Irregular Times Diaries: Unfit Discussion

This morning I recieved the following in my email from a student. It is intented to be inspirational, or at minimum cautionary. My response to the student is included at the end.
This is very true……Our God is a wonderful and forgiving God, but what he says is true…..Do not mock him, and be sure not to put anything past him. Our God is merciful, but there are to many people today who do not fear Lord…. that’s the problem. Read the good Book!
DID YOU KNOW THESE FACTS? I SURE DIDNT TILL NOW
Death is certain but the Bible speaks about untimely death!
Make a personal reflection about this….. Very interesting, read until the end…..
It is written in the Bible (Galatians 6:7):
“Be not deceived; God is not mocked:
for whatsoever a man soweth,
that shall he also reap.
Here are some men and women who mocked God :
John Lennon (Singer):
Some years before, during his interview with an American Magazine, he said:
“Christianity will end, it will disappear. I do not have to argue about that. I am certain.
Jesus was ok, but his subjects were too simple, Today we are more famous than Him” (1966)
Lennon, after saying that the Beatles were more famous than Jesus Christ, was shot six times.
Tancredo Neves (President of Brazil ):
During the Presidential campaign, he said if he got 500,000 votes from his party, not even God would remove him from Presidency.
Sure he got the votes, but he got sick a day before being made President, then he died
Cazuza (Bi-sexual Brazilian composer, singer and poet):
During A show in Canecio ( Rio de Janeiro ), while smoking his cigarette, he puffed out some smoke into the air and said: “God, that’s for you.”
He died at the age of 32 of AIDS in a horrible manner.
The man who built the Titanic
After the construction of Titanic, a reporter asked him how safe the Titanic would be.
With an ironic tone he said: “Not even God can sink it”
The result: I think you all know what happened to the Titanic.
Marilyn Monroe (Actress)
She was visited by Billy Graham during a presentation of a show. He said the Spirit of God had sent him to preach to her. After hearing what the Preacher had to say, she said:
“I don’t need your Jesus”.
A week later, she was found dead in her apartment
Bon Scott (Singer)
The ex-vocalist of the AC/DC. On one of his 1979 songs he sang: “Don’t stop me, I’m going down all the way, down the highway to hell”.
On the 19th of February 1980, Bon Scott was found dead, he had been choked by his own vomit
Campinas (IN 2005)
In Campinas , Brazil a group of friends, drunk, went to pick up a friend…… The mother accompanied her to the car and was so worried about the drunkenness of her friends and she said to the daughter holding her hand, who was already seated in the car:
“My Daughter, Go With God And May He Protect You..”
She responded: “Only If He (God) Travels In The Trunk, Cause Inside Here….. It’s Already Full ”
Hours later, news came by that they had been involved in a fatal accident, everyone had died,
the car could not be recognized what type of car it had been, but surprisingly, the trunk was intact. The police said there was no way the trunk could have remained intact. To their surprise, inside the trunk was a crate of eggs, none were broken .
Christine Hewitt (Jamaican Journalist and entertainer)
Said the Bible (Word of God) was the worst book ever written.
In June 2006 she was found burnt beyond recognition in her motor vehicle
Many more important people have forgotten that there is no other name that was given so much authority as the name of Jesus. Many have died, but only Jesus died and rose again, and he is still alive
“Jesus”
P.S: If it was a joke, you would have sent it to everyone.
So are you going to have courage to send this?.
I have done my part, Jesus said
“If you are embarrassed about me,
I will also be embarrassed about you before my father.”

Here’s how I replied:
So…
Whatever God does is by definition the good.
If we want to be good, God should be our role model.
So if someone mocks us, we should kill them in some horrific way that makes it look like we had nothing to do with it.
I’m afraid I don’t find this sort of thinking very inspiring. In fact it makes me nervous to think that people are inspired by stuff like this.

