Defense of Truth

Part of my creed as a faithful member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (nicknamed the Mormons ) came as a response of founding prophet Joseph Smith to a journalist who was essentially asking what made us different. The text goes as follows: "We claim the privilege of worshipping Almighty God according to the dictates of our own conscience, and allow all men [sic] the same privilege, let them worship how, where, or what they may." I've had this eleventh verse in a series now known as the thirteen Articles of Faith memorized since I was about 10 years old, and still regard it as a profound and profoundly tolerant moral code for how I should regard the deeply held beliefs of others. This does not mean that I should not use all the persuasive powers I can muster to bring those with false beliefs into a knowledge of a true basis for judgment--this was the essence of my reason for volunteering to serve a two-year mission in the Côte d'Ivoire as I did--bu...

Dinesh D'Souza, fellow at the Hoover Institute and frequent columnist on conservative and religious topics, posts a recent article on Townhall.com in which he praises Stanley Fish, the widely cited literary critic, for taking atheists to task via deconstructionism. Fish tells the story of a man who seemingly abandons all (family, friends, who are beckoning him to return to more reasonable/knowable pursuits) to pursue a light which claims to be able to grant him eternal bliss. The deconstructive argument then shows how the atheist position is part of that narrative and depends on it, rather than standing outside it as it claims to be. I will give you one comment from an atheist and my reply: Atheist Comment: Dinesh writes "Fish comments, 'What this shows is that the objections Harris, Dawkins and Hitchens make to religious thinking are themselves part of religious thinking.'" Same old same old, Christians framing atheism in theistic terms that assumes the very con...

It's been enlightening for me reflect upon some of the different types of marital relationships that I observed in such a multicultural tapestry as the Côte d'Ivoire. I say multicultural because there are over 60 different languages spoken by the different peoples within the nation's borders, and though many of their traditions are similar if not analogous, there are also competing varieties of modern European and Eastern traditional types of marital arrangements there also. There was an amazing complexity compared with what I had always assumed was the almost binary choice of cohabitating couples in Western cultures (marry, or live together, with few other socially sanctioned arrangements possible), and yet there seemed to be no confusion. If there was any confusion, it didn't come from the culture, but rather from recent successive changes in the state's legal definition of marriage. As with many African nations there existed a long history of traditional marriage...