Awards
Lists of Brodie award winners:
X-Mormon of the Year 2012: David Twede
X-Mormon of the Year 2011: Joanna Brooks
X-Mormon of the Year 2010: Monica Bielanko
X-Mormon of the Year 2009: Walter Kirn
A Community for Anyone Interested in Mormonism.
Help? Do I belong here?
How do we help “new bloggers” find their voice? Are we really a community that does? I believe we are, or at least can be. Main Street Plaza is an Internet home for people who care about their thoughts and ideas, eventhough weoften disagree. Wedon’t have the same world view,but it helpsus tobe able toarticulateour point of view, and listen to others asthey express theirs.Disagreements on doctrineor different life choices,does nothave to lead to animosity.I hope that we are making a space for Read more [...]
Posted in Affirmation, civil discourse, Education, History, Humor, Main Street Plaza, Open Thread, Philosophy, Uncategorized
What is Faith?
During a recent (perhaps ongoing) discussion of faith (among other things), we found that the four people in the discussion are using four different definitions of faith. Naturally, this led me to ask: “What is faith?” So, I used my faith in Google and in the Internet to get some ideas. First off, Google told me that this question is not trivial. There are several whole books written just to answer the question “What is faith?” and some of the pages that came up danced around the question without Read more [...]
Posted in Philosophy, Quran
Respect versus Idolatry
When Republicans read the United States Constitution in the House of Representatives, they censored the embarrassing passages of the document, you know, the part about slavery and African American being 2/3s people in Article I, Section 2. I am glad that people are ashamed of slavery. On the downside, the efforts to depict the Constitution as perfect strike me as idolatrous. I admire the founding fathers because they were human beings with warts and flaws that achieved an extraordinary feat. Covering Read more [...]
Posted in Philosophy, Politics, Religious Right, Women
Oldies but Goodies: Testimony of a Dissident
A while back another blogger asked me to submit an essay about my Mormon experience. Probably, for good reasons he changed his mind and never published it. Since it is already written and might shed some light on my argument at Times and Seasons, I might as well publish it myself. It might help some people to understand where I am coming from. Testimony of a DissidentWhen I grew up in the seventies and eighties, Church was a liberating experience. My mother converted when I was six. My Read more [...]
Posted in Abuse, Appearances, Bloggernacle, Book of Mormon, Boyd Packer, BYU, Callings, Christianity, Depression, Divorce, Epistemology, Ethics, Europe, excommunication, Family, Freedom, Germany, LDS History, Moving On, Nostalgia, Obedience, Philosophy, Power, Prophets, Science, Sunstone, Theology
Nature’s Values
Our revulsion at the cruelty of the Supreme Leaders henchmen is a powerful refutation of the postmodernist credo that anything goes. After the enlightenment discredited the authority of tradition and religion, the notion that reason or civilization could provide an ersatz God has also collapsed. The efforts of analytical philosophy could neither remove the ambiguity from language nor provide mathematics with a foundation. While most people could not care less, much less understand, analytical Read more [...]
Why Mormons Are Not Conservatives
Andrew Sullivan makes an interesting point: Most Americans have a healthy respect for religious teaching but in their lives give greater preference to common sense and practical experience. That includes almost all religious groups as well – Catholics, in particular, show conservative tendencies. The exceptions? Evangelicals and Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses – who are trained to forego practical reasoning for abstract truths based on unquestionable authority. Evangelical Christians are much Read more [...]
Posted in Culture, Epistemology, Evangelicals, Fundamentalism, Mormon Doctrine, Philosophy, Politics, Religious Right
Peace, Order and Religious Freedom
In the wake of the reformation Europe was torn by religious wars for almost two centuries. France had the Huguenot wars, Britain the civil war between king and parliament, and in Germany, there was the 30 year war, which killed one third of the population. My home town was the seat of a Nassau principality. By the end of the war, seven people remained alive. Conflicts over resources are much easier to resolve than religious differences because one can just split the differences. That’s not Read more [...]
Posted in Family, Freedom, Philosophy, Politics, Sex and Gender, Tolerance
Power and Morality
The Jesuit magazine America features an essay by Cathleen Kaveny, which discusses the concept of inherent evil and it’s political implications. This passage caught my attention: Some Catholic commentators have claimed that the certainty we have about the wrongfulness of intrinsically evil acts means that we should give their prevention priority over other acts, which may or may not be wrong, depending upon the circumstances. Their argument seems to run like this: the church teaches that abortion, Read more [...]
Posted in Ethics, Objectivity, Philosophy, Power, Theology
Sartre’s Spirit World
Wry Catcher’s question whether the notion of spirit world addiction reminded me of Jean Paul Sartre’s Les Jeux Sont Faits, which is particularly interesting to Mormons because Sartre’s description of the afterlife happens to coincide with commonly held notions of the spirit world. Les Jeux Sont Faits is a wonderful drama by Jean Paul Sartre about two lovers who were destined for each other but fate failed to connect them. Meeting as spirits, the lovers file a customer complaint and the “system” Read more [...]
teaching & living Basic Right & Wrong… (guest thread-post)
If a system of beliefs, morals, ethics is to be effective or meaningful in an individual’s life, it has to Start with a Basic understanding of good-bad, right-wrong concept(s). If one starts with detailed instructions on specifics, people will undoubtably quibble about definitions, exceptions, etc. They will tend to hang onto leaders’ senses of right/wrong rather than develop (grow) their own values & sense of guidelines as to conduct & behavior. Leaders will quickly be lulled into micro-managing Read more [...]
Posted in Ethics, Philosophy
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