Like my essay on the LDS conception of God, this is only a first draft. It is written with the intention of posting it on a discussion board for my students, but I thought I’d give it a test run here. You will find plenty of places where I ought to offer citations. I will before I offer it to my students.
- Scott

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended for us to forego their use.
- Galileo

Evolution Creation Debate
It is common for students starting college or university to believe in creationism. It is considerably less likely that those same students will believe in creationism upon graduation. Invariably, every semester brings in a new batch of students who reject evolution, sometimes quite vociferously. The purpose of this short essay is to point out some of the reasons that it is more reasonable to believe in evolution than creationism.
First, some clarifications.
What does the term “creationism” mean? There are certainly variations depending upon which brand of religion is telling you what to believe, but some of the more common themes include:
- the world, and all living things, were created at the same time
- about 6000 years ago
- by an intelligent force;
- geography and biogeography can be explained by recourse to a worldwide flood
- about 5000 years ago.
What does the term “evolution” mean? This one is actually quite simple:
- species can and do change over time.
What about Darwinism? What does that mean?
- there can be variations in characteristics from generation from generation
- (this is now understood in terms of genetics, but genetics is not part of Darwinism, per se)
- there can be variations in environments.
- some variations in characteristics are better suited to some environments
- organisms with characteristics that are better suited to their environments are more successful at reproduction
- so are more likely to pass on their characteristics than those less well suited.
One more term—what is a theory?
- an attempt to explain a phenomena based on
- observable facts
- accepted principles, and
- assumptions that don’t contradict the observable facts and accepted principles;
- it is also falsifiable. This is ESSENTIAL to understanding what a scientific theory is. When a scientist posits a theory, it becomes publicly testable. It could, of necessity and by definition, potentially be wrong.
- Falsifiability allows science to be self correcting. A theory makes predictions. If those predictions turn out to be incorrect, scientists use that information to revise the theory.
- Hence, scientists use the word “truth” selectively. One of my professors said to me that “as a scientists, you don’t hope to be right; you hope to be wrong for interesting reasons.”
- So science is an attempt to access the truth, all the while recognizing that you are only approximating the truth.
There is another sense in which we commonly use the word “theory.” We sometimes use it to mean something that is not substantiated, something not supported, like an opinion, a myth, or even a guess (as in “Well, that’s just your theory.”).

Evolution is Only a Theory
So with that in mind, here is an important conceptual clarification. Sometimes people will say “Evolution is just a theory.” Is this an accurate statement? In a sense it is probably factually correct, but it is at the same time misleading. True, some scientists think of evolution as a theory, but they think of it in the first sense mentioned above, in the self correcting approximation to the truth sense, not in the my guess is as valid as anybody else’s guess sense. However, when somebody makes the statement “evolution is just a theory,” you can bet your last dollar that they are implying the second sense of the word, banking on the fact the common public understanding of the word is the second, not the first.
When you hear the phrase “evolution is just a theory,” which connotation of “theory” do you hear? The phrase is intended to lead people into thinking that evolution is just a guess—that there are multiple frameworks that could explain the observed phenomena equally well, and that asserting evolution over the others is essentially random. It is a sneaky but effective rhetorical tactic—make the statement knowing that most folks will interpret in one sense, but if anybody challenges you, you have option to turn around and say that the statement is factually correct.
Contained in the statement “evolution is just a theory” is another ambiguity. If a scientist assents to the statement, he/she most likely does not mean to agree with the statement that evolution, per se, is hypothetical. Virtually every scientist working in a field related to evolution accepts the occurrence of evolution as an established fact. If a scientist does agree that “evolution is just a theory” he or she is most agreeing that Darwinism is a theory. Darwinian evolution is the theory postulated to explain evolution. Evolution is considered an established fact that stands in need of explanation, Darwinism is the theoretical explanation of the mechanism behind the established fact. And though Darwinism is a theory, it is a theory in the scientific sense described above, not the opinion/guess sense. By analogy, Evolution is a theory in the same sense that gravity is a theory. Nobody seriously doubts that gravity exists, but exactly how best to explain it is where theory enters the equation.
Don’t be swayed by the claim that evolution is “just” a theory.

