Chap wrote:Or ... after reading that fascinating article ... because some of them decided that it was really too much of an investment to pay for their sons to be given the training and specialized education needed to sustain Jewish identity?
lulu wrote:Which was pretty dumb, consigning them to illiteracy?
Chap wrote:Illiteracy in Europe of (say) the 10th century was not what it is today - an exclusion from much of ordinary social and economic life. Literacy was a rather specialized skill with limited practical application. For someone in the middle to lower end of society, investing in literacy in Hebrew was not going to do a lot to help you get on in life. It was essential in order to give a male full membership in Jewish society as it was then constituted (as the article notes), but in the same way that some Mormon families find the benefits of continued active membership not worth the cost, there may have been Jewish families who decided that being Gentiles gave them more options and more available resources.
(Edited to fix typo)
I'm hanging in there with the any literacy is better than no literacy position.
"And the human knew the source of life, the woman of him, and she conceived and bore Cain, and said, 'I have procreated a man with Yahweh.'" Gen. 4:1, interior quote translated by D. Bokovoy.
Dec 10, 1997 - BYU graduate and Provo, Utah-born Mormon Paul D. Boyer is awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Little attention is paid to this in the LDS community because Boyer has been an outspoken atheist for years.
Hmm. Interesting that he still gets called a 'Mormon' by Mormonwiki even though he has renounced at least one basic article of the beliefs of the CoJCoLDS - the existence of a deity.
In fact it is clear that even his family were not really Mormon either, and he most certainly had ceased to be one:
Boyer was born in Provo, Utah. He grew up in a nonpracticing Mormon family. He attended Provo High School, where he was active in student government and the debating team. He received a B.S. in chemistry from Brigham Young University in 1939 and obtained a Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation Scholarship for graduate studies. Five days before leaving for Wisconsin, Paul married Lyda Whicker. They remain married and have three children: Gail B. Hayes, Alexandra Boyer and Dr. Douglas Boyer; and eight grandchildren: Imran Clark, Mashuri Clark, Rashid Clark, Djahari Clark, Faisal Clark, Lisa A. Hayes, Leah Boyer and Josh Boyer.
Though the Boyers connected with the Mormon community in Wisconsin, they considered themselves "on the wayward fringe" and doubted the doctrinal claims of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). After experimenting with Unitarianism, Boyer eventually became an atheist.[2] In 2003 he was one of 21 Nobel Laureates who signed the Humanist Manifesto.[3]
For his own account of his farewell to religion, see:
In 1963, we moved to Los Angeles where I continued my research in biochemistry at UCLA. For many years I had regarded basic Mormon theology as critically flawed. A primary doubt was the validity of heavenly messengers to Joseph Smith and his purported direct revelations from God. I learned that a history professor at UCLA, Fawn Brodie, had published a book about Joseph Smith in 1945 entitled No Man Knows My History. The perspectives she presented seemed to substantiate and justify my doubts about the founder of the Mormon Church.
However, it was not the specific doctrines associated with Mormonism or whether Joseph Smith was a faker, but a much more basic rejection of all religions that I was developing. More and more I doubted the validity of the concept of the God of Christianity or of gods with any religion or other beliefs. To me, it seemed that God was created by man, not man created by God. This basic rejection grew as science provided amazing and wonderful information about our earth and life and the universe. Such knowledge has not come from present or past religions. In the past there have been frequent and ugly conflicts between religious views and views arising from the experimental approaches of science. The intellectual darkness of the middle ages resulted principally from religious zealots using their power to banish and kill. The use of observation and experimentation to gain knowledge, as fostered in the Greek civilization, was suppressed. Such remarkable men as Copernicus and Galileo lived lives of fear and of oppression by religious authorities. Over and over, expanding scientific knowledge has shown religious claims to be false. Religions adapt and change in order to foster their survival. But in our country, most of them retain a belief in God, and this is taken as a norm by most of my fellow citizens.
Before my time, the enlightenment coming from science led many thoughtful men and women to question the concept of God. It is a tribute to them that they reached their conclusions without the remarkable scientific knowledge attained since I embarked on a scientific career. This striking attainment has resulted from the collective ability of the human mind in a civilization that supports scientific inquiry. My participation in these revealing undertakings has given me an appreciation of how the knowledge acquired provides new and powerful support for the view that God, as proposed by Christian and other faiths, does not exist.
Would he have been able to stay on as a student in BYU as it is today?
Thanks a lot , Chap.
David Hume: "---Mistakes in philosophy are merely ridiculous, those in religion are dangerous."
DrW: "Mistakes in science are learning opportunities and are eventually corrected."
Dec 10, 1997 - BYU graduate and Provo, Utah-born Mormon Paul D. Boyer is awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Little attention is paid to this in the LDS community because Boyer has been an outspoken atheist for years.
Well unless he died, resigned or was excommunicated he meets all the criteria to be counted among the 14 million.
"Any over-ritualized religion since the dawn of time can make its priests say yes, we know, it is rotten, and hard luck, but just do as we say, keep at the ritual, stick it out, give us your money and you'll end up with the angels in heaven for evermore."
