Theology
Posts about LDS theology, doctrine, and philosophy
By: The Baron
[Contains some spoilers for “Batman Begins” and “The Dark Knight”]
Batman and Superman—other than having approximately equal popularity--are arguably as complete opposites as one can find in the comic book world.
While Superman is basically the most powerful superhero imaginable—often with new abilities appearing out of nowhere with each new comic or film that's created--Batman, we should note, has no ‘powers’ at all.
By: Téa
It's the first time I'd ever seen the Bishop stop a meeting to clarify and correct doctrine. It was a few minutes after another first: me skipping out on a meeting to report to him what had happened.
Misguided, well-meaning, confused, there are all sorts of 'polite' words one can use in this situation. I adore my Bishop's plainspoken style--Brother B was just WRONG. But I am getting ahead of myself by about 20 minutes, so let's rewind.
By: The Baron
[Wrap up of this brief series about movie content and ratings. Links to earlier posts: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6]
Imagine this situation: You are heading back to your apartment one evening after work/school when you run into a friend from next door.
By: The Baron
[Part 6 in a brief series about movie content and ratings. Links to earlier posts: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5]
“You know, if the Bible (or Book of Mormon) was a movie, it would be rated R…”
A commonly heard phrase…notwithstanding they HAVE made movies based on the Bible and the Book of Mormon and most of them were not rated R...
By: The Baron
[Part 5 in a brief series about movie content and ratings. Links to earlier posts: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4]
Editing movies for content has been a controversial idea from the beginning...
By: The Baron
[Part 4 in a brief series about movie content and ratings. Links to earlier posts: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3]
Originally, there were four ratings for movies: G, PG, R, and X.
Then came Steven Spielberg...
By: The Baron
[Part 3 in a brief series about movie content and ratings. Links to earlier posts: Part 1 | Part 2]
Conventional wisdom says the US—and particularly the conservative watchdogs who discuss movie content the most— are far more tolerant of violent content than sexual content.
Before we discuss whether this should be the case or not—is one of either sex or violence worse than the other?—first let’s see if this is, in fact, true. Are movie ratings in the US more ‘lenient’ for violent content than they are for sexual content? Let’s do some research…
By: The Baron
[Part 2 in a brief series about movie content and ratings. Links to earlier posts: Part 1]
The movie rating system has taken a lot of abuse over the years, most of it deserved. However, it’s worthwhile to try to look at the current movie rating system objectively—considering both the pro’s and con’s—and see what the alternatives are, if any.
By: The Baron
[Part 1 in a brief series of posts about movie content and ratings from an LDS perspective]
Question: Why are Church members encouraged to keep standards when selecting movies to watch?
Answer: Because many movies contain profanity, sexual images or dialogue, and violence.
Question: Okay, but why avoid profanity, sex or violence (PSV) in the first place?
By: Stady Canton
I've read many an application of religious principles in the last few years, from the bizarre to the beautiful. (Ah, the joys of the bloggernacle!) The Baron wrote an excellent series on science & religion earlier this year, refuting the 'it can only be one or the other' fallacy. I hadn't realized just how deeply some people out there are firm in their position that anything that says the earth is more than 6500 years old is a ploy by Satan to steal our souls and destroy all faith in a Creator. Until a recent e-mail exchange, that is.
Now I believe.
By: The Baron
Imagine a particular type of congenital heart defect that strikes children from birth and dooms them to an early death, usually before they are a year old. Suppose every year throughout human history about 100 children worldwide are born with this defect and pass away within a year, with really nothing anyone can do about it.
By: The Baron
Kaimi asks whether it's hypocritical for the Church to oppose same-sex marriage on a 'marriage = one man and one woman' basis, given its polygamous history.
Is it contradictory to oppose gay marriage while allowing (in principle) for polygamy? Not at all: polygamy does not, in fact, violate the 'marriage = one man and one woman' principle.
By: The Baron
"Milk before Meat" is how the axiom goes--see 1st Corinthians 3:2. Not so in the blogosphere, where largely we view ourselves as full-fledged carnivores looking for the juiciest steaks we can find.
Or perhaps not. It came to me one day as I was sitting in a recent Sunday School class...
There is no 'meat' in the gospel.
Or rather, rephrasing: the milk *is* the meat.
By: The Baron
"Wherefore, whoso believeth in God might with surety hope for a better world, yea, even a place at the right hand of God, which hope cometh of faith..." (Ether 12:4)
"O ye that are bound down under a foolish and a vain hope, why do ye yoke yourselves with such foolish things?" -- Korihor (Alma 30:13)
Question: what's the difference between a real hope and a false (or 'vain') hope?
By: The Baron
On August 6th, 1945, the US dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan--quickly followed three days later by another on Nagasaki. This bombing essentially ended World War II in the Pacific front, as Japan surrendered to the Allies immediately after.
The use of atomic bombs to end the war—causing over 200,000 deaths within the first year, and many more following due to radiation exposure—was and is, to say the least, a controversial decision. Was dropping two atomic bombs on Japan a ‘mistake’ by the US? Something that, in hindsight, was highly regrettable, and shouldn’t have happened?
