There was an interesting segment on 60 Minutes last week titled “Jihadists And ‘The Narrative'”. You can watch it here:

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“The Narrative” is the all too pervasive worldview among radical Muslims that says the United States is secretly bent on destroying Islam. Near the end of the segment it became clear that The Narrative relies heavily on conspiracy theories for its support. In this case the radical Muslims are convinced that the CIA was the driving factor behind the September 11, 2001 Al Qaeda attacks on the United States. The logic is that the CIA put Al Qaeda up to the attacks so America would have an excuse to invade Iraq and Afghanistan and to proceed with its secret agenda to destroy Islam. (more…)

My 40th birthday is coming up this Tuesday. These birthdays that end with a zero are landmarks so I figured I should post something. (Plus I realized I haven’t written very many posts here this year.)

I was 34 when I started this blog. That doesn’t seem all that long ago but in some important ways I am a different person now than I was then. That is the beauty and danger of digging into metaphysics and philosophy I think; when you tinker with the very core of your beliefs you are adjusting the lens through which you see the universe. Making changes to the lens through which you see the universe (sometimes called shifting paradigms) is interesting in that it may not have immediate and obvious consequences but it will inevitably have massive long term implications.

I’m reminded of this famous quote attributed to Henry David Thoreau:

For every thousand hacking at the leaves of evil, there is one striking at the root.

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The claim by evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa is that “men do everything they do in order to get laid”. Although Kanazawa is clearly going for some shock value with his claim, I must admit that I find his arguments compelling.

Kanazawa’s most recent in the series of blog posts supporting his claim is this post discussing the Tiger Woods sex scandal. Here are a few quotes that summarize the theory:

In the very short time since I have been a “blogger” at Psychology Today, since February 2008, there have been numerous sex scandals of politicians, athletes, and other celebrities: Eliot Spitzer; Silvio Berlusconi; David Paterson; John Edwards; Mark Sanford; David Letterman, and now Tiger Woods. This is nothing new. The only puzzle is that some of them had to pay for the sex. … (more…)

The new men’s college basketball rankings came out this morning and the 20-1 BYU Cougars are ranked #10 in the coaches poll. This is the highest ranking for the Cougs since the ’87-88 team. I think this is the best BYU hoops team since the Danny Ainge days.

BYU is led by Junior point guard Jimmer Fredette out of New York state. I have long thought Jimmer was the best player on the team — ever since he looked like the best BYU player on the floor in the NCAA tournament game his freshman year. This year no one can deny Jimmer is one of the best guards in the country. He really turned heads nationally at the end of December when he dropped 49 points on Arizona in Tucson, setting a new BYU scoring record and a new McKale Center scoring record in the process. The only problem was that he came down with a case of mono right after that game and it has taken the better part of a month for him to bounce back.
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No doubt many of you have seen the movie Avatar which is breaking all kinds of box office records this winter. For the three of you who don’t know, in the film humans in the future are mentally connected to test-tube-grown alien bodies and essentially act as pilots to those bodies in the story. This idea of minds powering bodies is pretty common in religions around the world where the assumption is that each of us is a spirit piloting a mortal human body and as soon as our body dies our spirits essentially hit the eject button and move on. This concept is certainly at home in Mormonism where it is not uncommon to hear analogies about hands and gloves to describe the relationship between spirits and mortal bodies.

So with that as a backdrop, it is not entirely clear to me what the theoretical objection to the idea of human evolution among Judeo/Christian religionists would be. The stereotypical objection is that evolution means human bodies “evolved from monkeys”. As far as I can tell the awfulness of this prospect is supposed to be self evident. But of course the awfulness of the idea that our ancient biological ancestors were “monkeys” isn’t self evident. If we are just pilots of these present bodies then why should we care at all how these bodies came into existence in the universe? Now I can understand that Biblical literalists would be concerned about having to give up some hyper-literalism in their interpretations of the Bible to accept human evolution and they might not like that. But beyond that it seems to me humans shouldn’t really care much how our species came to be on this planet.
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I predicted before the season that this year’s BYU Men’s Hoops team would make it to the Sweet 16 in the NCAA tournament despite not winning an NCAA Tourney game since ’93. BYU is pulling through for me nicely so far. At the halfway point of the regular season BYU is 15-1, ranked in the top 25, and looking very strong. Tonight BYU took down MWC title contender UNLV by the score of 77-73. The win is impressive but much more so when you consider that BYU’s star player (Jimmer Fredette) wasn’t able to contribute much due to a bout with strep throat he is trying to recover from. In addition, the second best player on the team (Jackson Emery) was gimpy with an injured heel. So the win tonight was especially impressive with the role players and bench coming up big. Congratulations to the Cougs on a great win and a great first half of the season.

