Written between August 5 and October 2, 2006 Read the entire document in PDF format: Complex Adaptive Systems Essay v2 Table of Contents Complexity Theory for Dummies (Like Me) 2 Introduction 2 Complexity Theory in Context 2 What is an SOS or CAS? 4 The Universal Diagram 5 How Patterns Form in Complex Systems 7…
November 29, 2005 version 2 Word formatted version of this document: how_denial_works.doc Whether we like it or not, each of us is constrained by limits on what we can do and feel. To ignore these limits leads to denial and eventually to failure. To achieve excellence, we must first understand the reality of the everyday, with…
A PDF version of this Document: http://goo.gl/JvlTY And Answers to Other “Tough Gospel Questions” in Reply to a Faithful Mormon Scholar’s Defence of Mormonism bob mccue June 20, 2004 Version 3 Nothing falsifies history more than logic. Fransois Guizot Introduction In a June 13, 2004 article on page B7 of the Observer/Faith & Reason section of…
Twice during the last week I’ve been asked the same question by successful, highly educated people who are at this moment peering with trepidation through the fog around the edges Mormonism toward the unknown (for them) beyond. That question is whether I could provide them with a list of the pros and cons with respect…
Some time ago, I wrote my usual long, verbose, redundant, meandering, biased, ad hominem, misleading analysis of how Mormon and other apologetic groups work. It was, of course, described this way by a Mormon apologist. You can find it at http://www.mccue.cc/bob/documents/rs….. For reasons unclear to me, I woke up this morning with a few things to…
There is a lot of evidence to suggest that the probability of changing one’s foundational beliefs declines as age advances. There are at least two reasons for this. First, the older we get the less plastic our neural connections become. The second reason, however, is far more compelling from my perspective. Larry Iannaccone explains this…
This does not happen much anymore, but I still occasionally get a letter from an LDS leader asking in a polite way what happened to my testimony and why I don’t do what he thinks might bring it back. In this case, the questions and comments were as follows: – My questioner understands that I…
Life is good. One of the things that makes it good – or better – is taking time to record whatever we find satisfying. These are not necessarily highlights. They are, more simply, whatever resonates with us. So that is what I’m going to do this evening. I will reinforce the nice feelings I had…
While I do not care for everything Stephen Colbert does, I have been chuckling aloud for a couple of days while listening to his CD “I am America, and so can you!” The man is such a beautiful walking parody of what is wrong with the right end of the American political and religious spectrum,…
The widest angle lens I have found while trying to understand my experience on the way out of Mormonism was handed to me by a friend as I was going through some of my darkest moments of that birth canal. She referred me to comparative mythologist Joseph Campbell. I found him and others like him…