By: The Baron
[Part 10 in a multi-part series on Science & Religion from an LDS perspective. Previous entries in the series: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9]
As a side note to the general science vs. religion discussion, let’s take another aspect of science and see how it could apply to some religious principles in general, and story in LDS history in particular.
Here’s a simple example to introduce some of the concepts of dimensional theory.
By: The Baron
[Part 9 in a multi-part series on Science & Religion from an LDS perspective. Previous entries in the series: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8]
In the previous section, we looked at how evolution may be reconcilable with creationism in general. Now let’s look at some specifics regarding the Biblical account of man’s creation: Adam, Eve and the Garden of Eden.
By: The Baron
When it comes to religious stumbling blocks--issues that believers of any religious tradition find hard to reconcile together with current teachings or policy--the 'inaction of God' is a common one. Basically, the idea that God has the omnipotent power to overcome any large or small problem we face in mortality...but chooses (for some reason) not to do so. Many people just can't accept the idea that a living God is compatible with the prevalence of evil in the world today, where God appears to remain passive.
Answers to the problem of God's inaction (meaning, of course, not answers answers, but rather alternative ideas to help reconcile the problem) generally include: free agency and a higher view of ultimate purpose of mortality (as discussed a number of times on this site and elsewhere).
I believe, paradoxically, however, the bigger stumbling block to those who doubt God's existence is not heavenly inaction, but heavenly action.
By: The Baron
[Part 8 in a multi-part series on Science & Religion from an LDS perspective. Previous entries in the series: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7]
Before hitting ‘evolution’ proper, we should first define and discuss some additional terms that are relevant to the debate.
(1) “Creation”
What does it mean to be ‘created’, or for something to have a ‘creator’?
By: Eric Nielson
The First Presidency recently sent a letter to Bishops and Brach Presidents warning them about a false doctrine that has been circulating through the church.
By: The Baron
[Part 7 in a multi-part series on Science & Religion from an LDS perspective. Previous entries in the series: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6]
When identifying the primary points of conflict between science and religion—the areas where most debates seem to start and stop—the top two are almost certainly: (1) evolution and (2) Noah’s flood.
Saving evolution for later, it is remarkable the amount of attention that Noah and his ark receive, only because of how insignificant that story really is from a religious perspective. (The story itself contains nothing directly or even indirectly related to what we would call ‘doctrines of salvation’—if it were removed from the Bible altogether, Christianity as a religion changes hardly a bit…)
By: The Baron
[Part 6 in a multi-part series on Science & Religion from an LDS perspective. Previous entries in the series: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5]
Before we address some specific elements of the science vs religion debate, let’s first identify the idea of ‘reconciliation’.
“Reconciliation” happens when someone is faced with two ideas and/or bodies of data that seem to contradict, despite some amount of evidence that suggests both are true. When this happens, there are a number of possibilities:
By: The Baron
[Part 5 in a multi-part series on Science & Religion from an LDS perspective. Previous entries in the series: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4]
Imagine a university with both math and literature classes. (Okay, maybe that's not that hard to 'imagine'…)
By: The Baron
[Part 4 in a multi-part series on Science & Religion from an LDS perspective. Previous entries in the series: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3]
“Faith” is almost universally considered to be a religious term…and not without reason, as there are 368 sections of scripture throughout the LDS standard works that discuss it.
Often, to a person on the science side of the debate, “faith” is not only a religion term, but a derogatory term at that. “You (a religious believer) depend on ‘faith’“, you might hear, “while we (the science side) rely on fact”.
Is ‘fact’ really the opposite of ‘faith’? Would it surprise anyone to learn exactly how much science depends on those so-called religious pillars of ‘faith’ and ‘testimony’?
By: The Baron
[Part 3 in a multi-part series on Science & Religion from an LDS perspective. Previous entries in the series: Part 1 | Part 2]
One of the primary characteristics of working with incomplete ‘explanation-schema’ is that speculation becomes a fundamental part of the process. One takes what one knows, places it within the framework of existing theories, and then makes guesses as to what the rest of the picture might look like. They are usually educated guesses, of course--not random--but speculative guesses nonetheless.
By: The Baron
[Part 2 in a multi-part series on Science & Religion from an LDS perspective. Previous entries in the series: Part 1]
For the next step in analyzing the relationship between science and religion, let’s look at how the search for truth is accomplished in both. To do this, we need first to define a word that gets thrown around a lot in science vs. religion discussions: “Theory”
By: The Baron
[Part I in a series of articles exploring the ‘conflict’ between science and religion, particularly from a LDS perspective. I do not have a pure scientific background, so this series will not be a deep analysis of scientific evidence in regards to religious beliefs or doctrines—you might try LDS Science Review or Clark’s site for that—but rather an exploration of the concepts of science and religion and how to relate and reconcile them together from a more abstract, philosophical perspective.]
A key question in modern society is how to judge the relationship between science and religion. No one questions that they are different, but are they different in the sense that they fundamentally oppose and conflict with one another, like oil and water? Or perhaps complement each other instead, like peanut butter and chocolate?