For practicing Latter-Day Saints: your favorite non-LDS thinkers/philosophers/theologians?

[flameburns623]

3 hours ago, The Nehor said:

I actually did not find her thought provoking, Atlas Shrugged seemed to me to be erotica with a bad tacked on story.

She started out, in We The Living, as a passably good serious novelist, wroting a semi-autobiographical account of her life in Soviet Russia.

The Fountainhead seemed a step down from that.

Atlas Shrugged is a clumsily written defense of individual liberty, using extremely one-dimensional characters.

And Anthem is a step down from that. 

[flameburns623]

4 hours ago, Duncan said:

I like Henri Nouwen, N.T. Wright, Raymond E. Brown to name a few

And, why?

[Scott Lloyd]

3 hours ago, Kenngo1969 said:

Around here, we call him by his more formal name, Charles Richardens. The same thing happened a few years ago when I tried to comment on something(s) written by BYU law professor Fred Ge-Richards.  

 

P.S.:  Insulting someone around here is tricky, too. One has to write, "You're such a Richard!"  and hope his intended target gets the inside reference and takes sufficient umbrage.  

Or the variation, "Kind of a richard, aren't you?"

I'm used to having the board mangle it when I try to cite D-i-c-kens, as he is one of my all-time favorite authors. So I reflexively write it the first time the way I did here.

Edited November 8, 2016 by Scott Lloyd

[Scott Lloyd]

2 hours ago, Boanerges said:

Charles ****ens, particularly A Christmas Carol which encompasses the basics of the gospel.

 

 

A Christmas Carol gets my vote for best fictional work of all time, and not just Christmas fiction, but fiction of any kind. And for the reason you give.

[Duncan]

14 minutes ago, flameburns623 said:

And, why?

different perspective, they can point out things in scriptures that I don't know or whatever

[Jeanne]

5 hours ago, rodheadlee said:

Bob Dylan, Jesse Colin Young, JRR Tolkien.  Bob Dylan for HWY 61 Revisted and All along the Watchtower, Jesse Colin Young for Darkness Darkness .I'm late for work.

John Lennon...Imagine.

[Gray]

7 hours ago, flameburns623 said:

And, why?

I would say all three of them helped renew my spirituality by allowing me to see scripture and religiosity in a new light. I could no longer connect with the fundamentalism I was raised with. Being introduced to a more liberal and open approaches to spirituality (within liberal Christianity and reformed Judaism), informed and not threatened by good scholarship, allowed me to reconnect with God, and indeed have the first healthy connection with God that I've experienced in my life. Fundamentalism was a very unhealthy path for me, although I understand the same is not true for others. 

[Boanerges]

2 hours ago, Scott Lloyd said:

A Christmas Carol gets my vote for best fictional work of all time, and not just Christmas fiction, but fiction of any kind. And for the reason you give.

Yeah, it has love your neighbor, chains forged in this life and judgement, grace in Marley's warning to Scrooge, repentance - all the good stuff about the gospel.

[Teancum]

5 hours ago, Scott Lloyd said:

Lennon and McCartney for that immortal line, "And, in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make." (From "Golden Slumbers)

You rebel you! 

[Kenngo1969]

2 hours ago, Jeanne said:

John Lennon...Imagine.

I believe I know, at least to a certain extent, what Lennon was driving at with those lyrics.  Here's why I think he was both right ... and wrong.  

https://greatgourdini.wordpress.com/2014/05/27/lennon-hope-and-religion/

[Jeanne]

18 minutes ago, Kenngo1969 said:

I believe I know, at least to a certain extent, what Lennon was driving at with those lyrics.  Here's why I think he was both right ... and wrong.  

https://greatgourdini.wordpress.com/2014/05/27/lennon-hope-and-religion/

He was so different wasn't he??  But poetic and thoughtful.  There was of course a huge ego attached to his many talents.  For all his grand illusions..I will forgive and give peace a chance.

[waveslider]

I read a book a few months back, and I liked it coming from a philosophical point of view on how to be around our fellow beings. It lined up nicely with being Christ like toward our fellow man. I don't know who actually wrote it. It is from, the Arbinger Institute, whatever that is, but I liked it: https://arbinger.com/product/leadership-and-self-deception/

I have always like Rush lyrics since the 70's until now. Many of their lyrics have some interesting morals and deeper meanings to them.

