Making good men better

Growing up I remember hearing a David O. McKay quote quite often (#25):

To me this sounded like a proof of the Church. What we have makes better people, therefore we are the One True Church of God on Earth. It also sounded like a justification for staying Mormon even if the Church weren't true. Why abandon the fiction if it leads men to self-improvement? I preferred to see this statement as wise, prophetic council for a true prophet of God...

That is until I looked up "make good men better" on the Internet and learned that this little motto has been lifted from the Freemasons! (It's not the only thing Mormonism has borrowed.)

If the prophet's just getting his material from the Freemasons, what the hell are we doing in church instead of attending our local lodge? We might as well go to the source, right?

Here's your conspiracy handshake picture of the day. TOTAL FREEMASON HANDSHAKE!!!

Poor theologians!

Pity the poor theologians! They are faced with a seemingly impossible dilemma when it comes to making sense of divine action in the world. If they affirm that God does act through miraculous interventions in nature, then they must explain why God acts on these occasions but not on numerous others; why miracles are so poorly attested; and how they are supposed to be compatible with our scientific understanding of the universe. On the other hand, if they deny that God acts through special miraculous interventions, then they are left with a faith which seems to be little more than Deism - the belief that God created the universe but is no longer active within it. If God is real, should we not expect to be able to discern at least some special divine acts? The theologian seems to have to choose between a capricious, wonder-working, tinkering God and an absent, uninterested, undetectable one. Neither sounds like a suitable object for love and worship.

Thomas Dixon Science and Religion: A Very Short Introduction, pg. 41.

Thomas Paine speaks the truth

 “Is it more probable that nature should go out of her course or that a man should tell a lie? We have never seen, in our time, nature go out of her course. But we have good reason to believe that millions of lies have been told in the same time. It is therefore at least millions to one that the reporter of a miracle tells a lie.”  

The Age of Reason

Heavenly fatherliness #19 - Criticism

According to popular wisdom, a good father restrains criticism.

Does God restrain his criticism? Totally. Just ponder for one moment how many criticisms a Perfect Being could slam us with if he wanted. 

Not that he doesn't tell us we're total shit from time to time. We are base and fallen, prone to disobey. We are, in effect, naughty by nature. Unworthy. What harsher criticism can you possibly imagine? 

"Kids, you're all total nasty fuck-faced shits who can't do anything I tell you to do right, but I love you like hell."

Thanks, Dad! We love you, too!

*These attributes represent the popular thoughts of Ask Men’s Jullian Marcus, examiner.com’s Tanya Tringali, and Open Talk Magazine’s Glenn Silvestre as per their respective articles on what makes a good father.