MarginOfError

It isn't far off. We already have online Seminary. My stake is piloting online Institute right now.

As I've dug into this further, most of my reading points to this being something of a myth. This article is a decent primer. That isn't to say that beer wasn't safer. The fact that it is boiled will generally eliminate most of the biological contaminants. Some differences to consider: modern beer likely has a much higher alcohol content than ancient beers (unverifiable reddit thread, judge for yourself). With modern beer, a person could reach a BAC of 0.08% with three 12 oz. beers in an hour (ish...from a fully sober start...your mileage may vary...check this for adjustments for weight). Ancient beers would have required about three times that much. That's almost three quarters of a gallon of beer in one hour! So it could take quite the effort for a person to get sloppy drunk off of beer. Wine, on the other hand, seems to be a completely different issue. I won't cite everything, but I've seen some claims that ancient wine had more alcohol content than modern wines. Apparently, the yeast/bacteria needed to ferment wine grow on the skins of the grapes. So the fermentation process isn't as complex if you want to produce a high alcohol drink as it would be for beer. It's pretty clear that Biblical figures were aware of the hazards of over indulgence (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_in_the_Bible). At the same time, there didn't seem to be much concern that Noah was off his rocker drunk (if you take the record literally). Some civilizations handled this in different ways. Apparently there were laws as far back as Hammurabi against public drunkeness. One Chinese emperor would have drunkards publicly executed. Romans and Greeks, for a while, diluted their wine with water to prevent inebriation. In the late Roman Empire, one emperor had half of the vineyards destroyed and levied enormous taxes on pure wines to prevent their overuse. So it seems like it boils down to culture. It just wasn't a big deal to people back then (or now, for that matter). So yeah, it seems strange if you look at history from our contemporary position. But that's the thing about continued revelation...it bring commandments that are tailored to the conditions in which we live. That means not everyone in the course of history will be expected to live by the same commandments. ---------------------------------------------- For a point of reference, this article claims it would take about 20 oz of wine to reach a BAC of 0.08% (on average...give or take). That's about two thirds of the amount of modern beer, and a little more than a fifth of the quantity of ancient beer it would take to reach 0.08%. And, take not, 0.08% isn't exactly sloppy drunk. Here's a fun article about a group of coworkers who went out to gather anecdotal evidence about what it feels like to be at 0.08%. In some cases, they say they felt tipsy, in some they say they were surprised they were above the limit at which they could legally drive, and others say they could feel the buzz, but felt they could make the drive home in a pinch (I'm not endorsing that)--in other words, they didn't feel their judgment and response times were impaired (on their own subjective interpretation...this isn't a scientific study, please don't treat me like you expect it to be). But in no case had they become belligerent, blacked out, or in the realm of a public nuisance. So, realistically, it takes some time and effort to reach a truly drunken state. If you've never had alcohol, you probably don't have a frame of reference for why civilizations have tolerated moderate drinking habits. Until very recently, inebriation really wasn't a big deal except with the most extreme cases (i.e., alcoholism). What really changed everything was the introduction of the automobile, where even low levels of inebriation can have catastrophic effects. Before the automobile, a BAC of 0.08% wasn't enough for you to even worry about losing your sandal on the walk home.

One of the unspoken truisms that I think we should be more open about is that parents with children under the age of six get next to nothing out of Sacrament meeting (and parents with children under the age of three barely get anything out of church). The only real value in going to Church at all with children those ages (in my arrogant opinion) is setting the pattern of worship as an expectation (in other words, brainwashing ). What we need to understand is that some parents can survive that ordeal of constantly managing kids and still get the spiritual nourishment they need. Some cannot, and will let their kids be disruptive so that they can get whatever sliver of nourishment they need. And yes, some are just bad parents. Heck, some of them take their disruptive kids out and are still bad parents (I submit myself as exhibit A in this category). If I ever eventually get to my point, it will be that parents with young children get far less out of being at church than those with older children or no children to tend to. Sacrament meeting is enough of a struggle for them without their neighbors in the pews around them lamenting the presence of those children. As I've thought about it more, I've concluded that if the child behind me is being so disruptive that I can't give the attention I want to the speaker, I myself an perfectly capable of removing myself to the foyer or Relief Society room or Cultural Hall and turning on the sound system there.

Historical context is important here. At the time that what we know as the Word of Wisdom was given, the language used was to prohibit "strong drink." People of that time would have understood that to mean distilled liquors, such as whiskey and rum. "Soft drink" or "soft liquors" were broadly understood to be fermented liquors, like beer and wine. It wasn't until the 1900s that the Church would classify fermented alcohols into the prohibited class. So, a very valid way to describe it is that Joseph wasn't commanded not to drink any alcohol--he was commanded not to drink some alcohols. A commandment he dutifully followed, so far as we are aware.

