Entry for January 08, 2008

From http://deseretnews.com/article/content/mobile/0,5223,695242228,00.html

Better duck — if you're a Mormon

By Doug Robinson
Deseret Morning News

Published: January 8, 2008

Imissed the memo that said it's A-OK to make disparaging and often erroneous statements about Mormons.

Apparently, they are fair game.

Sure, these are hypersensitive times, when name-calling or perceived bias against any group will get you the Don Imus treatment, but you get a free shot with Mormons. You can say what you want about them with impunity.

If you denigrate a racial group, you're racist.

If you denigrate women, you're sexist.

If you denigrate Mormons, you're hip.

No one would openly suggest that you shouldn't vote for Hillary Clinton because a woman can't lead the country, especially an ornery one.

Nobody would dare say that you shouldn't vote for Barack Hussein Obama because he's black, or of Muslim descent, or because he has a name that sounds like a terrorist. One Clinton worker even apologized for alluding to Obama's use of drugs as a youth, so apparently it's wrong to disparage former drug users, too.

But nobody is shy about saying you shouldn't vote for Romney simply because he's a Mormon. It doesn't even register on the PC-O-Meter.

Just like that, 6 million Americans have been virtually disqualified from running for president. They've been rendered second-class citizens. They're foreigners living in America. They face a glass ceiling.

How un-American is that?

It would be one thing if most of those who oppose Romney did so because they disagreed with his politics or character. But Romney is one of the few candidates who has no character issues, a "squeaky clean" man who has a distinguished record of accomplishments, success and service, with no divorces, no affairs, no scandal. The only thing opponents can say about him is that he belongs to a church they don't understand.

A Harvard law professor called Romney the most qualified of all the candidates and "the perfect candidate for this moment in time." But there is his Mormonism, he noted.

Even the self-styled PC chief of police, Al Sharpton, once jumped in on the action, saying, "As for the one Mormon running for office, those who really believe in God will defeat him anyways."

Mormons don't believe in God?

For his penance, all Sharpton had to do was endure a family home evening in Utah.

It's open season on Mormons. A few days ago, Miami Herald columnist Dan Le Batard stated on ESPN and in the newspaper that part of the reason fired coach Cam Cameron failed was because he got stuck with a Mormon quarterback — not a rookie quarterback (which he is) but a Mormon quarterback.

"And you'll have a hard time finding a leader anywhere in sports who was as unlucky this year as Cameron," Le Batard said, noting that because of injuries, Cameron was forced to play "a United Nations huddle of a Mormon quarterback, Mexican receiver, Samoan fullback and some guy named Lekekekkkkerkker."

Now Mormons are foreigners?

Ignorance makes no difference. You can say Mormons have four wives or that they aren't Christian, and no one cares.

Imagine the uproar if Le Batard had written that the Dolphins suffered because they had to play a black quarterback for part of the season? Or a Catholic?

The Salt Lake Tribune has had a field day for more than a week since learning that Mike Leavitt and some of his like-minded cohorts met early in the morning to discuss Mormon theology and governance while he was Utah's governor. What if it had been a Bible study?

Nobody seems to mind when former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee says his religion "defines me." Or when Obama says his church guides "my own values and my own beliefs."

People worry that Romney will take his orders from his church leaders. They don't worry that Obama will take orders from his church, whose "10-point vision" includes two references to its "non-negotiable commitment to Africa," with no mention of America. Oh, and the church statement begins by noting on the Trinity United Church of Christ Web site, "We are a congregation which is Unashamedly Black."

It's a different set of rules for some out there. You can print newspaper cartoons disparaging Mormons. You can harass their families as they walk to their biannual conference with all sorts of foul language. When someone commits a crime, you can note the criminal's religion, but only if he's Mormon. You can make them a one-liner on Leno. Good luck reconciling all this with the paranoid political correctness that's so in vogue.

Meanwhile, the most politically correct presidential election field ever assembled — a woman, a black, a Mormon, a Baptist, etc. — has gone politically incorrect, but only when it comes to you know who.

Bushman "On the Road with Joseph Smith"

This is taken from "On the Road with Joseph Smith" by Richard Lyman Bushman, page 15 - 16. An excerpt from a letter.

Quote:

I wish I could strike a responsive chord in Christians like you. Mormons wonder why all Christians don't understand that we believe in the Book of Mormon on the basis of a spiritual witness. It is very hard for a Mormon to believe that Christians accept the bible because of the scholarly evidence confirming the historical accuracy of the work. Surely there are uneducated believers whose convictions are not rooted in academic knowledge. Isn't there some kind of human, existential truth that resonates with one's desires for goodness and divinity? And isn't that ultimately why we read the bible as a devotional work? We don't have to read the latest issues of the journals to find out if the book is still true. We stick with it because we find God in its pages--or inspiration, or comfort, or scope. That is what religion is about in my opinion, and it is why I believe in the Book of Mormon. I can't really evaluate all the scholarship all the time; while I am waiting for it to settle out, I have to go on living. I need some good to hold on to and lift me up day by day. The Book of Mormon inspires me, and so I hold on. Reason is too frail to base a life on. You can be whipped about by all the authorities with no genuine basis for deciding for yourself. I think it is far better to go where goodness lies. I keep thinking other Christians are in a similar position, but they don't agree. The keep insisting their beliefs are based on reason and evidence. I can't buy that--the resurrection as rational fact? And so I am frankly as perplexed about Christian belief as you are about Mormons. Educated Christians claim to base their belief on reason when I thought faith was the teaching of the scriptures. You hear the Good Shepherd’s voice, and you follow it. I guess we could go on and on. I hope I am telling you the truth about myself. The fact is I am a believer and I can't help myself. I couldn't possibly give it up; it is too delicious.

