Or mean that you must repeat it. Because sometimes people say things in church are are just plain not true.
Just because you heard it at church, doesn’t make it true.
Category: Cornucopia
“Hearing Cosmic Harmony Again”—Dan Peterson Delivers BYU Summerhays Lecture 2013
Thursday at 7pm in the JSB Auditorium at BYU, Dan Peterson will speak on how our understanding of the natural world through history has reinforced or weakened belief in God. His title for the 2013 Summerhays Lecture is “Hearing Cosmic Harmony Again.” Here is an introduction from the Summerhays Lecture web page: For many centuries, religious believers of all stripes have affirmed, in the words of the Psalmist, that “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handy work.” But, although the Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins could still exclaim that “The world is charged with the grandeur of God,” scientific discoveries had seriously undermined that view–or, at least, were being claimed to have done so–by the time of his too-young death in 1889. The serious subversion had begun, or so the story is often told, with the Copernican “revolution’s” dethronement of earth and humans from their privileged place at the center of the universe. It continued, rather ironically, with Sir Isaac Newton’s portrayal of that universe as governed by a remorseless chain of cause-and-effect operating under mathematically rigorous physical laws, and it seemed to have been proven by Darwin’s apparent demonstration that life, in all its varieties, had emerged as a result, merely, of purposeless chance. I will attempt to show, with special emphasis on astronomy and cosmology, that this picture of the development of science and its implications–the picture with which I grew up–…
Paradigms and Stumbling Blocks
I started thinking about the phrase “stumbling block” recently. It’s such a common phrase that it’s easy to take its significance for granted. And maybe miss its meaning and current relevance. The literal meaning of the words is obvious, and “stumbling block” is in that sense basically the same phrase as “tripping rock”. But “tripping rock” is fresh and so it forces you to take a look at what the words actually mean: a stone that causes people who are walking somewhere to fall. Why should such an apparently innocuous concept be so deeply ingrained in scripture that it becomes an integrated part of our religious lexicon? I thought I’d consider another such phrase for comparison. If you used the phrase “tipping point” in the first half of the 20th century, the literal meaning would be clear. But as the graph below (created using a simple Google tool that searches a vast library of books and checks frequency of use), the term didn’t really come into its own until the second half of the 20th century. Of course the Malcolm Gladwell book of the same name explains a lot of the uptick in recent years, and is probably the reason (directly or indirectly) that you’ve heard the phrase. But Gladwell’s book was published in 2000. What explains the upwards trend in the 1960s? A quote from Rear Admiral Grace Hopper, who was a pioneering computer scientist, might explain that: “Life was…
Mortality
I have family members who have died recently, others who are dying, and some who tell me confidently every time we talk, “You know, I won’t be around much longer…”
It’s time to change early morning seminary
School’s back in session. Several weeks of early mornings have burned through the summer sleep reservoir. Inevitably, the debate over school start times sputters to life, ignited this year by Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who tweeted “Common sense to improve student achievement that too few have implemented: let teens sleep more, start school later.” Duncan’s statement references both the sleep science suggesting that teenagers’ circadian rhythms shift toward later wake and sleep times, and the small but growing initiative to delay high school bell schedules to better accommodate the students’ biological reality and, potentially, improve their academic performance. For some LDS teens, there’s another wrinkle to the debate (and under their parents’ sleepy eyes): early morning seminary. It’s just so early. (1) Classes start as early as 5:30 AM in some areas, in order to accommodate students involved in zero-hour school activities. Assuming a 5:30 AM seminary start means a 5:00 AM alarm, a seminary student who needs eight hours of sleep at night would have to be in bed by 9:00 pm. Yet my daughter didn’t get home from her Young Women activity last night until 9:00. The hours just don’t add up. This is a familiar complaint, and I make it out of craven self-interest, as I have a seventh-grader this year and I dread the imposition that early-morning seminary will soon make on the quality of our family life in the mornings and on my children’s…
Temple and Observatory Group At NYC
The Temple and Observatory Group, which sponsored an event in July in Provo featuring Richard Bushman, Fiona Givens, and Terryl Givens is bringing the same lineup to New York City. Come listen to the three speak about negotiating LDS history and faith challenges on Saturday, September 28th from 10am – 3:30pm at 390 Broadway 3rd floor in Manhattan. (Here’s a copy of the official flyer.) Additional events are being planned for the East Coast in coming months including Washington, D.C. (October 19) and Boston (November 9). You can visit the website to keep informed (and learn about the groups’ name) 0r follow the group on Facebook.
