Diligently Seek

The third installment of Potter Squad. Part 4 coming later this week. 

Secular and religious students spend a lot of time evaluating the rightness of The Book of Mormon. Believers seek to establish the truth of the empirical claims made in and about the book, which are fundamental to their belief. Nonbelievers seek to disestablish these claims. It is a lot of great, scholarly, fun. But, it seems to me, that more time could be spent evaluating the goodness of The Book of Mormon . Suppose we grant that it is an ancient work, recovered in the nineteenth century, and translated by supernatural means. This would make it right, but the enlightened reader must still grant an even more obvious case against the book: it is not good. It is not good in a literary sense, to be sure, and we can look into that later, but it is not good in an ethical sense. I could cite its misogyny[1], brutality [2] , or injustice [3] , but for me, the glaring ethical failing in The Book of Mormon is its racism [4] . Early in the text, we pick up a thread of ...

Yesterday my wife and I had a very real conversation. We were sitting in our car, watching our kids play in a park, and Dani casually asked me about metaphysics. The scene must be set a little so that you can see my point here. Dani and I left The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints about 4 years ago. I left in my mind first, having concluded that the likelihood that a god exists is thin enough to warrant disbelief . I have stayed my mind on that case, and the evidence for it continues to foment in my mind. Dani has not been so sure. She has always been cautious and rigorous. She does not seek a conclusion. She waits for it . So, yesterday, we sat and she casually brought up some experiences of which she is aware that seemed to give evidence for a spiritual realm. We talked about intuitions, incredible coincidences, and synchronicities. Spouses sense the death of their loved ones from across the globe. Dani has sensed danger before it arrived, identified lies be...