On the morning the Challenger space shuttle exploded, Maggie shot on over. I’ve been thinking about both events as though they were connected, even though I know they aren’t. They were separated not merely by…
Jack slowed down, looking for a sign. Seeing none, he sped on down the highway, grumbling to himself. Dean could have given more specific directions — or better, first-hand instructions, not this friend-of-a-friend nonsense. It…
I found this philosophical bit by Chip Janis in In the New World (1988), a little book of poems put together by young Indian students at the Pretty Eagle School and St. Charles Mission in Ashland, Mon tana. Why am I here? It is a question most of us come face to face with. I have heard that Leo Tolstoy, after he had fathered thirteen children, helped Tsar Alexander II free the serfs, and written dozens of articles and books, still tortured himself with the question: “Why am I living?”
On the second Sunday of December 1976, Cloyd Mullins and his two sons, Lynne Whitney and her four children, Bill and Ellen Lilley and their two small children, a pair of missionaries, and Karl Tippets…
The morning promised no bright sun. No blue sky. Only dust from the desert’s chalky red soil. “Lord in heaven,” Rosalinda said to herself. She stared out the window, worried about her garden. She couldn’t…
My wife, Freida, could have worked for Cecil B. DeMille or Steven Spielberg, given her cast-of-thousands knack for the spectacular. Take to night, for instance. In the name of fellowshipping, and to beef up our…
The public image of David O. McKay, ninth president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, is overwhelmingly positive. Impressive in physical appearance, with a large frame, McKay stood six feet one inch,…
I’m going to risk starting with an impression I will not try to document but suspect many Mormons would share: that in the church, when we attempt to teach chastity to youth (say in Sunday…
Membership in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is expanding rapidly. As the church passes the ten-million member milestone, social science researchers have raised a number of important questions about the rapid growth of Mormonism. Issues include changing Mormon demographics, cultural tensions of church globalization, and the evolution of Mormon identity and assimilation. Another topic of research focuses on mass media use and the role it plays in the ways Mormons accommodate the larger society. What has not been examined, however, are the ways mass media, such as movies, television, newspapers, etc., tend to describe Mormons.
According to traditional theism, God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent. If God were omnibenevolent, he would want to eliminate evil. If God were omnipotent, he would be able to eliminate evil. So why should there be any evil? This problem is, by far, the most discussed subject in the philosophy of religion. In this paper, I argue that rejecting the traditional notion of God is the best way to deal with this problem.