A Game Theoretic View of the Atonement
The Prisoner’s Dilemma came up in the comments to a post of mine from about a month ago. I outlined my thoughts very briefly there (see comment #12), but I’d like to return to them in more depth today. The Prisoner’s Dilemma is perhaps the most important scenario studied in game theory, and “it shows why two individuals might not cooperate, even if it appears that it is in their best interests to do so.” To understand the analysis, however, I’ll need to back up and give a very brief game theory primer. In game theory, a game is a situation where two players each face two or more options in pursuit of goals which are at least partially in conflict, and where the outcome of the situation depends on the choices that each player makes. This interdependence is what game theory from more general decision theory. In traditional parlance, games are won and lost, but in game theory game are solved when you understand exactly what decisions the players will take when each takes into account the actions of every other player This arrangement of complementary player actions is called an equilibrium. There are many kind of equilbria, but the most important is the Nash equilibrium. A Nash equilibrium is a set of of player actions such that each player has no incentive to change his or her action in response to the actions chosen by other players. Now we’re ready to see how the concept…
What BYU-Idaho does right
You might be surprised to learn that the church maintains not one but two large universities, including one about 280 miles north of Provo. The existence of BYU-Idaho is one of those things that seems to easily escape notice, even for Mormons in the middle of a vigorous debate about what must be done about BYU and LDS higher education. While the low level of scrutiny that BYU-Idaho receives is in general salutary for the university, it’s unfortunate for the discussions of higher education, as some of the most interesting experiments in the American university system today are being conducted in Rexburg, Idaho.
Complicity
It’s one thing to know that what you are witnessing is wrong; it’s another thing altogether to know what to do about it. I do know that inaction is often taken as tacit approval, and I do not want to be guilty of the sin of complicity
The Abyss of Nothing and Everything
I often heard, growing up, that teenagers think they are immortal. I always thought this applied to other teenagers. For the most part I didn’t get into the sorts of shenanigans that make adolescence famous. I felt I had a perfectly rational aversion to death and dying that manifest itself in, among other things, a general trepidation about learning to drive. Passing other cars at a cumulative speed of 100mph with only a few inches and some yellow lines as separation is still a kind of scary thing, I think, if you stop and consider it. It wasn’t until I was nearing my 30s that I for the first time encountered a new and heightened fear of death. It forced me to reconsider whether or not the old saying had applied to me after all. I remember the specific day–an ordinary week day after an ordinary day on the job–when I lay on my bed for a few minutes in the afternoon and the thought suddenly occurred to me: one day I will die. This body, with which I have grown so comfortable, will cool to room temperature. If I were to die right then, my heart to simply cease striving for one beat after the next, it would take minutes or even hours for my wife to find my body. I pictured her shock, horror, and sadness as she found me–but not me–inert and unrespsonsive. There would be nothing I…
We Are All the Work of Thy Hand
A number of years ago, a friend wrote me an email that included this reminiscence: Friday was my last day of spring break. I had worked all through the break, and really wanted to do something fun, something indulgent. I immediately thought of the only thing I have ever done when I wanted to be indulgent in past years– go to Barnes and Noble. I have always been haunted by a trip to the temple 20 or 30 years ago, and an old mission friend was along. We went to the book store, and he just loaded up with an armful of good books. I almost cried as he checked out so casually. I of course couldn’t even afford to buy one on our budget at the time. My happiest birthday memory was about 10 years ago, my wife took me to B&N, where I spent a few hours and I bought two books and we went home and lit a fire and I just read all day. Well, last Friday those thoughts came back. But you see, I have had the research stipend for 7 or 8 years now. I can buy any book I want at any time, and I have spent thousands sating every bibliographic lust I have. So last Friday, my idea about going to B&N just wilted before my eyes. I just worked instead. It’s a sad story, of course, but I think there’s a…
Walk This Way
Notice how similar these three passages are:
Bloggernacle PSA: fMh Tracy McKay Scholarship
“If you haven’t heard around the ‘nacle– The fMh Tracy McKay Scholarship fund drive is in full force! Last year many around the bloggernacle rallied together to help the awesome Tracy McKay finish the last few months of her degree when her ward could no longer help her out. fMh is keeping the tradition going by helping more single Mormon mothers go back to school.
