All posts by bfwebster

How sweet it is! [updated]

BYU, Main

We interrupt our regular coverage of religion to talk about sports (and, no, I don’t confuse the two).

I have been watching (and following) BYU football since arriving on campus as a freshman in 1971. This means, of course, lots of excitement mixed in with varying levels of frustration.

But today’s game against UCLA (the final score, for those who don’t know: 59-0) is possibly the most perfect game of football I’ve ever seen BYU play. There have been plenty of other routs in BYU history, but they were usually against relatively weak conference rivals. This was against a UCLA team that beat 18th ranked Tennessee two weeks ago.

Yeah, there were a few early penalties, and one interception (which did nothing for UCLA), but BYU was pretty much invincible in all its departments: offense, defense, special teams, and coaching. If Coach Mendenhall had left Max Hall in the game (he pulled him — and much of the 1st team offense — halfway through the 3rd quarter, with the score 52-0), the final score might well have been around 80-0. As it was, our second-string offense went on score a touchdown on UCLA.

By the way, I’ve found two great blogs for covering BYU football: the Cougar Blog at the Salt Lake Tribune, and Deep Shades of Blue, a blog by former BYU player Quinn Gooch.

59-zip against UCLA. Heh. I’ll be smiling about this one all season long.  ..bruce..

[UPDATED 2317 MDT]

Holy crap! The MWC went 4-0 against Pac-10 opponents today:

  • BYU beats UCLA 59-0
  • TCU beats Stanford 31-14
  • New Mexico beats Arizona 36-28
  • and UNLV(!) beats #15 Arizona State (!!!) 23-20 in overtime!

If you’re wondering why the gloating, it’s because just a few years ago, Pac-10 coaches (I’m thinking in particular of the coach at Oregon State) said that BYU and the rest of the MWC teams were in no way good enough to compete in the Pac-10. Heh.  ..bruce..

We now resume our regular programming.

Why I’m leaving the Democratic Party

Main, Personal, Politics

I have a lengthy post on one of my other blogs as to why the Left’s vicious and hypocritical reaction to Sarah Palin’s nomination has led me to finally leave the Democratic Party after 37 years:

The Democrats like to complain about “the politics of personal destruction”, even as they have mastered it (again, since Bill Clinton’s ascension in 1992). But the absolute frothing rage and vile, hypocritical and/or false attacks that have followed hard upon the announcement of Sarah Palin as the GOP Vice-Presidential candidate have left me appalled beyond words. The Left has shown once again that no one surpasses them at their willingness to utterly trash anyone — especially women and minorities — who defy or threaten them.

Here’s a simple thought experiement: suppose that Sarah Palin were a Democrat and had been chosen by Barack Obama as his VP candidate. Virutally everything that the Left is attacking Sarah Palin on right now would instead be touted as “real-world experience and understanding”, especially her time as mayor of a small town in Alaska.  They would fiercly mock any criticism, however mild, of Bristol’s pregnancy; they would tout Sarah’s choice to keep Trig (their Down’s Syndrome child) as showing how much of a ‘big tent’ the Democratic party has; and they would shout to the heavens Palin’s reformist credentials, particularly her fight against corrupt Republicans in Alaskan government.

For what it’s worth.  ..bruce..

Book recommendations

Books, Main, Writing

Sorry for the lack of posts; I’ve actually been busy with work (a good thing), traveling first to Dallas and now to Richmond (VA).

Two books that I’m currently working my way through are Milton’s Paradise Lost and T. E. Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom. I’ve never read either before and am very taken with both. Milton’s work, of course, is like a mountain that dominates the landscape of Western literature, but I don’t think you can realize how much it does so until you’ve read it. I’ve got the Fowler annotated edition, which is tremendously helpful. I’m just sorry it’s taken me this long to get around to it; my inspiration for finally doing so was picking up and reading C. S. Lewis’ A Preface to Paradise Lost, itself an outstanding work (and a reminder that Lewis was a professor of literature at Oxford when that really meant something).

Lawrence’s work is a revelation. Laying aside the disputes over how accurate his portrayal of events is, I am (as a writer) simply stunned at his writing. I’ll read a paragraph and think, “That’s such a wonderfully written paragraph; maybe I’ll quote that on one of my blogs.” Then I’ll read the next paragraph and think the same thing. And so on. Here’s a paragraph chosen at random:

His distance might have been six thousand yards; but the fuses of his shrapnel were Boer War antiquities, full of green mould, and, if they burst, it was sometimes short in the air, and sometimes grazing. However, he had no means of getting his ammunition away if things went wrong, so he blazed off at speed, shouting with laughter at this fashion of making war; and the tribesmen seeing the commandant so merry took heart of grace themselves. ‘By God,’ said one, ‘those are the real guns: the Importance of their noise!’ Rasim swore that the Turks were dying in heaps, and the Arabs charged forward warmly at his word.

I would bleed myself to write that well, and Lawrence goes on that way for hundreds of pages.  ..bruce..

