Author: Stephen C

  • AI Censorship and Sacred Cows

    AI Censorship and Sacred Cows

    In the AI world there is a debate swirling about how much AI providers should censor their image generation. Of course there are plenty of things to mock in past attempts to censor or otherwise put a thumb on the scale of AI to be more socially appropriate. Exhibit A of course were the racially…

  • Is Anybody Excommunicated Anymore?

    Is Anybody Excommunicated Anymore?

    I assume they aren’t actually this dour, but what some people envision a disciplinary council looks like. Here I’m not addressing the normative question of whether we should excommunicate, I have already said my piece about that here.  A while ago I was speaking to my stake president and made some humorous quip about him…

  • O’Sullivan’s Law and Latter-day Saint-Adjacent Organizations

    O’Sullivan’s Law and Latter-day Saint-Adjacent Organizations

    Chat-GPT’s rendition of a very strict, orthodox Mormon, right next to a liberal, heterodox Mormon, because even heterodox Mormons still wear buttoned-up, tucked-in shirts evidently.  O’Sullivan’s law, one of those cute Internet “laws,” states that “any organization or enterprise that is not expressly right wing will become left wing over time.” Like most Internet laws,…

  • On Miracles

    On Miracles

    Elijah calling down fire from heaven, 21st century version Years ago I saw a New Atheist-y meme that showed a cartoon panel of “the power of God across time,” starting with the creation of the world, moving onto the great flood and turning water into wine, and then ending with Christ appearing on toast, with…

  • Grinding the Faces of the Poor Through the Lottery

    Grinding the Faces of the Poor Through the Lottery

    I do not have the brain chemistry for gambling. If I bet my house on a coin flip and won, I would be a sleepless wreck for weeks anxiously wondering about what would have happened had I lost. (Like tobacco, this is one of those Latter-day Saint rules I would keep even if I left…

  • Cutting-Edge Latter-day Saint Research, July 2024

    Clarke, Steve. “When conspiracy theorists win.” Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy (2024): 1-24.

  • Churches with Sound Fundamentals Are Very Robust

    Churches with Sound Fundamentals Are Very Robust

    Imagine President Nelson and the First Presidency came out with a revelation prophesying that the Second Coming would happen on a specific year (yes, that would never happen in the Church for a great number of reasons, but suspend disbelief for a second). This message was trumpeted from the General Conference pulpit on multiple occasions…

  • On Pie and Beer Day

    On Pie and Beer Day

    Last Utah post for a while, I promise Imagine you lived in the Jewish Autonomous Oblast in Russia, or some other area settled by a historically disenfranchised religious group. Also imagine, if you will, that this Jewish or Muslim or what have you group had a local holiday that celebrated their escape from persecution and…

  • The New Ex-Mormons

    We just returned from our yearly-ish pilgrimage to Utah. Trips to Utah are always an opportunity  to stick my finger in the air to get a more subjective, qualitative sense of things are going in the Church. Of course, Utah does not equal the Church in so many ways, but it does act as a…

  • Misuse of the “Lost Sheep” Parable

    Misuse of the “Lost Sheep” Parable

    People often misuse the Parable of the Lost Sheep, where the Lord leaves the 99 to go after the 1, and draw analogies and connections that don’t make a lot of sense given the premises of the Parable, so I thought I’d make a set of guidelines for logically using the Parable. Note: I have…

  • To Live in Utah or not to Live in Utah? The Grand Debate

    To Live in Utah or not to Live in Utah? The Grand Debate

    I asked Dalle-3 to “Create two images side-by-side, one representing Utah in a good light and one representing Utah in a bad light. Show me images that show bad things particular to Utah and good things particular to Utah, instead of just generic bad and good things.”  In the image it generated “the left side…

  • Interesting Wikipedia Articles About Latter-day Saints

    Interesting Wikipedia Articles About Latter-day Saints

    Martin Luther King Jr.’s Murderer, Ex-Mormon (according to Wikipedia) James Earl Ray A recent project of mine has been to figure out a way to generate a list of all Wikipedia articles that mention the word “Mormon” or “Latter-day Saint” so that we can generate the comprehensive compendium of all things Latter-day Saint/Mormon on Wikipedia. …

  • The Endowment and the Traditional Latin Mass: Beauty, Holiness, and Structure

    The Endowment and the Traditional Latin Mass: Beauty, Holiness, and Structure

    Due to some things I’m involved in, I recently attended a Traditional Latin Mass (TLM). For the uninitiated, after Vatican II the Catholic Mass was changed to be more user-friendly. It was conducted in the vernacular instead of Latin and was shortened. While in the past the priest traditionally faced towards the East as he…

  • Cutting-Edge Latter-day Saint Research, June 2024

    Greenhalgh, Spencer P., and Amy L. Chapman. ““Come for the Memes, Stay for Defending the Faith”: Far-Right and Anti-Feminist Red Pill Influences in the# DezNat Twitter Hashtag.” Mormon Social Science Association: 2:1.