You can't go wrong with C. S. Lewis either. IMO

[hagoth7]

• Cicero
• Jacob Arminius
• Menno Simons
• Isaac Newton

Edited November 9, 2016 by hagoth7

[Calm]

The artwork of James Christensen and JKirk Richards.

http://mormonartist.net/interviews/james-christensen/

http://mormonartist.net/interviews/j-kirk-richards/

[CV75]

On 11/8/2016 at 0:56 AM, flameburns623 said:

People whose ideas enrich and inform your Restorationist understanding of the Gospel?

Who?

And, why? 

I  have been re-reading three of Chaim Potok's novels, and while I  am wholly removed, experientially, from Orthodox and/or Hasidic Judaism,  the struggles of the central figures of these novels to remain faithful and yet intellectually honest often resonates within me.

I find much  in Teilhard de Chardin which speaks to me. I suspect that Kierkegaard might be someone who would appeal to me on some level, though I  haven't yet found the time to read much about or by him.

Your favorites?

I grew up with "Aesop's Fables," "Just So Stories" and Confucius as my key influences for morality, common sense and a certain "attitude."

[mfbukowski]

OK my turn

I think it is more productive to think in terms of schools of thought rather than individual authors.  My general categories would be social constructivism, pragmatism, and fideism.

Basically those you will find in a list of fideists.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fideism

Why?  Maybe citing the above wikipedia article on two of my absolutely favorite authors would answer both questions

Quote

 

Fideism (/ˈfideɪˌɪzəm, ˈfaɪdi-/) is an epistemological theory which maintains that faith is independent of reason, or that reason and faith are hostile to each other and faith is superior at arriving at particular truths (see natural theology). The word fideism comes from fides, the Latin word for faith, and literally means "faith-ism."[1]

Theologians and philosophers have responded in various ways to the place of faith and reason in determining the truth of metaphysical ideas, morality, and religious beliefs. A fideist is one who argues for fideism. Historically, fideism is most commonly ascribed to four philosophers: Pascal, Kierkegaard, William James, and Wittgenstein; with fideism being a label applied in a negative sense by their opponents, but which is not always supported by their own ideas and works or followers....

James and The Will to Believe

American pragmatic philosopher and psychologist William James introduced his concept of the "will to believe" in 1896. Following upon his earlier theories of truth, James argued that some religious questions can only be answered by believing in the first place: one cannot know if religious doctrines are true without seeing if they work, but they cannot be said to work unless one believes them in the first place.

William James published many works on the subject of religious experience. His four key characteristics of religious experience are: 'passivity', 'ineffability', 'a noetic quality' and 'transiency'. Due to the fact that religious experience is fundamentally ineffable, it is impossible to hold a coherent discussion of it using public language. This means that religious belief cannot be discussed effectively, and so reason does not affect faith. Instead, faith is found through experience of the spiritual, and so understanding of belief is only gained through the practice of it.

Wittgenstein and fideism

The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein did not write systematically about religion, though he did lecture on the topic. Some of his students' notes have been collected and published. On the other hand, it has been asserted that religion as a "form of life" is something that intrigued Wittgenstein to a great degree. In his 1967 article, entitled "Wittgensteinian Fideism," Kai Nielsen argues that certain aspects of Wittgenstein's thought have been interpreted by Wittgensteinians in a "fideistic" manner. According to this position, religion is a self-contained—and primarily expressive—enterprise, governed by its own internal logic or "grammar". This view—commonly called Wittgensteinian fideism—states: (1) that religion is logically cut off from other aspects of life; (2) that religious concepts and discourse are essentially self-referential; and (3) that religion cannot be criticized from an external (i.e., non-religious) point of view.

 

I have added emphasis of course.  The view that religion cannot be criticized from a non-religious point of view destroys all fundamentalism- the idea for example that historic facts or scientific facts have anything to do with religion.

Others I really like would include John Dewey for his further development of James, and Richard Rorty for his further development of Dewey's further development of James.  Dewey also links in with humanism and the idea that humans are god- which by a simple A=A tautology one could conclude that that also means that God is human or at least that accepting a paradigm based on the idea that God is human might be an interesting way of envisioning God.  

