Alright, the title is partially tongue in cheek since the method I describe below has more than a few caveats to it.

Ziff over at Zelophehad’s Daughters put up a post shows the distribution of Facebook likes which readers of each blog in the bloggernacle have for each member of the 15 apostles.  Keep in mind that by “reader of a blog” I mean a person who has liked that blog on Facebook.  Thus, Ziff’s data compares this distribution against the distribution which exists for the total FB likes to Q15 members.  I find this comparison interesting, but incomplete.  (Newcoolthang does not have a Facebook page, but this is not the incompleteness to which I am referring.)

Luckily, Ziff was nice enough to also publish his raw data in the post, thereby allowing me to analyze the data along different lines.  Whereas Ziff was concerned about the distribution of likes among Q15 members for each blogs readership, I want to analyze how much support there is for each Q15 member within each blogs readership.  By “support” I mean this: out of all the people that “like” a particular blog, how many of those people also like each Q15 member?  Here are the result of my analysis: (more…)

In my last post I introduced Jurgen Habermas’ book The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere and argued that it is very relevant to us in the bloggernacle.  More specifically, I argued that just as how during the Enlightenment independent people came together in a public forum so as to engage in critical debate which eventually served to erode the perceived legitimacy of their state authorities, so too us within the bloggernacle come together as independent persons in this public forum so as to engage in critical debate which can – if we are not careful – erode the perceived legitimacy of our church authorities.  The bloggernacle is largely characterized by the same three traits that structured the public sphere which Habermas sees at the center of democratic politics:  Open accessibility to all, equality amongst interlocutors and all topics are open to critical discussion.  My point in that post was not to accuse anybody in particular of undermining the authority of our leaders so much as it was to warn us all how easy it is to seamlessly and unnoticeably slide from “a public sphere in which the [priesthood authority is] merely represented before the people [to] a sphere in which [church] authority [is] publicly monitored through informed and critical discourse by the people.” (p. xi)   In this post I want to articulate the subtle steps by which this transition can happen. (more…)

I worry that the bloggernacle is a crucial cog within a cultural machine that takes prophetic religions and transforms them into secular and therefore apostate institutions.  I worry that the same mechanisms by which modern intellectuals overthrew feudal society are also attempting to secularize the church today.  (I have a strong suspicion that a very similar process characterized the transition from apostles and prophets to theologians and state authorities in the early church.)  I will follow Jurgen Habermas in calling this mechanism, “the public sphere.”  Let me first give a very brief description of the role that the public sphere played in the overthrow of feudal society before I articulate the rather obvious parallels which I see in the bloggernacle.  (All references are from The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, Jurgen Habermas) (more…)

Over at Wheat and Tares, Hawkgrrrl wrote an interesting post on the difference between obedience and self-sufficiency.  She mentioned how pretty much everybody teaches both perspectives to their children, but if push came to shove and they could only teach one, religious people would teach obedience while secular families would choose self-sufficiency.

In the comments to that post I pretty much rehearsed the reasoning behind my post, “The False Prophets We Follow”, wherein I suggest that self-sufficiency in the sense of not following or obeying what anybody else teaches us is a myth which serves to reinforce secular values at the expense of religious values.  Our thoughts and values have almost entirely been taught us by other people and/or spirits.  Thus, the question is not whether we or our children will obey or be self-sufficient (this is not exactly the question that Hawkgrrl was asking); the question is whether we or our children will construe the choices we make in our lives in terms of obedience or self-sufficiency. (more…)

Human reasoning is pretty much indispensable in our daily lives as human beings.  Not only are we allowed to engage in human reasoning, but we are actively encouraged to do it…. Unless it contradicts the teachings of our priesthood leaders.  Priesthood authority trumps human reason.

“We feel very sure that you understand well the doctrines of the Church. They are either true or not true. Our testimony is that they are true. Under these circumstances we may not permit ourselves to be too much impressed by the reasonings of men however well-founded they may seem to be. We should like to say this to you in all kindness and in all sincerity that you are too fine a man to permit yourself to be led off from the principles of the Gospel by worldly learning. You have too much of a potentiality for doing good and we therefore prayerfully hope that you can reorient your thinking and bring it in line with the revealed word of God.”

-12 November 1947 Letter to Lowry Nelson, First Presidency, Archive.org (more…)