Caleb Jones

Caleb Jones explores how video game environments model humanity's relationship with nature, distinguishing between passive worlds that serve merely as resources and active worlds that create feedback loops with players. Drawing on Linda Chang's book Playing Nature, he analyzes games from Minecraft's indifferent landscape to ECO's sophisticated ecological simulation, using frame analysis to uncover their ontological, normative, and strategic assumptions. Jones connects this to Mormon transhumanism by mapping the Transhumanist Declaration and Mormon Transhumanist Affirmation onto this framework, suggesting that virtual worlds could teach ecological concepts and embody a distinctly Mormon transhumanist environmental ethic.

Caleb Jones examines the Spirit of Elijah as a call for intergenerational reconciliation, arguing that turning hearts between parents and children must extend beyond temple work to address the living. Drawing on G. K. Chesterton’s “democracy of the dead,” Abraham Heschel’s critique of stale religion, and Book of Mormon narratives, he explores how religious traditions can become burdensome when preserved rigidly rather than renewed for each generation. Jones highlights research showing rising disaffiliation among young Latter-day Saints and urges a model where parents turn their hearts to children—trusting them to gather fresh spiritual “manna” and adapt faith to contemporary challenges.

Caleb Jones presents an emergentist interpretation of Ray Kurzweil's six epochs of evolution through the lens of Mormon theology. He traces the progression from atomic structures through biological evolution, neural development, technological advancement, and ultimately toward post-human consciousness—drawing parallels with Mormon teachings about eternal progression and the divine potential of humanity. Jones argues that Mormonism's naturalistic ontology and eschatology provide a robust framework for syncretizing science and religion, suggesting that traits emerging from each epoch carry forward into subsequent ones, with religion's adaptability being crucial for flourishing in technologically transformed futures.

Caleb Jones examines how semiotics—the study of signs and symbols—can transform our understanding of religious faith and revelation. Through the scriptural phrase “Unto what shall I liken?” he explores how revelation inherently involves encoding divine experience into limited human symbols, a process that breaks down between communicator and audience. Jones argues that this semiotic awareness invites self-reflection about religious symbols: rather than treating doctrine as fixed edicts, we can approach them as milestones in an evolving faith, recognizing that prophets speak through the “poor symbols our life affords” while disciples maintain responsibility to discern through charity and Christ-centered filters.

Caleb Jones presents Mormon theology through the lens of fractal geometry, proposing that the relationship between humanity and God can be understood as a fractal progression. Drawing on Joseph Smith’s teachings about the eternal nature of intelligence and Lorenzo Snow’s couplet—“As man now is, God once was; as God is now, man may be”—Jones argues that Mormonism’s ontology exhibits key fractal properties: self-similarity between humans and God, continuous line-upon-line progress, recursive self-referential laws, and infinite aesthetic variety. He suggests that fractal mathematics, pioneered by Benoit Mandelbrot, provides a richer symbolic framework than Joseph Smith’s original ring metaphor for understanding eternal progression, the temple ritual’s transgenerational symbolism, and the simulation hypothesis’s intersection with Mormon cosmology.