In other BYU hoops news: Jimmer Fredette broke the 48 year old BYU single game scoring record last week when he dropped 49 points on the Arizona Wildcats in Tucson. In so doing Jimmer also broke the scoring record in the McKale Center. The feat garnered Jimmer the National Player of the Week honor as well as the MWC player of the week award. I saw that game and it was a truly spectacular display. Congratulation to Jimmer on that.

And Go Cougs!

Today is The Thang’s five year anniversary. An awful lot has been discussed around these parts in five years. What do you think the odds are that we’ll still be going in another five years? (I think they are pretty high…) Happy new (blogging) year everyone.

First, the BYU men’s basketball team scored 110 points in their victory over Nevada today. Jimmer dropped 33 on the Wolfpack alone. The only problem is the Cougs gave up 104 points in the victory. But a win is a win and Nevada is a solid program. BYU is now 11-1 and plays Nebraska tomorrow. If they win that one don’t be surprised if the Cougs crack the top 25 this week.

Ok, on to the other BYU game. At halftime of the Las Vegas Bowl BYU leads Oregon State 23-7.

Things looked ugly at first. With the wind howling at 40 mph in the face of BYU the offense was getting no where and then OSU scored a touchdown that looked way too easy. But BYU suddenly gathered themselves and marched 80 yards down the field directly into the head wind to score a tying touchdown. Right after that the wheels started coming off for The Beavers. First a backwards pass was dropped and BYU scooped it up for a TD. In the second quarter OSU was facing the wind and had two punts go all of 6 yards. Plus OSU got several penalties that helped BYU. The result was another BYU touchdown and field goal. I’m pleasantly surprised at how well things are going at the half. I’ll live blog the rest of the game: (more…)

There have been rumors circulating in recent months that the threefold mission of the church that became part of Mormonism under President Kimball (Proclaim the Gospel, Perfect the Saints, Redeem the Dead) was going to be expanded to include something about caring for the poor and needy. It now appears those rumors were accurate. We get this from Peggy Fletcher Stack’s article on the subject today:

The LDS Church is adding “to care for the poor and needy” to its longstanding “threefold mission,” which is to preach the LDS gospel, purify members’ lives and provide saving ordinances such as baptism to those who have died.

This mission first was coined by late LDS President Spencer W. Kimball in the 1980s and since then has been repeated as a mantra by the church’s more than 13 million members.

The new group of phrases will be described as The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ “purposes,” rather than missions, and will be spelled out in the next edition of the LDS Church Handbook of Instructions , due out next year, church spokesman Scott Trotter confirmed this week.

I like it. A lot.

Among the most radical teachings of Joseph Smith was his flat rejection of creatio ex nihilo — the idea that a beginningless God created all else that exists out of nothing. By rejecting creatio ex nihilo Joseph opened a world of theological and cosmological possibilities that are precluded from the creedal Christians who accept creation out of nothing as a foundational believe. One of the the theoretical possibilities is an idea I am labeling “radical universalism”.

Here are some of the theological assumptions that would underlie a radically universalistic cosmology:

A. God is beginningless

The scriptures that support the idea of a beginningless God plentiful so one might think that this is an uncontroversial assumption. However in some of our past discussions Mark D. and others have argued that while the rudimentary parts of God are beginningless it is possible that there was a time before there was a fully formed God. While I entertained this idea in the past I currently believe the scriptural support for the claim there never was a time before God is stronger.

B. The One God is a union of multiple divine persons
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Utah was atop yet another list of happiest states in the USA.

I’ll bet that really chaps the hides of critics and enemies of Mormonism. For some reason that makes me happy (and I don’t even live in Utah).