Quantumleap42

Stories from My Mission: I Find People

2012-01-08T18:22:00.002-05:00

Perhaps one of the hardest parts of being a missionary is having to track people down. It is made even harder when you don't have an address. In some places that would not be a problem, you just start asking people on the street and you can find them with in a few days, but in larger cities, this does not work.

When I moved into my fourth area of my mission in the city of Eldorado, Misiones (the same area where I got hit by a tornado) I was approached by the branch president there and given a special assignment (I should emphasize that I was given the assignment, not my companion). I had only been in the area for about a week when the branch president asked if he could talk to me in his office in the church building. I noted that he specifically asked me, and not my companion, to talk with him. The reason for this would eventually foreshadow future events.

When I got to his office and sat down he said, "Elder, you seem like someone I can ask to do something, and it will get done." He then gave me a list of six names and said, "These six people or families are on our records as being members of our branch, but most of them I do not know who they are and no one I have talked to knows who they are or where they live. The one or two that have met before I do not have address for them. For the rest I don't have any address either, nor do I know anything about them. I want you to find them." So there I had it, six names, and a city of about 55,000. No address, nothing, just the names. I told him I would do it.

As a missionary I would carry around a weekly agenda in my pocket (actually I would carry three, one for the current week and the two previous weeks, so that I would have them as reference, with names and addresses). On the back of my agenda, in a position that I reserved for important information, I wrote down the six names. I drew a box around it and got ready to look for those people. When we got back to our apartment I pulled out the list of names and looked at it. I took out the complete list of members for our branch and looked up each name on the list. Just as the branch president had said, their names were there but no addresses or any other information. We had nothing to go on.

While I was sitting at my desk (I had not told my companion about my special assignment from the branch president) I called out to my companion who was in the other room making lunch and asked, "Have you ever heard of someone named, _________?" and read off the first name on the list. I was asking him since he had been in the area for several weeks and I had just arrived that week. He said that he had never heard of that person. I proceeded to go down the list and ask him about each one. For each name he told me he had never heard of that person. I then went down the list again to make sure that none of the names rung a bell. He again told be that he had never heard of any of them. I put the agenda back in my pocket, but kept the names in mind, just in case.

A few weeks passed and I kept the names on my agenda. Every week when I got a new agenda I would transfer the names over. Occasionally when I had the opportunity I would ask some of the members, even those who were not coming to church, if they had ever heard of any of the people on the list. I didn't get any leads, until one day I got a bite. Someone remembered a name and said, "Oh, yeah. They lived over on whatever street, I think." It was a start. Slowly I began to gather information. Here a little there a little. It took me weeks, but I finally found one of the people, and then another. But for the other four I was no closer to finding them. My companion was aware that I had this list, but he never showed any interest in helping me find the people. Things finally came to a head with two dramatic experiences.

I honestly can't remember which came first, but I think they happened in the same week. The first experience happened as we were walking along and met a member of our church branch in the street with two of his boys. We stopped and spoke for a minute when the member suddenly said, "Have you ever gone to visit the [what-ever] family that lives just on the next street over?" I instantly recognized the name as one of the families on my list. As I hurriedly took out my list to verify that I had the name correct, my companion casually replied, "Oh, we used to visit them about once a week. We even had lunch with them once or twice. They don't really seem interested in coming back to church." I was just dumbfounded. I assured the member that we would keep them in mind and the conversation quickly ended.

As we walked away I paused, looked at the list and again went down the list and asked my companion, "Do you know any of these people?" He again told me that he didn't know any of them. I would later find out that he had actually met with and spoken to two other people on that list but it took him a week after that to "remember" that he knew them (including one of the people that I had already tracked down). By this point I wasn't feeling a whole lot of trust for anything my companion was telling me. About the same time that I found out that my companion had not "remembered" meeting any of these people, I had my second, and perhaps one of the most memorable experiences of my mission.

One morning I was looking at a map of the city and I felt a strong impression that we should go to a certain part of the city. There was one street in particular that I felt we should go to, and I could even pick out the two or three blocks that we should focus on. I mentioned this to my companion and his immediate reply was, "I don't think we should do that. That is the exact opposite part of the city that we need to go to." When I said that we didn't have any set appointments for that morning and we really didn't have anything planned so it would not be a problem to head in that direction, he insisted that we should go to another part of the city and try to find a particular person that we had been unsuccessfully trying to find for some time. I told him that trying to find that person would be a waste of time since they really didn't want to listen to us, and they have been putting us off for some time. But he was adamant, so I said that we could go there, but then we should return to the other side of the city (literally the exact opposite side of the city) because I had an impression that we should go there. He argued that it would be a waste of time since it would take too much time to walk to one side of the city and then walk back to the other side. He was getting upset about it, so let the matter drop for the moment.

We set out to find the person we had been teaching previously and it took some time to walk to her house. By the time we got there and clapped (remember we don't knock on doors, we stand at the gate and clap) no one responded. My companion was visibly upset about this. We had the morning completely free with nothing to do. So I just suggested that we go back to the neighborhood that I had indicated on the map before we left. My companion objected again and said it was a waste of time and was getting visibly upset with me. But I again felt that it was very important so I insisted that we go to that part of the city. My companion responded by walking in the exact opposite direction. (As a note: As missionaries we are not allowed to leave our companions alone. We have to stay together no matter what.) So I had to follow him.

He walked down to the end of the street and then just stood there. I turned left and got us walking in the general direction of where we needed to go. I began walking and my companion reluctantly began following. I didn't say anything, but every time we came to an intersection and my companion realized that we would have to turn left to get to the area I wanted to go to, he would walk straight, or turn right. We were going in a rather odd, round about way, and if I were to draw on a map the route we took it would look more like a random walk than an intended course.

Every once in a while when my companion wanted to slow down our already slow progress he would stop and clap at a random house to see if anyone was interested in "hearing our message". No one was, or no one was home of the 15 or so houses we stopped at (normally if we clapped at 15 random houses, we would be guaranteed to talk to at minimum one person and usually around four or five, so to have no one home, or willing to talk out of 15 houses was quite notable). Eventually my companion just got depressed and sullen and walked along slowly after me. All morning I had been feeling agitated and upset because I felt that we were going the wrong way. But finally when my companion gave up his resistance I started feeling better.

By the time I got to the street where I knew we should go I was feeling much better to the point of elation. The street we needed to get to was literally at the edge of the city, as in on one side there were houses and on the other there were trees and farmer's fields lying fallow and full of grass. As I stood there looking out almost triumphantly over the edge of the city, my companion grumbled at me, "Now what." It was not until that moment that I realized that I had not thought past just getting to that spot. I had spent almost the entire morning trying to get my companion to just go in that direction that I never stopped to think about what I would do when I got there.

So I stood there for a moment, and said a prayer that went something like this, "Dear Heavenly Father, you told me to come here...now what do I do?" The distinct response was, "Go right." So without another thought I turned right. I got to the next intersection and said, now what. "Go right," again came the response. I turned right again. I detected that my companion was grinding his teeth since we were now going in the exact opposite direction from the one I had been dragging him in. I was starting to think, "Now what?" We went about half a block and again I had the impression, "Go right."

Now I need to point out that cities in Argentina are all laid out in a nice square pattern. Almost all of the streets are straight, and they all intersect at right angles (with a few very rare exceptions, which is another story). So normally if you stand at an intersection and take three rights you will end back up where you started. But for some reason there was one street that didn't connect through. It was a kind of a half block street that ended in trees, houses and footpaths. Essentially we couldn't get there unless we had started at the very edge of the city and had taken the three right turns.

My companion was still upset and grumbled again and asked what we were doing. At that moment I looked up and saw a man working on a motorcycle in front of his house. Again I received a very clear impression that simply said, "Him." I walked up to the man, who was about 50 or 60 years old, introduced myself, but I didn't say who I was other than my name. I didn't mention that I was a missionary or why I was talking to him, I just said, "Good morning, My name is Elder Tanner." I really didn't know what to say after that. So I asked him if he was fixing his motorcycle. I know absolutely nothing about motorcycles, so I really didn't have anything to say. I asked him his name and he said, "Juan...I'll go get my daughter." and walked off without another word. I thought, "That's odd. Why is he getting his daughter?"

We waited for a few seconds and from inside the house emerges a huge bear of a man that stood about a foot taller than me, had arms about the size of my chest and a look like he wanted to fold me in half. My first thought was, "That's not his daughter." My second thought was, "I am going to die." My third thought was, "I think I can outrun my companion."

I looked at him, and introduced myself. I said one or two other things that I can't remember and then he looked right at me and said, "How is President Gomez doing?" President Gomez was our current branch president. I thought, "Wait...what? This guy knows who President Gomez is?" It turns out that he was a member, and his wife was a member. This man who I thought was going to kill us, was actually the son-in-law of the man fixing his motorcycle. The man fixing the motorcycle saw us and knew that we were members of his daughter's church so when we showed up he just assumed that we were there to speak to her. He went in the house and mentioned that we were outside, so his son-in-law came out to talk to us. I was pretty excited that I had been lead across the city to the very door of someone who needed to talk to us.

I spoke with him some more and found out that he used to live in another part of the city (very far from where we were) when he and his wife got baptized. They had gone to church for a while but then life got in the way, and they decided to move to Buenos Aires. They had moved there for about a year and a half, until he couldn't find anymore work due to the economic crisis, so they decided to move back to Eldorado and move in with her parents. They had not told anyone in our branch that they had moved to Buenos Aires, and they had just moved back a week before I found them.

We spoke for a while and agreed to come back and visit them. As we were walking away I took out my agenda to note the appointment and glanced over the list of names that the branch president had given me to find. Their names were on the list. They were my fifth check mark on the list and were the last ones that I would find. That Sunday I met with President Gomez and gave him all the information. I gave him the addresses for five of the six families and had managed to do it in a little under six weeks. He was impressed. He told me that he had given me the names as a last resort and thought that I might find one or two at best. He never thought that I could get five out of the six.

Stories from My Mission: Reading the Christmas Story

2011-12-25T17:46:00.000-05:00

A year into my mission I was in a city named Oberá in the province of Misiones. The church there was struggling and we were there on special assignment to help fix some of the problems and revive the struggling branch, but that is another story. At the time this would be my first and only Christmas in Argentina, since my first Christmas was spent in the Missionary Training Center in Provo.

Christmas in Argentina is very different than it is in the United States. I remember when I was growing up there would always be talk of a "white Christmas" (always jokingly, I lived in Arizona). But everything about Christmas, all the decorations, the things we colored in school and things we talked about in primary were associated with a "cold", "snowy" wintertime Christmas. But in Argentina Christmas falls in the middle of the summer, thus there it was associated with BBQ's, and fireworks and parades (processions). There were a few things that were odd and out of place that obviously had been imported from the United States (if not physically imported, then culturally imported), such as pictures of snowmen and "holiday" specials on TV that mostly consisted of Tim Allen's The Santa Clause or Arnold Schwarzenegger's Jingle All the Way dubbed in Spanish. For some reason those were popular in Argentina.

At this time of year as missionaries we would also have the opportunity of celebrate. The missionaries in my Zone (a group of about 10-16 missionaries) decided to get together for Christmas and have a BBQ. Only 6 of the 12 missionaries in my Zone were actually in Oberá so the others would have to travel in from other cities to spend Christmas with us. This meant that we would have to go pick them up at the bus terminal (we walked, we didn't have cars) and show them how to get to our apartment and where the hotel was and everything. This meant a lot of walking around making sure no one got lost. We also had to go out and buy the meat that we wanted, the seasonings, and all the other food we were going to make. So like many Christmas get-togethers, and us as the hosts, we were busy. Very busy.

In the middle of all of this my companion got sick and was out of commission for most of the day before Christmas. With all of the stress, illness and commotion I was failing to feel the spirit of Christmas and feel like it was something special. I was, we all were, being overwhelmed by too much stuff.

In my family we had the tradition that we would get together at my grandparents house and my grandfather would read the Christmas story from the book of Luke in the Bible. In the middle of all the commotion I was missing this special tradition and felt that I should do something.

Because everyone was going every which way I never really found the time to get the missionaries together to read the Christmas story. But my companion was sick and immobile so in a brief moment of pause I sat down with him and said that I thought it would be a good idea to read the Christmas story from Luke. He agreed and I opened my Bible and began to read.

As I read the story there was a change in both of us. Whereas we had been frenzied and distracted, as we focused on the reason for Christmas and read the story of Christ's birth we returned to a more peaceful and calm spirit that brought us a measure of relief. When the story came to a close my companion looked at me as said, "Thank you, that is what I was missing. We have been worrying about too much stuff, but this really brought us back to the true meaning of Christmas."

Even though there were still things to do we had come back to the true spirit of Christmas and that made it all worthwhile.

Stories from My Mission: I Get Hit by a Tornado

2011-11-20T12:24:00.001-05:00

I have decided to share some of my more memorable stories from my mission on my blog. For those who might read this who are not aware, the young men of my Church are expected to serve a two year mission where we proselyte for our faith (i.e. we share with people what we believe and invite them to believe as well). We do this when we turn 19 but some choose to wait a few years before they go. I left on my mission shortly after I turned 19 after completing one semester of college. I served my mission in Argentina in a part of the country known as el Litoral, which is one of the poorest parts of Argentina. It is a region characterized by hot, humid climates, rain forests, swamps, bogs and palm forests in the east, and flat, dry quebracho forest in the west. The Litoral is cut into the east and west halves by the Rio Paraná, which is the largest river in Argentina. I'll share more about the Paraná in future posts.

As I mentioned above, this part of Argentina gets a lot of rainfall, especially the part I was in at the time of this story. I was in a city called Eldorado in the province of Misiones (yes, I did serve my mission in Misiones, and I am an official resident of the city of Eldorado so in more than one way I was and still am a Misionaro ;-). While it is not uncommon for it to rain, and rain fairly hard, it usually doesn't have extremely hard storms like the one that hit us that day. Now I will say up front that for those who live in tornado alley the tornado that hit me was no F5, or even an F2 or maybe even an F1, but it was still pretty hard. It did take trees down, and cut power and caused problems all over the city.

We had been eating lunch with the branch president (the leader of our local congregation) in the city and were just leaving their house when it started to rain. We had umbrellas and ponchos so we weren't too worried but we immediately knew that this storm would be a little more intense than normal. We immediately set out for our apartment, a 15 minute walk, to see if we could beat the worst of the storm. We walked up to the end of the street and turned the corner when the rain started to come down harder. As we walked up the next street I started to become concerned that we would not make it back to our apartment before the rain got too hard, but we kept on going.

Google Earth image of where the rain started to hit us. Arrows indicate our direction of travel.
Note: For scale, each block is 100 m.

It was windy and the rain was starting to come down harder but it still wasn't that bad. I had been in worse. Still some of the leaves were blowing off the trees and were whipping across the road and I was wondering how far we could go before we had to find shelter, but my companion kept walking. (As a note for those who don't know, as missionaries we work in pairs and we have a very strict rule that we should never leave our companion no matter what. So when he kept walking I had to go after him.) When we got to the end of the second street and crossed the road I turned to my companion and said that we needed to find shelter somewhere, but he kept walking. At about that time the wind really picked up and the rain started coming down sideways.

Google Earth image of the next part of our journey in the storm. Path starts where the path on the previous image ends. Arrows indicate direction and path ends where the tornado hit us. The houses on the left side of street were not there when this happened (back in 2003) so the tornado had a clear shot at us.

By this time I had given up on my umbrella since I realized that it would probably break if I kept it open so I closed it, but I still had my poncho on, even if the rain was now so hard that my poncho didn't do much. My companion kept walking so I kept following him. The wind and the rain kept picking up and I kept thinking, "It can't get much worse than this." It did. I was beginning to desperately look around for a place to take shelter, but there were no good places. I didn't want to be right next to a tree since the branches might break and fall on us, so we kept walking. That was when the leaves that had been flying across the road turned into twigs, and small branches. I was getting concerned. At the end of the block we took a right and kept on going.

During most of this my companion was walking in front of me so I could not see his face, and he was walking rather quickly. I thought he was just trying to hurry so I let him lead the way. I again told my companion that we needed to stop and look for some shelter, but it was like he didn't hear me. At this point the wind got really strong so I had to start shouting to make myself heard, but he kept going. I was wondering what was wrong with him since he didn't seem to acknowledge anything that I said.

At this point the small branches that were now flying across the road turned into large branches. I could hear the trees starting to crack and break around me. I thought, "OK we really have to stop." But I remembered that just up the next street only 2 blocks away (200 meters) there lived a family that we knew, and I though we could take refuge there. So I thought, "OK we only have to make it to the end of the street." So we turned the corner and pushed on. That is when it got really bad.

The wind became so strong and the rain was so thick that I could barely see. My poncho was being pushed so hard against me and the rain was coming so fast that it did little to keep anything dry. The large branches that were running across the road were in danger of ending their run inside of us. At this point I screamed to my companion to stop. At that instant we had come to a point in the road where the houses on the left side of the street had stopped. The street was also on the crest of a hill and the left side of the street dropped off sharply which meant that from our position we could see quite a distance (maybe 100-200 meters) which is unusual since our view would normally be blocked by trees or houses, which also meant that the storm had a clear shot at us without any obstacles. At the instant I screamed at my companion to stop I looked out through the gap in the trees and could see it coming.

Right then my companion, who had been walking about a step or two in front of me the whole time, finally turned towards me, and I realized why he had not stopped earlier when I yelled at him. He was panicked. I had never seen someone panicked like that before. It was something I had read about or heard about in war documentaries or in news stories of natural disasters, but I had never actually seen someone so panicked that they literally could not think or function. The look on his face was one of pure panic. For the last 400 meters he had been so scared that he didn't know what to do so he had just kept walking, but finally he turned towards me, reached out and grabbed my wrist. As soon as I saw the look on his face and his death grip on my arm I understood. We were not far from the edge of the road so I grabbed his other arm and moved him to the side of the road where there was a low brick fence topped by metal bars about four feet tall. I grabbed on to the metal bars and motioned for him to grab on (words were useless since he would not have been able to hear me over the roaring wind). In the last moment I tightened my grip on the fence and on my companion and looked up in time to see the tornado move into the street about 50 meters away. And then it hit us.

I don't remember having to fight to stay upright, but it was enough to knock us into the fence and hold us there. I don't know how long we were there but it did pass by rather quickly. The wind was still strong and the rain was still thick but at least we weren't in danger of being blown away. I noticed that we were just a few feet from the front gate of the house we had stopped in front of. I moved us over to the gate so that we could go into the yard and take advantage of the small, covered porch in front of the house, but being the overly polite, socially conscientious person that I was, I paused to clap first. In that part of Argentina all the houses are set back from the road and most have a fence around the yard. So you can't go up to the door and knock, instead if you want to get the attention of the occupants of the house, you clap. It's standard practice. Most people don't even know how to knock on doors since they never do it. So there I was clinging to the fence with my companion soaked to the bone, and I had to pause and clap before invading some stranger's yard in order to take shelter. I clapped and then thought, "This is ridiculous, they can't hear me and it's not important." So I grabbed my companion and hauled him up to the front porch of the house, which was covered enough that we could take shelter.

We sat there for I don't know how long before the wind slowed and the rain let up, and when it finally did we continued on our way. We walked up the street, another 80 meters or so, to the home of a member of our church (the house I had been trying to get to in the first place). When we walked up to the door and clapped the mother opened to door and saw us and her eyes went wide as if to say, "You were out in that?!?!" We asked her if we could come in and she invited us in. In her front room we took stock of the damage and considered ourselves lucky. From a previous experience I had learned to always keep my scriptures in a plastic bag, but my companion had not, so his scriptures were soaked. Mine were thankfully dry (mostly, even with a plastic bag the rain got in). We waited a few more minutes until the rain stopped entirely and then we set out for our apartment.

All over the city we saw trees down and broken branches. Cars got smashed and roofs damaged, but we had managed to get through it unscathed. From the time the rain started to the time we finally were able to take shelter took about 8 minutes, and then the rain stopped 15-20 minutes after that. It was a very short but very intense storm. For the next few months I would walk by the fence where we held on for dear life and think, "It's amazing that that fence is sturdier than all the other fences on the street, yet that was the one we stopped by and grabbed onto." I also remember that the house had a very large planter where they were growing carnivorous pitcher plants that were about 4 feet tall. I never met the people who lived in that house. I did stop and clap there a few times, but no one ever answered the door.

Disingenuous Arguments About Religion

2011-11-06T22:20:00.001-05:00

A while ago I was reading an article about Mitt Romney and I happened to glance at the comments blow the article. There was one comment, which had nothing to do with Mitt Romney running for president, that caught my eye. It said, "Religion is the worlds biggest war maker and hate inciting machine ever invented."

Now that struck me as quite a claim. I am well aware that several wars have been started and fought because of religion, but to claim that it was the "biggest war maker" in history seemed like quite a stretch. This got me thinking because I like to read about history, historical figures, historical events such as wars, so I was wondering just how many wars in history could be attributed to religion. Just off the top of my head I could think of a few religious wars (or at least some "religious" wars), but I could also think of several more non-religious wars (including whole periods of history where empires expanded and which had nothing to do with religion). But to flesh out my investigation I thought it best to look into a more complete list. So I went and looked up a lists of wars.

There certainly were a lot of wars in history. I also very quickly realized that the list of wars presented on Wikipedia was heavily skewed towards the European wars, since the only wars included there were wars to which we have adequate historical (written) records for. This immediately excludes so many wars of which we have archeological evidence for, but no written record of, even if they occurred during the same time period. For example the list of wars from 1000-1499 includes so many European wars, but not a single Native American war, despite the fact that there is ample evidence that wars occurred in the Americas during that time period.

So the list provided by Wikipedia should be considered to be a biased sample since it relies heavily on a certain subset of historical documentation (as a side note if you consider just the list of wars on Wikipedia then that would seem to indicate that Europeans cause a lot of wars, which has also been argued by some people wishing to show how terrible Europeans are. If you use histories written by Europeans to construct the list of wars then of course Europe will have "more" wars. In effect if you use a biased sample then that will determine the conclusion that you can draw.).

But the list provided (even if it is incomplete) should do for our purposes. Even though there is no single citation for the entire list (individual wars have several different citations), I found that there are several books published that list the recorded wars in history. For example there is the Encyclopedia of Wars, and the Dictionary of Wars, both rather extensive. The Encyclopedia of Wars lists a total of 1763 wars. It is noted that in the Encyclopedia of Wars only 123 (about 7%) can be classified as religious wars. That seems to be a far cry from being the world's "biggest war maker". It would seem that the political forces that were the driving the world's empires have had a more devastating impact on history in terms of number of wars fought and people killed. So to make the claim that religion has been the single biggest cause of war throughout history is to grossly misrepresent or just plain ignore history.

Returning to the original comment that prompted this post, I realize that it was just one random comment and as a wise man once said, "A single grasshopper does not make a plague of locusts." But I have been finding that there are more and more comments like this that rely on a very skewed view of history that deliberately leaves out some or most of the critical details. I find it rather ironic that the very people who reject and ridicule religion because of "it's beliefs of a false history" or because it is full of "things that aren't true" are committing the exact same errors that they accuse religious people of committing.

Now I am not arguing that all people who criticize religion fall into this group, or even that they constitute the majority, but this group does exist and it is growing (or they are just getting internet connections for the first time). But in the end these ideas get passed around and repeated as a modern type of town gossip and just like so many other forms of gossip it usually isn't substantiated or true. For those of us, like me, who are religious it gets a little old and tiresome after a while to constantly deal with comments like the one that prompted this post. Normally I wouldn't be too concerned, but the single grasshopper is starting to show up with more friends. And I'm just curious how far they will go and how it will impact my life because it can get a little awkward when someone I have to deal with in normal (real, non-internet) life thinks that I am part of a massive "hate inciting machine". So far I haven't met anyone that will say that to my face but I really don't want it to come to that. Until then I will keep reading watching how things are going.

Quick thought on particle-wave duality

2011-10-02T22:55:00.001-04:00

Just a quick thought on particle-wave duality today.

So how should we think about fundamental particles? Are they points in space or are they waves of probability? One person I read recently said that it just depends on the type of experiment. If you want a wave then make a wave experiment, but if you want a particle then make a particle experiment. This may seem like a simple explanation except for the fact that in some cases they behave like particles in wave experiments and also behave like waves in particle experiments.

So how do I think of particles in the particle-wave duality debate? The way I see it, they behave like waves when they travel, but they behave like particles when they interact with other particles. So when I explain it to students I say, "It travels like a wave, but interacts like a particle."

