Author Archives: Bruce Nielson

The Myth of the Framework Introduction: What Your Philosophy?

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Agellius once asked me what school of philosophy I most believed in. He wanted to try to understand where I was coming from better. (This is typical of Agellius. He is a very sincere guy.) It is well known that Agellius is a Thomist because he’s Catholic.

I wasn’t quite sure what to answer him. I am actually generally hostile to modern variants of ancient philosophies. My feeling is that just as scientific theories give way to better theories, we should let the ancient philosophies die out and only go with the newer ones that fit what we now know about the world.

This isn’t a slam on ancient philosophy at all. We owe a great debt of gratitude to the ancient philosophers for having created our modern world. But I would have as many concerns over a modern “Aristotlian” as I would over a modern “Newtonian.” [1] In light of our current knowledge about General Relativity, what the heck would a modern “Newtonian” even look like? And should we take him/her serious?

But, of course, I feel very differently about many modern philosophers. In particular, Agellius happened to ask me this question not long after I had discovered Karl Popper and had found that my worldview strongly matched with his philosophies of epistemology (i.e. theory of how we gain knowledge.)

So I told Agellius that I was a Popperian. I think this is actually the first time I had ever called myself a Popperian like that.

I’m still not sure if I regret it or not.

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Cultural Mormons Welcome – But Please Don’t Be Deceptive

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J Max Wilson recently wrote a post comparing modern liberal Mormons to the more ancient Pharisees. (See Having A Form of Godliness : Modern Mormon Pharisees)

J Max decided to not cross post this post on M*, probably because he predicted it would cause a stir and he wanted to make it clear he took the full credit for what he was writing.

I’m not one to pull parallels between modern and ancient pharisees. However, I do confess that I enjoyed the article because it got me thinking. I was not aware of some of the parallels he lays out and I sort of agree with Ardis Parshall on this: “What I appreciate most about your post is that it caused me to work back and forth between modern Pharisees and what I’ve learned about New Testament-era Pharisees, helping to clarify other reading I’ve done.”

But I think any sort of parallel like this is limited at best.

Unfortunately, the ‘Bloggernacle’ didn’t respond well to the post. BCC immediately put up a nasty named link to the post. Since they took it down, I won’t repeat it. Unfortunately, one of my homes — Wheat and Tares — put up a link entitled “So, are YOU a hypocritical, orthoprax Mormon pharisee?”

Considering the fact that J Max didn’t mention anyone in particular, it bothers me that the Bloggernacle’s main response was mockery. J Max actually left considerable room for individual’s imperfections:

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The Book of Mormon as Inspired Fiction

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Not long ago I did a reprint of a Mormon Matters post where I asked people if they would regularly study inspired fiction. The overwhelming answer was “no.” But in the choir of voices, there was one particularly interesting response that I think is worthy of sharing.

Now this commenter did not believe the Book of Mormon is in any way historical. In fact, when he took my question to the group, he rewrote it like this:

Did coming to believe realize The Book of Mormon was only inspired fiction not a literal history cause you to reduce your efforts to study it in any way?

His response was then:

I’ve known this since my teenage years, so a before/after comparison is impossible. All of my adult study of the Book of Mormon has been informed by my understanding that it is not a literal history.

His biggest concern with my original post was that:

I think the terms “fiction” and “fictional” are loaded words that break the spiritual mood. To keep a religious feeling, it’s probably better to say “parable” or “inspired stories” or simply “scripture,” with the understanding that scripture is not history and vice versa.

My concern with his rewording was that just saying “parable” failed to get to the heart of my real question, which was how do you explain the plates. Joseph Smith carted them around and many many people touched them under a cloth.

Then an amazing thing happened, he actually gave an tentative answer to this question. Outside of this one time, I never seen nor heard of any person in favor of an “inspired fiction” view of the Book of Mormon actually make an attempt to explain how such a thing is possible! (See also Mike Parker’s article on this subject.)

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Could Life be Inherently Just? The Significance of the Parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man

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This is one of the most important pieces I’ve written that gets to the very heart of my soul. It was also the last post I ever did on Mormon Matters; someone promptly tried to turn it into a discussion about past racist views of an apostle… and I knew my time on Mormon Matters was coming to an end.

Could Life be Inherently Just? It seems like a silly question. We all know life isn’t fair. Its cliché, isn’t it?

There is a long time “proof” that God does not exist that goes like this: “If there is a God, how could there be such injustice and evil in the world?” What they really mean is that they can’t rationally fathom the possibility that all the evil and injustice in the world could somehow be part of a greater justice or morality. Without this further explanation, the “proof” is meaningless.

There is also a “proof” that God does exist that goes like this: “Why do we all — even those of us that claim we believe otherwise — treat morality as if it’s an absolute (that is to say, not merely a construct of convenience of situation) if morality really just rose from an inherently unjust universe?” What the asker really means is that they can’t fathom the possibility that morality really is merely a construct. (I have never met, and believe I never will, a person that isn’t outraged over immoral conduct towards his or her self rather than just saying, ‘oh, morality is just a construct anyhow, so to each their own.’”)

It seems morality is the main — perhaps only — point of contention over God, and it’s a sharp point that pierces both ways.

Now consider the parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man:

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Jesus Without Miracles and The Rational Problems of Rejectionist Philosophies

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Blogger Joe Geisner once reported on a book he was reading called The Life of Jesus. The author, Heinrich Paulus, reviews the miracles of Jesus in a ‘scholarly study’ (Joe’s words not mine) and addresses non-miraculous means for each of them:

In this book Paulus tries to explain the miracles from a natural point of view. When it comes to the loaves of bread and fish Paulus points out that Jesus has the disciples organize the congregation into small groups and also has the disciples get him the fish and loaves, when the people see this they realized it was time to eat and opened up their own baskets of food. By doing this there was plenty of food with baskets of food left over.

For the walking on water Paulus writes that because of the storm and it being night it caused the disciples not to realize that they had not travel much off shore. Jesus really walked in ankle deep water and Peter didn’t realize that they were in such shallow water, he panicked and Jesus had to lift him up so that he could get his composure.

The raising of the dead is much more complicated but he comes from a medical point of view for the time. What is interesting is Paulus also makes an argument for the rising of Jesus from the dead as being a explainable natural occurrence. There actually is accounts from antiquity of people surviving the crucifixion though the Romans thought they were dead.

This quote explains well my main concern with Rejectionist philosophies. Think about all the miracles in the New Testament subscribed to Jesus and then think about ‘natural explanations’ for each of them. Then here is my question for you. Just how rational is Paulus’ point of view?

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