MarginOfError

I'm not sure how changes in the wording in the endowment constitute the death of the Patriarchal Order. Especially when, on its face, the changes seem to align better with what is being taught by current and past leadership. I mean, the actual wording in the temple before was pretty hard to square up with "equal partners." Will I concede that societal pressures may have been the premise on which an inquiry about changing the language changed? Absolutely! But that isn't necessarily a bad thing. Societies morph and change, sometimes for better and sometimes for worse. The temple ceremonies have been adjusted to reflect some of those changes several times already. Yet I don't hear a lot of complaints that privacy concerns altering how we do initiatories is a sign of apostasy. Another way of looking at it is that these are implementations of principles. Implementations can change without altering the principles. Saying the Patriarchal Order is dead because we changed a few words in the endowment is kind of like saying the Law of Consecration is dead because we did away with the United Order. With respect to Ordain Women, it's hard to make a case that Ordain Women is killing the Patriarchal Order when most of the leaders of that movement have been excommunicated, disciplined, or driven underground. Sure seems to me like the Patriarchal Order survived that ordeal. Regardless, according to the talk you linked to, "the patriarchal order will have no enduring relevance for those who do not qualify for an eternal marriage relationship." It's hard to kill something that exists only under certain covenants. To stamp it out dead, you'd have to kill the authority to make those covenants. The greater threat is individuals either refusing to make those covenants, or failing to live up to them. But now we're not really talking about killing the Patriarchal Order. Now we're talking about getting people to live it. I'd argue that is fundamentally a different concern.

My recollection of the training was that those in the bishopric (bishop and counselors only) are to call the Church's abuse hotline. The hotline connects bishopric with social workers and lawyers who consult on the legal issues specific to the jurisdiction of the local ward. The lawyers will discuss whether the bishopric has clergy-penitent privilege and ask if the bishopric can or wants to waive it in this case. It is the clergy-penitent privilege that is at the heart of the difference. The only leaders who have that privilege are the bishop and his counselors. My understanding is that it isn't so much that a Catholic priest can't report a crime that is confessed to him, but that he doesn't have to. Depending on local law, of course. And there could be legal implications of waiving that privilege.

Forgive me for being picky (well, I'm not actually feeling apologetic about that), but this editorial doesn't actually answer the question.

What part of the Patriarchal Order do you think is dead? For what its worth, feminism helped teach me the skill of viewing my marriage as a partnership in which decision were made by discussion and consensus--which is exactly what the article you link to describes. It was through the lens of feminism that I began to understand the principles that were taught by Elder Larsen; it was through feminism that I learned to better implement the Patriarchal Order, as described by Elder Larsen, into my life. So help me out here. If you want to investigate this question further, I'd appreciate it if you didn't assume that the meaning of "feminism killed the Patriarchal Order" is self explanatory. Because it isn't (unless you're intending to preach to your own little choir).

Hmmm....not so sure. The 1981 introduction to the Book of Mormon stated "the Lamanites are the principal ancestors of the American Indians." That has since been scaled back to "are among the ancestors of the American Indians." If I had said, "I don't believe the Lamanites are the principal ancestors of the American Indians" in 1982, would you say I had been sowing the seeds of apostasy in my own life? I get where you're coming from with the slippery slope argument here. But realistically speaking, the Church has published and propagated theories and teachings that haven't held up to scrutiny. Having established that such mistakes and misinterpretations are possible, the door is already open to questioning what other mistakes and misinterpretations are waiting to be discovered. Some people don't want to explore those questions, and that's fine. Still, there are people that do want and/or feel compelled to explore those questions. For those people, telling them they shouldn't is counterproductive. It's a lot better to teach them how to explore those questions in a way that can still build faith in Christ, even if the evidence leads them to conclusions you disagree with.

Nonsense. Sports definitely unite us. But if my daughters marry yankees* fans, I will disown them. * deliberately not capitalized.

