i learned today in my western religions class that a testimony, or the sharing of it, began as an oath with the ancient israelites. in context of the abrahamic covenant to have numberless prosterity, the oath was made on those future descendants by grabbing the source while stating the promise. that's right, they grabbed their balls as they made the oath.
think about this as you bare your testimony this sunday.
went up to salt lake tonight and saw the testaments of one fold and one shepherd. i love that movie. everytime i see it, i can't help but tear up. i am soooo excited for sunday!
ok, i need all you kids' help. i want to rewrite one of my philosophy papers from last semester so that i can publish it in uvsc's philosophy journal, sophia. if you haven't yet, check them out here and here. leave a comment on this entry to let me know which is better, which you disagree with more, and any criticisms you have of it. you can also e-mail me with more critcisms you have. i'll prolly try to publish whichever most people disagree with
a man puts his gun to your head and ask if you believe in jesus. if you say yes, he pulls the trigger and you die. if you say no, he lets you live. what is the right thing to do? most will say that we should tell the truth and die. is it better to profess our faith and end our lives, or is it better to deny it (but still retain our inner convictions) to preserve our lives so that we can do more good in the world? if jesus were standing there and you were able to ask him what he wanted you to do, what answer would he give?
now the scenario is obviously unlikely, but this is exactly how the media portrayed an incident in the columbine shootings. i personally think the story is bunk, or at least flowered.
why a mango? because a freshly picked, tree-ripened mango is the most tempting piece of fruit on earth.
in both my western religions class and my institute class, we have been discussing the garden of eden. in the former, we are looking at the eden myth and how it has been interpreted in jewish and christian thought, and in the latter we began discussing what made adam's choice a transgression, rather than a sin. now for some thoughts...
1. sin vs transgression. by strict definition, there is nothing different between the two. according to my institute teacher, joseph fielding smith was the first two popularize a supposed distinction between the two. often the distinction given is that a sin is a deliberate rebellion of god's laws, while a transgression is an ignorant breaking of god's laws. the problem here is that adam was explicitly commanded not to eat the mango. there was no ignorance in his choice. so why this lexical distinction? i think there are a couple main reasons why people want to say that adam transgressed rather than sinned. the first reason is that adam sinning (especially in traditional christianity) is seen as a terrrible action and all mankind is screwed because of it. as lds, we see adam's choice as a necessary and noble step in the plan of salvation. how dare we call such a noble step by what it actually is, a sin. so in order to preserve adam's dignity, we call it a transgression. it just sounds better. the other reason why we want to call in a transgression, is because of the necessity the book of mormon places on the fall. god put adam in a tight spot. either way, adam was going to sin. either he ate the mango, or he breaks the commandment to multiply. adam had no choice to not sin. it was inevitable. to save god's dignity, we pull out our transgression card and save god from forcing adam to sin.
2. myth vs history. this, i believe, is the key to understanding the garden of eden. i;'m sorry to say it, but there wasn't a garden with naked people made from clay, frolicking around, hanging out with talking snakes, and eating magic mango. does this mean that the genesis account isn't true? no. it just means that the events didn't actually happen as they were revealed. i believe that there was a first man and woman on the earth, but i'm sure there story was rather boring. so why the story? i think god revealed the garden myth to teach us about ourselves. it's a narrative drama about our own nature and place in this world. in the book of moses, adam is many and as we go through the temple, we are adam and eve. the story is not about a couple of nudists in hawaii, it's about you and me. the account begins with placing us in the universe. the world was made for us. each aspect of the natural universe (the heavens, seas, land, animals, plants, etc) was designed and placed for out betterment (is that a word?). the myth is no longer about how some guy way back when sinned and fell, it's about how we individually have sinned and fallen. we have each eaten the mango in one way or another and are screwed without the saving powers of our savior. sin is a necessary aspect of our progression. we need to have experienced it to have a true knowledge of good and evil (this is rather controversial). i do use neccessary with caution though. as jesus showed, it is entirely possible to live a life without sin. though he still needed to experience it by proxy in getheseme. we are all on earth, a mango is dangled before us. we give in. luckily wer'e not accountable for our wrongs until we are around eight, but as soon as that time comes, it prolly took us less than a few minutes to take the fruit. not by necessity, not even by nature, but by our free-will. the actual possibilty existed for us to totally abstain from sin, but we don't. luckily, god gave us a way out.
