Main Street Plaza’s second annual Brodie Awards are upon us. The Brodie Awards are to recognize the best of the Mormon/ex-Mormon blogosphere. Last year, the SHAFT blog won two Brodies—one for ‘Best New Blog’, and the other for ‘Best Humor Piece.’ I’d like to see our blog have a strong show in this year’s competition as well.
Please nominate your favorite SHAFT posts here. Earlier, I shared a list of my favorite 15 posts.
Thanks for your support!
Conservative televangelist Pat Robertson has said many absurd and atrocious things, but I find myself agreeing with what he said on his Dec. 22nd program:
Quite the surprise. I guess this is yet another reminder for me not to pigeonhole people.
Last Thursday, the pope called Christians are the most persecuted people in the world, and this immediately elicited derision from my fellow liberals, gay rights activists, and atheists. The pope’s contention may seem absurd at first blush. I mean, Christians enjoy a privileged status in our country. But elsewhere…
Greta Christina discusses why religious believers want the atheist seal of approval.
Millions of people will commemorate the virgin birth of Jesus this weekend. How do Mormons, though, reconcile the virgin birth with their belief that Jesus is the literal son of a corporeal god? My friend Neal supposes that god artificially inseminated Mary.
In another Christmas-related story, a Texas Christian group executes Santa by a firing squad.
Salon magazine names comedian Ricky Gervais the funny new face of atheism.
Elizabeth Edwards passed away after a long struggle with cancer two weeks ago. Her last public goodbye was posted on Facebook, and what was most notable about it was not what she did mention, but what she didn’t—god.
“Disciples”, a short documentary produced by the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, profiles the lives of three openly gay ex-Mormons.
In a surprising gesture, the LDS Church invited prominent gay rights activists, including Dustin Lance Black, to its Christmas concert last weekend.
LTD Jewelers prepares for the Second Coming by offering a 50% off sale. Yes, really.
I recently wrote about the similarities between atheism and Mormonism. Well, I missed one: both are unpopular. A new survey conducted by sociologists David Campbell and Robert Putnam found that Mormons are the third most hated religious group. (That same survey also found that religious people—especially Mormons and black Protestants—make easy targets for scams.)
Five ridiculous things you probably believe about Islam, and five psychological effects which cause people to believe in nonsense.
Coming soon to a theater new you: “Gawd Bless America,” a hilarious and critical documentary about aliens, physics, and the paranormal.
The multiverse theory is often dismissed as a convenient way for atheists to circumvent the cosmological argument for god, but there is new evidence that lends some credence to the theory.
The Obama administration released scientific integrity guidelines to increase transparency and prevent political meddling with scientific research, a problem under the previous administration.
Christopher Hitchens and Rabbi Shmuley Boteach debate the afterlife. Boteach’s Jewish perspective made for an interesting discussion, as he and Hitchens agreed that an emphasis on the afterlife is immoral.
Ironically, ethics books are among the most likely to be stolen.
According to a new Gallup poll, four in 10 Americans believe in strict creationism. That’s the bad news. The good news: belief in strict creationism is at its lowest point since this survey was first done in 1982.
Can you tell whether someone is religious by their face alone? A research team from the University of Toronto claims you can. They even concluded that you can tell Mormons apart from other Christians.
An atheist tries to make sense of the Fall and the crucifixion. I share his confusion.
Google just released a tool, Ngram, that allows you to track word and language trends in millions of books over the hundreds of years. The occurrence of the word ‘god’ has experienced a dramatic decline in literature since 1800.
From the Salt Lake Tribune today:
The LDS Church has made subtle—but significant—changes to chapter headings in its online version of the faith’s signature scripture, The Book of Mormon, toning down some earlier racial allusions.
The words “skin of blackness” were removed from the introductory italicized summary in 2 Nephi, Chapter 5, in describing the “curse” God put on disbelieving Lamanites.
Deeper into the volume, in Mormon, Chapter 5, the heading changes from calling Lamanites “a dark, filthy, and loathsome people” to “because of their unbelief, the Lamanites will be scattered, and the Spirit will cease to strive with them.”
This isn’t the first change to the Book of Mormon. There have been thousands of changes, most of them minor, since its first publication in 1830. In 1981, a verse claiming that repentant Lamanites will become “white and delightsome” was changed to “pure and delightsome” (which is actually what the phrase was in the 1840 edition). And more recently, the church edited the introduction to the Book of Mormon to read that Native Americans are “among the principal ancestors” of the Lamanites instead of being “the principal ancestors.”
Should atheists celebrate Christmas? This poor kid’s mom doesn’t think so.
With the end of the year only weeks away, it’s time for some retrospection. Of the total 273 posts that were written in 2010, here are my favorite 15:
Humean, all too Humean: The Problem of Induction
Why Mormons should be thankful Third Nephi is not history
An evolutionary view of morality
Deutero-Isaiah in the Book of Mormon
LDS teachings on sex are contradictory and untenable
The difficulty defining Mormon doctrine
BYU censors letter to the editor critical of Prop 8
The science of spirituality intrigues me. One of my first posts at this blog was about that topic. When I was a Mormon, I was very prone to powerful spiritual experiences. I’d often cry during prayer or scripture study, I saw ghostly apparitions, and, on several occasions, I experienced what I then thought were demonic possessions. These phenomena anchored my testimony for years until I discovered naturalistic explanations for them. (That isn’t to say, though, that all spiritual experiences are necessarily reducible to the brain.)
Neuroscientist Dr. Michael Persinger has done a lot of pioneering research concerning the brain and spiritual experiences. He is perhaps best known for his ‘God helmet’, an electro-magnetic device that is able to induce spiritual and out-of-body experiences in patients.
My Hotmail account was recently hacked and was completely inaccessible to me for weeks. Well, after contacting customer support yesterday, I finally recovered my account. I don’t really use my Hotmail any more, but there were a lot of old email correspondences there that I didn’t want to lose. One such correspondence was a debate between my priesthood quorum leader and I that took place in March 2005. More about that later.
In late 2004 and early 2005, I began having serious doubts about my testimony of the LDS Church. (These doubts were initially precipitated by a few unsavory quotes I read in Bruce R. McConkie’s Mormon Doctrine.) And as my doubts grew, I raised increasingly difficult questions in church classes—questions regarding blacks and the priesthood, the Fall, and the problem of evil. I wasn’t seeking to sow seeds of doubt in others’ minds; rather, I was just sincerely looking for answers.
My priesthood quorum leader, Brother Crane, was eager to answer my questions. We exchanged a series of emails, and I’d like to share one of my responses to him.