I think it is important to recognize that a crisis of faith is not an acute event. It doesn't come on quickly, and it doesn't pass quickly. By the time a person has reached a crisis of faith, the doubts have been festering for a long time. Do not try to fix it. The first thing you need to do is be willing to listen to whatever your sister has to say. It's okay to say things like "I don't see it that way." But you also need to be able to say, "Thank you for sharing with me how you feel." People who feel like they don't have a safe space in which to express their doubts leave the community. And then it's very hard to bring them back in. I am currently 15 years into my faith crisis. I can't tell you if I'll go back to church on any given Sunday. But one of the things that makes it easier to do so is knowing that no one is going to ostracize me for not holding conventional views. Going through a faith crisis requires patient, loving care. And it won't always result in the person returning to church. But if done well, it will at least prevent open hostility to the church, and will keep a peaceful, loving environment at Thanksgiving.

Yeah, you've lost all credibility.

And for what it's worth, the bulk of the conceal carry crowd in our population today don't really bother me. What concerns me is the advocacy of "The world is falling apart. Get yourself a gun and defend your own" as a public order solution concerns me. Those that are driven to gun ownership and use out of an overhyped fear are the ones that are going to be quick to pull the trigger and do the most damage. I really do get the concerns about rights to bear arms, self protection, etc. I also understand the arguments from the gun control side. But for the love of all that is holy, can we shut out the whackadoos on each side and have a reasoned discussion about the issues? If this is going to be an all-or-nothing proposition, everyone loses.

Oh please. I'm a pacifist. I firmly believe violence is damaging to the soul and is always (yes, I said always) wrong. But it's sometimes the only course of action that will defend the innocent. You can abuse scripture to justify any point you like. Find a better argument.

Okay, it is edited. No one can claim I am not academically honest. The post now reflects that the instantaneous probability of being killed by vehicle is 40 times higher than the instantaneous probability of being killed by a firearm. While I hadn't pointed this out when the math was more in my favor, I will point out now that the comparison is kind of wonky. It uses "hours of exposure" as the base unit of risk. But is an hour inside a vehicle really the same risk profile as an hour in the vicinity of a person carrying a firearm? Gun advocates will use this to say "that's exactly my point, it's less dangerous!" But the reality is, being in a moving vehicle is inherently dangerous. Being exposed to a gun is not the same level of risk until someone in the vicinity loses their temper, or a crime occurs. The point being, the fact that, based on these figures, the probability of being killed by a vehicle is only 40 times higher than being killed by a gun doesn't say nearly as much about the safety of guns, but of the remarkable safety of vehicles.

You're missing that I'm doing this at 5 in the morning when I already can't sleep. dagnabit. Now I need to go figure out how many hours people spend "operating" guns.

It would seem his affiliation with drinking got off the ground in the events following his First Vision. Remember that he was ostracized by the ministers, anyone of any religious community, and generally a laughing stock. The only social group that was available to him at the time was the only group of people who didn't care what kind of crazy he was. As it turns out, drinking buddies are those kind of people. There is some vague illusion to his shortcomings here when he says There's also a brief mention in the History of the Church where Martin Harris makes allegations that Smith drank heavily during the translation of the Book of Mormon. Smith's response is, effectively, "No, that was before the Book of Mormon." My personal take is that the restriction against alcohol isn't really about the alcohol. Since I'm lazy and don't want to type out my full justification, I'll point you to my response to another thread.

Haeh? This seems like an unhinged rant. Seriously, I can't figure out how those two paragraphs are supposed to fit together.