Rexburg
What is it like to move to Rexburg? If you’ve ever driven across the country, you’ve probably stopped for gas or lunch in some town you’ve never heard of and observed in astonishment that people not only live there, but appear to lead lives as happy and meaningful as any other American. Those lives may include more baseball or rodeo than you would choose for yourself, but the people there seem content enough. You see parks and schools and streets with decent-looking houses and a reasonable number of stores, and you wonder what it would be like if you lived there. Moving to Rexburg is like stopping for gas in a place like that and failing to get back on the highway to wherever it was you thought you were going.
SMPT 2013 Reminder/Travel Funding
The August 23rd proposal submission deadline for the Society for Mormon Philosophy and Theology’s 2013 Annual Meeting is approaching. The conference will be held at Utah Valley University, October 31-November 2, with the theme, “The Atonement.” For a fuller discussion of the theme and submission information, see the Call for Papers flyer (PDF), or the Call for Papers web page. Student Travel Funding: SMPT has some funding available, on a competitive basis, to defray travel costs for student presenters. Travel funding awards of a value up to $700 each will be made on the basis of (a) merit of the proposal and (b) distance of travel to Orem. Students interested in travel support should indicate their institution, degree sought, and subject at the time of paper/proposal submission, and should provide a brief statement of need, including their point of origin for travel to the conference, major mode of transportation (e.g. air, train, personal vehicle) to Orem, and availability of travel funding from other sources, such as their home department, if any.
Malian elections, a good loss for an LDS candidate
The Malian presidential elections have run their course and have produced a new president of Mali, Ibrahim Boubacar Keita. The second runner Soumaila Cisse has conceded and congratulated the new president. The election ran in two phases, first between all 28 candidates, and then a second phase between the two front runners. After the first phase, Keita had 39% and Cisse 19%. There was, as we know from an earlier blog, an LDS candidate, Yeah Samake. He ended with 0.56% in the first run, and has extended his congratulations to the winner. For our Mormon fans of Samake, some questions remain. The last 20 candidates showed under 2% of the general vote, among them Samake. Is this a waste of effort and money? They hardly influenced the elections, and people did pour money into it. In Samake’s case these sponsors were his American friends mainly, acting – as far as my information goes – mainly on information received from him. Was that a wise investment or should that money have been spent on Samake’s foundation instead? For a European like me, the question is quite American. First, sponsoring political candidates is not a European custom, we finance our campaign’s differently – and they cost much less. In this respect the USA is closer to Africa. Second, though politicians aim to win, democratic elections are primarily not about winning, but about a process of an open, informed and fair choice, about…
On Faithful Puzzlement, Belief, and Choice
I thoroughly enjoyed Rosalynde’s FAIR talk, “Disenchanted Mormonism”! Thank you, Rosalynde! I really like the way she presents doubt as something that can be a productive and legitimate place to inhabit indefinitely, even while there is an active hope for greater knowledge and confidence in the future. I also really like how she embraces what we don’t choose, including the fact that we (at least many of us) are members of the body of Christ and of the church largely independent of personal choice. I have a question for Rosalynde, though: isn’t there still a pretty significant form of belief, and of choice, involved in the attention and observance you describe? It seems to me that while we sometimes talk about belief as though it involves a casting aside of doubt, belief can just as well, and perhaps even more legitimately should, be a form of trust exercised in the midst of doubt, trust precisely in the sense of embracing what is uncertain. This is the subtle combination I take to be reflected in “I believe; help thou my unbelief.” In this sense, by fasting, for instance, one exercises a belief that fasting is good and worthwhile, even without claiming any certainty about it. I would say that faith is active hope, hope that one invests in through the way one acts. And in this there is choice, is there not? I agree that to a great extent we are…
Maybe We’re All Right
