Did anyone watch Law & Order last night on NBC? If you didn’t, you missed an interesting parody based on the events that transpired in Texas with the FLDS Church. Instead of the FLDS Church it was The Church of the Path. Today’s guest post is by The Captain. Continue reading…
The first talk of the Priesthood session reminded me of a man I met on my mission. His wife had died and he told us of all the things he had done in worship and prayer to seek God’s help. He complained of how he had come up so empty. The list he gave us consisted of various forms of emotionalism.
He was Catholic, but obviously had gone somewhere else for comfort (and, bless his heart, seemed to be blaming his priest). I was struck by how he was substituting emotional processes for spiritual ones. I have seen that process many, many times since. I consider it a terrible mistake.
Who wrote this, and why wouldn’t the Correlation Committee allow it to be published today?
Every teacher is obligated by his responsibility to others to become a scholar in the gospel. Continue reading…
Today’s guest post is from The Captain. The urban dictionary defines the term persecution complex as follows:
One of the top fifteen factors that can transform a reasonable, amiable, friendly person with reasonable, friendly beliefs and ideas into a ranting, screaming, judgmental zealot with poisonous, nauseating, self-righteous dreck for beliefs.
“History is opaque. You see what comes out, not the script that produces events, the generator of history. There is a fundamental incompleteness in your grasp of such events, since you do not see what’s inside the box, how the mechanisms work. …the minds of the gods cannot be read just by witnessing their deeds. You are very likely to be fooled about their intentions.” (The Black Swan, P. 8 )
In a previous post I discussed the realities of The Black Swan, those improbable events that rule our lives but we pretend don’t and can’t happen. I also discussed how in actuality “randomness” is really just incomplete information. And finally I discussed how we feel the need to reverse engineer explanation for historical events — even though it’s impossible — and how, once we do, we have a really hard time realizing that there is more than one viable explanation for the same event. [1]
Which brings me to how this all directly relates to the LDS Church and specifically to the intolerance we show each other on the Bloggernacle at times. It is all directly related to two facts:
- History is a collection of facts demanding interpretation before we can process them.
- Thus all history is mostly narrative fallacy.
To the teachers out there, sorry if this one is coming a day late and a dollar short. Our ward is a month behind on these due to Stake & Ward Conferences. Mea culpa.
Sometimes we forget that the early restored church focused a lot on the millenium, which many of them believed was imminent. As if they didn’t have enough stress! Continue reading…
The Relief Society teacher was teaching the lesson on the signs of the Second Coming, and she was writing these events on the board as fast as we sisters could shout them out. “Wars,” “Rumors of wars,” “Pestilence,” “Earthquakes,” she wrote. Then came an unusual one:
“The waters of the Dead Sea will be healed.” Continue reading…
In my previous post, I discussed my introduction to the science behind the rationality problems all humans suffer from. I later found another book, this one called Evil Genes: Why Rome Fell, Hitler Rose, Enron Failed, and My Sister Stole My Mother’s Boyfriend, that introduced me to the biology behind our emotional – and sometimes irrational — thinking.
This time, I’m going to mostly just go with quotes from the book, as they say it all: Continue reading…
THE NEW MORMON BRAND
In my view the Prop 8 campaign in California that just ended has turned out to be a fiasco for the Church. I had assumed and hoped it would fail but we have all lost by winning. This post is not about the issue of same sex marriage but expresses my view that the Church leaders have shot themselves and all of us in the foot. Quite apart from the astoundingly divisive nature of the effort it has created a new toxic image of the Church that is going to stick around for an awfully long time. This is my view of how the Church will be viewed and portrayed by those not of our faith.
In my last post I talked about how God helped me develop a more realistic, though uncomfortable, world view that excluded faith in myself. As it turns out, there is scientific backing for this view. The first book that introduced me to that science is called The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb (from here on I’ll abbreviate NNT). Continue reading…
BH Roberts predicted that if church leaders did not address the historical problems of church origins and possible anachronisms in the Book of Mormon, these problems would eventually undermine “the faith of the Youth of the Church.
Something I have noticed on the Gay Marriage debates is what causes people to change their minds, and it is generally social proof. More, what I am seeing has caused me to think that arguing over gay marriage may be the wrong argument to be having.
Continue reading…
You probably know the Primary song about Sunday observance by heart:
Saturday is a special day
It’s the day we get ready for Sunday
We brush our teeth and we go to the bathroom
So we don’t have to do it ’til Monday
Well, that’s how my sister and I used to sing it anyway. So, how liberal or orthodox is your interpretation of Sunday observance?
Ironically, some of you with “strong testimonies” may think that those struggling with their testimony make only a small percentage of us here today. The converse is also true; many of you who are “struggling” yourselves may believe that you are the only one in the ward that thinks or feels what you do or that there are only a few of you at best. The truth, however, is that most of us, if not all of us, are struggling to some degree—(admittedly, some more than others). For although many of us stand at this pulpit once a month and testify of things that we “know,” for most of us these things are merely things that we have accepted and in which we have practiced faith successfully. Today’s post is from guest blogger Matt Lorenzen. Continue reading…
Does this represent Bill Marriott taking a stand?
