— 1 — If you’re coming here from Conversion Diary, I really recommend you take a look at a guest post series I had this week on the Mormon priesthood. After a couple news sources started reporting on Romney’s priesthood and role as a bishop, and asking whether we’d be concerned if a Methodist priest or a Catholic bishop became a politician, I realized I needed more data about how Mormons think about priesthood. A college friend of mine graciously... Read more
A reader of Marginal Revolution posed a theological thought experiment this week, and a friend challenged me to answer. Here’s the pitch: In this thought experiment you are a contestant on a gameshow. The host of the gameshow (let’s call him Alex) has a notecard that says whether or not god exists and to what extent he is involved in the affairs of mankind. You start with $1,000,000 that you must allocate across five possible categories: Scriptural literalism. Bet into... Read more
In June of 2010, I had a debate with Justin Martyr of the now defunct blog The Faith Heuristic on the topic “R: The Evidence Supports the Existence of God.” Unfortunately Justin has taken down his blog in the interim, so his parts of the debate are lost to the winds of the internet. I’ve collected my posts below, and I think you can still piece together most of the arguments. Rebuttal to Justin (Part 1) – Justin began the... Read more
Now that Michael’s given us an overview of the Mormon priesthood and answered some of my questions about how the priesthood relates to gender and transfiguration of spirit, I think we’ve all got enough background to go on to weirder and wonkier questions. Again, my questions are in bold, his answers follow, and he’s not to be blamed for the illustrations. Q: At various points in the history of Christianity, monks and ascetics were seen as particularly holy because they... Read more
As a follow-up to Michael Haycock’s clarification of what it means to be a Mormon priest or bishop, I did a two-part Q&A about Mormon theology, hierarchy, and culture. My questions are in bold, his answers follow, and he has no culpability for my choice of pictures. Q: Why is the Melchizedek Priesthood reserved to men? Are there any roles reserved to women? Hoo boy. The first question is a loaded one, because it cuts to the quick of the... Read more
Via the Daily Dish, I found an article by Howard P. Kainz, that argues that the media’s relative comfort with Romney’s religion is proof that most Americans don’t consider Mormons to be real Christians. Here’s a pull quote: [T]he fact that Mitt Romney, the first Mormon candidate for the presidency in our nation’s history, is not only a bishop in the LDS church but a High Priest of the highest echelon (the “order of Melchizedek”) within that religion, and is... Read more
The Reason Rally didn’t have a clear ‘ask.’ We weren’t calling on Congress to pass a particular piece of legislation or demanding a timeline for reform. As a result, news media has a lot of latitude to frame the message of the rally. And most of them took their cue from one of the best known speakers: Richard Dawkins. USA Today’s headline was Richard Dawkins to atheist rally: ‘Show contempt’ for faith. They didn’t include a block quote from him,... Read more
In May of 2011, I did a stint guestblogging at Daylight Atheism, while Adam Lee went on vacation. The individual posts are listed below, and you can browse all of them here The Rapture of Charlie Sheen – As Howard Camping’s predicted rapture approached, atheists made sport of his delusion. Is there any point where a belief so obviously false that mocking its adherents is abusive? At what point is a false belief and resistance to reason indistinguishable from mental incompetence? Whom... Read more
After the transition from my old Blogger blog to Patheos, I lost all my post tags, and I’ve been adding them back in a haphazard manner. I’m finally committing to checking links and retagging, starting from the beginning (some 500 posts ago) and working my way back to the present. As a result, I’ll be regrouping some posts into sequences, so don’t be surprised if you see new index posts popping up in your RSS feed. This will make it... Read more
I was really hoping to get more pictures of signs, but it was so rainy that most people had to stow them pretty early. I’ll give more substantive thoughts soon, but right now I’m running late to the American Atheists National Convention, which is also this weekend, so you’ll get a double header. The night before the meetup rally, I went to a dinner where I met up with Jen of BlagHag and Adam of Daylight Atheism. Last year I... Read more
Unequally Yoked
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