Compassion Theory of the Atonement

I’ve not done many religious oriented posts of late. I wanted to return to Blake Ostler’s compassion theory of the atonement which he discusses in volume 2 of his Exploring Mormon Thought series: The Problem of Theism and the Love of God. This was by far my favorite volume in the series, although [...]

Evolution and Theology

Yes, I’m really behind on blog posts here. Sorry, I’ve been quite busy. Larval Subjects had an interesting post on theology and evolution. It’s primarily brief comments on Nagel, Fodor and Plantinga responding to Darwinism. However Levi raises a good critique I’ve heard both from more fundamentalist critics of evolution as [...]

Mormonism, Externalism and OOO

I’d brought up at LDS-Herm my recent comments on Heidegger, Peirce and externalism. While this is one of those topics where there appears no over LDS connection I did find it interesting that this discussion was so close to topics I’ve been studying off and on for many years. In fact this blog [...]

Religious Belief & Reformed Epistemology

One thing that many religious thinkers have appealed to in religious epistemology is the idea of reformed epistemology. This is roughly the idea that you can be justified in a belief without having the conditions of your justification before you. That is you can know without being able to give reasons for your [...]

God and Completion

It seems to me that several major strains of Mormon thought have paradoxes within God. However the paradoxes are quite different than say some Christian theologians had paradox. (Say Anselm) The traditional Christian paradoxes tended to argue that God is either not bound by logic or that he is so Other that [...]

Faith Instinct

Over at Gene Expression Razib reviews Nicholas Wade’s The Faith Instinct. It sounds like a different sort of book from the more cognitive science oriented ones like Scott Atran’s In Gods We Trust. (Which I enjoyed a great deal). One problem I’ve always had over the question of the evolution of religion [...]

Ethics and the Death of God

I was reading a post at Secular Right that was bringing up the old canard about needing the idea of God to ground moral order. This is the idea that atheism intrinsically leads to immorality. Now of course this is demonstrably false. I don’t see any evidence that atheists or agnostics in [...]

Sartre’s Existentialism and the Meaning of Life

Maverick Philosophy has a post up on Sartre’s Existentialism and the Meaning of Life. It seems to me some of the critique applies to Mormons. Mormon thinkers have often tended to adopt a Nietzschean or Satrean approach to the meaning of life – but one in which there is a kind of overcoming [...]

More on the Atheist Debate

Surprisingly that quick post from the other day on Postmodern Conservative and the New Atheists got a bit of traction. Razib put up some comments at Secular Right. There were then two more posts (here and here) at Postmodern Conservative. I think my own position was misunderstood a little. I’m not [...]

Debating the Mormon Theology of Spirits

Over at NCT Geoff has up a pretty good discussion of the theology of spirits in Joseph Smith’s thought. I think the comments went pretty well, although as is common there the volume gets a bit high. (Comment 77 and counting at the moment)
The basic debate is over the meaning [...]

PoMo Conservative against Atheists

The PostModern Conservative has a post up against New Atheism.
“…hit the new atheists hard with the Heideggerian criticism of the vulgarity of their materialism. They cowardly avoid the question of being, of why is there is being rather than nothing at all, or of even why scientists or other free persons could come [...]

Only Begotten in the Flesh

I know I said I was going to talk a lot of theology and religion this month and haven’t. So let me bring something up I’ve been thinking about a lot. Obviously Mormon theology places a strong emphasis on materialism. How much varies in various theologies, but by and large even those [...]

Creationism as a GOP Litmus Test?

There’s some interesting discussion about whether Creationism has become a kind of litmus test for GOP candidates. Razib, writing over at Secular Right, notes
[I]t looks like 3 of the front-runners for the G.O.P. nomination are rather frank Creationists (Palin, Huckabee and Pawlenty). I’m skeptical about any of these as likely candidates (i.e., if [...]

Ardis on the Handcart Rescue Lesson

Ardis has up two posts on this week’s Sunday School lesson about the Martin and Willie handcart companies. The first is a discussion of the controversy. The second is Ardis talking about how she taught the lesson. The lesson went reasonably well in our ward, if a tad sentimental at times. [...]

Missing Dads and Bad Behavior: Environment or Genes?

An other fascinating post from Razib. This one on the question about whether bad behavior from homes without dads is primarily due to environment (as both liberals and conservatives tend to suggest) or genes. I’d never have even thought to raise the question. It’s quite fascinating even though it doesn’t fully resolve [...]

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