Books of 2009

A list of books I read in 2009:

Concept of Prayer - DZ Phillips

The Viper on the Hearth: Mormons, Myths, and the Construction of Heresy (Religion in America) - Terryl Givens

American Apocrypha: Essays on the Book of Mormon (Essays on Mormonism Series)

Exploring Mormon Thought: The Problems With Theism And the Love of God (vol. 2) - Blake Ostler

Massacre at Mountain Meadows

The Worlds of Joseph Smith: A Bicentennial Conference at the Library of Congress

The Complete Persepolis

Spencer W Kimball (Biography)

ORSON PRATT'S WORKS: ON THE DOCTRINES OF THE GOSPEL A Series of Pamphlets on the Doctrines of the Gospel

Reading Judas: The Gospel of Judas and the Shaping of Christianity - Elaine Pagels

The Seer - Orson Pratt

The 5 Love Languages: The Secret to Love That Lasts

A voice of warning and instruction to all people;: Or, an introduction to the faith and doctine of the Church to Jesus Christ of Later-day Saints

People of Paradox: A History of Mormon Culture - Terryl Givens

Pygmy - Chuck Palahniuk

The Life and Thought of Orson Pratt - Breck England

Mysterium Liberationis: Fundamental Concepts of Liberation Theology

The study of religious language (The Library of philosophy and theology) - Anders Jeffner

Invisible Cities - Italio Calvino

Longing for Running Water (Biblical Reflections on Ministry)

Preacher - Garth Ennis

An Introduction to Wittgenstein's Tractatus (Wittgenstein Studies) - GM Anscombe

Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (Routledge Classics) - Ludwig Wittgenstein

Wittgenstein's Tractatus: An Introduction (Midway Reprint) - W.O. Mounce

Discussions of Wittgenstein (Wittgenstein Studies) - Rush Rhees

What is Analytic Philosophy? - Glock

Latin America: A Concise Interpretive History (8th Edition)

Twilight (The Twilight Saga, Book 1)

New Moon (The Twilight Saga, Book 2)

Joseph Smith, Jr.: Reappraisals After Two Centuries

Obama's Q&A with the GOP

If you haven't seen this yet, you definitely should.

Hate the new Gospel Principles manual as much as I do?

Then let them know...

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This is yet another blog post based on a comment I wrote for another blog. The Church has a blog asking for members' opinions on the new Gospel Principles manual. This is what I wrote:

This is easily the worst Church manual I have experienced. While it may have removed the references to McConkie’s Mormon Doctrine, the teachings itself are often just as non-reflective, unscriptural, simplistic, and speculative. As a missionary, I was uncomfortable with new converts having to be subjected to this material. Now I must admit that I am dreading having to attend elders’ quorum for the next two years and am hoping for a calling that will give me a reason to not attend.

--

Let me explain my comment above a little better. One of the problems I see with the book is that it repeatedly makes claims and teaches thing as matters-of-fact without providing any scriptural basis or giving any indication that for most of these teachings, there have been different views and interpretations from various Church leaders and prophets. Instead of showing that there are many ways to see things (and encouraging thoughtful discussion and reflection), it instead pretends that for these so-called basics, there is only one view and one answer.

For example, the very first chapter says that all things denote there is a God and implies that by merely looking at the world around us, we can come to the conclusion of God’s existence. The fact is that for many people, this simply isn’t the case. Many scientists will say quit the oppositely that the world (and what they see in it) is evidence that there is no God. By encompassing the existence of God in a cosmological argument that the manual does, it alienates those who do not succumb to the simplistic reasoning and, even more importantly, ignores the subjective and personal experiences that are usually the most important factor of a believer’s faith.

The chapter then evokes traditional Christian language of God (which while contained in the scriptures), are ultimately problematic when trying to discuss the beautiful and complex beliefs that we as Latter-day Saints have.

The first chapter finally ends with a step-by-step answer to teach us how we might come to know God, while ignoring the very and explicit means by which God and Jesus taught that we might come to know them–by serving others.

The second chapter has similar problems. For example, it teaches that: “[God] has chosen the time and place for each of us to be born so we can learn the lessons we personally need and do the most good with our individual talents and personalities.” What is the scriptural (or authoritative) basis for this? While this may be uplifting to some, it equally opens up the problematic views that a persons station in this life is a direct result of their previous life–leading to racialist folk beliefs about black and the priesthood, and other potentially oppressive and/or suppressive views. All of this, of course, ignores the huge problems that it creates with our belief in free agency.

