As we consider our modern dilemma, it seems important to try to get to the root of the problems in our economic, political, educational, and social life as a culture. We see that the problems are enormous. It seems to me that the crux of the problems can be focused on how we try to get answers to our problems.
Socialism, as an enterprise, is sweeping the world. It has a very particular answer to the problems of mankind. It is my belief that this answer is mistaken, but nevertheless, most educated people today believe in this answer. Therefore, it is important to understand the answer, to know how to meet the challenge and to be able to offer something better in its place.
First. I take it first of all that the intellectual basis of socialism is that the wisdom of men is sufficient to solve all human problems. Now, breaking this down into four parts we might, so to speak, take apart the socialistic outlook. The socialistic outlook today is basically a faith in science. In the first place, we live in an age when physical science has given men important control over many problems and great technological ability. Most people would say, if you would query them, that it is only a matter of time until all significant physical problems are solved by scientists, only a matter of time until we can completely control our environment as to light, heat, warmth, perhaps food, clothing, sickness, disease; all these things will be controlled. But they are willing to admit that this is not yet the case and it will take some time for this to happen.
Second. Because of the tremendous prestige which physical science has, people are want to say that social science has progressed far enough that we know how to solve our problems. A typical answer given by most people today is that since we have so much understanding of the economic situation, that a collapse such as that of 1929 is forever impossible now in our enlightened age. It is my belief that future events and even present events show that we are not yet that knowledgeable nor powerful in the realm of social affairs.
But the consensus of opinion, nevertheless, is that social scientists know how to control and solve our social problems and, therefore, it is only a matter of giving these scientists enough power so that they can create a utopia. Those who resist the giving of power to them are looked upon as traitors to mankind, those who would hold back progress of the human race. So, those who believe in science as the panacea for all human problems see that the principal barrier to human progress and happiness is a reactionary attitude which resists the scientists, that wants to put checks on what we do, that wants to have people have determination of their own affairs. People with faith in science are want to say, “Let’s give power to the scientist, let’s make him the governor of controlling boards, let’s let him recommend the legislation, let’s let him set up the government agencies that can take care of our human needs.”
Now, because religion in the last one hundred years has been a principal source of resistance against the encroachments of scientific power, religion is looked upon as a principal enemy to mankind by socialists, saying that it is the “opiate of the people”. Religion today is looked upon, if it holds to any theological commitments, as a reactionary force that binds men to primitive thinking, to medieval institutions, and the only way that man can progress is either to change his church and religion into a progressive system that incorporates social science, or to reject it altogether. I think this is the reason why we see most of the churches of our nation turning to social action as the basis for religious commitment and they neglect anything to do with personal morality as being intrinsic or significant any longer. They preach situational ethics in which anything goes, anything that is, except reaction to or resistance to, the encroachments of social science upon our personal, private decisions.
Those who are enamored of science as the panacea, thus see that the principal problem is to gain control of all educational processes and information sources. Once having gained control of these aspects of our life, then the humanizing of all cultural institutions can take place rapidly. Religions can be converted to civil action movements, students in school can be converted to believe in scientists, they can be taught to look to the government for the solution to all their problems.
People of this kind of thought are not above forceful restraint of reactionary minorities such as religious groups, and I think this is evident in our country as we see attacks upon anyone who would resist the forward movement and increased power of agencies employing the concepts of social science. This, of course, refers to anybody who would believe in “constitutional” government, in religious scruples, in a belief that the private sector of our national life ought to be the most important and crucial sector.
The net socialist outlook then is that science is the hope of mankind. In science and through science will come all the responsible, reliable answers to the problems of humanity and, therefore, to give science its head and let it lead us where it will is the only intelligent course of action. Because of this belief in science, I take it that modern science, when used this way, becomes a Tower of Babel. It becomes a false way of gaining heaven. I say false way because notwithstanding the great prestige that science has in our age, its accomplishments in solving social problems are highly limited and its failures are notable. A little bit later I will discuss the basic reason for these failures. But at least we can see, I think without reservation, that science is the false god to which the modern world has turned. It rejects the true god and insists upon this god of its own making and its own image. In ancient times men used to create gods of wood and of stone and fall down and worship them. Now men create gods of ideas and fall down and worship them and are just as willing to persecute and destroy those who will not follow this mode of worship as were the ancients.
Now the opposition, the only effective opposition in the world to the socialist outlook, is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Other religions, other churches, are fast being destroyed under the onslaught of socialistic thinking, the worship of science. But the Gospel of Jesus Christ teaches men quite a contrary understanding of life. It teaches men that their human way will never solve their problems. Only the ways of God are sufficiently powerful to solve the problems that face humanity. And so those who believe the Gospel of Jesus Christ believe that only in Christ can every good thing be obtained. They look to Christ for the solution of their social and personal problems as well as the solving of their purely physical problems, such as those which are ordinarily solved by the method of science. Now this is not to say that a servant of Christ will reject science. He may indeed want to study it and become a proficient scientist, but the point is that he will never put his main trust in it. He will never see it as the way of answering his problems. Rather will he see faith in Christ as the way to becoming a more proficient, a more powerful, a better knower, a better scientist. For he knows that Jesus Christ is his God. He looks to the Savior who was a man but was also a God and is now a living true God, a being who knows all, can do all, and is morally perfect. He looks to Christ as the source and repository of all good things and his hope for the obtaining of all good things. A person who has a testimony of Jesus Christ knows that through the laws and ordinances of the gospel men can received this power which Christ has and thus receive answers to all of their problems. So, the way to solve the problems of mankind is faith in Jesus Christ, repentance from all of our sins, covenanting with Christ through the ordinances of baptism, receiving the Gift of the Holy Ghost by the laying on of hands by those who have authority to bestow it and enduring in righteousness to the end.
