![\"Mojave](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/186\/2017\/01\/Heavens_Above_Her.jpg\")
<\/a>(Wikimedia Commons public domain image)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
This morning, I was re-reading Joseph Smith\u2019s 1832 account of his First Vision as it is transcribed in the extremely important book Opening the Heavens: Accounts of Divine Manifestations, 1820-1844<\/em>, edited by John W. Welch with Erick B. Carlson (Provo and Salt Lake City: Brigham Young University Press and Deseret Book, 2005).\u00a0\u00a0A revised second edition of\u00a0Opening the Heavens\u00a0<\/em>is actually available now.\u00a0 It was published in 2017.\u00a0 I own it, and that\u2019s the one that I should have been using.\u00a0 I simply grabbed the wrong book yesterday as I headed out the door. But the earlier edition will serve my purpose here quite adequately.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n These sentences, on page 5, stood out to me, and not for the first time.\u00a0 They\u2019re from Joseph Smith, which is something of a rarity because they\u2019re both quite early and they\u2019re in his own handwriting. They offer a very simple stab in the direction of a basic natural theology:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I looked upon the sun the glorious luminary of the earth and also the moon rolling in their magesty through the heavens and also the stars shining in their courses and the earth also upon which I stood and the beast of the field and the fowls of heaven and the fish of the waters and also man walking forth upon the face of the earth in magesty and in the strength of beauty whose power and intiligence in governing the things which are so exceding great and marvilous even in the likeness of him who created them and when I considired upon these things my heart exclaimed well hath the wise man said it is a fool that saith in his heart there is no God my heart exclaimed all all these bear testimony and bespeak an omnipotant and omnipresant power a being who makith Laws and decreeeth and bindeth all things in their bounds who filleth Eternity who was and is and will be from all Eternity to Eternity.<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Such appeals to the physical cosmos, the visible natural world around us, as evidence for the existence of God and, to some degree at least, for his nature and character, are scattered throughout the scriptures.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Here, for example, is a famous passage (Psalm 19:1-2) ascribed to the ancient Israelite king David, as rendered in the English Standard Bible (ESV):<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n The heavens declare the glory of God,<\/span><\/span><\/strong> \u00a0<\/p>\n And here is the apostle Paul, taking aim at pagan idolatry and immorality in his letter to the Saints at Rome, also represented here in the ESV translation:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n For\u00a0the wrath of God\u00a0is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be\u00a0known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature,\u00a0have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world,\u00a0in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they\u00a0became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and\u00a0exchanged the glory of\u00a0the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.\u00a0<\/strong> (Romans 1:18-23)<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Consider, too, this part of the exchange between Alma, the Nephite chief priest, and the anti-Christ Korihor in the Book of Mormon:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n And now Korihor said unto Alma: If thou wilt show me a\u00a0sign, that I may be convinced that there is a God, yea, show unto me that he hath power, and then will I be convinced of the truth of thy words.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n But Alma said unto him: Thou hast had signs enough; will ye tempt your God? Will ye say, Show unto me a sign, when ye have the testimony of\u00a0all\u00a0these thy brethren, and also all the holy prophets? The scriptures are laid before thee, yea, and all things denote there is a God; yea, even the\u00a0earth, and\u00a0all\u00a0things that are upon the face of it, yea, and its\u00a0motion, yea, and also all the\u00a0planets\u00a0which move in their regular form do witness that there is a Supreme Creator.\u00a0 <\/strong>(Alma 30:43-44)<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Many of us, and perhaps even most of us, will have had the experience at least once or twice of contemplating a grand landscape or watching a beautiful sunset and having the sense wash over us, perhaps not very articulately, that there is something divine behind it.\u00a0 But I\u2019ll let a quartet of famous English poets speak for the less eloquent rest of us.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n William Wordsworth, who was \u2014 especially in his earlier life\u00a0 \u2014 a great Romantic poet of nature, wrote of<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n that blessed mood,<\/span><\/strong><\/span> \u00a0<\/p>\n Gerard Manley Hopkins believed that\u00a0\u201cThe world is charged with the grandeur of God.