Nonviolence vs. Pacifism, or How to solve unsolveable problems?

Wednesday,February 1st, 2012 Leave a comment

How to countenance a situation that can’t be countenanced? I started thinking about that again as I was reading the updated biography of Nelson Mandela by Anthony Sampson (updated by John Battersby, pub. 2011). First of all, there is the kind of racism that, while stepping on your toes, isn’t about running you completely to the ground so as to avoid having to make concessions. Then there is the other kind that sees you as property and whipping you to work harder so as to squeeze every last bit out of you until you’re discarded as useless.

We are dealing with the latter kind here. When Mandela was born in Transkei, Eastern Cape in 1918 Read more…

Good and Evil — Thinking of Moral Philosophy

Thursday,January 5th, 2012 Leave a comment

I must stress my disclaimers here, especially: These thoughts are my own, if by nothing else, my adopting them because they make sense and sound right. Also, I am by no means an official representative of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Just a member with a few decades of experience on local/district (call it diocese or, stake, as we call it). Please feel free to comment, even if you haven’t read every single word here–this is, after all, 1,500 words. I love learning new stuff.

Also, if you run into any leftover spilling mistokes, please let me know and I’ll fix ‘em.

There are many, who struggle to understand good and evil from a post-modern perspective. Read more…

Rise (and fall) of rational Theology

Sunday,August 7th, 2011 4 comments

When I mentioned King James Bible in an earlier post, I deliberately left out the turmoil of Continental Europe. The 17th century brought on wars that have somewhat falsely been called religious wars, but are generally the 30 years war.

It was about formerly Catholic princes, king, dukes etc. pitting their forces against Read more…

Celebrating King James Bible

Friday,August 5th, 2011 1 comment

Some others may have read the August Ensign, and noted the pages dedicated to celebrating 400 years of King James Bible. I was sort of inspired to put my 2 cents about the Bible in ordered bits as if someone else were interested in my thoughts. Feel free to criticise/correct me; but my hope is that people would study history, so we could learn from past mistakes. Read more…

Finding the historical “Truth”

Friday,June 17th, 2011 Leave a comment

It’s interesting to notice how easy it is to misunderstand/misinterpret history. Historical “facts” arise from different sources, and it is the historian’s job to sift the documentary evidence and see what kind of balance comes out in the end. And the balance doesn’t necessarily come from the volume of the documentation. Popular lies get reported much more–creating documentary evidence–than the uncomfortable truth. Read more…

Crisis, Choice and Commitment

Thursday,May 26th, 2011 2 comments

So a theme I’ve been reading about lately is the crisis of faith phenomena in Mormon circles. It seems that there are endless numbers of people who 1) have been brought up in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) by parents, who have taught the gospel at home and have strongly supported their childrens’ activity; 2) have also “found out” something they think is compromising Read more…

Oh, Mother!

Friday,May 20th, 2011 Leave a comment

So, I am being “inspired” to write this partially (a big part, I must confess) by an article/podcast discussion about the issue at MormonMatters.org. Not plagiarizing, but just tossing out some thoughts to consider. I encourage you to get familiar with the article and podcast.

The podcast shoots down some stuff that many of us LDS folks have heard in recent decades. An example: “We don’t talk about Heavenly Mother Read more…

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