Dave's Mormon Inquiry

Technology Might Kill You

As promised, here are comments on another chapter from The Lord of the Rings and Philosophy, this time from chapter 2, "The Cracks of Doom: The Threat of Emerging Technologies and Tolkien's Rings of Power," by Theodore Schick, Jr. The article has the Ring symbolizing a new discovery or technology that could Destroy the World As We Know It, then asks what we could or should do about it in the here and now. The decision of the Council of Elrond to attempt the risky destruction of the Ring was even a possibility only because the Ring could be destroyed and never refashioned. The destructive technologies we now face are more like genies that can't be put back in the bottle and pose sobering challenges (both practical and moral) as we stumble into the 21st century.

Something Wicked

"By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes." We don't seem to have any trouble identifying (by a gut feeling, a thumb feeling, or some other device) evil persons, entities, or events, but it is trickier than it first appears to give a clear explanation of what exactly constitutes evil, where it comes from, and why it is so prevalent if God is both sovereign and good. I'm going to approach the subject from a comfortable distance, considering the philosophical approach to the "problem of evil" by way of a short essay, "Tolkien and the Nature of Evil," by Scott Davison, chapter 8 in The Lord of the Rings and Philosophy (Open Court Pub., 2003). The book has been in my Featured Books queue (left sidebar) for some time now, although it is a short and easy read (hey, I've been busy). I might put up a couple of additional posts from other chapters in the book over the coming week. I'm sure you'll be interested in, for example, "Überhobbits," and "The Bounded Joy of Existentialists and Elves."

Magic Realism

I first came across the term "magic realism" just last year in a series of posts at the award-winning blog AMV (here, here, here, and here). My literary dictionary defines magic realism as "a kind of modern fiction in which fabulous and fantastical events are included in a narrative that otherwise maintains the 'reliable' tone of objective realistic report." Wouldn't you know, I just recently stumbled into magic realism while reading Making the Ghost Dance (Signature, 2006), a short novel by an established Utah author. It's an interesting genre.

1491

I just breezed through 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus (Knopf, 2005). The author is Charles C. Mann, a journalist, but he's done his homework in trying to synthesize the present state of science regarding the origin and history of pre-Columbian America. Bottom line: the simplified textbook version that most people got in school is now largely superceded by new developments, but there is so much dispute at the moment regarding alternative theories that there is no definitive consensus theory to replace it. I'll comment on the book for a few paragraphs, then come back to the Mo app at the end.

Metaphysics | Mormonism

Just finished The Basics of Western Philosophy (2004), a topical intro to philosophy and a break from my usual preference for historical intros to philosophy (I never seem to get beyond the intro stage). I think of Clark as a real amateur philosopher, whereas I'm just an amateur amateur philosopher. I'm happy just to be able to spell Nietzsche correctly without looking it up. Anyway, a good topical intro gives a more technical intro to the subject (I reviewed a similar topical intro here last year). I'll write about metaphysics (what is the stuff that makes up reality?) today and maybe do a second post on morality (defining and living the good life) tomorrow.

Evolutionary Psychology

Just finished Evolutionary Psychology (2004), a textbook on a new approach to psychology that has been on my "Now Reading" list (now banished far down the left sidebar) for about a year. Evolutionary psychology might revolutionize the field. It is a new subdiscipline that attempts to understand human psychology in all its varieties in an evolutionary context, considering the many facets of human thought and behavior in light of their adaptive contribution to human survival (i.e., reproduction). For those with some knowledge of and sympathy for evolution, the book makes psychology understandable, even reasonable. I don't have time to write a lot, but I'll throw out a couple of teasers, then end up with this interesting question: Is there a Mormon view of psychology?

Aristotle for Everybody

Just finished Aristotle for Everybody (1978) by Mortimer J. Adler, an American philosopher. Adler was an interesting fellow in his own right: he dropped out of high school, attended college but failed to complete the requirements for a bachelor's degree, then was awarded a doctorate in philosophy at Columbia. His book on Aristotle is eminently accessible. It's organized around Aristotle's analysis of knowledge, specifically how people come to know things. He defined three types of knowledge: how to make things (techne), how to do things (phronesis), and how to obtain knowledge of things as they really are, behind appearances (episteme). This approach helps to disaggregate our overused English word "to know."

The Sociopath Next Door

About a month ago, I breezed through The Sociopath Next Door: The Ruthless Versus the Rest of Us (2005) by Martha Stout, a PhD and practicing clinical psychologist. This is one of the more engaging psychoreads you will find; it is highly recommended. The book is not about serial killers, it's about your first boss. Or you sister's ex-husband. Or that creepy member you kind of got to know when you were a missionary. You will be probably be surprised who this book is about. I was.