Latter-day Saint exobiology (part 2)

LDS Doctrine, Main, Science

God is speaking to us in a consistent voice. God will deal with all the human family equally. We might be in a large ward or a small branch, our climate or vegetation may differ, the cultural background and language might vary, and the color of our skin could be totally different. But the universal power and blessings of the restored gospel are available to all, irrespective of culture, nationality, political system, tradition, language, economic environment, or education.

— Pres. Dieter F. Uchtdorf, 2nd Counselor, First Presidency, July 2008 Ensign

Or, one might add, to those living on a different planet altogether.

In part 1 of this series, I noted that the LDS concept of myriad inhabited worlds within this universe dates back to 1830, the same year the LDS Church itself was founded. In other worlds, LDS doctrine has from the start had a very expansive, non-geocentric view of reality. This is a doctrine in which “were it possible that man could number the particles of the earth, yea, millions of earths like this, it would not be a beginning to the number of thy creations; and thy curtains are stretched out still…” (Moses 7:30), and in which “by [Christ], and through [Christ], and of [Christ], the worlds are and were created, the inhabitants thereof are begotten sons and daughters unto God.” (D&C 76:24).

But what will those sons and daughters look like?

Consider the diversity of human forms (usually lumped under the unfortunate term “race“) known to exist in historic times just here on Earth.  The MButi people of Africa average around 4.5″ in height, while the Watusi (since merged into the Tutsi) average — or used to average — around 6.5” in height; furthermore, there are anthropological evidences (albeit controversial) of yet taller and shorter population groups. There are wide variations in skin color, eye color, and hair color and type, as well as in the shape of the human skull, facial characteristics, and many other genetically-linked or -influenced traits. We then have to add in the influences of environment, including evidences of rapid evolution and growing genetic diversity among modern humans.

And that’s just here on Eath.

We in the LDS Church have historically been strongly influenced by our British/European roots in our view of the physical nature of God and Christ. But what if the Gospel had been restored (for argument’s sake and ignoring the socio-politcal difficulties) in Africa, China, or India, or among indigenous peoples in Australia, South America, or North America? How would we view God and Christ then? It’s an old argument, I know, but valid nonetheless.

Now, let’s extend the above to countless worlds spread across this universe, inhabited by “begotten sons and daughters unto God” who have lived and been shaped by countless different ecologies and environments, and who will need to be genetically and physically compatible with those worlds. What physiological traits of those humans might emerge and dominate on a given world vs. what traits would be common across all worlds?

The common traits would likely correspond to those common among humans here on Earth:  upright, bilateral symmetry, two arms, two legs, front-facing head with basic facial organization, two genders [yeah, yeah, go argue elsewhere], and so on. I suspect we’d recognize them as human — but, again, that covers an awful lot of ground right here on Earth.

There could be signficant differences as well. As a simple example, consider this listing of “7 people from around the world with real mutant superpowers” (warning: profanity; also, ignore the guy with the flying jet pack). Again, these are all people here on Earth; the human body, as we know it, is capable of things that we don’t fully understand, and such characteristics — rare here on Earth — could be selected as a survival trait on another world. Other rare characteristics, considered here as birth defects — such as extra digits or webbing between fingers and toes — could again be normal and common elsewhere.

There could likewise be variations in the characteristics listed above — height, eye color, hair color/style, skin color, skull and facial characteristics, overall body shape, and so on — that don’t appear here on Earth.  Nothing inherently prohibits blue hair, red eyes, or green skin; while they’re not in the human genome here on Earth (as far as I know), they could well exist in the human genetic code on other worlds.

The planet itself could shape or require a changed physiology. Consider factors such as gravity, air pressure, O2 content, solar radiation, humidity, land mass vs. water surface, dissolved minerals in water, climate (with the resulting weather patterns), and the fundamental chemistry of plants and animals, that is, food sources. This could change existing physiology — consider the claimed physiological adaptations of population groups that have lived for many generations at high altitudes — or there could be completely new physical characteristics that don’t correspond to any human characteristics here. As a simple example of the latter, imagine infrared sensors on one’s cheeks or neck, analogous to those found on pit vipers; this could be useful on a world surrounding a small red sun (the single most common type of star out there).

At this point, the image that comes to mind is (wince) “Star Trek: The Original Series”, with its variety of very-human-looking aliens, usually having only cosmetic external differences among them, though often claiming significant internal and sensory differences. Of course, “Star Trek” did this because it was cheaper and easier to slap some makeup and prosthetic foreheads on real humans than to try to create a truly non-human alien (though they actually made a few decent stabs at that as well).

In sum, I don’t think we can presume that the “begotten sons and daughters unto God” on these billions (or more) of other worlds would necessarily blend in while wandering around the BYU campus. But they would be our brothers and sisters, nevertheless. In that, we and the Vatican would agree — but we would mean it a bit more literally. ..bruce..

Aging with grace

LDS Doctrine, Main, Personal

Come, thou Fount of every blessing,
tune my heart to sing thy grace;
streams of mercy, never ceasing,
call for songs of loudest praise.
Teach me some melodious sonnet,
sung by flaming tongues above.
Praise the mount! I’m fixed upon it,
mount of thy redeeming love.

