The Book of Mormon--philosophically sound! Who knew?

My atheist roommate attended a debate last Saturday, wherein a prominent secular-humanist first lectured on how to discourse civilly and work with people one disagrees with (he said the key isn't to find common ground, but rather to frankly and honestly acknowledge the irreconcilable differences--an idea I've heard before, and that I think I agree with), and then debated a local Philosophy Prof./Presbyterian Preacher on the subject of whether or not morality is possible without God.

My roommate told me he didn't like the preacher's stance that all morality originates with God, because that would mean all morality is only as good as God, and is therefore also arbitrary and capricious. I then remembered Alma 42:25, which reads, "What, do ye suppose that mercy can rob justive? I say unto you, Nay; not one whit. If so, God would cease to be God," which implies that justice does not originate with God, but rather is a principle God Himself must conform to just to be God (and likewise, by extension, if we are to be as God, must likewise conform to justice), and if he does not possess justice then he loses his Godhood. Joseph Smith himself, in "Lectures on Faith," states that God possesses, as opposed to originates, every good and correct principle. My roommate told me he likes that idea a lot better, and consequently respects Mormons that much more.

So, the Book of Mormon--philosophically sound. Go figure!

But more importantly, it is true, by the testimony of the Holy Spirit.

A purely epistemological concern, to be sure--that's why Joseph Smith didn't blame anyone for not believing his story; one can't take his word for it, but have the religious experience on one's own. If one doesn't have the experience, than one cannot be expected to conform to it.

And before I forget, it was Russian formalist Viktor Shklovsky who stated that the function of art is to defamiliarize the familiar (and thus by corollary familiarize the unfamiliar), an idea I'd heard and of all the definitions of art's nature is the one I think I agree with most, but I was never sure who said it.