I am not new to Mormonism or science, but the two halves of my life have gradually come into greater and greater conflict throughout my life. I was raised Mormon, baptized at age 8 by my dad who is an engineer who loves space and took my brother and me to the Clark Planetarium often growing up. My mom was born in Maputo, Mozambique to Portuguese born parents and grew up in apartheid South Africa (she became Mormon later). Between my dad who loved science and my mom who did not grow up as a Mormon, I was not as fully immersed in the Mormon culture as most of my friends. The first day I realized this fact was November 5, 1996. My second grade teacher had us vote for President on that election day. It had never occurred to me that I was in the minority. Ever. I was sitting next to my best friend Rachel watching as my teacher tallied up the votes on the board. In a class of 25, I was one of four to vote for Bill Clinton. Now, did I have any clue really the difference between Clinton and Dole? No. All I knew was that my mom talked favorably about Clinton. I asked Rachel who she voted for, and of course she said Bob Dole. Even at age eight I understood that this meant that my family was not quite the same as everyone else.
Why does it matter that my family was different? As a child I wasn't sure, but today I know. My older brother graduated from high school and went to UC Berkeley, I graduated four years later and went to Cornell University, and this year my sister is graduating and going to the University of Tampa. We were different as children and weren't afraid to stay different later. My dad had attended the University of Utah (along with every member of his side of the family) so it was unprecedented when Tony decided that he wanted to go out of state. We did the whole college tour thing, I saw schools like MIT and Harvard, UCLA and Berkeley. When I started looking at colleges, I already knew I didn't have to stay in Utah and I didn't want to.
I was not confined by Mormon culture to being a stay at home mom (or, it could be put like this: I was not indoctrinated into believing that being a stay at home mom was wonderful and fulfilling). My mom did stay home until I was eight (quite the turning point year in my life clearly). But I could always tell she wasn't really completely happy. Not that she didn't love us or enjoy raising us, but that she wanted to be a productive member of society. It wasn't hard to see actually. Before she got a job, my mom would make crafts (paint wood crafts house decorations or cross stitch wall hangings) and sell them at a local craft store. My mom was an excellent artist and it seemed to alleviate her feelings of impatience with her life. It wasn't really a surprise to me at all when she got a job at Delta Airlines part time. I didn't know it at the time, but I later learned that my mom had been in law school in Johannesburg when she converted to Mormonism and moved to Utah. She had always thought she would work and it was hard for her to give up the mindset.
My mom's job had a double influence in our lives as kids. We flew (fly) for free. Anywhere Delta flies. By the time I was fifteen I'd been to most major cities in Western Europe and most Central American countries. Once you've become comfortable seeing so many different cultures and people you lose your fear of leaving. I was not even kind of afraid of leaving the Mormon belt of Arizona, Utah, and Idaho. I already knew that most people are good and that Mormonism is not the only way to be a happy person.
So, I did not see a problem with going to an expensive college to get a great life for myself and doing it somewhere else. I am decently talented at academics meaning I am pretty good at knowing how to get good grades. In elementary school I was in a satellite program for gifted and talented students. That program did a lot for my abilities as a student and was actually an early networking program. At our high school graduation more than five years after they split us up to different junior highs and long after we were very good friends anymore, they announced all the 'different' colleges people were going to. All of the out of state colleges except one or two out of eight or nine were from my little gifted class (our graduating class had 711 students). One kid went to Princeton, one girl went to the Royal Academy of Music in London, another kid went to the Naval Academy, etc. (The reality is there are a lot of smart kids in Utah who could go to great colleges but simply don't care to leave the Mormon belt).
So the point of all this: I went to an Ivy League school and studied science.
While I went to Cornell, I came to recognize that my religion and my studies could not fundamentally challenge one another. Mormonism is built on faith and testimony while science is built on experimentation to achieve facts. This is not the post where I will discuss the details of those concepts, but it is sufficient to say that I do not think that science can disprove God or religion dispute science because they are incompatible.
