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Not sure if anyone is even interested but some odd things are happening with new discoveries in science. For example; for the Big Bang theory to have any creditability there had to be a brief period of "inflation" where the Universe expanded faster than the speed of light. Among the problems are that there are many super massive Black Holes. These objects are so massive and some have been around for so long there is no answer to how they could come into existence. In an effort to explain some of the things being discovered there are lots of theories being circulated. It is like we have entered an era where there is so much contradiction and confusion that anyone with a scientist title can make up anything and it appears as creditable as anything else. But a new theory is being developed that does make some sense and could change everything - even more than quantum physics, relativity and the standard module all combined. This new theory involves neutrinos and that neutrinos are the key to alternate forms or kinds of matter that we lump into the category we call "Dark Matter". To understand here is a little background. Before nuclear energy was harnessed scientist were studying particle decay. As a heavy atom decayed there were particles and energy given off but there was a problem. All the matter and energy that existed before the decay did not add up to all the matter and energy that existed after the decay. There was no explanation for this loss and it violated the very foundation of physics. There was no explanation until someone stated the obvious and suggest a new kind of particle that we do not know about was given off. A particle that once released did not react with anything so we could not detect it. Some strange kind of neutral particle - thus the Latin for neutral or neutrino. There was a lot of debate if neutrinos were real because no one could find any. That wasn't until a scientist had a simple idea. The idea was that using the decay of more heavy atoms we could fire neutrinos into a much lighter field of atoms and reverse the decay and detect the new rebuilt lighter atom that we knew how to find. The concept was brilliant but when the experiment was ran - only 1/3 of the expected neutrinos were realized. Fast forward and it turns out there are 3 flavors of neutrinos and only one will react as expected but over time as the neutrino travels (it travels at the speed of light) it alternates between the 3 flavors and it has mass but not much - here is the calculation for it mass: m < 0.120 eV (< 2.14 × 10−37 kg). This is such small mass there is currently no know way to detect it. This is why neutrinos can pass completely through just about anything without being detected. Neutrinos behave differently than any other kind of matter/energy that exist. That is until someone suggested that there may be other kinds of neutrino like particles that are not zinging through the universe at the speed of light but have neutral charge and react only at the sub atomic levels (strong and weak atomic forces) and gravity. And that this matter or kind of matter is what the dark matter stuff is. Now things are starting to literally come together - things like very old supermassive Black Holes and even simple stars like our sun. All we need now is the discovery of this alternate flavor(s) of neutrino kind of matter. There is a race by physicists involved to be the first and become famous. But I wonder and ponder that with such a discovery will also reveal G-d and how he is connected to keeping all things together for existence in our universe. Scripture tells us that all things testify of (prove) G-d. Maybe, just maybe, neutrinos are a new key that will not only change what we know about science but religion as well. The Traveler

Fascinating! I'm sure there is much more to do to further understand how religion impacts suicidal ideation and such, but this certainly looks like one entry level piece on the subject. Almost certainly not the last word (I think the authors themselves say as much) on the subject. A few non-expert reactions to the opinion piece and the BYU paper: 1) The BYU authors emphasize early on that "significance" in the paper means that they were able to conclude "statistically significant" from their statistical tests. "Significant" does not necessarily say anything about the real world "size" of the effect. In other contexts, I have seen some criticize "high n studies" (where the conclusions are based on a large number of participants -- I don't know if n=86k is considered large n for this kind of work). Because of the large n, the criticism goes, the study has strong statistical power to "see" small differences between groups, but the perceived differences are still very small. At some level, even if the difference between LDS and other religion or no religion is statistically significant, is the difference large enough to have practical meaning? 2) As with anything like this, there is always the "correlation does not mean causation" thing going on. The authors find a statistically significant correlation between checking the LDS box on a form and less suicidal ideation/attempts, but that does not mean that being LDS prevents suicide. I expect that a large part of the future work that wants/needs to be done is trying to understand what factors drive the correlation. 3) I appreciated their attempts to address how disaffiliation might confound the conclusions. I can't say that I understood everything they did, but it does seem like an important thing to include in this analysis. It was somewhat gratifying that, even using their best guesses at disaffiliation numbers, the final conclusion did not change. However, in their discussion of disaffiliation, they also note that, assumptions along the extreme end of their alleged uncertainty limits, could change the conclusions, so their appears to be just enough overall uncertainty to claim, at the outside, that maybe some of the paper's conclusions are because the SHARP data do not include any indication on disaffiliation. On a personal note, perhaps just because of where some of my own thoughts are on the topic, if identifying as LDS is somehow correlated with lower suicide rates, is there some way we as a Church can do something more to discourage disaffiliation? I do not have the expertise to provide any expert opinions, but it seems like a good entry into the discussion. I look forward to more data to help clarify the relationships between the Church and its LGBQ members.

Yeah, I pretty much agree with you there. No matter how good of a case can be made, "ouch that hurt" sometimes just ends up winning the day. Fortunately for us, the modus operandi for new viruses, is they get to mutating into less harmful and deadly forms over time. My personal amount of "done with this" is directly tied to how many vaccinated people are overloading our hospitals and morgues with their COVID-related things. Once I read this article, it dawned on me it's probably not happening anywhere, at least not in the US. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/09/covid-hospitalization-numbers-can-be-misleading/620062/ And at the end of the day, we're all descended from humans who survived the Spanish flu. It was a foregone conclusion from the beginning with 'rona that this story would eventually end up with a similar ending. The only question was how much misery and despair and stuff we'd have to endure before it dropped off our radars.

The one which will fold first will be the one whose adherents do not hold fast