Trevor Southey is one of the greatest living Mormon or post-Mormon artists. You can see his work at http://www.trevorsouthey.com/ . His “Dark Light” has come to have significant meaning for me. You can find a picture of this work at http://picasaweb.google.ca/bob.mccue4… it is an approximately 3′ x 5′ mixed-media piece. A bronze figure, about 3 feet in…
Today’s Globe and Mail has an interesting article with regard to the recent upsurge in church attendance. See http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servle… No news here really. Religious belief and behavior are to large extent a response to perceived danger. That is not to say that this is all religion is. It is a complex social phenomenon that performs many…
The recent psychological literature has noted a striking increase in depression rates at more or less the same time as the psychological community has turned its eye, and pen, toward what makes people happy.[1] It seems, to an extent, that the more aware we become of our potential for happiness, the more depressed we are.…
So, what if the non-Mormon academic community agree with these wordprint studies in more or less the same fashion they did the Mormon related DNA research? Here are a few of the strained arguments in support of the Mormon position that I expect to see trotted out before the Book of Mormon is eventually acknowledged…
While contemplating life the day after an historic US election, I decided to jot a bit about basic, ironic, differences between political liberals and conservatives, and how small group dynamics (in particular, religious group dynamics) play into this. For background, I highly recommend Jon Haidt’s TED talk athttp://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/jo…. Haidt is one of our most consistently…
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…
The power of example has been so over worked that I hesitated to compose this note. However, recent experience has revived this concept for me in a way worth recording. So here I go. Almost 20 years ago I began developing knee problems while attempting to train for what I thought was to be my…
I found Jon Haidt’s reference in The Happiness Hypothesis to the literature related to ethics of community versus ethics of individuality to be useful. In particular, it was his suggestion that perhaps we would not want to completely eliminate either one or the other that got me thinking about this concept. There is lots of…
I still receive email on a fairly regular basis from the faithful of various stripes (Mormon, FLDS, Evangelical) who encourage me to take the time to consider their latest theories and evidence as to why they have “the truth”. Early on in my recovery/exodus process, I diligently followed up on much of what I received…
“I Am Hutterite†by Mary-Ann Kirkby I saw this book sitting on a stand in and airport bookstore as I was walking past this afternoon, picked it up on impulse and finished it a few hours later. I highly recommend it. This is not a great work of literature. It is, however, a nicely crafted…