If you haven’t heard, the CoJCoL-dS decided to dust off the old scriptures, polish ’em up, and give them a slightly different meaning. A bit of additional hedging. The most dramatic change was to shy away from the claim that the Book of Abraham was translated from the papyrus in…
Tithing vs. Taxes: Winner – Taxes!
Caught this interesting article in Forbes about a Mormon who hasn’t been paying his taxes. Â He’s currently trying to negotiate with the IRS the rate at which he will pay his back taxes. Â He wants to pay them at a pretty paltry $3,000 a month, claiming his lifestyle requires that…
Mormon Trolls, Gorgons and Orcs, and Being Tired of Good People
Currently the most posted story in my Facebook feed is this excellent NY Times op-ed from Ta-Nehisi Coates, entitled “The Good, Racist People.” Coates uses the recent frisking of Oscar-winning actor Forest Whitaker as an opportunity to analyze the racism of “good” people: In modern America we believe racism to…
The Inconvenient Truths about Mormon Lactivism
Recently there has been much talk surrounding a YW leader who is unfortunately threatened of having her temple recommend withdrawn if she does not leave the room or cover herself while breastfeeding at church meetings. (Call to Action – Lactivism) There are many things wrong with this scenario. The LDS…
NoCoolNameTom’s 25 new scripture mastery verses
For the first three months of this year, NoCoolNameTom has been translating scriptures into Greek, and giving context around the 25 scripture mastery verses. Â Beyond just being awesome to actually see the options for translation, and getting a good feel for which ones are twisted out of context, and which…
How is lying an improvement?
In case you haven’t heard, LDS Inc has updated their scriptures. Â Most of the changes are cosmetic, apparently, but Peggy Fletcher Stack notes some that aren’t so cosmetic: changes that reflect views on race and polygamy. Â But what’s confusing me is the spin that’s going on with these changes. Â In…
The Tree-Hating Insane Inorganic Alien Trying to Destroy the Earth
Several years ago, at the recommendation of a friend, I read Not in His Image: Gnostic Vision, Sacred Ecology, and the Future of Belief by John Lamb Lash. It was a very, um, interesting book. Actually I guess outlandish might be a better term, but it certainly held my attention. …
Sunday in Outer Blogness: Picture it edition!!
This past week’s reading employed a lot of images — and not just those brought to mind by the breastfeeding controversy! Even though Mormon Infographics didn’t update this past week, there were some cool infographics, including eye-opening information about how much the church leadership hierarchy changed during Joseph Smith’s time…
Oh boobs!
Apparently, some Mormons are getting really upset about women breastfeeding in church. Â Props to the women who are fighting this ignorance, and double props for the cool name: Latter-day Lactivists. Â What’s the big deal? Now, I used to be uncomfortable around women who were breastfeeding when I was hormonal teenager,…
The Mormon Apogee of Affirming the Consequent
From Wikipedia: Affirming the consequent, sometimes called converse error or fallacy of the converse, is a formal fallacy of inferring the converse from the original statement. The corresponding argument has the general form: If P, then Q. Q. Therefore, P. An argument of this form is invalid, i.e., the conclusion…