tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-67358728362372136202026-05-14T18:23:29.898-04:00Thoughts on Mormonism, Transhumanism, and reconciling humanity, and original poetry, crafts, and other interests of Jonathan CannonJonathan Cannonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16998764195741319613noreply@blogger.comBlogger182125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6735872836237213620.post-47173194203018043012026-03-02T13:19:00.000-05:002026-03-02T13:19:27.103-05:00

 Alvin Plantinga's ArgumentIn the early 2000s, I went to hear Alvin Plantinga speak at the University of Wisconsin. He was arguing that believing in naturalism (everything came about through natural laws and processes) was a defeater for believing in evolution. If you believe in evolution AND you believe that humans have the capacity to reason correctly, then it is more probable that there

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During graduate school, fresh from Brigham Young University, I attended a Mormon ward for single adults. I cared a lot about people feeling welcome and about spreading the good news. I knew how to fit right in in Mormonism, and I felt like it needed to be a place for people who didn't feel they fit. So I grew out my hair. I then grew a beard. I didn't always wear a shirt and tie, but sometimes

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 I'm moving back to Blogger because I don't have to pay for it, and I have to economize at this point in my life. Of course, we could run the internet in a more fair way, and then I could choose to host my blog where I want, rather than giving my attention and traffic to another Google company.https://www.weforum.org/stories/2018/12/tech-companies-should-pay-us-for-our-data/ Maybe we

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Humans won't need humans As humans are less and less necessary for meeting human needs, we could foreseeably all be out of jobs. With improvements in emotional simulation and response, we could even become unnecessary for "human" emotional contact. I do not think we will choose such an extreme future, but once technology is out, there's really no putting it back, and most of us don't want to.

Jonathan Cannonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16998764195741319613noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6735872836237213620.post-19198829518123379002020-04-27T12:12:00.000-04:002020-04-27T12:12:00.913-04:00

If you've been Mormon long, you know this story. God didn't make the world. He told Jehovah to make it, and He got a bunch of other people together to do the real work. We made the world. We had instructions, sure, but it seems they weren't exactly like a blueprint. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the instructions were more organic. There was an element of agency involved that we don't typically think

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I probably shouldn't write this, but I will anyway. I regularly read/skim the NY Times opinion page. With the editor on vacation, he invited people with views not typically represented in the NY Times to write the main editorial piece for a week each. Two socialists shared a week. A legal expert wrote for another. A conservative columnist (and strong supporter of the current Republican

Jonathan Cannonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16998764195741319613noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6735872836237213620.post-89001870632375190862017-01-29T12:34:00.001-05:002017-01-29T12:42:00.602-05:00

Government: Restricter or Promoter of Liberty? Most often I hear arguments against government focusing on how government hobbles individual choices, like choices about how to do business or what to do with one's justly earned property. This is a focus on negative liberties--things we are forbidden to do by laws and institutions. Too seldom do I hear about the positive liberties enabled by

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(The idea that time isn't real is an obstacle to understanding God. We try to associate the Aristotelean unmoved mover with the Newtonian observer outside space and time, and we end up with an absurd, omni-God.) Time is meaningless in a block universe, and is meaningless to an observer outside of time. Devaluing time is tied to privileging mathematics as reality. The ideas that math is reality

Jonathan Cannonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16998764195741319613noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6735872836237213620.post-43071354193806957742016-09-01T14:35:00.003-04:002016-09-01T14:35:56.048-04:00

What is Natural Philosophy? Here are some of its enduring characteristics . . . Its first hallmark is to take nature as its topic: not science but the world itself. . . . Science and natural philosophy have the same subject matter, but not the same powers and methods. A second characteristic . . . is to question the present agenda or the established methods in particular sciences. Natural

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Once we free ourselves from the superstitions that prompt us to see the study of society and history as weak biology and biology as weak physics, we are free to recognize these analogies and to learn from them. Prejudice against other disciplines doesn't make us better scientists. History and social science have a richer tool set than physical sciences. In this pursuit, the mind can stock

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The following post was published on The Transfigurist on 4/26/2016 The problem of pain is not in its logic. It only defeats false Gods, or Gods unconstrained by the realities of the nature we live daily. The problem of pain is in the gut wrenching sadness of watching a parent lose a child and thinking of your own precious children. Of watching a man or woman lose the love of their life