Looks like someone wants to play the statistics game. Okay, I'll bite. Check this out: In 2016, there were 37,461 automobile related fatalities in the United States (source) In 2013, there were 33,636 firearms related injuries. (source) When compared side-by-side and adjusting for population, that amounts to 11.59 fatalities per 100,000 people due to vehicles and 10.6 firearms deaths per 100,000 people. Now, you may be sitting there thinking, "yup, see, that means firearms are safer!" But I'll take the opportunity to point out a couple of things. First, the firearms data is three years older, and the rate of firearms deaths has been increasing since then, with 2016 figures putting it at "about 12" per 100,000 (source). So really, these figures suggest firearms and vehicles are equally dangerous. (We're also going to ignore things like statistical significance that would almost certainly show insufficient evidence to conclude that 11.59 is meaningfully different than 10.6). But wait! There's more! 11.59 vehicle fatalities per 100,000 population is a very broad risk category because it calculates all human time, including time that a human wasn't exposed to the vehicle. A more precise figure of risk would be based only on the time that people are exposed. So let's get to work. The US Department of Transportation estimated that Americans spent on the order of 84 billion hours driving during 2015 (source). Please note, and this is a low estimate for our purposes, because it is based on driver hours, not passenger hours. Dividing the number of automobile fatalities by the number of hours at risk gives us the instantaneous probability of a fatality: 0.000000404762 (or about 4 in 10 million). Now we need an estimate of the number of hours Americans spend exposed to firearms. These data are extremely difficult to come by. I'm going to justify my estimate by citing a few things we do know. First, it is estimated that only about 31% of American households have a gun (source). Second, about 3 million Americans carry a gun daily (source). So only about 1 in 100 Americans are in the vicinity of a person carrying a firearm on a daily basis. So let's make an estimate that I expect will be kind of high. For every gun carrying American, we will count 24 hours of gun exposure, and for every non-gun-carrying American, we will count 8 hours of exposure. The math shows 3,000,000 * 24 + 322,000,000 * 8 * 365 = 966,520,000,000 (966.5 trillion hours of gun exposure each year) Now, to level the playing field in favor of firearms, let's remove suicides from the total firearms deaths. This gives us 11,994 non-suicide firearms deaths per year. So the instantaneous probability of being killed by a firearm in 11,994 / 966,520,000,000 = 0.00000001240947 (or about 1.2 in 10 million) Let me put those numbers on top of each other for easier comparison 0.000000404762 (probability of being killed in a motor vehicle accident this year) 0.00000001240947 (probability of being killed by a firearm this year) Working that out, the probability of a fatality is actually only 30 times higher than the probability of dying by firearm. (this is notably less than 22,000). And again, this doesn't include passenger hours. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bonus point: careful playing the statistical game. If we made gun control decisions based solely on statistics, I can't imagine any possible way to justify the Second Amendment (for that matter, you can't justify driving either). Which is why, as a practicing statistician, I want to be clear that statistics by themselves are terrible decision making tools. But they're great for making decisions when properly contextualized in cultural norms and values. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- And now, for further fun, let me reply to a few of your comments What an odd comparison. When a person makes an adjustment to avoid flying, the adjustment usually explicitly the removes the mode of death--the airplane. A more apt comparison for wanting to avoid dying by firearm would be to remove the mode of death--the firearm. Well, we've already shown that, in the best case scenario, your car wreck claim is false. I could run through the same thing with heart disease, but you'll find that humans spend a lot more time with their hearts beating than they do in vehicles, so it's probably safe to assume that your heart disease claim is inadequate to your case as well. This is a stupid statement. The vast majority of houses of worship have negligible political significance. Historic black churches, however, are in a totally different risk profile, which is why it would be fair to exclude them for an evaluation of general risk. You actually have something of a point here. I need to revise my statement to "a policy encouraging concealed carry" or "a policy expanding concealed carry". Because, as has already been shown, only one in 100 Americans currently carry a gun on a regular basis. My concern is not the status quo, my concern is the unsubstantiated claim that the solution to violence is more guns. Please, do tell...what agenda am I pushing? Because as I recall, so far in this discussion, the only thing I've stated is that the expected value of deaths resulting from more guns in the population from civil disputes is probably larger than the expected value of deaths from mass shootings. Which, by the way, is probably true. If more guns were put into the daily population and resulted in as little as one more death per week from civil disputes will easily out pace the deaths from mass shootings. "more guns" is not the obvious solution. Here you are either fundamentally misunderstanding what I am saying, for fundamentally misrepresenting what I'm saying. I'm not concerned about the extra deaths that occur when someone tries to stop a mass shooting. That's a drop in the bucket, given how rare mass shootings are. The added deaths I'm concerned about are from the guys that get shot in a parking lot over a parking space dispute. And here is the real crux of your position. So far, all I've claimed is that more lives will be lost if more people carry guns. I haven't said anything about which lives will be lost. That's the funny things about statistics and expected values...they can tell you a lot about populations, but they can't tell you what will happen to any one person. So let's be clear about what your argument is here: when you say "Didn't help the 46 victims..." or "That won't help me if it happens at my church..." or some other such thing, what you are are saying is "I value my life more than I value anyone else's." Or maybe it's a variant, like, "I value my family's life more than I value anyone else's." We can even make it personal: "I value my family's life more than I value your family's life." And that's fine. It's a human response and a human emotion. But I will stand by my belief that public policy positions should not be based primarily on such assertions. Instead, public policy ought to be based, primarily (not entirely) on objective, unemotional evaluations of what will benefit the population.