allrighty...the pics from our cabin trip are in my photo album. that trip was hella fun. it sucked at first cuz right before we left, jenna found out that she couldn't go. and then as we were driving up there, i got us lost....again. last time i went up there, i missed the firt turn and my car ended up breaking down. good memories.... anyways, i got the first couple turns right, but then i got us lost. the only time i had driven up there was in the fall during the day. the place looks totally different in the night with tons of snow. it also didn't help that the snow plows only plowed certain streets, so i had to take a different path up there. it took over an hour to drive what should have been about five minutes. once we got there, everything was a blast. we had pizza and all sorts of yummies, played games, watched death to smoochy and talked till about 3am. in the morn we got up ate toast and eggs, cleaned up and left.
i was supposed to go clubbin last night, but my buddy mike never called me to tell me which club they were going ot be at. major bummer. i'm gonna call him later today verbally abuse him. i ended up watching dead poets society last night with jenna and then talked with her till abut 3. i am hella tired now, but i still have ward choir practice, a potluck at my apartment, and some studying to do. i'm sure i'll slip in a npa somewhere in there.
had a great time at the cabin, it sucked that megan couldn't come, and then jenna couldn't come either. it was a blast though. i had to work right after and just got back from watching a movie with jenna. tired as hell now. i'll write more about the trip later as well as post pics from the cabin tomorrow. time for some much needed sleep
i'm shooting for a personal record for entries today...
today, a rep for the study abroad in england came over to my deductive logic class to promote it. i totally want to go. it' goes from early may to mid june. i'll be studying religion and violence with my favorite professor dennis potter and religious based ethics with my second fav proffessor, brian birch. i will also be doing some independant study as well. the trip to london includes a 4 day break in paris and a trip to belfast ireland to meet with an unofficial branch of the ira. in all, it'll cost about 5 thousand dollars. i should be able to get enough loans and aid to pay for it... i hope. the only thing holding me back is my best buddy and friend tory and melanie are getting married in mid-may. i really want to be there for that, but i think they'd understand. this could be my only opportunity to do a study abroad, cuz who knows what the future holds.
on wednesday there is an open-house for it where i'll be learning more about it. i'm stoked.
i have to say, that for the first time in a long time, i really enjoy going to school. it's fun again. i love what i am studying and found something that i want to do for a career. a part of me has always wanted to be a teacher, but i didn't know what i wanted to teach, and being a highschool teacher just didn't pay what i wanted to raise my future family. i got great help in realizing i needed to make the change. its too bad it happened this late, cuz now i need to fix my grades from the past year or so.
sometimes i wish i didn't care about people. i wish i could look them in the eye and tell them to f*** off and not care about how they feel. now i wouldn't really want to do anything like that. there is nobody i dislike enough. there isn't even anybody that i could say i dislike.
i just sometimes wish i could have the disregard for their feelings that they have for me.
but i can't. i still care about and i still love those who mean a lot to me.
drove up to my parents cabin with jenna tonight to see if it was going to be possible to drive up on friday night. unfortunately, my car could not make it up all of the way. hopefully i'll be able to figure out some other means to get up there for friday night. took jenna out to dinner at a nice little mexican restaurant in heber and then watched g.i. jane (not that great of movie) at her apartment. she's a lot of fun to talk and hang out with and i've enjoyed the time i've spent with her lately.
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summum
tory and i are going up to visit the summums for some school projects in a few weeks. he's gonna write a daily universe article about them and i'm gonna do a project on them for my western religions class. they've got a pyramid, mummies, and a golden wiener
ok...well last night didn't turn out exactly as i expected. no celebrities and not too many girls. besides that, i had a blast. crystal method ended up spinning mixes instead of playing their own stuff, but they totally ripped the place up. there was not a single bad song the entire night and the crowd was going strong the whole time. well actually, before crystal method started, the crowd sucked and nobody would dance. it didn't help that the dj preceding crystal method was pathetic. i had a great time though and danced my butt off until 2 in the morning. which leaves me especially tired considering i didn't get home until almost 3 and had to wake up at 7 for classes. i got some fun pics of my friends and i though. i'll be going up to salt lake on saturday to do some more clubbing. it was about time i was able to get out doing that again.
