Author: Clark Goble
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Hell Part 1: Close Readings of the Book of Mormon
I love doing close readings of scripture. The normal way to do this is reading linearly through the entire book of scripture. An other great way is to study by topic. Each helps you see things you might miss using only the other method. While I’m glad our gospel doctrine has encouraged reading all scripture, part…
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Wanting Authenticity and Getting It
Many of you may have seen the J. Golden Kimball stage show from a number of years ago. He was the infamous swearing general authority. I must admit I first heard it on my mission when a companion had some tapes of the show. We were in the southern states where J. Golden had served…
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What if Belief isn’t Volitional?
Imagine you walk outside under a beautiful blue sky, the sun warm on your skin. Now someone comes up to you and tells you that you must believe the sky is orange and the air cold. Can you do it? If not, does that mean your beliefs are freely chosen? Can you choose to believe?
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Huntsman Buys Salt Lake Tribune
As rumored for a while the Huntsman family has bought the Salt Lake Tribune. Both the Tribune as well as the Deseret News have been struggling for quite a while. The drying up of classified ads has hurt newspapers across the country the last 15 years. For a relatively small market like Utah to have…
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Converts per Missionary
A few years ago in October 2012 the Church dropped the age for missionaries from 19 to 18 for men and 21 to 19 for women. There are various speculations of why the Church did this although I don’t think anyone knows for sure. (A popular explanation is that it cuts down on young men…
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Modern Gadiantons?
One last post, before my non-philosophical blogging stint is done. One thing I’ve thought of with recent events in the middle east was the parallels to the Book of Mormon. I know that’s not exactly an original point to make, but I think the Book of Mormon has a lot of parallels both regarding our…
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Reading Poetry Aloud
Now that I finally have a child, one of my enjoyable activities with him is to read to him before bed. The one problem I face is not in selecting poetry I want to read, but learning how to read it properly aloud. I’ve scanned Google for some suggestions. They all tell me what I…
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The Importance of Thanksgiving?
I confess, having grown up in Canada that I still have a hard time thinking of this week as Thanksgiving. To me it was back in October. (That’s Columbus Day for you Yanks) Since my parents lived way out in Nova Scotia I never went home for the US Thanksgiving either. So my memories of…
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Utah Mormon Socializing
I thought I’d put up a slightly different kind of post and get at a pet peeve of mine from back in the days when I was single. (i.e. only a year and a half ago) The big question is, outside of Church, where does a single Mormon go to socialize? The problem is, of…
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Holocaust as Metaphor
I know it’s the weekend and blog activity drops way down on weekends. However I thought some might find this discussion interesting. I’ve been blogging about it on my website the past few days, but have primarily been focusing on abstract phenomenological and semiotic aspects of the problem. The basic issue gets back to the…
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Science and Mormonism
My background within the Mormon “intellectual” community is primarily within the science community. Even now, most of my friends have ties to the science community and despite the “personae” I might convey as a philosopher-geek, I’m really much more of a physics-geek in my own mind. One thing that I’ve long wondered about was the…
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Political Lessons of Mormon History
One nice thing about blogging here is that I can talk about topics I don’t get to on my blog – specifically politics. However what I find interesting is what Mormonism can bring to the political arena. One thing that has long been on my mind are the lessons of our past. The example of…
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Essential Net Resources
First thanks to everyone for actually allowing me to write on topics unrelated to my blog. Hopefully I can live up to some of the excellent guest bloggers from over the past year. (Damon Linker was among my favorites.) One thing I’ve noticed of late is that my favorite series on Times and Seasons has…