Author: Adam Miller

Let’s say that the historicity of the Book of Mormon could be demonstrated irrefutably. (Say that Nephi returned in a cloud of glory, held a press conference, and pointed us to incontrovertible archeological proof.) Would I tune in to watch? Yes. Would this convince me to join or stay in the church?

Just a reminder that the deadline for applications for the First Annual Summer Seminar in Mormon Theology, co-spsonsored by The Mormon Theology Seminar and the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, is December 15, 2013.

The Mormon Theology Seminar will host a two-day conference, “Opposition in All Things: Mormon Perspectives on the Fall,” at Utah Valley University on June 7-8, 2013.

We need bodies to become like God. But bodies are organs of passing.

On his deathbed, Queequeg asks the ship’s carpenter to fashion him a burial canoe. So fashioned, Queequeg demands to lay himself the length of it, testing its virtue. Then, having abruptly remembered something he’d forgotten to do, he decides not to die after all and rises from the grave.

Ladies and gentlemen, the new Maxwell Institute Blog is now live.  Check out the announcement about the newly reconstituted Mormon Studies Review.

“Beyond the Mormon Moment: Directions for Mormon Studies in the New Century” A Conference in Honor of the Career of Armand Mauss March 15-16, 2013

I want to understand one thing especially. All my work bends to it. I want to understand the contraction of religious belief as a positive religious phenomenon.

In “How to Make Our Ideas Clear,” Charles Peirce argues that belief just is whatever it does.

Would you like to learn more about how to not just brownout when you kneel down in prayer? It’s a good New Year’s resolution: learning how to be still and listen for God.

I’m no longer of the opinion that religion matters because it makes life meaningful. Religion, it seems to me, makes meaning rather the way breathing makes CO2: as leavings, as tailings. That’s fine. Meaning may follow, but it’s meant to be exhaled. If you hold your breath, you’ll suffocate.

You thought you were going to get it right. Right. Instead, you’re morphing into that crazy guy who sits on the front row in Sunday School with two hands up and three incompatible opinions. Given your extremity, making you crazy may well be God’s worst best way of saving you. Plan A is out the…

I agree with The God Who Weeps that agency is pivotal, but I disagree about what agency is.

I’m glad to see that The God Who Weeps makes some room for Darwin, but I wish it had made more.

I agree with The God Who Weeps that our doctrine of pre-existence is crucial, but I disagree about why.

I agree with The God Who Weeps that God redeems our hungers and desires, but I disagree about how God does this.

Defamed and exiled, Silas Marner loses his native faith. Now he’s got nothing to prop up his soul.

AAR Pacific Northwest Region AAR/SBL/ASOR Regional Meeting Seattle University Seattle, Washington May 3-5, 2013 SPECIAL TOPICS: MORMON STUDIES

Godfrey is trying to repent but no one will cooperate.

George Eliot sends Silas Marner packing. Early in the novel, Silas is framed for a theft he didn’t commit (probably by his best friend who also has designs on pinching Silas’ fiancé). Silas appeals to God in his defense, but when the church elders cast lots to divine the truth, the lots say he’s guilty.…

Julie Smith opens her excellent T&S review of Turner’s Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet (which I’ve not yet read) with clear reservations about recommending this book to the “average” church member.

Is the existence of God, for you, an obvious and uncontroversial feature of any common sense way of seeing the world? Has it always been so profoundly and straightforwardly given that you could not deny it? If so, then in what sense would we be right to say that such a belief is either praiseworthy…