Entry for January 07, 2008

From Orson Scott Card...about Romney that devolves into trinity.

Deseret Morning News | Theology: LDS god is in harmony with the Bible

An article / transcript on philosophical underpinnings of the trinity and why LDS view is why it is.

The Fallacy of Fundamentalist Assumptions

On this second article, I admit that it is hard to follow. I'm not a philosophy kind of guy but I did like some of the reasoning. I'll get into the details later.

Feel free to pick the articles apart. I feel no real need to defend them, but I think it will be an interesting exercise.

Mormons are so stupid.

On several other boards I've been on, when I mention my LDSness, I get questions as to my intelligence, motives, etc. I got it on this board when I first joined and occasionally by the new interlopers as they join. I found a good post. I hope you read it.

Mormanity: "How Can Anyone Be So Stupid?"

Wisdom from Kirby

This was too good to pass up. Bolding is mine.

Quote:

Kirby: No one is fair when it comes to religion Robert Kirby Tribune columnist Article Last Updated: 12/14/2007 07:10:42 PM MST During a recent interview, presidential candidate Mike Huckabee (R-Baptist) talked about fellow candidate Mitt Romney (R-Mormon). Huckabee posed the question: "Don't Mormons believe that Jesus and the devil are brothers?" The question was perceived by some as an opportunity to hold an element of Mormon theology up for ridicule. As a Mormon, I wasn't bothered because, well, it's true. It gets weirder. Not only is Satan our brother as well, he looks exactly like KSL meteorologist Kevin Eubank, only redder. OK, I made that part up. But Mormons do believe a lot of things that seem pretty strange, if not downright crazy. So do you. Imagine that the average presidential candidate rings your doorbell tomorrow. Male, affluent and not visibly deranged, the candidate offers some really cool ideas about running the country. He wants your vote. Before you can answer, the candidate casually mentions that the driving force in his life is a profound belief in a cosmic walrus that sets the world spinning each new day with the force of its benevolent flatulence. As the average American voter (Christian), your response would be laughter followed by incredulity. In parts of the country, you might even be legally entitled to assault the candidate. After all, the real god is a shape-shifting entity, born of a virgin, who cured blindness with spit and busted out of his tomb after being lynched - a god you periodically honor by ritualistically eating him so that he won't kill you when he comes back. Well, that wasn't really fair, was it? I hope not. Since when did religious belief ever have anything to do with fair? Muslim, Pagan, Christian, Jew, Buddhist - one of the great ironies of all spiritual belief is that cold, brutal logic should be applied to every version but yours. If you're Hindu, for example, you might find the idea of Christian communion ludicrous. Why would anyone even pretend to eat a god? Conversely, Christians find the notion of God having the head of an elephant completely ridiculous. Extra arms? Ha! We don't even want to talk about one with multiple sex organs. What's going on here isn't real logic. It's not even insight. It's simply comparing your beliefs against those of others and egotistically concluding that you are the only one who can't be dismissed as an idiot. Incidentally, this is a human condition that affects secularists as well. The absence of religion doesn't make people moral anymore than its presence guarantees morality. Is religious belief bad? It damn sure can be. People are certainly bad when they become contemptuous of others, and religion far too often provides us with the place to do just that.

Entry for January 05, 2008

Finally typed the quote I liked the most. Like I mentioned, he spends about 300 pages breaking down assumptions of the classic trinity and the completes on this chapter.

Quote:

Chapter 14 A Mormon Christology Mormonism’s distinctive understanding of God derives from its commitment that Jesus the Christ is the preeminent revelation both of what God is and what humans are. Mormonism takes Jesus as the model of what it means to be truly and fully human and truly and fully divine. We take it for granted that we know what it is to be human even thought we rarely realize our full humanity. Insuperable problems for Christology are created by the conventional belief which posits an ontological dichotomy between the Creator and the created which can never be bridged no matter how much progress humans make. Mormonism’s belief that Godhood and humanity form a continuum—that divinity is fully mature humanity—allows it to avoid the most intractable logical problems confronting Christology. Mormonism’s commitment that Jesus experienced mortality in the same way that humans do—by leaving and temporarily forgetting his exalted, preexistent status while growing in mortality from grace to grace and confronting genuine temptations in concrete situations, experiencing both pleasure and pain as a necessary condition to gain experiential knowledge – helps it to confront the historical problem. Mormonism’s unique contribution to Christology arises from its redefinition what properties are essential to divinity and which are essential to full humanity, for it is only such a redefinition that allows the logical problem to be coherently addressed. Although Mormon scripture, like Judeo-Christian scripture in general, is precritical in its approach and understanding of who and what Jesus is or was, it more directly addresses the issue of Christology than the New Testament writings. The Mormon scriptures expressly grapple with the problem entailed in asserting that “God became a man,” an assertion not found in the Old or New Testaments. Indeed it is doubtful that the Judeo-Christian scripture asserts that Jesus Christ is God in the same sense that the Father is God. I am not asserting that the Mormon scripture addresses either the historical or logical problems elucidated above—indeed, the scriptures reveal little awareness of the historical and logical problems on which I have chosen to focus. Nevertheless, Mormon scripture develops a Christology beginning with the Book of Mormon, at least in seed, which follows an identifiable trajectory through the Nauvoo period. I thin it is fair to say that the distinctive Mormon view of God is a result of its understanding that Jesus of Nazareth is a revelation of the nature of both God and man.