Constructing the Doctrine

As of the time of this writing, there are less than two months left until the end of the world.

Well, the beginning of the end anyway. According to the EBible Fellowship the rapture will happen on May 21st, 2011. This date comes from following a number of assumptions:

1. The flood of Noah happened in 4990 BC (apparently this is calculated by using dates in the bible)
2. The flood started on "the second month, the seventeenth day of the month." (Genesis 7:11)
3. The seventeenth day of the second month in the Hebrew calendar is equal to May 21st in the Gregorian calendar (no source given)
4. The Lord tells Noah, "For yet seven days, and I will ... destroy [all things] from the face of the earth" (Genesis 7:4) This has both a literal and "spiritual" meaining
5. "A day is with the Lord as a thousand years" (2 Peter 3:8)
6. Exactly 7000 years (7 days in God's time) from the flood is May 21st, 2011.

Amazing isn't it? But lest Mormons get comfortable thinking that such strange conclusions wouldn't come from their religion, let me give another example.

Cleon Skousen gave a famous (infamous?) talk on the necessity of the atonement[1].  He presents his case through a series of scripture references. I'll summarize his points here:

1. There are two types of matter in the universe, things to act and things to be acted upon (2 Nephi 2:14)
2. Things that act are called "intelligences" (D&C 93:29)
3. Intelligence is independent of God (D&C 93:30)
4. There are gradations of intelligences (Abraham 3:19)
5. Things that are acted upon are called "matter" (D&C 93:33) 
6. The elements obey God (Abraham 4:18, 12, 10; Helaman 12:8, 9)
7. The power to control the elements comes from God's honor (D&C 29:36, Moses 4:1,4)
8. If God were to not follow his own rules, he would cease to be God, and presumably lose his power to control the elements (Alma 42:13, 22, 25 Mormon 9:19)
9. God cannot save us without breaking his rules (Alma 34:9)
10. Thus, we need the Atonement.

In a way, this is a beautiful piece of logic, powerful in its explanatory power. But again, the sources for this are disparate and unrelated. I find it very difficult to believe that the authors of each source intended them to be combined in these ways.

The primary assumption behind these lines of reasoning is that the scriptures are some kind of set of cohesive code books that must be picked apart, parsed, and pieced together in order to get a full picture.

In fact, this exact reasoning is expressed by Boyd K. Packer.

"Individual doctrines of the gospel are not fully explained in one place in the scriptures, nor presented in order or sequence. They must be assembled from pieces here and there. They are sometimes found in large segments, but mostly they are in small bits scattered through the chapters and verses"[2]

The problem with this is that with a body of work as varied in scope and subject as the scriptures, it's easy to find bits and pieces that can be reconstructed to justify nearly anything.

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[1] Officially, you can purchase it here, but if you search for "Atonement Cleon Skousen" you can read the full text on other sites.
[2] This was originally from a talk given to CES instructors, but in trying to locate the source, I found it in a lot of other places, including some of the student guides for scripture study.

Boyd K. Packer - Cleansing the Inner Vessel

In the October 2010 General Conference, Boyd K. Packer gave a talk entitled "Cleansing the Inner Vessel".  This talk generated a lot of controversy, which I may go into later, but for this post I want to focus on one specific analogy that he used.

Years ago I visited a school ... the teacher told me about a youngster who brought a kitten to class. ... It went well until one of the children asked, "Is it a boy kitty or a a girl kitty?" ... Finally, one boy raised his hand and said, "I know how you can tell ... You can vote on it!"

There are those today who ... advocate voting to change laws that would legalize immorality, as if a vote would somehow alter the designs of God's laws and nature.  A law against nature would be impossible to enforce.  For instance, what good would a vote against the law of gravity do?

Although he doesn't come right out and say it, he's likely referring to legislation regarding rights for homosexuals, specifically the right to get married.

I have a couple of issues of this. To demonstrate the first one, I'll extend Packer's story about the children who were attempting to identify the gender of the kitten.

"I know how you can tell," said a young boy.  "You can vote on it!"

"Silly youngster," said the wise old man. "You can't determine the gender of that kitten by voting."

The children look at him, eager to hear the answer.

"You need to pray about it."

You can't vote against the facts of nature.  But you can't have revelation against them either.  The fact is, same-gender attraction seems to be something that has a genetic basis. If you're interesting in understanding this further, I recommend listening to a BYU Professor talk about the biological origin of homosexuality.

Homosexuality is also found in a number of other species. In a literal meaning, it's natural--it exists in nature. No amount of legislation or revelation will change that.

Jesus's Coolest Miracle

In reading the lesson for the Sunday School lesson this week, I came across a miracle Jesus performs that I hadn't every really noticed before.

In John 6, Jesus feeds the five thousand, then walks on water to his disciples' boat.  Then in verse 21:

Then they willingly received him into the ship: and immediately the ship was at the land whither they went. (emphasis added)

So not only can Jesus make food out of nothing, and walk on water, but he can teleport an entire boat across the sea!  Why don't we talk more about this?!  This is the coolest miracle in the Bible!