Thomas Jefferson: Our New World Man

I just read Joyce Appleby's Thomas Jefferson (Henry Holt, 2003), a short biography of our finest president. So accomplished was he that being President for eight years did not even make his short gravestone resumé, which notes the Declaration of Independence, the Virginia Statute on Religious Freedom, and the University of Virginia as the three achievements he was most proud of. He was one of only a handful of men to be an eyewitness to both revolutions that define the modern world, the American Revolution in the 1770s and the French Revolution in the 1790s. This frontier aristocrat, whose boyhood backyard stretched 500 miles to the Mississippi, summarized the Enlightenment for succeeding centuries. Not Rousseau, not Voltaire, not Locke, not Adam Smith, but this young American wrote, "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal."

At Sea With Jack London

I finished The Cruise of the Snark, a collection of Jack London essays recounting his cruise on a sailing boat he had built from scratch in San Francisco. He, his wife Charmain, and several sailing companions sailed to Hawaii, the Marquesas, Tahiti, Samoa, Fiji, and eventually the Solomons between 1907 and 1909. The plan was to go around the world, but various picturesque island maladies overcame the crew, including London, while in the Solomons, which ended the adventure. Surprisingly, reading travel narratives is a little like reading early LDS history. How so, you ask?

America on Trial

In America on Trial (2004), Alan Dershowitz looks at great trials in US history from a defense lawyer's perspective. These cases open a view on some strangely revealing pages of history such as the cases of Shoeless Joe Jackson, Colonel Billy Mitchell, and Alger Hiss, but I'll just touch on a few cases that might be of particular interest to DMI readers: the Salem witchcraft trials, the Leo Frank affair, the Scopes trial, and Lawrence v. Texas.

A Tough Year in Massachusetts

Such was 1692, when 19 people in Salem Village were hanged as witches, four died in jail, and one unfortunate was pressed to death with stones. I recently finished A Delusion of Satan: The Full Story of the Salem Witch Trials (orig. pub. Doubleday, 1995) by Frances Hill, a British journalist and writer. This isn't a sensationalized account, however, but a carefully detailed narrative that scores most of its points through understatement and excerpts from extant letters and transcripts. I think every Mormon should read a good book on the Salem witch trials. Why?

Beyond Belief

Encouraged by the spirited discussion in the comments to my earlier post on the Gospel of Thomas, I dug up and read a copy of Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas (Random House, 2003) by Elaine Pagels. I was surprised. From the title, I was expecting sort of a critical indictment of orthodox Christian views, using the "secrets" from Thomas to critque orthodox "belief." In fact, it is a crisp, clear review of early Christian history, with an emphasis on the slow development of the canon, the problematic role of Iraneus, and the fate of the Gospel of Thomas. Great book, lousy title.

Think

I just finished Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy (OUP, 1999) by Simon Blackburn. It's more of a topical treatment and does seem rather more "compelling" than the standard historical survey. Hopefully, by the end of the book the reader can confront the first question of philosophy -- Why bother? -- with some type of response. Several, probably, as the book flows smoothly through the major areas of philosophy in eight crisp chapters, covering knowledge, mind, free will, the self, God, reasoning, the world (objects), and what to do (ethics).

The Disappearance of God

I finished The Disappearance of God: A Divine Mystery (Little, Brown, 1995) by Richard Elliott Friedman, a noted biblical scholar best known for his earlier book Who Wrote the Bible? In Part I of Disappearance, he recounts how the Hebrew Bible shows God progressively retreating from direct human contact and self-revelation; in Part II, he depicts Nietzsche and Dostoevsky as latter-day prophets delivering unwelcome news to their readers; in Part III, he examines how discussions of the Big Bang, our modern creation myth, are nevertheless infused with a sense of spirituality and reverence. Creation has, in a way, supplanted the Creator in the modern view.

Roads to Modernity

Welcome back to the future, everyone. It's 2005! Another five years and we'll actually have a name for our decade again, either "the tens" or "the teens." For my first post of the year I'm going to make a few comments on Gertrude Himmelfarb's The Roads to Modernity: The British, French, and American Enlightenments (Alfred A. Knopf, 2004), as it is due tomorrow and I don't want to break my "no more late book return fines" New Year's resolution on the second day of the year.

Atheism in the Postmodern World

Just finished The Twilight of Atheism: The Rise and Fall of Disbelief in the Modern World (Doubleday, 2004) by Alister McGrath, a professor of historical theology at Oxford.  McGrath gives a refreshingly objective account of the declining fortunes of atheism as an ideology.  Full-blown atheism really did not exist before the 18th century.  It gathered momentum in the 19th century as it became intellectually defensible, acting as an ideology of liberation from oppressive religious institutions allied with state power.  It was legitimized by arguments supplied by Feurbach, Marx, and Freud.  In the post-Darwinian era of the late 19th and early 20th century, belief in God fell out of fashion and religious institutions themselves adopted a good measure of secularity under the banner of Liberal Christianity.

