In this second post of this reading club I will cover pages 11-13 in Sterling McMurrin’s 1965 book The Theological Foundations of the Mormon Religion. (The original plan was to cover pages 11-18 like Clark did in his reading club but the post got too long.) I think this series might be helpful to lay the groundwork for the philosophical terms that become required as we discuss Mormon theology here at the Thang. I’m hoping I can refer back to this series of posts when discussing theology in the future. But beyond that, I think these subjects are interesting and worthy of discussing in their own right as well. (more…)

I don’t read a lot of fiction. It’s not that I don’t like reading good fiction – more that I have trouble stopping. When I get a book I really like I have trouble sleeping or concentrating until I finish it. For that reason, I tend to read my fiction on vacations and holidays. Last Christmas I was inspired by a post by Kaimi to get a copy of Enders Game. I loved it and powered through it in a day or two. Last week I decided to try the sequel, Speaker For the Dead, and couldn’t put it down either (causing me to drop out of a few hot blog debates here and elsewhere…). If anything, I think Speaker For the Dead might be even better than Ender’s Game. I’m on to the third in the series now, Xenocide. I’m about half way through and it is not shaping up to be as good as the first two books, but it does give me some good fodder for a blog post. As it turns out, the universe Ender and friends live in is apparently built on the theology and metaphysics (ideas about the nature of reality) of 19th century Mormon apostle Orson Pratt. (more…)

One of the things that remain a mystery to the world is the nature of the soul. I have already written a couple of posts on this subject, the first was called “Are we eternal or is it just our parts that are eternal?” and the second was my recent post on the Sterling McMurrin book. McMurrin put it pretty well when he said the question was one of what our spirits are made of – are they necessary or contingent; are they made up of irreducible parts or are they “simple”, irreducible, and indestructible themselves. When he wrote his book in 1965, McMurrin felt that the parts model was dominant in Mormonism. (more…)

I am finally getting around to reading Sterling McMurrin’s 1965 book called “The Theological Foundations of the Mormon Religion“. Clark already sponsored a reading club for this book about 18 months ago so in this post I will pick up on that long-dead discussion and follow Clark’s outline. Both Clark and Dave started by posting on the topics covered in the first eleven pages. (more…)

Johnny was bad, even as a child, everybody could tell…

– Opening line to Only a Lad by Oingo Boingo

I gave the priesthood lesson today in my ward. It was based on President Hinckley’s recent talk on forgiveness. You remember the story he related about the generous woman that was so forgiving to the young man that had foolishly and carelessly heaved a frozen turkey through her windshield and disfigured her face in the process. It is a touching story of repentance and forgiveness – I highly recommend it. (more…)

I took a class with Stephen Robinson at BYU in the early nineties. I got the feeling I annoyed him a bit. I suspect I might annoy him even more now (if he spends much time on the Web) since my post on why his parable of the bicycle is wrong now shows up as the #4 Google result for the search term “Parable of the Bicycle”. After bashing the parable of the bicycle I felt obligated to try to find a better explanation of what the atonement does for us so I concocted and presented my own parable and called it the parable of the mortgage. The problem was that I was not really satisfied with my alternative either. (more…)

The Garden of Eden story is packed with symbolism. Jeff Giliam has even made compelling arguments here at the Thang that the Garden story is entirely symbolic. In this post I will riff on this idea that the Garden story is symbolic rather than literal. Before doing so, I want to point out that I am not hinting that there was no literal Adam on this earth. I think the evidence that there was a literal Adam is quite compelling. Rather, I want to look at possible meanings of the garden story and pre-garden story. (more…)

So I was listening to the song Monkey Man by The Specials this afternoon and it dawned on me that I haven’t written a single post on Mormons and evolution here at the Thang. That changes today. (I’m always thinking of how to tie posts in with radio.blog anyway…) (more…)

Bryce’s recent post has reignited a small discussion about God’s foreknowledge. I thought I would make a few comments that tie some of my former posts together on the subject. (more…)

In my last post on the Oneness of the members of the Godhead I brought up the idea that a fundamental difference between our minds and the mind of the Godhead is that we can only think of one thing at a time and they can think of multiple things at once. Here is a link to the Nibley article I referred to earlier called “Zeal Without Knowledge.” In this paper Nibley leads with the idea that human minds literally can only think of one thing at a time. We really do have one track minds — we are just good a flickering back and forth between things so quickly that it is as if we are thinking of multiple things at once. God does not have this limitation. The connection to the last post is that I think that without this limitation, the notion of me vs. other becomes a different thing entirely. Clearly, God’s thoughts are not our thoughts. (more…)

Our speculative discussion in the last post has me thinking about the implications of total unity vs. individuality. This is a doctrinal question that touches most every important part of our spiritual and religious lives. It is at the heart of the tension between our unity as a community striving to become a Zion people and our individuality, our unity as couples or families vs. individuality, and the unity of the Godhead vs. their individuality. If we are to become one with God then what becomes of our individuality? (more…)