There is a large body of evidence that shows that women don't come forward when the abuse happens because of a variety of reasons. These range from fear of being blamed, blaming themselves for being in a situation to be assaulted, not wanting to admit that it happened, and even fear of being blamed. You don't have to like the situation, you don't have to believe her. But to claim, "if it really happened, then they would have reported it right away" is dead wrong. Anyone who believes and perpetuates that idea is insufficiently educated in matters of abuse to have an opinion worth listening to.

My first inclination, if I know the parents, is to ask if they want to let the child try sitting with my family. Kids that scream like that don't just do it at church. Church my be the one place where they might have any hope of solace. I'll gladly sacrifice an hour of mine so that they can have it before going back to a week of turmoil.

Spoil sport

And thus my qualifier. But I could go crazy on LDS scripture too, if you want.

Curiously, Genesis and the Hebrew scriptures are void of any record of Abraham making any theological contribution. Still, I'm with you. This doesn't mean that Abraham wasn't a prophet. Throughout the biblical timeline, and especially toward the end of the Kingdom of Judah and the Captivity, there were multiple prophets that operated without a clear hierarchy. Also, paying tithes to Melchizedek probably had very little to do with how we view tithes today. It would have been more akin to paying attribute to maintain good relations with a powerful and respected ally. Perhaps Abraham had received some forms of support from Salem in his battles against Lot's captors.

Florida stands out as a counter example to this idea. There may also be a big difference between a society that owns weapons and a society that carries weapons. But again, questions we don't really have data to answer.

There aren't a lot of these stories, if any, though there have been some cases where police have missed their targets and injured bystanders. But the inadvertent casualty from a concealed carrier trying to stop an active shooter is not where the greatest risk to the population lies. When more people carry weapons, the risk of escalating violence in personal, civil disputes goes up. that is the risk that must be managed when talking about more citizens carrying. As I've said earlier, this should not an easy balance to find. And just as a discussion point, it kind of irritates me when people say things like "law abiding citizens don't commit gun violence." Yes, that is tautologically true. But a great deal of gun violence is committed by people who purchased their weapons legally and were law abiding citizens right up to the point that they lost their cool and illegally committed an act of violence. The metric I want to see, and have yet to see, is the incidence of offenses by people who purchased their weapons legally and had no prior criminal record.

Sorry, my shifty sarcasm eyes are sometimes too subtle

I resemble that remark.

Yeah, it's a really tricky spot. I don't have a good solution for you. All I can say is I'd like to have better data, better research, and better evaluation of risk. (Humans are terrible at evaluating risk, as it turns out. Fether's reaction to this news is a good illustration of that)

After the Saratoga Springs shooting, a counselor in my bishopric really wanted to discuss whether it made sense to discourage concealed carry in our buliding. I had to dig up all sorts of FBI resources, religious security guidelines, and other materials to demonstrate that the vast majority of violence that happens in houses of worship is related to civil disputes. The attacker almost always knows and is targeting the victim. The likelihood of a mass shooting event is in the realm of one in a billion on any given week. Less if you exclude politically motivated shootings. But the probability of a shooting related to a civil dispute is a couple orders of magnitude higher. Statistically speaking, a policy permitting concealed carry within houses of worship could have an expected value for injuries and deaths greater than the expected value resulting from the improbable mass shooting. While I understand the worry of being unarmed that you speak of, all signs indicate that a pervasively armed untrained* populace is far more dangerous the its citizenry than an unarmed one. * I do not count basic concealed carry as training here, as it does not really teach decision making under pressure in any way similar to what police and military experience.

Again, you are taking hold of contemporary teachings and projecting them back onto Paul. There is no documented evidence that Paul believed in, taught, or conceptualized the idea of eternal marriage in the same manner we understand it. The scriptures you cite bring no evidence to support your view, as they could just as easily be read in the context of generic, temporal marriage (which, in fact, they have been for centuries) And I will caution you again agaimst making assumptions about what I am or am not aware of. There is a vast difference between reading the New Testament with the beneficial bias of post 1800 revelation a day attempting to understand those same writings in the limited context of what was know and understood at the time and in the culture of which they were originally written. I genuinely don't care what you believe about the marital status of Jesus. But I do care that you not pass off your personal interpretations as The Way It Must Be (TM)