As a side note, this is an interesting way of looking at it since it would seem that particles travel like they have mass, but when they interact, they interact like they have no mass. Hmmm... so the wave nature of particles give them mass? There's an interesting thought.

Why I haven't heard a good argument against religion yet, Part 2

2011-09-27T21:34:00.000-04:00

This is a continuation of a previous post of mine about arguments against religion. In my previously post I (some what imperfectly) tried to point out that the reason why I have not found any good arguments against religion (in general) is because of the fundamental approach taken in most of the arguments. Most of the arguments against religion center around a basic attempt to disprove, ridicule, or point out the obvious flaws of some of philosophical pronouncements of religions. When these flaws are pointed out the person then making the argument then insists that that specific religion, or even religion in general should be done away with, because the "foundational" philosophies are misguided or naive (at least in the opinion of the arguer). When these arguments fail all too often the arguments quickly devolves into less sophisticated attacks.

My point in my previous post was to point out that the actual foundation of religion is not in the esoteric philosophical statements and syllogisms that are typical of so many theologians, but is in fact grounded in a way of thinking about others and in governing how we act towards others. The philosophical "foundations" that are the subject of so many attacks on religion are actually derived from the more, shall we say, central aspects of religion, that of how we treat each other. There can be no true attacks or arguments against religion that do not address this central point. All other things are incidental.

So if someone is to argue with me about religion, they would do well to realize that no philosophical argument against some particular point of doctrine will convince me. This is not because I live in denial, it is because that is not why I believe and why I follow a religion. If someone were to argue with me about why I should not believe, or why I should not follow a religion they must first and foremost convince me that I should not strive to have a positive way of treating other people. In effect they must convince me that the simple things of religion, such as how we treat each other, are not desirable and should not be endorsed. In effect, if someone is to convince me that religion is useless they must first convince me that the ideas taught in the simple children's song I'm Trying to be Like Jesus are not admirable or they are not a desirable way to live. If you can do that then you just might have a case to begin to argue that I should reject religion. Until then, I have not heard a good argument, because this is the foundation of religion, not the myriad of technical, philosophical arguments that have been used at one time or another in defense of religion.

I’m trying to be like Jesus;

I’m following in his ways.

I’m trying to love as he did, in all that I do and say.

At times I am tempted to make a wrong choice,

But I try to listen as the still small voice whispers,

“Love one another as Jesus loves you.

Try to show kindness in all that you do.

Be gentle and loving in deed and in thought,

For these are the things Jesus taught.”

I’m trying to love my neighbor;

I'm learning to serve my friends.

I watch for the day of gladness when Jesus will come again.

I try to remember the lessons he taught.

Then the Holy Spirit enters into my thoughts, saying:

“Love one another as Jesus loves you.

Try to show kindness in all that you do.

Be gentle and loving in deed and in thought,

For these are the things Jesus taught.”

Why I haven't heard a good argument against religion yet

2011-09-19T00:13:00.003-04:00

By argument against religion I mean an argument against religion in general and not against a specific religion. This is something I have been thinking about for a while, but I was inspired to write this post after reading an opinion piece on the BBC that dealt with the same topic.

Most of the arguments against religion that I come across generally consist of "This particular proposition about religion is either false, unfalsifiable, unprovable or I consider it to be silly, therefore religion is false." In other words, the arguments treat religion as a series of propositions, or logical syllogisms, that can be proven or disproven through rational argument. But as the commenter on the BBC put it,

"The idea that religions are essentially creeds, lists of propositions that you have to accept, doesn't come from religion. It's an inheritance from Greek philosophy, which shaped much of western Christianity and led to practitioners trying to defend their way of life as an expression of what they believe."

What it comes down to is there is an attempt made to disprove some key aspect of religion (i.e. God created the world, Jesus' resurrection, the ex nihilo creation, the immutability of God etc.) and then conclude that religion is therefore wrong. But despite all the arguments, some in depth and intricate, others not so much, there are still rational, logical, well-balanced, well-educated, people who still believe and follow a religious way of life. Perhaps the most common response given by critics of religion when these kinds people are encountered is, "Well they must be crazy or delusional or both, because I proved [blank] and disproved [blank] and they still accept religion. They must be ignorant."

But these people, such as myself, are not ignorant. It's just that religion to us is not just a set of propositions that must be logically proven in order to be acceptable of belief. Religion is more about a way of life than it is about being able to accurately and completely describe reality in a set of well formed philosophical propositions. It is something that inspires us to become better people and to do things we would not naturally do. So when ever I come across arguments against religion I realize that the people making the arguments think they are attacking the core of religious belief by forming their best arguments, but in reality they are only attacking the inconsequential philosophical fluff that is mostly wrong anyway.

The core of religious belief is (or should be) a morality that guides our interactions with others. From my perspective, and experience, most arguments against religion are not ultimately motivated by philosophical doubts, but are instead are arguments against moral systems in general. When ever I am confronted by arguments against religion, my thought is not, "Hmm. I will have to think that one through to consider how this argument fits with all the other propositions of my religion." but I think, "Why would I have to give up being nice to my family, and other people just so all my logical propositions can 'fit together', based solely on my current understanding of the world (which will definitely change)." This is because religion for me, and many other people as well, is about how we treat other people. So an argument against religion is essentially a statement that we should not have a consistent set of rules that govern how we treat other people. From this perspective, religion is an effort to avoid moral and social anarchy, and it would be illogical and irrational to reject religion simply because of some esoteric philosophical argument (which ultimately may or may not be valid anyway).

So while those who bring up arguments against religion may think they are being quite cleaver, they are unfortunately missing the point of religion and the basis on which it stands. Religion works not because it has a complete set of philosophical propositions that have been rigorously argued and logically thought out, but because its moral system is self propagating and allows for stability and happiness.

I believe because religion allows me to find comfort when I feel sorrow, find help when I need it, find peace when the all around me have none, and inspires me to treat others better than I naturally would. Why would I give up all that because of some philosophical argument to which there is no real answer? That is why I haven't heard a good argument against religion yet, and probably never will.

Remembering 9-11

2011-09-11T21:48:00.001-04:00

Now ten years later it is interesting to see the course that history has taken since September 11, 2001. At the time no one had any idea the course that history would take, or the outcomes that we would see. At the time there seemed to be an unrestrained movement towards national unity in response to the terrible acts of that day, but ten years later the legacy of that day, and all its effects, have left us more disunified than at almost any other time in our nation's history.

I remember it was a Tuesday morning. I had slept in a little and I had just gotten up and was getting ready to go to class. It was my first semester in college and I had to be to Mission Prep. that morning when my roommate, Ryan Weaver, came in and said that something had happened. He told me that two planes had crashed into the Twin Towers in New York. I stood there in my room for a moment trying to decide what to do since I had to be to class in 5 minutes, but after a moment of thought I decided that class wasn't that important anyway and I made my way into the lobby of the dorm (we didn't have a TV in our apartment). There were two or three people out there watching the news and I sat down with them and watched the events unfold.

By the time I got out there both towers had already fallen and the news was showing footage of the strikes and the collapse. At the time I had a sense that this would be a defining moment in history, but I really didn't know what the end result would be.

I had just graduated from high school and while I was there I had the opportunity to have the same history teacher for both my sophomore and junior years. His name was Rob Helsel and he instilled in me a sense of the important moments of history that determine future events. I realized that I was living to see one of those important events that would determine so many things in history. It was one of those, "Because of _____, this happened, which caused this and that and all this other stuff, which led this happening because of these things that were going on here." moments in history.

Perhaps the two things that put the whole thing into perspective were two speeches I listened to that were made in the days and weeks following 9-11. The first speech I listened to was President Bush's address to Congress. I remember thinking, "Uh oh. This may turn into another Vietnam." In one sense I was right, but the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have not approached the level of the Vietnam war (despite what some people would have you believe). Mostly I was concerned that it would never end.

The second speech was actually a conference talk (you can hear the audio of the talk here) by President Hinckley given on October 7, 2001. It was at the end of the Sunday morning session of General Conference and President Hinckley got up and said, "I have just been handed a note that says that a U.S. missile attack is under way." At that moment I knew that my life and history had changed again. But it was definitely that talk that put it in perspective for me. I will share a few of the highlights from his talk here. You can find the full text (and audio) in the above links.

"You are acutely aware of the events of September 11, less than a month ago. Out of that vicious and ugly attack we are plunged into a state of war. It is the first war of the 21st century. The last century has been described as the most war-torn in human history. Now we are off on another dangerous undertaking, the unfolding of which and the end thereof we do not know. For the first time since we became a nation, the United States has been seriously attacked on its mainland soil. But this was not an attack on the United States alone. It was an attack on men and nations of goodwill everywhere. It was well planned, boldly executed, and the results were disastrous. It is estimated that more than 5,000 innocent people died. Among these were many from other nations. It was cruel and cunning, an act of consummate evil.

"Recently, in company with a few national religious leaders, I was invited to the White House to meet with the president. In talking to us he was frank and straightforward.

"That same evening he spoke to the Congress and the nation in unmistakable language concerning the resolve of America and its friends to hunt down the terrorists who were responsible for the planning of this terrible thing and any who harbored such.

"Now we are at war. Great forces have been mobilized and will continue to be. Political alliances are being forged. We do not know how long this conflict will last. We do not know what it will cost in lives and treasure. We do not know the manner in which it will be carried out....

"The terrible forces of evil must be confronted and held accountable for their actions. This is not a matter of Christian against Muslim. I am pleased that food is being dropped to the hungry people of a targeted nation. We value our Muslim neighbors across the world and hope that those who live by the tenets of their faith will not suffer. I ask particularly that our own people do not become a party in any way to the persecution of the innocent. Rather, let us be friendly and helpful, protective and supportive. It is the terrorist organizations that must be ferreted out and brought down.

"We of this Church know something of such groups. The Book of Mormon speaks of the Gadianton robbers, a vicious, oath-bound, and secret organization bent on evil and destruction. In their day they did all in their power, by whatever means available, to bring down the Church, to woo the people with sophistry, and to take control of the society. We see the same thing in the present situation.

"We are people of peace. We are followers of the Christ who was and is the Prince of Peace. But there are times when we must stand up for right and decency, for freedom and civilization, just as Moroni rallied his people in his day to the defense of their wives, their children, and the cause of liberty....

"Religion offers no shield for wickedness, for evil, for those kinds of things. The God in whom I believe does not foster this kind of action. He is a God of mercy. He is a God of love. He is a God of peace and reassurance, and I look to Him in times such as this as a comfort and a source of strength....

"No one knows how long it will last. No one knows precisely where it will be fought. No one knows what it may entail before it is over. We have launched an undertaking the size and nature of which we cannot see at this time....

"Let us be prayerful. Let us pray for righteousness. Let us pray for the forces of good. Let us reach out to help men and women of goodwill, whatever their religious persuasion and wherever they live. Let us stand firm against evil, both at home and abroad. Let us live worthy of the blessings of heaven, reforming our lives where necessary and looking to Him, the Father of us all. He has said, “Be still, and know that I am God” (Ps. 46:10).

"Are these perilous times? They are. But there is no need to fear. We can have peace in our hearts and peace in our homes. We can be an influence for good in this world, every one of us."

I think the most important measure of our lives is not what happens to us, but how we respond to it. If we respond with hate and fear then we will have hate and fear all the days of our lives. But there is no need to fear, and no need to hate. If we strive for the good then we can can heal the hurt and pain of the past and present and overcome all things. Simple kindness has done more to overcome barriers than any army or weapon devised by man. Perhaps by pausing a thinking a bit, and by offering simple kindnesses and forgiving the faults and failings of others, and by holding the lives of others as more precious than gold, or land (or oil), or even ourselves, we can begin to heal the hurt, and close the divisions we have in our society.

I will end with this video of remarks by President Bush from the memorial service yesterday.

My Ride to Work

2011-08-30T22:22:00.000-04:00

I know I haven't been posting a lot lately, but I have been busy and most of my mental energy is going into my research at the moment. Which means I don't have a lot of time to write. I just wanted to post something simple.

This is a graph of my ride to work. On the days that I can (or want to) ride my bike to work I have to go up and down a few hills. Using Google Earth I figured out distance and altitude for the path I take to work. It takes me straight through campus and is quite nice except for the one big hill and the last long hot stretch.

The x axis is the distance that I ride (in meters). The y axis is the altitude (in feet).

Each dot represents a place where I have to turn (even if it is a slight turn, it is somewhere I can't just go straight). I start at 400 ft. and I end up at 500 feet (there is a reason why they call the place Chapel Hill, where I work is a short distance from the location of the original chapel on Chapel Hill, now home to the Carolina Inn), with a minimum altitude of 352 feet. I have a total altitude change of 276 feet and an absolute change of 100 feet, over a distance of ~2.1 km. The worst part is one long hill with 60 foot climb at a 9% grade. It's great coming down, not so fun going up.

I think little children instinctively know what is right

2011-08-14T22:58:00.000-04:00

Today I was teaching my Sunday School class, which is a class of kids who are 7 or 8 years old, and we have a time in class when each child can tell the rest of the class about something fun they did that week and also how they had one opportunity to Choose the Right. After all the children had had an opportunity to share my co-teacher turned to me and asked if I had anything I wanted to share about something fun I had done this week. I said, "Well I did something that I thought was fun, you may think it a little strange, but this week my boss gave me some money so I could go out and buy some books and computer stuff for my work." (I have a grant that I can use for textbooks and other "research materials").

One of the girls in the class asked, "So you could go out and buy whatever books you wanted?" And I explained that no, I couldn't buy whatever I wanted because I had to only use the money for books and stuff related to my work. She thought for a moment and then said, "Oh, so you also were able to choose the right!"

She was able to recognize that the money was given to me to use for a specific purpose and that it wasn't right to use it in a way that I wasn't supposed to even if no one would know. She instinctively knew what was right.

I feel blessed to be able to "teach" children like this, because they can teach me so much more.

Book Review: The Extraterrestrial Life Debate by Michael J. Crowe

2011-08-04T18:01:00.002-04:00

This is actually two reviews in one. The author, Michael J. Crowe, wrote two books that dealt with the debate on extraterrestrial life. The first book, published in 1986 and the second in 2008, give a comprehensive view of all of the scholarly, religious, and popular writings about extraterrestrials from antiquity (i.e. the Greeks) until about 1915.

His first book, entitled The Extraterrestrial Life Debate, 1750-1900, is more narrative, meaning he does a lot of the explaining and tells the history of the the ideas behind extraterrestrial life. The second book, entitled The Extraterrestrial Life Debate, Antiquity to 1915: A Source Book, contains large portions of the source material that he used to write his first book. Thus it is not narrative, but more informational, with long quotes and brief explanations. Combined both books are a great resource for anyone who wants to know what people thought about extraterrestrials before they became little green men.

I think that if you asked the typical person on the street when was it that we first got the idea that there might be extraterrestrials, they would probably say that the idea of extraterrestrials has only been around for about 100 years, or maybe 150 or so. Very few people would realize that the discussion of extraterrestrials goes back to the Greeks (such as Epicurus and Democritus (yes the guy who thought up atoms, and lost the debate to Aristotle, at least until they found atoms again)). Few people would also realize that the debate about extraterrestrials was also on going through out the middle ages, but that it got much more coverage during, and after, the Enlightenment.

Perhaps the most prominent driver of the extraterrestrial debate was religion, mostly because the question of whether or not there are extraterrestrials directly impacts many religious doctrines and ideas. The author, Dr. Crowe, points this out, but while he does not take a side on the issue, he readily admits that this is a very important question because the discovery of extraterrestrials would radically change the way we view ourselves, our ethics, our culture and religion. One thing that is interesting to note is that while religion has been a major driver in the debate, religion as a whole, or even just Christianity and a whole has not universally taken a side on the debate. Many (almost all) of the theologians in the middle ages took the stance that there were no extraterrestrials, but since the Enlightenment there have been just as many theologians (and even non-theologians) that have taken the view that there were extraterrestrials.

One of the most interesting things I got out of these books was the very different view of extraterrestrials that people had during that time period. Our current view of extraterrestrials has been so radically changed by H. G. Wells, Star Wars, Star Trek, Sputnik, Buck Rogers, E.T., Alien, Roswell and others that it is difficult to get past our current view of extraterrestrials to understand how people viewed extraterrestrials before 1900. Their conception of extraterrestrials was so radically different that most people would not realize just how much our views have changed in 100 years. These books give an excellent insight into how people though of extraterrestrials before there was "The War of the Worlds".

The difference in ideas, and thinking is so profound that any attempt by modern people to understand what was written about extraterrestrials before 1900 will most likely result in misunderstanding, and a severe misconstruing of what people thought and believed. Any attempt to retroactively project our modern ideas of extraterrestrials on what was written before then would be a severe intellectual disservice. The types of questions, dilemmas and motivations in the extraterrestrial life debate are so different from what they currently are that the possibility for misunderstanding and fundamentally missing what was talked about are very high. These books are supposed to bridge the gap between the historical and modern views of extraterrestrials.

Lightning Struck a Tree

2011-07-06T18:02:00.000-04:00

Recently lightning struck a tree near by the building I work in. I took a few pictures of the lightning damage to the tree before they cut it down. The tree is very old and UNC was considering removing it anyway, but with this much damage they will just have to remove it as soon as possible. I spoke briefly with someone who works for the grounds crew and he said, "The tree is already dead, it just doesn't know it yet."

I would like to point out the distinct spiral pattern of the lightning strike. From all the trees I have seen that have been struck by lightning, they all have the same distinctive spiral pattern. I don't know why follows the spiral pattern, but I do know why lighting causes trees to explode like this. If the tree is dry (i.e. no rain has fallen) then the lightning will travel down through the living part of the tree, where the sap and water is. The water super-heats and expands rapidly (it literally explodes) causing the outer layer of the tree to blow out. In some cases, such as this, the damage is extensive enough that it will kill the tree outright or do enough damage to severely reduce its ability to survive.

You can see two separate spiral patters here where the lightning traveled down the tree.

If you look carefully you can see the splintering going all the way up the tree.

From the exact opposite side of the tree from the previous picture.

A close up of where the lightning traveled down the tree. The section where the bark has been removed is about 8-9 inches wide, and you can see two groves where the lightning actually traveled. One is at the extreme left of where the bark has been stripped, and the other is slightly off to the right from the middle of the stripped area.

Why Google+ Gets Human Relations and Facebook Fails Miserably

2011-07-01T14:54:00.000-04:00

A couple of years ago I signed up for Facebook. I had been resisting it for a while, even when people kept asking me if I was on Facebook and promptly treating me like a leper when I told them I wasn't. It wasn't until one of my roommates (who was also staunchly anti-Facebook) got on Facebook that I broke down and got my own account. For a while I only had one Facebook "friend" (my roommate) but eventually I got more. At first I was slightly amused, but mostly annoyed with the trivial tripe of Facebook such as the pokes, surveys, polls, games and flashing lights (some of that has toned down over the years).

But eventually I sort of stopped using Facebook because really it was just one more thing to bother with when I had other things (such as two blogs) to think about, and that fulfilled my "social networking need". So I kept up with a once yearly update on Facebook and called it good, and if I ever needed to actually get in contact with someone, I could look them up on Facebook and find their email address. That worked for me.

One of the things that I could never really get into with Facebook was the way everyone I knew was thrown into one big pot. Everyone, from my wife, to my parents to my in-laws, to high school or college friends to that random guy in my class were put into the same big pot of "friends". It was kind of like Facebook couldn't conceive of anyone having any relation other than "friend". At some point they kind of implemented this thing where you could declare someone as part of your "family" but other than being cosmetic I could see no use to it.

If I wanted to post a status update I had to keep in mind that everyone from my parents to high school friends to graduate students that I work with could see it. If I wanted to post about family reunion stuff, why would my high school friends want to read about that? Everyone was being blasted by the same fire hose and there was little that could be done to redirect that stream so that it could be manageable. Over time Facebook was working on improving that but it seemed that they still functioned with one driving principle in mind, that one person had one status and one stream of thought to the entire world. And that all human relations are fundamentally equal and indistinguishable. That there is nothing inherently different in a human relation between a parent and a child than there is between two associates at work. Human relations, according to Facebook, are a nondescript pipeline of information flow (or at least a flow of stuff, if you don't want to call what happens on Facebook information) with information constantly flowing from one person to another, and the more the information flows the stronger the human relation.

This way of thinking may make sense in a college setting where everyone is meeting someone new and people are forming new relations, but in the real world there are pre-made relations that are formed for different reasons. Some relations are not based on information flow but on other things, such as marriage or blood relation. I may be "friends" with my wife's aunts and uncles on Facebook, but I would not characterize our relation as one based on information flow, or even on a desire to network. I have interactions with them because I married their niece, not because we met and decided that we should be "friends" (that doesn't mean I have a problem with them, it just means that the connection was made for reasons other than the ones the Facebook team think of as being fundamental to human relations). The thing is Facebook fails to comprehend this. To them the connection to my wife's cousin's husband (who I have never met in person) is considered to be of the same order, or importance, as the connection I have to a roommate that I lived with for 3 years, or that mission companion that I was with for 3 months, and survived dog attacks, torrential downpours, floods, cold weather, broken ribs, and several unforgettable teaching experiences with. How does that compare? Yet Facebook fails to understand that and just wants to lump everyone into one big group of "friends" and you are given one fire hose to turn on them and drench them with your pictures, status updates and stuff.

Today when I got onto Google+ the first thing I noticed was that I could very easily put people in different categories. I could also control the streams of status updates, photos and stuff. I could separate the photos of family from friends, and from acquaintances. That way the pictures of my nieces and nephews would not be mixed in with the pictures of "that one guy" from high school playing guitar at some random party. In short, the Google team made it so that my interactions on a social network could be organized into real human relations that reflect the real world. That right there puts them light years ahead of Facebook.

I don't know much else about how Google+ works, but that one feature of being able to separate friends from family, acquaintances from people I know from work, and my 20+ aunts and uncles-in-law from my cousin that I haven't seen for about 20 years, is enough to make me want to give it a shot. And I might just stick with it because it may actually be useful.

Cool Video from the Cockpit of an Air Tanker

2011-06-21T13:52:00.000-04:00

Just wanted to share this cool video shot from the cockpit of an air tanker fighting the Monument Fire in Arizona.

Also I found this cool time-lapse video of the fire.

"Inasmuch as ye shall keep my commandments" Scripture Chain

2011-06-18T16:49:00.000-04:00

One of the reoccurring themes in the Book of Mormon is the idea that if the people follow the commandments of God then they will prosper, but if not then they will be cut off from his presence. This theme is so prevalent that it is mentioned at least 18 times in the Book of Mormon in almost the exact same way. If there is something that is mentioned so many times in the Book of Mormon then I think it should be something to take note of.

One thing I find particularly interesting is the difference between what is promised for keeping the commandments, and what the consequence is for not keeping the commandments. On the one hand those who keep the commandments are promised that they will "prosper in the land". But on the other hand those who do not keep the commandments are not warned that they will be destroyed, instantly, slowly or otherwise, but they are warned that they will be "cut off from the presence of the Lord." So the warning for not keeping the commandments, interestingly enough is not instant, immediate, absolute and eternal destruction, but rather that they (those who do not keep the commandments) will be left to their own devices, and will be left to fend for themselves. They will stand or fall by their own strength and will no longer receive the sustaining influence of the Lord.

A number of years ago one of my sisters loaned my a set of scriptures to use in seminary. It was the same set of scriptures that several of my sisters had used in seminary (sorry I don't know the full history of this set of scriptures, but it does have two of my sister's names in the front). Somewhere along the way someone had written a scripture chain which included every instance where the promise and warning is given in the Book of Mormon. I just wanted to include that scripture chain here, with links to the scriptures on lds.org. Hopefully this will be helpful to someone.

Bound for the Promised Land

2011-06-18T15:37:00.001-04:00

Bound for the Promised Land is a song written by Samuel Stennett in 1787. The tune for the song was written by a "Miss M. Durham" of which nothing else is known. The song became a well known Christian hymn, and most recently it has been arranged by Mack Wilberg. Below is a video of the hymn as arranged by Mack Wilberg, performed by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, directed by Mack Wilberg.

When I looked up the lyrics I found that many of sites that had the lyrics did not have all of the verses. Some had three, others four, but they all seemed to have different verses, and none of them had all of the verses in the Mack Wilberg arrangement. So put together the lyrics as found in the Mack Wilberg version. He has four verses, and includes the chorus six times (first two verses, chorus twice, next two verses, and repeat chorus four times).

On Jordan's stormy banks I stand

And cast a wishful eye

To Canaan's fair and happy land,

Where my possesions lie.