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apparantly somebody didn't like the photos in my photo album (and to be honest, i didn't like them either. i just threw them on to test the photo album capabilites of dreamweaver) i've swapped the pictures in the album with photos from last night. i still need to go through the pictures, remove the red-eye and delete a few of the redundant ones. the phots of me didn't end up looking to flattering
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if you want to comment on entries in this stupid blog of mine, click the comment line after the entry and use that instead of the guestbook.
woohoo!!! gonna hang with the celebrities at the crystal method concert tonight in park city!!!
is the path worth taking?
staring at the fork in the road
thinking aloud to myself
is the path worth taking?
last time it brought so much joy
last time it brought so much pain
looking to the easy path
only it doesn't seem so easy
varying possibilites
endless conclusions
yearning for the difficult path
opening to paths out of my control
happiness and sadness
making the decision is the toughest part
everyone says to take the easy
gone will be the chance of pain
and yet i don't want to
never knowing if i might have had the joy
...so says the little piece of paper from my fortune cookie hanging on mirror. are dreams worth holding on to? yes and no. dreams can give us purpose and drive, but dreams can also bring us dissapointment. i guess it come down to weighing out the dreams. is the goal worth the possible pain? usually it isn't. however, now and then, a dream comes around. something fantastic. something if it came into fruition, would be worth all the possible pain and dissapointment. i'm willing to take that risk.
hung out with tory, mel, megan, and jake tonight. just had some good ol' hanging out fun.it was really nice to hang out wiht megan again. that girl is just incredible. i don't know what it is about her, but it's somethin special. i really missed having her as a friend. so i'm glad thats kinda back.
elder groberg came to the institute for a devotional. her used experiences from his mission, along with clips from the movie abotu his mission to make some points. they were 1. god gives us confidence to do what is right. 2. pray to be an answer to someone else's prayers. 3. be open to being wrong when yu ask god for somethig.
john searle came to uvsc for the philosophy of education conference today as well. he's one of the top few philosophers in the nation about the study of mind and the study of language. he said there are 6 things that every student should gain from their colege experience. 1. to be able to speak and write clearly. 2. a sense of their own cultural tradition. 3. a basic knowledge of how the world works. 4. a basic knowledge of how society works. 5. a foreign language they can feel comfortable with. 6. enough philosophy to construct a logical arguement.
i gotta work on most of those. besides this blog, i have 1 pretty goods i thinks. ;) 2, 3, and 4 i'm working on. lost in 5 and i think i got 6 rather well.
"if men do not comprehend the character of god, they do not comprehend themselves" - joseph smith
so yeah, i don't believe god is all-powerful or all-knowing in the classical sense. i'm a finitist...and thus blasphemous. god does not have an absolute knowledge of the future, nor is he all powerful. there are some things which he just cannot do. for example, we have agency. it's something that we've always had and always will have. god cannot control us. there are just some things out of his control. i think this is best exemplified in moses 7 where enoch sees god weeping and cannot understand how a might all-powerful god can weep. enoch learns that god is weeping because things are not all in his control. his children had turned evil and there was nothing he could do about it.
what does this all mean? why would anyone want to worship a finite deity that is not all-knowing or all-powerful? here is why. a god that is not in total control is a god that is actively in the battle with me. he constantly watches me, feels real pain when i fail him, a real joy when i succeed. this is only possibly when he does not absolutely know what i can do. my future is not guaranteed. life is not easy. i can't sit back and let the world happen and expect it to turn out in any way that i want. god is the same way. his plan is not guaranteed by his power. he needs to be an active part in the plan. he is just as much into this as i am. my challenges are his challenges. just as it is not easy for me, it is not easy for him. it is much harder for him. and i love him even more for perservering in helping me.
why else do i believe god is finite? because i will be like him. as i said in an earlier post, life would be boring and pointless if we had power to make things just as we wanted them. we progress though challenge. if progression and being like god means that i no longer learn, and that i have no more challenges, then count me out and send me to hell.
as latter-day saints, we usually hold teachings from the latter-day prophets and teachings from the scriptures at different levels. the words in the scriptures are usually viewed as authoritative and doctrinally binding truths, but view talks from the latter-day prophets with a lesser status. in stephen robinson's book how wide the divide, robinsons says that the living prophets have a higher authority, but when it comes to doctrine, he asserts that the scriptures are the only source of official doctrine.
why should a 'general conference' talk by king benjamin and a letter from the apostle paul be seen as any different than a general conference talk by brigham young and an ensign article by apostle oaks? in the end i think there are two alternatives, we can view all general conference talks as most latter-day saints would normally view scripture(infallible, especially as most lds view the book of mormon). this route will make it that everything every latter-day prophet leader has said is doctrinally binding; or we could accept scripture as we would accept general conference talks (not infallible). this route would mean that the possibility exists that nephi, paul, or moses were wrong in some of the things things they taught.
what do you think?
the butterfly effect
went and saw a screener for this movie tonight and absolutely loved it. have you ever thought that if you could go back in time and fix just one thing in your life, that your life would be much better? the movie explores that very idea. i used to struggle with this at times. always thinking that things would be better if i could just go back and change one thing that i did. the past is the past though, and nothing can change that. all i can change is now and hope that the future follows what i hope for.
balancing my educational, economical, social, physical, and intellectual lives
i think i'm going to be swamped with school this semester. at the seame times, this is the first semester that i've felt i can actually get a 4.0. i don't wanna end up as a slave to school though. i need to balance my time for school, work, dating/friends, the gym, and reading. with my refellowshipment coming up in a month, i want to feel complete this semester in all the aspects of my life.
