Jeff Lindsay has some spot-on commentary at Mormanity: Boy, am I ever grateful that Genesis was NOT part of the Book of Mormon. If Genesis were introduced to the world as restored scripture from the Mormons, the critics would have attacks ten times as powerful as anything they’ve levied against Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon so far. And he doesn’t even mention Tamar . . . Read More

The bloggernacle likes to talk about dating. We already know that JL over at Celibate in the City provides the bloggernacle’s version of reality TV, with adventures in dating 24/7. Now, the (sane?) folk over at Let Your Mind Alone are tackling the subject too. Chris Potter wonders about the prevalence of non-committal dating practices and suggests that (gasp!) “Mormon dating practices, on average, aren’t as morally superior to the dating practices of the rest of the world as we would all like to think.” Chris Patton follows up with a comment guaranteed to endear him to Mormon women everywhere:… Read More

Everyone’s favorite (or tied-for-favorite) LDS serviceman (formerly) in Iraq, Chief Wiggles, is looking for help save an Iraqi girl who needs lifesaving medical care that she can only receive in the United States. She’s nine months old and not likely to live much longer without surgery, which will almost certainly allow her to live. Chief Wiggles is an LDS serviceman who founded the Operation Give charity (along with some help, including from T & S’s Matt Evans) to provide toys for kids in Iraq. He has details about the girl’s condition here. They’ve located a hospital and surgeon, Dr. Marcelo… Read More

We have been infected with spyware. I’m working on eradicating it. It’s gone. Read More

I know we believe in a God of hurricanes, but this is starting to get ridiculous. (Link via Froomkin). Read More

During the course of its history the Church has spawned more than its share of schismatic organizations. During the Nauvoo period William Law and others disaffected with Joseph over polygamy, temple ordinances, the political Kingdom of God, and radical teachings about the nature of God formed the New Church, which was meant to institutionalize Mormonism in its pure form before it was infected by the Nauvoo era innovations. After the abandonment of polygamy Musser and others broke off to found the various fundamentalist sects. Indeed, since the Manifesto, virtually all of the Mormon schismatic groups have been on what one… Read More

For any who doubt that Sunstone at time struggles for new ideas, check out Nadine Hansen’s “The Garden of My Faith” . The essay was originally delivered as a “Pillars of My Faith” lecture at a Sunstone Symposium. As near as I can tell, the “Pillars of My Faith” lecture is sort of like the Storrs Lectures of the Sunstone subculture: an honor bestowed on those who have paid their dues and presumably have something to say. Hansen’s essay doesn’t miss a cliché as she tells of her efforts to weed out white washing, over-correlation, sexism, and homophobia from amongst… Read More

I don’t know about you, but of all of the members of the Quorum of the Twelve, Richard G. Scott has always struck me as the sweetest and most patient. I have no personal experiences or special information to back this up. It is just my impression. I wonder if this is in part the lingering influence of Admiral Hyman Rickover. Read More

Yes, that’s T & S blogger Matt Evans in the New York Times (all the news that’s fit to print), talking about his business, Baby Insight. (Alert reader Matt Horlacher was the first to point it out to me). Matt’s business allows customers to take voluntary, often very high-definition ultrasound images of fetuses in the womb, usually at around 30 weeks. The article points out that some medical organizations oppose the taking of voluntary ultrasounds, but Matt counters by noting that there is no evidence of harm caused by these ultrasounds. And I suspect that as a pro-life advocate, Matt… Read More

I followed Adam’s link in the sidebar to an article in Meridian Magazine, by their film critic Kieth no I did not spell that wrong Merrill. Read More

Jason Knapp over at Let Your Mind Alone is looking into the possibility of establishing a student-edited journal of Mormon studies, possibly in conjunction with BYU Studies (he mentions informal discussions with Jack Welch). It all sounds very tentative and gestational at the moment, but it sounds like a potentially interesting development. Students (or others, for that matter) who are interested in Mormon studies may want to check out Jason’s post, where he also gives contact information. Read More