In fact, it was Ithaca itself that has somehow created a conflict in the religious half of my life. You see, Utah Mormonism has a lot of self contained culture (you know, the part of Mormonism that I just described not fitting into) but in Ithaca, NY I went to a Cornell student branch. That branch was the best religious environment I have ever been involved in. We had married and single students (I started single, eventually got married) and we were small, say about 80 people total. Well, Cornell is a pretty liberal school so we had quite a few liberal thinking academics alongside traditionally minded Mormons. But even the people in that branch that were traditional Mormons were very smart people and had put a lot of thought into their beliefs and contributed to thought provoking discussions with the moderate and liberal Mormons in the branch. I was able to really grow as a person and develop more beliefs and knowledge of why I believed certain things. I was also able to come to term with certain aspects of Mormonism (ex: I don't know why we don't drink coffee, I understand there are studies showing coffee has plenty of health benefits. I also will acknowledge coffee is healthier for you than the aspartame filled diet soda I drink instead and so health is probably not the reason for Mormons not drinking it). The liberal culture of Ithaca plus being in a university setting still made us feel conservative but intelligently so. There was much less blind acceptance of any belief than anywhere else I have been.
Of course, all good things must come to an end. I graduated from Cornell in 2011, got married two weeks later, and started my PhD in biology two weeks after that. This is the point in my life when I started to notice the escalating conflict in my life. Now I'm back in a ward not too different from the one I grew up in. I live in San Diego which one might expect to be a liberal place given that it is 1) a city and 2) in California (which currently has a super majority of democrats in both the houses of congress) however, San Diego has like four military bases and is one of the most conservative (big) cities in the US. So, our ward here is a lot of military families and is huge. I feel totally lost most of the time because I fit in less here than I ever did as a kid. At least as a kid I had a class of kids my age who went to school with me and related to my general life experience. Now, I am older than the young women and younger than the relief society. I am the only girl who is a graduate student and since I'm married I only have limited interactions with the men who are students. I feel like adulthood has come to fast and isolated me from the few people I have similarities with. Plus, I'm not very social. I prefer to read books at home to meeting new people and going out.
If I were to go out, I would go with people I know. Here, the only people I'm very comfortable with are the students in my PhD class. Science and academics also have a culture all their own. Being a lot newer to the science culture, it is harder for me to pinpoint all the details, but for certain scientists are very forward thinking and benefit a lot from the democratic party thinking (i.e. funding for science/academics is good!). There is obsession with your work and then much needed breaks (which range from innocent dinners to hard core clubbing). In Mormonism, it is very common to be married by your early 20's. In my PhD class, there are 32 students and only 4 are married and I am the only one of those four who is under 30. Most of the girls imagine having families in their thirties when they've long since finished their PhD and are very secure in a professorship or an industrial job.
It is the cultural conflict that has my life all confused.
Why does it matter that my family was different? As a child I wasn't sure, but today I know. My older brother graduated from high school and went to UC Berkeley, I graduated four years later and went to Cornell University, and this year my sister is graduating and going to the University of Tampa. We were different as children and weren't afraid to stay different later. My dad had attended the University of Utah (along with every member of his side of the family) so it was unprecedented when Tony decided that he wanted to go out of state. We did the whole college tour thing, I saw schools like MIT and Harvard, UCLA and Berkeley. When I started looking at colleges, I already knew I didn't have to stay in Utah and I didn't want to.
I was not confined by Mormon culture to being a stay at home mom (or, it could be put like this: I was not indoctrinated into believing that being a stay at home mom was wonderful and fulfilling). My mom did stay home until I was eight (quite the turning point year in my life clearly). But I could always tell she wasn't really completely happy. Not that she didn't love us or enjoy raising us, but that she wanted to be a productive member of society. It wasn't hard to see actually. Before she got a job, my mom would make crafts (paint wood crafts house decorations or cross stitch wall hangings) and sell them at a local craft store. My mom was an excellent artist and it seemed to alleviate her feelings of impatience with her life. It wasn't really a surprise to me at all when she got a job at Delta Airlines part time. I didn't know it at the time, but I later learned that my mom had been in law school in Johannesburg when she converted to Mormonism and moved to Utah. She had always thought she would work and it was hard for her to give up the mindset.