There generous fruits that never fail

On trees immortal grow;

There rocks and hills and brooks and vales

With milk and honey flow.

Chorus

I am bound for the promised land,

I am bound for the promised land

O who will come and go with me

I am bound for the promised land.

Repeat Chorus

O the transporting rapt'rous scene

That rises to my sight;

Sweet fields arrayed in living green

And rivers of Delight.

When shall I reach that happy place,

I’ll be forever blest,

When shall I see my Father’s face,

And in His bosom rest.

Chorus

I am bound for the promised land,

I am bound for the promised land

O who will come and go with me

I am bound for the promised land.

Repeat Chorus

In addition to the four verses in the Mack Wilberg arrangement I was able to find four additional verses to the song. I will include them below.

Soon will the Lord my soul prepare

For joys beyond the skies,

Where never-ceasing pleasures roll,

And praises never die.

O’er all those wide extended plains

Shines one eternal day;

There God the Son forever reigns,

And scatters night away.

No chilling winds or poisonous breath

Can reach that healthful shore;

Sickness and sorrow, pain and death,

Are felt and feared no more.

Filled with delight my raptured soul

Would here no longer stay;

Though Jordan’s waves around me roll,

Fearless I’d launch away.

Book Review: Venezuela's Chavismo and Populism in Comparative Perspective by Kirk Hawkins

2011-06-10T17:13:00.000-04:00

If I had to sum this book up in one word it would be "dense". This is not a book that you would (typically) want to curl up with on a lazy afternoon to relax with. This book has an incredible wealth of information, complexity, and analysis. This is not a book written for a general audience, but the things it talks about are incredibly important for the general audience. Perhaps the only way I could begin to understand what the author was talking about was because I have at least a minimal familiarity with Latin American politics and I spent four years studying philosophy, that way I could understand a lot of the technical terms and their proper context.

Perhaps I can give a brief overview of the book (kind of like trying to explain the history of Western Civilization in 1000 words or less), so here goes:

As the title implies the book deals with the Chavismo movement in Venezuela (it does not provide a breakdown of Hugo Chávez himself, as the Chavismo movement, while centered on Hugo Chávez, is much more complex than a single movement lead by one man). Furthermore, the book looks at Chavismo as a populist movement rather than an expression of a particular political ideology. The movement does have a particular ideology, but to think of it in such narrow terms is to miss what is really going on.

One of the first things Dr. Hawkins does is set out an understanding of three critical ideas; populism, worldview and discourse. In terms of worldview, Chavismo movement has what is called a Manichaean outlook, which means they view their own actions, plight and work as being part of a larger cosmic struggle between the Good and the Evil. In this case the Good is interpreted by them to be the unified will of the people and the Evil to be a conspiring minority. In this sense their worldview is a populist worldview. The discourse refers not to a set cannon of political tracts or works, but a more elusive and set of vocabulary, tone, metaphor and broad themes that drive the movement.

After laying this foundation Dr. Hawkins then proceeds to give an in depth analysis of Hugo Chávez's use of populist discourse and also gives a method of measuring the populist discourse quantitatively. This is compared to other countries and leaders to give a sense of where Chávez and Chavismo in general falls in the populist spectrum. Not surprisingly it falls at the extreme end of the populist spectrum.

Then Dr. Hawkins looks into the historical causes that lead to the rise of populism in Venezuela. While there were a number of factors that contributed to the formation of the societal forces in Venezuela, Dr. Hawkins clearly states that it was the break down of democratic norms and the underlying violation of the rule of law that allowed for the creation of a populist movement in Venezuela. This assertion is accompanied by a number of studies and surveys (presented in a number of tables) to measure the level or the perceived level of corruption in government. This measure is compared against the causes of populism across several countries and areas of the world.

The book finishes up with a look at how the introduction of a populist movement has affected Venezuela in general. Specifically the author looks at the effect of Bolivarian Circles on the fundamental political organization of the country. The Circles are characterized by four attributes: low institutionalization, movement structure, disruptive tactics, and insularity within the larger society. These four things both defined and drove the populist movement in Venezuela. The effects of populism on public policy are also considered where it is asserted that the ideology of the populist movement drives the economic policies rather than economic policies driving the movement.

The book concludes by emphasizing the importance of the ideas developed in the course of the book, namely that of populism as discourse and worldview that can be used to understand and apply to different situations across the world. It is important to understand how the system works because that will determine future outcomes and/or determine how the society interacts with other societies. How that particular society responds to external forces and influences will be highly dependent on the strength and amount of populist fervor in the country. Definitely important things to consider when interacting or studying the country in question.

Overall I found the book to be very informative and interesting. I realize that I could never give an adequate summary of the book here as it is very complex, but it does provide a wealth of ideas, analysis and understanding of populism.

Disclaimer: Dr. Kirk Hawkins is my brother-in-law, which is why I decided to read this book. I don't typically go and pull random Political Science books of the shelf and read them. But I really did enjoy reading this book.

The Philosophical Implications of the LDS Doctrine of Works

2011-05-30T00:07:00.000-04:00

Previously I had written about the purpose of our Christian works. In that post I discussed how one of the critical ideas that set Latter-day Saints apart from many other Protestant theologies is how we view our personal works being a part of our process of salvation. One of the things that Mormons find interesting or noticeably different when talking to Protestant Christians is how much emphasis they place on "being saved". Quite often LDS members are bemused by how frequently they are asked if "they have accepted Jesus" or "have been saved". For many LDS members they view these questions as nonsensical or at least don't understand why the question has to be asked so much. More often you will hear Latter-day Saints say that they are "working towards salvation" or that they are "in the process" of being saved. In wards (congregations) that I have been in it is not uncommon to hear the phrase "it's a process", about once a month in reference to salvation.

Too many times when the subject of salvation comes up in conversation between Mormons and Protestants (especially Evangelical Protestants) the Protestants come away thinking that Mormons do not believe in Jesus, or think that Mormons do not accept the saving grace of Jesus Christ. The truth is Mormons readily accept the saving grace of Jesus Christ, it's just that we have a different perspective on what it means "to be saved" or rather, "the process of salvation" (there's that word again, "process"). What it comes down to is a fundamental difference of philosophy. Just as Mormons do not typically talk about "being saved" (as a single act), Protestants do not frequently talk about "the process of salvation", and this, I think, is a insight that would be of great interest to those who are philosophically minded.

Essentially what it comes down to is that LDS theology is fundamentally related to process theology. This is to say that while we view God as the creator of the world, we also hold that we have creative power, or the power to reshape . The common way we express this is to say that we are "co-creators" with God (but I must emphasize that that phrase is only used in a limited sense and in specific circumstances. This does not extend to the creation referenced in Genesis, but only to current, specific creative acts.). This approach to theology fundamentally puts us at odds with the majority of Protestant (and most Catholic) theology which is fundamentally based on substance philosophy (i.e. an emphasis on being, or states of being, rather than a process).

To understand this difference we need to understand the difference between process philosophy and substance philosophy. Perhaps the best way to explain substance philosophy is to start with Aristotle's Categories (both the book and the topic).

"[Statements about a subject (or a thing)] which are in no way composite signify substance, quantity, quality, relation, place, time,position, state, action, or affection. To sketch my meaning roughly, examples of substance are 'man' or 'the horse', of quantity, such terms as 'two cubits long' or 'three cubits long', of quality, such attributes as 'white', 'grammatical'. 'Double', 'half', 'greater', fa;; under the category of relation; 'in the market place', 'in the Lyceum', under that of place; 'yesterday', 'last year', under that of time. 'Lying', 'sitting', are terms indicating position; 'shod', 'armed', state; 'to lance', 'to cauterize', action; 'to be lanced', 'to be cauterized', affection." (1b25-2a4)

The point is that all things, even actions, exist in a state of being. Thus any and all qualities that a thing has is simply a succession and collection of states. But the ultimate reality, the ontology, is that things exist in specific states or have specific qualities, even when in motion (because motion itself is a state of being).

One of the consequences of this way of thinking is that change in a substance (as in, from cold to hot, or from white to black) is of a lesser reality than the actual states. The flux, or change, in states does not constitute a form of reality. This way of thinking is so pervasive that it can even be found in certain interpretations of quantum mechanics. In the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics the common description is that the wavefunction of a particle describes all possible states. The uncertainty involved quantum mechanics is not considered to be an aspect of reality, but rather is ignorance of reality.

On the other hand process philosophy takes the view that the fundamental change in states, rather than being an inferior aspect of reality, is an integral part of reality. That is, the creative process is an aspect of reality that creates reality, just as much as the substance of things makes up reality. With this way of thinking, reality is not made up by a set of states, or collection of substances, but by interactions of processes that act on things, to produce states.

There are of course philosophies that go to the other extreme and say that all things are flux, and that there is no substance at all (as is common in Eastern philosophies). But the LDS concept of process theology, while avoiding substance philosophy, also avoids a complete rejection of substance, and makes no assertions that all things are in flux, but in fact says that the elements are eternal. Thus LDS theology contains a rather unique view of process and being that is not found anywhere else.

The way this process philosophy manifests itself in LDS culture is in the idea that (individual) salvation does not come in a single act, but is a process that we must go through. Hence the difference, and often misunderstandings, that Mormons have with other Christians. For most Christians (especially for Protestants) to be saved means entering into the state of salvation. The actual change to the state of salvation is a mystery performed by God. On the other hand, for Latter-day Saints, to talk about "being saved" does not make sense because salvation is fundamentally a process, and is not achieved in a single act of believing or confession.

Thus we can see that this fundamental difference in philosophy can create a misunderstanding between Mormons and other Christians, because Mormons treat salvation as a process that must be worked through, but other Christians (especially Protestants) treat salvation as entering into a state of being saved. This difference is more than just a difference on an abstract level, but affects the way we interact with our own religion. For Mormons, because salvation is a process, our (Christian) works are not simply a result of being "saved", as some Protestants put it, but our works are the means by which we become worthy of entering into the presence of God (i.e. being saved).

The end result is a strong emphasis on doing good works, and living a moral life. Thus this process theology, which many Christian theologians consider a heresy, results in and encourages Mormons to do good works, and is what makes us known for our moral lifestyles. This is the real effect of this way of thinking.

Now as a final point. While process philosophy is gaining some ground, especially in the United States, I should point out that while many of the things that are fundamental to LDS theology are similar to the writings of process philosophers such as Whitehead, Hartshorne, James and Pierce, these ideas were expressed and taught more than 50 years before some of the process philosophers were even born, and definitely before any of them began writing. The common perception in philosophy is that philosophical frame works drive theology, but in the LDS case, the theology drives the philosophy. Again I think that this is an interesting point that those who are philosophically inclined should take note of.

Building bridges in my community

2011-05-09T21:19:00.000-04:00

A few weeks ago I participated in a community service project organized by my church and a few other churches in the area. There were many, many different projects and I participated in one that had us putting together benches and two bridges for a local park. Here are some pictures of the benches and bridges I helped build.

These are the three benches that we put together. They still have the supports on them, to keep the upright until the cement sets.

This is the largest bridge we built, about 40 feet long.

The same bridge from a different perspective.

This is the second, and much smaller bridge. I did not help build this one, but I helped put it in place.

I was able to help on just about everything, from putting the benches together, to digging the holes, to pouring the cement, and helping construct the larger bridge. The service project was on Saturday, April 16th, which incidentally was the date that a large storm came through and spawned a number of tornadoes in the state. Several people died and a number of homes and businesses were destroyed. It was the worst outbreak of tornadoes in the state since the 1980's. We did all our work in the morning, and we were just finishing up when the storm hit and some of tornadoes passed just north of us (several miles north, not just north of us).

Here is the NOAA storm reports map for that day.

That bright concentration of red dots in the middle there, that's about where I live.

What is the point of our (Christian) works?

2011-05-08T21:18:00.000-04:00

Recently I was reading a post on the Mormanity blog about perfection, and down in the comments came up the discussion of whether or not Mormons believe that they are saved by their works. The implication was that if Mormons believed they are saved by their works, then that would preclude us from relying on the grace of God for our salvation. Although the discussion also focused on other things the question of the status of our works, and whether or not they are necessary for salvation, was mentioned briefly. At one point someone insisted that, "Your salvation (which means living eternally in the presence of God) is NOT dependent on what you do." To which the natural response would be, "Then what is the point of our works? What is the point of having commandments to follow?"

The person who made this statement then insisted that, "What you do [in response to being "saved"] will be your love response for what God has done in your lives--NOT a prerequisite to salvation." Then continued to explain that, "Good works are the response of a saved soul, and are works God has already ordained for us to do to glorify Him." The central idea being expressed here is that all (good) works come from God and if someone does something good then it is only because God has given that good work to us to do. According to this way of thinking Christians, or anyone else for that matter, cannot do anything good unless by the grace of God they are given that good work, and even then that good work is not theirs but God's. This doctrine is an offshoot of the concept of the depravity of man, which insists that because of the fall man can do no good thing because they are enslaved by the original sin which prevents them from partaking in the goodness of God. There are many variations and degrees of this doctrine in Christianity, of which the version expressed above is just one. The expressions of the depravity of man range from complete (man can never do any good thing, and can never receive any good thing from God) to the more moderate (overall we tend to be bad people, but everyone can do good things) to the rejection of depravity (men are not holden on God for anything, and can do any thing of their own free will).

As the doctrine of the depravity of man is so prominent in Christianity it is natural to ask, "Where do Mormons fit on the spectrum of belief? Do they consider man to be depraved and wholly reliant on the grace of God for every good thing? Or do they reject depravity and think that their good works do not come from God?" The problem of asking the question, where do Mormons fit on the spectrum, is that it necessarily assumes that we fit on the spectrum in the first place. If Christians are used to thinking of good works as originating only from God and are given to man through the grace of God, then it is natural to assume that anyone that emphasizes the good works of individuals would be guilty of rejecting the grace of God. That is, anyone who insists that "doing good" is necessary for salvation runs the risk of being accused of rejecting the grace of God and the Atonement of Christ, because if we must "do good" to receive salvation then we are not relying on the works of Christ, but our own works.

This all of course assumes the depravity of man to some degree as the basis of insisting that we can do no good thing. The reasoning goes something like this, because of the fall of Adam we are all made partakers of sin and thus fall short of the grace of God. Because we are all made sinners we cannot receive salvation through anything we can do and thus we must rely on a savior, and it is only through the grace of God that we can receive any good things from God. The good that we receive from God includes being able to do good works, and because of our fallen state we would not be able to do anything good because we are sinners.

From this perspective if anyone, such as Mormons, suggest that not only can we do good things (without the intervention of God) but also that we are required to do good things to receive salvation creates a catch-22 for Christians who hold to a strong sense of the depravity of man, because man cannot do anything good yet they are required to do good. This usually leads them to rejection of the idea that we must do something to receive salvation (hence the statement, "Your salvation is NOT dependent on what you do."), and by extension they reject LDS theology as valid Christian doctrine because we heavily emphasize the need for personal action (i.e. doing good works) in order to receive salvation.

But the only problem is that LDS theology, in regards to the fall of Adam and our sinful state does not fit onto the standard spectrum used by Christians to measure their doctrine of the depravity of man. Because on the one hand we strongly state that we cannot merit salvation through any actions of our own (see Mosiah 2:21) yet on the other hand we are commanded to do good works so that we may be saved (see Mosiah 5:15). Many Christians (and some Mormons) would see this as a contradiction but if we consider the rest of LDS theology regarding the fall of man, the atonement and salvation we can see this problem from a different perspective, and then we can see why I said that Mormons do not even fall on the spectrum of the depravity of man.

First, how do we view the fall? In the 6th chapter of Moses, Enoch is teaching the people and tells them:

48 And he said unto them: Because that Adam fell, we are; and by his fall came death; and we are made partakers of misery and woe.
49 Behold Satan hath come among the children of men, and tempteth them to worship him; and men have become carnal, sensual, and devilish, and are shut out from the presence of God.
50 But God hath made known unto our fathers that all men must repent.
51 And he called upon our father Adam by his own voice, saying: I am God; I made the world, and men before they were in the flesh.
52 And he also said unto him: If thou wilt turn unto me, and hearken unto my voice, and believe, and repent of all thy transgressions, and be baptized, even in water, in the name of mine Only Begotten Son, who is full of grace and truth, which is Jesus Christ, the only name which shall be given under heaven, whereby salvation shall come unto the children of men, ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost, asking all things in his name, and whatsoever ye shall ask, it shall be given you.
53 And our father Adam spake unto the Lord, and said: Why is it that men must repent and be baptized in water? And the Lord said unto Adam: Behold I have forgiven thee thy transgression in the Garden of Eden.
54 Hence came the saying abroad among the people, that the Son of God hath atoned for original guilt, wherein the sins of the parents cannot be answered upon the heads of the children, for they are whole from the foundation of the world.

There are several important doctrines here but I want to focus on just a few of them. First we see that because of the fall we (meaning the human race) exists. Without the fall we would not even be alive. That fundamental understanding immediately changes the way Mormons are disposed to think of the fall.

Because our lives depend on there first being a fall we are more likely to view the fall and what happened in the Garden of Eden as a good thing. Thus our first introduction into the world is not a mistake, but is dependent on what Adam and Eve did in the garden. It is quite common among other Christians to view the fall as having only negative effects. As some Christians put it, "If it weren't for the fall we would all be living in paradise!" Thus it is natural for other Christians to view the fall as having robbed us of our paradisaical state. For them it was a mistake, and it was a mistake that banished us to live in a world that is imperfect and undesirable.

On the other hand the LDS view is that the fall was not a mistake but is a necessary part of our existence on the earth. This causes Mormons to have a more optimistic view of what happened in Eden. This optimistic view means that for Latter-day Saints they fundamentally approach the world in a different way. Rather than view the world as an evil thing that must be escaped, the world is a testing ground where we grow and become good. There is nothing inherently wrong, evil or depraved about our existence, or the things that we do. We do acknowledge that because of our fallen state we will do things that prevent us from returning to the presence of God, but these actions are not guaranteed or inescapable. This is to say that we do not sin by merely existing in this world, as some would suggest (as one person put it, "I sin every day, even without realizing it."). We will not be punished for any sin we do in ignorance, nor will we be eternally punished because of the corruption of this world.

With this in mind, let us return to the concept of works. According to LDS doctrine, all men, women and children who have lived on this earth will be redeemed from the death of the mortal body and any corruption that we might have experienced in this life. This is only just as the corruption of this world is something that we did not create and could not control. So God will not punish us eternally, nor leave us to our inescapable fate that came because of the fall. This is what is meant by the scripture when it says, "the Son of God hath atoned for original guilt". This is the power of the atonement of Jesus Christ. This redemption will come upon everyone regardless of what they have done in this life, whether good or bad, or nothing at all.

Because of this redemption it is not inevitable for us to tin and our fate is not inescapable. We have been given an opportunity to act for ourselves and just as everyone is capable of doing evil, so are we all capable of doing good, and it is given unto us to act for ourselves.

26 And the Messiah cometh in the fulness of time, that he may redeem the children of men from the fall. And because that they are redeemed from the fall they have become free forever, knowing good from evil; to act for themselves and not to be acted upon, save it be by the punishment of the law at the great and last day, according to the commandments which God hath given. (2 Nephi 25:26)

It is up to us to keep the law and the commandments and it will be the judgements of a just God that will reward us for our actions (see Prov. 24:12). And this is just, because we will be judged according to our own actions, and not the actions of others, or the effects of mortality, ignorance, or accidents of history (see D&C 137:7-10).

Because we are free, and we know good from evil, we are commanded to work righteousness. Only those who choose righteousness and love Christ will enter into the kingdom of God. And to do this we must keep the commandments (see John 15:10-12 and surrounding verses). Thus from an LDS perspective, our salvation is dependent on whether or not we keep the commandments, because that is precisely what God has told us in the Bible, and other scripture. Which means that contrary to what was asserted by the commenter on the Mormanity blog, our salvation IS dependent on what we do, because this this what Jesus taught, as recorded in the Bible, and what is taught to us by His personal representatives.

An Easter Message

2011-04-24T21:28:00.000-04:00

The LDS concept of baptism

2011-04-23T12:45:00.000-04:00

A few weeks ago I was following a series of posts on a blog about baptism where the blog author (a catholic) was detailing a discussion he had with a protestant friend about the nature of baptism in Christianity. To sum up the conversation the protestant asserted that baptism was a physical act that, while symbolic, had no real saving effect. The saving effect came through faith which must be active before baptism. Essentially the protestant was asserting that salvation came through faith and that baptism was unnecessary for salvation but could be used as an outward expression of faith. The catholic (and blog author) countered that baptism in the New Testament is never used in this sense. It is always done so that the one being baptized can receive a remission of sins. In other words, the inward commitment of faith is not sufficient to receive a remission of sins and spiritual regeneration, but must be accompanied by baptism if it is to have any efficacy or force.

To prove his point the catholic offered a number of quotes from (protestant) biblical scholars about how the early Church Fathers viewed and taught about baptism. He did this to point out that even protestant scholars acknowledged that for most of the history of Christianity baptism was never considered to be only a symbolic act of faith, but was necessary for and prior to any spiritual change that may occur. The last quote he included I think summed up nicely the teachings of the early Church Fathers.

William Webster, a former Catholic turned Evangelical, in his 1995 book The Church of Rome at the Bar of History, freely admits the unanimous position of the Church Fathers as to what is called "baptismal regeneration":
"The doctrine of baptism is one of the few teachings within Roman Catholicism for which it can be said that there is a universal consent of the Fathers....From the early days of the Church, baptism was universally perceived as the means of receiving four basic gifts: the remission of sins, deliverance from death, regeneration, and the bestowal of the Holy Spirit." (Webster, page 95-96)

From this we see that historically there have been four key concepts that have been associated with the act of baptism.

Remission of sins
Deliverance from death
Regeneration (also called being spiritually reborn)
Bestowal of the Holy Spirit

For this post I will refer to these four items as the four blessings of the believers (this is not what the blog author called them, or anyone else for that matter, I am just giving them a name for easy reference for this post).

In this conversation, the protestant insisted that the four blessings did not come about because some one was baptized, but rather because (and only because) they had faith. Baptism can be used symbolically as an expression of faith, but it has no essential saving force and does not produce the four blessings. The catholic insisted that in order for any of these four blessings to be operative a baptism must be performed. Without the actual act of baptism none of the four would be manifest in the life of the believer.

So here we have one of the key differences between protestant theology and catholic theology. For protestants (maybe not for all, but this view is widespread) any physical act (i.e. baptism) cannot produce spiritual change. That is, the performance of a physical act such as baptism does not confer or give the four blessings of the believers, they can be accessed at any time through faith. They can only be accessed through an inward (spiritual) act that cannot be physically manifested. If the believer then wants to perform an outward act to reflect the inward act of faith then they can, but it is not required or necessary. But in catholic theology the four blessings cannot be received until a physical act, such as baptism is performed.

Simply put, for protestants, baptism is merely a symbolic act, an outward manifestation of an inward (spiritual) change. For catholics the physical act of baptism is necessary to produce the inward (spiritual) changes. For protestants the spiritual changes are prior to the physical manifestation or act. For catholics, the physical act is necessary and prior to the spiritual changes.

So returning to the title of my post, the LDS concept of baptism, we can ask, between these two conflicting view points where does the LDS concept of baptism stand.

If we look at lds.org we can read about the way Latter-day Saints view baptism.

"Those who keep the covenants they made at baptism are blessed by the Lord for their faithfulness. Some of the blessings include the constant companionship of the Holy Ghost, the remission of sins, and the privilege of being spiritually reborn. If they continue faithfully, they are promised eternal life (see 2 Nephi 31:19–20)."

I do not know who specifically wrote that paragraph, these doctrinal statements found on lds.org are usually written by committees made up general authorities and other church scholars, but I find it interesting that we from a theological stand point we are much more closely aligned with catholic theology. And incidentally that puts us in agreement with the "universal consent of the Fathers....From the early days of the Church", as pointed out by protestant scholars.

While the LDS concept of baptism includes the four key blessings of the believers, as was taught by the early Church Fathers, the way the blessings are conferred and how they associate us with God is different. Unlike the catholic view, the conferral of these blessings does not come through a mystic connection (as in, it is not a doctrinal mystery) but they come by way of covenant. That is, we covenant to keep the commandments and to remember always Jesus Christ, and in return we are blessed with the four blessings of the believers,

Remission of sins
Deliverance from [eternal] death [and receiving eternal life]
Regeneration [spiritual rebirth, i.e. being born of the spirit]
Bestowal of the [constant companionship of the] Holy Spirit

The key here is that this is not mystical or mysterious relation but a covenant relation, which is to say, in as much as we do [blank] God will do [blank]. For us this makes God an interactive and personal God.