The ultimate challenge that this manual creates though results from our essentially lay ministry and lack of trained teachers. This is further problematized when many Bishops (and quorum/group leaders) seem to want to specifically not call those who actually are trained to teach. While a skillful (and spiritually-guided) teacher may take cues from the manual while creating and offering a good lesson with productive and thoughtful discussion, this is often not the case with less skillful teachers. Without good teaching skills, this manual ultimately sets up the teacher to fail.

You thoughts on the new manual?

This is for Adam and Steve

...and not Adam and Eve.

Your thoughts on Colbert's 'The Word' last night?

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
The Word - Prece-Don't
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Economy

My take on the whole Eden story

Like most of my recent blog posts, this is a comment I quickly put together for another blog and decided that it was long enough to also post here.
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I think too often we get caught up in our own modernity and expect others to read (and write) the scriptures with our worldview. We tend to have an obsession with a correlation theory of truth where a statement can only be true if it correlates with a fact of the world. Thus, we say that the Adam story can only be true if there was in fact a man (Adam) who fell and thus caused all humans to be in a fallen state. The problem we have is that the Garden myth is so full of obvious absurdities today (talking animals, magical fruit, mystical beasts, light-sabers, etc) that we want to dismiss these as allegory, but still maintain our correlation theory of truth and demand that while their may not have been [a magical garden with naked people talking to animals and then being deceived by a talking lizard who convinces the naked people to eat a magical fruit which causes them to be banished from the magical garden and prevented from eating other magical fruit by winged beasts with light-sabers, while at the same time the talking lizard is cursed to lose his legs and is thus forced to crawl on his belly], we yet demand that each of these items must correlate to some historical (past) person/thing/occasion in order to be true.

Imagine poor Jesus giving the parable of the Good Samaritan and being constantly interrupted by his disciples who were trying to figure out which historical (actual) person each character on the parable was supposed to represent. The truth of the parable, just as with the truth of the Garden narrative, isn’t in it’s historical accuracy, but in the truth of the message that is pulled from it.

I think we as LDSaints need to come to grips with the fact that the Garden myth is not supposed to be some one-to-one retelling of historical (actual-through modernity’s eyes) events, but is a prophetic retelling and restructuring of ancient creation narratives borrowed from other cultures that pre-dated the OT’s creation narrative. In other words, the prophets were not giving us a description of what happened in the past. They were picking up others’ creation narratives and retelling them to teach us about the fallen nature of man and the reason why snakes don’t have legs and are an enemy to humans (who when get bit by snakes tend to die).
But what about J Smith’s use of Adam? Simple, he was just doing the same thing that all the other prophets were doing. He took on a cultural myth and prophetically re-adapted it to teach new principles.

LDS Church First Presidency asks members to donate to Haitian relief efforts

The First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints issued the following statement today:

"Our hearts are filled with sadness as we have watched the suffering in Haiti in the wake of the devastating earthquake. We turn to the example of Jesus Christ who reached out to 'lift up the hands which hang down' and 'strengthen the feeble knees.' We are keenly aware that many in America are dealing with economic challenges caused by the recession. However, we are appealing to members to donate to Church Humanitarian Services as their means allow in order to help our Haitian brothers and sisters. Many have already contributed and others are anxious to do so.

"Money is not the only need in Haiti. People are frightened, bewildered, and wholly uncertain about their future. In addition to what people can do in helping with food, water and shelter, there needs to be a calming influence over that troubled nation. We invite our people everywhere to supplicate God for a spirit of calm and peace among the people as urgent aid and reconstruction efforts continue."

Beyond other public means, the Church has set up a website to make donations through the Church's LDS Philanthropies.

Download Nine Inch Nails' free album, The Slip, for only $9.49

While I am usually a fan of Amazon (where I make most of my book orders), I must say that I found this to be the best deal ever.

Two years ago, Trent Reznor released his Nine Inch Nails album, The Slip, as a free-download from his website--which is still available free today. While you can download the album for free in super-high-quality mp3 from the Nine Inch Nails website, Amazon has decided to help you save some money by selling lower quality mp3s of the same album for $0.99 per song. However, to help you save even more money, Amazon will allow you to purchase the entire free album for only $9.49. That is a savings of $0.41 for the whole free album!

Sweet.