Religions are at their best when they lay off the rule-making and focus on helping their fellow man.  To that end, the Latter-day Saint Humanitarian Center annually sends about 12 million pounds of shoes and clothing, 1 million hygiene kits and 1 million pounds of medical supplies to more than 100 countries.  Additionally, the center typically employs about 100 people, many of them immigrants and refugees getting their first work experience in America while receiving training to enter the general workforce.

Anyone, LDS or otherwise, who wants to help out can donate or the Humanitarian Aid Fund or donate supplies for aid kits.  The center’s Website also has suggestions about what people can do to assist the needy in their communities.  1655 S. Bennett Road (2030 West), 801-240-5954, LDS.org/Service/Humanitarian

On a similar note, according the sltrib (26 Jan 2012):

The LDS Church opened the doors Thursday to its new 570,000-square-foot Bishops’ Central Storehouse in west Salt Lake City.

Inside the New LDS Bishops' Storehouse in Salt Lake City

The new storehouse, which sits on a nearly 36-acre site at 5405 W. 300 South, will include adminstrative offices, bulk/rack storage and refrigeration areas.  It also will house support facilities for the church’s trucking fleet.

The idea of a bishops’ storehouse began in the 19th century, when many Mormons shared their excess goods with other members.  Today, these storehouses are established across the globe to distribute food and other commodities to the poor and needy. . . 

The trouble with contemporary Christianity is that a massive bait and switch is going on.  “Christianity” has essentially become a mechanism for allowing millions of people to replace being a decent human being with something else, an endorsed “spriritual” substitute.  For example, rather that being a decent human being the following is a list of some commonly acceptable substitutes:

• Going to church
• Worship
• Praying
• Spiritual disciplines (e.g., fasting)
• Bible study
• Voting Republican
• Going on spiritual retreats
• Reading religious books
• Arguing with evolutionists
• Sending you child to a Christian school/providing education at home
• Using religious language
• Avoiding R-rated movies
• Not reading Harry Potter

The point is that one can fill a life full of spiritual activities without ever, actually, trying to become a more decent human being.  Much of this activity can actually distract one from becoming a more decent human being.  In fact, some of these activities make you worse, interpersonally speaking.  Many churches are jerk factories.

From the NT, we learn that Mary Magdalene was a leading figure among those who followed Christ.  When the men abandoned Christ, Mary stayed with Him, even during the Crucifixion.  She was also present at the tomb, the first person to see and converse with the resurrected Christ.  This eventually earned her the title of “apostle to the Apostles.”  She was obviously a very significant figure in Christ’s inner circle.

In the Gnostic Gospels (not included in the canonized NT), her image gets further enhanced.  The so-called Gospel of Mary, a story of early Christianity, features Mary Magdalene as one of early Christianity’s most powerful leaders.  The Gospel of Philip tells of a rivalry between the male disciples and Mary Magdalene:

. . . the companion of the [Savior is] Mary Magdalene.  [But Christ loved] her more than [all] the disciples and used to kiss her [often] on her [mouth].  The rest of the [disciples were offended by it . . .].  They said to Him, “Why do you love her more than all of us?”  The Savior answer and said to them, “Why do I not love you as [I love] her?”

There is much to ponder when it comes to Mary’s portrayal in both the NT and Gnostic Gospels. 

It should be noted that the NT Gospels were written well after the fact.  The books in the NT were not canonized until the fifth century.  Thus there was plenty of opportunities for social and political messages to be inserted into the holy book, or awkward verses to be deleted.  To add further confusion, there are several Marys and unidentified women in the NT.  Thus, it is hard to paint a consistent image of Mary Magdalene.  But one thing we know for sure, that Christ was more of an egalitarian than most give Him credit for and that Mary Magdalene was an important part of His life.

For contemporary Christians, many of the beliefs and practices of the early Gnostics are difficult to understand, and Gnosticism was declared heretical by the early orthodox church.  Thus, their literature is not taken seriously by today’s mainstream Christianity.  But the fact that the Gnostic Gospels hint of a strong physical bond between Christ and Mary gives one pause to wonder.

So what do we know about Mary’s life after the death of Christ?  Nothing really.  Legend has it that, after she preached for a while in Palestine, the local authorities had enough of her and her Christian friends, and cast them off into the Mediterranean in a small boat without a sail or paddles.  (This being more of an intended execution than an exportation.)  After many days of being driven by the wind and currents, the small group miraclously reached the shores of southern France.  In France, she preached for a while and then sequestered herself in a cave.