The purpose of baptism in LDS theology is therefore neither the forging of a mystical connection to God, nor solely a symbolic act, but is the pronouncement or demonstration of a covenant. By making this covenant we become citizens of the kingdom of God, and thus must abide by the laws of the kingdom, but in turn we benefit from the blessings that come from being members of the Church of God. Thus baptism is the naturalization process for the Kingdom of God, which means that it is a necessary act, as set forth by the laws of the kingdom, to enter into the kingdom as a member, and it is done so that we might receive the promised blessings. Blessings which are available to all people.

We see from this that the LDS concept of baptism is in agreement with what was taught by the early Church Fathers and for most of the history of Christianity. It is only a relatively recent development in Christian theology that has taught that baptism is not necessary for salvation. While there are differences in the interpretation and administration of the blessings associated with baptism the essential doctrines are the same across thousands of years of history and across very different theological systems.

What does a computer virus look like?

2011-04-03T19:03:00.000-04:00

This post is a general education post to help people become more familiar with computer viruses and trojans. For those who have never seen an actual computer virus taking over a computer, or who have seen it but did not realize what happened to their computer, here is a short video showing how a virus can take over your computer (I did not make this).

A couple of things to note here. The first warning sign that there was a virus was when the web page he was trying to access did not come up, but instead there was a page for a completely different site that came up. That should have been the first warning sign. The second was that a web page, not owned by Microsoft, said that there was something wrong with his computer. This would be like having some random person on the street come up to you and say that there has been a recalled issued for your car, and then they ask for your keys. You wouldn't give them your keys, so why would you trust some random website to tell you that your computer is broken and they need to fix it.

Up to this point the computer does not have a virus, it is just the webpage telling him that there is a problem. The next thing that was wrong with was that the web page began scanning his computer. No webpage, even legitimate ones should ever scan your computer. Again, that would be like someone calling you on the phone and offering to fix your car over the phone. If someone did that then you should suggest they take a trip to the loony bin, and when a website tries to do the same thing with your computer then you should also close your browser and don't go any further. Up to this point your computer still does not have a virus, and still works just fine. But when you download the virus, and run it (some viruses might be able to run immediately when you download them) then you have problems.

If you get to the point where you have a virus on your computer, then even if it says there are other problems, and even if it offers to fix the problem (for a fee) then don't do it. Either you will have to fix the problem yourself, if you know how, or find someone you can trust, who can fix it. Also keep in mind that no trustworthy anti-virus software will ever ask you to pay a fee after downloading it randomly off the internet. If you did not purchase the software in the normal way (off of a trusted site, or in an actual store) then it is not legitimate, and your should never give them credit card information.

Answering the "Works" Accusation

2011-03-30T00:05:00.000-04:00

One of the most common accusations against The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is that we believe that we are saved by our works and not by the grace of God. Well I have been going to church all my life and I have never heard anyone ever teach that in church. The only place I ever heard that is from Evangelicals trying to prove that Mormons believe false doctrine. As an interesting side note, that is also one of the central accusations that Evangelicals have against Catholics, so go figure.

So the other day I came across a random blog that discussed religion and the author was looking for comments about what she had written about Mormons. So on her post about Mormons and "how they think they are saved by their works" (she called it the Jesus Plus program, as in faith plus works--imagine that! you mean we actually have to do something?! you mean we can't just "believe" and Jesus will save us?...anyway back to my post), I decided to leave a comment (actually it was three comments because blogger has a limit to the number of characters allowed in a comment). I decided to repost my comment(s) here.

--Begin Comment--

Perhaps one of the hardest things to understand about LDS theology from a Protestant perspective is the concept of how salvation, grace and what we do (our works) are related. Let me try to explain it.

You have quoted some of the more well known scriptures from the Book of Mormon and the D&C but there are others that will perhaps help you understand this concept better. In the Book of Alma in the Book of Mormon the prophet Amulek was talking to some people who were wondering why they had to have faith in Christ. In Alma Chapter 34, verse 9 he explains that, "For it is expedient that an atonement should be made; for according to the great plan of the Eternal God there must be an atonement made, or else all mankind must unavoidably perish; yea, all are hardened; yea, all are fallen and are lost, and must perish except it be through the atonement which it is expedient should be made."

So up until now this is exactly the same as any other Christian church teaches. So, later on in verse 16 he says, "And thus mercy can satisfy the demands of justice, and encircles them in the arms of safety, while he that exercises no faith unto repentance is exposed to the whole law of the demands of justice; therefore only unto him that has faith unto repentance is brought about the great and eternal plan of redemption."

Here is what many Protestants would consider to be the difference. For those who have enough faith in Christ to repent of their sins then the Plan of Salvation (Christ's atonement) will begin to work. Now before we continue with this we must understand why this needs to be.

Well further on in verse 33 and 34 we read,

"33 And now, as I said unto you before, as ye have had so many witnesses, therefore, I beseech of you that ye do not procrastinate the day of your repentance until the end; for after this day of life, which is given us to prepare for eternity, behold, if we do not improve our time while in this life, then cometh the night of darkness wherein there can be no labor performed.

34 Ye cannot say, when ye are brought to that awful crisis, that I will repent, that I will return to my God. Nay, ye cannot say this; for that same spirit which doth possess your bodies at the time that ye go out of this life, that same spirit will have power to possess your body in that eternal world."

Here we see a critical idea, because in the when we die the same spirit (our spirit) that possesses our body, that is to say what ever good, or evil, that we have in our souls will stay with us in the resurrection. When Christ restores to us our bodies, what ever type of person we were in this life, if we were mean and hateful, or kind and gentle, then we will still be like that after the resurrection.

The whole point is that when Christ comes to save us He will not, I repeat will not save us in our sins. He will only save us from our sins. He gives us a way out. A way out of bondage from our sins. This is what the scriptures mean when they say that Christ is the way. He is the way out of bondage from our sins. Thus for Mormons, to continue in our sins (to continue sinning) is to deny The Way, or the way out. Which is to say, to accept Christ as your savior, but then continue in your sins is to deny Christ, and the power of His atonement.

So the next question is, why is this?

Well, if we continue reading in Alma 34:35-36,

"35For behold, if ye have procrastinated the day of your repentance even until death, behold, ye have become subjected to the spirit of the devil, and he doth seal you his; therefore, the Spirit of the Lord hath withdrawn from you, and hath no place in you, and the devil hath all power over you; and this is the final state of the wicked.

36 And this I know, because the Lord hath said he dwelleth not in unholy temples, but in the hearts of the righteous doth he dwell; yea, and he has also said that the righteous shall sit down in his kingdom, to go no more out; but their garments should be made white through the blood of the Lamb."

If we sin, which is to say we do not listen to the counsel of God and Christ, then we are opening ourselves up to the Devil, and he will make us unclean. And if we are unclean, then we cannot enter in to the kingdom of God. This is not just a Mormon thing. In Ephesians 5:3-5 it reads,

"3 But fornication, and all uncleanness, or covetousness, let it not be once named among you, as becometh saints;

4 Neither filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor jesting, which are not convenient: but rather giving of thanks.

5 For this ye know, that no whoremonger, nor unclean person, nor covetous man, who is an idolater, hath any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God."

The thing to remember is that once we are unclean, once we have sinned, there is nothing we can do that will cleanse us of our sins. If it were entirely up to us then we would be forever shut out from the presence of God the Father and Jesus Christ. But through the atonement of Christ we can have "our garments made white". There is no other way.

After they are made clean, the only thing that make them unclean is ourselves, returning to the sins we had previously given up.

With this in mind let us look at some of the phrases you picked up from lds.org and other places. One of the phrases you quoted, “the scriptures say that His Spirit cannot be with us if we are sinful.” This quote related to the idea that God cannot dwell in unholy temples, or to put it another way, God cannot dwell within us if we are sinning. To say otherwise would be to make God a liar. His spirit withdraws from us and we are left to ourselves, without his support.

Then you said, "We are cleansed of our sins when we reach perfection." I think a better way of saying this would be, "We are cleansed of our sins so that we might reach perfection." The further issue of what perfection is, and how the concept of perfection has been corrupted by different philosophies, would take a very long book to explain. The short answer is that Mormons try not to have an impossible view of what it means to be perfect. Anyway, back to the subject...

So finally we come to spiritual death and our salvation. With all this in mind if we consider the implications of sinning again, then that is a strong incentive to not sin, or to continue being a good person. So when we get baptized, both by the water and by the spirit, the Atonement of Christ cleanses us from our sins. Now it is up to us to not mess it up, because we can return and sin we are also able to act for ourselves and to not sin. But if we do mess up, then Christ can again cleanse us from our sins and let us start new again. There are no sins (except for denying the Holy Ghost) that Christ cannot cleanse us from. To not even attempt to repent is to deny the Way, which is to deny Christ.

I think that is a start.

--End Comment--

I hope that wasn't too much for her since that ended up being more writing than she put in all of her six posts on Mormons that she had up. So, any comments?

Slippery Slopes and Moral Lines

2011-03-21T01:01:00.000-04:00

I wasn't going to comment on this because I generally don't comment on sports, sports related stuff, or things that are more than adequately covered in the normal news outlets. But for some reason it was notable enough that it got international news coverage (yes, there was an article on the BBC about this). The event that was so notable that even the British news services felt compelled to cover it. So what was this international news worthy event? BYU enforced its honor code.

In the middle of the run up to the NCAA Basketball tournament, BYU suspended it's center starter because of an honor code violation. While I will not comment on what the player did, I will comment on the reaction to what happened. Some of the reactions were positive, some were negative, but most (almost all) were shocked. The most shocking part, and the part that got BYU international news coverage, was that BYU would even have such an honor code, and would enforce it, especially when it involved a star player right before the big play-off. Perhaps what was so interesting about the reaction was not that so many people were shocked that BYU set such high standards, but that they had set any standard. That is, they were shocked not by the "extreme" or "restrictive" honor code, but that BYU had a firm "line in the sand" that they would not cross. For them the firm moral line was more of a shock than where the line was drawn.

The very fact that so many news organizations, all over the US and even in Britain, covered the story demonstrates that they consider what happened to be odd, or out of the ordinary, meaning it was news worthy. Effectively the titles of the news articles could have been, "BYU has firm moral values" or "BYU uncompromising in its morals" and it would have gotten the same response. Thus the fact that someone had and held a firm moral line was news worthy indicates that it is not "normal" or "common" to have a firm moral standard. So if there is not a firm moral standard, then the next obvious question is, what kind of moral standard do we have?

First, because there is no firm moral standard in our society (there may be one for individual groups or organizations, but not in general) that indicates that our historical moral standard is in flux. Because it is changing no one really knows where to "draw the line" or even if a line should be drawn. Some say that there should be no line because the mere existence of a moral line in the past caused "hurt feelings", "heartache" or other problems (according to them) such as stifling creativity, identity or expression. The end result in this is that there is no moral line that society in general will not cross. There are many individuals, organizations and churches that maintain their moral lines, but society in general has not yet established an equilibrium where any type of moral line is drawn.

Probably the only moral imperative operative in Western Society right now is the idea that there should be no moral line imposed by anyone other than the individual (and even then that is subject to ridicule).

So does this mean that our society is currently wallowing in a sea of amoral actions and is one or two years from total societal collapse? No. Just because there is no current moral line in society does not mean that no one has personal moral lines, or that we will quickly descend into an amoral hell, but right now society in general is in a kind of moral free fall. Because there is no societal moral lines there is nothing to prevent society in general from moving into more and more immoral actions. The point is, because society in general does not draw a line anywhere in particular does not mean that anything and everything is allowed, but that there is no societal pressure that would eventually prevent those things from becoming standard and acceptable.

One of the common accusations against same sex marriage is that if it is allowed then what is there to stop polygamy, polyamory or any else which is currently disallowed by society in general. To which supporters of SSM respond, "That will never happen." Well unfortunately the same thing that currently makes their situation possible will not prevent those other things from becoming "acceptable" by society. It is very hard to begin drawing moral lines and preventing things from happening when there have been no moral lines drawn by society since the 1960's. We have yet to reach the bottom of our current free fall into the abyss of immorality. The question is when, or if, society will begin again to draw moral lines. Some attempts at drawing moral lines have already been made (i.e. with hate speech legislation, and other things) but because of the immense societal momentum it is hard to begin drawing lines now. Society has already gone down the slippery slope and some are desperately trying to catch onto anything to prevent a further decent into immorality.

Unfortunately whenever anyone tries to impose a moral line they are frequently met with the accusation, "If you start imposing your morality (i.e. any morality) then that is just a slippery slope into an overly restrictive and suffocating society without joy, happiness, puppies, butterflies, rainbows and ponies." It is rather ironic that while society is sliding down its slippery slope those who wish to apply the breaks and prevent our decent into a cesspool of immorality are accused of themselves going down a slippery slope. They fail to see that there can only be a moral slippery slope when there is no well defined boundary or moral line that should not be crossed, which is precisely the situation in which we find ourselves.

Lately I have been hearing a lot of talk about how the current trend in society is "inevitable", as if the current trend were self-evident and was the obvious result of the natural human interactions called history. Well unfortunately the view that it is inevitable will only hold until Western Society begins to draw a moral line again, at which point they will need to justify the moral lines they are drawing, which means they will again have to build a systematic morality (something that has been noticeably lacking in our society for the last 75-100 years or so, connection? hmmm....). But with a systematic morality comes the conclusion that societal trends are not "inevitable" because one of the hallmarks of a systematic morality is the idea that some things are not allowed, not because we can't do them, or not because we don't have the inclination, but because we should not do them. This removes the feeling of inevitability that comes with no fixed moral code. Thus things are only inevitable if there is not fixed moral code. If there is a moral code, then that will "prevent the inevitable" slide into immoral behavior, which is the whole point of having a moral code.

So the question is, when will our society begin to draw moral lines and begin to build a systematic morality? I don't know.

There are indications that this may be happening. There is an ever so slight shift in our society that might result in the moral lines being drawn somewhere (as opposed to nowhere as it currently stands). But as to the state of our society when those moral lines are finally drawn? I don't know. I guess we will have to see where we end up. We will just have to wait until we hit the bottom of the slippery slide.

The next question is, what do we do when we finally stop our decent? And more importantly, how do we build back up to the moral society that we were before (if not better)? Well if I knew the answer to that then I would be a wise man, and I probably wouldn't be writing a blog about this. But my guess is we would have to begin again, and follow a similar path to what as done before. That is, look at what led up the introduction of systematic moral systems through out history and see what allowed for that to happen. It is possible, it just has to be done deliberately, and it will take time. I am willing to help work for a moral society, and I invite you to do so as well.

The Error of Cain

2011-03-14T01:03:00.000-04:00

In the book of Genesis in the Bible we find recorded the story of Cain and Abel. While many people focus on Cain's sin of killing Abel, many people overlook Cain's error that put him on the path that ended with him killing Abel. The record in Genesis tells us.

3And in process of time it came to pass, that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the Lord.

But when Cain presented his offering the record tells us,

5But unto ^aCain and to his ^boffering [the Lord] had not ^crespect. And Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell.

The Book of Moses expounds a little more on what happened by giving the interchange between God and Cain after the failed offering.

22And the Lord said unto Cain: Why art thou wroth? Why is thy countenance fallen?

23If thou doest well, thou shalt be ^aaccepted. And if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door, and Satan ^bdesireth to have thee; and except thou shalt hearken unto my commandments, I will ^cdeliver thee up, and it shall be unto thee according to his desire. And thou shalt ^drule over him;

24For from this time forth thou shalt be the father of his ^alies; thou shalt be called ^bPerdition; for thou wast also ^cbefore the world.

25And it shall be said in time to come—That these abominations were had from ^aCain; for he rejected the greater counsel which was had from God; and this is a ^bcursing which I will put upon thee, except thou repent.

26And Cain was wroth, and listened not any more to the voice of the Lord, neither to Abel, his brother, who walked in holiness before the Lord.

From these verses we note the ironic fact that it was Cain's attempt to offer a sacrifice to God that ultimately led him to commit murder. So let us consider this, what exactly was wrong with Cain's sacrifice that prompted God to reject it?

We note that when Cain offered sacrifice he offered "the fruit of the ground", which is to say, he offered the food that he had grown. We do not know exactly what it is that he offered but we can guess that it must have been whatever he had been farming, and we might even assume that it was the first of his harvest and the best of his crop. These things would surely be a worthy sacrifice, as he might have been offering the best of what he had, if it were not for the fact that Cain was attempting to change the ordinance and substitute his own efforts and ideas for those of God's.

When the ordinance of sacrifice was first instituted it was done for a very specific purpose. As we read in the Book of Moses, when Adam and Eve were driven out of the Garden of Eden they were commanded to offer sacrifice.

5And he gave unto them commandments, that they should^aworship the Lord their God, and should offer the ^bfirstlings of their ^cflocks, for an offering unto the Lord. And Adam was ^dobedient unto the commandments of the Lord.

6And after many days an ^aangel of the Lord appeared unto Adam, saying: Why dost thou offer ^bsacrifices unto the Lord? And Adam said unto him: I know not, save the Lord commanded me.

7And then the angel spake, saying: This thing is a ^asimilitude of the ^bsacrifice of the Only Begotten of the Father, which is full of ^cgrace and ^dtruth.

8Wherefore, thou shalt do all that thou doest in the ^aname of the Son, and thou shalt ^brepent and ^ccall upon God in the name of the Son forevermore.

We find from this that the purpose of offering sacrifice was to remind the Children of God of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. The amount or value of the sacrifice was not the important thing because the sacrifice itself was not the thing that brought salvation. The purpose of the sacrifice was to remind them that it is only through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ that we can receive salvation.

So when Cain offered his sacrifice he was changing the intent of the ordinance. He was in effect saying that his sacrifice was what brought salvation. It was his actions and his intent that would allow God to give him salvation. Thus by changing the ordinance, Cain sought to put himself in the place of Christ, and make his own actions, thoughts and intents more important than those of God. In a sense what Cain was trying to do was understandable. He viewed the ordinance of sacrifice as nothing more than the act of giving up what one has. If we think about it in this way then it makes sense that in order for Cain to make a worthy sacrifice then all he would have to do is offer that which had the most value to him, that is, he offered the fruits of his labors.

Here in lies the error of Cain. He failed to see the intent and purpose of the ordinances that he was commanded to perform. We might say that Cain thought that the ordinances were all about him and what he had to do, and he failed to see that they were not about him and his actions, but pointed towards Christ. It should be noted here that Cain did not do this ignorantly. He must have known the intent of the sacrifices, and even after his failed sacrifice he was not immediately condemned or cast off by God. He was admonished and warned that if he did not repent then, and only then, would he be delivered over to Satan. But as God said to Cain, "If thou doest well, thou shalt be accepted."

But Cain did not repent and did not listen "any more to the voice of the Lord, neither to Abel, his brother", and Cain continued on the path he was on that led to him murdering Abel and being cast out forever from the presence of the Lord. And it all started because he wanted to change the ordinances to suit his own desires.

Unfortunately we find members of the Church today who will do the same thing. They want to change the order of the priesthood, or the ordinances of the Gospel to suit what they view as the "correct" or the "right" way of doing things. They view the priesthood as "unfair" and the ordinances of the Temple as "asserting male dominance" or "blind obedience to a bunch of old men", as one comment said that I read today. But in doing so they are committing the error of Cain by wishing to change the ordinances of the gospel to suit their own desires and to fix things as they see fit. Nowhere in all their arguments do they even consider what God has to think on the subject. They also fail to see that just as the sacrifices of ancient times were intended to point to Christ, thus are the ordinances, the structure and teachings of the priesthood are also intended to point to Christ.

1And again, my brethren, I would cite your minds forward to the time when the Lord God gave these commandments unto his children; and I would that ye should remember that the Lord God ^aordained priests, after his holy order, which was after the order of his Son, to teach these things unto the people.

2And those priests were ordained after the ^aorder of his Son, in a^bmanner that thereby the people might know in what manner to look forward to his Son for redemption. (Alma 13:1-2)

In their rush to bring equality and justice they loose sight of the fact that the purpose of the priesthood is not to exert dominion and control over others, and is not a symbol of worldly power and strength, but is only intended to point our minds to Christ, "in a manner that thereby the people might know in what manner to look forward to his Son for redemption." That is to say, the whole structure of the priesthood is set in such a way that we may know the manner and source of our salvation. The structure of the priesthood (and the Church in general) is set such that it is a reflection of the way we will gain salvation. When I say that the structure of the Church, I do not refer to the common daily (or weekly) administration of the Church, but the structure of teaching, compassionate service, brotherly love, service, selflessness, kindness, caring and unity that make up the Church. This is the manner of our salvation.

6And thus being called by this holy calling, and ordained unto the high priesthood of the holy order of God, to teach his commandments unto the children of men, that they also might enter into his ^arest—

. . . .

16Now these ^aordinances were given after this ^bmanner, that thereby the people might look forward on the Son of God, it being a ^ctype of his order, or it being his order, and this that they might look forward to him for a remission of their sins, that they might enter into the rest of the Lord. (Alma 13:6,16)

To desire otherwise is to deny the ordinances and order as given by God that point us to Christ. There is wisdom in what God does, and we need not commit the error of Cain and impose our desires, wisdom (or lack there of) and thoughts on the ordinances and order of God. For they are given to point to Christ and when we endeavor to change the ordinances to suit our own ideas, we deny the power and efficacy of Christ's Atonement. This is why the ordinances were given to us from God and were not instituted by man (or women) that we might look to Him for our salvation and not to ourselves.

"Ye cannot dethrone an iniquitous king save it be through much contention"

2011-02-27T18:36:00.001-05:00

In light of the current events happening in the Arab world I thought that this short passage from The Book of Mormon was particularly applicable.

16Now I say unto you, that because all men are not just it is not expedient that ye should have a ^aking or kings to rule over you.
17For behold, how much ^ainiquity doth one ^bwicked king cause to be committed, yea, and what great destruction!
. . .
21And behold, now I say unto you, ye cannot dethrone an iniquitous ^aking save it be through much contention, and the shedding of much blood.
22For behold, he has his ^afriends in iniquity, and he keepeth his guards about him; and he teareth up the laws of those who have reigned in righteousness before him; and he trampleth under his feet the commandments of God;
23And he enacteth laws, and sendeth them forth among his people, yea, laws after the manner of his own wickedness; and whosoever doth not obey his laws he ^acauseth to be destroyed; and whosoever doth rebel against him he will send his armies against them to war, and if he can he will destroy them; and thus an unrighteous ^bking doth pervert the ways of all righteousness. (Mosiah 29:16-17,21-23)

I think that the events of recent weeks, especially in Libya, prove the wisdom and truthfulness of these words. While many people, countries and nations have looked to kings, or strong autocratic rulers, as a solution to their current problems. Unfortunately the end result is usually more hardships and trouble for the people. In the end it never turns out to be a solution.

An explanation of the problem with "The Kolob Theorem" (#2)

2011-02-14T01:05:00.001-05:00

[Update 4/17/11: Because most traffic about The Kolob Theorem was still being directed to my old post, I decided to replace my original post with this one, because this review is perhaps more informative than the original.]

Previously I had written a post entitled The Problem with "The Kolob Theorem", and in revisiting the topic I thought that I should expound on why I think The Kolob Theorem to be problematic. This post is intended to replace my previous review of The Kolob Theorem, but I will leave the other post up for anyone who cares to read it, but I will say that I wrote it in one of my less charitable moments. This post will hopefully be a little less harsh, but more instructive of why The Kolob Theorem presents a problem in LDS theology. For reference, I have recently been reading the book Science, Religion, and Mormon Cosmology by Erich Robert Paul, which has prompted me to recast my critique of The Kolob Theorem in a different light.

The first time I encountered The Kolob Theorem I was at my wife's grandparents house. Someone had loaned my wife's grandmother the book and I saw it sitting on a table and was intrigued by the title and wanted to know what it was about. I only took a quick glance through the book but it was enough to make my skin crawl. There were in fact two reasons for my seemingly severe negative reaction to the book. The first was that there were critical scientific errors in the book that effectively invalidated the whole argument, and the second was that I realized that most people would be unaware of these critical errors and thereby base their understanding of scripture on a foundation of incorrect science.