“I don’t know the answer to the question” ≠ unanswered question ≠ unanswerable question.
A common mistake in student thinking is to argue against evolution by asking what they think is a question that has not been answered by evolutionary science, thereby exposing what think to be a fatal flaw in science.
Typically, the student mistake is to confuse a question that he/she does not know the answer to with a question that has not been answered. Included in this note is a discussion of a couple of these questions. Questions like “how do you account for the missing link” and “if we evolved from monkeys, how come there are still monkeys?” are questions that have an answer that fits in the big picture provided by evolutionary theory and are consistent with the evidence… i.e. they have been answered.
A second mistake in this approach is to suppose that an unanswered question poses an insurmountable obstacle to the scientific method. This is an example of a common error in thinking that applies either/or thinking to situations when there is room for a middle ground.
In this case the either/or is that either there is an answer to this question, or Darwinism is false/creationism is true. The problem is that there are number of potential other alternatives. It is possible, for example, that both Darwinism and creationism could be wrong. Biodiversity could be explained by a further, yet unarticulated theory.
This is probably not necessary as Darwinism does not claim to have all the answers. Our understanding of evolution has been contributed to by, for example, Mendel’s studies of heritability, genetics, linguistics, geology, archeology, and anthropology. The answer to the “insurmountable” question could come from any source and need not invalidate Darwinism.
Furthermore, this approach to critiquing evolution fails to recognize one of the essential elements of the scientific method. Science is not threatened by unanswered questions, rather, it thrives on them. Being an unending quest for the truth, science has to have means of discovering error, it has to be self correcting. Asking questions, making predictions, and testing those predictions are all essential to the progress of knowledge. If we stopped asking questions, knowledge would cease to expand.

What About The Missing Link
There is an implied metaphor in the question “what about the missing link?” The metaphor is that of a chain, and the implications are that (i) evolution is a linear process, and that (ii) there are clear definable links in the chain. Furthermore, just as a chain with gaps would hardly function as a chain, the implication is that the missing link in evolution makes the theory untenable.
The problem is that the metaphor is misleading. Better metaphors would avoid the clear definable links of the chain and focus on shades of grey, and instead of focusing on the linearity of the chain would focus on the fact there are multiple lines of development—a branching rather than a single line from point A to point B.
Here’s statement that sounds like support for creationists as opposed to scientists. The problem is not that there is a missing link, but that there are innumerable missing links. But surprisingly, this is exactly what evolutionary theory would predict.
Gould (1977, 2002) proposes the theory of Punctuated Equilibrium. Equilibrium means stability, and punctuated means interrupted or disrupted. In Gould’s theory, there are periods of rapid speciation during which there is rapid change and branching. These periods, however, are only the punctuation. For the most part, Gould argues, there are periods of tremendous stability during which there are few forces acting upon species that would force a change. Consequently, evolutionary theory predicts that even if we find lots of fossils, we should expect only a small ratio of these to be transitional fossils because the periods of punctuation are relatively small.
Missing links, being exactly what one would expect based on evolutionary theory, are hardly the smoking gun thought by lay persons.