Her image as a prostitute was first suggested by Pope Gregory the Great.  In a 591 A.D. homily he stated:  “She whom Luke calls the sinful woman, whom John calls Mary, we believe to be Mary. . .  It is clear, brothers, that the woman previously used the unguent to perfume her flesh in forbidden acts.”  In 1969, the Vatican declared that there was little evidence that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute.

However, the image of Mary as a wayward woman lives on.  It is graphically reflected in Martin Scorsese’s film adaptation of Nikos Kazantzakis’ novel The Last Temptation of Christ, and is also a major plot component of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical “Jesus Christ: Superstar.”  In the latter, there is a very sexual Mary singing to Jesus:  “I don’t know how to love him.  What to do, how to move him.”  To this day, Mary Magdalene is the patroness of “wayward women”, and “Magdalene houses” are established to help save women from prostitution.

Mary Magdalene’s image took a turn for the better with the publication of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code.  This novel proposes that Christ was married to Mary Magdalene and that they had a daughter.  While this hypothesis was largely discounted by theologists, historians and the like, it does make for interesting speculation.

Prof Terryl Givens at the Podium

Mormons have largely left others to frame the the theological discussion.  In opting to emphasize Mormon culture over Mormon theology, Mormons have too often left the media and ministers free to select the most esoteric and idiosyncratic for ridicule.  So jibes about Kolob and magic underwear usurp serious engagement, much as public knowledge about the Amish is confined to a two-dimensional caricature involving a horse and buggy.  But members of a faith community should recognize themselves in any fair depiction.  And it is the fundamentals of Mormonism that should ground any debate worth having about Mormon beliefs or Mormon membership in the Christian community.  What are these fundaments?

1. God is a personal entity.
2. Men and women had a pre-existence.
3. Men and women are born pure and innocent.
4. God has the desire and power to save.
5. Heaven will principally exist for eternal familial relationships.

Any list of this sort is going to be controversial.  But this one, given the author, is a bit of disappointment.  I will briefly mention three points.  (Also, I need to note that I have shortened each of the items from Givens’ original description.)

First, in the elongated version of 3, there is a brief discussion of Adam and Eve that is, for me, unnecessary.  I think Christians, including Mormons, need to start thinking about how OT biblical metaphors fit into their belief structure.  For example, there was obviously “death before the Fall.” If there was no literal Adam and Eve, how do Mormon’s and other Christian’s deal with the Fall and Atonement.

Second, there is no item explaining where mankind is headed long-term?  What is the purpose of this life?  Where are we headed in the afterlife?  How are mortality and post-mortality related? Isn’t explaining this issue an important function of any religion?

Third, there is no mention of the importance that Mormon’s place on service.  Givens’ suggests no credo like “faith without works is dead.”  For me, the emphasis on “serving your fellow man” is one of the beautiful parts of being Mormon.

My general criticisms would be:

• The book doesn’t seem to have a target audience.  At times the authors talk down to the readers and at times they write like the readers are biblical or religous scholars. 
• This book needs to have more non-BYU participation.  There needs to a more diverse collection of LDS scholars.
• The book needs to deal more overtly with issues related to science and the LDS Church.
• There is too much reliance on the work of Joseph Fielding Smith, Bruce R. McConkie, and C.S. Lewis.  But this is a personal prejudice.

The first chapter that I read was “God and Man,” by Robert L. Millet (who is also the book’s editor).  The relationship between God and man has always been a favorite topic of mine, but on several issues there seems to be a wide disperity between the early teachings of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, and the doctrine put forth by Bruce R. McConkie.  Millet tries unsuccessfully to find common ground.

Millet starts out by stating that God is “omnipotent, omniscient, and by the power of the his Holy Spirit, omnipresent.”  Thus implying that He is all knowing and that He has nothing more to learn (a teaching of McConkie).  Millet goes on to state that “God and man are ‘of the same species.’”  My understanding is that the LDS Church still believes in Eternal Progression for mankind (althought the expressions is used a lot less today than it was 50 years ago).  Since God and man are the same species, doesn’t that imply that God is also progressing, and will continue to progress throughout the eternities?