What made this second reason so problematic was that as an astronomer I would most likely be asked about it (and I was) and I would have to very carefully and politely explain that while the science was extremely off base the religious aspect of the book was not. In other words, I realized that whenever I would be asked about this book I would be faced with the dilemma of having to state quite clearly that the book was wrong, and do so without destroying someone's faith in the scriptures or causing the person to also reject all of science in the process. Essentially the dilemma is that on the one hand I want to emphasize the problems and misconceptions that went into the theorem, without causing people to react and go to the other extreme of rejecting everything that went into the theorem including both the science in general and the specifics of the revelations. This dilemma is much more difficult to deal with than people realize, and it also comes up more frequently than most people are aware of. Perhaps I am just a little more sensitive to this problem due to my being an astronomer, and therefore I become the local "go-to guy" to resolve these issues and thus I have to deal with things like this on a semi-frequent basis.

The Kolob Theorem is part of group of theological writings that are called natural theology. Strictly speaking, natural theology denotes a fundamental approach to theology as opposed to a specific theology. Thus natural theology is not confined to any one religion or church. The main trust of natural theology is to verify one's religion using arguments from the prevailing scientific theories and observations of the day. It is in effect an attempt to argue that one's religion is true based on the latest and greatest theories in science. This is problematic because if the latest and greatest theories are shown to be wrong then that automatically calls into question the theology and religion of the natural theologian.

Dr. Hilton's book is a prime example of the process, and problems, of natural theology. Starting with some basic astronomy, he moves on to make a theological argument about where God lives and where the three degrees of glory are located. As Erich Robert Paul pointed out in his book on Mormon cosmology, Joseph Smith never attempted to reconcile the knowledge of astronomy from the Book of Abraham, or the three degrees of glory with any contemporary astronomical observations. Thus Dr. Hilton is attempting what Joseph Smith never attempted. This may be very commendable and courageous, or more likely it may prove to be premature and problematic. To consider why this is problematic we need to consider other failed attempts at natural theology.

In the middle ages there was a type of world map called a T-O map that was common in the religious books at the time.

A reconstruction of a T-O map. Image from Wikipedia. Usually the map is represented with Asia (east) on top.

The purpose of the T-O map is to show the general layout of the world and how it reflects Christian theology. These maps were made to show how certain Christian doctrines are symbolically part of the world. The world is laid out in such a way that the cross of Christ is evident, with Jerusalem at the center (the cross being formed by the Mediterranean Sea, the Nile and the Don rivers). There was more symbolism in the O of the ocean surrounding the land (the complete, eternal circle of God, and water from the water and the blood). While the map may have been useful to teach certain religious doctrines, it is not very accurate when compared to an actual map of the world.

The T-O map superimposed on a modern map. Image from Wikipedia.

The way Dr. Hilton attempts to show the location and structure of the three degrees of glory only makes sense when using a very simplified map of the galaxy. Much in the same way that the T-O map of the world is only theologically useful when you assume a very simplified structure to the world. While the T-O map may be theologically instructive, it is rather useless as an actual map that may be used to get from point A to point B.

The end result is that the theological argument gets based on a very simplified, and very inaccurate, map of the world. The same happens with The Kolob Theorem. Dr. Hilton uses an excessively over simplified "map" of a galaxy to make a theological argument. The end effect of the theorem is to place the veracity of the revealed word, the scriptures, on a specific scientific theory or observation. To a natural theologian this is the desired result, but this has the unintended result of making revelation depend on something that may not be true, or that may change as our understanding changes. This is precisely the problem that plagues The Kolob Theorem.

For example, Dr. Hilton includes a quote from a famous astronomer, Fred Hoyle, to back up part of his theorem. The quote, found on page 25 of the book, comes from 1955 and at the time it expressed the current understanding of how stars formed in galaxies. But our understanding of astronomy has changed since then and parts of the view as expressed in Fred Hoyle's quote no longer reflects our understanding of star formation.

By basing part of his argument on a specific scientific theory, or insight, Dr. Hilton does himself a disservice because he places the interpretation and veracity of revealed scripture on something that can and will most likely change as we gain greater understanding of how the universe works. He is in effect setting himself up, and setting up his faith and by extension, the faith of others, to be disproven when the next largest telescope gets built and we find out more about the universe. That is, for me, a very problematic result to his theory. I would not want members of the Church to base their faith, testimony, or understanding of the scriptures on something that is already demonstratively false and will become more so as we gain new insights into the universe though our astronomical observations.

So in his attempt to make the latest and greatest astronomical observations into something "faith promoting", Dr. Hilton enters the realm of natural theology which "opens up a whole new can of worms" which may be more troublesome than Dr. Hilton realizes. Because the current astronomical observations are just that, current, they will grow old and become yesterday's observations and then last century's observations, and all the theories that they produced will have changed. This does not mean that we should reject all astronomical observations and untrue, unimportant or insignificant, but rather we should resist the temptation to base our faith on something that has proven throughout history to change. There should be a better foundation to our faith than the latest and greatest theories of science.

Also as a final note, I realize that many people are impressed with this book mostly because they have never considered the implications of what is written in the Book of Abraham and in the Doctrine and Covenants. Many of the positive comments posted on goodreads.com about the book are from people that say that the book "opened their eyes" or "made them think about their religion in a different way" and how it made "the plan of salvation more real". While I can't argue with their own personal feelings (and if the book did prompt them to investigate the scriptures more, then good I'm all for that), I do wish to temper their enthusiasm with the realization that to base our theology, faith and religion on something like The Kolob Theorem will ultimately result in a challenge to our faith and will not be "faith promoting" in the end. The truth of God is more amazing than anything that you will find in The Kolob Theorem.

I don't know where Kolob is, so stop asking.

2011-02-13T22:54:00.000-05:00

I will just apologize up front, this post will be a rant.

In short, I don't know where Kolob is, so stop asking. Because I am an astronomer it seems like about once a month I get asked, "So, have you found Kolob yet?" Mostly when I get that question I respond with a simple, "No." But sometimes I am tempted to respond with much more, but usually that would involve technical explanations that would put my listeners to sleep long before I get to the punch line and the effect would be totally wasted. But for those who are tempted to ask their local LDS astronomer (like me) if they have "found Kolob yet" let me explain just what it is they are asking.

First, all we know about Kolob is this:

2 And I saw the stars, that they were very great, and that one of them was nearest unto the throne of God; and there were many great ones which were near unto it;

3 And the Lord said unto me: These are the governing ones; and the name of the great one is Kolob, because it is near unto me, for I am the Lord thy God: I have set this one to govern all those which belong to the same order as that upon which thou standest.

4 And the Lord said unto me, by the Urim and Thummim, that Kolob was after the manner of the Lord, according to its times and seasons in the revolutions thereof; that one revolution was a day unto the Lord, after his manner of reckoning, it being one thousand years according to the time appointed unto that whereon thou standest. This is the reckoning of the Lord’s time, according to the reckoning of Kolob.

5 And the Lord said unto me: The planet which is the lesser light, lesser than that which is to rule the day, even the night, is above or greater than that upon which thou standest in point of reckoning, for it moveth in order more slow; this is in order because it standeth above the earth upon which thou standest, therefore the reckoning of its time is not so many as to its number of days, and of months, and of years.

6 And the Lord said unto me: Now, Abraham, these two facts exist, behold thine eyes see it; it is given unto thee to know the times of reckoning, and the set time, yea, the set time of the earth upon which thou standest, and the set time of the greater light which is set to rule the day, and the set time of the lesser light which is set to rule the night.

7 Now the set time of the lesser light is a longer time as to its reckoning than the reckoning of the time of the earth upon which thou standest.

8 And where these two facts exist, there shall be another fact above them, that is, there shall be another planet whose reckoning of time shall be longer still;

9 And thus there shall be the reckoning of the time of one planet above another, until thou come nigh unto Kolob, which Kolob is after the reckoning of the Lord’s time; which Kolob is set nigh unto the throne of God, to govern all those planets which belong to the same order as that upon which thou standest.

10 And it is given unto thee to know the set time of all the stars that are set to give light, until thou come near unto the throne of God.

11 Thus I, Abraham, talked with the Lord, face to face, as one man talketh with another; and he told me of the works which his hands had made;

12 And he said unto me: My son, my son (and his hand was stretched out), behold I will show you all these. And he put his hand upon mine eyes, and I saw those things which his hands had made, which were many; and they multiplied before mine eyes, and I could not see the end thereof.

13 And he said unto me: This is Shinehah, which is the sun. And he said unto me: Kokob, which is star. And he said unto me: Olea, which is the moon. And he said unto me: Kokaubeam, which signifies stars, or all the great lights, which were in the firmament of heaven.

14 And it was in the night time when the Lord spake these words unto me: I will multiply thee, and thy seed after thee, like unto these; and if thou canst count the number of sands, so shall be the number of thy seeds.

15 And the Lord said unto me: Abraham, I show these things unto thee before ye go into Egypt, that ye may declare all these words.

16 If two things exist, and there be one above the other, there shall be greater things above them; therefore Kolob is the greatest of all the Kokaubeam that thou hast seen, because it is nearest unto me.

This comes from the Book of Abraham Chapter 3, translated by Joseph Smith from ancient Egyptian papyri. So unless we talk to the original author (Abraham), the translator (Joseph Smith) or the revelator (God), or we happen to have access to a set of Urim and Thummin there isn't anything we can add to what we read in the Book of Abraham. That's it, that's all we have. So to "look for Kolob" we would be looking for a star (no idea what type) "nigh unto the throne of God" which we have little idea what that is either. So to "find Kolob" we are looking for a star of unknown type, somewhere in the Universe (a very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very big universe, emphasis on the big), that is somewhere close to "the throne of God" which, unless you have actually seen it, we have no idea what it looks like. Thus we are looking for a star (unknown type) next to something that we don't know what it is.

So to ask me "Have you found Kolob yet?" is like asking me, "Have you found that one thing that is next to that other thing?" Of course my answer will be "No." As soon as we know what that one thing is that is next to that other thing, and what that other thing is then I will know what I am looking for and then I might just be able to begin to look for it. Until then, don't ask.

Is God Omnipotent?

2011-01-30T23:58:00.000-05:00

The question of God's omnipotence frequently comes up in religious discussions, yet there is rarely any agreement or consensus on the matter. Most Christians will agree that God is omnipotent (also omniscient and omnipresent, collectively known as "the three omni's") but what that actually means differs greatly from church to church and from theologian to theologian. Even among Mormons there is some debate as to what it means for God to be omnipotent (though decidedly less than other churches). Some take the standard Protestant/Catholic approach complete with ontological arguments, while others take a more experiential approach to God which makes a discussion of ontological arguments, and by extension, a discussion of the three omni's irrelevant. But the question remains, is God omnipotent?

When confronted with this question I could ask, "What do you mean by omnipotent?" but that rarely gets anywhere. So the other day I was thinking about it and I came up with a way of responding to that question. When I am asked, "Is God omnipotent?" I will respond with another question, "Is the earth a sphere?" The answer to that question is "'Yes.'" but it is a qualified "yes". The earth is very spherical, but to say that it is a perfect mathematical sphere of uniform density is to destroy the reality that is the earth. But to say that the earth is not a sphere is to ignore the obvious fact that it is a sphere, even if it is not a perfect, mathematical sphere. For all practical purposes (air travel, satellites, ocean navigation, astronomy, warfare, cartography, farming etc.) the earth (as a whole) can be treated as a perfect sphere, but to always think of the earth as a perfect sphere would ignore the immense complexity, wonder, and beauty that is the earth. So no, the earth is not a simple mathematical sphere, but that is what makes the earth so wonderful.

So is God omnipotent? Only in as much as the earth is a sphere.

Book Review: Inventing the Flat Earth by Jeffrey Burton Russell

2011-01-22T16:13:00.000-05:00

I have known about the flat earth error for some time but I have never actually read a book or even a scholarly article detailing where the myth started and how it entered our popular culture. Then I came across Inventing the Flat Earth by Dr. Russell, and I was impressed with how quickly he presented the argument and dealt with the issue. The book is a very short read (77 pages, not including end notes, 30 pages, "selected" bibliography, 7 pages, and an index) and can be finished in an afternoon (or over a few days if you only take it a few pages at a time). It covers the topic very well and gives you a good sense of how, and why, the flat earth error started. But because of its length, it is only good as a starting point if you want to get deeper into the subject. For those who only want to learn about the flat earth error and how it started then this is the book for you.

First, the book is about the flat earth error also referred to as the Myth of the Flat Earth, not to be confused with the error of the flat earth. Simply put, the flat earth error is the idea that people in the middle ages thought that the earth was flat and not spherical. As Dr. Russell demonstrates, ever since the Greeks proved the sphericity of the earth the scholarly consensus has been that the earth was spherical. There was some debate as to the size, whether or not there was land on the opposite side and whether or not that land was inhabited. But there was never any serious question as to whether or not the earth was a sphere.

Dr. Russell explains that the only opposition to Columbus was not from people who thought the earth was flat, but from other scholars who thought that the earth was bigger than Columbus calculated it to be (which it was). If Columbus's calculations were correct then it would have been possible to sail west from Europe to Asia using the boats they were building at the time. If he was wrong, then the distance would have been too great and they would not have been able to make the journey (alive). That was the only concern raised by scholars at the time. There were a few people in history that flat out stated (ha ha) that the earth was flat, but of the two theologians/scholars that get cited most often, one had his writings condemned for being heretical (for other reasons), and the other was never read nor cited all throughout the middle ages except by two different writers, who only cited him to point out in no uncertain terms that he was wrong about the earth being flat. Other than that those writings were not cited, noted, quoted, or even read until the 1800's when historians and scholars began citing them as evidence that "everyone" believed the earth was flat. Dr. Russell goes into more detail in his book.

Sometime in the 1800's a few different people thought that it would be great to cast Columbus as a great scientist fighting against the darkness of the illiterate and ignorant traditions of the past and say that he was trying to prove that the earth was round and not flat. Thus scholars cherry picked the writings of a few theologians from the middle ages and said, "Look! People used to think that the earth was flat, and they thought this until Columbus proved that it was round." Thus from about 1870 to 1920 there was virtually unanimous consensus among historians that people (theologians and scholars) in the middle ages thought the earth was flat. This lasted until people actually began reading what they wrote, and not reading what other historians thought about what they wrote. After this there was a shift in the scholarly world that recognized that people in the middle ages did not think that the earth was flat, but unfortunately that idea became so strongly embedded in our culture that even today it is still put into text books and taught in our schools as being true (I asked my cub scouts about it and they all repeated back to me the flat earth error, as told them by their teachers. I then told them that their teachers were wrong and I set them right.).

Dr. Russell speculates as to the motivation of the scholars who started this myth. There were some non-scholars who contributed to the myth, such as Washington Irving, but it was mostly spread by scholars who had ulterior motives. There were some who promoted the idea so that they had a basis to attack the Catholic Church ("Hey, look at what the crazy Church leaders used to believe. And I hear they wanted to burn Columbus at the stake for believing the earth was round!"). There were others who used it to attack religion in general, saying that the idea was a hold over from an antiquated era when people believed in silly things such as magic, and religion. But "we have moved past that we are now in a more enlightened era, dominated by Natural Philosophy". This of course was all strongly influenced by the ideas of Aususte Comte, who viewed history as a progression from less enlightened to more enlightened ways of thinking. With this as the basis, it made sense to assume that any opposition to Columbus was due to unenlightened thinking about the world, which meant that everyone else must have thought that the earth was flat. So strong where these ideas that the myth persisted and persists to this day.

Dr. Russell also talks about how there might be some confusion regarding some words, such as antipodeans, which he explains scholars in the middle ages used to refer to people that lived on the other side of the earth, and modern scholars interpret to mean literally, the other side of the earth. Thus medieval scholars debated the existence of antipodeans (meaning people living on the other side of the earth), and scholars in the 1800's interpreted that debate to mean that they were discussing the existence of the other side of the earth, and used that debate as proof that they thought the earth was flat.

I would recommend reading this book, and I think it should be required reading for all elementary education majors. My only complaint is that the all the notes in the book are in endnote format, which means they are all crammed into the end of the book, and it is hard to have to keep flipping to the back of the book to see if the note is something interesting (i.e. a break down of the Latin root of a word used, and how the meaning changed over time) or if it simply contained a list of additional books to read. So my only complaint is in the format, not the writing. Footnotes would have been better.

Movie Review: City of Ember

2011-01-21T15:25:00.000-05:00

The movie City of Ember is based on a book with the same name written by Jeanne DuPrau. Overall the movie is pretty good, but just don't watch it with high expectations. It is a good movie for family entertainment and kids should love it (or at least not be board with it). It is clean, which is always a plus, and for those ideologues who worry about how Hollywood is "ramming their morals/politics/fashion/junk down our throats" this movie does none of that. Just don't expect something exceptionally complex that will make you think about your "status in life"/"state of being"/future/humanity/"the categorical imperative". So if you want entertainment, and something that will keep the kids glued to the TV for all of 90 minutes, this is it.

My advice is to just watch the movie and not think too hard about practical things like, plot, and, "Why in the world would ANYONE do something so monumentally stupid?" and "How in the world did they get there?" For example, there is a part in the movie where the main characters take a little boat ride down a gentle (if a 50% grade is gentle) underground river (think roller coaster). After going down for what seems like an eternity (to us) they somehow magically arrive at the surface about a mile above where they started out. I'm still trying to figure out how you can go "down" that far and end up above where you started, but that is merely a minor (critical) plot point.

The entire premise of the movie hinges on the idea that in order to preserve mankind "the builders" built the city of Ember below ground (the surface was uninhabitable for unspecified reasons). And for some strange reason they only gave the people enough resources, and power to last 200 years, and they even specifically designed the city to break after 200 years, with absolutely no way out except for the secret, wet and wild, boat ride through the earth that will magically bring you back up to the surface. And on top of that they specifically did not tell people that there was a way out, or even that there was something other than the city ("There is nothing beyond the darkness."). Yet to prevent "The last hope for humanity" from dying out underground they gave the first mayor a box, containing instructions on how to get out, that would automatically open in 200 years. Oh and they didn't tell the mayor what was in the box, just that they had to pass it along to the next mayor. And they had no other "back-up plan" or failsafe, just in case something normal happened, such as the mayor dying before the next mayor can receive the box (which happened). So the only instructions for how to get out of the city are sealed in a box that only one person knows about, and they don't even know what is in the box or even that they can (or should) leave the city. For the first few minutes of the movie I kept thinking, "Couldn't they have come up with a better system? One that was not dependent on a single set of instructions and ONE key (made out of two pieces of glass!). Couldn't they at least put the instruction on something more durable like metal or at least plastic, and not paper so that the main character's little sister doesn't eat them (which happens)? Wasn't anyone thinking?!?"

As soon as I stopped ignoring these obvious questions and just focused on watching the very amenable characters, and just went along with the story, the movie was much better.

New Institute Videos

2011-01-19T13:03:00.000-05:00

The Church has posted new Institute videos on the Mormon Messages channel on youtube. They look pretty good, but having lived in Utah I can definitely tell that they were filmed in Utah. Still, I like the new videos. Here is the video about Moses.

Justifying Profanity Through the Suppressed Correlative and Other Logical Fallacies

2011-01-13T23:44:00.001-05:00

The other day I came across a quote in a news article that caught my eye. The story involved a case where someone had been issued a citation for "profanity". One of the lawyers involved in the case was quoted as saying,“I have no idea what is indecent or is profane, and nobody else does for that matter.” I thought that was a very interesting statement to make.

The first part of the statement is particularly interesting because it would seem that the lawyer is admitting his ignorance as to what it means to be indecent or to use profanity, but I do not think that that is how he meant it. I think it is more an indictment of the state of our society rather than an expression of personal ignorance. He is in a sense saying that there are no words that could be considered to be profanity or indecent. The fact that we live in an "anything goes" society with no checks, either personal or legal, on behavior is an indication of a larger problem in society. Because there is neither a personal morality nor a public ethics that dictate a limit on what is considered civil indicates that as a society we are wholly incapable of restraining criminal or anti-social (meaning against, or destructive of, society as opposed to individualistic) behavior.

But the second half of his statement I also found odd because while he is at first insisting on his own (or society's in general) ignorance of what constitutes profanity, he then extends that ignorance to everyone else. He is in essence saying that because he his ignorant of something, everyone else is too. This is a classic case of a deductive fallacy, where the subject (the lawyer in this case) assumes knowledge of what everyone else knows based on what he knows. This is to say that everyone else is ignorant of what is indecent just because he is. This seems rather presumptuous. To be honest I do not think that was what he meant by his statement, but my argument still holds because he is still making the assumption that because he cannot pin down the definition everyone else is wholly incapable of defining it either. He is essentially saying that because he holds a particular world view everyone else necessarily holds that same world view. This seems rather presumptuous.

So leaving behind the deductive fallacy, let us look at the ideas that prompted him to make this statement in the first place. In referring to profanity and indecency he is recognizing that there is a measure of vagueness in what constitutes profanity. I will admit that there is some vagueness in whether or not some words, or a single word in particular, can be considered profanity. I have known some people that would use certain words without thinking twice about it, while other people would blush when the same word was used in their presence and would never even think of using the word themselves. Thus for the two different people the same word can at the same time be considered profanity and a natural part of the conversation. I am not referring to words that are used differently in different countries, I am talking about the same words used in the same country. But now that I mention that I can also point out that there is a word that when it is used in Mexico it is a terrible swear word, but the same word in Argentina is used commonly by most people, including nice, little, old grandmothers who would never use foul language. Coincidentally there is also a word in Argentina that is never used in polite society, yet the same word is a common verb in other countries and is regularly taught to first year Spanish students in the US.

So yes there is some vagueness as to what can be considered profanity, yet that does not create the fallacy. The fallacy comes from the assumption that just because something is vaguely defined, it automatically has no definition. For example, the edge of the earth's atmosphere is not sharply defined yet there is no doubt that there is a difference between outer space and the atmosphere, because if there were not discernible difference then we would not use the terms in the first place. The mere fact that the terms exist is an indication that there is a distinction and that at least someone understands it. How we define the transition is a separate matter, but it is still a fallacy to deny the distinction just because there is some ambiguity in how to define the transition. We can also debate the usefulness of using the distinction, and this is also an important question in some situations, yet in the case of profanity and indecency there is still general acknowledgment in our society that profanity exists (and in some cases they are trying to come up with new definitions, laws and punishments for it). So to deny at least the existence of a definition is disingenuous.

Almost all the arguments I have encountered about why profanity should be acceptable and not punished/looked down upon either use the vagueness argument, or they use an argument that uses a fallacy known as the suppressed correlative. Essentially individual words which at one point were considered profanity are successively defined as not being "bad", or come into such common usage so that no one (or very few) considers them to be profane. After changing the definition to the point that all words that were profane are no longer, the definition becomes pointless (i.e. the empty set) and it is logical to do away with the definition. Strictly speaking this is a kind of a reversed suppressed correlative, but it applies. Still, as long as the word remains in common usage then it still has a definition that can be applied, even in a court of law.

There are some considerations that we have to take in to account. We do not want an overly broad definition because that would mean we are guilty of the reverse, yet at the same time because the distinction exists and it is up to our judgement to figure out where the line is drawn. To deny the existence, like the lawyer did, of the distinction between what is profane and what is not, is for me an acceptance that we cannot, or do not desire, civility in out society. And for me that is a terrible fallacy.

When I Get Called Heretical

2011-01-04T20:40:00.000-05:00

I find it particularly odd that when ever my religion gets called heretical it usually goes something like this:

"You believe X, therefore you are heretical."

To which I respond, "Um, I actually don't believe X."

"Yes you do."

"Um, no I don't."

"No, you actually believe X."

"Um, I don't believe X, because I actually say that I don't believe X."

"Well you must be mistaken, or lying, because you actually believe X."

It never ceases to amaze me that when people will bash my religion they will first tell me what I believe and then tell me why that is wrong, rather than actually asking me what I believe and then figuring out what I mean by that and then trying to figure out why that is wrong (or possibly trying to understand why I think it is right). Though I guess this can go both ways. I have heard some Mormons giving base characterizations of other Churches and beliefs, but I do find that on the whole Mormons do listen respectfully and respond respectfully to other's beliefs. When ever I am confronted with a belief that I find odd or particularly off the wall, I try to remember that most people want to be rational about their beliefs and are sincere in their beliefs an we should understand them as they do and not as we do.

Setting Realistic Goals

2011-01-02T21:46:00.000-05:00

As a new year begins many of us will be setting goals for the new year and making a list of things we want to do, or to stop doing. Related to this is the common joke about how long the average new year's resolution lasts, which is used ad nauseam to the point of no longer being funny.

