Sometime during the 1950’s, Solomon Asch performed a psychological experiment in which participants were brought into a room and told that their vision was going to be tested. One group of participants were simply shown an image of a line, and asked to compare the length of the line to three other lines. Specifically, they were asked, “Of these three lines, which one is the same length?” Only 1 in 35 participants answered incorrectly.

Another group of participants sat with a number of other “participants,” and each participant in the room was asked the same question, in turn. The other participants in the room were all collaborators with the experimenter, and they each gave the same incorrect answer to the question. The real participants were always the last to answer the question, and 75% of the participants gave the same incorrect answer as the rest of the collaborators. These results are interesting enough that this experiment has been performed by psychology undergraduate students hundreds of times, and often with the same results. Even I’ve participated in this experiment as an undergrad, because, face it, it’s fun to watch obvious social conformity at work. Continue reading →

I’m currently at a seminar run by the Institute for Humane Studies, which is basically a libertarian think-tank designed to shepherd classical liberal thinkers into schools and positions of influence. I just had a conversation with a non-religious libertarian who discovered that I was Mormon. Here’s how the conversation went:

Him: “You’re Mormon? Awesome! I have a question for you: What do you think about the Book of Mormon?”

Me: “I believe it is scripture, and the word of God.”

Him: “No, I mean the musical!” Continue reading →

As Latter-day Saints, we know that every sin, every heartache, and all suffering can be redeemed through the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ. We also know that the Savior is the only way to find redemption from and through these things. But how does the atonement do this? And why is it the only way? Honestly, I don’t think we fully know. There are a number of LDS authors who have provided insights, but I don’t think any of their theories are definitive.

I would just like to talk for a moment about the penal-substitution and the debtor theories of the atonement, and why I don’t like them very much. I think they are certainly useful metaphors, but neither describe the way I experience the atonement in my life. Let me explain: the penal-substitution theory of the atonement is, as C.S. Lewis states it, “the one about our being let off because Christ has volunteered to bear a punishment instead of us.” Every sin as a certain amount of suffering attached to it as punishment. Either we can suffer it ourselves, or Christ can suffer it on our behalf. Continue reading →

Several months ago, Orson Scott Card published an article in the Mormon Times that describes the loneliness he felt when he was a child, when everybody seemed to value athletic prowess and neglect intellectual curiosity. He explains, “This is the era when kids who actually excel at school are called by sickening epithets like ‘nerd’ or ‘geek’; intellectual or artistic students are usually treated as pariahs by their peers, unless they are also either rich, rebellious or athletic.” There is, indeed, a culture among our youth that prizes athletic talent and downplays and even ignores academic talent. I don’t think these values come from nowhere. Children are taught what to value by their parents and their teachers, in addition to their peers.

Wait, what? Parents and teachers teach children to value athletic prowess more than academic achievement? Most of us would reject that accusation. Certainly none of us value athletic accomplishment more than intellectual accomplishment. How and why would we ever teach them to? The truth is that we vote on what our youth should value with our wallets, our time, and our praise.

Orson Scott Card provides a case example of how we do this: Continue reading →

I’ve been thinking about Voldemort, and the question I kept asking myself was, “Why doesn’t Voldemort have a human face?” The question was more than just about how Voldemort’s face was disfigured to look as strangely alien as it did in the movies. The question was about what literary purpose it serves to take away Voldemort’s human face. He was a student at Hogwarts, after all. Why did his sojourn into evil require the loss of ordinary facial characteristics?

Then I began counting the number of science fiction and fantasy stories that take away the faces of evil. Sauron in Lord of the Rings was never shown to have a human face. None of his orcish minions had human faces. Even the “reavers” on Firefly and Serenity disfigure their faces. Why? Are we afraid of depicting evil with a human face? Alien invasion movies do this on a regular basis: they provide us with an enemy that is inhuman. They way I see it, there are at least 3 possible reasons for this literary trope. Continue reading →