Social constructivism fits well with fideism and pragmatism and also the idea that for LDS, a God who is human "organizes" reality as we know it from "matter unorganized"

This view goes back to Kant- a golden oldie  who came up with this whole way of thinking, with his idea of the synthetic apriori, but that is getting a little too esoteric perhaps for our purposes here.  

Rorty can be seen as a social constructivist, as can Dewey.  I would say that if I have a single favorite author, it would be Dewey.  For me his "Reconstruction in Philosophy" is actually about the Restoration of the gospel, though he most certainly would violently differ with me about that.  But the parallels cannot be ignored.  I gotta write about that someday..

Another author I really like is Thomas Nagel who happens to be an atheist who is also essentially a fideist.   In other words, he takes it on faith that God does NOT exist!

He offers an interesting way of seeing the world and is best known for his PROOF- in my opinion- that consciousness is not explainable in terms of the physics of the brain.

So in short it took an atheist to prove to me that it is completely rationally justified to believe in the existence of "the spirit" or "soul".  I just love it when famous atheist philosophers "prove" to me that "Mormonism is true".  

It just doesn't get better than that!  If THEY can't disprove it- who can??  

Edited November 10, 2016 by mfbukowski

[Robert F. Smith]

A couple of my favorites have already been mentioned in this thread:

N. T. Wright (most know him as Tom Wright) who not only sees the Genesis Creation and Garden stories as temple texts, but powerfully engages us in meaningful Christianity on every level.

Margaret Barker, who delivered another stunning and penetrating analysis of the Jewish temple yesterday at BYU in Provo, Utah, and the video will soon be online at www.templestudies.org ..  Her address was followed by interesting analyses of her piece by David J. Larsen (who obtained his PhD under Tom Wright), Daniel Peterson, and Andrew Skinner.  That was followed by a response and Q&A by Dr. Barker.

[CV75]

31 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

I think it is more productive to think in terms of schools of thought rather than individual authors.

OK so my Aesop, Just-so and Confucius influences represent unsystematic pragmatism, ad-hoc fallacy and humanism, respectively!!!

[Kenngo1969]

My brother and I had a social studies teacher when we were in high school who powerfully impacted us.  Known among some of our classmates as "Screwy Lewy" because of his somewhat unorthodox methods of attempting to impart the substance of something meaningful beyond his subject matter to us, he was a devotee of such "positive thinking" gurus as Dr. Dennis Waitley and Earl Nightingale. (As a small example of such methods, every Friday, he would tell his students to have a nice "strong end." )  One of his recommendations to us was Richard Bach's Jonathan Livingston Seagull.  

Now, a quarter-century on, I find my thinking is still impacted in more than simply a tangential way by that book and by some of the other things he tried to impart to us.  Jonathan Livingston Seagull and the story of his discovery of a life beyond the mundane, hum-drum existence for which his fellow gulls were willing to settle, as well as his discovery of the fact that the essence of what made Jonathan Jonathan went well beyond a mere collection of cells or biological processes, has powerful implications for Latter-day Saints, given our conception of the Plan of Salvation.  Too, Jonathan's rejection by his "gull society" and his attempts to impart his newfound knowledge to other gulls make him a prophetic (and perhaps a salvific) archetype.

Edited November 11, 2016 by Kenngo1969

[Jeanne]

5 hours ago, Kenngo1969 said:

My brother and I had a social studies teacher when we were in high school who powerfully impacted us.  Known among some of our classmates as "Screwy Lewy" because of his somewhat unorthodox methods of attempting to impart the substance of something meaningful beyond his subject matter to us, he was a devotee of such "positive thinking" gurus as Dr. Dennis Waitley and Earl Nightingale. (As a small example of such methods, every Friday, he would tell his students to have a nice "strong end." )  One of his recommendations to us was Richard Bach's Jonathan Livingston Seagull.  

Now, a quarter-century on, I find my thinking is still impacted in more than simply a tangential way by that book and by some of the other things he tried to impart to us.  Jonathan Livingston Seagull and the story of his discovery of a life beyond the mundane, hum-drum existence for which his fellow gulls were willing to settle, as well as his discovery of the fact that the essence of what made Jonathan Jonathan went well beyond a mere collection of cells or biological processes, has powerful implications for Latter-day Saints, given our conception of the Plan of Salvation.  Too, Jonathan's rejection by his "gull society" and his attempts to impart his newfound knowledge to other gulls makes him a prophetic (and perhaps a salvific) archetype.

