[Colofornian]

From the column: He talks about how these famous stories are examples for how mankind can still be moral agents without God...They were written to show that even without God, man is an independent moral force.

[Ya know, if this Mormon Lit prof changed the word "moral" to "immoral," he would (finally) be right on!]

From the column: Joseph Smith taught something extraordinary that turns these tales upside down again. "God, angels and men are all of one species," Givens quotes Elder Parley P. Pratt, who was summarizing Joseph Smith's teachings.

Well, Joseph Smith indeed elevated man to God's level & reduced God down to man's level (even though he did this post-Book of Mormon; that product of his imagination mentions absolutely zilcho about God being a man; or having a body of flesh & bones; or men becoming gods; or anything about basic Mormon teachings of "eternal progression," exaltation, or three degrees of glory).

From the column: For most religions, however, there is an insurmountable gap between mankind and God. God is completely and totally other...they [referenced fictional works] merely demonstrate the collapse of the transcendent, the collapse of the insurmountable gap -- something that Joseph Smith taught all along..."The divine nature of man and the divine nature of God are shown to be the same..."

Translation? Givens is just saying that Smith brought God down to our level ("collapsed" the transcendent nature of God; destroyed God's unigueness as a wholly, holy other being). Smith redefined his god in his own image. How pathetically sad. (No wonder he and some of his followers, like apostles Orson Hyde and Pratt, made Christ out to be a polygamist...and many Lds leaders, who made God out to be a polygamist who sexually brought about billions of spirit children).

From the column: ...in contemplating the absence of God from the universe that they [these writers of fiction] discovered the divine in man." ...There is something divine in us...And if we are the same species as God..."Joseph Smith's cosmology gives us a way of sacrificing transcendence without the loss of absolute meaning..."

Translation: Joseph Smith was just like these writers of fiction in assigning divinity to men; why we're just the "same species" as the gods. Yeah, I know this normally leads to loss of meaning, but once you've redefined yourself as a god, why you, too can love and suffer like he does.

Can you spell "New Age?" (Smith was just a cutting-edge New Ager who hauled it in under the guise of a "restored" Christianity)

[Sherman Logan]

the atheist Ivan systematically destroy the faith of his brother Alyosha, a priest. Ivan's logic -- centering on whether Alyosha would have created a world with suffering if he had been God

I'm afraid I've never understood this particular "paradox."

If God creates beings with free will, that free will by definition includes the capacity to do evil and thereby cause suffering. The only way to get rid of all suffering would be to eliminate free will, and I personally can't see the point of creating beings without it.

[svcw]

"God, angels and men are all of one species," Givens quotes Elder Parley P. Pratt, who was summarizing Joseph Smith's teachings.

And LDS wonder why we say they are not Christians

[Colofornian]

From the column: ...the human will is capable of reconstituting a meaningful universe," Givens says. "But what Joseph Smith taught is that God's divinity is similarly constituted...Christ does appear in these stories, "but it is a Christ who is methodically and excruciatingly shorn of his salvific capacity," Givens says.

You know, Prof. Givens has a marvelous vocabulary; and the kind of voice you can listen to for hours.

But having heard that clip of his on the PBS "The Mormons" two-part series, where they show him saying, "fully reconstituted" a few times...and then at this lecture, he uses the word "reconstituting/reconstituted" a few more times, you almost get the feeling that Prof. Givens stands in front of a mirror, practicing and re-practicing him saying "fully reconstituted" and "methodically and excruciatingly shorn of his salvific capacity"...

[Elsie]

"God, angels and men are all of one species," Givens quotes Elder Parley P. Pratt, who was summarizing Joseph Smith's teachings.

Now THERE'S a statement to make you sit up and take notice!

[Saundra Duffy]

God’s thoughts are not our thoughts; His ways are not our ways. Ain’t that the truth.

[Tennessee Nana]

This guy again...

De Groote...

I hope hes not a relative...