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Roughly six months ago, Microsoft sent a PowerPoint presentation to electronics retailer Best Buy–ostensibly to help their employees teach customers the differences between Microsoft Windows and Linux.  Linux advocates objected to what they called Microsoft’s exercise in “FUD” (“Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt“).  However, taking advantage of consumer conservatism is not a sin.  In fact, there is a very good reason for this conservatism.  Information is expensive, and, unless people are convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that the new thing/way/system is more cost-effective than the old one, people are simply not willing to spend resources (not just money!) to switch.

With this in mind, Microsoft’s choice to highlight Linux’ reputation for being “of the geeks, by the geeks, and for the geeks,” is simply fair game.  It isn’t Microsoft’s fault that traditionally, Linux’ focus on programmer and developer choice tends to leave most users–who tend to be ignorant of computer science–lost. [Read more…] about Flamewars and Polemics….

Matt Roper from the Neal A. Maxwell Institute of Religious Scholarship (formerly FARMS) has managed to track down, compile, and scan 556 publications discussing the Book of Mormon from between 1829 and 1844. The collection, called “19th-Century Publications about the Book of Mormon (1829–1844)” (also known as the “Kirkham project” after Francis W. Kirkham), is available for digging through online at the Harold B. Lee Library Digital Collections.

The collection includes facsimile copies as well as .pdf transcriptions of each publication. It seems to be an exciting resource for researching the reception and analysis of the Book of Mormon in early American print culture. The collection is described as follows:

“Since its publication in 1830, the Book of Mormon has been cast in a variety of roles by both Latter-day Saint and non–Latter-day Saint readers. Published literature relating to the book that appeared during the Prophet Joseph Smith’s lifetime is one of the best historical windows for understanding how this ancient American scripture was interpreted, used, and understood by early readers. This collection represents an effort to gather together that body of literature and make it available to those interested in the origins of the Book of Mormon.”

The cropped image above is an excerpt from The Wayne Sentinel, Palmyra, New York, 26 June 1829. It is the earliest known publication mentioning the Book of Mormon. Here’s part of the provided transcript:

Just about in this particular region, for some time past, much speculation has existed, concerning a pretended discovery, through superhuman means, of an ancient record, of a religious and a divine nature and origin, written in ancient characters, impossible to be interpreted by any to whom the special gift has not been imparted by inspiration. It is generally known and spoken of as the “Golden Bible.” Most people entertain an idea that the whole matter is the result of a gross imposition and a grosser superstition. It is pretended that it will be published as soon as the translation is completed. Meanwhile we have been furnished with the following, which is represented to us as intended for the title page of the work–we give it as a
curiosity:—
“The Book of Mormon, an account, written by the hand of Mormon upon plates, taken
from the plates of Nephi—

See the collection here: http://lib.byu.edu/dlib/bompublications/. Having these sources in one place is great. I hope it grows, too.

Some recent volleys have been fired in the on-going culture wars between the faithful Mormon community and their anti- and ex-Mormon counterparts. It is not quite fair to contrast a general authority’s polished speech and some off-hand message board remarks backed by shoddy research. Bruce C. Hafen’s remarks were summarized in this Mormon Times article, but I take responsibility for applying them to my recent experiences in researching marital ages of 19^th century wives alongside those of Joseph Smith and the Deseret era saints. Some excerpts from MT:

“Readers have no way of knowing which critical claims have already been discredited, and the anti-Mormon sponsors are certainly not going to tell them right there on the site,” he said.

The democratization of ideas sometimes confuses the reader as to what is true and what is not, as all ideas are presented horizontally and as fact, thus positioning the blogger’s flippant opinion alongside the scholar’s well-researched dissertation.

[Read more…] about 19th Century Nuptiality and Propaganda II

Review
======
Title: The Joseph Smith Papers: Revelations and Translations: Manuscript
Revelation Books
Editors: Robin Scott Jensen, Robert J. Woodford, Steven C. Harper
Publisher: The Church Historian’s Press
Genre: Nonfiction
Year Published: 2009
Number of Pages: 752
Binding: Hardcover
ISBN-10: 1570088500
ISBN-13: 978-1570088506
Price: $99.95