Tolkien, Depth, and the Book of Mormon

Just finished The Road to Middle-Earth: How J.R.R. Tolkien Created a New Mythology (Houghton Mifflin, rev. ed., 2003) by Tom Shippey, himself a professor of English language.  Shippey is a sympathetic critic trying to rescue Tolkien from the obloquy heaped on him by two generations of literary critics who were simply not equipped to understand or evaluate the roots and the context of Tolkien's creation.  He created his own genre, a singular achievement that precious few authors manage even with a chorus full of literati cheering them on.  Three brief points on what went into the unique mix of Tolkien as an author:

1. THE WAR - Tolkien fought in the trenches in World War I.  He returned, but the war cost him his closest friends, the young scholars who were his college friends but died in the muddy fields of France.  Tolkien came by his battle scenes honestly.
2. CATHOLICISM - Tolkien was a lifelong and dedicated Catholic.  While it was early remarked that the peoples of Middle-Earth appeared to lack religion, the later (sometimes posthumous) publication of Tolkien's additional writing makes it clear that in subtle ways his Catholicism did influence the world he created.  For example, men were fallen in Middle-Earth, but not elves, not even the "wood elves," those who did not visit the West.
3. LANGUAGES AND TEXTS - He was a professor of English language, meaning Middle English, Old English, and all that.  He could read Beowulf in the original (in fact, he was the one who established Beowulf in the eyes of critics) and, like the Christian poet of Beowulf, was himself a Christian author telling epic tales of a pre-Christian era.

A Very Brief History of Philosophy

Solomon and Higgins wrote A Short History of Philosophy (Oxford Univ. Press, 1996), but that was apparently too long at 305 pages, so in 1997 they came out with A Passion for Wisdom: A Very Brief History of Philosophy, which accomplishes the task in a mere 128 pages. That's as far as they have gone, but if you are really obsessed with brevity, go read Eric Schulman's History of the Universe in 200 Words or Less. He also did it in 6 words and even in 2 words here, here, and here. But I digress. What themes get covered in the 128 pages of Solomon and Higgins' very brief history of philosophy?

Hanging Witches

I'm just getting started with the pleasant little tome A Delusion of Satan: The Full Story of the Salem Witch Trials (Doubleday, 1995) by Frances Hill, with an introduction by Karen Armstrong, noted author of The Battle For God (which I read earlier this year and talked about here). I understand that Satan is something of a touchy topic in polite conversation--I myself have never watched The Exorcist or The Omen (although I did manage The Witches of Eastwick and Meet Joe Black). And the topic of Satan is certainly a flashpoint in fundamentalist religions like Mormonism that hang a lot of doctrinal baggage on the Satan peg. A quick word check, for example, shows the word "Satan" appearing 26 times in the Book of Mormon and "the devil" appearing 89 times. In addition, the two terms appear an additional four times in Joseph's short one-page preface to the 1830 edition that is no longer provided in modern editions.

Mormon Mythology

What does it mean to believe a myth? I just finished Jealous Gods and Chosen People: The Mythology of the Middle East (Oxford, 2004), a mercifully short treatment at 132 pages, about as much myth as I can handle. All the Middle East cultures had mythology, and these powerful and often violent myths still have power to shape modern minds and events for Jews, Christians, and Muslims. This disturbs author David Leeming, who calls this a "devastating influence," contrasting myth-inspired fundamentalist violence with the peaceful counsels of the respective religions. He continues:

Fundamentalists see their way as the only way. They forget that myths--themselves in all likelihood factually untrue--represent truths that are spiritual and philosophical. Myths help to build and to identify functional communities; they are not historical events that can reasonably be used to justify acts of violence and dominance. (italics in original)

Why does this happen? I think we are hard-wired to think mythically. It takes discipline and practice to think historically, philosophically, or scientifically, but myth grows to suit our own biases and desires, and is malleable enough to easily fit the needs of the moment. No wonder mythical thinking is so prevalent. For more on myth, go read Wikipedia's brief entry on Mythology, which includes a paragraph on modern mythology a la Star Trek, Tarzan, or Lord of the Rings.

This all leads up to the title of my post: So what are the uses and abuses of Mormon mythology? What's your favorite Mormon myth?

The Future of Atheism

It's hard to consider atheism (an active and often evangelical disbelief in God) separately from secularism, liberalism, modernism, evolutionism, and all the other "isms" of the modern world. In the newest addition to my "Now Reading" list, The Twilight of Atheism: The Rise and Fall of Disbelief in the Modern World (Doubleday, 2004), Alistair McGrath tries to do exactly that. McGrath is described as a professor of historical theology at Oxford, but he is no shrill Christian demonizing atheism. In the introduction, he writes:

The idea that there is no God captured human minds and imaginations, offering intellectual liberation and spiritual inspiration to generations that saw themselves as imprisoned, mentally and often (it must be said) physically, by the religious past. It is impossible to understand the development of Western culture without coming to terms with this remarkable movement.