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I have wondered about the issue of Gender Dysphoria, and when several of my friends and acquaintances posted links to a position statement by the American College of Pediatricians, I was interested. Even as a public LGBTQ ally, I continue to be sceptical of positions that fail to recognize the predominant biological sex binary. I was encouraged as I began reading the ACP position that it

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I continue to be a believer in Mormonism. I don't think many people who know me question this, even if as practicing Latter-day Saints they think I could be more committed to my ward or the LDS church, even if they question my understanding of doctrine or faith, or what it means to follow God, or even if they know my sins and failings. Doubters and unbelievers don't hesitate to identify me

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I wrote most of this a couple of years ago when I was unsettled by this topic. I still think most of these thoughts are accurate. I'm less invested in the outcomes, since I no longer see myself as having a future of potential influence within the standard structures of the LDS church. Partly because I feel these things less, I'm finally ready to share them and hope that others will recognize

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I listened to a brief interview with Jonathan Haidt in which he was asked if religion does more harm or good. He hesitated briefly because his answer was yes and no. He observed that in places like the United States, where there is robust competition among the different religious sects, religious people contribute more to society in a number of measurable ways than their non-religious

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Just published this on Rational Faiths. Probably slightly more polished there. The Restoration Completed I have very nearly finished reading every general conference talk given by the first four presidents of the LDS church: Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, John Taylor, and Wilford Woodruff. As I'm working through Wilford Woodruff, a trend has stood out to me because it is in such contrast to my

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Prone to Wander, Lord 2001 He wanders far from crowds, on quiet paths, Slowly, in dark thoughts of human weakness, In shade of trees and guilt, in cold iso- lation of an early winter morning And narcissistic self-pity.  But one Prone to wander is not prone to stop For long.  Even in despair he’ll wander Through this vale of fears, and shadows give way To fields and the

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I've wanted one for years. I heard about some historian that described a trend in U.S. History. Every 50 years there is a major social change. In 2005, I started wondering what this would be? We had the Revolutionary War in the 1770s, the national bank, Missouri Compromise, and Monroe Doctrine in the 1820s, the Civil War in the 1860s, women's suffrage in 1919, the civil rights movement in the

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A Mind's Resting Place It has been two and a half years since I wrote my most viewed personal post (almost 900 views as of today), Thermodynamics and Theories of Atonement. I want to write an update. I said then that each theory could be compared to an approximation of the reality of the atonement--some better, some worse, but many useful in their proper context. I am now ready to share my

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I haven't felt this way for more than 10 years now, but the words are still among the favorites I have ever written. For me the images and rhythms capture the feelings I felt. Perhaps you can sense them, too. Hesitation 2000 I wouldn’t stop sensing the moment or break the flow of words between us that falter on your lips, or on mine to await a time and place to unblock their expression, where

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I don't know what I think about Jesus, sometimes. I'm clearly a believer--a believer in his life, in the resurrection, in the atonement, in salvation and exaltation, in his hard moral teachings. But sometimes the ways I believe in these things seem so different from how I understood them before that some might not recognize them as Mormon. I believe in the resurrection. I know it's unprovable

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Stop defending Patriarchy. It's animal instinct raised to social dogma. It's using your lower brain. It's not using your higher reasoning powers. It's the definition of the natural man. It's not enough to say, "I'm a benevolent ruler." You need to use your power to give power to those without it. Sometimes at the expense of your own power. Amen.

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I remember wondering how the Millennium could include all the just of the earth--both those destined for celestial glory and those for terrestrial glory--and everyone wouldn't simply convert to Mormonism? For years I satisfied myself with the answer that the spirit world and the Millennium must look enough like other religions' conceptions of the afterlife that there would still be room for

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I love the erudite blasting of string theory and the multiverse hypotheses: Rather than acknowledging such underdetermination as a limit or a failure of insight, it has tried to turn a detriment into a benefit by describing the former as the latter.  String theory is almost totally untestable: The large preponderance of equations, or of their admissible parameters, refer to circumstances

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I recently published this poem on Rational Faiths under the title "Growing Doubt". I need to publish it here, and I just encountered a famous sonnet that uses the same imagery. The messages are both the same and contrary. I will let you enjoy and judge them as you wish. I was once told. . . 2002 I was once told there’s danger in a question— Faith and doubt cannot live in one mind, And doubt

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