Today during Elder's Quorum we had a lesson about goals and setting realistic goals. As I was sitting there I remembered what I had learned about setting goals on my mission. One of the things that we did every week was to sit down as a companionship and set goals for the coming week. At that time our mission president asked us to keep track of all the work and teaching that we did. This meant keeping track of the the number of charlas (discussions) taught, the number of hours we worked, the number of baptismal commitments that we extended, the number of baptismal commitments accepted, the number of people progressing towards baptism subdivided into potential priesthood holders and everyone else and the number of people baptized and confirmed. Although we were not required to have a minimum number of any of those things (except for the total hours worked) we were frequently encouraged to increase the number of charlas taught, and the number of people we were teaching. So while there was not a minimum standard set by the mission president we were all encouraged as a companionship to look at what we were doing and try to find ways to increase the number of charlas, commitments and people taught. That is, it was left up to us to set a goal and to obtain it.

With my first companion we had a great time and I loved working with him, but every week when we set our goals for the coming week it went something like this:

Comp: "We have 10 appointments this week, but some of them will fadge on us, so I expect us to have 5 appointments actually work." [The word "fadge" is not a typo. It is a transliteration of a slang word used only by Castilian speaking Mormon missionaries. Technically it should be spelled "fall-ed" but it is pronounced "fadged" or "fashed" or "fadshed". It comes from the Spanish word "fallar" which literally means "to fail" or "to mess up" and when we had an appointment that didn't work out (i.e. the person wasn't home) we would say that the person "nos falló" or they fell through on us, or they failed us. In Argentina the double L is pronounced with a strong "sh" sound, thus the common phrase "nos falló" when used by native English speakers would become slang "they fadged us". Anyway back to the story...]

Comp: "We have 10 appointments this week, but some of them will fadge on us, so I expect us to have 5 appointments actually work."

Me: "OK, we'll put our goal down as 5 charla unos (first discussions)."

Comp: "Well we have to try to keep our goals up and if we don't then we will never have something to aim for. So let's put down 10 charlas as our goal for the week."

Me: "OK."

Next week:

Me: "Well we only taught 4 charlas this week. A lot of people fadged us this week. Our goal was to get 10."

Comp: "Well let's try harder this week. We have 10 appointments, so let's put our goal as 12 charlas."

Next week:

Me: "We we only taught 3 charlas this week. Perhaps we should lower our goal."

Comp: "Well you heard what Prez [The mission President] said in the last conference, and the AP's [Assistant to the President] said that we need to focus on increasing the number of charlas that we teach and what better way than to set a high goal."

Me: "OK."

Next week:

Comp: "Well this week was really bad, everyone fadged us, we only got 2 charlas..."

Me: "Three actually."

Comp: "That one doesn't count....Well what should our goal be for the next week?"

And thus it went on for most of my mission. It was not just my first companion that this happened with. It happened with most of my companions. We would have our weekly companionship meetings and we would set our goals for the coming week, but invariably we would set goals that we would never achieve. For most of my companions this was OK because for them the point of a goal was to set something impossibly high because, as their reasoning went, the purpose was not to achieve the goal, but to set it high enough that it would drive us to do better than we normally would have. But for some of my other companions, the only reason why the goal was set so high was because it was expected of us to set a high goal, and then we would do whatever we saw fit and completely ignore our goals that we had set. But the practical effect was that our goals would be treated as meaningless. There was no point because our goals moved up and down independent of how much work we actually expected to do.

Part of the problem was that we did not want to admit defeat on some points and concede that most of our appointments would fall through on us. We wanted to maintain at least the appearance of an optimistic outlook. We wanted most of the people to actually want to listen to us. But we didn't want to be honest and admit that it just wasn't true.

As I thought about this throughout my mission I slowly came to the conclusion that the only way I could make our companionship goals useful was to be honest about it and to lower my expectations. I reasoned that it is better to set an impossibly low goal and actually achieve it than it was to set a high "motivational" goal and not achieve it. The reason for this was the over time if our goals were never achieved then no matter how high (or moderately) they were set they became meaningless and were promptly ignored. It did not matter how motivated we were when we set the goal, if we consistently failed to achieve it then we consistently ignored it as irrelevant. But because of the seriousness of what we were doing we felt that it was not possible to treat our goal setting lightly or humorously, even with my companions who also saw the futility of the goal setting, we still took the setting of the impossible goals as seriously as we could.

So at some point during my mission I decided to try a new tactic, I would set low, achievable goals. Rather than using the standard method of calculating what should be our goal for charlas (which was generally to take the number of appointments set for the week and then add a random number of between 1 and 5, sometimes more, to the number of appointments we already had set and that set the goal for the next week). Instead I would take the number of charlas we had already set up and then divide that number by two to account for those that would fadge us and then subtract an additional one or two from that number to get my goal for the week. When I first proposed this idea, my companion, who was a big believer in setting impossible goals in order to motive us, said I was crazy and said that I was just trying to be lazy. I tried to explain to him my reasoning and he still insisted that I was trying to justify being lazy, so he went ahead and set his own goal of somewhere between 12-15 charlas for the coming week. I set a goal of 4.

The next week we looked back at what we had actually accomplished, and through no fault of our own we had managed to have a total of 4 charlas that week. It was the first time in my mission that I had managed to achieve the goal that I had set. I pointed this out to my companion when we were talking about our goals for the coming week, and he still insisted that I was just trying to be lazy. So again he set a goal of 14 or 15 charlas for the week. I set a goal of 5. We got 3.

After that I really stopped using the goals and focused more on the number of people I was teaching rather than the number of people I thought I should be teaching. The total number of charlas, and I must say the quality of the charlas, I was teaching went up after that. Things got better after that. While I had some companions who insisted that we go through the whole charade of making up an impossible goal that we would never keep, I learned to ignore the impossible and to focus on the possible. I learned how to make more realistic goals that weren't self-defeating and detrimental to my motivation.

While there is something to be said for setting high standards and for using goals to stretch us, I found that in order for that to work we must achieve some minimum level first because otherwise the goals that are meant to stretch and motivate us end up demotivating us and preventing us from being challenged to achieve at a higher level. It's a delicate balancing act, but we must keep in mind that when we set goals we should set them so that they can be achieved every now and then rather than always chasing The Impossible Dream.

Happy Annen Juledag

2010-12-26T10:22:00.000-05:00

In much of Scandinavia today is known as Annen Juledag in Norwegian and Swedish (also spelled Anden Juledag in Danish). Literally it means "Second Christmas" (Annen = second and Juledag = Yule day or Christmas Day). The day is usually marked by joyful singing, dancing about the house in a line holding hands and eating lots of food with friends and family.

Most Churches will have a second worship service today in addition to the normal Christmas service, but that is in Scandinavia where snow and cold weather is normal. Where I live in North Carolina the moment a flake is seen the city shuts down and everyone prepares for the Apocalypse. Accordingly when we woke up this morning and saw this:

We knew that we would shortly get an email telling us about Church being canceled, and we did and it was.

"The mistake of attributing the extraordinary intellectual development of this period to the Protestant Reformation"

2010-12-25T14:27:00.000-05:00

[Editor's note: This is an essay from The Student Handbook of British and American Literature by The Rev. O. L. Jenkins, A.M., S.S., late president of St. Charles's College, Ellicott City, Md. Edited by a Member of the Society of St. Sulpice. A note before the preface states, "Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1885, by P. P. Denis, President of St. Charles's College, In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C."]

The Mistake of Attributing the Extraordinary Intellectual Development of This Period to the Protestant Reformation

What we understand by the modern English period is all that interval of time which extends from the middle of Queen Elizabeth's reign to our own day. Doubtless more books have been produced than at any preceding period, elementary knowledge has spread more extensively among the masses, physical sciences have reached a wonderful development, criticism and philology have entered a new career, the novel and the newspaper have grown to be the daily food of the million. But it is right to conclude from these facts that the so-called Protestant Reformation originated this movement, and thus opened to mankind an era of unheard of progress in civilization and science?* [Footnote: "The times which shine with the greatest splendor in literary history are not always those to which the human mind is most indebted.....The first fruits which are reaped under a bad system often spring from seed sown under a good one." Macaulay, Essay on Machiavelli] Or rather, was not the intellectual activity of Europe already aroused and even fairly started with a promise of great progress before the sixteenth century, and did not that activity receive from the religious and political commotion of the Reformation a sudden check, from which it has recovered only to grow wild, and follow, to a great extent, devious and deceitful ways? We do not mean to enter here upon a full discussion of this vast subject, but merely to throw in a few remarks, corroborated in most instances by Protestant authorities, concerning the actual influence of the Reformation upon the principal elements of human progress, as literature in general, fine arts, philosophy, social order, liberty bother civil and religious; and then briefly state what we understand to be the real causes of the wider spread of letters in modern times.

1. Literature in General.--Erasmus, who was contemporary with the early reformers, and certainly no blind approver of the old state of things, gives his testimony that the Reformation was fatal to all wholesome intellectual progress, and he laments bitterly that wherever Lutheranism reigns, literature perishes. In one of his letters, speaking of the Evangelicals of his day, he tells us that to them is due the fact that polite letters are neglected and forgotten: "languent, fugiunt, jacent, intereunt bonae litterae." [Hallam's Lit. of Europe, vol. i, p. 189.] "The most striking effect," says Hallam, "of the first preaching of the Reformation was that it appealed to the ignorant....It is probable that both the principles of the great founder of the Reformation, and the natural tendency of so intense an application to theological controversy, checked, for a time, the progress of philological and philosophical literature on this side of the Alps." [Ibid., p. 192.] Thomas Arnold, in his work entitled Chaucer to Wordsworth, thus characterizes the English reformers: "The official reformers, if one may so call them,--Henry VIII. and his agents, and the council of Edward VI.,--did positive injury to education and literature for the time, by the rapacity which led them to destroy the monasteries for the sake of their lands. Many good monastic schools thus ceased to exist, and education throughout the country seems to have been at the lowest possible ebb about the middle of the century. The sincere reformers, who afterwards developed in the great Puritan party, were disposed to look upon human learning, as something useless, if not dangerous; upon art, as a profane waste of time; and generally upon all mental exertion which was not directed to the great business of securing one's salvation, as so much labor thrown away." [Pp. 52 and 53.] In his History of English Literature, the same writer lays the charge in question upon the reformers generally, and Luther in particular, as being the originator of the fanatic movement against human learning. [P. 106] "By the regulations of the Star Chamber, in 1585, no press was allowed to be used out of London, except one at Oxford and another at Cambridge. Thus every check was imposed on literature, and it seems unreasonable to dispute that they had some efficacy in restraining its progress." [Hallam's Lit. pp. 413 and 414]

2. Fine Arts.--The effect of the Reformation on the fine arts was pernicious, not only by the destruction of existing specimens of architecture, sculpture, and painting; but by diverting art itself from its original and natural destination. The Reformation viewed as superstition the pomp of divine worship, as objects of idolatry the masterpieces of art. Its tendency was to degrade taste by repudiating its models; to introduce a dry, cold, captious formality, in lieu of the elevating, soul-inspiring service of the old Catholic cathedrals.* [When Dean, afterwards Bishop, Berkley offered an organ as a gift to the town of Berkley in Massachusetts, the selectmen of the town were not prepared to harbor so dangerous a guest; and, voting that 'an organ is an instrument of the devil for the entrapping of men's souls, they declined the offer.' Duckinck's Cyc., vol. i., p. 166.] "The Reformation favorable to the fine arts!" exclaims Archbishop Spalding, "as well might you assert that a conflagration is beneficial to a city which it consumes. Wherever the Reformation appeared, it pillaged, defaced, often burnt churches and monasteries; it broke up and destroyed statues and paintings, and it often burnt whole libraries." [History of the Reformation, vol. i., ch. 15.] In the British Parliament during the Protectorate, so deep was the fanaticism of the times, that "serious propositions were made to paint all the churches black, in order to typify the gloom and corruption that reigned within them."

3. Philosophy.--A few remarks concerning the influence of Protestantism on philosophy, are made necessary from the close relation in which that branch of learning stands to literature. The vehicle through which the results of philosophical investigation are conveyed to the people at large, is literature; and, reciprocally, the speculations of philosophy are modified by the ideas current in literature. What, then, have been the effects of the Reformation on philosophy?

The fundamental principle of the Reformation--private judgement or the rejection of authority in religious matters--sweeps away all the mysteries of the Christian faith, since, being above human reason, they cannot be comprehended by human reason. Hence Rationalism must be substituted for Christianity, and a pagan literature must be ultimately the inevitable consequence. In fact, those among Protestants who followed out their principle, were led to drive away God and the soul from their philosophy, and rush madly into the gross errors of materialism. To substantiate what we say, we need only recall the names of Lord Herbert of Cherbury, Hobbes, Blount, Toland, Shaftesbury, Woolston, and Bolingbroke. The French philosophism of the last century emanated from this school; and the French infidels, headed by Voltaire, were at first mere echoes of their English masters. It is also a fact worthy of notice that Voltaire, who cherished so intense a hatred of Christianity, has generally found great favor with Protestants. At times, indeed, reactionary movements have been set on foot to turn the tide of infidelity; but, as long as the principle remains, such movements will be failures. To-day the fatal doctrines continue to produce the self-same consequences in the skeptical, anti-Christian spirit that strives more and more to assert its supremacy, even in such quarters as the once so conservative University of Oxford. Darwin, Spencer, Tyndal, Huxley, Matthew Arnold, are the leading representatives of that spirit. The effects of such a philosophy upon literature have been to deprive it of the highest source of inspiration, the Christian spirit; to throw a cloud of doubts over the best-ascertained facts of history; and finally to replace Christian by pagan ideals and heroes. Such in fact, to a great extent, is our contemporary literature; such is it, at least, in its most popular form, the all-pervading novel.

4. Social Order.--It cannot be denied, that peace and order, in the State, are among the essential conditions to the progress of civilization and the prosperity of literature. The best guarantee of peace and order, is found in a spirit of obedience on the part of the governed, and a spirit of justice on the part of the government. Now Protestantism stands opposed to this twofold spirit. Its very origin was a protest, a revolt against the highest authority on earth; its essential principle, a sanction to arbitrary rule and despotism; and hence its effect was gradually to undermine the basis of social order. Germany, the cradle of Protestantism, was frightfully mutilated by the devastating scourge of religious wars. The ferment of revolt, extending wherever the Reformation prevailed, was everywhere a cause of commotion and strife. During two entire centuries, Sweden, Denmark, and Holland, were writhing with anarchy. France was reduced to the verge of ruin by the same religious dissensions. For two-thirds of the sixteenth century, England groaned under religious persecutions and the most brutal despotism; and, during the greater part of the seventeenth; she was a pry to civil wars and the fanaticism of sectarians. Hallam considers that the excitement of a revolutionary spirit was a consequence of the new doctrines, and adds: "A more immediate effect of overthrowing the ancient system was the growth of fanaticism, to which, in its worst shape, the Antinomian* [Antinomian (αντι, against, and νομος, law) signifies the error which denies the obligation of the moral law, under the Christian dispensation. Luther said that we might sin a thousand times a day and not mind it, provided we had faith in Christ, i. e., faith that His merits are greater than our iniquities.] extravagances of Luther yielded too great encouragement." [Lit. of Europe, vol. i., p. 187, Harper's Edit.] "A political and spiritual despotism such as that of Henry VIII. and of Cromwell, would have been impossible but for the Reformation." [Fred. Schlegel.] It is a startling fact, that, in every Protestant kingdom of continental Europe, absolute monarchy, in its most consolidated and despotic form, dates precisely from the period of the Reformation.

5. Civil and Religious Liberty.--Those who look upon Protestantism as inseparable from public liberty, do not agree with Hallam and Guizot, neither of whom can be accused of any want of sympathy for the Reformation. According to the former, "It is one of the fallacious views of the Reformation, to fancy that it sprung from any notions of political liberty, in such a sense as we attach to the word." [Lit. of Europe, vol. i., p. 187] "In Germany," says the latter, "far from demanding political liberty, the Reformation has accepted, I should not like to say political servitude, but the absence of liberty." [Hist. Gen. de la Civil., Lect. 12.]

With regard to religious liberty, let us hear Hallam again: "The adherents of the Church of Rome have never failed to cast two reproaches on those who left them: one, that the reform was brought about by intemperate and calumnious abuse, by outrages of an excited populace, or by the tyranny of princes; the other, that after stimulating the most ignorant to reject the authority of the Church, it instantly withdrew this liberty of judgement, and devoted all who presumed to swerve from the line drawn by law, to virulent obloquy, or sometimes to bonds and death. These reproaches, it may be a shame for us to own, 'can be uttered and cannot be refuted.'" [Lit. of Europe, vol. i., p. 200.] In what age or country has religious liberty ever been more systematically, more steadily, and more thoroughly trampled upon, than it was in the case of Catholics in England, Ireland, and Scotland, from the time of Elizabeth to the Catholic Emancipation in 1829? In our own country, the early history of Virginia and New England is little more than a record of doctrinal disputations, the bitter fruits of religious intolerance.

From the facts just enumerated, the following conclusion forces itself upon us: that the Reformation was rather a retrograde than a progressive movement in the interests of civilization and science; and that, if literature had developed so extensively in modern times, it is not in consequence, but in spite of the Reformation. The various elements of modern progress, carefully gathered together for centuries, had already produced great results, and the impulse was given for still greater, when the Reformation entangled the human mind in wild controversies, and estranged it from the Church only to lead it beak gradually to paganism. This false direction given to the mind, of which we see still the unhappy consequence, belongs to the Reformation; whilst the life and brilliancy that characterize this epoch are due, as we shall show, to causes far different.

Real Causes of Human Progress and Literary Improvement in the Modern Period

Among these causes, we place in the first rank the Catholic Church. She it was that saved the world from utter barbarism, when the hordes of the North were settling over the ruins of the old pagan civilization. She it was that converted and civilized, one after another, all the nations of Europe. It was her zeal for intellectual pursuits that led to the foundation of numerous schools, and those famous universities, which, for depth of teaching and the number of students, have never been equalled. When the new civilization was threatened by the fanaticism of Islam, it was her pontiffs that first sounded the alarm, and united in one common cause the rival claims of European princes. Indeed, from Urban II. to St. Pius V, and from St. Pius V. to Clement XI., the popes never relented their efforts till the Mahometan power was first crippled at Lepanto, and its aggressive spirit finally broken under the walls of Belgrade (1717).

The Crusades not only repelled the enemy of civilization, but proved beneficial at home, by dissolving the feudal system, ridding Europe of many a petty despot, stimulating commerce, and eliciting a spirit of industry, enterprise, and invention.

The decline of the feudal system and the abolition of slavery, by introducing a large body of men into the rank of citizens, contributed not a little to the general development of human resources. Under feudalism, the mass of the people, under the appellation of serfs, were bought and sold with the soil to which they were attached; but now their condition was gradually improved by the influence of the Church, until the system disappeared altogether from European society.

As regards slavery, "the spirit of the Christian religion," says Bancroft, "would, before the discovery of America, have led to the entire abolition of the slave-trade, but for the hostility between the Christian Church and the followers of Mahomet. In the twelfth century, Pope Alexander III., true to the spirit of his office, . . . had written that 'Nature having made no slaves, all men have an equal right to liberty.' It was the clergy that had broken up the Christian slave-markets at Bristol and Hamburg, at Lyons and at Rome." * [Hist. of the U. S., Vol. i., pp. 163 and 165, 1st edition.]

Another important element of human progress, also the work of the Church, were the elevation of the female character, and the restoration of women to her proper station in society. The Church, from the first, taught the barbarian to treat women not as a slave, but a companion. The mother, whose duties in the training of her children were so laborious and weighty, forgot her troubles in the joy of possessing the undivided affection of her spouse. She became the sovereign of the domestic circle, the ornament, and refiner of society.

A more immediate cause of the progress of letters in Western Europe, must be traced to the advent in Italy and elsewhere, of many learned Greeks, together with the munificent patronage held out by the Houses of Medici, of Este, of Gonzaga, and especially by the Popes. Greek manuscripts were collected at great expense, and buildings erected to preserve these treasures and the monuments of art that survived the ravages of the barbarians. As early as the middle of the fifteenth century, the Vatican Library, enriched, if not founded, by Pope Nicholas V., possessed now fewer than 5000 volumes, many of which were of the greatest value. This zeal for letters and the general revival created a galaxy of geniuses in the golden age of Leo X., very properly styled the second Augustan age of Roman literature, when

'A Raphael painted, and a Vida sung.'

Elsewhere also, as in Spain, in Portugal, and in France, three countries where the Reformation did not succeed in implanting itself, there was a general outburst of enthusiasm for letters, which, indeed, might have been fatal to Christian ideas but for the directing hand of the Church.

Finally, what contributed most of all to the development of literature in modern times, was that wonderful invention of the art of printing, the authors of which, according to the more common opinion of learned men, were Faust, Schæffer, and Gutenberg, at Metz, about the year 1440. Printing by hand was known long before, even as far back as the tenth century, but was of little advantage, owing to the slowness of the process and the scarcity of paper. The invention of the printing press, at a time when paper had become cheaper and more common, afforded unprecedented facilities for the prosecution of literary studies. Before the close of the fifteenth century, it is said that 10,000 editions of works, of which the classics formed a considerable number, were printed in Europe. Of these works, Italy had the honor of publishing nearly one-half; while a very small number, (not exceeding one hundred and fifty), were printed in England. of the Vulgate, Hallam mentions ninety-one editions, and of Virgil, ninety-five. We find 291 editions of the writings of Cicero. These numbers, it must be remembered, relate not to single volumes; but to whole editions of the works, varying from 225 to 550 copies, or more, for each edition. If we take the latter number as the basis of our calculation, and apply it to the works of Cicero alone, the result is that above 160,000 copies of the writings of this elegant author were brought into circulation during the last quarter of the fifteenth century.

In England, the example set by William Caxton, who first introduced the press there in 1477, was eagerly followed by others. Not only the classic works of Roman and Grecian genius, but the popular writings of modern Italy and France, were translated and widely circulated. Thus a taste for general reading and information was excited and fostered in all classes of society. The language itself soon felt the benefit of the new impulse, and was enriched by a great variety of words drawn from the ancient and modern tongues. Better models of thought and style were introduced; and the quaint untutored phraseology of our earliest authors, yielded to the more correct diction and polished periods of subsequent writers. Yet this movement was considerably retarded by the religious commotions of the kingdom, during the reigns of Henry VIII. and his two successors. When the nation had become more indifferent to the old worship, and the general quiet was left undisturbed by the patient endurance of Catholics under a relentless and bloody persecution, then England was able to enjoy the golden age of her literature.

Glories within Glories

2010-12-13T01:17:00.000-05:00

This post assumes a knowledge of LDS theology as I will not explain in depth the ideas behind what I am talking about.

In Joseph Smith's vision of the three degrees of glory found in D&C Section 76 he talks about the celestial, the terrestrial and telestial glories, giving a description of those who will go there and what blessings they will have. While this section is largely our only source in scripture for understanding the three degrees of glory, D&C Section 131 also has a brief statement about the "celestial glory". All it includes is four verses stating:

1 In the celestial glory there are three heavens or degrees;
2 And in order to obtain the highest, a man must enter into this order of the priesthood [meaning the new and everlasting covenant of marriage];
3 And if he does not, he cannot obtain it.
4 He may enter into the other, but that is the end of his kingdom; he cannot have an increase.

It is from this first verse that we get the idea that the celestial glory is further divided into three more levels or degrees. The first revelation (section 76) was received in 1832 and the second one was received in 1843, thus it is assumed that the second revelation (section 131) was received as a small addendum to the doctrine given in 1832. In other words, the fact that there were three levels within the celestial kingdom was something that was missed by Joseph Smith in the original vision that was added on later (in about 1843) to flesh-out our understanding of the celestial kingdom. At least that was the conventional wisdom being taught in seminary.

Today there is a common phrase in the church about "the highest level of the celestial kingdom". This phrase is common enough that most members can at least repeat it and say something about it, mainly they heard it from so-and-so that ______(fill in the blank, with appropriate reference to general authority, prophet, book, scripture, rumor, myth, mormon musical etc.).

My thought is that in the original vision seen by Joseph Smith he never mentioned anything remotely alluding to separate levels within the celestial kingdom. As a matter of fact there is language contained in section 76 that would imply that there is no sub-dividing levels within the celestial kingdom. For example verses 92-96 state:

92 And thus we saw the glory of the celestial, which excels in all things—where God, even the Father, reigns upon his throne forever and ever;
93 Before whose throne all things bow in humble reverence, and give him glory forever and ever.
94 They who dwell in his presence are the church of the Firstborn; and they see as they are seen, and know as they are known, having received of his fulness and of his grace;
95 And he makes them equal in power, and in might, and in dominion.
96 And the glory of the celestial is one, even as the glory of the sun is one.

