- Stephen C. on A Preposterously Complimentary Review of the Book of Abraham: “I’m a big Scott Alexander fan, so I read this Substack when I saw it in my Inbox. One thing I’ll add is that, while he’s not going to be joining the Church anytime soon, Alexander’s take on the apologetics arguments is actually more generous and sophisticated than most online rationalist’s responses to the BoA (which is usually just some version of “Lol, John Gee is dumb and Robert Ritner is cool.”) So it’s a little more generous than the South Park angle of “this is patently dumb but Mormons are nice and that’s what matters.”” Jul 17, 13:35
- on Spiritually Inspirational Art by Not-So-Inspirational Artists: “Adam F: Good example. RLD: WRT the King of Assyria, I do think the idea of God using bad people to, say, punish his chosen people (Assyria is going to Assyria after all) is less complicated than God using somebody *to create an inspired work of art.*” Jul 17, 13:26
- on A Preposterously Complimentary Review of the Book of Abraham: “Thanks, Kendall. Though I did not read the review in it’s entirety, it addresses a lot of themes I’ve been interested in and have posted about. https://www.timesandseasons.org/index.php/2024/03/a-secular-case-for-the-church/ I’ve long thought that concluding line from the South Park episode the reviewer cites was important, but I do get the challenges of believers engaging in claims like these.” Jul 17, 10:13
- on A Review: Educating Zion: The Diaries of BYU President Ernest L. Wilkinson, 1952–1971: “So, it’s not like there’s a proven formula for turning a religious college into a nationally prominent university while maintaining its religious mission. A lot of colleges that started on that path have preserved at most a nominal religious identity and only a few ultimately succeeded. It makes no sense to dismiss concerns about secularization as paranoia when secularization has been one of the most important influences on society for the last century or more.” Jul 16, 19:36
- on A Review: Educating Zion: The Diaries of BYU President Ernest L. Wilkinson, 1952–1971: “It used to be that Mormons were one of the best educated religious groups in America. Yet BYU was unable to attract much of the Church’s top notch talent because of Wilkinson’s paranoia. It is sad that the university was willing to sacrifice talent for the sake of indoctrination. BYU had the potential to be so much more. Could Wilkinson’s accomplishments been achieved some other way? Probably. For example, provides scholarships to all worthy college bound students. And have Institutes at a wide range US and global universities. The latter has been partially achieved.” Jul 16, 17:31
- on Spiritually Inspirational Art by Not-So-Inspirational Artists: “This isn’t unique to art, though it definitely applies to art. We’re rightly comfortable saying that the Lord uses imperfect people to do his work, but what about people we might reasonably label as “bad”? It’s worth asking whether the Lord recognizes a difference. I think a case can be made from the Book of Mormon that the Lord puts people who deliberately harm others in their own category (call it “the wicked”), and they’re the ones who are proactively punished. See 3 Nephi 10:12, for example. But it’s not a slam dunk. The best-explained example of the Lord using bad people is the King of Assyria in Isaiah 10/2 Nephi 20, but his “contribution” to the Lord’s work (destroying Israel) is bad and Isaiah makes it clear he’ll still be punished for it. I’d put Christopher Columbus in the same category, and insist that the Spirit of the Lord may have “wrought upon” him to persist in sailing west, but not to underestimate the size of the Earth and definitely not to enslave or murder the people he met when he got there. But the post focuses on people who make positive contributions to the Lord’s work despite their own failings. Thomas Jefferson stands out to me here: it seems to me that it must have taken the influence of the Holy Ghost to make a slaveowner write such true and stirring words about equality and unalienable rights. I think Steven’s right that the Spirit sometimes surprises us by whom it inspires…and by when it inspires us. I love his last paragraph. We need to stop judging–if we refuse the fruits of inspiration because the person inspired also harmed others, we’ll cut ourselves off from a lot of beauty and a lot of wisdom. God will ensure there is justice for perpetrators and healing for victims. (Samson is definitely a cautionary tale, but in a different direction. His flaw was to take the gift the Lord gave him–his strength–and use it for selfish purposes rather than to free Israel like the judges had before him. That and flouting his Nazarite vow: all that bizarreness about eating from lion corpses and fighting with jawbones is there to illustrate that he was ignoring the rule that Nazarites can’t touch the dead. It was when he finally abandoned the last remnant of the Nazarite vow, never to cut his hair, that the Lord withdrew his gift. Most likely Samson no longer believed it was a gift.)” Jul 16, 15:46
- on Spiritually Inspirational Art by Not-So-Inspirational Artists: “Samson comes to mind as a cautionary tale … seems more a reflection of how we use our gifts in the final accounting, than a reflection of whether the Spirit touches us to create something in some moment.” Jul 16, 06:44
- on A Review: Educating Zion: The Diaries of BYU President Ernest L. Wilkinson, 1952–1971: “I tried hard in preparing the diaries to be as balanced as possible. I also wanted the diaries to speak for themselves, supplemented as needed by other contemporary materials. I think the introduction to the diaries may contain a more nuanced discussion of how I’ve come to view Wilkinson. He strikes me as a complicated man, driven by his own needs and insecurities to succeed. He accomplished a lot during his years at BYU. He–and others–also paid a high price for his singleness of vision. I guess one of the questions today is was it worth the cost? Could Wilkinson’s accomplishes been achieved differently?” Jul 15, 12:43
- on A Review: Educating Zion: The Diaries of BYU President Ernest L. Wilkinson, 1952–1971: “Gary, your interview on Mormon Stories seemed overly kind to Wilkerson. You seemed to focus on the quantity of students, while barely mentioning the quality of the education and staff. Because of the tattletale environment, many bright Mormon educators wanted nothing to do with BYU. Which deprived the university of some potential high quality staff. In DOM’s biography, Wilkinson is portrayed as a bit of a conniver. And the biography is not very kind to him. The religion department was full of right-wing nuts. Anti-evolution, biblical literalists, etc. For Wilkinson, a university was for indoctrination, not encouraging a free flow of ideas. Calling BYU the Harvard of the West was a joke. It was more like a Bob Jones of the West.” Jul 15, 12:16