  • Sien Hoornik, Vincent Van Gogh, and Making All Things New

    Sien Hoornik, Vincent Van Gogh, and Making All Things New

    Sorrow, a Van Gogh drawing of a pregnant Sien Hoornik Selling only one painting during his lifetime, Vincent Van Gogh has become the archetype of the tortured genius not appreciated until after his death. His long-running mental health problems have been the subject of movies and ballads (with one moving example being Don McLean and…

  • The Buddhist Alma the Younger and Forgiving the Unforgivable

    The Buddhist Alma the Younger and Forgiving the Unforgivable

    While Saul/Paul and Alma the Younger were arguably committing the worst kind of sins by fighting against God, in both narratives they were sincere and possibly even well-meaning, albeit theologically wrong. They weren’t, say, torturing or killing people en masse as far as we know, and it seems like if there is a textbook case…

  • Ancient Horses in the Americas, False Negatives, and the Paleobiology Database

    Ancient Horses in the Americas, False Negatives, and the Paleobiology Database

    Distribution of Equus fossils in the Americas from the Quaternary, Paleobiology Database The fossil record for horses in the Quaternary in the Americas, a very niche topic, has had particular interest to Latter-day Saints for well-known reasons. At the outset I should lay my cards on the table and state that I hold to a…

  • From Whence Muhammad?

    From Whence Muhammad?

      Fun fact: One of the most prominent movies about the life of Muhammad (who, out of respect for Sunni Muslim sensitivities, is never actually shown onscreen) was produced and directed by Latter-day Saint Richard Rich, who has also done some Book of Mormon films, and whose aesthetic you might recognize from movies like the…

  • The Cosmological Grandeur of the Restored Gospel: Mining the Journal of Discourses

    The Cosmological Grandeur of the Restored Gospel: Mining the Journal of Discourses

    Worlds Without End in the style of Van Gogh How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, “This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant?” Instead they say, “No, no, no! My god is a little god,…

  • The Church in the Courts, 2024

    The Church in the Courts, 2024

    The website “Court Listener” is a publicly available source for looking up cases around the country. By searching for the term “Latter-day” I looked for all cases involving the Church that were filed sometime during 2024. Of course, I am no lawyer (unlike By Common Consent, our bench is quite shallow on the legal side…

  • The Latter-day Saint Homeschooling Conundrum

    The Latter-day Saint Homeschooling Conundrum

    Latter-day Saint homeschooling families living outside the Mormon belt face a conundrum. For the uninitiated, many if not most homeschoolers actually do quite a bit of organized educational activities with other homeschoolers in what are called “homeschool co-ops.” Sometimes this is limited to activities while in other cases one of the parents will volunteer to…

  • How Literally Do Members Take the Church’s Truth Claims?

    How Literally Do Members Take the Church’s Truth Claims?

    Stephen Cranney and Josh Coates This is one of a series of posts discussing results from a recent survey of current and former Latter-day Saints conducted by the BH Roberts Foundation. The technical details are in the full methodology report here.  Occasionally in Latter-day Saint discourse people that have lost their testimonies of the Church’s…

  • Cutting-Edge Latter-day Saint Research, May 2024

    Sorrell, Sydney A., G. Tyler Lefevor, Samuel J. Skidmore, Rachel M. Golightly, and Kyrstin NL Searle. “Understanding How Religiousness Shapes Perceptions of Compulsive Sexual Behavior.” Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy (2024): 1-16.

  • Religious Studies Graduate Programs are Pyramid Schemes. Just Say No.

    Religious Studies Graduate Programs are Pyramid Schemes. Just Say No.

    Blind leading the blind I’m not saying that religious studies folks are blind to things that matter, I just thought it was a good depiction of the religious studies treadmill in general, and I kind of just like the picture.  I have one of those Facebook friends who I’ve only met briefly once in real…

  • An Anonymous BYU Honor Code Office Experience

    An Anonymous Account of an Experience with the Honor Code Office at BYU and its Aftermath that was Submitted to T&S as a Guest Post.   Surprisingly, after the initial rush of dread the first feeling after seeing the pop-up message on the screen was one of relief. I had been caught, would be reported…

  • My “Sacred Envy” List

    My “Sacred Envy” List

    “Sacred Envy” is the well-known idea (at least in Latter-day Saint circles) of having the humility to recognize some positive attributes of other faiths, so I thought I would make my “sacred envy” list.  To be clear, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is my faith because I think it is the best…

  • Addressing One Part of the Female Ordination Question

    Addressing One Part of the Female Ordination Question

    And yes, if women ever receive the priesthood I’m sure it will also be given to sisters with extra fingers.  Female ordination is one of those issues that is built on so many premises that are themselves so potentially polemical that it would take a ten-part series to walk a true believer and a true…

  • Christ-Like Living According to “The Godfather”

    Christ-Like Living According to “The Godfather”

    In the Godfather Part III (I know, I know), in response to his protege threatening to knock off a competitor, Mafia don Michael Corleone quips “never hate your enemies, it affects your judgment.”  This is a common theme throughout the Godfather series, also embedded in the (in)famous “it’s not personal, strictly business” line. The cold-hearted…

  • My Spirituality Stack

    My Spirituality Stack

    I’m a sucker for those lifestyle influencers that show off their green smoothie stacks. Even though I know that 99% of supplements are scams that don’t pass the double blind, RCT standard, at the very least it’s still health-motivating to see somebody cram a bunch of greens into a blender (although, to save you time,…

  • How Do Members Explain the Priesthood and Temple Ban?

    How Do Members Explain the Priesthood and Temple Ban?

    Black man ordaining another Black man in the style of African folk art Stephen Cranney and Josh Coates This is one of a series of posts discussing results from a recent survey of current and former Latter-day Saints conducted by the BH Roberts Foundation. The technical details are in the full methodology report here.  The…