This quote is from an interview by Krista Tippets (Speaking of Faith) with Karen Armstrong. It seemed to relate to my Divine Investiture post, so I wanted to capture it.

Gregory of Nyssa.. is 4th century, a wonderful mystic. And he… formulated the Eastern Orthodox doctrine of Trinity. And he said, first of all, this doctrine can only be understood in a ritual context and in the context of prayer and contemplation. It’s not something like an equation that you can just follow rational. But he said, “When I think of the three I think of the one. When I think of the one I think of the three. And then my eyes feel with tears and I lose all sense of where I am.” And that’s a theological formulation of the Trinity should do to us.

I have made a post over at Millennial Star about the Doctrine of Divine Investiture. Here is a preview:

Unfortunately Divine Investiture just doesn’t get the due it deserves. It is usually only trotted out to explain certain scriptures and then not mentioned again until we come to the next scripture that requires it. As such, some people have entirely discounted it as part of the doctrines of the LDS Church. They see it merely as an excuse to ignore or “figure-atize” scriptures that just don’t play well with Mormon’s (supposedly) otherwise Tritheistic doctrines. (more…)

From my other posts, I’m sure all of you know I’m a theistic evolutionist, but one very friendly to Intelligent Design and even Creationism. I see them as wrong, but understandable points of view that (like all points of view) belong in political debate. If they are wrong let the facts fell them. Therefore, I generally find the Atheist Evolutionists point of view right, but immoral.

However, nothing in life is that simple, is it? (more…)

Join Podcastle podcast for the tale of an Evil Overlord’s hilarious attempts to stop his prophesied downfall.

I have done numerous posts in the past exploring the Mormon Doctrine of Deity. I recently put up an M* post reviewing my past posts.

I then later “continued my series” by doing a post about The Oneness of God in the Book of Mormon.

Actually, I’ve been wondering about the best way to handle posts like this. I really want to put them on both Jr. G and M*. Is it best to do a cross post or just a post linking to the other?

This article talks about a proposal on how to teleport energy via quantum entanglement. (See actual paper here.)  Based on everything I’ve ready about the Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum physics, particularly this paper by Frank Tipler, if you really could teleport energy, that would disprove the MWI, wouldn’t it? (Since MWI says there is no quantum non-locality)  (more…)

I am really hoping that this article captures (perhaps poorly) a real attempt to reach out and sincerely address the needs of people with same-sex attraction without being untrue to ourselves and teachings.

If you can see past the SLtrib intentional spin, it seems like we might have a story here of some very productive approaches to how to better integrate our teachings and a more Christ-like and emphathetic approach to those with same-sex attraction. (more…)

Found this one listening to the Radio West podcast. The interview was with Philip K. Howard, that wrote Life without Lawyers. (With apologies to all the lawyer bloggers, this really isn’t a negative view about lawyers at all. The name is misleading.)

There is this kind of general notion, that is still the presumption in this society, that a law suit just a dispute between two parties. But that’s not true. What people can sue for establishs the boundaries of everyone elses freedom.

And interesting comment from Rosalynde,

Setting aside the particular issue of abortion, I find the notion that technology informs our moral intuition fascinating and a little frightening. For one thing, it casts serious doubt on the moral legitimacy of private conscience; if the conscience is basically an internalized enforcer of social convention—shaped, of course, by technology and culture—then it doesn’t have any special authority against external claims. (more…)

I’m listening to day to the Radio West podcast with the authors of Game Change. The final caller asks them who, of the candidates on both sides, they respect the most. Their answer:

Mark Halperin: Boy, I defer to readers to read the book and make up their own minds about that. You know, we’ve known all these people, we have respect for them and what they put themselves through is incredibly hard on them and their families…

Doug: Spoken like a true journalist… (more…)

I am listening to Radio West’s interview with Krista Tippets from Speaking of Faith. She was asked by a caller if people can be spiritual without a belief in God. She answers, yes, and I fully agree with her. I have had spiritual feelings, hair standing up on the back of your neck type spiritual feelings, being in nature, studying physics, listening to great music, etc. I have no doubt that “spirituality” exists without a belief in God, though I still believe it comes from God even if the person doesn’t realize it. (more…)

I remember when John Dehlin put up a post with a video (no longer available) about the difference between “fundamentalists” and “curious people.” John originally just entered it as a link that said “The curious, my kind of people.” Then later he put up this post which changed the tone to by tacking on “or does Mormonism Inspire Curiosity?”

The idea of the video was that there are two kinds of people, those that fit the facts to their worldview and those that accept the facts and enjoy what life brings. (more…)

This quote was overheard on the “Stars of Cosmology, Part 2″ episode of the Scientific American podcast. This is a podcast with several famous physicists (i.e. the “stars” of physics cosmology) discussing the future of cosmology, particularly inflation.

The context of this quote is right after discussing the possibility of infinite universes where most are inhospitable to life and the only ones that have astronomers and physicists questioning, “why are the laws of physics perfectly hospitable for life?” are the ones that randomly happened to be hospitable to life.

Let me add one more thing that could be seen at the LCH, that could make most of us unhappy if it’s seen. We could see evidence for more fine tuning in nature than we’ve already seen in the cosmological constant. And that would be taken as evidence for this multiverse anthropic picture where the laws of physics are not determined by fundamental principles but rather by a wide variety of things happening and certain things selecting for life. (more…)

Most people still think their lifestyle is a conscious choice, but recent scientific evidence suggests that many might be born that way. How will we have to rethink the way we treat them if science continues to prove this out? (more…)

On the same Scientific American Podcast previously mentioned they did a series of readings from “Origin of the Species.”

This quote stood out to me because, if I understand it correctly, it just defined evolution and human morality to be opposites: (quoted from here) (more…)