This morning , I was listening as usual to the 7 am rebroadcast of last week’s “Music and the Spoken Word” on BYU TV (I’m usually at church when the 9:30 am live broadcast comes on). The closing number was “Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing”, always one of my favorite hymns (and one that needs to be in our LDS hymn books). By the end of the performance, I was weeping — and not (just) because of the beauty of the arrangement and the singing. This hymn, like few others, speaks to my deepest struggles and frustrations in my own personal life.

I joined the Church at age 14, some 41 years ago. Through those four decades, I always assumed that by, let’s say, age 55 I’d be a lot more perfected than I am. As I have stated any number of times in talks and lessons at church, including just last week, the power of the Atonement is not just the power to cleanse us — it is also the power to perfect us, to change our hearts, to receive Christ’s image in our countenance.

Yet a few months ago I ran across some note cards I had written on twenty years earlier listing goals and areas for improvement in my life. With no little dismay, I saw that I could just as easily have written them just a week earlier instead of nearly half a lifetime ago. Where the change of heart, where the progress, where the perfection?

Here I raise mine Ebenezer;
hither by thy help I’m come;
and I hope, by thy good pleasure,
safely to arrive at home.
Jesus sought me when a stranger,
wandering from the fold of God;
he, to rescue me from danger,
interposed his precious blood.

It may just be me, but I wonder if we as Latter-day Saints generally tend to shift from focusing on works to relying on grace as we grow older. This doesn’t mean that we abandon our efforts at service to others and personal righteousness — quite the contrary — but that we realize how far short we will always fall from where we need to be. We struggle with the trivial and the mundane, and wonder how we’d ever deal with the wrenching and the profound — not always realizing that it is the starkness of the latter that often makes those decisions easier. It is in the day-to-day things that we often trip up.

As I grow older, I understand better the repetition of the phrase “endure to the end” in the scriptures. A large part of that enduring is, I think, enduring ourselves, particularly our own imperfections, and not becoming discouraged thereby. I think we run the real risk of giving up in frustration at our own failings, at the messes large and small that we’ve made in our own lives and the lives of those around us. It is why I think Paul and Mormon placed “hope” right between “faith” and “charity” — it is hope that keeps us bound to Christ, even when faced with our own sins, errors, and weaknesses.

O to grace how great a debtor
daily I’m constrained to be!
Let thy goodness, like a fetter,
bind my wandering heart to thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
prone to leave the God I love;
here’s my heart, O take and seal it,
seal it for thy courts above.

This last verse is the one that makes me weep. It captures my fears, my frustrations, my hopes, and my pleas to God. The foundation of my hope is that I’m pretty good at enduring; beyond that, I simply have to trust that God’s grace will do the rest.  ..bruce..

[cross-posted over at Mormon Mentality]

(Face buried in hands. Again.)

LDS Society, Main, Media

Ok, if you haven’t seen the news yet, the guy responsible for the Mormon missionaries cheesecake calendar has been summoned to a disciplinary council:

Chad Hardy, the brain behind the Men on a Mission calendars, which feature topless returned Mormon missionaries doing their best to look sexy, is facing discipline and possible excommunication because of the project.

Check out this Associated Press article on the controversy.

The basics are this: Hardy got a letter from Frank E. Davie, a Las Vegas Mormon church leader. The letter summoned him to a meeting with the church’s council of elders to discuss his “conduct unbecoming a member of the church.”

Of course, all the news articles are playing up the “possibility of excommunication”, though in truth I can’t imagine that any stake president in his right mind would excommunicate someone for this calendar.

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UPDATED 07/13/08: Sheesh, well, I guess I was sure wrong about that last statement.
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I understand the concept of disciplinary councils to ‘protect the good name of the Church’, but in cases such as this, it appears to me to have the opposite effect. The Church looks silly and the calendar (and its creator) gets far more publicity — and, most likely, far more sales — than if the Church has just maintained a dignified silence over the whole matter.

Sigh. ..bruce..

“Tablet ignites debate on Messiah and resurrection”

Belief systems, Book of Mormon, LDS Doctrine, Main, World Religions

The “debate” cited in this New York Times article is triggered by a stone tablet — apparently predating Christianity — that talks of a Messiah rising from the dead after three days:

JERUSALEM — A three-foot-tall tablet with 87 lines of Hebrew that scholars believe dates from the decades just before the birth of Jesus is causing a quiet stir in biblical and archaeological circles, especially because it may speak of a messiah who will rise from the dead after three days.

If such a messianic description really is there, it will contribute to a developing re-evaluation of both popular and scholarly views of Jesus, since it suggests that the story of his death and resurrection was not unique but part of a recognized Jewish tradition at the time.

Of course, that’s not going to faze Latter-day Saints much, since we believe that Jewish prophets were fortelling the Messiah’s death and resurrection (after three days) several centuries before Christ’s birth. Worth reading the whole article.  ..bruce..

P. S. Sorry for the lack of posting; it should be picking up a bit more this week.