On the 2nd Day of Christmas...

On the 2nd day of Christmas
My true love gave to me:

Two Starbucks mugs

And Celine Dion's latest CD!

On The 1st Day of Christmas...

On the 1st day of Christmas
My true love gave to me
Celine Dion's latest CD!

God in a Box

My mind was wandering in my philosophy class a few weeks ago while we were discussing the attributes of God. The following argument popped into my head- feel free to hate it, but these are the kinds of things that I think about on a daily basis.

The Dragon’s Argument Regarding God’s Purpose

1) God’s purpose is to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man (by “man” we can assume “humankind”).

2) God is perfect.

3) Since failure implies imperfection, a perfect being never fails to accomplish its purposes.

4) Thus God never fails to accomplish his purposes.

5) Not all humankind will achieve the immortality and eternal life contained in God’s purpose.

6) Thus, either God will fail in his purpose because he is not perfect (2-4 are false), premise 1 is not God’s purpose, or all humankind will somehow achieve immortality and eternal life (5 is false).

Draco’s objections:

a) God is bound by the laws of justice and agency. It is not he who fails, but humankind that fails in achieving eternal life.

b) “Man” does not refer to all humankind, but rather to all righteous people.

The Dragon’s Rebuttal:

Objection (a) is irrelevant; the purpose still belongs to God and so failure to bring to pass said purpose belongs, at least in part, to God.

Objection (b) is false. Purpose implies a desire to accomplish something, so objection (b) argues that God does not desire for all humankind to achieve immortality and eternal life. Further, the scripture does not say “righteous men,” but simply “man.” God loves all of his children equally and equally desires each person’s immortality and eternal life.

Wow- talk about philosophy mingled with scripture! Ever since I joined the LDS church, my mother has told me that she thinks we try to put God in a box by claiming we know more than we can know about the nature of God. Perhaps she is right; perhaps we limit God too much in our thinking which leads to problems and contradictions like the one above. I'm not saying that God is all mysterious and distant- I think He can be very personal and close. But sometimes I wonder if we don't try to put our thoughts into God's head.

Live and Let Live

"No one of us ought to issue vetoes to the other, nor should we bandy words of abuse. We ought, on the contrary, delicately and profoundly to respect one another's mental freedom: then only shall we bring about the intellectual republic; then only shall we have that spirit of inner tolerance without which all our other tolerance is soulless, and which is empiricism's glory; then only shall we live and let live, in speculative as well as in practical things." -William James

Do You Know What I Know?

So I posted a pretty long post a few days back about what it means to really “know” something, but I felt like it was too long, too cynical, and too preachy of a post. It now exists only as a draft and it will probably stay that way. But I don’t want to completely abandon this train of thinking, so I’m going to give you the abridged version of The Dragon’s argument concerning knowledge:

Our definition of “knowing” something in the church is different from the universal idea of “knowing” something. Knowing, in the universal sense, implies that one has evidence such that the truth of something is an indefectible certainty. In other words, there can be no doubt whatsoever and there must be undeniable proof. Knowledge is more than just belief or faith.

In the church we say that we “know” a lot of things to be true. In reality, we only believe that we know. Why is that? It is because our evidence for believing things (like the church is the only true church, the Book of Mormon is true, etc.) does not provide undeniable proof. It might be considered strong proof, but one can still doubt the verity of such things. This means we don’t know- we just believe.

But what about a spiritual witness? Doesn’t that provide certain evidence so that we can say that we really know? Spiritual experiences can also be doubted, so they cannot be used as indubitable evidence to claim sure knowledge. Again, they could be classified as strong evidence, but that still only lets us believe with reason- it doesn’t allow us to say that we know.

This is why I really disliked that General Conference talk about knowing that you know that you know. Not only is that confusing, but it is impossible when it comes to spiritual ideas. At best you can believe that you know that you know- but that doesn’t mean that your belief is true.