The story of the blind men and the elephant is as useful as it is widespread. It features in Jain, Buddhist, Sufi and Hindu lore and has also been applied in modern physics and biology. In case you haven’t heard it before, the essence of the story is that a few blind men each touch a different part of an elephant (like the tail or ear or leg or tusk) and each conclude that the elephant is like the part that they see (brush, fan, pot, or spear). Depending on the version of the story, they either cooperate to understand the elephant as a whole or get into a fight because each clings to his own perception to the exclusion of all others. Thus the story of the blind men and the elephant has a happy resolution, or at least it can have a happy resolution, because the different perspectives can all be resolved. The function of the blindness in the story (sometimes the men aren’t blind but are in a dark room) is to temporarily hobble their perspective. Because of their inability to see, they have to get very close to the elephant, and this proximity robs them of the chance to step back and adopt a wider perspective. Since what we see depends on our perspective, they are ultimately limited not by lack of site, but by lack of perspective. The perspective needed to see the whole truth of the…
Guest Post: The Parable of the Two Sons
My friend and neighbor has written a beautiful parable that I am pleased to share with you today. David Harding works actively in his ward and neighborhood. His daughter is my daughter’s best friend. As those of you with children know, it is a great blessing to have your offspring fall in with good people who help support them as they grow into themselves. Periodically, maybe once or twice a year, David writes something that he thinks could be shared beyond his close circle. The topics range, but as often as not they are gospel related. And so I’m introducing David, and one of his writings, to you. The Parable of the Two Sons by David Harding The master of the vineyard was setting out to travel foreign lands for a number of years. He had two sons whom he loved more than anything else. They had recently come-of-age and now had their own budding households. The first son was nervous about the impending absence of his father, and approached his father asking for some extra money in case things went poorly while he was gone. The father had compassion on his son and gave him ten talents to ensure he would have sufficient funds to cover any unforeseen difficulty. During the first year of the master’s travels there was a bountiful harvest at home. The second son worked hard and made a fair profit. The first son, on the…
Further Thoughts on Sin
Last week I wrote about the conflict between a basic axiom of human behavior (we tend to see ourselves as heroes in our own stories and rationalize our behavior accordingly) and the requirement that sinful actions be in some sense deliberate in order to be sinful. I did this primarily by suggesting that, while the original commission of a sinful act often occurs under duress of some sort (thus mitigating against it’s nature as a deliberate choice), we frequently compound that sin by subsequently trying to rationalize it. I’d like to conclude (for now, anyway) my posts on this subject by looking the other direction: backwards in time. One response to my original argument may simply be to deny the premise that people don’t view their sinful actions as sinful at the time that they commit them. In one sense, this must be true. We aren’t held responsible for violations of moral laws we are really and truly ignorant of. But it’s a mistake to see this issue in terms of stark binary opposites, as though the only options available are “know” and “not know.” Let me suggest two realistic descriptions of the frame of mind of a person at the time that they commit a sin: They simply are not deliberating at all. This describes the mental states of, say, someone with an extremely quick fuse. Such a person can go from passive to enraged (in the right situation) without ever…
The Bible in Jacksonville
I wrote some lectures on the Bible to present in Paris, although due to scheduling and communication conflicts, only the first was actually delivered. I’m now scheduled to do two of them in Jacksonville, FL in the next two weeks. These will be held at the LDS Chapel on 440 Penman Rd. in Jacksonville. The first is next Sunday at 7PM (flyer below), the second (similar to my presentation here) will be Friday the 23rd, same time and place. Given that I speak English slightly better than French, these will probably be a bit more spontaneous and expansive. If you’re in the neighborhood, come check it out and say hi.
