I’m pretty gloomy when it comes to questions of human nature. I very much believe in original sin. I don’t buy the optimistic notion that humans aren’t really all that bad, and just need a bit of education to be persuaded to do the right thing. No, I resonate much more with Alma on this one: we’re carnal, sensual, and devilish. It’s not just that without grace, we can’t quite make it to the finish line on our own; we’re wandering off in the wrong direction altogether. It’s why I like Augustine, who would have no patience with the positive self-talk of 20th and 21st century pop psychology. We’re pretty messed up, we human beings. We hurt each other, both inadvertently and intentionally. We hurt ourselves. We set out to do good, but our motives are mixed, and our efforts prone to self-sabotage. We plan to repent–but not yet. Read More
The Keystone Cops of Our Religion
In this ZD feature–Titles in Search of a Post–we provide catchy titles and you, our scintillating and creative readers, have the opportunity of offering suggestions in the comments section as to what such a post should be about, ranging from half-baked free associations to polished paragraphs, and (this should go without saying on our blog) from the sublime to the ridiculous. Enjoy!
(And if you aren’t familiar with the Keystone Cops, click here.)
The Problem of Eve’s Submission
From a feminist perspective, Genesis 3:16 is one of the more difficult passages in scripture. The last phrase, “thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee,” sets up a hierarchical model of marriage in which men lead and women follow. Though the terms have shifted (rule/preside for the men; obey/hearken for the women) over the years, the general model remains in LDS teachings and liturgy–providing a topic of endless discussion for Bloggernacle feminists. In grappling with the contemporary arrangement, in which women covenant to hearken to their husbands, I have encountered a number of arguments which attempt to deal with the apparent sexism. The most commonly cited, at least in my experience, are: Read More
More Like Three Wise Guys, I’d Say
As a kid, I was at least somewhat aware that we Mormons believed differently than other Christians about some crucial doctrines. For example, I knew that our belief in God having a physical body wasn’t widely shared. I also knew that, unlike the sadly misled apostates, we believed that the Wise Men weren’t present at the birth of Jesus.
Yes, I thought that was a central doctrine. I also thought that Mormons uniquely took that position that the Wise Men arrived later. I’m not sure why I thought this was so important or unique. Maybe my parents mentioned it to me once or twice, or suggested I move the Wise Men away from the stable in the nativity scene. I don’t know. It makes me laugh to think back now that I thought it was such a central and important issue.
I’d love to hear of anyone else’s experiences of finding out that the Church-related ideas you thought were crucial as a kid turned out to be not so important.
[In case it’s not clear, my title is a reference to the Far Side cartoon in which a bartender (I think) is dismissing the Wise Men with this line.]
Riding the California Zephyr
6:30 am
My alarm goes off. I’m in a deep sleep, dreaming about my sister Melyngoch coming back from her mission and wanting to go on a crazy hike involving a lot of waterfall crossings. I get up, and pack my last few things. I have a large suitcase, a small one, a backpack and a small bag. Also, two other train necessities: a pillow and blanket. Since I’ll be flying later, I’ve been careful not to bring too much—one of the advantages of train travel is that the luggage limits are rather more generous (not to mention that they don’t come with extra fees), and it’s tempting to over-pack.
Approved Party Song #19
In a discussion about the hymnbook at FMH a few weeks ago, patti said that her husband thinks Put Your Shoulder to the Wheel is the Communist fight song. This reminded me that many years ago, when I was in a BYU ward and this hymn was announced, a friend wrote a note referring to it that said, “Working shoulders of the world, unite!” (Perhaps my friend is patti’s husband.) This comment inspired me to rewrite the hymn: Read More
Trusting God (part 2)
So a couple of years ago, I made a post at Times and Seasons about trusting God. In the meantime, things have changed, and the whole trusting God thing is a challenge for me at the moment. But let me back up a bit. Read More
Latter-day Fairy Tales: Goldilox and the Three Nephites
In this new ZD feature–Titles in Search of a Post–we’ll provide catchy titles and you, our scintillating and creative readers, will have the opportunity of offering suggestions in the comments section as to what such a post should be about, ranging from half-baked free associations to polished paragraphs, and (this should go without saying on our blog) from the sublime to the ridiculous. Enjoy!