Millet seems to want to have it both ways.  He wants to placate the Christian right by saying that God is all the omnis, but then he also writes at length about theosis (man becoming god) as a tribute to Joseph Smith.  Millet avoids the issue of whether God is still progressing.  Godly progression is something that was taught by Brigham Young and advocated by John A. Widtsoe, but was abhorrent to McConkie.

For us to completely understand God’s eternal plan, I think the issue of whether God is progressing is an important one, and Millet’s inability to “pull the trigger” is troubling and leaves a deep hole in his chapter.  I would also have liked to see a more complete discussion of Joseph Smith’s King Follett funeral discourse along with a discussion of Mormonisms similarities and dissimilarities with Process Theology.

As a side note, Millet tosses out the line:  “there is no way to establish and maintain a moral standard independent of God.”  There is no backup for this statement; it is put there as if it is a commonly accepted fact.  There is enough moral conumdrums in the OT, B0fM, and religious history to seriously question Millet’s ascertion.  Modern atheistic writings (like those of Sam Harris) are starting to seriously question this assumption.  Millet needs to either leave this subject alone or devote a chapter to it.

The next chapter that I read was “The Fortunate Fall of Adam and Eve” by Daniel K. Judd.  This is a chapter that needs to be written (or at least co-written) by scientist.  Mormonism needs to come to grips with the fact that Adam and Eve may not have been real people.  Organic evolution is a reality and Mormon theologians need to deal with this issue.  We can’t keep pretending that there was no death before the Fall.

Much of the Book of Genesis is a metaphor, and other parts of the OT are suspect.  There was no Universal Flood, there was no Tower of Babel, the Earth didn’t stand still, and Jonah wasn’t swallowed by a big fish.  To continue to teach these metaphors as if they are literal history is a serious mistake.  Many of the scientists at BYU are starting to make this case.  We need to start interpreting the saga of Adam and Eve in the light of what science is telling us about the creation.

Judd’s chapter contrasts the general Christian belief in Original Sin with John Locke’s philosophy of a “blank slate” (a child’s mind is like a white paper void of all characters) or “tabula rasa.”  Judd wants to stake out, as the LDS position, a middle ground between the two.  This seems more a concession to conservative Christians than a real argument.  I certainly have no trouble with Locke’s position as summarized by Judd.  (Although I’m certainly not an authority on Locke.)  According to Mormon Terryl Givens’ writing for the University of Chicago Divinity School website:  “Men and women are born pure and innocent, with no taint of original sin.  (We find plenty on our own.)”

And what’s with the artistic rendering of Adam and Eve kneeling in the Garden of Eden at the beginning of the chapter?  Could Adam and Eve be more “white and delightsome”?  How do we know that the pair wasn’t Black?  Can we please stop with the Nordic images.  How about some diversity?

Adam and Eve Kneeling in the Garden of Eden

The next chapter I read was “Latter-day Saint Perspective on Biblical Inerrancy” by Millet.  How can you write this chapter and have only a one-paragraph discussion of the OT?  Some discussion of the Book of Genesis would have been useful.

In the future, I will try and write concerning some of the other chapters.

I just attended a staff meeting for our division.  It was my turn to give the safety message.  After my short informal presentation was over, I wanted to bolt out of the room.  Instead, there was another 10 minutes of kibbitzing.  During this latter short period, I was extremely uncomfortable.

This is not an usual occurance for me.  It happens over and over again.  Just last week I attended a meeting of Federal water resource planners in California.  There were about 14 hours of presentations spread out over 3 days.  Talk about hell.  I paced in the back of the room; I tried to avoid discussions during breaks; and I occasionally blurted out comments and questions.  In other words, I wasn’t very social.

Two weeks ago, I put together a meeting of organizations working to improve conditions for Native Americans living in isolated locations.  Before the meeting started, a woman I have known casually for several years came up to me and asked me how I was going to run the meeting (something I’m not comfortable doing).  I told her that my general philosophy was organized chaos.  She asked if she could take over.  I said “Please do,” and boy was I releaved.

Even with my family, I’m not totally comfortable.  At family gatherings, I tend to want to hold the grandchildren rather than enjoy social intercourse.  My greatest enjoyment with my family is when we do stuff, when we go rock climbing, camping, and hiking, or just go to the movies.