Then why are we so set on testifying that we know things? I think it’s because we are taught to say that we know and because it can be comforting- even empowering. And apparently it’s not enough to just have faith or believe. It’s almost taboo to say “I believe that…” during a testimony meeting. I had a talk with Luisa about this the other day and I really liked her explanation of things. She said that we come to the point where we believe so strongly that something is true, that the best word we can come up with to describe the feeling is knowing. I mean, come on- who wants to say I believe that I know…? She also pointed out that she thinks it’s refreshing when she hears someone say, “I believe that…” or “I have faith that…” –it sounds honest. I personally think the insistence on using “I know” so copiously in the church manipulates people into thinking that they know things. Maybe this is part of the reason that people (like my parents) think that our church brainwashes people.

Really, how can we say we know truths that the rest of humanity does not know when we, in the church, have created our own definition of knowledge?

Okay- so that was still pretty long, but it’s a big idea.

"One day our generation..."

I took my dear friend Luisa with me to the Matis’s FHE yesterday and she had a wonderful time. :) Luisa comes from a nuclear LDS family; her father is in the stake presidency, her mother is an amazing do-everything woman, and all of her siblings are active and have been married (or will be getting married quite soon) in the temple. Luisa and I grew up together, and in high school I remember her being one of the most conservative people ever and she was very outspoken about her views. She was the one who invited me to church and to listen to the missionaries. Since then she has been through a few years of college and served a mission, and now I think she’s become more of a moderate, even embracing some liberal ideas.

Luisa was so excited to see people that she knew at the FHE. She hurried over to them laughing and bubbling. :) When they saw her they gave her a look and asked, “Wait, are you…?” She told me later as she was looking around the room, “You know, I don’t know which ones are "family" and which ones aren’t, and it doesn’t really matter. Maybe some people here think I am "family"- I don’t really care!”

I was happy to see that she felt so comfortable in that environment, where I’m sure a lot of Mormons would not. It gives me hope that with time, more and more people will become more understanding of our situation- looking past the “ick-factor” of SSA and reaching out with loving arms.

(I love you Luisa!)

Of the Devil

I know that my last post was about tolerance, however, there are certain things that are absolutely intolerable. The following is possibly the strongest philosophical argument that I have come up with to date. I want to address one of the most serious sins that Mormons commit- and if you have committed this sin then you automatically lose 100 points. I’m talking about the plague of plagues- that disgusting practice called scrapbooking. What? You think it’s harmless? Oh, oh- you have been deceived! Here is my unshakeable proof to show you how scrapbooking is of the Devil.

1) At least 95 percent of scrapbooking is kitschy (for those who are unfamiliar with this word, it basically connotes tackiness, suckiness, ugliness, doilyness, and granny decorationsness).

2) Scrapbooking is a waste of time. You could be playing with your children, spending time with your family, reading a good book, or alphabetizing your soups; pretty much anything is more productive. Why spend hours on end kitsching up your photo album when you and your posterity will almost never look at it. I see no problem with keeping a regular photo album- it’s nice to look back on happy times- but seriously, is decorating your album going to make the memories any happier. No. If anything it will just kitschify your memories.

3) Scrapbooking is a waste of money. Someone could start a college fund for their child with the amount they spend on scrapbooking.

4) Satan wants us to waste our time, waste our money, our talents, and he likes kitschy things.

5) Therefore, Satan wants you to do scrapbooking (!).

“But people like my scrapbooks!” you might say. They’re just lying to you. When you pull out the scrapbook to show to your poor guests, you think you’re sharing memories with them. But at the same time you’re implicitly saying, “Here, hold this waste-of-time book for a while and look at all the kitschyness.” And if the person is not a scrapbooker, they say, “Okay- wow, this is pretty fancy!” They are really thinking, “Okay- wow, this person sure wasted a lot of time on this kitschy book.” If the person is a fellow scrapbooker, then they’re really thinking, “Oh, I hope my scrapbook is cooler than this one. If it’s not then it’s off to Scrapbook Heaven to load up on ribbons and kitty cat stickers!”

See? Satan likes people to scrapbook. It also causes other people to waste their time. Now I’m not saying that scrapbooking is damnable (though I wouldn’t be surprised if the issue came up in General Conference), but I’m almost positive that all your scrapbooks are going to hell- where they belong! Sorry.