- Kendall Buchanan on A Preposterously Complimentary Review of the Book of Abraham: “Stephen C, Stephen F, Yeah, I think he was being more generous than the South Park quote suggests. In a follow-up post I’d like to touch on another theme the reviewer implicitly grapples with: when Mormonism is so “obviously incorrect”, how does it stay so resilient and continue to thrive?” Jul 17, 15:58
- on A Preposterously Complimentary Review of the Book of Abraham: “My sense is that the reviewer is engaging in a more sophisticated grappling with a similar question that the South Park episode seemed to ask in a more crass way. Is there something about Mormonism that produces the outcome of it’s very nice people? I think that’s an interesting question too and am glad the reviewer is interested in the topic.” Jul 17, 14:11
- on A Preposterously Complimentary Review of the Book of Abraham: “I’m a big Scott Alexander fan, so I read this Substack when I saw it in my Inbox. One thing I’ll add is that, while he’s not going to be joining the Church anytime soon, Alexander’s take on the apologetics arguments is actually more generous and sophisticated than most online rationalist’s responses to the BoA (which is usually just some version of “Lol, John Gee is dumb and Robert Ritner is cool.”) So it’s a little more generous than the South Park angle of “this is patently dumb but Mormons are nice and that’s what matters.”” Jul 17, 13:35
- on Spiritually Inspirational Art by Not-So-Inspirational Artists: “Adam F: Good example. RLD: WRT the King of Assyria, I do think the idea of God using bad people to, say, punish his chosen people (Assyria is going to Assyria after all) is less complicated than God using somebody *to create an inspired work of art.*” Jul 17, 13:26
- on A Preposterously Complimentary Review of the Book of Abraham: “Thanks, Kendall. Though I did not read the review in it’s entirety, it addresses a lot of themes I’ve been interested in and have posted about. https://www.timesandseasons.org/index.php/2024/03/a-secular-case-for-the-church/ I’ve long thought that concluding line from the South Park episode the reviewer cites was important, but I do get the challenges of believers engaging in claims like these.” Jul 17, 10:13
- on A Review: Educating Zion: The Diaries of BYU President Ernest L. Wilkinson, 1952–1971: “So, it’s not like there’s a proven formula for turning a religious college into a nationally prominent university while maintaining its religious mission. A lot of colleges that started on that path have preserved at most a nominal religious identity and only a few ultimately succeeded. It makes no sense to dismiss concerns about secularization as paranoia when secularization has been one of the most important influences on society for the last century or more.” Jul 16, 19:36
- on A Review: Educating Zion: The Diaries of BYU President Ernest L. Wilkinson, 1952–1971: “It used to be that Mormons were one of the best educated religious groups in America. Yet BYU was unable to attract much of the Church’s top notch talent because of Wilkinson’s paranoia. It is sad that the university was willing to sacrifice talent for the sake of indoctrination. BYU had the potential to be so much more. Could Wilkinson’s accomplishments been achieved some other way? Probably. For example, provides scholarships to all worthy college bound students. And have Institutes at a wide range US and global universities. The latter has been partially achieved.” Jul 16, 17:31
- on Spiritually Inspirational Art by Not-So-Inspirational Artists: “This isn’t unique to art, though it definitely applies to art. We’re rightly comfortable saying that the Lord uses imperfect people to do his work, but what about people we might reasonably label as “bad”? It’s worth asking whether the Lord recognizes a difference. I think a case can be made from the Book of Mormon that the Lord puts people who deliberately harm others in their own category (call it “the wicked”), and they’re the ones who are proactively punished. See 3 Nephi 10:12, for example. But it’s not a slam dunk. The best-explained example of the Lord using bad people is the King of Assyria in Isaiah 10/2 Nephi 20, but his “contribution” to the Lord’s work (destroying Israel) is bad and Isaiah makes it clear he’ll still be punished for it. I’d put Christopher Columbus in the same category, and insist that the Spirit of the Lord may have “wrought upon” him to persist in sailing west, but not to underestimate the size of the Earth and definitely not to enslave or murder the people he met when he got there. But the post focuses on people who make positive contributions to the Lord’s work despite their own failings. Thomas Jefferson stands out to me here: it seems to me that it must have taken the influence of the Holy Ghost to make a slaveowner write such true and stirring words about equality and unalienable rights. I think Steven’s right that the Spirit sometimes surprises us by whom it inspires…and by when it inspires us. I love his last paragraph. We need to stop judging–if we refuse the fruits of inspiration because the person inspired also harmed others, we’ll cut ourselves off from a lot of beauty and a lot of wisdom. God will ensure there is justice for perpetrators and healing for victims. (Samson is definitely a cautionary tale, but in a different direction. His flaw was to take the gift the Lord gave him–his strength–and use it for selfish purposes rather than to free Israel like the judges had before him. That and flouting his Nazarite vow: all that bizarreness about eating from lion corpses and fighting with jawbones is there to illustrate that he was ignoring the rule that Nazarites can’t touch the dead. It was when he finally abandoned the last remnant of the Nazarite vow, never to cut his hair, that the Lord withdrew his gift. Most likely Samson no longer believed it was a gift.)” Jul 16, 15:46
- on Spiritually Inspirational Art by Not-So-Inspirational Artists: “Samson comes to mind as a cautionary tale … seems more a reflection of how we use our gifts in the final accounting, than a reflection of whether the Spirit touches us to create something in some moment.” Jul 16, 06:44