\u201d\u00a0 Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote that<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Earth\u2019s crammed with heaven, <\/strong><\/span> \u00a0<\/p>\n William Blake exhorted us<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n However, aren\u2019t such perceptions merely the sentimental, vague, and, in the end, rather irrational things that we can expect from, well, poets<\/em>?\u00a0 After all, nobody is going to confuse Walt Whitman or Emily Dickinson with Isaac Newton or James Clerk Maxwell.\u00a0 Intuition isn\u2019t the same thing as a reasoned argument.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n But at least some scientists have evidently had the same sense.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n The great seventeenth-century German astronomer and mathematician Johann Kepler reported of his revolutionary scientific insights that<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I was merely thinking God\u2019s thoughts after Him. Since we astronomers are priests of the highest God in regard to the book of nature, it benefits us to be thoughtful, not of the glory of our minds, but rather, above all else, of the glory of God.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n And the late Allan Sandage, one of the foremost astronomers of the latter half of the twentieth century \u2014 and, although I didn\u2019t realize it until too late, for many years a near neighbor of mine in San Gabriel, California, where I grew up \u2014 came to serious Christianity relatively late in his life on the basis of a similar sense:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n It was my science that drove me to the conclusion that the world is much more complicated than can be explained by science. It is only through the supernatural that I can understand the mystery of existence.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I find it quite improbable that such order came out of chaos. There has to be some organizing principle. God to me is a mystery, but is the explanation for the miracle of existence, why there is something instead of nothing.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n The world is too complicated in all parts and interconnections to be due to chance alone. I am convinced that the existence of life with all its order in each of its organisms is simply too well put together. Each part of a living thing depends on all its other parts to function. How does each part know? How is each part specified at conception? The more one learns of biochemistry the more unbelievable it becomes unless there is some type of organizing principle \u2014 an architect.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Albert Einstein wasn\u2019t by any stretch of the imagination an orthodox Jew, let alone a Christian.\u00a0 He didn\u2019t believe in a personal God, and he rejected the idea of personal immortality.\u00a0 But he also energetically rejected attempts to portray him as an atheist, and he was, in his way \u2014 and in a way relevant to this particular little mini-essay \u2014 profoundly religious.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty \u2014 it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute the truly religious attitude; in this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n I believe in Spinoza\u2019s God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n The most beautiful and most profound experience is the sensation of the mystical. It is the sower of all true science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their primitive forms \u2014 this knowledge, this feeling is at the center of true religiousness.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Even Charles Darwin, at one point, evidently published\u00a0an ode on the folly of atheism, with the biblical motto \u201cI am fearfully and wonderfully made,\u201d drawn from Psalm 139:14.\u00a0 The poem\u2019s first verse reads as follows:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Dull atheist, could a giddy dance\u00a0<\/strong><\/span>
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.<\/span><\/span><\/strong>
\nDay to day pours out speech,<\/span><\/strong>
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>and night to night reveals knowledge.<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n
\nIn which the burthen of the mystery,<\/span><\/strong><\/span>
\nIn which the heavy and the weary weight<\/span><\/strong><\/span>
\nOf all this unintelligible world,<\/span><\/strong><\/span>
\nIs lightened:\u2014that serene and blessed mood,<\/span><\/strong><\/span>
\nIn which the affections gently lead us on,\u2014<\/span><\/strong><\/span>
\nUntil, the breath of this corporeal frame<\/span><\/strong><\/span>
\nAnd even the motion of our human blood<\/span><\/strong><\/span>
\nAlmost suspended, we are laid asleep<\/span><\/strong><\/span>
\nIn body, and become a living soul:<\/span><\/strong><\/span>
\nWhile with an eye made quiet by the power<\/span><\/strong><\/span>
\nOf harmony, and the deep power of joy,<\/span><\/strong><\/span>
\nWe see into the life of things.<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n
\nAnd every common bush afire with God, <\/strong><\/span>
\nBut only he who sees takes off his shoes;<\/strong><\/span>
\nThe rest sit round and pluck blackberries.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n
\nOf atoms lawless hurl\u2019d<\/strong><\/span>
\nConstruct so wonderful, so wise,<\/strong><\/span>
\nSo harmonised a world?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n