As we read in verse 95, those who partake of celestial glory are "equal in power, and in might, and in dominion". It seems to me that that would preclude there being any levels or distinctions between people in the celestial kingdom. If we look at what is said about the other kingdoms the only place we find subdivisions or distinctions within the kingdom is in the telestial kingdom where, "as one star differs from another star in glory, even so differs one from another in glory in the telestial world" (v. 98). This difference is distinctly absent from the other kingdoms. So if it is the case that the people in the celestial kingdom are "equal in power, and in might, and in dominion" then it would be illogical for there to be three levels or degrees within the celestial kingdom.

But if we return to section 131 we have the statement in the first verse which clearly states that "In the celestial glory there are three heavens or degrees". This would seem to be a contradiction from the complete lack of levels within the celestial kingdom from section 76. But if we think about it we should consider the phrase "celestial glory" and how it is being used, or specifically how Joseph Smith used it. In our modern times members of the church would be picky about the use of the word celestial to only mean those things pertaining to the celestial kingdom (i.e. the highest kingdom as explained in section 76). I do not think that at the time Joseph Smith was as particular with his words as we are today. That is, he was not working with the definition that we have built up around the word "celestial". It is most likely that when he used the phrase "celestial glory" in the context of section 131 he simply meant anything that was part of our post-mortal experience.

Thus the three degrees referred to in section 131 are not referring to three previously undisclosed levels of glory within the glory of the celestial kingdom, but in fact refer to the three known kingdoms of glory, what we call the celestial, the terrestrial and the telestial. If we consider it like this then we have less contradictions to explain in the scriptures. As a final parting note, there is even a short Wikipedia stub about the separation degrees within the celestial kingdom. As the source they cite section 131 and then reference section 132 verses 16 and 17 to explain the two unexplained levels within the celestial kingdom. But if we take a look at these two verses we read:

16 Therefore, when they are out of the world they neither marry nor are given in marriage; but are appointed angels in heaven, which angels are ministering servants, to minister for those who are worthy of a far more, and an exceeding, and an eternal weight of glory.
17 For these angels did not abide my law; therefore, they cannot be enlarged, but remain separately and singly, without exaltation, in their saved condition, to all eternity; and from henceforth are not gods, but are angels of God forever and ever.

These verses are used as support for the subdivisions inside the celestial kingdom in order to explain what happens to the people in the other two levels, i.e. those not exalted to the highest level. They are made "ministering servants" to those who are exalted to "the highest level", but they are still part of the celestial kingdom, according to this interpretation. The problem with this is that in verse 17 it specifically states that these "ministering servants" "are not gods", which again goes directly contrary to what we find in section 76 which states (verse 58), "Wherefore, as it is written, they are gods, even the sons of God" referring to those who receive celestial glory. Thus we have another contradiction between sections 132 and 76, but only if we assume that the "ministering servants" referred to in 132 are part of the celestial kingdom and make up the two lower levels of the celestial kingdom. But if we take the idea that there are no levels within the celestial kingdom and that the only distinctions come from the three main degrees of glory then we no longer have this contradiction and the "ministering servants" are clearly members of a different or lower kingdom and do not partake of the fullness given to those of celestial glory.

Of course all this hinges on the fact that Joseph Smith may not have been using the phrase "celestial glory" in the same way that we are accustomed to use it now, which I think is much more likely than the contradictions that arise from assuming that there are multiple levels within the celestial kingdom, where all are "equal in power, and in might, and in dominion" and all are "gods, even the sons of God".

First Snowfall of Winter

2010-12-08T20:18:00.000-05:00

This past weekend we had our first snowfall of the winter. It was light, about 1 inch, but for North Carolina (at least the piedmont region) this is a lot of snow. It basically shut down the city because here people don't know how to drive when it snows. I got a few good pictures of the snow before it all melted. On a side note, we finally had to turn on our heater for the first time this season.

Fall Leaves

2010-11-24T14:58:00.000-05:00

I remember when I was growing up my elementary school teachers always had activities where we would draw pictures with brightly colored leaves on the trees during fall. Also the teachers would decorate their rooms with bright oranges, reds and yellows with leaves made out of construction paper. During this time our red, yellow and orange crayons would get most of their use. So I grew up learning all about the brightly colored leaves on the trees during the fall, and thinking about how that's what fall was like. The only problem was that I grew up in Arizona and in Arizona the leaves on the trees don't change color (much). About the closest it got was the leaves on the pecan trees in my front yard would turn slightly yellow before most of them just turned brown and fell off. A few other trees would also turn a slight color, but most would just turn brown and fall off. I never really saw real fall leaves, like the ones I always drew in my classes.

It was not until I moved to North Carolina that I finally saw the fall leaves I had been drawing every year in elementary school. It was only then that I finally understood what I had been drawing for all those years.

An explanation of the problem with "The Kolob Theorem"

2010-11-22T20:21:00.020-05:00

[Update 2/13/11: I have significantly rewritten my critique of The Kolob Theorem. My first review of the book was perhaps a little too harsh and short on details. Hopefully my second post will be better at informing anyone who reads this of the fundamental problems with The Kolob Theorem.]

Previously I had written a post entitled The Problem with "The Kolob Theorem", and in revisiting the topic I thought that I should expound on why I think The Kolob Theorem to be problematic. This post is intended to replace my previous review of The Kolob Theorem, but I will leave the other post up for anyone who cares to read it, but I will say that I wrote it in one of my less charitable moments. This post will hopefully be a little less harsh, but more instructive of why The Kolob Theorem presents a problem in LDS theology. For reference, I have recently been reading the book Science, Religion, and Mormon Cosmology by Erich Robert Paul, which has prompted me to recast my critique of The Kolob Theorem in a different light.

The first time I encountered The Kolob Theorem I was at my wife's grandparents house. Someone had loaned my wife's grandmother the book and I saw it sitting on a table and was intrigued by the title and wanted to know what it was about. I only took a quick glance through the book but it was enough to make my skin crawl. There were in fact two reasons for my seemingly severe negative reaction to the book. The first was that there were critical scientific errors in the book that effectively invalidated the whole argument, and the second was that I realized that most people would be unaware of these critical errors and thereby base their understanding of scripture on a foundation of incorrect science.

What made this second reason so problematic was that as an astronomer I would most likely be asked about it (and I was) and I would have to very carefully and politely explain that while the science was extremely off base the religious aspect of the book was not. In other words, I realized that whenever I would be asked about this book I would be faced with the dilemma of having to state quite clearly that the book was wrong, and do so without destroying someone's faith in the scriptures or causing the person to also reject all of science in the process. Essentially the dilemma is that on the one hand I want to emphasize the problems and misconceptions that went into the theorem, without causing people to react and go to the other extreme of rejecting everything that went into the theorem including both the science in general and the specifics of the revelations. This dilemma is much more difficult to deal with than people realize, and it also comes up more frequently than most people are aware of. Perhaps I am just a little more sensitive to this problem due to my being an astronomer, and therefore I become the local "go-to guy" to resolve these issues and thus I have to deal with things like this on a semi-frequent basis.

The Kolob Theorem is part of group of theological writings that are called natural theology. Strictly speaking, natural theology denotes a fundamental approach to theology as opposed to a specific theology. Thus natural theology is not confined to any one religion or church. The main trust of natural theology is to verify one's religion using arguments from the prevailing scientific theories and observations of the day. It is in effect an attempt to argue that one's religion is true based on the latest and greatest theories in science. This is problematic because if the latest and greatest theories are shown to be wrong then that automatically calls into question the theology and religion of the natural theologian.

Dr. Hilton's book is a prime example of the process, and problems, of natural theology. Starting with some basic astronomy, he moves on to make a theological argument about where God lives and where the three degrees of glory are located. As Erich Robert Paul pointed out in his book on Mormon cosmology, Joseph Smith never attempted to reconcile the knowledge of astronomy from the Book of Abraham, or the three degrees of glory with any contemporary astronomical observations. Thus Dr. Hilton is attempting what Joseph Smith never attempted. This may be very commendable and courageous, or more likely it may prove to be premature and problematic. To consider why this is problematic we need to consider other failed attempts at natural theology.

In the middle ages there was a type of world map called a T-O map that was common in the religious books at the time.

A reconstruction of a T-O map. Image from Wikipedia. Usually the map is represented with Asia (east) on top.

The T-O map superimposed on a modern map. Image from Wikipedia.

The end result is that the theological argument gets based on a very simplified, and very inaccurate, map of the world. The same happens with The Kolob Theorem. Dr. Hilton uses an excessively over simplified "map" of a galaxy to make a theological argument. The end effect of the theorem is to place the veracity of the revealed word, the scriptures, on a specific scientific theory or observation. To a natural theologian this is the desired result, but this has the unintended result of making revelation depend on something that may not be true, or that may change as our understanding changes. This is precisely the problem that plagues The Kolob Theorem.

For example, Dr. Hilton includes a quote from a famous astronomer, Fred Hoyle, to back up part of his theorem. The quote, found on page 25 of the book, comes from 1955 and at the time it expressed the current understanding of how stars formed in galaxies. But our understanding of astronomy has changed since then and parts of the view as expressed in Fred Hoyle's quote no longer reflects our understanding of star formation.

By basing part of his argument on a specific scientific theory, or insight, Dr. Hilton does himself a disservice because he places the interpretation and veracity of revealed scripture on something that can and will most likely change as we gain greater understanding of how the universe works. He is in effect setting himself up, and setting up his faith and by extension, the faith of others, to be disproven when the next largest telescope gets built and we find out more about the universe. That is, for me, a very problematic result to his theory. I would not want members of the Church to base their faith, testimony, or understanding of the scriptures on something that is already demonstratively false and will become more so as we gain new insights into the universe though our astronomical observations.

So in his attempt to make the latest and greatest astronomical observations into something "faith promoting", Dr. Hilton enters the realm of natural theology which "opens up a whole new can of worms" which may be more troublesome than Dr. Hilton realizes. Because the current astronomical observations are just that, current, they will grow old and become yesterday's observations and then last century's observations, and all the theories that they produced will have changed. This does not mean that we should reject all astronomical observations and untrue, unimportant or insignificant, but rather we should resist the temptation to base our faith on something that has proven throughout history to change. There should be a better foundation to our faith than the latest and greatest theories of science.

Also as a final note, I realize that many people are impressed with this book mostly because they have never considered the implications of what is written in the Book of Abraham and in the Doctrine and Covenants. Many of the positive comments posted on goodreads.com about the book are from people that say that the book "opened their eyes" or "made them think about their religion in a different way" and how it made "the plan of salvation more real". While I can't argue with their own personal feelings (and if the book did prompt them to investigate the scriptures more, then good I'm all for that), I do wish to temper their enthusiasm with the realization that to base our theology, faith and religion on something like The Kolob Theorem will ultimately result in a challenge to our faith and will not be "faith promoting" in the end. The truth of God is more amazing than anything that you will find in The Kolob Theorem.

Place Holder Title

2010-11-22T17:41:00.010-05:00

Probably the biggest problem with The Kolob Theorem by Dr. Lynn M. Hilton is that it is impossible to fully explain in a single blog post why it is wrong. The worst part is that it is written so that it sounds semi-official and it deals with a subject that few people understand, but many people are familiar with, namely Astronomy. This creates a problem because while the author is writing about things that many people have heard about (i.e. stars, the milky way, and black holes etc.) he is making assertions or assumptions about how galaxies, stars and black holes work that most people cannot verify, let alone understand. And it is precisely these assumptions that contain the problem with The Kolob Theorem.

Dr. Hilton is in effect using a Wikipedia understanding of galaxies as the basis of The Kolob Theorem, which means he is writing about things that many people have heard about in 8th grade science class, newspaper articles, magazines and word of mouth. This means that the words he is using (i.e. stars, dust lanes, color (this is an important one), Milky Way, black hole) are words that people have heard and have a colloquial understanding of the definition the words. The problem with this is that it creates a false sense of understanding and an inflated perception of the truthfulness of what he is saying. He does this by having the minor facts correct (yes, the center of the galaxy is in the direction of Sagittarius) but the overall, and arguably more critical facts, he gets wrong, very wrong (such as interpreting the colors in pictures of the Andromeda Galaxy).

The most annoying part of this is that it makes it impossible for someone like me to explain why it is wrong. The only reason why I can read Dr. Hilton's book and immediately recognize what is wrong with it is because I have been studying physics and astronomy for many years. I already have one degree in physics and will have my second within a few months. This means that it has taken me 7+ years of college to get to the level where I can read The Kolob Theorem and immediately recognize it as factually misguided. So don't expect me to be able to explain everything, or even a small part, of what is wrong with The Kolob Theorem in a single blog post. If someone wants to understand exactly what is wrong with The Kolob Theorem, perhaps the easiest way is to get a degree in astronomy (or physics will do) and then it will be easier to understand what is wrong with the theorem, at least from a scientific standpoint.

I have reservations about saying that because my readers my think that I am expressing an elitist view of things, and that I am saying that those who have not "paid the price" should not be allowed to express their views. I sincerely think that this is not the case. I definitely value the opinion and views of experts, while at the same time acknowledging their fallibility as humans, and recognize that in some aspects we have a limited understanding, but this does not in anyway lessen or invalidate my criticism of The Kolob Theorem. What makes Dr. Hilton's book so wrong is that he gives the impression that he is giving an accurate and authoritative view of astronomy when in fact he is not. His many quotes from astronomers, such as Fred Hoyle, give the impression that the astronomy aspect of the book is "correct" and authoritative. As an example of why this is a false impression, taking Fred Hoyle's quote from page 25 of the book, the quote comes from 1955 and at the time it expressed the current understanding of how stars formed in galaxies. But our understanding of astronomy has changed since then and parts of the view as expressed in Fred Hoyle's quote no longer reflects our understanding of star formation. To someone who is not familiar with the field of astronomy, like Dr. Hilton, this important point would be missed. And even by saying this I do not mean that everything Fred Hoyle said is now considered incorrect, just parts of it, and to explain which parts would take an entire blog post.

In the end the thing that kills The Kolob Theorem, from a purely scientific standpoint, is that while Dr. Hilton mixes in a lot of correct factual information, which can easily be verified by consulting any standard undergraduate astronomy textbook, with either outdated, or flat-out incorrect ideas of galactic structure and star formation. Part of this is due to the fact that of the sources used by Dr. Hilton the most recent astronomy source was published in 1982. A lot has changed in astronomy since then. If Dr. Hilton wants some reliable books to learn about galactic dynamics and structure, I would suggest Binney and Tremaine and Binney and Merrifield (two different books) along with Carroll and Ostlie to start. That would get a basic understanding of galaxies and astronomy which would greatly alter the way he views the subject and would show why his theory suffers from so many intractable errors.

As a final note, my assessment of The Kolob Theorem only touches on the astronomical aspects of the theory and in no way addresses the religious aspect. The only errors and failings I have talked about deal with Dr. Hilton's use or understanding of astronomy and not anything dealing with religion or religious interpretation. My purpose in writing this is to point out, to put it bluntly, that his understanding of astronomy is severely lacking and that his use of so much factual astronomical information hides the gaping errors in his reasoning that obfuscate the problems to the point that only someone who has spent several years in research astronomy (and not astronomy as a hobby) could see the failings in his theory. None of the reviews I could find online were written by anyone who had any serious training in astronomy and thus could not comment on the veracity (or lack there of) of the science being presented.

PS: If anyone has any specific questions regarding the astronomy found in Dr. Hilton's book, feel free to contact me or leave a comment with your question and I will try my best to explain it. I realize that that is a rather open ended request for questions so you can also ask me list a few of the specific errors I found particularly egregious in his book. I just won't take the time unless someone actually wants to know.

PPS: To just throw out two things that are problematic; Dr. Hilton's basic concept of galactic structure as shown on page 46 is incorrect (by the way, the Milky Way is probably a barred spiral). And galactic structure is a lot more complex than Dr. Hilton puts forth. This includes: dwarf galaxies, ultra compact dwarfs, barred spirals, ellipticals, mergers, galactic cores etc.

[Original comments]

Cartesian: "I am not a Mormon and I have not heard about this book, but for the galaxies, it seems that it is possible to think that there are different stages in the life of a spiral galaxy and that the different types are these different stages."

EDL: "Admitting at the outset that I am neither a physicist nor an astronomer (I am a Ph.D. psychologist), I nevertheless feel compelled to share two observations that came to mind as I read your critique of Dr. Hilton's book, a book which I have found extremely thought-provoking in terms of its attempt to reconcile the scriptural and astrophysical bases for past and future changes in the earth's state and its orbit within the galaxy. My first observation is this: in graduate school, one quickly learns that there are two ways to gain scholarly recognition---(a) put forth a new theory or paradigm; or (b) disprove an existing theory or paradigm. While both (a) and (b) are essential in the ongoing scientific process, (a) usually requires much more time, effort, and persistence, comparable to that of constructing a building---shovel by shovel, board by board, brick by brick. On the other hand, (b) largely consists of pointing out flaws in the brickwork or the notion that newer materials should have been utilized, etc. Such seems to be the case in your criticism of Hilton's "building." If you truly believe you don't have sufficient blog space to provide a definitive or adequate critique---but just enough space to flash your credentials---then perhaps you should remedy this deficiency in a future blog (or series of blogs if necessary). Otherwise, you are committing a condescending, self-serving injustice: you are discouraging potential readers from discovering a paradigm which, though imperfect, provides the single most cogent attempt thus far for reconciling astrophysics with the references in ancient and modern scripture regarding past and future changes in the earth's state and orbit.

My second observation is this: what your Hilton critique focuses on, contrasted with what it ignores, is comparable to the city slicker who walks into the Sistine Chapel and proceeds to exclaim, "Just look at these dusty, pitted floors!"---totally oblivious to the breath-taking expanse overhead. While you continue gazing at the floors, I (and many others) will continue gazing at the ceiling.

Ed Lauritsen"

quantumleap42: "Ed thanks for your comment.

Perhaps I should clarify a few things about what I wrote. Using your building example, my criticisms of Dr. Hilton's book are not merely a cosmetic critique of the building, i.e. I am not concerned about the color or lay of the bricks, but I was expressing my concern of what I saw as a fundamental flaw to the entire argument. At the risk of over extending your analogy (something which is very dangerous) the "dusty, pitted floors" that I am commenting on is an observation of the unstable state of the foundation, which if it were to fail would obviously nullify any grandeur and beauty that the ceiling has to offer.

I would not have offered such a strong criticism if it were not for the fact that I viewed the problems with Dr. Hilton's astronomy to be singularly detrimental to his overall theory. Again I should emphasize that my criticisms are of his presentation of astronomy and have nothing to do with his explanation of our theology. The fatal error comes where he tries to support the theology using astronomy. In my opinion the religious writings of Joseph Smith can stand on their own, and I whole heartedly accept them as truth. So do not mistake any criticism of the astronomy for a criticism of the spiritual.

I strongly commend Dr. Hilton for his courage in attempting to reconcile astronomical understanding with spiritual understanding, but I also wish to point out that it is dangerous to mix true revelation with thinly supported and not well understood scientific understanding. The reason why I was so strident in my criticism was that I did not want anyone to base their testimony or even their understanding of true things (revelation) on an argument that cannot be supported by any scientific consensus. While The Kolob Theorem is certainly "thought-provoking" the danger lies in the direction the thoughts take afterwards.

Because of the great growth of our astronomical understanding I was well aware that at some point the issue of what has been revealed by Joseph Smith would have to be reconciled to what we know through science, but unless the conversation is started in the right direction it will ultimately lead to nowhere. Thus while I am glad that someone started the conversation and wrote "The Kolob Theorem" I am concerned that unless someone pointed out that there were problems with the astronomy then the conversation would continue on in the wrong direction creating problems later on. So my comments should be considered a course correction, and a warning, and not as a desire to kill the conversation."

quantumleap42: "I would also like to add that the reason why I did not try to explain everything that is wrong with the astronomy is because, as I pointed out in the post, I could only understand what was wrong after having taken 7+ years of physics and astronomy classes. That knowledge is surely not something that could be condensed down to a few blog posts, a series of posts, or even a series of blogs. If Dr. Hilton were willing I would like to help him and get him pointed in the right direction with regards to the astronomy. It is much more desirable that this discussion be directed in the correct direction than it is to be ended."

Going Blind

2010-11-14T23:57:00.000-05:00

No I am not going blind, but that laser shot that I took in my right eye as an undergrad didn't help any, but that's a different story. What I am talking about is going blind by looking at the sun. While this is not something I regularly do, or even do at all, it is something that happens occasionally to most people. Most people when they look at the sun they have a natural reflex that causes them to blink and to look away. This natural reflex usually prevents any major or long lasting damage to the retina. But occasionally people will look at the sun for extended periods of time and not realize that they are permanently damaging their eyes. Usually they do this when there is something interesting in front of the sun, such as a cloud, a planet or the moon. Sometimes with sufficient protection people can look directly at the sun and observe these interesting phenomena, but without adequate protection these short periods of solar investigation can cause serious or permanent damage.

It is for this reason that whenever there is a solar eclipse we are always advised to not look directly at the sun. When I was young I specifically remember two solar eclipses where I was very sternly warned not to look at the sun because I would go blind almost instantly. According to my siblings and classmates this danger was so severe that if we even looked anywhere in the general direction of the sky we would all be smitten with instant and permanent blindness. I distinctly remember walking through a grove of aspen trees during a family reunion being very conscious of the sky and mindful of the damage to my eyes if I so much as raised my eyes to even see the blue of the sky during the partial eclipse. Such was the power of the sun's rays during an eclipse (or so I thought) that even to see the blue sky was taboo.

I also remember a second experience where we all got out of class to go see the eclipse. Well, actually we didn't see the eclipse because we were all instructed in no uncertain terms that we were not to raise our eyes to the sky. Any young child who was so unfortunate to even see the blue of the sky would be instantly smitten with blindness, or worse, expelled. We had to use pin holes through paper to resolve images of the disk of the sun partially covered by the moon, and that was how we "saw" the eclipse. For the fortunate few who thought to bring very "special" sun glasses ($5 at Walmart) they could, for a very short time look directly at the sun, but for the rest of us unworthy folk we had to be content with our rudimentary pinhole cameras and look at the tiny images of the partially eclipsed sun.

Of course this was all overkill, because I would not have gone blind by looking at the sky, or even in the general direction of the sun, but I definitely would have if I had stopped to look at the sun for any extended period of time, which may have been significantly easier considering I had something interesting to look at, namely the eclipsing moon. But back then in my mind it was oh so very dangerous to even see the sky. For the more critical minded of us the obvious question was, "If we can look at the sun, even for an instant, and not have any permanent damage, why would it be more dangerous to look at the sun when it was being partially blocked?" A good question, to which the ready response was usually something like, "Because during an eclipse the corona of the sun glows brighter. Brighter even than normal, and brighter even than the whole sun normally does." This is of course hogwash, but so many of us believed it because we knew that under no conditions were we to look at the sun. To do so would bring about instant blindness, or so we were told. So we went on creating any number of "logical" reasons for why could not look at the sky, let alone the sun during an eclipse.

No matter how intelligent or informed the reasons seemed at the time, in retrospect they were all very foolish because they were all justifications for things we did not yet understand. For me and my classmates, our reasoning was sound, we could not look at the sun during the eclipse because corona was brighter, or the atmosphere made the part of the sun that was still visible brighter, or the light bent around the moon making the light from the sun more concentrated, or there were more UV rays during an eclipse because of the corona/atmosphere/moon/monkeys etc. In our minds it was all true and perfectly reasonable. What we failed to realize was the obvious answer, we were children and we didn't have a lot of common sense. Our teachers didn't want to have to deal with making sure that each child only looked at the sun for no more than one or two seconds, so they put the fear of God into us and told us not to look at the sun, or even to look at the sky. Can you imagine herding 30 kids (aged 9 and 10) outside and then making sure none of them were sitting there frying their eyes because they didn't have enough common sense to look away from the very, very interesting partial eclipse?

So of course they told us not to look at the sun, not because it would cause us INSTANT blindness, as many of my classmates kept insisting, or because the corona was especially bright during an eclipse, but because even though part of the sun was blocked by the moon, the rest of it was still just as bright and could easily damage our eyes. Normally us children would not sit there and stare at the sun, but suddenly we had a very good, and a very interesting reason to forget common sense, if we ever had any, and stare directly at the sun. What our teachers and parents were trying to protect us from was not the INSTANT blindness caused by the vast number of reasons we could think of, but rather the inevitable blindness that would result from too much curiosity and not enough common sense.

