This is the next installment in a review of Peter Vardy’s book Good and Bad Religion (London: SCM, 2010).

Having decided that “good” religion leads to human flourishing via the Aristotelian virtues, Vardy goes on to identify three ways in which “bad” religion limits the same. [Read more...]

So, to Aristotle we turn — to the notion of human flourishing, to the alignment with God’s natural law which will enable the same, and to the virtues which characterise this alignment. So far, so Aquinas. [Read more...]

Having established that “truth” is not relevant to “good” and “bad” religion, Vardy goes on to discuss the problem of otherwise determining the morality of religious behaviour. In this he cites Plato’s Euthyphro Dilemma — is something good because God commands it or does God command that which is good? Religion has traditionally followed divine command theory in ethics: good can be judged as good because God commanded it and he is good. The circularity is obvious and thus Vardy rejects it, noting along the way that this thinking as led to a depressingly long list of religious crimes. [Read more...]

Our next question is that of “truth.” Vardy discusses the assault of the popular atheists on the notion of religious truth, namely that it is both lightweight and dangerous, a “virus” to use Dawkins’ term. Vardy disagrees, obviously, championing the idea of knowledge beyond the empirical realm. In doing so, he rubbishes Ayer’s view that the unverifiable is worthless. Kant suggested that though we are confined to the phenomenal world, this does not preclude the existence of the noumenal. On occasion, Vardy argues, the noumenal can make itself known to us through something other than the normal senses, perhaps through aesthetic experience. This is a perfectly reasonable thing to believe. [Read more...]

The title is partly for my punk buddy John Fowles, but also because I intend to spend a few posts reviewing a new book by Peter Vardy, Good and Bad Religion (London: SCM, 2010). [Read more...]

I’m currently teaching Buddhism to a group of educated, but distinctly non-Buddhist young men. Last week we talked about Buddhist food rituals and I told them that many Theravada monks fast after noon. For boys (and their teacher) who enjoy their food, this seems like an impossible practice.

It also had them asking “why? — what’s so beneficial about not eating past lunch?” One witters on about self-control blah-de-blah, but I’ve decided that it would be better to try it for a week and see. The experiment is somewhat (completely?) artificial because I’m neither a Buddhist nor a monk and so the spiritual element is likely to be missing, but having floated the idea at dinner today, I’m now committed to it. You see, my youngest son told me I couldn’t do it — “dad, you’re too greedy” — and my wife is dubious that I will be able to eschew the 9pm Marmite-on-toast. Gauntlet, dropped.

• Read a “Food Rule”: #37 – “The whiter the bread, the sooner you’ll be dead.” [Read more...]

In assembly yesterday I talked about how we can learn from Israeli grandmothers and treat others how we would wish to be treated. The Golden Rule is an ethical universal but so very difficult to do.

I want to take this idea further. Listen to this strange tale from the New Testament (Luke 24: 13-16): [Read more...]

On Saturday, Jews across the world celebrated the high holiday of Yom Kippur. Known in English as the Day of Atonement, Jews fast and pray on Yom Kippur as an atonement — or penance — for the previous year’s sins and misdeeds. [Read more...]

Mormon testimonies tend to be small-t trinitarian:

1. I know that God lives.

2. I know that Jesus is the Christ.

3. I know that the Church is true. [Read more...]

A few months ago my family visited Picardy in northern France. From the cathedral city of Amiens we drove to Albert and entered a rolling countryside so beautiful now but so full of blood and horror almost a century ago. Despite our distance from the First World War, “Somme” still invokes a feeling of dread in the British, images of trenches and mud and mutilated bodies passed to us through a vivid national memory. We were not there but somehow we know it was uniquely awful. [Read more...]

The Incarnation is both cosmologically grand and appealingly chthonic at the same time. It supposes that the Great God of a universe of more than one hundred thousand million galaxies, the Supreme Being who created this universe and perhaps an infinite number of others, condescended to earth to live life as a poor Jewish man in the Eastern Mediterranean two thousand years ago. The story is full of miracle — virgin birth, resurrection from the dead — and yet strangely familiar. There is fear and love, hope and failure, loyalty and betrayal, with Jesus’ humanity palpable and proximate. Peter Steele captures well the Christian awe of this incarnate God: “in the face of this mysterious reality [the incarnation], either we could talk for ever, or we could find ourselves wordless.”[1] [Read more...]

The European Mormon Studies Association Annual Conference 2010

Tilburg University, Tilburg, Holland

Thursday 15th – Friday 16th July 2010

Keynote Address: Professor Terryl L. Givens

Call for Papers

“European Mormonism and its Experience in Media and the Public Sphere” [Read more...]

On the day the Lord gave the Amorites over to Israel, Joshua said to the Lord in the presence of Israel: “O sun, stand still over Gibeon, O moon, over the Valley of Aijalon.” So the sun stood still, and the moon stopped, till the nation avenged itself on its enemies, as it is written in the Book of Jashar. The sun stopped in the middle of the sky and delayed going down about a full day.
- Joshua 10:12-13

[Read more...]

Originally posted at FMH.

I went to an Anglican elementary school. Every Christmas we put on a nativity play at the local church. One year I was Joseph, another year Herod. But one thing I could never be was an angel. That was reserved for the girls.

As a good Mormon boy among those apostate Anglicans, I knew that something was terribly wrong with the angels. For one, they wore wings. But worse, they were girls, and we all know angels are men.

Rubbish, right? Right?

What’s the Mormon doctrine of angels? And, where are the female angels? [Read more...]

True story (as in one I haven’t made up):

In the summer of 1996, Henry B. Eyring was vacationing in Europe and spent one Sunday with us in the Salzburg ward. At lunch someone asked him what he thought about the European Union. These were his words:

China’s on the rise and America’s still powerful — small nations will need to group together to compete in the world. A country like Austria needs the European Union.

So there you have it. Prophetic support for Project Europe. [TONGUE/CHEEK]

When my parents voted for the UK to join the European Economic Community in 1973, they were voting for Britain’s inclusion in a European free trade zone. This week, the EU will have its first president. The stone rolls forth.

Giving 10% of one’s income to charity is a concept familiar to Mormons (although paying tithes to the Mormon Church is not really the same in its purpose as paying 10% to, say, Oxfam — no judgement implied). One Oxford academic has decided to go further. He has pledged not only to give up 10% of his income but also all of his income above £20k ($30k). Dr Ord predicts being able to donate £1m over the course of his life and thus save thousands of lives. His website (Giving What We Can) encourages others to donate at least 10% and usefully ranks charities according to their cost-effectiveness.

I find Ord’s decision inspiring and wish him well in keeping to his goal (the pull of Mammon should not be underestimated). He goes where tithing does not — hurting the rich (or in Ord’s case, the non-impoverished). Up-scaling our donations according to wealth seems like a sensible way to discharge our obligations to the poor and remove the love of money from our hearts.

Could I do it? Probably not. Off the top of my head, I think our household of five in this corner of England could live comfortably and make room for future needs with no more than £50k ($75k) p.a. Tithing 100% (to the church, or to other charities, or both) of income above £50k is something I really wish I could aspire to. Even then I think £50k is too high a ceiling if I am to “give away [a relatively sacrificial amount of my possessions] to the poor.”