Now this simple formula, age old, is the only formula with the power to save man. It is the hope of every person in whose breast is the spark of righteousness and the love of truth. Any person who tries to be righteous, will through his own experiments discover that he cannot be righteous by himself. He may try to do good but the power to deliver, to guarantee, is not in him and he finds that only when he turns to our Lord and Savior can he be sure that his works will be effective in doing the greatest good for men. So he looks to the laws and ordinances of the Gospel. He knows the Gospel works because he has tried it: he knows that he will be able to do good. Those who believe the Gospel see that the principal barrier to human progress is the unwillingness of hardened hearts to accept the testimony of Christ, the unwillingness of stiff necks to bow to the Savior and Lord of all men. It is the unwillingness of men to humble themselves and admit that they know almost nothing about the world and that they don’t know how to solve its problems, thus to be able to come unto Christ as little children and to receive the power and to be able to be strengthened by and through and in Him. Because most of mankind have hard hearts and stiff necks, they cannot come unto Christ. They continue in breaking the commandments of God and as they do this, they fix upon themselves the chains of hell more and more surely.
What can a servant of Christ then do to bring about the emancipation of mankind, to bring about freedom, to do something about the encroachments of socialism? I think it is plain that the only sure and safe and efficient course of solving the problems of mankind and of helping other people, is to bear witness of Christ and of the principles of the Gospel and to invite and entice them to come to the fountain of all righteousness and begin to receive blessing from Christ. It is my testimony that as we look over the world, anywhere we see any person who does any good thing, it is because they have in some measure partaken of the truth and employing the truth they are able to do good in their lives. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is the collection of all truth that relates to the problems of mankind and if any man wants to have all blessings and do all good, his only hope is to come unto Christ and receive that power from Him. Men throughout the world are left without excuse because they do have in their hearts a knowledge of right and wrong and when the Gospel message comes to them, they know by that same power which tells them of right and wrong, good and evil, that Jesus is the Christ, that He is the way and the hope, the salvation and the succor for all mankind. So, the net Gospel outlook is then, that we must turn to Christ. The conclusion is that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the antidote for every problem of human beings and specifically for this sickness that causes men to worship their own minds and to build a Tower of Babel in this day, even as has been done in past times.
Now let us turn to part three and see if we can explain clearly why science cannot save man. First of all, science cannot solve value problems. Science does a magnificent job of describing the things that go on in the world and of establishing correlations. But it can only state correlations. It cannot tell us the real causes of things. It can only tell us what sorts of things go together. This is especially so, and note worthily so, in the area of social science. But more important for the present moment is the idea that science cannot solve value problems. It might be able to tell a person how he can nourish himself better. It might be able to tell him how to get rid of a certain disease which arises from malnutrition, but it can’t tell him whether he ought to be rid of that disease or not. It cannot assure him that perhaps a disease might be of benefit to his soul and maybe the disease is put there so that he might receive strength to his spirit. Science can have nothing to do with that. Science cannot show him that maybe in the economy of the Lord certain problems are given to mankind that they might suffer, and that through their suffering they might learn obedience. To be able to solve value problems, science would have to see all the scope of eternity, to be able to project the courses of all actions infinitely into the future and to determine the specific nature of each human being and see what would be best for him. Now, God can do both of those things. He has all knowledge and can see what is best for each person, but for science to make value judgments is to become unscientific because the evidence that science has does not warrant any value judgments. Furthermore, for scientists to make value judgments is to arrogate to themselves the omniscience and priesthood prerogatives of God and this becomes clearly a form of anti-Christ. The net result of this idea is that no program of actions is scientific because action always involves goals and goals involve values. Now, if someone says: I want to build a house; science can help him to build that house well, but the judgment that he wants to build a house and should build a house is always non-scientific. It depends upon factors that science can never demonstrate or substantiate. Secondly, it is important to realize that science deals with generalizations, with types. The net effect of this is to destroy the individual. As science, science cannot deal with the individual. It can only typify human beings and treat them as if they were all roughly similar. Typical examples of the group approach, or the typifying approach by which science distorts reality can be seen in our schools where teachers grade on the curve. To grade on the curve is to take the class as the important thing, the group, and to say that the individual members of the group are not important. Scientists treat humanity in this way in general. They say it’s the group that is important and not the individual. Thank goodness that in the Gospel of Jesus Christ it is just the reverse. There is no mention of group salvation. Salvation is always individual. Salvation may be for family units which are groups, but the qualifying for place in family unit is always done as an individual. The Gospel preserves, exalts, promotes the individual integrity of each human being, his own individual worth. Whereas the necessary course of science is to average human beings, to take away their personality, their identity, to force them to be like other people. The net result then of science is that it represses individuality and in so doing represses the very thing a person needs to live the Gospel of Jesus Christ which is to assert themselves as an individual, to dare to be different from one’s peers, to dare to be a servant of Christ in the midst of a world of unbelievers.
