Why I Could Never Be a Mormon: One online article reports: “Though coffee has been popular around the world for centuries, it doesn’t always mix well with religion, as is the case with Mormonism, now called the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS). As part of church doctrine, Mormons have been historically prohibited from drinking coffee or tea. Modern-day members of the LDS are allowed to drink herbal teas and hot chocolate, and recently, church authorities lifted the ban on caffeinated drinks like soda.” Yep, I would probably fail at that religion before I even started. I might even drink coffee while someone attempted to “evangelize” me into Mormonism. On a more serious note, there are major theological issues with Mormonism from a biblical viewpoint, and being a Mormon is not the same thing as being a Christian—far from it.
Treebeard on Saruman in The Twin Towers: Talking with Pippin and Merry, Treebeard provides a keen assessment of modern man when describing Saruman: “He has a mind of metal and wheels; and he does not care for growing things, except as far as they serve him for the moment.”
Christian Spirituality: A holistic, healthy, and biblically-grounded faith acknowledges the importance of the physical body for worship, sanctification, etc. Do we not take communion? Do we not join together in physical places to worship with others? Do we not share physical food in community with one another? Matter and the physical body plays an integral role in the Christian life. We are not just souls that happen to have a body; we are embodied souls.
Important Distinction in Philosophy—Objectivity and Subjectivity: IEP states the following about objectivity and subjectivity: The terms “objectivity” and “subjectivity,” in their modern usage, generally relate to a perceiving subject (normally a person) and a perceived or unperceived object. The object is something that presumably exists independent of the subject’s perception of it. In other words, the object would be there, as it is, even if no subject perceived it. Hence, objectivity is typically associated with ideas such as reality, truth and reliability . . . . “Objective knowledge” can simply refer to knowledge of an objective reality. Subjective knowledge would then be knowledge of any subjective reality. There are, however, other uses of the terminology related to objectivity. Many philosophers use the term “subjective knowledge” to refer only to knowledge of one’s own subjective states. Such knowledge is distinguished from one’s knowledge of another individual’s subjective states and from knowledge of objective reality, which would both be objective knowledge under the present definitions. Your knowledge of another person’s subjective states can be called objective knowledge since it is presumably part of the world that is ‘object’ for you, just as you and your subjective states are part of the world that is “object” for the other person.
BJ Condrey, Ph.D. 