The subject of loyalty came up over at a recent Bloggernacle Times thread. Jacob J stirred the pot a little by saying the following:

I think loyalty is vastly overrated. In all the cases when loyalty is cited as the motivation for virtuous behavior that same behavior could/should have been motivated by a less problematic virtue like fairmindedness or kindness. In plenty of cases, loyalty is a name for going against your better judgment to do something wrong, covering something up, or sticking up for a person who is in the wrong.

This comment was met with resistance but Jacob is entirely correct. Loyalty is a useful motivational tool to be sure but is hardly a virtue itself.
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Well, I had a few more things I could have done with the data, but time got the best of me. Rather than leave this undone though, here is the data.

Survey Data

Please feel free to use the data,do some analysis and post a link here to your findings.

Blake has a relatively new paper up on his site called “Atonement in Mormon Thought (a Response to Deidre Green Regarding the Compassion Theory of Atonement)”. As the title indicates, it is largely a response to a paper critiquing his compassion theory of atonement.†

Before making his response to Deidre Green, Blake does a quick survey of uniquely Mormon theories of atonement and offers some critiques of his own. He did me the honor of offering a short critique of my Dialogue paper The Divine-Infusion Theory: Rethinking the Atonement (which is now available online, thanks Kristine and Dialogue!). When I read what Blake had to say it got me thinking about how it came about and I wanted to make a short response here. (more…)

Continued from here.

For the full series click here.

So I was a little surprised by this set, though in hind sight, it makes perfect sense.
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The dominoes have officially begun to fall folks. Colorado just officially announced that it is leaving the Big12 to join the Pac10.

What is next? Nebraska is widely expected to leave the Big12 to join the Big10. If that happens then the Big12 is reportedly dead. The other big dogs (Texas and Oklahoma) don’t want to stay in the Big12 if Nebraska is gone. So there is a decent chance that most if the Big12 South will also defect to the Pac10 creating the Pac16.

If for some reason Nebraska stays in the Big12 that would be good news for both Utah and BYU. Utah is first in line to join CU in the Pac10 and BYU would surely be a top candidate to replace CU in the Big12. If the Big12 implodes things get messier because it would leave schools like Kansas and Kansas State without a conference at all. Maybe the Mountain West would be able to recruit them in that case.

Lots and lots of dominoes yet to fall folks. We’ll try to keep you updated in this thread as news goes comes in.

Alright I know posting on something like this is a cheap way to drive traffic and comments, but a recent conversation Kristen and I had with an LDS friend inspired me to post on the elephant (or two) in the room. What is the deal with so many Mormon women getting plastic surgery which normally includes but is not limited to adding big fake boobs? (Which they of course cover ever so modestly thereafter…)

I wish we had some data on this subject. What I don’t know is if Mormon women are more likely or less likely than their socio-economic counterparts to join in the plastic surgery trend. My guess is that income and region are far greater predictors of plastic surgery participation than religion. If that is true the question is: Should we be surprised about that? (more…)

Continued from here.

For those of you who are new, click here for the entire series.

Seeing as the more free of commentary on my charts I am, the less crazy the comments on the post are, I am going “commentary lite” on this one. (more…)