Restoring the Paths to Dwell In – Part III
My main motivation was jealousy. I was fantastically jealous that my wife was running the coolest book club I’d ever seen.[1]
Some Thoughts on Sin
The textbook definition of sin is doing something that you know to be wrong. And yet, as has been frequently noted in fiction, villains (almost) never think to themselves, “Gee, I’m doing something wrong now.” We each live out narratives in which we star as the protagonist. We are the heroes of our own stories. How can we reconcile these two notions: first, that sin requires a knowledge that what we are doing is wrong and second, that no one really believes what they are doing is wrong at the time that they do it? I’m going to rely once again on Lt. Col. Dave Grossman’s On Killing. (As I’ve written about before, his work has had quite an impact on me.) The primary thesis of his work is that human beings have a strong aversion towards killing other human beings, and that as a result most combat soldiers will not willingly take the life of their enemy even when their lives and their comrades lives depend on it. Clearly the army that figures out how to overcome this inhibition will have a tremendous advantage over foes that have not. (Grossman suggests that several smaller wars in the 20th century reflected this imbalance, including the Falklands War.) Modern militaries have stumbled onto psychological practices such as operant conditioning to create automatic reflexes that will override the innate inhibition and render combat forces frighteningly effective. Soldiers trained in such techniques still require a host…
Restoring the Paths to Dwell In – Part II
The first time I remember, it happened – of course – because I was searching for things on the internet. If I remember correctly, it even happened because I was researching for a Sunday School lesson. I read about Gallatin Missouri
Not quite “Faith in Every Footstep”
Restoring the Paths to Dwell In – Part I
I’d never seen anything like it. It wasn’t just Mormonism: Shadow or Reality? (which was opened on the living room coffee table with a pen resting on top). There was a pile of anti-Mormon literature in various stages of being read sitting around the room.
Gone Fishin’
What kind of associations does the idea of fishing raise for you? Leisure time? Quiet? Peace? Stillness? (Hopefully not a few beers.)
An Information-Rich Gospel: Correlation and the Growth and Maturation of the Church
The gospel of Jesus Christ is a rich, complex, and beautiful thing. It can’t be fully absorbed in one sitting, or one decade, or one lifetime. The gospel is information-rich. A recent New York Times article talks about Mormons who are led to question their faith by information about the church that they find, e.g., on the internet. The article seems to suggest that the gospel cannot survive in an information-rich environment. Mormons believe, however, that “the glory of God is intelligence” (D&C 93:6), and “It is impossible for a man to be saved in ignorance” (D&C 131:6). Information, learning, understanding, therefore are central to what Mormonism is about. The information age should be not only welcome, but ultimately a real strength to the church and the progress of the gospel. I’m convinced it is, though we haven’t grown into it yet. The NYT article, of course, can easily be read to suggest the opposite. Here is a simple narrative one might derive from it: The LDS church has embarrassing things in its history that it can’t give a good explanation of, which undermine its moral authority, and so in order to preserve its credibility and the faith of members, it has to suppress information about these things. In the internet age, of course, suppressing information doesn’t work any more, so . . . you can draw your own conclusions. There are probably a few people at the NYT who…
Faithful Obedience or Malicious Compliance?
Malicious compliance is the idea of using the letter of the law to intentionally violate the spirit of the law. It is perfect obedience. It is also sabotage. Since so much trouble seems to arise from the gap between the letter and spirit of the law, we might reasonably ask: why not close the gap? Why not just write down the spirit of the law in the first place? I think the answer is at least in part that whatever is written down and then read and interpreted by a human being is necessarily going to fall short of the spirit. If by “the spirit” we mean the ultimate truth upon which some particular edict of God rests, then “the spirit” is like the actual, true laws of physics that govern the universe and the letter is like whatever the current best interpretation of those rules might be. If this analogy holds, then right off the bat we should be deeply suspicious of the finality of any revealed law. Anyone who accepted Aristotle’s model of physics as final would have missed out on Newton, and anyone who thought Newton had the last word would have subsequently been left behind by Einstein. In other words, if laws are imperfect translations of perfect principles into our particular place and time we should not only be prepared to accept changes in God’s law as they arrive, we should expect them. Contrast the assumption that revealed…
Getting Dirt in Jesus’ Eyes
You are probably familiar with Mark 2:1-12, because it is hard to forget a story about a guy getting lowered through a roof.