Our Homes
I’ve been wanting to write the last couple of days, but I’ve been kind of stuck with my current writing project. In my attempt to either work through this or avoid it (you pick), I’ve come up with some blog posts. They’ve all been fairly random, especially in regards to what we usually talk about around here, so most of them haven’t actually been posted (actually, most of them have only been written in my head at this point). But despite the fact that I don’t want to completely bury our blog in random and off the wall posts, I still do post some of them. Like my last post, which was even entitled Complete Randomness. Or the post about a fly in my bedroom.
I realized that to post such things I must feel pretty comfortable here. At home. And I do. It got me thinking about where I feel at home, and where I don’t, and ways that I can tell. Read More
Complete Randomness
I haven’t blogged in a while, and I’m feeling a little guilty about it. (This is not to suggest that my fellow bloggers are in any way making me feel guilty. If you hadn’t figured it out, we’re kind of laid back about posting around here. No, the guilt is entirely self-induced.) The thing is, I really don’t have anything interesting to blog about. Not even anything uninteresting that I can make an entire post out of. Because, well, posts require thought (semi-coherent ones do, at least), and I’m currently incapable of thought. (This is a fairly common occurrence, what with 3 kids 3 and under.)
So, I’m now going to string together some completely random thoughts and call them a blog post.
Read More
Are There Any “Soft R” Movies? (and Other Movie Rating Musings)
A few months ago, The Baron argued in a post at Waters of Mormon that a weakness of the MPAA movie rating scheme is that it considers only the movie’s worst content category (of violence, profanity, and sex). For example, if a movie has enough profanity to get an R rating, the R says nothing about its levels of violence or sex. Such a movie could have any combination of levels of violence and sex, from none at all up to enough to warrant an R rating on their own even without the profanity.
The Baron pointed out that this practice of rating movies by only their worst type of content might set up an odd incentive:
this only encourages filmmakers to add more “R-rated” content to their movie, since obviously if they know they’re getting an R for violence already, why NOT add a lot of profanity and nudity as well? The rating is going to be the same, either way
This had never occurred to me, but I can see his argument that the rating system would create this incentive. His unstated assumption, though, is that movie makers want to put as much violence, sex, and profanity into their movies as they possibly can. I doubt that that’s actually the case. While I suspect they probably chafe at times at restrictions that trying to get a particular rating might place on them, I would be surprised if getting lots of offensive material in is often one of their major goals.
So which is true? Are movie makers anxious to put lots of offensive content into their movies, or not? What’s fun about this question is that there’s data I can use to try to answer it.
Books, Mormons, and Statistics, part II
Ziff, Ray, and Kent Larsen had it right — the Book of Mormon has the largest standard deviation in ratings of any book on the site. The stat is called “25 Books People Can’t Agree On” and you can see it at the bottom of this page.
The Book of Mormon may be at the top of the list, but it’s in good company, since books by Nathaniel Hawthorne and Isaac Newton are also on the list. (Of course, the urban vampire fantasy and regency romance do drag down the neighborhood a bit.)
It’s also the most widely-owned of any book on that list, by far. There are around 1,600 LibraryThing members who own a total of around 1,800 copies of the Book of Mormon. The next most widely held book is Hawthorne’s The Marble Faun, at around 400 copies. There have been some other popular books on the list, but they tend to drop off when they get very popular, because enough people give them an intermediate rating (2.5-3.5 stars) that it lowers the standard deviation of all the ratings. The Secret, a book made popular by Oprah Winfrey, used to be on the list, but now the standard deviation of the ratings is down to 1.34, well below the current top-25 cutoff of 1.42. Read More
Books, Mormons, and Statistics
If you like books and statistics, you’ll love LibraryThing. They have 554,277 members who have cataloged 33,647,263 books of which 3,850,295 are unique works not shared by anyone else on the site.
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s [Philosopher’s] Stone is owned by more people than anyone else (37,254 copies, 3 of which are mine), although more people have posted reviews of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (704 reviews, with an average rating of 4.43 stars out of 5).
As you might expect, J.K. Rowling is the top author in terms of number of copies of her books owned, but Stephen King is second, even though his top individual book isn’t even in the top 200.
Oh, and one more thing (which is actually the whole point of this post): The Book of Mormon is at the top of a list based on another site-wide statistic. Care to guess what that statistic is?
Why Do We Need the Holy Ghost?