What does this mean?
Here’s another quote from a discarded Church manual predating Correlation. Who said it and why wouldn’t it fly in today’s Church?:
The pragmatic or experimental view of life has penetrated widely into the educational program of America, in the form known as Progressive Education…Most teachers who accept some of these ideas would indignantly reject any suggestion that the universe is naturalistic or Godless, that there are no fundamental moral truths, or that man is really an animal in the ultimate sense. Continue reading…
Here’s an exercise for the ‘Nacle
If you had complete control of the church, what would you change?
The only 3 requirements are that any change must lead to:
1) Equivalent or increase of church membership
2) Equivalent or increase in member’s willingness to commit time to the church
3) Equivalent or increase in tithing receipts
Any takers?
For those interested in seeing video footage of the recent protests at the LDS temple in Los Angeles, see the links below:
Fights in front of temple wall and in the street
Angry protesters shake temple gates (WARNNG: Explicit language. Parental guidance is suggested.)
Photo gallery of protests at LA Temple & elsewhere
More below.
This lesson discusses the written correspondence Joseph sent to Emma during his frequent absences. IMO, this is a tough lesson for many reasons, so read on to see how you would make the most of it. Continue reading…
For some time, Mormon bloggers have lamented the fact that there was no wide-reaching aggregator that featured solo Mormon-themed blogs. Dr. B. has, for the past few months, been attempting to remedy this situation. Shortly after he started the endeavor, which he calls Mormon Blogosphere, Elder Ballard’s “call to blog” inspired a proliferation of bloggers who post on LDS subjects. This caused a problem for Dr. B.’s new project. Originally he had in mind to include all solo Mormon blogs, wherever he could find them. But he soon discovered that there were now too many. It took a while for him to whittle the group down to a manageable size. But he is confident that he has now created a place where “the little people” can be found. On Mormon Blogosphere the blog enthusiast can, at a glance, see what an array of quality Mormon blogs have recently posted.
Dr. B. hopes to include on the Mormon Blogosphere all the solo blogs with themes of interest to the Mormon reader. Sometimes this is easy to identify. All of the blogs under his heading “Theology, History, and Doctrine” will appeal to the general Mormon reader. But as you can see while perusing his aggregator, there are a huge number of personal blogs. These aren’t always so easy to identify. Some he has chosen because they are connected to well-known Bloggernacle figures (like Margaret Blair Young’s husband, Bruce, for example; or Clean Cut’s wife. Or they deal with subjects that have a wide appeal to Mormons. Or they are just plain funny, like Seriously, so Blessed, or Navel Gazing.
So now it’s your turn to review the newest Mormon aggregator. Take a look and leave a comment here on this post. Tell Dr. B. what you think of his choices, his arrangement, and anything else you can think of. Do you think a solo Mormon blog aggregator is needed? Is this something you would use?
Oh, and Dr. B. says he will take suggestions for additions if you would like to see your blog or one of your favorites included!
It’s a familiar story: I read a book (or part of a book anyhow) about Mormon History and began to doubt my faith in the LDS Church.
Your life lays on the floor, shattered before you. Are there any pieces worth salvaging, or is none of it worth a darn? Is there even a God? Does life have meaning?
You aren’t sure what to do or where to go from here. You want to believe in God still, because there was so much joy in it, but you can’t just will it to happen over what your brain tells you the truth is. And you feel all alone because there is no one within the LDS Church you can really talk to about your doubts in a meaningful way. Continue reading…
What is the church to you? A family you must learn to love? A path you must follow? A checklist of items you must do to be saved? Today’s post talks about the church as a tool and is from guest poster Jordan Turner. Continue reading…
Well, it’s time for the non-Mormon blogger to chime in on Prop 8. As some of you know, I live in the San Diego area. I, along with the rest of my compatriots here, have been inundated with pro- and anti-Prop 8 propaganda. We must protect traditional marriage! (What the heck is that, anyway?) We must protect the rights of gays to marry! (Where is *that* right spelled out?) There was too much dreck for anybody to possibly sort out.
Here’s the irony. At its heart, Prop 8 wasn’t about gay marriage at all. It was about how we understand the role of government in deciding how churches can deal with their members. By passing Prop 8, the churches, who should value their independence from civil authority, have invited the “arm of flesh” into their chapels and said, “Yes, YOU, the government, can now decide who can marry and who can’t.”
How in the hell can Mormons, of all people, with their history of persecution and problems with the government, possibly support this intrusion of state into church affairs? And the Baptists! Don’t they have a tradition of independence and separation from government? Something bad has happened along the way, and it’s time religionists wake up and see that their silly, knee-jerk reactions to issues like gay marriage are, on a macro level, threatening the very institutions they’re trying to preserve.
Alas, vox populi has become pox populi. And, in the end, there may very well be a pox on all our houses. As for me and my house, we will serve a rational approach to the issue.