Entries from December 2007 ↓

An interesting post the other day at Summa Theologica about the traditional text-centered dialogue about Mormonism as opposed to one that analyzes actual practice, ritual, and devotion in an attempt to understand a group of people.The post resonated with me because part of the reason I started this blog was because I was absolutely bored with the dialogue that so often accompanies Mormonism on the internet; Continue reading →

This is all in good fun. I got a kick out of some of his little side comments.

Behind the silliness are some potentially more serious and thought-provoking questions:

Is chance really the driving mechanism behind our lives? Is the family, location, and religion of our birth simply chance? Is all of life an accident? That is the answer of science. I’m in the middle of reading E.O. Wilson’s The Diversity of Life and in a section I recently read he makes the point that everything, the diversity of life, all of it, is an accident, “beauty arises from error.” Life is a statistical anomaly. There is no plan, there is no meaning. Continue reading →

Today, on the other side of the world, an estimated 2.5 million people are participating in a sacred ritualistic pilgrimage, the Hajj. It is the largest annual religious pilgrimage in the world and is one of the Five Pillars of Islam.

I would like to look at the general outline of the Hajj in light of my own experience as a participant in the rituals of the Mormons in what is called the Endowment. I hope to do so in a way that maintains the sacred nature of the rituals in the eyes of their respective participants, again, I will be mainly comparing elements of the general outline of the experiences. All the quotes regarding the Hajj are taken from the related Wikipedia article.

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If I’m going to take the amount of time I do to respond to certain critics of my faith, I thought I would at least share the exchange with my readers as well. You’re all welcome to read the original post entitled The Flashlight in which the author shares a parable about his “seeing the light” by putting down his previous association with the Mormon church. My response had nothing to do with trying to woo him back, he is perfectly entitled to his beliefs and decisions. However, when he publically attempts to smear the beliefs of others, in this case Mormons but it would go for any other faith, I believe I have a moral right and responsibility to point out to the public that such opinions are indeed that, opinions, and that those who maintain their beliefs might see things a bit differently even having all the same information before them. Continue reading →

My latest read was a book published in 2005 authored by William Dever entitled Did God Have a Wife? Archeology and Folk Religion in Ancient Israel. A fascinating read that I would recommend in a heartbeat. I will say that the author seems a bit obsessed with Asherah so that every slight hint of a woman deity is attributed to her, but at the same time perhaps his exuberance is needed to wake up a religious community that seems unwilling to face up to the questions raised by this accumulation of research.

The quick summary: Dever tries to paint the picture of how religion was practiced in Ancient Israel based on the archeological remains of typical communities. In many instances this picture is quite different (or provides a more complete picture) than the traditional interpretation or picture painted by Christianity or Judiasm based on their reading of the Old Testament. His primary focus throughout is the evidence of a female counterpart to El (or Elohim) and Yahweh (the Hebrew words most often translated as God or Lord in the King James Bible) named Asherah.

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This quote has always presented a poignant test to me when I contemplate philanthropy:

 ”I am afraid the only safe rule is to give more than we can spare…If our charities do not at all pinch or hamper us,… they are too small.  There ought to be things we should like to do and cannot do because our charitable expenditures excludes them.”

C.S. Lewis in  Mere Christianity

This could be considered in relation to my series of posts on the what-should-we-be-doing question.  It brings up another point that I will have to discuss in a later post but I think money is a primary testing agent in the test of this life.  The story of the Rich Young Man in the New Testament is troubling to many who often try to offer alternative explanations to get around the personal implication of parting with their own riches however relatively large or small.  My own beliefs take the phrase “no poor among them” in the desired Utopian or Zion society as, literally, an economic issue and not merely as some kind of soft philosophical ideal.

I challenge us all to contemplate the words of C.S. Lewis and examine our own patterns of spending.