I personally don't believe that Adam and Eve existed as described in the scriptures. I'm more inclined to believe that "Adam and Eve" were the humans chosen at the time that the species had evolved sufficiently both biologically and cognitively that the Lord chose to reveal himself to them and start the clock on human accountability. For me, it follow then that there was no Tree of Life nor a Tree of Knowledge, and that those are constructs used to teach principles. I'm on the fence about the Book of Mormon as a literal history. I don't think there's sufficient evidence to make a conclusion either way. I doubt the Book of Mormon was what some early Church leaders understood it to be (a record of the principal ancestors of the Americas), preferring the narrative that the American continents were populated by other peoples than just the Nephites, Lamanites, and Jaredites. If it is a literal history, I still assume it has some heavy biases. That doesn't mean it wasn't inspired, but much like Biblical authors had biases and viewpoints that leaked into their writing, Nephi, Mormon, Alma, and others likely had biases and opinions that leak through into their writing. Does it matter? Not really. If you believe in God and Jesus Christ, Adam and Eve being the first humans or Adam and Eve being the first human to whom God revealed himself is kind of irrelevant. The principles that follow are the same. Similarly for the Book of Mormon--if you believe it is a message from God, whether it is allegory, history, or something in between is irrelevant.

All I know is that at least our stake president has been giving direction to inform all of our members. We don't normally receive instruction like this from our stake president unless he's been directed to do it from Area leaders. We opted not to read the policy in Sacrament meeting, but instead, will be printing it in the bulletin for several weeks and following up with an e-mail.

I'll clarify here that outright disarmament is not something I support, even if the parameters of the two debates are similar. It would be academically dishonest not to recognize a difference between a sociological mechanism (gun ownership) and a biological mechanism (disease) I just thought it was an interesting comparison. But the more research I do, the more convinced I become that widespread carrying is not the gateway to a crime free utopia.

I'll try to put into perspective why this is troubling for some people. I personally know people who would argue vehemently that anything anti Mormons said that sounded the least bit weird was an outright lie or gross distortion of truth. They were conditioned to reject these things by seminary teachers, youth leaders, etc. I have personally known people that have mocked the peeping stone story as false. And they were pretty shocked when the church released photos of it. The issue that is troubling is that some feel the church was either lying about its history, or at best, withholding truthful information. Whether or not that's true, it's how they feel. They were blindsided to find that some of the crazy things anti Mormons were saying had more truth to them than they were introduced to. They interpret that as a breach of trust. And I think it's widely accepted that trust is easier lost than it is regained.

Not at all obvious to me. Previous discussions revolved around how the church would defend itself against claims that it was responsible having implemented this policy. We've not discussed how it would defend itself if it permitted weapons. Also, it isn't a matter of which case is easier to win. It's a matter of how much is expected to be paid. Why would the church think it will incur less expense under this policy than it would under a more permissive policy?

As I got into those lower estimates, I came across some flaws that would suggest underestimates. Which is why I conclude above that the incidence is more than 100,000, but probably far less than a million. The most damning argument against the high estimates is that, if assumed to be true, it would seem defensive gun users kill more people in self defense than are currently reported to be killed by firearms from all causes. And since more than half of firearms deaths are suicides.....I hope the conclusion is obvious. This is where things get really interesting. Because carrying a weapon might make you safer in very rare circumstances, but it isn't clear that widespread carrying makes society safer. Which means this whole issue has just boiled down to a vaccination debate.

I'll revise my previous statements. It seems probable to me that DGU exceeds 100,000 incidents per year. But given tabulations of reported crimes, it almost certainly does not come anywhere near a million. RAND put together a really good review: https://www.rand.org/research/gun-policy/analysis/essays/defensive-gun-use.html Perhaps the most interesting finding is that DGU is associated with less loss of property, but the DGU benefit is not larger than the benefit of simply running or hiding.

This review of the study that produced the higher estimates does a pretty good job of describing methodological flaws in those estimates. It shows that the impact of 1% of respondents being misclassified would overestimate actual DGU by about 4 times. Misclassification of just 1.3% would bring the estimates down to the level reported at the low estimates. It also describes the pitfalls of rare events (or low probability events. In statistics, this means events with probability less than 5%, as the numerical properties of probability distributions tend to unravel at that point) Of particular interest Section IX of this article is a pretty interesting read, too. Next, I'll look into the study that produced the 55,000 to 80,000 incidents estimate to see what it tells us, as it seems to be the more realistic estimate.