Perhaps if I had been older when I saw my first two eclipses then I might have had a different experience. Perhaps I may have seen through the clever arguments of my peers to see that they were just an ephemeral attempt to justify the hard-and-fast rule of "Do not look at the sun." If I had been the rebellious type I might have justified looking at the sun because the reasons my peers gave for not looking were unfounded and untrue. But this would have put me, or rather my eyes, in jeopardy because even if the reasons for not looking at the sun were entirely untrue, the fact remains that looking at the sun, especially when it is the object of curiosity such as during an eclipse, can be especially dangerous. This is not because of any increase in the amount of light but because I would override my natural instinct to look away and would slowly and steadily end up going blind.

Explanation:Now in writing this I could just leave it at that and I will have made my point, but because I always like to clarify what I write, I will continue writing and explain why I wanted to write about going blind by looking at the sun. My little story that I told about (not) seeing an eclipse is an analogy for morality. At times we are given rules to follow and they are hard-and-fast rules with little leeway. For those of us who are spiritually immature we may not understand why we are given these rules and we may even try to come up with some explanation as to why we should follow these rules, things like, "You'll be struck by lightning if God sees you!" or "The Devil will come and get you!" or "You'll be cursed with misfortune for the rest of your life." Most of these reasons rely on the assumption that anyone who breaks the rules will be instantly smitten with punishment and misfortune.

But there are those who hear these arguments and still "look at the sun" and break the rules. When no lightning bold is forthcoming they assume that the reason for the rule is silly and pointless and promptly assume that they can proceed to break every single rule and get away with it. What they fail to realize is that there was a reason for the rule, it just was not the simplified and instant reasons often given as justification. The true reason being to prevent very real and very permanent damage to ourselves or our souls. The instant lightning flash reasons for keeping the rules, aren't always the real reasons to keep the rules (sometimes the lightning does strike, but not always).

As in the case with the eclipse it is true that looking at the eclipse can cause blindness, it may not be the instant blindness like I was lead to believe in as a kid, but it will still be blindness just the same. Thus it is with the rules of God, if we break them we may not be smitten instantly or the Devil may not jump out from behind the next bush and drag us down to hell, but those who violate God's rules will be smitten (not necessarily by God, but in most cases by their own sins) and the Devil will come for their souls.

The most common result from breaking the laws of God is to be smitten with spiritual blindness and to be left to oneself to fend against the things of the world. And eventually those who do not progress and keep the commandments will lose that which they have. This is the meaning behind my story of "going blind".

Facebook is mocking me

2010-11-14T18:34:00.000-05:00

About once a year I get a slew of emails from Facebook telling me that so and so has just written on my wall wishing me a happy birthday. This year I had about 12 emails in one day where normally I average about one every other week. So I figured that I should actually go check out my Facebook page (Yes! I do have one!). I thanked everyone for wishing me a happy birthday and confirmed the 12 or so friend requests that I managed to stack up over the past few months. I looked at what a few of my friends were up to, "liked" a video that my dad had posted and then went on my merry way, until I got another email from Facebook. I thought at first that it was someone who had noticed my recent posts or something and was commenting back. So I opened up the email and this is what I read:

First off, I have no idea who "Erika" is since I don't have ANY Facebook friends named "Erika" so why would I want to say "Hi!" to someone I don't even know after being absent from Facebook for about a year (since about my last birthday). And secondly, does Facebook really have to rub it in that I'm not using their product? I mean, I am well aware of the fact that I just went onto Facebook after about a year's absence, do they really need to tell me that obvious fact. It's like getting a letter from your hair-stylist after you go see them for the first time in a year. It's like Facebook is a needy, overly dependent "friend" who goes into a deep depression every time I leave for more than a few minutes. I mean, get a life...ok so maybe a computer program can't do that, which is why it keeps sending me desperate emails trying to get me to come see it. If I keep this up Facebook will start sounding more like an old, troublesome girlfriend...which I really don't know that much about, anyway, moving on...

Oberá District Disbanded

2010-11-11T11:29:00.000-05:00

A number of years ago when I was serving a Mission for the LDS church I served for a few months in the city of Oberá, Misiones in Argentina. It was a very beautiful city and I really enjoyed my time there. I was sent there along with five other missionaries to help fix the district of Oberá. Normally a district will have several branches (congregations), even as many as 10 or 12, but when we got there the Oberá district (which encompassed more than just the city of Oberá) had only one branch meeting in Oberá and one group (a unit smaller than a branch) meeting in a township just outside of Oberá. Officially there were ~2400 members on the membership list for the entire district of Oberá in more than 10 towns and villages, but there were only a consistent number of about 60 people attending each week in the branch and about 10 more in the group meeting. This is an activity rate of about 3%, compared to the normal activity rate in other areas of my mission which ranged from 20% to 50%.

At the time I was sent there there were only two missionaries there but they brought the total to six for the special assignment of trying to find every member officially listed on the membership roll and determine if they still wanted to be a member of the Church. They gave us the membership records of everyone in the district and told us to go find them.

I was amazed at the number of people that we actually found, but there were also some terrible addresses that were a nightmare to find. The city of Oberá was a hodgepodge of random streets and even more random addresses. While part of the city was very well layed out, there were others that were not. On top of that there were sections of the city that were orderly with very disorderly sections inbetween, and sometimes the orderly sections had grown to the point where they were now overlapping, thus creating disorder out of their individual order (by this I mean that there were neigborhoods that were layed out in a very nice grid pattern, but the different grid patters did not line up so when they met there was a mess of cross and diagonal and crooked streets). To give you an idea here is a screenshot from Google Maps of part of the city:

Imagine walking those streets without a map and trying to figure out how they worked, using only your mental map of where you have been. On top of that each organized neighborhood had its own numbering system which did not use a city wide reference but used an internal reference. For example, if we were on Avenida San Martín and the numbers on the houses were in the 400's then we could walk for 100 meters and cross over into the next barrio, and while technically we were still on San Martín the numbers would now be in the 100's. In some cases the postal service took it upon itself to redo the numbering system, but as they were reissuing house numbers in some neighborhoods they got partway through the neighborhood and stopped before all the houses got new numbers. There was one street we were on that started off numbering in the 100's. We went to the next block at it went to the 200's. The next block was the 300's but partway through the fourth block the numbers went back to the 100's, but only on one side of the street about halfway up the block. We wandered up and down the street for a few minuets noticing that some of the houses we had passed had some odd or random numbers. We eventually clapped at a random house and asked the lady of the house how the numbers worked. She explained that a few years previously the post office had been renumbering the houses but they never finished. She then directed us to the correct house that we were looking for.

Another time we were looking for a house numbering somewhere in the low 100's. We got to the end of the street and we began to walk down it looking at the numbers. They started at about 200 and went down from there. When we got to about where the house should have been there was no house, just a deep ravine with a stream at the bottom. We continued on thinking that it must be on the other side. When we got to the other side of the stream the next house number was lower than the one we were looking for but we kept walking anyway. Pretty soon the numbers went below 100 until it got to about 76 where the numbers began to rise again all the way to the 170's and then proceeded to fall again until finally we got to the right house (number 113 I think, right between 89, on the up number side, and 103 on the down number side). We talked to the people there and commented on the numbers they explained to us in a very matter of fact way that they used to live up by the ravine but a number of years ago they moved and when they did they took the house number with them, as if that were the logical and natural thing to do. It seems like many people on that street did the same thing.

Finally the six missionaries got fed up with the addresses and streets so we went to the municipality and asked the people working there if they had a map of the city. They did not have a map to give us but they did have a large map on their wall that they maintained to show things like utilities and power lines. That day we were looking for a particular street that no one had ever heard of. We asked the municipal workers about the street and they had never heard about it, nor had it on their map. We continued our investigation and went to the local tourist visitor center. Remarkably they had a map. It was not complete but it would do. We also asked them about the mysterious road that we were trying to find. They had not heard about it. This continued one day until we were talking to a member in the branch who had actually heard of the street we were looking for. He said his mother and some other members of his family lived on it. He then proceeded to explain where it was and we realized that we had actually been there. Many times. We had actually walked down the street we were looking for about 20 or 30 times already. The reason why it did not show up on any maps was because it was not an official street, but the odd thing was that it was a very well established street, just not official. We went there and talked to people that lived there and found out that they had been living there for about 20 years. In other words this street had been in use and had well established houses on it (with power!) for about 20 years and the municipality had never known of its existence! Below I have marked the "non-existent" street in red and marked some of the recognized and "official" streets in green around it.

It was quite the adventure to try and find all these people, but there were some remarkable stories where we in a random neighborhood and we stopped at a random house and it turned out that just the person we were looking for happened to be there (as in the person that was literally next on our list to find). Officially their address was in another part of the city, but they just happened to be visiting there that day and had been wondering how to get in touch with the missionaries because they were thinking about coming back to church, but didn't know how. There were many, many of these stories that we had.

After walking the city for months we had finally taken about 500 people off the membership lists. That was just in the city of Oberá where we had ~1600 members on the membership rolls. So overall I actually decreased the total membership of the church on my mission, quite significantly actually. When I got to Oberá they were talking about disbanding the district and having it become part of the Stake in Posadas. Apparently last year they finally did it and now they have officially disbanded the district. Somehow I'm not surprised. The branch in Oberá will continue, and they have a beautiful chapel now, but it will be some time before there is another district there again.

Here is Oberá on Google Maps if you want to explore.

View Larger Map

Allison Bowers (1999-2010)

2010-10-31T02:22:00.003-04:00

This week my niece tragically died in an accident. She was hit by a car while riding her bike. It is one of those things that you hope never happens, and you pray you never have to live through, but when it does we learn what is truly important, and learn to love a little more.

This is a picture that I took of Allison back in 2006 when we were hunting for geodes in Utah. It was around Thanksgiving and it was rather cold out. You may notice the rocks sitting on top of the frozen water. It was cold and windy, but Allison had a warm smile.

I took this picture when I was in Arizona for a birthday party for Allison's sister Johanna in 2005. The one thing that stood out to me even then was her warm smile. It was contagious, and still is.

My sisters and brother have also expressed their feelings on our loss:

Consider the Lilies

TheAncestorFiles

This Journey

Florida Family Times

"Neither Shall the Covenant of My Peace be Removed"

2010-10-27T00:23:00.000-04:00

As you walk into the Provo Temple there in the entryway is a large mural of Christ teaching the woman at the well. Most people who enter the temple don't stop to look at it and perhaps even less read the plaque underneath explaining where it came from. The brief story told on the plaque is that it was originally placed in a chapel but when the building got old and was about to be torn down they removed the mural and placed it in the Provo Temple. Even though I had seen the mural many times I had never stopped to consider it until one day a friend of mine commented about it after reading the plaque underneath the mural explaining where it came from. He said that what impressed him about the mural was not the mural itself but that someone had gone through so much trouble to preserve it. What made the mural so important was not that it was a particularly spectacular mural but that the person who had carved it had done it for the Lord and had dedicated his efforts to making it for God. My friend observed that the reason why the mural was preserved was not because God was interested in preserving the mural because it was a work of art, but because the mural was given to Him, and because it was given to Him it became His and He would preserve and keep what was His.

The insight that my friend had was that God will keep and preserve those things that are His, because they are His, and that included more than just murals and buildings. As I thought about this I thought about the covenants that we make as members of the Church and how we covenant with God to keep His commandments and to obey His Law, and in return he will make us His. That may seem like a simple thing but when we consider it that is a very significant thing. When we make covenants to God that we will obey His Law and keep His commandments then in return He will own us, keep us, and preserve us. The strength of this sealing is something beyond our comprehension. This is a sealing and a power that stretches beyond death and hell to preserve those that are owned by the Lord. It is a covenant that He will not lightly abandon. Those that make this covenant will be brought back to the presence of God because they are His and he will not let them go. They will be brought back, in life or death, to the One who owns them.

"Verily, verily, I say unto you, if a man marry a wife according to my word, and they are sealed by the Holy Spirit of promise, according to mine appointment, and he or she shall commit any sin or transgression of the new and everlasting covenant whatever, and all manner of blasphemies, and if they commit no murder wherein they shed innocent blood, yet they shall come forth in the first resurrection, and enter into their exaltation; but they shall be destroyed in the flesh, and shall be delivered unto the buffetings of Satan unto the day of redemption, saith the Lord God." (D&C 132:26)

This does absolve them of their responsibilities, nor does it give them a free pass, but God will preserve that which is His, and He will not let them go. But what about those who have not yet made this covenant? What about the children who die before they can be sealed by this power? Or those children who reject the message of the gospel and do not continue in the faith? When a man and a woman are sealed by the covenant, that power covers those who belong to the parents, the children. They too shall be brought back by the power of the covenant, either in life or in death and they shall not be lost. This is the power of the covenant and the sealing that is given to those who faithfully make and keep this covenant.

"For the mountains shall depart and the hills be removed, but my kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of my peace be removed, saith the Lord that hath mercy on thee." (3 Nephi 22:10)

Though all things shall fail, this covenant will not fail nor be removed, for the Lord is merciful and will keep that which is His.

Elder Oaks: "Two Lines of Comunication"

2010-10-25T00:12:00.000-04:00

I am embedding the video of Elder Oaks' talk from the last conference. Below the video I will include some of my comments about what I thought was important.

The breakdown of his talk is very simple. There are two lines of communication between us and God. One is through personal revelation, while the other is through priesthood authority. Both are essential for receiving revelation from God and neither one can function without the other.

In regards to personal revelation Elder Oaks stated,

"This personal line of communication with our Heavenly Father through His Holy Spirit is the source of our testimony of truth, of our knowledge, and of our personal guidance from a loving Heavenly Father. It is an essential feature of His marvelous gospel plan, which allows each one of His children to receive a personal witness of its truth."

If we are to learn the doctrine of salvation it is not sufficient to listen to and to memorize or accept blindly the teachings of those in authority in the Church, because the personal line of communication is the source of our testimony of truth and of our knowledge of eternal doctrine. But lest we think that this is an unrestrained endorsement of the "priesthood of all believers" he cautions us that, "in its fulness the personal line does not function independent of the priesthood line." and that, "we cannot communicate reliably through the direct, personal line if we are disobedient to or out of harmony with the priesthood line."

So while it is necessary for each individual to discover for themselves the truth and to learn the doctrine through the direct, personal line of communication from God, this line of communication does not function properly if we are separated from the priesthood line of communication.

Elder Oaks explains that unlike the personal line which has no "mortal mediator" the priesthood line, "has the additional and necessary intermediaries of our Savior, Jesus Christ; His Church; and His appointed leaders." This means that in order for the priesthood line to function there must be "mediators" through which the revelation is communicated. This means that no one can function independently in the priesthood line because the purpose of the priesthood line is to organize the Church and to allow the ordinances to be performed. As he put it,

"The priesthood line is the channel by which God has spoken to His children through the scriptures in times past. And it is this line through which He currently speaks through the teachings and counsel of living prophets and apostles and other inspired leaders. This is the way we receive the required ordinances. This is the way we receive calls to service in His Church. His Church is the way and His priesthood is the power through which we are privileged to participate in those cooperative activities that are essential to accomplishing the Lord’s work. These include preaching the gospel, building temples and chapels, and helping the poor."

So while we may learn and understand the doctrine through the personal line of communication, it is through the priesthood line that we first receive the doctrine. The priesthood line is also necessary for the performance of ordinances as they are things that, by definition, we cannot perform on ourselves.

One of the potential problems that Elder Oaks pointed out was that there are those who think that they can rely solely on the personal line of communication and disregard the priesthood line.

"Some members or former members of our church fail to recognize the importance of the priesthood line. They underestimate the importance of the Church and its leaders and its programs. Relying entirely on the personal line, they go their own way, purporting to define doctrine and to direct competing organizations contrary to the teachings of prophet-leaders."

This way of thinking leads these people to criticize the leaders of the Church because in their view the Church leaders "just don't get it", or to say things like "the leadership has no special claim to inspiration or revelation" which is another way of saying, "I don't need the influence of priesthood authority". The end result is to separate the individual from the priesthood line of communication where spiritually they will wither and die (as Jesus put it, "As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me." (see John 15:4-6)).

This way of thinking also leads individuals to assert that, "the church has gone off course and is not on the track it was meant to be." In saying this they fail to recognize that God uses the Church and the priesthood in the Church to direct its course. So to assert that the Church as a whole, or even just the Church leaders as a whole, have gone astray is to assert that God is not directing His Church and that the priesthood line of communication has become corrupted, all the while not questioning the clarity of their personal line of communication. This does not mean that all things that come from Church leaders are perfect and infallible, but because the priesthood line of communication is the method through which God disseminates his word, then it is in His best interest (i.e. our interest) to keep those channels free and clear of corruption. But as a check we have the personal line of communication. Thus we whole heartedly reject the notion of blind faith. Blindly accepting the direction and teachings of our leaders is to forget the personal line of communication which goes contrary to the very teachings being given by our priesthood leaders.

As Elder Oaks put it,

"We must use both the personal line and the priesthood line in proper balance to achieve the growth that is the purpose of mortal life. If personal religious practice relies too much on the personal line, individualism erases the importance of divine authority. If personal religious practice relies too much on the priesthood line, individual growth suffers. The children of God need both lines to achieve their eternal destiny. The restored gospel teaches both, and the restored Church provides both."

President Packer's Talk and the Free Will Debate

2010-10-17T15:59:00.000-04:00

I wasn't going to comment on this because so many other people have already commented on it, but as I was reading a short CNN.com news story about President Packer's talk from the last General Conference and I noticed an interesting connection to the free will debate. In a nutshell the question is whether or not those with homosexual tendencies have free will in the matter. Because if they have no free will in the matter then moral responsibility cannot be assigned to it. If we take a look at President Packer's talk we can see that it is full of assertions affirming the reality of our free will. Quoting Lehi President Packer stated, "Lehi taught that men are free and must be “free . . . to act for themselves and not to be acted upon, save it be by the punishment of the law at the great and last day.”(2 Nephi 2:26)"

He continued, "There is something very liberating when an individual determines of his or her own free will to be obedient to our Father and our God and expresses that willingness to Him in prayer." And also he stated, "Some suppose that they were preset and cannot overcome what they feel are inborn temptations toward the impure and unnatural."

These statements are an affirmation that we are free to act for ourselves, and because we are free to act, our actions can be assigned moral value, which means we are morally accountable for our actions. It is interesting to note that nowhere in President Packer's talk does he imply that having or feeling a temptation is a sin (i.e. meaning it is not morally wrong to have the temptation or tendency), but only when we act on the temptation or give in to our tendencies then we have done something wrong which requires us to repent (change).

Responding to President Packer's talk the Human Rights Campaign issued a statement that stated in part, "I hope you will...acknowledge the scientific truth: sexual orientation cannot be changed, nor should it be." Essentially this statement asserts that sexual orientation is not determined by our choices and thus is outside the purview of free will. Because of this we cannot assign moral value to sexual orientation.

In contrast Church spokesman Michael Otterson mentioned in a statement in response to the Human Rights Campaign that, "It’s not a sin to have feelings, only in yielding to temptation." and that, "None of us is limited by our feelings or inclinations. Ultimately, we are free to act for ourselves." This takes the stance that while someone's inclinations, or temptations in religious language, are outside the realm of free will and thus have no moral value, but the actions we choose in response to these inclinations do have moral value.

Thus we have an interesting question here. How much are those with homosexual tendencies free to choose their inclinations and/or actions? If we are to consider this question we must separate the tendencies or temptations from the actual actions which must be considered independent from the inclinations, at least for now. We must consider in which aspects we are free and thus determine to what can be assigned moral value, and then determine the moral value. So we have at least four possibilities:

The inclinations are determined (no free will). The actions are also determined (no free will).
The inclinations are determined (no free will). The actions are not determined (free will).
The inclinations are not determined (free will). The actions are not determined (free will).
The inclinations are semi-determined (partial free will). The actions are not determined (free will).

It is interesting to note that the stance taken by the Human Rights Campaign is slightly interesting in that they assert that there is no free will with respect to the inclinations but do not consider or even speculate whether or not people are free to choose to act on those inclinations. It is taken as a given that because the people have the inclinations it is irrelevant what they choose to do with them, either to act on them or not (though it could be argued that they assert that it is a moral wrong not to act on the inclinations). So while they can be classed as holding to either (1) or (2) they avoid the question of whether or not we have free will in choosing our actions despite the fact that our inclinations are preset and are wholly determined. Thus it is difficult to put them in either category.

In contrast President Packer expressed a belief that inclinations are semi-determined meaning people can have the inclinations but they can change. Even with tendencies that seem inborn and immovable he says can change. "Some suppose that they were preset and cannot overcome what they feel are inborn temptations....The priesthood has the power to unlock the influence of our habits, even to unchain from addiction, however tight the grip. It can heal over the scars of past mistakes." This can be understood as having partial free will in terms of our inclinations. We may have the inclinations and they may be inborn, or seem that way, but they can over time, be overcome. It is interesting to note that to have these inclinations are not a sin (as the quote from Michael Otterson shows) but as President Packer is pointing out, to fail to try to rectify those tendencies, let alone act on them, is a sin. And this is the crux of the disagreement between the Church (specifically President Packer) and those who promote homosexuality. The Church believes, and President Packer taught, that the inclinations that people have can change over time, and it is desirable to change them. This means that where the Church assigns negative moral value to the acts associated with homosexuality (while maintaining neutral moral value for the inclinations), those who disagree with the Church wish to assign positive moral value to homosexual acts. This is interesting because once we assign moral value to something (either good or bad) then we must assume that there was free will involved in the act, thereby disproving (1) above, or at least the second half. Because if we assume any moral value, good or bad, then there must be a choice, which is expressly denied by those who promote homosexuality.

So let me sum up. The Church's stance is that people are free to act for themselves and that their actions are not determined by biology, temptations, inclinations, or habit. But the Church acknowledges that some people may have inclinations that they cannot control or did not choose (while carefully not saying anything about the source of these inclinations), the Church keeps the inclinations (temptations) separate from the actions of those who are tempted. It is not a sin to have the temptations (inclinations), but it is a sin to act on them and break the law of chastity. In his talk President Packer asserted that these tendencies can change over time, and with the help of the priesthood, just as any other addiction or bad habit can be overcome. Thus while we have full free will with respect to our actions, our inclinations (temptations) cannot be chosen and thus fall outside the realm of free will, at least in the short term. Over time, desires, habits and what tempts us can change, which means that we have some free will when it comes to our desires, inclinations and temptations, just not enough to stop them immediately, unlike our actions. Any thing that can be subject to our wills is open to moral evaluation and thus can have either positive or negative moral merit. The Church states that homosexual actions, or any sexual activity outside of marriage, is wrong in that it promotes a negative moral environment and damages our spiritual sensitivity.

On the other hand, those who are reacting angrily to President Packer hold that there is no choice involved in their "orientation" and that to imply otherwise is a severe moral wrong (to see what I mean, recently a government bureaucrat was severely criticized by activists and forced to apologize because she implied that being homosexual was a "lifestyle choice"(emphasis added)). Interestingly, even though they are so adamant that there is no choice in their "orientation", they do not even address the question of whether or not free will applies to their actions. To ask the question would elicit an angry response, because if they are free to choose their action, even if they cannot chose their inclinations, then moral value can be attached to their actions, and until now there are very few philosophies that would place positive moral value on such actions. Thus they are in a very tenuous philosophical position, because on the one hand they have to insist that there is no choice involved, but they have to deal with the fact that somewhere a choice must be made to participate in that "lifestyle".

So while the Church separates, and insists on separating the inclination (temptation) from the actions taken, those who reacted angrily to President Packer, focus solely on the immutability of their orientation or identity and refuse to consider whether or not they are free in their actions and whether or not their orientation or identity really is immutable.

The Reason for the Fed

2010-10-13T20:58:00.000-04:00

I randomly came across this today when I Googled "How does the Fed work". From the "How Stuff Works" site:

"There were even times when banks didn't have enough money to honor withdrawals by customers. Imagine going to the bank to withdraw money from your savings account and being told you couldn't because they didn't have your money! Before the Fed was created, banks were collapsing and the economy swung wildly from one extreme to the next. The faith Americans had in the banking system was not very strong. This is why the Fed was created."

Yep! Aaaaaand the Fed certainly fixed all that. Banks always keep enough money on hand to honor deposits, large numbers of banks no longer fail, the economy never swings wildly from one extreme to the other, aaaand Americans have great faith in the banking system. Yep! The Fed sure fixed all that.......