Sometime T & S and BCC commenter Jim Lucas points out this interesting story. Daniel Arkell, an LDS student at Washburn University Law School in Kansas, joined the Christian Legal Society. When the group decided to start a Bible study program, he was one of the volunteers to lead the study. However, the group then decided that he could not lead the Bible study, or become an officer of the group. Arkell filed a discrimination complaint with the university, which then revoked the CLS’s charter. The CLS is now suing the university in federal court. Read More

Just how PoMo is the celibate one? Here’s a sample from her post on the topic: Because of my internet blogging activities I ‘meet’ other people online. We have no real life interaction, just email and blogging comments. Then, one reader of my blog-about-dates invites me on a real date with one of his real friends. So I go out and meet in real life this stranger that I first met in cyberspace. (My simulacra world has now spilled into my real world). We have a real nice time. Then I go home to blog about the date, so I… Read More

I am not a connoisseur of music, I am an omnivore, and I think I recall Nietzsche pointing out that a person who will eat anything is a person who has no taste. That’s me. There are few kinds of music that I don’t enjoy. Read More

Here is a very simple question on which I have no priors: is there a difference between withdrawing from the Spirit and having the Spirit withdrawn? On the former, see Mosiah 2:36. On the latter, see Helaman 13:8. I can visualize us withdrawing from God, but I have a harder time visualizing the circumstances under which God withdraws from us. Read More

We’re going to the Temple tomorrow, three hours away, and I was sitting here pondering where we might eat lunch (I’m extremely pregnant and pretty much living from one feeding to the next.) in a city I don’t know that well. So, I went to Yahoo! maps, typed in the address of the Temple, clicked on ‘show restaurants’ and ‘all cuisines’ and there you have it. Every restaurant in a five mile radius, location shown on map, and no panicked u-turns because you passed a place that looked good or settling for fast food because you don’t know if there… Read More

Over the next little while, I’m going to be trying to implement the new blogroll feature from WordPress. There will be a bit of lag time as we get our blogroll moved over. During this lag, the new blogroll will only be partially complete. However, it should load a lot faster as it’s not getting data from two other websites. Read More

Apologies to all who have tried to comment this morning. Kaimi was messing with comment moderation settings (where we can put “questionable” comments into a queue for individual approval) and accidentally added an extra blank line to the list of questionable comment flags. The software apparently interpreted this as a blank space, so any comment with a space in it was marked questionable. This has been fixed, and everyone’s “questionable” comments have been released from comment jail. (I hear they’re considering a class action lawsuit, alleging unconstitutional conditions). Read More

Over at my own blog, I’ve posted some (as is my wont, lengthy) reflections on the importance of celebrating holidays, even those that aren’t, strictly speaking, one’s own. The occasion, of course, is that today is Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. (Actually it began last night at sundown, but the formal holiday is today.) As I’ve mentioned a few times before here at Times and Seasons, I’m a fan of holidays–I think their religious, historical, communal and moral importance to one’s personal and family life can only with difficulty be overstated. And that goes especially for religious holidays (despite… Read More

I don’t know how I missed this, but apparently during halftime of last week’s Stanford-BYU game, the legenday Stanford Band’s halftime act included five dancers wearing wedding veils — a not-so-subtle dig at the opposing school’s founder. Not to worry, though, the Stanford athletic director issued an apology Monday. Read More

Some of my co-bloggers are big fans of the slippery slope. I’m a skeptic. I’m not suggesting that it is not possible to, in a descriptive way, construct some sort of progression between events that makes some sense. (I have separate doubts about descriptive use of slippery-slope arguments, particularly with the problem of cherry-picking). But my biggest concern with slippery slope arguments are when they are employed normatively: “We shouldn’t do X, because that might lead to Y, and then Z.” Or the ever-popular framing: “Wow, so-and-so suggests we do X. What’s next, Y?” And thus are proponents of some… Read More