In his early years before founding the Mormon church, Joseph Smith admitted that he sought after gold through magical means. Some might argue that his search for "magic" never ended, that the "golden plates" which he translated by use of seer stones in a hat were an extension of the same search. I personally honor Joseph Smith as a prophet, despite some serious flaws, but I have wondered sometimes how often Mormons talk about the power of God as if it were magic. What's the difference, you might ask? Isn't religion itself just a more socially sanctioned way of talking about superstition?
In many ways, I consider Mormonism to be the most "scientific" of religions. Before you scoff at this, let me explain. When I was in grad school, I studied Hume's "Of Miracles" in "An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding" where he argues that a miracle is "a violation of the law of nature." I argued with my professor that not all religions believed that miracles defied the laws of the universe. In fact, I told him that Mormons believe that God always follows the laws of the universe, only sometimes not always the laws as we understand them incompletely in our mortal state. My professor thought my religion was very strange indeed. I claimed that Mormonism did not require us to suspend our belief in any of our practical knowledge. I sometimes tell my friends who write science fiction that Mormonism is a science fiction writer's dream religion--and this isn't just because Battlestar Galactica's original writer Glen Larson was a Mormon.
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