Why are not other species of primates evolving into humans?
Another question raised by those opposed to evolution regards the claim by science that humans are a species of great apes. If humans evolved from primates, they reason, then why are other species changing into humans?
This stems from a number of misunderstandings regarding how evolution works.
The first is that evolution is not teleological. Teleology means moving toward a predetermined aim or goal. An acorn growing into an oak tree could be described teleologically because it’s final form—the oak tree—is already coded into the acorn; there is no waiting and wondering whether forces of nature will make the acorn grow into an antelope or a bacteria, it is already determined.
Those who are steeped in creationist thought tend to think teleologically. Just as the acorn is developing according a plan (“design”), so the world, as is, is the result of design. And because it is so, it is inevitable that things would turn out as they did.
Those who watch Star Trek are familiar with the question of why all intelligent alien species are so similar to humans. Almost all aliens typically are just shy of 6 feet tall, have two arms, two legs, one head, two eyes in the front of their heads, communicate through forcing air through some sort of vocal cord in the neck and through a mouth in the front of their heads. Well, this raises the question—why? Why do so many alien races look almost exactly like humans.
There was an episode of Star Trek (The Next Generation) where this question was addressed. My memory on this is fuzzy, but the explanation was something like this: when life began on Earth, it did so because the planet was “seeded” by a race of super aliens. Contained in the “seed” was a tendency toward characteristics that we would describe as human. Well, these same Super-Johnny-Appleseeds did the same thing all over the universe. Therefore, whenever intelligent life is discovered, the life-forms share relevant characteristics with humanity.
The Star Trek TNG example is a wonderful illustration of what we mean when we refer to teleology. Just like the seed and sapling have in them a disposition to grow into an oak tree, a teleological thinker would look at our ancestors and presume that they had, inherent in them, a predisposition to move toward humanness.
Prior to Copernicus, humans believed the world to be the center of the universe, and that the world was created for the benefit of humanity. We assumed that the human form was designed by God, the human form was the top of the biological hierarchy.
An analogous idea is found in the views of one of the founders of Sociology, Auguste Compte. Compte, like Europeans in general, thought that there was a natural hierarchy of sorts of societies, with cultures inevitably going through stages—an evolution leading toward a society like that of Western Europe.
It is not difficult to see why a creationist—someone who believes that humans are the result of a grand design by God, when confronted by the idea of evolution would read teleology into it. Evolution, if it happened, was the process that leads (inevitably) to humans. We are the natural result of the process.
But in the absence of the idea that there was an inevitable tendency towards humanity as the ultimate goal, the question of why there are other species of great apes becomes moot. If there is no predetermined process that turns non-human primates into humans, then there is no surprise that other primates are not gradually changing into humans.
Evolutionary theory does not include such an element of teleology. Any teleology in evolution is a misunderstanding on the part of the critic. Humans are considered to be the result of random changes that could have quite easily turned out different. Changes happen, not according to a predetermined pattern, but randomly, and those that fit a niche are more likely to pass on their genes than those less adapted.

Non-falsifiability in Creationism
Phillip Kitcher (1982) argues that Creationism claims an interesting fallback positions that make it non-falsifiable.
He quotes Whitcomb and Harris (1961) as saying that “[i]t is because the Bible itself teaches us these things that we are fully justified in appealing to the power of God, whether or not He used means amenable to our scientific understanding…”
If one takes such an assertion seriously, it implies that because claims are based on the Bible, we can accept them as being true regardless of what evidence actually says. This attitude is what puts the creationist in his interesting position. Whenever there is evidence that could fit into a creationist structure, it should be embraced as confirming evidence; whenever there is contradictory evidence, it doesn’t matter because our conclusions are true regardless. Disconfirming evidence, then, can be dismissed as if it were the exception.
Compare this to science. Science values disconfirming evidence. As described above, the possibility that you might be wrong is essential to the pursuit of knowledge. It allows science to be self correcting and always improving.
Without admitting the possibility that you might be wrong, there is no way to discover whether you are in fact wrong. If you can’t show that you are not wrong, could you ever hope to show that you are right?