I loved this book...everytime I read it..I got something else out of it.  BTW:  I think I might now Screwy Lewy.....

[Kenngo1969]

11 hours ago, Jeanne said:

I loved this book...everytime I read it..I got something else out of it.  BTW:  I think I might now Screwy Lewy.....

I would bet that you do (Ahem ... if I were a betting man. )

Edited November 12, 2016 by Kenngo1969

[thesometimesaint]

I've always been impressed by Saint Francis of Assisi, Pope Francis, Bishop Desmond Tutu, Reverend Martin Luther King, and the Dali Lama.

[Bob Crockett]

I generally dislike philosophical writing as often disconnected and pompous.  Ayn Rand is just such an example, although I am a Libertarian.  She advocates rape as a legitimate means to an end.  

Having said that, I was greatly affected by Tolstoy during his Christian phase.  

I liked City of God by Augustine.  

I liked Utopia by Thomas More, although it runs afoul of libertarianism and I reject More generally for being the King's agent in the burning of Protestant clerics.

I generally dislike all LDS philosophers as weak, pandering, wordy and impenetrable, although I find Nibley and Peterson readable and helpful to my commoner sensibilities.  I much liked "Approaching Zion" despite its naivete about socialism.

Some of Orson F. Whitney's stuff is very interesting, like his reply to Invictus, which follows (you have to read Invictus first), and here I have it.  I guess I am a little partial to cheesy poetry as philosopy:

Orson F. Whitney's reply to Invictus: The Soul's Captain

 

Invictus

William Earnest Henley

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from Pole to Pole,
I thank whatever gods may be,
For my unconquerable soul. 

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud,
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed. 

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid. 

It matters not how straight the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.

 

 

The Soul's Captain

Orson F. Whitney

Art thou in truth?
Then what of him who bought thee with his blood?
Who plunged into devouring seas
And snatched thee from the flood 

Who bore for all our fallen race
What none but him could bear--
The God who died that man might live
And endless glory share. 

Of what avail thy vaunted strength
Apart from his vast might?
Pray that his light may pierce the gloom
That thou mayest see aright. 

Men are as bubbles on the wave,
As leaves upon the tree,
Thou, captain of thy soul! Forsooth,
Who gave that place to thee? 

Free will is thine--free agency,
To wield for right or wrong;
But thou must answer unto him
To whom all souls belong. 

Bend to the dust that “head unbowed”,
Small part of life’s great whole,
And see in him and him alone,
The captain of thy soul.

Edited November 11, 2016 by Bob Crockett

[cdowis]

I have to say that Hugh Nibley had the greatest influence on my thinking
(using my words):

1. Question your assumptions.  I understand the difference between data/fact and opinion/assertion.

2. Experts are sometimes full of nonsense.  Don't be intimidated by credentials, especially  when they are expressing their opinion.

3. We don't know what we don't know, and what we think we know is sometimes wrong.

4. "There are only two possibilities" ==>> they are a victim of their own lack of imagination.  Look for that third option.

Edited November 11, 2016 by cdowis

[cdowis]

The Feynman Lectures on Physics

What do we mean by “understanding” something? We can imagine that this complicated array of moving things which constitutes “the world” is something like a great chess game being played by the gods, and we are observers of the game. We do not know what the rules of the game are; all we are allowed to do is to watch the playing. Of course, if we watch long enough, we may eventually catch on to a few of the rules. The rules of the game are what we mean by fundamental physics. Even if we knew every rule, however, we might not be able to understand why a particular move is made in the game, merely because it is too complicated and our minds are limited. If you play chess you must know that it is easy to learn all the rules, and yet it is often very hard to select the best move or to understand why a player moves as he does. So it is in nature, only much more so; but we may be able at least to find all the rules. Actually, we do not have all the rules now. (Every once in a while something like castling is going on that we still do not understand.) Aside from not knowing all of the rules, what we really can explain in terms of those rules is very limited, because almost all situations are so enormously complicated that we cannot follow the plays of the game using the rules, much less tell what is going to happen next. We must, therefore, limit ourselves to the more basic question of the rules of the game. If we know the rules, we consider that we “understand” the world.

http://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/I_toc.html

Feynman on quantum mechanics

I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics. 

Edited November 12, 2016 by cdowis