Website: http://jakespainfullynormalworld.blogspot.com
Profile: Was born half-grasshopper half-boy and spent his childhood eating books. As a teenager he fell in love with Indie music, tweed, and the smell of old books. Currently a PhD student in the history of philosophy and ideas at the university of Warwick he now likes to explore, play the guitar, and watch films. After stumbling into a philosophical dark hole one day he discovered the bloggernacle as a pillar of light to guide him out, for which he is ever thankful. He now resides on the borders of Plato's cave and agrees fully with the following statement: “I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the book we're reading doesn't wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for? So that it will make us happy, as you write? Good Lord, we would be happy precisely if we had no books, and the kind of books that make us happy are the kind we could write ourselves if we had to. But we need books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. That is my belief.” Franz Kafka
The church does not have a solid reputation of treating all people equally. Some unequal treatment is based on behavior (e.g. the heathen drinkers of alcohol), other distinctions are made for tribal reasons (e.g. other religions or unfamiliar backgrounds), and there are distinctions made for who people are inherently (e.g. one’s sex or sexual orientation). [...]
On Tuesday the BBC did a documentary called The Mormon Candidate. The aftermath resulted in every one of my member friends shouting (virtually, of course) that we should all complain about the programme’s misrepresentation of the church. By Common Consent even published an open letter to the BBC about the decontextualisation of the facts in [...]
I may be a historian, and I may align with feminist thinking, but I am not a feminist historian. Feminist history usually involves digging up forgotten people (women) from the past, and then holding them up to show how they were oppressed, subjected by male patriachy, or silenced. In some cases it is important to [...]
Anyone who has listened to the Mormon Stories podcasts, or spent any time around New Order Mormons, or any Ex-mormon site should be familiar (they are used often enough) with the terms cognitive dissonance, deception and delusions. It seems as if they have a particular traction amongst these groups. Personally I think they are over [...]
My 15 year old sister always gets told off by my mother when she prays. The reason for this is that instead of saying “Thee,” “Thou,” or “Thy” (referred to as TTT from now on) she uses “you” and “your.” My mother likes to quote these words of Spencer W. Kimball: “In all our prayers, it is well [...]
A recent trend in sociology claims that there is a rise in sentimentalism, that increasingly we are substituting sentimentality for real emotion. Both religion and sentimentality end up failing to be what they seem upon closer inspection. It has been argued that if Christianity were inspected by the Trades Descriptions Act it would be found guilty of false [...]
The philosopher Goethe once said that we should every day see something beautiful when he said that: “Every day look at a beautiful picture, read a beautiful poem, listen to some beautiful music, and if possible, say some reasonable thing.” This year I have taken up that challenge and I am attempting every day to [...]
Last week I talked about the results of John Dehlin’s recent survey that showed that a leading cause of people leaving Mormonism has become the ready access to church history information on the internet. Today I’d like to continue to evaluate the survey information. Oh Ye of Too Much Faith It seems that often those [...]
Recent articles in the media have pointed to the study of church history as being key to the loss of faith. What role does it actually play?
We often speak of God as a distant abstract entity, a being who dwells on a planet next to Kolob. At the same time we talk of a being who is intimately involved in our lives and helps us find our lost car keys. This dual process of distancing and bringing Him close in many [...]
The famous proverb states that if you ‘Train a child in the way of the Lord when he is old he shall not depart from his ways.’ If this proverb is right and childhood education has such a deterministic role in a persons life, then the education of that child should be considered carefully, lest [...]
“A number of interesting parallels can be seen between the church and some of the ideas and policies of the National Socialists [Nazis].” Deseret News, 1933
To what extent is the revolution described in Animal Farm like the modern church?
In recent years two individuals have claimed to be true Mormon prophets. How do we know that they are false prophets?
Missions are a breeding grounds of both speculation on deep doctrine and false doctrine. This is a sample of talks that fuel this speculation.
The church focuses on porn being a problem, but what are the motives that lead someone to it in the first place?
“The system that you are brought up with is the one that seems obvious – any others seem intuitively wrong, however rationally they may have been constructed.”
Francis Bacon said that “a prudent question is one-half of wisdom” but is it equally true that questions are one-half of faith?
Recently a friend asked me to give them a list of talks that I would recommend that they should read. There is something exhiliarating about making a list of your top five things. In The Sound of Music, Maria lists her favorite things to cheer up her young charges. Lists also play a key role in one of [...]
What would you ask if you had the chance to ask an Apostle a question?
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