Cost/Benefit Analysis
In deciding whether to accept evolution, it would be helpful to consider a cost benefit analysis.
1. If evolution did not occur…
One thing that new students often do not realize is that evolution is extremely well established. Essentially all of the sciences converge on the same conclusion. One could look at archeology, anthropology, geology, biogeography, psychology, physics, psychology, linguistics, paleontology, biochemistry, genetics, astronomy, etc, and they all arrive at the same conclusion—that evolution happened.
So one cost of rejecting evolution is that we have to throw out all of the sciences. If we reject evolution, we also have to reject the scientific method with it.
If we have to reject evolution, we have to reject the notion that we can use evidence and rationality to arrive at true conclusions.
Furthermore, while rejecting evolution, we are claiming
(i) all of the sciences are mistaken,
(ii) they converge on the same (mistaken) conclusion, and
(iii) they all use different methodologies.
We have to ask ourselves how it is even conceivable that researchers using different and flawed investigative methods could independently arrive at the same profoundly incorrect conclusion. Some possibilities…
(i) God created the world in such a way that it is obvious (though wrong) that evolution has occurred.
If you believe in God you believe that rationality is a gift from God. If you accept possibility (i), you accept that God planted all the evidence such that, when we use our God given gift of rationality, we arrive at a false belief.
(ii) The devil placed the fossil record there.
God, though omnipotent (there is nothing God cannot do), omniscient (there is nothing that God does not know) and benevolent (God has our best interests in mind) allowed the devil to plant evidence such that, when we use our God given gift of rationality, we arrive at a false belief.
(iii) Or perhaps there is a vast conspiracy of all scientists and social scientists
While (iii) is a theoretical possibility, it is quite untenable. How does a scientist make a name for himself or herself? By providing new theories and new explanations, by showing where science has been wrong in the past. Being a scientist and being religious are not mutually exclusive, many scientists are religious. If perhaps one or two of those religious scientists were to break the silence regarding the big conspiracy, they would be the most famous scientists in the world. If we accept option (iii) we have to believe that all those who enter into the pursuit of truth that is science become part of this conspiracy of silence to the extent that they are capable of resisting the temptation of becoming the most famous scientist in the world by doing the very thing that motivated them into the sciences in the first place—exposing the truth!
2. If evolution did occur
The biggest cost here is that creationists will have to give up a literal reading of Genesis (or the Qur’an, or PofGP).
Please note that I did not contend that religious persons would need to give up his or her belief in God or in the Bible. It is quite conceivable that one could retain religious conviction whilst not accepting a literal reading of Genesis. This must be the case when you consider the numbers of scientists who maintain religious belief.
One reason that people are motivated to maintain belief in the literal reading of Genesis is that one of the major events of Genesis is the Fall of Adam and Eve and the subsequent separation of Man from God. When Christians talk about being saved, to what are they referring? It is commonly understood that being saved refers to being saved from the effects of Fall as described in Genesis.
Clearly there must be alternative interpretations of the opening chapters of the Bible, else how could so many scientists be Bible believers, how could the Pope accept evolution, or how could they teach evolution at BYU (yes they do).
There are a number of alternative readings of Genesis.
If you believe that God inspired the Bible, then in Genesis God is trying to tell you something. What that something might be I don’t want to venture too far as religion is such a personal thing, but it is probably reasonable to read the opening chapters of Genesis as a message concerning the human condition. If it is a revelation from God, consider the context in which it was revealed. Had God inspired the writers of Genesis to write in terms of molecular biology, heritability, and evolutionary psychology, the message would not have been understood. If Genesis is an inspired book, God would have had the authors write in terms of the metaphysics of the day so that it could be understood by the people of the day.
There is no indication in the text of Genesis that the metaphysics is the message.
So the cost-benefit analysis.
Option 1: reject evolution
cost:
- with it goes science, the scientific method, knowledge derived from science
- and our belief that we can gain knowledge through evidence and application of our God given faculty of reason (so why are you even in school?)
benefit:
- maintain a literal understanding of Genesis, even though a literal reading is not necessary for belief in religion in general nor Genesis specifically.
Option 2: reject creationism
cost
- with it goes a literal reading of Genesis
- there is no cost to belief in God, nor in belief in the Bible.
benefit”
- we have not rejected the possibility of obtaining knowledge through evidence and reason.
Finally, it is instructive to consider who are the people who are making the claims for evolution and creationism, and consider who would be the most likely to make an error due to preconceived notions or biases. In what follows in the next few paragraphs, I am admittedly speaking in sweeping generalities.
Speaking for evolution and Darwinism are the scientists. An important element of scientific validity is the quest to eliminate biases. One of the main purposes of peer review of academic papers is to ensure that the research methods employed are adequate to eliminate (or at least reduce) the impact that the expectations, preferences, or motivations of the researchers might have on the outcome of the research. You’ve heard folks say that “you can prove anything/!” Well, no, not really. That’s only accurate in poorly designed research. What you want to turn out o be true should have no bearing on the results you obtain from your research. In fact, to allow one’s expectations or biases too much sway is to put roadblocks in the way of the acquisition of objective truth.
Creationists, on the other hand, are motivated to believe in creationism, not because of the evidence, but because of religious considerations. Believing in creationism is a matter of faith.
Faith is believing a proposition to be true in the absence of an adequate justification (reason, evidence) for believing that proposition. Faith requires an act of will, i.e. “I choose to believe X (that God exists, that there is life after death), even though X cannot be justified by reason and/or evidence.”
Furthermore, faith is widely held to be a virtue. i.e. it is virtuous to believe certain proposition in the absence of or contrary to evidence or reason. This leads to an interesting condition in some true believers. The lack of scientific support for creationism is not seen to be problematic. If “taking a leap” of faith is virtuous, then surely, the greater the leap, the more virtuous. The greater the act of will required to believe a proposition, the more unshakeable the belief.
Consequently, the creationist openly admits bias, openly admits that he will believe creationism regardless of what any evidence says
So if we compare the two proponents. Scientists are always looking for their errors, trying to self correct. Creationists believing there is no possibility of error so not asking the questions that an lead to self correction…
Who is most likely to be biased?
(i) somebody who examines the evidence then draws conclusions?
(ii) somebody who draws conclusions, then examines the evidence? Then ignores evidence contrary to their biases?
Or phrased another way–In Empirical matters (like evolution) which is going to be the better research method for discovering truth. Examining the facts and reasoning from the evidence, or believing whatever you would prefer to be true…
Finally I want to very briefly ask, why would a non-creationist ever even listen to an “argument” for creationism? If I wish to convince you that a proposition is true, I could look at the evidence for the truthfulness of that proposition, and/or I could use reason and logic. But what happens when the only way to believe that proposition is to ignore evidence and reason? What is left to use as the premisses in your attempt to convince. In order to defend creationism, one must ignore the evidence, the logic of the scientific method, and reason. What is left to use in an argument for creationism?

