Author Profile: Arthur
Author Archive for Arthur
I’ve delayed publishing this essay for several months due to the fact that, the more I seem to learn about this subject, the more I know that I don’t know. I suppose it’s that way with anything. However, it’s a subject that I think is absolutely remarkable in its implications. You’ve seen them on talk shows, the radio, best-selling books, and now the Internet: people who claim to have had a near-death experience (NDE). We’ve known about NDEs for years now, and, though they were once seen as “fringe science,” due to sheer numbers of experiencers, psychologists, neurologists, and theologians have been forced to begrudgingly confront, explain, and study the NDE.
In my endless search for connections between faith and music, I came across a stark and beautiful sight last month. First of all, I finally bought a Sleep album after knowing about them for years. Sleep is a sludgy, brutal Doom/Stoner Metal band from the early ’90s, and I really can’t explain why I love them so much. But that’s beside the point. I was reading about their history, and discovered that one of their original guitarists, Justin Marler, had left the band to become an Orthodox monk.
I remember a remarkable conversation I once had with another Elder when I was a missionary. He and I had been talking about the relationship between God and science, which was a notoriously hot topic in my mission. Darwin is a dirty word in West Texas, and words like “radiometric dating” and “natural selection” aren’t necessarily swear words, but shouldn’t be used in polite or mixed company. In the course of our conversation, I mentioned in passing the Big Bang. He was quite taken aback. “You don’t actually believe in the Big Bang, do you?” he asked.
I told him that I did. With some effort, I tried to explain redshift and galaxies and the Second Law of Thermodynamics as best as I could, but he didn’t buy any of it. To him, the Big Bang was some smart-ass scientist’s attempt at replacing God with some natural mechanism.
The Big Bang didn’t create the Universe. God did.
* * * *
I had one of those “oh, great” moments today as I was searching the news online. I have “oh, great” moments now and then. For instance, about a week after the semester started here at the University of Kentucky, as I was locking up my bike, I realized none of the other bikes had helmets with them. It then dawned on me: no one on campus wears their helmet. I’ve been the one geek on campus who wears a helmet! All the people that looked at me and smiled- were they really just laughing at the helmet?
Then I remembered that I’m married, so who cares if I look like a geek? What, are they not going to go out with me? I like being married for this and many other reasons.
But today I had another “oh, great” moment when I found the following headline: “Video shows chicks ground up alive at egg hatchery“. The quite disturbing (to me) video in question can be found here. Great! So not only are companies committing cruel acts towards animals, I’ve been contributing to this ever since I was born!
I’m not even sure how I got it, surprisingly, but in the short time I lived in Idaho, I received an interesting gem. It’s a book called Religions of the World: A Latter-day Saint Perspective, by Spencer J. Palmer.
I’ve always enjoyed books about world religions, especially the obscure and forgotten, but I was expecting something rather bland, or apologetic, or dismissive. I was pleasantly surprised. This one was actually very unbiased, concise, and interesting. It didn’t break any new ground, necessarily, except that it offered interesting comparisons and contrasts with other major world religions.
I found that book packed in an anonymous box last week and decided to give it another read. As I read about Guru Nanak I was struck by one tiny thing: how comparatively little we really know about him or his life. How can anyone believe in a prophet whose life we can’t relentlessly scrutinize?
Last Sunday, I mentioned a philosophical question I had in my mind and the comfort I received from the Lord after receiving an answer. In that post, I also mentioned that this question and answer led me to rethink the way I pray. Let me start with some information.
In Logic, we learn that it is a fallacy to use something to verify itself. Let me give you an example from my Logic textbook from class (I’m not making this up):
The Book of Mormon is true because it was written by Joseph Smith. Joseph Smith wrote the truth because he was divinely inspired. We know that Joseph Smith was divinely inspired because the Book of Mormon says that he was, and the Book of Mormon is true.
The way we experience time has never been too fascinating to me until the last week or so. I can’t pinpoint exactly when it hit me, but all of a sudden I found myself attacking the very fundamental nature of time itself. This has led me to look at prayer in a completely different way. Let me explain.
As I type, I can see that the desk in front of me has width, length, and depth. I can perceive all three dimensions simultaneously. People like Steven Hawking insist that time is a dimension also. And yet, while the first three dimensions are easily and immediately perceived by my mind, time has a completely different quality.
I cannot travel to my birth, nor can I perceive my death. For some reason, I’m trapped in the “present.” Once I have measured an amount of time, it has vanished forever. I cannot go back and measure and re-measure the same second over and over again, and I cannot perceive something in the future at all. Upon closer inspection, even the present is an illusion, for it has no duration, right? Continue reading…
I was sick over the bitterest month of the winter. It was just one grueling, annoying, or depressing illness after another. First it was a flu, which turned into a sinus infection, and then an awful throat infection, followed by a cold. I was miserable, and, no doubt, miserable to be around.
