Tag Archives: Liberal Theology

A Thought On Being “The One True Religion”

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Way back when I used to be on Mormon Matters, one very common complaint from Practicing-but-Not-Believing Mormons was that the LDS Church was ‘arrogant’ or ‘hurtful’ because they believed they were the ‘one true’ (or at least ‘most true’) religion. (Specifically, the claim of being the only currently existing Church organization started by Jesus Christ via a prophet was a particular sticking point.)

So I wrote a short post asking for some additional dialogue on this point. But I never posted it, so here it is now a few years too late:

Continue reading →

Does Book of Mormon Historicity Matter to Menu Mormons?

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I once went to lunch with a self proclaimed “Menu Mormon” friend of mine. For those that don’t know that term, a “Menu Mormon” is the Mormon equivalent to a “Caferteria Christian.” It is someone that claims to only believe the parts of the religion that work for them. They pick what they want ‘off the menu.’ My experience is that this almost always means they are equivalent to practicing-but-not-believing. 

Anyhow, this friend told me that it would not matter to him if The Book of Mormon got proven or disproven. He suggested that if we suddenly found an authentic letter between Joseph Smith and Sydney Rigdon working out the details of The Book of Mormon together he’d just keep on believing just as he currently does. Likewise, if they suddenly unearthed a giant sign post that, when translated, said “Welcome to Zarahelma – Lamanite Parking Not Available” that it wouldn’t affect his beliefs one bit. Continue reading →

What is Religion?: Memes, Religions, and Organism

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So far we’ve talked about how religion is all of the following things:

  1. Religion is a cultural unit of transmission that is replicated much like a gene. That is to say, religion is a meme.
  2. The adherents of a religion are the resource used to replicate the meme.
  3. In most cases, the meme a religion replicates is rooted heavily in a set of beliefs about certain truth claims. Often, as in the case of the LDS Church, it’s a set of beliefs and truth claims about a narrative that answers difficult questions about life and gives people a feeling of connection and purpose.
  4. Religion is a subset of a larger family of memes that we could call ‘meaning-memes.’ They are memes rooted in our biological sense of morality and create a reason to live (and sometimes a reason to die) by giving us a sense of purpose and meaning in our lives.

I want to emphasize that as far as the theory of memes goes, genes and memes are not intended to be mere analogy. The epistemological claim being made is that memes are an actual unit of information that Darwin’s natural selection applies to and the same laws are followed. In principle this means that memes can be understood and measured through some future information theory,  though we don’t yet know how using our current theories.

Elsewhere, I talked about the ‘organism’ for a meme. Now to be clear, I did intend this as just an analogy. Memes literally obey the laws of natural selection, but they do not literally have an exact equivalent to a biological organism. Continue reading →

My Attempt to Summarize The “Theologically Liberal” Narrative

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I am convinced that there is truth and beauty in all points of view. One such point of view – a particularly common one on the Bloggernacle – is the ‘theologically liberal’ (TL) point of view.

As I mentioned elsewhere, this label isn’t very good. It too often encompasses those entirely outside the point of view I’m going to try to express in this post. Making matters more confusing is that people that self identify as holding the TL point of view are often quite shy on wanting to share and explain their beliefs. So I confess that my attempt to put the TL beliefs into words doesn’t come directly from TLs, but rather from my own imaginations based partially on things they’ve actually said and partially on what they oppose rather than on what they actually say about themselves. Rare indeed is the TL that sticks their neck out and says, “This is what I believe!”

But I think that, despite this reticence, the TL point of view deserves more discussion, including admitting to the beauty that exists within it. Continue reading →

What is Religion?: Religion is a Type of Meaning-Meme

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In my last post I talked about how it’s well known that religious-memes benefit both the individuals in the religion (whom we’re calling ‘memeoids’) as well as the society they are a part of.

I wish to take a bit of an aside this time and consider the question of why does religion benefit people?

One point already raised (by Dawkins no less) was that it helps people overcome fear of death. This is probably the most commonly cited reason given by atheists about “religious-memeoids.” I do not doubt there is truth to it in many cases. But it’s well known that this is neither the sole reason nor even always the reason at all. Continue reading →