Gould, S. J. (1977) “Evolution’s erratic pace.” Natural History 86 (May): 12-16.
Gould, S. J. (2002). The Structure of Evolutionary Theory. Belknap Press.
Kitcher, P. (1982). Against Creationism. Abusing Science, pp.124-164. Cambridge; MIT Press.

White Pride
I posted a question regarding why one would take pride in one’s skin color when it is clearly not something that we would praise or blame one another for. I would still be interested in an answer. Since posting my comments regarding what I consider the silliness of having “pride” in the color of one’s skin, I’ll admit it’s been on my mind, and I was reminded of an essay by Jean-Paul Sartre entitled “Anti-Semite and Jew,” in which he argues that anti-Semiticism is attractive because it can be a source of pride for those who really have no attributes that actually merit pride.
The following are selections from that essay:

The rational man groans as he gropes for the truth; he knows that his reasoning is no more than tentative, that other considerations may supervene to cast doubt on it…But there are people who are attracted by the durability of stone. They wish to be massive and impenetrable; they wish not to change…
…[T]he anti-Semite is impervious to reason and to experience…not because his conviction is strong. Rather his conviction is strong because he has chosen first of all to be impervious.
…The anti-Semite has no illusions about what he is. He considers himself an average man, modestly average, basically mediocre.
…To this end he finds the existence of the Jew absolutely necessary. Otherwise to whom would he be superior?
…Anti-Semiticism is not merely the joy of hating; it brings positive pleasures too. By treating the Jew as an inferior and pernicious being, I affirm at the same time that I belong to the elite. This elite…closely resembles an aristocracy of birth. There is nothing I have to do to merit my superiority, and neither can I lose it. It is given once and for all. It is a thing…
Sartre, Jean-Paul (1948): “Anti-Semite and Jew” from Anti-Semite and Jew, trans. by George J. Becker, NY: Grove Press.

I think the analogy with this and taking pride in one’s skin color is blatantly obvious, so I won’t insult you by explicating it.
One of the things JP points out is something that I’ve been harping on about on this website in a couple of threads. That’s that if one is willing to believe propositions without justification, not only are you likely to believe false propositions, but you run the risk of believing harmful ideas. If you convince yourself that you have a special access to knowledge that nobody else has access to, then your beliefs will be impervious to reason and experience. Once you conclude that your internal truth detectors (ITD’s) are superior to (i) everybody else’s ITD’s, (ii) your senses, and (iii) your ability to reason, then what is to stop you from believing anything and everything that you would enjoy believing?

