Does a humble attitude mean we should never accept an award or feel good when someone praises something we've done. Not at all. However accepting the award or praise, and thinking it gives us some coercive or even persuasive power over others figuratively raising our personal pedestal another foot or two above the crowd, is dangerous thinking. Sprouts from the seeds of pride quickly grow to priestcraft as we are often warned by the Book of Mormon.

From a true LDS viewpoint, Christ is the center of all things. He literally lends us every breath. See Maxwell's, In Him All Things Hold Together for a stunning reevaluation. Carol Lynn Pearson's poem posing God turning the tables on atheists and pretending they don't exist is both hilarious and poignant. More poignant still is the Latter-day Saint who on the one hand takes upon him the name of Christ and then turns that table with a compromise to the world for the sake of popularity and, then from his self-supposed peace-maker Rameumptom pronounces, "All is well."

Truth has value that may only be diminished by compromise. Compromise diminishes the value of truth. Compromise dilutes truth. Compromise destroys truth. Each phrase is a gradual decline in public relations value. The first being soft and last hard. Soft truth is like trying. The Scout Oath says, "On my honor, I will do my duty." There is no mention of "trying" my duty. To try is to leave an out for failure.

The great value of Star Wars was the singular statement of Yoda, "There is do or do not; there is no try."

We have truth or we do not. And truth is hard, like a two-edged sword it cuts a line between it and falsehood. The world wants approximates. The world wants to try. We do. Or at least that's the goal even though we seem so bashful about the doing.

It seems over the past four or five decades we have stopped doing and started trying. We are rarely declaritive these days. When someone asks about the Word of Wisdom we give the caffine or alcohol answer. We rarely declare, "Because God revealed it through His prophet and I have received my own witness of its truthfulness by the Spirit of Revelation." And then we sidestep answers about what a "barley" drink might be or the true definition of a "hot" drink for fear of offending dead presidents of the church. Apparently, we fear everyone and everything but God.

We tend to give the "approved" scholarly or scientific answer rather than our testimony as if scientists and scholars have more validity than revelation. We are embarassed for our religion. We would choose Barabbas rather than be embarrased by our preferred choice. We avoid asking interesting questions because tradition has announce the subject settled. 

There was a time when scientists had a testimony that God actually did create the world and all in it. Their attitude was, "Okay, knowing that, now let's try and figure out how He did it and how He keeps it all going?" This, as opposed to much of the scientific world today which says, "I don't want to be saddled with the consequences of the existence of God so we'll just disregard that possibility and operate as if He didn't exist even in the face of overwhelming emperical evidence that our world could not possibly have created itself."

A balanced search for truth is a rare commodity today. The academic community, especially, searches for truth only within its allowed agenda rather than letting the search follow truth wherever it may lead, as did early scientists. How ironic that it was the established political church which ousted a number of courageous early scientists while today it is the athiests who assume that role. Truth is always someone's enemy, it seems.

Think those statements a bit strong? Here's a fun activity: Purchase a copy of Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed and especially pay attention to the interview with Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion; Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 2006). Here is the perfect example of a tortured soul trying to sell himself on his own weak argument. My Amazon.com review of his book follows:

The God Delusion is an amazingly shallow work performed by one who is: "Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth" as such men are prophesied to be these days.

But why not? Historical Christianity, along with every other man-made or corrupted church is not much for an intellectual mind to grasp and is equally shallow. One thing, however is sure: "...the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned."

God apparently knows us well and respects his gift of free will to us above his own sadness caused by our willing disbelief in him. Begging the kind reader's indulgence, two pertinent poems by Carol Lynn Pearson come to mind:

The Measure

Friend,
Do you measure land
With a barometer?
The law of gravity
By testing
The freezing point of mud
At its greatest density?

There is no God
By knowledge's rules?
Friend,
Examine your tools.

To discover God
You must form your plan
To the nature
Of God Himself,
Not the nature of man.
The only key
Is that forgotten faculty
That pulses through you
Now and then,
Eluding the hand
And startling the mind.
Spirit, it's called.

Friend,
You will not find
God though mistaken tools.
Who weighs a stone
With a measuring tape?
Fools.

And,

To An Atheist

God must have a huge sense of humor
So righteously to resist
The temptation of turning the tables
On your pretending He does not exist.

To think that the world's man-made or corrupted religions teach all correct principles, I agree, is both intellectual and spiritual folly. In this day, after a long-foretold spiritual darkness, the only solution was a restoration of the truth which was corrupted. That truth has been so restored and it is as much science as religion and contains deep and satisfying intellectual meat as well as spiritual fulfillment. If you seek it, you will find it but it will never be forced upon you.

That's the end of my Amazon.com book review of The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. I'm certain he's not impressed.