “But in the 20th century … with the advent of quantum mechanics, human thought processes occur in the brain by means of electrical impulses, at the root of which is the behavior of electrons and atom.”

“You can’t be certain what tiny particles like electrons will do, due to the uncertainty principle. Suddenly science and religion are no longer at odds. Our every decision cannot be predicted. We can choose whether or not to sleep in on a Saturday morning knowing that our choice was not predetermined. We can choose to love or hate our neighbor, not because the motions of our atoms let us to an inevitable mechanical conclusion, but freely. In this respect, the restored Church and science have found common ground with a tip of the hat to free will, leaving as responsible for the actions we pursue. And in science, with the advent of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle in the 20th century, one is left with a question: if choice is not predetermined by physics, how then does it come about?”

“Science has no answer, so we have to turn to religion and the possibility of a world apart from that which the eye can see. Joseph Smith’s vision of the world anticipated future science. It took a century to pass before modern science opened up the possibility of uncertainty at the atomic level, the very level at which intelligent thought has its source. And so once again, an apparent conflict between Joseph’s theology and the science of the day was resolved with new discoveries in science after his time.” Doctor Lamb says, “I exercise my agency by choosing to see this as another testimony of Joseph’s divine insights.” And with that I want to finish with this summary. It’s phenomenal. Love it.

He wraps it up by saying, “In summary, Joseph’s God given revelations anticipated the following: the vastness of God’s creations of stars and inhabited worlds, the degree to which only later did science begin to uncover; the existence of spirit and unseen worlds contiguous to our own, defied by the science of his day, but perfectly compatible with 21st century understanding of the world of matter and light; the nature of light and its relationship to life and intelligent thought far in advance of the science of his day; the roles of opposing forces of good and evil as they relate to the forces of cosmos and chaos in nature with greater clarity than ever before; a resolution to the age old paradox of free will and accountability, teaching that man is co-eternal with God while science of his day implied that the university and man were mechanical in nature, that free will was an illusion. Not until the following century did science understand that the universe is not mechanical, but that uncertainty is a property of nature that opens the door to the concept of free will; the possibility of an earth, billions of years old and the concept of relative time long before Einstein enlarged on these ideas; he encouraged his Saints to seek out all that is virtuous, lovely, or of good report or praiseworthy, and his successor Brigham Young made it clear that science is a reliable source of such things to be embraced.”which is something I did in the Religion and Science video: Seeing with both Eyes.

I hope you enjoyed the video. I had a lot of fun putting it together. Buy Doctor Lamb’s book or go to education week and see his class. It’s phenomenal. Hope you enjoyed it. Subscribe for more.

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Resources:

Book:

Joseph Smith’s 21st Century View of the World: Truths He Knew Before The World Accepted Them by Dr. John Lamb

Videos:

Evidences: Explosions of Light After 1830 (Joel Prophecy)!: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3W4ma…

Science & Religion: Seeing With Both Eyes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A57SU…

YouTube video with Dr Lamb speaking at BYU Devotional: Witnesses in Stars and Stones https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9mcL…

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Latter-day Saints’ Q&A is a video series not produced by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but by me, an ordinary member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, an independent voice, with a passion for studying Church history and defending the faith. In this series, I provide evidences for the restoration, and address tough questions posed by critics of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, offering faithful answers based on accurate research and historical references which will be posted at the end of each video.