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The Proverbial Elephant, Non-overlapping Magisteria, and Gifts of the Spirit

Posted on Oct 8, 2014 by Trevor in Religion

Preface: I can’t help but laugh at the ridiculous title of this post, but I swear to you that I tie all the ideas together.

The Blind Men and the Elephant

Many are familiar with the Indian proverb about the blind men and the elephant: several blind men following a path through the jungle suddenly encounter an elephant. They circle around it in an ad hoc fashion and begin to feel it with their hands. Then they begin to describe it to each other, yet with conflicting reports because each one is feeling a different part of the elephant. Although the men’s reports all differ from each other in major ways, they are all true as well.

I expanded this metaphor in a Sunday School lesson once. Instead of several men who were blind, I proposed that each of the men used only a single sense to “experience” the elephant. That is, one man described what he saw, one described what he heard, one described what he felt with his hands, and another described what he smelled. (Let’s exclude a man who tasted, because…. ew.) All the men attempted to describe the same elephant, yet used vary different tools to learn about it and very different ways to describe it.

The moral of the story–or at least one possible moral–is that the Truth can be perceived in many different ways, depending on your perspective and the “tools” you use.

Non-overlapping Magisteria

I’ve realized that this proverb is similar to Gould’s “non-overlapping magisteria”. Anyone who loves Venn diagrams can appreciate this one (or not, since there’s no overlap…).

Science is one magisterium, or domain of teaching authority, with its own tools and perception of truth, whereas religion is a totally separate one, also with its own tools and perception of truth. Neither domain is particularly suited to comment on the other, and attempts to mix them often yield messy results. Furthermore, when someone who is knowledgeable in one domain falsely supposes they understand another domain and attempts to comment expertly on it, they are likely to misunderstand it in fundamental ways.

For instance, suppose the man who sees the elephant and the man who touches the elephant get into a disagreement over who is more accurately approaching the Truth. Most of the time they’ll be talking past each other. Even in cases where they use the same word, it’ll likely have a different meaning to the other man.

However, if both magisteria are combined, we can get the best of both worlds. For instance, science isn’t particularly suited to give good answers to questions like:

• What’s the meaning of life?
• What should my values be?
• What course of action should I take in such-and-such scenario?

Those are questions that religion can answer very competently. Science, on the other hand, is particularly suited good for questions like:

• What effect does exercise have on our bodies?
• How can we prevent polio?
• How did humans evolve?

The Bridge

As I attend church and hear my co-religionists describe their beliefs, their reasons for having them, and why they think it matters, I often feel like one of the men encountering an elephant. My fellow Mormons have seen it, and they describe the visuals with glee, but I have only touch and no eyes. The end result is that my beliefs, my reasons for having them, and why I think it matters can be pretty different. If I dwell on these differences, I quickly feel like an outsider, despite being in a building full of friends and neighbors.

I often feel like sight is the only sense held in high esteem, and nobody’s interested in what touch can teach us. Or it seems that most people think that that sight is the “true way “of experiencing the world, and all the other senses are at best leftovers. Yet there is a scripture passage in Mormonism that helps me move forward.

Gifts of the Spirit

[F]or there are many gifts, and to every man is given a gift by the Spirit of God. To some is given one, and to some is given another, that all may be profited thereby. – D&C 46:11-12

This passage in Doctrine and Covenants often passes by unexamined, I believe. The typical way to read it this section is as a simple, rote list of the various spiritual gifts available. Terryl Givens, among others, has spoken and written about a deeper idea this passage conveys: we need to more fully appreciate the meaning of the diversity of gifts given to people. In the contemporary church, such a lopsided emphasis is placed on certainty (“knowing”) and having a testimony of a particular shape and color, but we neglect to “see” that this emphasis might unintentionally exclude people who lack certain gifts. We collectively miss out on the different vantage point (and accompanying benefits) that those gifts can bring to the church.

President Uchtdorf, to my deep appreciation, touched on this topic in the recent General Conference. He said:

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is a place for people with all kinds of testimonies. There are some members of the Church whose testimony is sure and burns brightly within them. Others are still striving to know for themselves. The Church is a home for all to come together, regardless of the depth or the height of our testimony. I know of no sign on the doors of our meetinghouses that says, “Your testimony must be this tall to enter.”

–Receiving a Testimony of Light and Truth

To bring this full circle, by considering the advantages that other spiritual gifts bring to the table, we gain the benefit of multiple domains of knowledge, tools, and experiences. Each domain has intrinsic value and we should seek to learn from them.

Tags: belief, faith, featured, inclusion, intellectual integrity, unity