Cornucopia

Posts You Might Have Missed

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If you have been too busy with real life to do more than your required online reading here at T&S, here are a few posts you might have missed.

A Brief, Incomplete View of Mormon Studies in the 20th Century is a nice, if rather conservative, summary of authors and events. It is framed as a response to a parent whose daughter sampled some of the “New Mormon History” and got lost. It concludes with a paragraph or two on “inoculation,” suitably endorsed by Richard L. Bushman. Interesting that this always seems to be the framework used for discussing the merits of scholarly versus faith-promoting history, as if one needs to justify or apologize for doing scholarly history. Another recent post that covers the same turf with a bit more sympathy is The New Mormon History.

Intelligent Design: Context Matters defends methdological naturalism as used in science and tries to help LDS readers see that Intelligent Design is a dead end. I see it as just another bad idea foisted on the world by Evangelicals — and haven’t we picked up enough bad ideas from them already? That’s really not where we want to be taking our cues for how to look at life and the Universe. For more enlightening discussion on ID, see Intelligent Design: Bad For Science and Faith at a newish blog run by a BYU biology prof.

Quick links: Understanding Ezekiel’s Remarkable Merkabah Vision at a new blog run by a theology grad student. Benefits of LDS Blogging, suggesting we’re not just wasting large amounts of time at the keyboard and also revealing there are people out there actually studying LDS blogging. And don’t miss Part One and Part Two on the textual history of the King Follett Discourse.

9 comments for “Posts You Might Have Missed”

  1. Thank you so much for this post. I hope you make it a regular feature.

  3. Steve, author of sciencebysteve.com (your “Intelligent Design: Bad For Science” link) is currently guest posting at BCC.

  4. The religious investment in evolution debates is almost entirely wasted. I would no more get exercised about ID than I would about evolution.

  5. I highly recommend Ezekiel’s Merkabah Vision post at Heavenly Ascents. David J. Larsen will help reveal more of Margaret Barker’s excellent temple studies to an LDS audience.

  6. Dave: Thanks for the referral.

    As you note, my brief and incomplete summary is brief and incomplete.

    “Interesting that this always seems to be the framework used for discussing the merits of scholarly versus faith-promoting history, as if one needs to justify or apologize for doing scholarly history.”

    You note the post responds to the concerns of a parent, and as such is not intended to provide all the nitty-gritty scholarship-for-its-own-sake details. Interestingly, I started my blog about the Journal of discourses in response to many critical arguments using excerpts from the JD. As I’ve continued through (now to vol. 4) my mindset has adjusted to discussing the Journal of Discourses for its own sake; how statements might have been understood then, how both members and critics may use or misuse various selections, etc.

    Indeed, the importance and relevance of scholarly history shouldn’t be understated. In my own strange way I have seemed to shift and blend the two.

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