One rarely sees this warm feeling for atheism among churchmen, who also tend to emphasize the increasing potency of science and secularism rather than the decline of atheism when they assess the religious landscape of the 21st century. So Twilight should offer an unusual perspective by one with the academic credentials to say something interesting on the subject.

I also finished Holifield's Theology in America and cycled it down to the Religion Book Notes list. A lot happened between the Reformation of Luther and Calvin in the 16th century and the debate between fundamentalism and liberal Christianity in the 20th. Holifield covers the establishment of Calvinism in America in the 17th century, its evolution toward Arminianism (stressing free will) in the 18th century, and the proliferation of new sects, denominations, and churches in the free-market religious scene of 19th-century America. A Mormon might view the book as a productive exercise in doctrinal genealogy.

Ender's Game

I finally read Orson Scott Card's sci-fi novel Ender's Game. Best quote: "There is only one game." Given the rapid evolution of video games and the Internet as a medium of communication and interaction, OSC's depiction of both in the novel have held up amazingly well.

As an LDS reader who got to know OSC via his LDS essays on BeliefNet and Meridian before sampling any of his fiction, I kind of approached the fiction from a different perspective than most. I was reading it to get a fix on OSC as much as for the sci-fi, but there was surprisingly little of either his politics or religion in the book. It was just good, clean fun (ignoring the fact an entire race of sentient insects was wiped out, but having been stung by a wasp last week that didn't cause me much remorse).

So, in case the Brethren are still drawing lots on those openings in the Twelve . . . OSC gets my vote. His religious views are far enough to the right to pass the Big 15 litmus test, plus he is (I'm assuming) rich, which always makes a big impression on LDS leadership (a sign of God's favor, you know). And think of the headlines! So if they're not going to shake things up by calling a woman to be an Apostle, let's go with OSC. [edited 12/22]

Reading Beowulf

I just queued up Beowulf, checking out from my local library the recent Seamus Heaney translation that has reinvigorated the classic Old English epic poem. Reading it is something of an adventure into the world-view of Scandinavian warriors, ancestors of the Vikings; into Old English, the language of the poet and ancestor of modern English; into Ireland and Irish, the home and touchstone of the translator; and even into Tolkien's Middle Earth, as it was Tolkien who rescued Beowulf from the scholarly fog that hung over it before his 1936 essay Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics.

Beowulf is epic poetry that we have in written form but which retains the cadence and syntax of orally transmitted verse. In the same class falls The Iliad and The Odyssey, much of the Old Testament, and Shakespeare (who wrote for the stage, after all). Interestingly, the Book of Mormon falls into this category too, more or less. The book was spoken (falling from the lips of Joseph Smith) before it was written (verbatim by scribes, then edited into verses with punctuation by copy editors at the printer's shop, and touched up ever since in successive editions). Joseph, we know, was a gifted storyteller as a youth who later matured into a fine preacher who could entertain audiences for hours.

Parallelism (of which chiasmus is one example) and alliteration appear in such transcribed oral poetry--these are devices storytellers use to punctuate their delivery and to order the material. I see this oral storytelling perspective as one interesting avenue into the text of the Book of Mormon. Would that someone like Seamus Heaney would come along and translate the Book of Mormon from its rather dated rendition of the King's English into modern verse!

The 9/11 Report

In a daring break with tradition, I bumped a non-LDS book up to the flagship "Book O' Month" spot at the upper-left corner--the 9/11 Report seems so topical and surprisingly informative. The whole "what's up with Islam" theme has been evident to me from the New Books shelf at the library and at bookstores. "Fundamentalist religion," whatever else it is, is religious belief that motivates people to actually do things, often rather ambitious things: pioneer new settlements in the desert (Jewish fundamentalists in Israel), picket abortion clinics or even blow them up (Christian fundamentalists in the US), and become soldiers of Allah in local wars or terrorist cells (Islamic fundamentalists). The secular bureaucrats in Washington have never really grasped that religion moves people--they were simply stunned by Iran in 1979, where religious zealots displaced a "modernizing" ruler. They never understood the Moral Majority. Now they're struggling to grasp the meaning of al Queda.

I think they'd do well to take a drive down the Beltway to the LDS temple in Washington, DC. They should just stare at it for a few minutes, telling themselves, "People did this for religion, not profit." They need to be thinking of how to support a kinder, gentler strain of Islam in the world to win this battle in the long run, I think. Support your local (peaceful) mullah.