I’d like to brag for a moment about how I’m raising my kids as color blind as I possibly can. I came home from work one evening, and my son,6 years old at the time, was excited to tell me about an episode of Star Trek he’d watched. I asked him which series he was talking about. It was the one “with the man captain.” Well narrowed it down to three (this was before “Enterprise”). I asked him to narrow it down further. “The captain is bald.” Narrows it down to two (TNG and DS9). More specific? He couldn’t think of a way to distinguish between the two captains, so he started describing the aliens. It would be easy to distinguish between the captains of TNG and DS9 as they are different colors. But since skin color is such an irrelevant feature, it never even occurred to him that skin color is a characteristic worth mentioning.
Below is a cutnpaste of my comments from the Texas Town Remains a White Settlement Thread

• Here’s some insight. You had nothing to do with the color of your skin. It’s determined by your genes, as is most of your other physical characteristics.
Claiming to be proud of the color of one’s skin is akin to, and makes about as much sense as being proud of the length of your colon. Both are completely beyond your control, both having nothing to do with you, both are determined by your genes.
Maybe you might want to claim pride in what others of your skin color have done. Maybe watching Carl Lewis made you proud to be black, or George W’s leadership makes you proud to be white…
Well, I have dangly earlobes as opposed to connected earlobes. I want to take pride in the accomplishments of those who share my genetic trait of dangly earlobes. Einstein, Condie Rice, and Prince Siddhartha were all danglers. Makes me proud to be a dangler.
In fact, I come from a village that was settled by folks with dangly earlobes. “Danglyearlobeopolis.” We don’t have a problem with those with connected earlobes, but we get a little annoyed when they try to use the “dangler only” peircing boutiques.
Did you know that the signers of the Declaration of Independence were all danglers? Yep, 100% of them. Yet we still allow “connecterds” to live in our country.
I’ve got a bumpersticker on my car that reads “Dangly Power” but that seems a little biased, so I’m going to replace it with a “Power of Pride in Danglyshipness” sticker.
I want to emphasize that some of my best friends are “Connecterds” and I am no way affiliated with those dangly supremecists who burn an Ankh on the sundecks of the poor connecterds.
I even let my daughter date one of them people once. I don’t want her to marry him ’cause I’m sure God divided the danglers from the connecterds for a reason.
April 14th, 2006 at 3:51 pm
Some people try to argue that Jesus had connected lobes.
God wouldn’t have let that happen, so I don’t believe it…
SOLIDARITY MY DANGLY EARLOBED BRETHREN!
April 22nd, 2006 at 6:32 pm
I’ve recently noticed a downturn in the number of dangly earlobed folks in my part of Canada. Due, no doubt, to failed immigration policies.
Should I be trying to convince the wife that we should be poppin’ out more little ones to before we become the minority?