Late one night in the middle of it all, I considered my roommate. He was a friend of mine and also the Elders Quorum President. It came to my mind to ask him for a blessing, using consecrated oil. I desperately wanted to be healed from this chain of horrible sicknesses, and the prayer in my heart went something like this: “Lord, I know when I get blessings for these things, they usually don’t work, and I might be selfish to ask. But could you just do me a solid this one time? People got healed constantly of much worse than this in the Scriptures. I’m not testing you, I think. I just want to get better.” My roommate then administered the blessing, and, much to my dismay and anger, it didn’t work.
The chance to do an interview like this doesn’t happen too often. David Murphy is a kind, energetic young man who does promotions for Simeon “Young Sim” Lawrence’s clean record label, Feel Good Music in Salt Lake City. On Friday, a 45-year-old man named Jeffrey Boyd Ackerman was shot and killed in Pleasant Grove, Utah, and a suspect with a weapon ran from the crime scene, pursued hotly by the police. David was working and witnessed the pursuit, in front of the business where he worked. What did he do? He ran out of his business and tackled the suspect, holding him down until the police could apprehend him. After I heard this amazing story from Sim, I just had to interview David about his experience.
One of my favorite parts about BYU-Idaho, or rather, one thing I actually liked about BYU-Idaho, was the religion classes. Systematic, academic study of the Standard Works was something I’d never experienced before and I loved it.
One thing that hit me like a ton of bricks in the middle of a religion class at BYU was this: I don’t know who the Holy Ghost is. Even my religion instructor admitted ignorance on the subject, though speculation abounded.
A few posts on MormonMatters got me thinking once about my relationship with other faith groups. For instance, a recent post on why it seems that ex-Mormons have a hard time joining other denominations. Valoel wrote a blog post on what you’d do if you found out that the Church weren’t true through some sort of revelation (from God or otherwise), however the post had the caveat: “For simplicity, the assumption for this topic is that no other church is a true alternative.”
For me, I’ve found that if, for some reason, I discovered that if the Church isn’t true, I probably would join another faith. Why?
Much has been said in church magazines and the Bloggernacle about the image of Joseph Smith. Do we know what Joseph Smith really looked like? Are our statues and paintings truly representative of him?
This is not the point of my post here, though. I recently had a conversation with my fiancee about Rastafarianism, mentioning that Rastas believe that Jesus Christ was black. I admitted that, though I personally don’t see much evidence for that, I did concede that Jesus probably looked very different than what most Mormons envision.
There seems to be a common thread running through the fringe theorists that I’ve talked to, and that is the idea of “secret societies.” Illuminati, the Freemasons, Skull and Bones. It’s the stuff of great novels, like The Da Vinci Code, and I’ve been surprised lately by those who even put secret societies behind recent events such as the election of Obama and the crash of the Stock Market. I’ve found that generally the idea is scoffed at by most “rational” thinkers.
Orson Scott Card recently made ripples with his recent column on his experience listening to a “new” LDS album, and the dire state of current LDS music. While I’ve heard these sentiments from many individuals, it usually takes a respected name like Orson Scott Card to point out that the Emperor has no clothes, and it’s not a moment too soon.
Most of the singers sounded as if they were talking down to Primary children.
You know what I mean: that smiley, condescending tone that used to be heard, not just in Primary, but in Relief Society meetings as well. For many years, it was the oh-so-special accent of LDS women in public discourse.
(I think it ended the first time Sheri Dew spoke in general conference. It’s as if LDS women heard her and thought: “Oh, now we can talk like grownups.”)
That tone of voice did not translate very well to singing — it undercut the credibility of every word they sang. We called them “smile singers” and never played the CDs again.I had noticed something else as well. Most of them had song after song that was intended to bear their testimony or teach a doctrine. They were trying to say something important. But there was no attention to the art of diction.
There are words that are weak or even ridiculous when sung, rhymes that make the listener wince — and, with all the fervor of their hearts, they used them regularly, arousing something between pity and embarrassment.
But I could understand it — these young Mormon singers were inventing a new genre, and had neither precedents nor standards. Continue reading…
One thing that I don’t see very often at Mormon Matters is the bearing of testimony. Some see the bearing of testimony as a form of social control, some may see it as people trying to convince themselves of truth, and so it seems that it doesn’t have much “place” in academic discussions. Yet there is something powerful in the bearing of testimony, and sometimes I feel that it’s all I truly have to offer. Here is a part of mine, and it is a testimony of the Apostles, in the light of Elder Wirthlin’s passing.
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