At work, I frequently take along a more extroverted colleague to help me through my efforts to communicate.  I would rather use email than talk on the phone.  I’m generally comfortable being by myself.

Aparently, my affliction is not that unusual.  According to Bryan Walsh writing for Time magazine (6 Feb 2012):

“Our tendency to be extroverted or introverted is as profound a part of our identities as our gender,” says Susan Cain, author of the new book Quiet:  The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking.  “But there’s a subtle bias against introverts, and it’s generating a waste of talent and energy and happiness.”

It’s been estimated that as many as 30 percent of American may be inflicted with some form of shyness.

Scientists have begun to learn that the introverted or extroverted temperament seems strongly inborn and inherited, influencing our behavior from not long after we’re out of the womb.

Over the next month and a half, I will be giving 4 presentation on a variety of subjects including:  (1) a short message on leadership; (2) two presentations on the future of water management; and (3) a discourse on religion and transhumanism.  Additionally, I will be helping to coordinate the work of about 50 student volunteers coming from 3 different Utah universities.  I will also be attending the international conference of a humanitarian group I below to.  Talk about discomfort.

The definition of hell for an introvert isn’t other people–not exactly.  But people are stimuli, and a cocktail party or brainstorming session full of them can blow their neural circuits.  So they limit their exposure.

Multiple Screen Mania

 When I first installed multiple screens, I took a lot of flack from colleagues (all of it friendly).  Even our office head got in on the act.  But, after a while, I noticed that he had gone to 2 monitors.

According to an article by Matt Richtel in the NYTimes (7 Feb 2012):

Workers in the digital era can feel at times as if they are playing a video game, battling the barrage of emails and instant messages, juggling documents, Web sites and online calendars.  To cope, people have become swift with the mouse, toggling among dozens of overlapping windows on a single monitor.

But there is a growing new tactic for countering the data assault:  the addition of a second computer screen.  Or a third.

This proliferation of displays is the latest workplace upgrade, and it is responsible for the new look at companies and home offices–they are starting to resemble mission control.

There are several reasons while multiple monitors have become fashionable:

• monitors are much cheaper than they used to be;
• monitors are slimmer, so desks can accommodate more of them; and
• there are more communication tools like IM, Twitter, and Facebook

The main reason given for a multimonitor setup is that it increases productivity.  According to Richtel:

One study, by the University of Utah, found that productivity among people working on editing tasks was higher with two monitors than with one.  The study was financed with about $50,000 by NEC Display, which had hoped to find evidence that companies should buy more monitors to increase productivity.

The author of the study, James A. Anderson, a professor of communication, said he had not been influenced by NEC’s funding.  He said he uses three monitors himself, but also said that it was hard to generalize about whether more monitors are better.

At the very least, Professor Anderson said, more monitors cut down on toggling time among windows on a single screen, which can save about 10 seconds for every 5 minutes of work.  If you have more than one monitor, he said, “You don’t have to toggle back and forth.  You can take in everything with the sweep of an eye.

One serious concern with multiscreens is information overload.  Another is the distraction caused by things happening on the multiple screens (for example, incoming messages), while you are trying to concentrate on a specific task.  Multitasking is not for everyone.  As one multiscreen user pointed out:  “I can handle it, I’m sure there are people who can’t.

If you have an opinion on this subject, I would love to hear it.

Child Soldier in Sudan

Gulu, for several years, had been victimized by a particularly nasty rebel group called the Lord’s Republican Army (LRA).  A couple of years ago, the Uganda army finally succeeded in driving the brigands out of the area.  But the LRA left northern Uganda in a mess.  Of particular concern were the child soldiers.

The issue of child soldiers was briefly discussed in a recent book titled Wine to Water.  The book is largely a description of the humanitarian work that the author did in Darfur (western Sudan):

The boy leaned coolly up against the hood of my Land Cruiser.  He looked like a fourth grader, yet he wore the SLA (a militia group trying to protect their people from savage attacks by government troops and their cooperators) uniform with the brim of his hat flipped up, and shouldered an AK-47.

I had seen other boy soldiers, but what struck me was that he was the youngest I’d seen.  And I felt oddly drawn to him.  Maybe it was his deep gaze or his surprisingly hardened behavior as he casually sucked down the last few drags of a cigarette as if he’d been smoking since infancy.  He seemed like a cool kid, but I had to remind myself that he’d probably killed more people than most grown men in our own military.