The study of the Holy Spirit (sometimes called pneumatology) is an under-developed area of Christian theology. While volumes of ink have been dedicated to explicating the precise relationship between the Father and the Son, the third Person of the Trinity remains much more elusive, sometimes showing up only as a kind of afterthought. This is not to say, of course, that matters of pneumatology remain entirely unaddressed. For example, the Holy Spirit is often discussed in terms of the relationship of the Father and the Son, as that which binds them together—and also binds us into the trinitarian life which they share. Some theologians grappling with questions of pluralism talk about Christ and the Holy Ghost as a way to balance particularity and universality, as Christ comes in a particular time and place, where the Holy Ghost is sent throughout the world. One twentieth century theologian (Wolfhart Pannenberg) even attempts to bring the Holy Ghost into the dialogue between science and religion, and proposes that it might be understood as a kind of cosmic force field. But compared to many other areas of theology, there isn’t all that much work on the subject. Read More
Sabbatical
At the moment I have several academic projects whose deadlines are looming–along with some demanding family responsibilities–so I’ve decided to go on a blogging sabbatical for the rest of 2008 in order to concentrate my limited time and energy on those other priorities. I have no doubt I’ll eventually be drawn back to the endless fascinations of the Bloggernacle, but for the moment my self-discipline could use the reinforcement of this public commitment to a couple of months away (possibly more, depending on how things go).
In the meantime, best wishes to all of you until we meet again. I very much look forward to catching up on all of the exciting controversies, personal announcements of life passages, and thoughtful considerations of experience when I return.
Vaccinations: My Choice for My Children
Jana has a great post up over at Exponent about an experience she had with her son as a baby. At the end she asks these questions:
I am curious what experiences have contributed to your parenting styles/philosophies? Are there incidents that dramatically shaped your approach to nurturing or caregiving?
I wanted to answer these questions, but I didn’t really want to start a vaccine debate (which can get ugly) on someone else’s site, so I decided to post my response here.
The biggest thing that has contributed to and changed my parenting style and philosophies has been my oldest son’s autism. The biggest thing that it has taught me is to be aware of what is going on with my children and with their bodies. It has also taught me that things that are good for many kids are not necessarily good for my kids. Read More
Excessive Road Signs and Arbitrary Detailed Commandments
Do traffic signs make us safer? A couple of months ago in The Atlantic, John Staddon argued that, on the whole, they may not:
I began to think that the American system of traffic control, with its many signs and stops, and with its specific rules tailored to every bend in the road, has had the unintended consequence of causing more accidents than it prevents. Paradoxically, almost every new sign put up in the U.S. probably makes drivers a little safer on the stretch of road it guards. But collectively, the forests of signs along American roadways, and the multitude of rules to look out for, are quite deadly.
. . . [W]hat is the limited resource . . . in the case of driving? It’s attention. Attending to a sign competes with attending to the road. The more you look for signs, for police, and at your speedometer, the less attentive you will be to traffic conditions. The limits on attention are much more severe than most people imagine.
This problem–where well-intended safety measures multiply and ultimately make us less safe–reminds me of a similar issue that I think sometimes arises in the Church. The problem occurs when we receive commandments that are arbitrary and detailed.
There’s a Fly in My Room…
…and I want it to leave. I can think of two possible ways to get rid of it.
A) Turn off the light.
B) Kill it.
A is problematic because I would feel guilty about turning the light back on, since my husband is in bed asleep next to me. And I can’t actually go to bed yet because I have to switch the wash so my son can have a clean shirt for pictures at preschool tomorrow.
B is problematic because, well, my fly-killing skills are just not that good. I’d definitely have to go downstairs and get the flyswatter (and then I’d have to go back down and put it away, and who really wants to run the stairs a couple of extra times, especially in the middle of the night?). Even then, there’s a good chance I wouldn’t be able to kill it.
So instead of doing anything productive I’m going to write a blog post complaining about the fly buzzing around my bedroom. That’s all. Maybe tomorrow I’ll write a real post. But then again, maybe not.
General Conference Closed Thread
If you have any thoughts about General Conference, please take them elsewhere. Move along.
They said, “Let us win.”
John McCain in Friday night’s debate:
I’d like to tell you, two Fourths of July ago I was in Baghdad. General Petraeus invited Senator Lindsey Graham and me to attend a ceremony where 688 brave young Americans, whose enlistment had expired, were reenlisting to stay and fight for Iraqi freedom and American freedom.
I was honored to be there. I was honored to speak to those troops. And you know, afterwards, we spent a lot of time with them. And you know what they said to us? They said, let us win. They said, let us win. We don’t want our kids coming back here.
And this strategy, and this general, they are winning.