My mom's job had a double influence in our lives as kids. We flew (fly) for free. Anywhere Delta flies. By the time I was fifteen I'd been to most major cities in Western Europe and most Central American countries. Once you've become comfortable seeing so many different cultures and people you lose your fear of leaving. I was not even kind of afraid of leaving the Mormon belt of Arizona, Utah, and Idaho. I already knew that most people are good and that Mormonism is not the only way to be a happy person.
So, I did not see a problem with going to an expensive college to get a great life for myself and doing it somewhere else. I am decently talented at academics meaning I am pretty good at knowing how to get good grades. In elementary school I was in a satellite program for gifted and talented students. That program did a lot for my abilities as a student and was actually an early networking program. At our high school graduation more than five years after they split us up to different junior highs and long after we were very good friends anymore, they announced all the 'different' colleges people were going to. All of the out of state colleges except one or two out of eight or nine were from my little gifted class (our graduating class had 711 students). One kid went to Princeton, one girl went to the Royal Academy of Music in London, another kid went to the Naval Academy, etc. (The reality is there are a lot of smart kids in Utah who could go to great colleges but simply don't care to leave the Mormon belt).
So the point of all this: I went to an Ivy League school and studied science.
While I went to Cornell, I came to recognize that my religion and my studies could not fundamentally challenge one another. Mormonism is built on faith and testimony while science is built on experimentation to achieve facts. This is not the post where I will discuss the details of those concepts, but it is sufficient to say that I do not think that science can disprove God or religion dispute science because they are incompatible.
In fact, it was Ithaca itself that has somehow created a conflict in the religious half of my life. You see, Utah Mormonism has a lot of self contained culture (you know, the part of Mormonism that I just described not fitting into) but in Ithaca, NY I went to a Cornell student branch. That branch was the best religious environment I have ever been involved in. We had married and single students (I started single, eventually got married) and we were small, say about 80 people total. Well, Cornell is a pretty liberal school so we had quite a few liberal thinking academics alongside traditionally minded Mormons. But even the people in that branch that were traditional Mormons were very smart people and had put a lot of thought into their beliefs and contributed to thought provoking discussions with the moderate and liberal Mormons in the branch. I was able to really grow as a person and develop more beliefs and knowledge of why I believed certain things. I was also able to come to term with certain aspects of Mormonism (ex: I don't know why we don't drink coffee, I understand there are studies showing coffee has plenty of health benefits. I also will acknowledge coffee is healthier for you than the aspartame filled diet soda I drink instead and so health is probably not the reason for Mormons not drinking it). The liberal culture of Ithaca plus being in a university setting still made us feel conservative but intelligently so. There was much less blind acceptance of any belief than anywhere else I have been.
Of course, all good things must come to an end. I graduated from Cornell in 2011, got married two weeks later, and started my PhD in biology two weeks after that. This is the point in my life when I started to notice the escalating conflict in my life. Now I'm back in a ward not too different from the one I grew up in. I live in San Diego which one might expect to be a liberal place given that it is 1) a city and 2) in California (which currently has a super majority of democrats in both the houses of congress) however, San Diego has like four military bases and is one of the most conservative (big) cities in the US. So, our ward here is a lot of military families and is huge. I feel totally lost most of the time because I fit in less here than I ever did as a kid. At least as a kid I had a class of kids my age who went to school with me and related to my general life experience. Now, I am older than the young women and younger than the relief society. I am the only girl who is a graduate student and since I'm married I only have limited interactions with the men who are students. I feel like adulthood has come to fast and isolated me from the few people I have similarities with. Plus, I'm not very social. I prefer to read books at home to meeting new people and going out.
If I were to go out, I would go with people I know. Here, the only people I'm very comfortable with are the students in my PhD class. Science and academics also have a culture all their own. Being a lot newer to the science culture, it is harder for me to pinpoint all the details, but for certain scientists are very forward thinking and benefit a lot from the democratic party thinking (i.e. funding for science/academics is good!). There is obsession with your work and then much needed breaks (which range from innocent dinners to hard core clubbing). In Mormonism, it is very common to be married by your early 20's. In my PhD class, there are 32 students and only 4 are married and I am the only one of those four who is under 30. Most of the girls imagine having families in their thirties when they've long since finished their PhD and are very secure in a professorship or an industrial job.
It is the cultural conflict that has my life all confused.
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