Still, I was intrigued.  So I decided to go over and sit with the boy.  I didn’t say anything at first.  I just sat down on the bumper next to him.

Using my broken Arabic, I fumbled to ask his name and his age.

“Ana Mustafa,” he answered.  “Ana Ithna ‘ashar.’”

Twelve years old?  When I was Mustafa’s age, I lived for the weekend.  All week long in school I would dream of Friday.  And when it finally arrived, I’d be out in the woods behind the house, with my BB gun, pretending that I was in the midst of guerilla warfare.  Yet sitting there beside me was a child who wasn’t pretending.

I did my best to make a joke–something, anything to coax a smile out of this young boy.  Nothing worked, and he didn’t seem very interested in talking either.

I had to learn the rest of his story.  So I excused myself and sidled up to the commander of his unit while calling Hilary (a Sudanese co-worker) over for some translation help.

“That boy Mustafa, what’s his story?” I asked, cutting right to the chase.  “Where’s he from?”

“The commander says Mustafa is from a small village,” Hilary translated.  “The Janjaweed (a group cooperating with the Sudanese army) destroyed his village and killed four of his family members when he was nine years old.  But he escaped and joined the SLA to fight against the Janjaweed, and has been with us now for three years!  Mustafa is young, but he is determined and hardworking.  He is a good boy and a good soldier.”

The reality of Mustafa’s childhood weighed heavily on me.  I knew boy soldiers were commonplace in the SLA, but for the first time for me, I guess those boy soldiers finally had a face and a name.  And it made me profoundly sad.

If my greatest successes revolved around the people, then the best way to really make a lasting difference in Darfur had nothing to do with fixing the most wells in the shortest period of time.  It had to do with the people.

Doc Hendley Repairing a Groundwater Well in Darfur

I realized that what I needed to do was to empower the locals, to give them the tools they needed to solve their own problems and become self-sufficient.

Hendley’s organization “Wine to Water” has expanded its humanitarian efforts into several other countries besides Sudan.  In Uganda, locals are assemblying slow-sand water filters for use in the north.

The Mormon Transhumanist Association has announced the preliminary list of speakers and topics for its annual conference on 6 April 2012:

• Adam Davis on “Scientific Realism and the Simulation Argument”
• Brad Carmack on “Mormonism Beyond the Gender Binary”
• Brent Allsop on “Ushering in the Millennium”
• Carl Youngblood on “Compassionate Obsolescence: Coping with Technological Change”
• Chris Bradford on “Bodies Without End: Embodiment in a Substrate-Independent World”
• Chris Bradford on “Wise as Serpents, Harmless as Doves: Subverting Dogma in an LDS Context”
• Cory Funk on “The Utility of Belief and Agnosticism”
• Dan Wotherspoon on “Things Mormon Transhumanist Nerds Should Keep in Mind When Interacting with Potential Non-Transhumanist Allies — Especially Ones within Their Own Tradition”
• Don Bradley on “‘The Grand Fundamental Principle’: Friendship as Partaking of the Divine Nature”
• Dorothy Deasy on “Post-biological Transfiguration”
• Eric Swedin on “Why Transhumanist Immortality is a Bad Idea”
• Evan Hadfield on “God as Universal Experience: A Buddhist and Mormon Perspective”
• Giulio Prisco on “The Turing Church of Transcendent Engineering”
• James Carroll on “Epiphenomenalism, the Problem with Property Dualism”
• Jamie Driessen on “Machine Skepticism Using a Non-Classical Suspension of a Logic Gate”
• Karl Hale on “Worshiping an Extra-Terrestrial Humanoid Deity”
• Kathy Wilson on “From Mormon to Mystic”
• Leonard Reil on “The Plurality of Gods: An Uncomfortable Doctrine”
• Lincoln Cannon on “The History, Status and Plans of the Mormon Transhumanist Association”
• Marcus Flinders on “Taxation in a Millennial World”
• Micah Redding on “Transhumanism and the Christian Story”
• Michael Ferguson on “Toward a Science of Spirituality”
• Mike Perry on “Christian Atheist Universal Immortalism”
• Roger Hansen on “Putting a Ghost in the Machine”
• Varden Hadfield on “How Amazing is Grace? The Role of Jesus Christ in Mormonism and Transhumanism”