I have a question for you all. Do you think 2 Nephi 2:25 qualifies as a metaphysical claim about our eternal souls? Here is the well known verse:

Adam fell that men might be; and men are, that they might have joy.

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Ok, after a seven month layoff I figured now would be a good time to pick up my discussion of Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. If you weren’t following along last Spring, you may not know that Habit 1 is: Be Proactive. In short, that means: “You have free will (in the full libertarian sense of the word) so use it. Do something. No excuses.” Habit 2 is: Begin with the End in Mind. This one is sort of about goal setting but it is also about metaphysics and mapping out existence for ourselves and trying to decide where we actually fit in the universe and where we intend to end up (whether in this life or past it). Now we’re on to Habit 3: Put First Things First. (more…)

Is it just me or have the makers of American Idol seemed more cruel this season already? I know that the “check out these idiots” portion of the auditions is always popular and I admit that I have laughed at many of the weirdos that have been featured over the years, but I have found myself cringing this season and pitying many of the sad folks featured so far. Seattle was especially painful with that poor software engineer being spotlighted for a good 5 minutes. (Nicholas Zitsman or something?) The producers of the show apparently decided that prolonging his humiliation by forcing America to sit through basically his entire a capella rendition of Unchained Melody would be good television. It started feeling like watching someone being tortured to me. I ended up rooting for the poor guy (who frankly seemed like he might be autistic or something) and disliking the producers for their apparent sadistic streak. But is the cruelty of the producers just driven by the cruelty of the audience? Are we the ones who demand more and more humiliation of the weak and downtrodden souls who are misguided enough to think trying out for American Idol is a good idea?
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[Edit: In this post I should have written that we generally live “as if” we were causally determined beings. Later discussions showed this mistake of mine confused a lot of people.]

There was an interesting article in the New York Times this week called “Free Will: Now You Have It, Now You Don’t” (Hat tip to the BCC sideblog). The author gives a quick review of the scientific arguments against the concept of Free Will (and in favor of causal determinism). I recommend you check it out.

There was one section and specifically one conclusion the author drew that I want to focus one in this post. The author recounted a now-famous experiment that has been brought up around these parts before (by some of our local science guys like Jeff G., Christian C., and Clark if I remember correctly). Here is the passage from the article:
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D&C 19:4-12 is a humdinger of a scriptural passage. In it the Lord confirms what people had surely been suspecting about various doctrines for thousands of years: “He has to be kidding about that doctrine, right?” Apparently the answer to their question in at least one case was “yup”. The specific misleading doctrine that the Lord tells us he had allowed people to buy into until section 19 was given in 1830 is the doctrine that “endless torment” and “eternal damnation” are actually endless and eternal in duration. Rather, the Lord admits, such punishments usually do have an end. God just allowed his people to believe otherwise because having people believe such punishments last forever was a useful form of motivation. In his words:

wherefore it is more express than other scriptures, that it might work upon the hearts of the children of men, altogether for my name’s glory. (verse 7)

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There has been some interesting action around these parts while I have been away. It started with some exchanges between Jacob and Mogget about the general subject of theology. Late in one of those threads at Mogget made an interesting comment:

Two points about our info on the post-mortal existence:

If it’s something that is known only by revelation, then let’s admit that it’s so.

If we’re going to speculate about it, then it needs structure and organization.

Now it seems that there are folks that think three kingdoms, and folks that think “many kingdoms.” Interestingly enough, both sides seem to think they have logic, exegesis, and revelation on their side.

So let’s take a step back in the whole process and talk about how to distinguish between competing claims in general before we work on this issue. It would seem that the tough one is competing claims of revelation, no?

Anybody got any ideas? Something reasonably objective?

The point she brings up about competing revelations a difficult but highly important one. (more…)

Ok, we’re back on a new server and with an upgraded look to match the recent WP upgrade. We may tweak the template a little for a while but I think we are pretty close. Welcome back to the Thang.

(Don’t forget to read and comment on Jacob’s last post. It got cut off in the change over.)

In my last post which outlined the newly named Royal Empathy theory of atonement I mentioned that one important assumption of that theory was the notion taught by Joseph Smith that our Father in Heaven was a savior on a previous world. J. Stapley chimed in with support for the theory and also provided some of the quotes from Joseph Smith that teach the idea that Jesus only became as the Father is by performing an atoning work for us as the Father did before him on a previous world. Here are the key quotes as Stapley presented them in that thread: (more…)

I’ve been threatening for quite some time to post an atonement theory. Blake Ostler has written a good one of his own and has thrown out the challenge to the rest of us to come up with a better one if we can. As it turns out, coming up with a coherent theory of atonement is really quite difficult. We have discussed his theory and others here for months and no one has come up with a theory that answers the questions we have have discussed about the atonement. Jacob wrote an excellent paper on the atonement (it was published in the Spring 2006 issues of Dialogue) in which he critiqued some of the theories out there but ended up demurring when it came to answering many of the tough questions a theory should answer. Mark Butler has talked about a theory but has never written it down in a single and concise form that can be adequately engaged. So this post is my preliminary and very rough whack at an atonement theory. (more…)

Moggett started using an excellent term in some of her posts over at FPR: “The Christ Event”. The Christ Event, as I understand it, is a name for the events in the life of Jesus between the last supper (or perhaps the triumphal entry into Jerusalem…) and the resurrection, including the Garden of Gethsemane and the cross. I think this is a very useful term to be used in conjunction with the broader term atonement. Making such a delineation may not be all that important in some settings, but when we are trying to discuss atonement theories such added precision becomes a necessity. (more…)

In the February 1, 1843 issue of Times and Seasons a poem signed “Joseph Smith” was printed. The 312-line poem was labeled “The Answer. To W.W. Phelps. Esq.” and was titled The Vision. It was a poetic paraphrase of “The Vision”, the revelation now found in D&C 76. The poem itself is generally not thought to be very good and would not attract much attention at all today if it weren’t for one startling theological statement it contains which is not in the actual revelation it is paraphrasing. Stanzas 21-22 of the poem say that all of the inhabitants of the universe “from first to last, /Are sav’d by the very same Saviour of ours”. Those who like the idea that Jesus is the only Savior for all the innumerable worlds throughout all eternity (yes, Blake, I’m looking at you) like to quote this poem as evidence that Joseph believed and preached such a doctrine. But as we have discussed at length here, the notion that Jesus is the first, last and only Savior throughout eternity seems to be at odds with the ideas Joseph preached later in the King Follet Discourse and the follow up sermon often called The Sermon in the Grove. (more…)