When I was at BYU I used to spend some of my free time between classes hunting for treasures in the BYU library. I made lots of trips to Special Collections since my searches on controversial topics seemed to land me there more often than not. But those trips took time. Frequently, I would just go to the Mormon section (on the forth floor at the time before the HBLL was expanded and it moved downstairs) and look for interesting books to check out. At the time I didn’t have a very clear picture of the larger scholarly community and I assumed if I was going to find interesting things I’d have to dig them up for myself in old books. (more…)

Phew! A non-conference road win… It’s about time.

BYU pulled out a win today over the Washington Huskies by blocking an extra point attempt that would have tied the game as time wound down. Good times, good times…

Just as I was about to kick a hole in my TV in frustration over the atrociously biased Pac 10 refs (who had just swallowed their whistles on a blatant hold — a hold that likely prevented a drive-ending sack no less), just at that moment the refs blew the whistle on UW quarterback Jake Locker when he hurled the ball into the air after scoring a last second touchdown. The penalty meant that with the score at 27-28 the Huskies had to kick the extra point from an extra 15 yards out. In shades of the 2007 Las Vegas Bowl the Cougs promptly blocked the kick and won the game. Good times.

Here are a few things I learned from watching this game: (more…)

Today I went back and read a few old posts, and a few things became apparent.
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When Nevada backed out of their scheduled season opening game with BYU several months ago BYU was left in a bad spot. They needed to schedule a home game for August 30 with a good opponent. The problem is that most schools are not super anxious to come to Provo to face the Cougs — largely because most schools realize it is hard to beat BYU in Provo these days. So BYU reportedly took the best game it could get. That meant that Division 1AA (FCS) powerhouse Northern Iowa.

In the end BYU took care of the NIU Panthers 41-17. But the game was no thing of beauty for the Cougs on Saturday. BYU actually did have an excellent first half. It was the dominating performance one would expect from a top 20 division 1A (FBS) school over a good school from a lower division with the Cougs leading 27-3 going into the break. But the third quarter was a disaster for BYU. After losing 4 fumbles the Cougars gave up 14 points and scored none in the 3rd and the score heading in to the 4th quarter was 27-17. BYU righted the ship quickly enough and got those 14 points back but the game did show that BYU is has a way to go in its “Quest For Perfection” (the team motto in 2008).

Here are some random thoughts and observations about the game:

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Every 5th Sunday in our ward, the Young Women started a tradition where a member of the Bishopric comes in and the Youth can ask them any questions they have. By Way of Contrast, here are some example questions:

Young Women:
-Who is Heavenly Father’s Father, and why Don’t we worship him?
-Why is there Suffering in the world when there is an all loving God?

Young Men:
-If you could pet a panda, would you?
-Which is your favorite Star Wars Movie?

Is this just my ward, or is it churchwide?

Click over and read this short article by Eamonn McCann from the Belfast Telegraph.

Every now and then someone I would never expect jumps in to say the obvious in it can be very refreshing. I’m not worried that his description of baptism for the dead is light on the word “proxy.” I’m not too concerned about his describing our baptisms for the dead as happening in “batches.” Misconceptions like that are widespread and increasingly I think they are not a big deal. When it comes to the main points of his article McCann is right on the money and I was thrilled to read it. Personally, I like it even better coming from an atheist since I can imagine that he has less built in religious bias than your average Catholic or Mormon commenting on the situation.

Hat tip to my mother in law for forwarding me the link.

P.S. Blake made some related comments in this post back in Feb 2007.

I frankly find this disturbing.

President Clark, you have a problem.

So, I have noted that my typical habit of buying books and giving them away has once again depleted my inventory. So I have been shopping the internet tonight, and I started thinking about the fact that I should buy books that help people with their issues, which got me to thinking about what all the issues are that my lds and other friends are going through, and I thought I would posit to the group what the best “faithful”* books are that deal with these issues:

So what is the best book(and you can’t answer the scriptures) that deals with:
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Football season is upon us.

Woohoo!

As I have in years past I will be posting on the BYU football team this season and recapping the games. But before I kick off my own posts on the Cougs I figured I would give you some links to the best day to day BYU football resources I have found: (more…)

So I have to teach the Young Men a lesson this Sunday on choosing an Eternal Companion, and while I was going through the lesson, I noticed a sort of lacunae.

Why do we want to get married?

The only thing the manual provides is that old chestnut “Men can’t be exalted without being married”.
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Someone asked me recently why the LDS church still uses the King James Version exclusively. My answer was probably a parrot of something I read in the bloggernacle at some point in the past, but I don’t really remember where I got my current view.

My answer was to this effect:

Q1: Why do we use the KJV in the first place?

A1: Because the KJV was the Bible in widespread use at the time of the restoration. We just picked up the KJV by default because it was the Bible used by Joseph Smith and his contemporaries.

Q2: Why do we still stick to the KJV tenaciously after all these years, even to the point of disallowing other translations from use as the basis for Gospel Doctrine classes etc.?

A2: Because the Book of Mormon uses KJV language and we don’t want to do anything to the Book of Mormon language. It would be weird if we started using a plain English translation of the Bible but had a Book of Mormon that still used the KJV English. Since we are not about to “translate” the Book of Mormon into modern English, we can’t officially do it to the Bible either. I don’t think it has anything to do with the KJV being the best, or even a particularly good translation by modern standards. (more…)