Reviewed by Trevor Holyoak

This is the second book to be released in the Joseph Smith Papers
project, and the first volume of the Revelations and Translations
series. It is a “facsimile edition” of Revelation Book 1 (also known as
“Book of Commandments and Revelations”) and Revelation Book 2 (“Book of
Revelation” or “Kirtland Revelation Book”). It is quite large, measuring
approximately 9.25 by 12.25 inches and weighing nearly 8 pounds. This
means it won’t quite match the previously released Journals volume on
your shelf (which it effectively dwarfs), but apparently there will be a
few other volumes of the same size to go along with it, so the finished
set of 30+ volumes should end up looking quite nice together, in spite
of the two sizes. And there is a very good reason for the larger size –
the body of the book consists of photographs of each page of the two
books, with the photos on the left side, and a transcription running
parallel on the right. [Read more…] about Revelations and Translations I

Parallelomania was a term perhaps coined in 1830, coincidently (or is it?) the same year the Book of Mormon was published.
I put some  notes  together a few months ago on evaluating parallels. I would like to hear some of your methods for discerning the significance of a proposed parallel and some examples as well. [Read more…] about Parallelomania

Recently I have been gathering notes to do some rewrites on the FAIR wiki regarding Brigham Young’s views on race mixing. Then I ran across Connell O’Donovan’s 2009 Sunstone West article [1].  O’Donovan has uncovered many Mormon specific sources on attitudes and reactions to interracial unions. When I read his earlier article on Walker Lewis, I wished for more of an attempt to contextualize Brigham Young’s thoughts with those of his contemporaries. In the Sunstone article,  O’Donovan delivers. He gives an overview of anti-miscegenation laws and attempts to repeal them over a long stretch of times. He also places Brigham’s views that “mulattos are like mules” and hence could not (or should not [2]) reproduce very well was within the norm of the scientific thought of his day. Needless to say, none of these attitudes belong in today’s more enlightened society or the LDS Church. [Read more…] about Brigham Young on Interracial Marriage

Conservative author Dinesh D’Sousa has written a new book to follow up on his best-seller, What’s so great about Christianity?–called, Life After Death: The Evidence [http://townhall.com/columnists/DrPaulKengor/2009/12/09/qa_dinesh_dsouza_on_life_after_death?page=1]. I have a copy of the former, as well as others of D’Sousa’s books, including The End of Racism. For those who don’t know about him, D’Sousa immigrated from India as a teen during the 1970’s, and became a senior domestic policy analyst for the Reagan Administration. His analysis is typical of people who immigrated from Asia and attended American schools; the quality is better than anything about 90% of native-born Americans can produce.

There is, however, one issue in his last two books, where D’Sousa’s analysis fails–utterly. One claim made by atheists like Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Hatrris, etc., is that Heaven is a wish fulfillment concept, and thus, so is religion. That is, earth life is so bad, we dream up a place that is wonderful beyond imagination to console us.

D’Sousa’s answer is that he can certainly understand why somebody whose life isn’t that nice might imagine a place waiting for us that is. He has problems, however, understanding hell as a wish-fulfillment. Hell, of course is WORSE than any place that exists temporally, and worse than what humans can imagine–even a Nazi concentration camp is paradise compared to hell.

While hell-as-wish-fulfillment is certainly incongruous with those for whom hell’s existence serves as incentive toward holiness, like, say, Mother Teresa, for most of us, hell’s existence serves as a wish fulfillment as a tool of cosmic justice, which doesn’t exist here on earth. That is, in our worst moments, we might wish hell upon our enemies–those we don’t like. Thus, liberal Democrats wish hell upon former President Bush–and his supporters, “birthers” wish hell upon that “African Muslim Socialist,” President Obama (He isn’t–at least the former two; I’ll explain in a later post.)–and his supporters, and anti-Mormons like Bill Keller (http://www.votingforsatan.com/) wish it for the Latter-day Saints–and those like the late Governor Lilburn Boggs [D-MO] actually attempt to send us there.

Thus, for most of us, hell is indeed a wish-fulfillment concept, and for the rest of us, it is evidence that we are nuts.

Personally, I think a better response–though less dramatic than D’Sousa’s–is Daniel Peterson’s rule of comparative religions: If a person who is undoubtedly sane and intelligent in other subjects adheres to a religion that an observer thinks crazy or stupid, the problem is more likely with the observer’s view than with the religionist’s beliefs [http://www.meridianmagazine.com/ideas/040315respecting.html].

What do you all think?