Posts Tagged ‘ faith ’

45: The Mormon Practice of Bearing Testimony

August 2, 2011
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Testimony image

In this episode, Mormon Matters host Dan Wotherspoon and panelists Brent Beal, Brian Johnston, and Jana Riess explore various aspects of one of Mormonism’s most regular (and sometimes it seems regulated) rituals: the monthly opportunity for church members to bear testimony. The discussion ranges from the nature of the expectation that those bearing testimony, including children, will focus on particular truth claims, to the peculiar way Mormonism encourages members to extrapolate from experiences of feeling “the spirit” within a gospel context to conclude that all other LDS claims are therefore true (and even that this is the “one and...

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39: Intellectuals and the Mormon Tradition

June 28, 2011
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39: Intellectuals and the Mormon Tradition

In early June, the Deseret News published a list compiled by Leonard J. Arrington in 1969 of the “most eminent intellectuals in Mormon history.” As you can imagine, the feature generated a lot of discussion both on the newspaper’s website, as well as in many corners of the Mormon bloggernacle. Who among those listed still belong in the Top Ten? Who should be on there now? Why aren’t any women listed, and which women should have made that list then or if a new list were compiled today? <br /> In this Mormon Matters episode, host Dan Wotherspoon and...

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Sorrowing for Korihor

September 12, 2010
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Mormon Heretic’s post on forgiveness from a few weeks ago touched me deeply, but I needed time to get my thoughts together about it before I could respond. I once had the neighbor from hell. I use the expression with theological intent. Smart and relentlessly treacherous, he was somewhere on the spectrum from malignant narcissist to full-fledged sociopath, and I had no desire to observe closely enough to find out where. I do not know what horror had befallen him — if anything more significant than a stray cosmic ray hitting the genome at the wrong time — but...

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Mormon.org FAQ: Women & Priesthood

August 17, 2010
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Last week we looked at some of the cool profiles on mormon.org that are part of a new effort to make members real and accessible for potential investigators.  And we talked about the difficulties of giving members an open mic on some of the tough questions.  This week let’s look at another tough topic:  Women and the priesthood.

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Mormon.org FAQ: Polygamy

August 10, 2010
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The church has initiated a new online profile campaign on mormon.org in which those interested in the church can “meet” actual members who’ve posted pictures of themselves, personal experiences with the church, and their own answers to a variety of questions about Mormonism.  A few of those questions are on more controversial topics, and it is interesting to read answers that members have posted.

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Why Do People Struggle? (With Poll!)

August 3, 2010
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Through my time in the church, I’ve known many who have left the church, many others who have seemingly never had an issue, and a vast majority who struggled with one aspect or another yet remained active (or resumed activity after a period of inactivity).  What’s your experience with struggling?

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Spiritual Guidance: A GC Talk Review

July 20, 2010
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Spiritual Guidance: A GC Talk Review

I wanted to try a new feature – going through some of the previous GC talks to discuss some of the ideas put forth.  I decided to start with E. Scott’s talk from the Oct 2009 GC session:  To Acquire Spiritual Guidance.  This was a talk I enjoyed when it was first given, although the last 3rd got a little repetitious on the whole porn thing (Did you notice that porn has now gone mainstream?  New motto:  Porn, it’s not just for Priesthood session anymore.)

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Understanding the Atonement

July 13, 2010
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Understanding the Atonement

The atonement is to Christianity what enlightenment is to Buddhism:  the foundational concept.  How do you feel about the atonement?  I admit to some mixed feelings on the concept of atonement.

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Faith, Knowledge, Belief, and Stochastic Theory Part 4: Finding Truth – An Optimization Problem

June 30, 2010
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In part two of this series I discussed Bayesian inference. Specifically, I discussed how Bayesian inference provided us with a mechanism for deciding in what we should place our confidence given all the information we possess and will yet obtain. This was all framed in the context of confidence. I’d like to discuss an alternative way of looking at Bayesian inference – namely optimization.

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Wandering Mormons as Nephites

June 27, 2010
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More than two years ago, the Holy Spirit began insisting that I re-read the Book of Mormon. Of course, I didn’t immediately recognize the impulse as anything but a good idea originating within my own intellect. That’s what I do with anything – process it intellectually first. I knew spending more time reading scriptures would be the spiritual equivalent of walking more for my heart, so I put it on my to-do-list. You know all about the to-do-list that never seems to get any shorter because of emergencies and recurring requirements. So, re-reading the Book of Mormon stayed on...