Third. Science can deal skillfully with areas where the variables can be controlled. The science which has made most progress in the last four to five hundred years is physics, and this is simply because, or for the main reason because, science needs to be able to control the variables to be able to progress, and in physics we can control the variables more easily than in any other science simply because there are fewer pertinent variables in the thing that we study. So, physics has made the most progress. When we go to the other end of the spectrum in science to psychology and social science there is a situation where there are literally hundreds of variables. Now statisticians will tell us that they can account for and average out these factors. And indeed they can for the group. They can show you marvelous statistical analyses where group variants become rather sure and where they can guarantee that certain factors can be controlled out. But you see they do this only for groups and never for individuals and therefore, the individual yet remains stultified, codified, and shorn of his individuality through these approaches. It is dealing with the individual that counts because when you stop to think of it, only individuals exist. All groups of people are artificial ideas in our own minds. We group them because of our own convenience in thinking about them. But they exist as individuals and therefore the only system that can help them with their problems is a system that treats them as individuals. The net result of this is that social science engineering, because it cannot control the factors, relative to either groups or individuals, must set up a false image of the world and on the basis of this false image it projects programs, ideas, projects and attempts to enforce them upon mankind. In so doing it rides rough-shod over the tender individuality, over the integrity of each individual child of our Father in Heaven.
Fourthly, and most important. Man is a dual being. He is not just a body. He has also a spirit and his spirit is the most important thing about him. This spirit is a source of his success and the source of his greatest difficulties. He can solve his problems, spiritual and physical, only by solving his spiritual problem. Science cannot take account of the spiritual realm at all. To be science, it must deny the existence of the spirit being of man. Therefore, to prefer science to Christ is to reject the very reality which is the source of man’s problems and his hope of progress. To prefer science to Christ is to be an Anti-Christ. It is to be blind, it is to prefer darkness to light and this rejection dooms all those who participate in it to spiritual damnation. Since the spiritual is the key to our physical problems, this leads also to physical damnation. It is noteworthy that notwithstanding social science as we have it today, our American civilization is faced with its greatest crises since its beginning. Not since the dark days of the revolution has our government been in such peril and never have our people been in such peril. But this is because man has become enamored of his own thoughts. He has come to believe that he is a god, and that he can solve his own problems. Those who are asked why then hasn’t science solved the problems will say, well, because scientists don’t yet have enough power. So if you would give them all power and make them absolute dictators over our economy, our education, our social life, how we make our friends, how we run our churches, they would be able to straighten everything out and then all would be peaceful and wonderful. But the more they do in this, the more disastrous we see it is and the worse situations get. So the point is, we are locked in a head-on conflict. Those who worship science see those of us who believe in Christ as the principal force that blocks the progress of humankind. They even see themselves engaged in a crusade to try and save mankind. They see that perhaps, if necessary, they will have to take measures against us. Perhaps to eliminate us physically so that the ground can be cleared for the progress and conclusion of scientific government. Those of us who worship Christ know that the Savior will never let them do that, but in the meantime, we must bear our witness, we must be sure that we are not espousing the right cause for the wrong reason. We must be servants of Christ, doing his work, doing his will at all times and places, promoting his cause. President McKay has commended to us to read Section 121 of the D&C wherein we are told that no power or influence ought to be exercised on the souls of men except in love and kindness, in long-suffering, in pure knowledge without hypocrisy and without guile. The hope of mankind is that those who do have answers will work that way, that the servants of Christ will not use the tools of Satan, but that they in the simplicity of a child of Christ will go forth bearing their witness in the world, showing forth the good works of the Master. Our Savior, then, might come forth and sustain them, and bless them, and prosper their works and protect them and bless them that their enemies will not vanquish them. We, as servants of Christ, have nothing to fear. The enemy can hurt us physically. But should we come to fear physically and begin to fight the enemy with his own weapons, if we begin to exercise unrighteous dominion and try to force people, even psychologically, to believe as we do, then we have given ourselves over to the means of the adversary, and we have given ourselves to the goals of the adversary. It is my hope that we can serve Christ, and him alone. I hope we all remember that science is not of itself bad. Science is good but it is not the greatest good. It can be used for evil. And when it is used for evil to tyrannize the lives of men and take away their individuality, to detract from their worship of Christ, it becomes the Tower of Babel. But if we can turn to Christ and serve him, then we can become the world’s greatest benefactors and show men both physically and spiritually that Jesus is indeed the Christ, and very God of heaven and earth.
I bear you my testimony, that I know that Jesus Christ is our hope, and it is my hope and prayer that we will serve him and be effective in the cause of righteousness that we might promote true peace and happiness on this earth. I say it in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.