The LDS conception of God
I apologize for any ambiguities or inaccuracies in this essay. I wrote it in one draft. If you catch any problems, note them in the comments and I’ll happily comment or revise the entry. A quick point–I am deliberately eschewing the term “Mormon” because for some it carries pejorative connotations. The Church is called the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Saints, so instead of the term “Mormon” I’ll use the common abbreviation LDS.
What follows is certainly not intended to be anti-Mormon in any sense. I have no intention of misrepresenting the LDS conception of God. And I will not stoop to “straw-men” nor hyperbolic science fiction allusions à la Erich von Däniken as some anti-Mormon literature is wont to do. Furthermore, I’m not arguing that the LDS view is wrong because it is inconsistent with classical theism. I reject the view that the LDS church is not Christian, and though there are non-trivial differences in the different conceptions of the nature of God, I don’t think this speaks to the question of whether “Mormons” are true Christians.
In a post a few days ago I made a comment something like “The LDS conception of God is that He is somewhat less infinite and eternal than the God of classical theism.” My purpose in writing this diary entry is to explain what I meant by that comment.
1. I’ll start by very briefly comparing and contrasting the definitions of God as found in LDS theology and classical theology. I certainly understand there will be subtle differences between theological traditions, so I’m trying to leave the definition open enough to include the Catholic and Protestant conceptions (and probably Muslim and Jewish interpretations too
One of the most important things to understand about LDS theology is that humans have the potential to become Gods. We are gods in embryo, so to speak. If we live faithfully, then in the next life we will be in the same position that our God is now. Lorenzo Snow (5th President/Prophet of the Church) put it succinctly: “As man is, God once was; as God is, man may become.”
This first part of the couplet indicates that God has not always been God. God was once mortal, and became God in much the same way we can. This indicates that there was a God that was our God’s God, and so on.
Joseph Smith (founder of the LDS church), in his first vision (contained in “The Pearl of Great Price,” considered scripture along with the Bible and Book of Mormon) learned that God the Father and Jesus the Son, two distinct persons, have physical bodies.
1.1 God is one. I find this to be the least controversial differences. The LDS church rejects the notion of the trinity, and understands God the Father, God the Son, and the Holy Ghost to be three distinct personalities.
1.2 God is an omni-God
1.2.1 Omnipotent. Simply, this means that God can anything except the logically impossible. Having become God, God gained His power somehow. On some interpretations of the Book of Mormon (e.g. Alma 42:13), some LDS believe that God is in a precarious position, and if He were to make any mistakes, He would cease to be God. i.e. God’s power is not “omni” but contingent.
1.2.2 Omniscient. God knows everything that is true–past, present and future. His knowledge is not contingent on anything. The LDS God, having become God, was not always “omniscient.” His knowledge is contingent in that (i) it was accumulated, and (ii) may also depend on the nature of the planet on which he resides.
1.2.3 Omnipresent. The LDS God resides in a particular physical space and time.
2. My next point is about a crucial ambiguity in LDS theology. Just how much does our God have jurisdiction over? If our God lived a mortal existence prior to His exaltation, then there were, we’d assume, others that were also faithful and were likewise exalted to God-hood. Is the universe sliced up for generations of Gods? Perhaps each solar system, galaxy, or cluster of galaxies each has their own God? More reasonably, perhaps there is a multi-verse—multiple Big Bangs, and each has their own deity? Regardless of which option one prefers, our God is omni, or our God is supreme only relative to us. God is merely relatively supreme.
3. Finally, there are some very interesting and potentially convincing arguments for the existence of God that arise from the philosophers and theologians of classical theism. I’m thinking specifically of the Cosmological argument from St. Thomas Aquinas and the Ontological argument from St. Anselm (and Descartes). Because of the limited nature of the LDS, these arguments cannot apply the LDS God—leading me that the God of the LDS faith and the God of Classical theism are not one and the same.
3.1. Aquinas’ cosmological argument. Aquinas offered five cosmological arguments, I am going to consider only the first two—in fact, because of their similarity, I’m going to conflate them and treat them like they are one.
Aquinas argued that nothing happens without a cause. Nothing moves without an efficient cause. So for something to happen now (at time t) something must have happened before it (at time t-1). For something to have happened at t-1, something must have happened at t-2, and so on.
If we follow the sequence, it cannot go back into infinity; we HAVE TO find a first cause. If we find no first cause, then there was no second cause, no third cause, etc, and there can be no current events.
So there must be a first cause, a first event. God is that uncaused cause—the first event.
Now the question—what does this tell us about the LDS conception of God? Nothing at all. The LDS conception of God is not that He is the first cause, the unmoved mover. “Our” God is simply one in that sequence of events and causes. The cosmological argument might convince us that there was a first God in the generations of Gods, but that’s not a question that is seriously discussed in LDS theology.
3.2. Anselm’s ontological argument. One can simply examine the contents of one’s mind and find a priori proof of God’s existence.
The argument asks you to imagine the greatest possible being. Imagine that which nothing greater can be imagined. Such a being has all attributes to an infinite degree. Not just the smartest, most powerful, tallest and handsomest, but having the relevant attributes to infinity.
Now, in the same way that it would be logically impossible to imagine infinity minus one (try, you can’t), you cannot imagine God lacking any of those attributes. Anselm holds that existence is one of those characteristics, so it is logically impossible to conceive of God not existing.
(if you don’t understand, sorry, my intention is not really to adequately explain St. Anselm’s argument, but to emphasize it’s important characteristics.)
So again—to compare the proof to the LDS God. When one imagines the LDS God, He is not the greatest possible being. There are the prior generations of Gods. He is not omniscient nor omnipotent, as His knowledge and power are both contingent. “Our” God may be the greatest relative to our jurisdiction, but is not the greatest possible being.
3.3. The arguments of Aquinas and Anselm do not negate the possibility that the LDS God exists, but they do not offer any support for Him either. Arguments for the existence of God as found in classical theism simply refer to a different being than the LDS God.