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Faith, Knowledge, Belief and Stochastic Theory Part 3: Putting It All Together

June 23, 2010
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In part one I introduced the problem I see with our current understanding of faith, introduced some basic statistics, and weakly drew a comparison to faith. In part two I introduced deductive and inductive reasoning, and showed how Bayesian inference leads to good inductive reasoning. I also gave a brief example of how this might work in real life. In this post I would like to put all these concepts together into at least one way of viewing faith, knowledge, and belief. I will do this by examining the plausible reasoning of three individuals: a stereotypical believing Mormon, a...

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Faith & Doubt

June 19, 2010
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Today’s guest post is by Glenn.  When I was at BYU, I got interested in the study of folklore – the way that traditional culture informs our understanding of the world. I worked in the BYU folklore archives cataloguing missionary stories – encounters with the three nephites, miraculous experiences (some easier to believe than others), initiation stories of greenie missionaries, cautionary tales — just a whole bunch of really interesting stuff. I was hooked.

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Faith, Knowledge, Belief, and Stochastic Theory Part 2: Inductive Reasoning

June 18, 2010
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Faith, Knowledge, Belief, and Stochastic Theory Part 2: Inductive Reasoning

Deductive reasoning is a form of reasoning in which the conclusion can be drawn directly from the premises. The idea is to show that the conclusion necessarily follows from the premises. For example: Bridges built using sound engineering principles are safe. The Bay Bridge was built using sound engineering principles. Therefore, the Bay Bridge was safe (at least when it was built). This form of reasoning is reliable, at least as far as logic goes, producing correct conclusions from the premises.

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Faith, Knowledge, Belief, and Stochastic Theory Part 1

June 9, 2010
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Faith, Knowledge, Belief, and Stochastic Theory Part 1

Faith has always been a perplexing topic for me. The definitions we hear in church, and in the scriptures seem to come up short. Furthermore, faith is almost always accompanied by a discussion of knowledge and belief. But faith is generally what is defined in the scriptures, and we typically just accept the colloquial meanings of knowledge and belief.

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Mixed Belief Marriages

June 8, 2010
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Mixed Belief Marriages

What should a church member do if their spouse is a non-believer?  This is something that many couples encounter, either because one spouse ceases to believe or because one spouse converts and the other does not.  What should the church advise these believing spouses who ask?  What is the “doctrinal” implication in these situations?  Does this put the believing spouse’s salvation at risk as some fear?

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Then I Will Believe

June 6, 2010
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Our guest post today is by SilverRain, who blogs at The Rains Came Down. When Jesus was suffering on the cross at Calvary, those who put Him there surrounded Him to mock Him. They jeered, “If the King of Israel . . . come down from the cross, and we will believe . . . .” (Matt 27:42) I have emerged from the other end of a marriage that stripped me of my ability to trust myself. It is taking hard work to believe the things that I have survived. I have been accused of things I...

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AZ Immigration Law vs. LDS Interests?

May 25, 2010
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AZ Immigration Law vs. LDS Interests?

A recent article in the Arizona Republic highlights the negative impacts to the LDS church of the new Arizona law that steps up enforcement of state immigration lows.  Due to the large population of Mormons in AZ (6% of the state are LDS), and the large population of Latinos (1.8 million, including many who are LDS), this issue is one that poses internal conflicts for members.

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Church History: Principles

May 18, 2010
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Church History: Principles

There has been a lot of discussion in the b’nacle about what the church can do from a practical standpoint to address the thorny issues in church history.  The current approach has been to: 1) keep the curriculum uplifting and free from controversy, 2) to never speak ill or contradict leaders of the past or present (even if they have been demonstrably wrong), 3) to let FAIR and FARMS apologetics address any tricky issues raised by external critics, and 4) to remind people that ”we simply don’t know” when it comes to conclusions about the trickiest issues.  With the internet and ready access...

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Mormonism and Catholicism: Who Can Mock This Church?

May 4, 2010
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Mormonism and Catholicism: Who Can Mock This Church?

There was a great article in the New York Times this week:  Who Can Mock This Church?  While it was about Catholicism reeling in the wake of the pedophilia scandal, it raised a few points relevant to critics of any church.

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Raising the Bar: The Honorably Excused

April 27, 2010
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Raising the Bar: The Honorably Excused

The church decided to “raise the bar” in 2002 on entry requirements for missionaries, effectively preventing those with a history of serious sin from repenting and enter the mission field.  This reduced the number of missionaries serving (down from a peak of 62K to approximately 51K at a time) and the number of convert baptisms (initially maintaining a rate of 4.7 or 4.8 baptisms per missionary, which rose to 5.5 in 2009), but another trend has also emerged in the last few years.  A higher percentage of missionaries are returning home early than before the change.  Is there a correlation between high...

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