1st level generals
do professors need to treat us as if we are idiots in these 1st level classes? yes. i go to uvsc. many/most of the students in these classes are probably idiots. the professors say there are no stupid questions. i disagree. i hear stupid questions by the dozen each day in these classes.
institute
went to lectures of faith. not impressed by the girls. gonna turn off the philosophy side of my brain and try a new testament class on monday.
kissing on a first date
not a good idea when she leaves the next day for winter vacation and you don't see her for a couple weeks. to be continued....
day one of school went off without any problems. it turned out that logical thinking isn't a prereq for deductive logic, so i'll be able to take both. for institute, i went to the articles and lectures of faith class. it looks like it'll be an interesting class, but it was rather lacking in the quanitity and quality of girls that i am looking for. i think i'll hit a new testament class instead on friday and see how the prospects are over there.
i got my new digital camera today. i haven't had a chance to play with it yet. i'll post some pics up when i do.
i love goin to the gym...well...i love coming home from the gym after working out. it's a nice feeling
school starts tomorrow as does institute. the question is: is the actual primary purpose of institute to meet girls or to learn about the gospel? cuz for the most part, i can't do both. it seems the classes that are open for a deeper discussion of the gospel tend to have fewer girls and the ones that the girls attend tend to have a pretty shallow forum of discussion. what should i do? i only have room for one class.
i'm tempted to take lectures on faith with hyde. i know he's a good instructor, but i also feel like i'll find myself with a differing opinion much of the time...and i'll want to share and explain that opinion. or i could take a new testament class that is sure to have girls and just suppress my opinion. leave me a comment with what i should do.
got that nasty student loan problem taken care of. that's a nice relief. it got denied initially becuz my professors, dennis potter and brian birch, didn't post my grade for my philosophy of religion class until friday. oh well...all taken care of now. my roommate had the same class at byu with david paulsen and he still doesn't have a posted grdae for that class...and byu's new semester started today!!!
started reading truman madsen's eternal man in the collection, five classics by truman madsen. just got into it, so i don't have anything yet to say about it.
i'm stoked for this semester. i'll be getting my last generals our of the way (biology and astronomy) and will be taking several classes for my majors (intro to western religions, intro to eastern religions, logical thinking, and hopefully deductive logic)
gonna be a lot of studying to do this semester.
school is about to start in a few days. lucky for me, uvsc decided to start a couple days after byu this year. this is good, because my financial aid loan has not gone through yet. i got a letter yesterday that said it was because i have failed to meet the requirements for the aid. i think it was because my philosophy of religion grade wasn't posted until friday (i got an 'a' bytheway). hopefully, i'll be able to straighten it all up tomorrow.
i've got 18 credits scheduled for this semester. it might drop to 15 though. i am still waiting for a response from one of my professors as to whether i can take a class in the same semester as it's pre-req or if i have to take them sequentially. hope fully i here back b4 the class starts.
saved eighty dollars getting my books online at bestbookbuys.com.
read james faulconer's scripture study: tools and suggestions it's a pretty quick read, only hundred twenty somethin pages. he has got a lot of insight about lookign at scriptures in new ways and stufs. i especially enjoyed the two appendices about scripture/history and hebrew/greek world-views. those are some things that have really added to my understanding of the scriptures the last few years. so all you mormons (and non-mormons) go pick it up!...and read it too ;)
saw tim burton's big fish last night. absolutely loved it. i'm a big tim burton fan and it was definately one of his best. basically the movie is about a dying father who's life was made up of far-fetched stories, and a son wishing to know who his father really was.
big fish made me think of an aspect of the scriptures that has been on my mind lately, the value of stories. much of the scriptures (especially the old testament), is made up of stories that may or may not be historically true. does historical accuracy have any bearing on the value of scripture. does it need to be historically true? for example, i don't believe that the garden of eden story actually happened. if i look at it as being historically true, it has little bearing on me. it really means nothing to me. adam fell and now i'm fallen. that's all that is really important about the events in the garden. but what if the story really didn't happen? what is it's purpose. the temple answers this the best. in the temple, i am adam. the story of the fall isn't about some old guy, it's a story about me, my own fall, and how i can return. it's narrative value far surpasses its historical value.
