Adventures in Mormonism

…it turns out that Matthew Murray, the Colorado shooter — the one who murdered four people before killing himself and who left anti-Christian screeds on various web sites — had joined the LDS Church a year or so ago. This is a wretched tragedy as it is; I’d hate to see evangelicals seize upon it to somehow implicate or criticize the Church. That may have been part of his apparent rejection of his family’s evangelical Christianity, and there’s no indication of whether he stayed active and involved in the LDS Church for any period after his baptism. But that’s not going matter much once this hits the news cycle. ..bruce..

In my posting regarding the Huckabee flap, I noted that the LDS approach to ‘angels and demons’ avoids some of the issues regarding the problem of evil (theodicy), largely due to our rejection of creatio ex nihilo (creation from nothing). While this helps neutralize the “God created evil” issue, we do still have the issue of ‘why does God permit evil?’ I think it’s because it’s a necessary consequence of our agency, which from an LDS perspective is an essential aspect of our eternal progress.

Beyond that, I suspect that in the next life, our perspectives regarding evil, suffering, and injustice will shift dramatically — in part because we will have ‘grown up’ and will have an eternal perspective on things. As a child, I hated getting shots; I would literally scream and thrash about. I’m still not a great fan of needles, but I can calmly watch myself getting a shot or giving blood — I think two years (during my missionary work in Central America) of getting a gamma globulin shot every three months probably did that for me. That’s a trivial example, but I think that our perspective will truly change in an eternal setting.

Beyond that, however, I suspect we may see examples of evil on an eternal level that make the worst sufferings here on earth look paltry and momentary. Consider this: if agency is an eternal aspect of eternal intelligences, what about those intelligences that chose evil early on — before ever receiving ’spirit bodies’? If agency existed prior to spirit incarnation — and I would certainly read the scriptures and the prophets that way — then the spirit sibling we call Lucifer is clearly a ‘Johnny-come-lately’ to the dark side.

At the risk of sounding like a Latter-day Lovecraft — I wonder what evil might exist that has been following that course for much of eternity? What form might it take, and what threat might it pose to (a) other intelligences, (b) pre-mortal spirits, (c) post-mortal spirits, and (d) resurrected beings? (Think about it:  who tempted Lucifer?) We may find that our mortal life is just a warm-up for the real battle.

Thoughts? ..bruce..

I had an earlier posting that talked about rethinking the Noachian flood from an LDS perspective, changing the timeframe and location of the Noachian events to North America at the end of the last ice age. In that post, I mentioned growing evidence about a major impact event over the North American ice sheet about 13,000 years ago that may have triggered the Lesser Dryas glaciation, the last ice age event before the current warm period.

Here’s another article that pulls together some of the growing evidence of this impact:

Evidence unearthed at more than two dozen sites across North America suggests that an extraterrestrial object exploded in Earth’s atmosphere above Canada about 12,900 years ago, just as the climate was warming at the end of the last ice age. The explosion sparked immense wildfires, devastated North America’s ecosystems and prehistoric cultures, and triggered a millennium-long cold spell, scientists say.

At sites stretching from California to the Carolinas and as far north as Alberta and Saskatchewan—many of which were home to prehistoric people of the Clovis culture—researchers have long noted an enigmatic layer of carbon-rich sediment that was laid down nearly 13 millennia ago. “Clovis artifacts are never found above this black mat,” says Allen West, a geophysicist with Geoscience Consulting in Dewey, Ariz. The layer, typically a few millimeters thick, lies between older, underlying strata that are chock-full of mammoth bones and younger, fossilfree sediments immediately above, he notes…

Heat from the event would have set off wildfires across the continent, the scientists suggest. The heat and shock from the explosion probably broke up portions of the ice sheet smothering eastern Canada at the time, they add. The flood of fresh water into the North Atlantic that resulted would have interrupted ocean currents that bring warmth to the region, and thick clouds of smoke and soot in the air would have intensified cooling across the Northern Hemisphere.

The inferred date of the event matches the beginning of a 1,200-year-long cold spell that geologists call the Younger Dryas, which in its first few decades saw temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere drop as much as 10°C.

The interesting note (as per the excerpt above) is that the Clovis culture of North America, along with much of the megafauna, appears to have disappeared post-impact. Read the whole article (which includes photographs of the charred layer). ..bruce..

Some weeks back, I happened to see the last few minutes of the movie “End of Days“, in which Arnold Schwarzenegger ends up taking on Satan himself. It highlighted for me how differently the LDS Church and most other Christians religion view angels and devils (or demons). I think it explains in part why Evangelicals are so obsessed with the LDS doctrine that both Christ and Lucifer are — just like the rest of us — eternal, uncreated intelligences with agency who each received spirit bodies from God and thus — just like the rest of us — are ’spirit children’ of Heavenly Father. Their usual way of framing this is that “Do Mormons really believe that Christ and Satan are brothers?”, an issue that presidential candidate Mike Huckabee has now apparently raised.

The short answer is, yes, an answer that (in my opinion) makes as much or more sense than traditional Christian theology while defusing the whole sticky issue of why (and how) did God create evil (theodicy). Let me explain.

Read the rest of this entry »

No, not John F. Kennedy’s original “Catholic” speech, nor Mitt Romney’s “Mormon” speech. This is a speech that Kennedy gave in the LDS Tabernacle in Salt Lake City in September 1963, just two months before his assassination. The full text has been posted over at Straight and Narrow Blog, but here are a few excerpts:

…Of all the stories of American pioneers and settlers, none is more inspiring than the Mormon trail. The qualities of the founders of this community are the qualities that we seek in America, the qualities which we like to feel this country has, courage, patience, faith, self-reliance, perseverance, and, above all, an unflagging determination to see the right prevail…

…I know that many of you in this State and other States sometimes wonder where we are going and why the United States should be so involved in so many affairs, in so many countries all around the globe. If our task on occasion seems hopeless, if we despair of ever working our will on the other 94 percent of the world population, then let us remember that the Mormons of a century ago were a persecuted and prosecuted minority, harried from place to place, the victims of violence and occasionally murder, while today, in the short space of 100 years, their faith and works are known and respected the world around, and their voices heard in the highest councils of this country.

As the Mormons succeeded, so America can succeed, if we will not give up or turn back. I realize that the burdens are heavy and I realize that there is a great temptation to urge that we relinquish them, that we have enough to do here in the United States, and we should not be so busy around the globe. The fact of the matter is that we, this generation of Americans, are the first generation of our country ever to be involved in affairs around the globe. From the beginning of this country, from the days of Washington, until the Second World War, this country lived an isolated existence. Through most of our history we were an unaligned country, an uncommitted nation, a neutralist nation. We were by statute as well as by desire. We had believed that we could live behind our two oceans in safety and prosperity in a comfortable distance from the rest of the world…

Hat tip to Dave’s Mormon Inquiry.  ..bruce..