So now it would be nice if you could explain why the expected settlements would be less under the firearms prohibition than without it. If, as you claim, we really are safer with firearms present, why does the organization expect to pay more when the firearms are permitted? No, the comparison doesn't still stand. Any defensive use of a firearm could have resulted in death had the firearm not been available; likewise, any defensive use of a firearm could have result in not death had the firearm not been available. And you haven't provided any estimate to how many of those prevented death. Also, the wikipedia article you cite references a number of articles (that I'm not willing to take the time to review right now), but I doubt those studies have a clear and consistent definition of defensive gun use. How many of those uses involve discharge? How many were just brandishing the weapon? How many are civilian? The statistics you cite are not well enough defined to justify the claims you are using them to support.

Point of order, the endpoints you present here are not comparable. You can't make a fair comparison to accidental gun deaths and defensive gun uses. Those are not similar populations of events, and you would either need to expand the accidents to include all instances of accidental gun use, or restrict the defensive population to defensive gun deaths. Also, I think you'd find that the statistics bear out that restricting access to firearms in locations like church buildings actually does reduce the risk of injury. Or at the very least, it reduces the expected value of settlements to the organization operating the facility. Say what you will about these kinds of policies, but the insurance industry is very good at probability and expected value. And it seems like they've determined that risk of firearm related injury is lower under the firearms prohibition.

Expect to hear more* shortly. Our stake president just conveyed direction to find a forum to teach our members about the new policy regarding firearms/weapons, and to point out the new, stronger language. * by "more" I mean, expect to hear the wording of the policy in your units. At the least, it is beginning to sound like this is being announced in all of the U.S.

And pulling from the next paragraph in your source The only way I can see the school being liable is if they had a knowledge that it would be targeted, or a reasonable expectation that it might. The question is at what risk profile does it become reasonable to expect it might be targeted? Ultimately, I'd have to guess that this would translate into a probability threshold, because fires, earthquakes, tsunamis, and meteor strikes are all possible. When is a risk probable enough that the school should do something about it?

I don't think that works in your favor. Because between the early Christian martyrs, the Anti Nephi Lehis, the Nephites that protected them, and the modern day stories such as the one you cite, it seems that your Church teaches of a God that is arbitrary about who He protects and who He doesn't. So again, why do you think you have any expectation that physical safety should be encompassed in the prospect of salvation after death?

But what has the Church promised you in return for your adherence to it's precepts. Has it promised you physical safety and security? What is the connection between the physical safety of your family and salvation after death? What's more, we don't even have to go into modern scriptures to find examples of church members and leaders who lost their lives because they followed the requirements of their faith. If God and his church weren't willing to protect earlier leaders and believers, why should they be expected to do so now? What has changed?

The problem with suing a school (or a church) I would imagine is demonstrating negligence. To show negligence, I think you'd have to demonstrate that there was reason to believe the building was going to be the target of a shooting. Given how rare the events are, it's hard to claim that on any given school day (or any given worship service), that someone is going to come in and shoot up the place. On the other hand, if a school receives a threat that there is going to be a shooting, and then they do nothing about it, that presents a case for negligence. But without a reasonable expectation of a threat, I don't think you can win that case. (IANAL disclaimers apply)

I'm trying to imagine how the lawsuit would play out: Lawyer: person0, why do you feel that you are required to be at a church building that prohibits carrying lethal weapons? person0: The Church represents itself as the one true church on the face of the earth, and expects us to attempt to attend all meetings. Lawyer: Do you accept the premise that the Church is the one true church on the face of the earth? person0: I do. Lawyer: Do you accept the premise that the leaders of the Church convey the express will of God? person0: I do. Lawyer: Do you accept the premise that the prohibition of deadly weapons on Church owned property was the express will of God? And at this point, the trap is laid. If you answer yes, then the corollary is that any carnage that followed was the will of God, and the Church is absolved of responsibility. If you answer no, then you've indicated that, despite claiming that Church leaders convey the will of God, that you don't actually believe that. In which case, why are you risking the safety of yourself and your family by going to a location that is in peril due to known errancy of God's spokesmen? The only way I can see the Church becoming liable is if you can objectively demonstrate that it is the only True Church (TM). Good luck with that.

I apologize, my previous post was missing a quote in which you apparently were agreeing to my characterization of myself as a heathen for wearing a colored shirt.

From another conversation: ___________________________________________________________________________________________________ So would that mean that anyone who wears their firearm to Church in contravention of this policy is a non-prophet following heathen? Asking for a friend.

Funny how when it comes to wearing a firearm at church, this seems so totally rational. But when it comes to wearing a colored shirt, it's completely rebellious.