Vort

Indeed, including statements from our leaders during the last fifty or so years that unanimously affirm that this life is the time to prepare to meet God, We have been warned against the philosophy of "eat, drink, and be merry...and it shall be well with us; and if it so be that we are guilty, God will beat us with a few stripes, and at last we shall be saved in the kingdom of God." Jacob goes on to call these "false and vain and foolish doctrines". Do not procrastinate the day of your repentance. Don't say, "Oh, celestial is too hard. I'll just live a telestial/terrestrial life. That's good enough, because eventually I'll get there." The truth of the matter is that celestial living is not merely far more rewarding than terrestrial/telestial living; it is EASIER. Show some faith. Believe the prophets and the scriptures. Think celestial.

I very explicitly disbelieve this. We have been told almost nothing about the lower kingdoms or what covenants are required to enter therein. This is because God wants us to be celestial. Our current prophet and senior apostle has clearly stated that we are to "think celestial". We are not to resign ourselves to a lesser kingdom or start planning for our more modest mansion in the terrestrial regions. The Lord Himself, both during mortality and in His eternal nature, has told us that eternal life—which is to say, exaltation—is the greatest of God's gifts, and that He wants to bestow that gift upon each of His children, and will do so to all who will receive that greatest of gifts. No, we do not need a better understanding of a lesser place. We need a better understanding of the celestial realms and, more importantly, a better understanding of what we must know, do, and be in order to gain that exaltation.

Someone has more than a little left to learn about human nature.

Ah, yes. I know her husband, Ben.

What do you call a guy with no arms and no legs who just lies on the grass in the front yard? Lon

Things would be better if they would just stay off the lawn.

Funny you should say that. This is my own opinion, also. Joseph didn't tinker with the content of his revelations; those are pretty static (though e.g. his various First Vision recountings do emphasize and bring to the fore different aspects of that encounter). But he seemed to have no problem rewriting parts of his Book of Mormon "translation"* when he thought the original wording didn't quite get the point right. He reworded, and I think it would be fair to say revised, revelations included in the Book of Commandments/Doctrine and Covenants as they came up for republishing. Joseph seemed to approach the role of prophet as a very dynamic one. And while he took his responsibilities very seriously indeed, I get the impression that he did not really take himself too seriously. He certainly had no problem admitting error in his work or revising how or what he said if it didn't feel right to him. *I put the word "translation" in quotes, not because I don't think it was a translation—it clearly was—but because we have a rather straightforward view of what a translation is and is not. I don't think Joseph's Book of Mormon translation fits the way we use the word today.

With great power comes great responsibility.

In a more civilized era, this was an uncommon though not unknown phenomenon. The neighborhood men (either those local, or those who took part in the families' social group, or those related, or some combination of all three) saw to it that the abandoned wife was treated as a widow and helped out with things so that she could continue her important mission of mothering her children while the men collectively and individually picked up the responsibility of surrogate father to the children. Wasn't a perfect system, for sure, but I think it beats our modern system of the government sending a check and everyone else just keeping their distance every which way.

Ah, yes. The trad wife, hearkening back to those halcyon days of yore when women just stayed home all day watching TV, doing Pilates, and going shopping, while the man took care of annoying things like paying the bills and keeping the cars running. You know, like our grandparents and great-grandparents used to live.

And from the man's point of view, why have a "kept woman"? She won't be faithful. and you don't want children with her anyway. What's the attraction? She's a money sink with no connection to you other than sex and (your) credit cards. I don't actually want to understand this. Some things are better just left on their own.

May your page load lag just enough that you end up accidentally clicking the ad link.

Gentamicin has seen to it that I hear continuous noise day and night. It's always with me, a kind of devoted but annoying friend that never, ever shuts up.

It's fluffy bunnies! How cute!

On our family call just now, my daughter came up with, "May your USB always be upside-down."

May you forget to shake the ketchup and squirt ketchup water on your hamburger bun.

May your chair produce a farting sound, but only once, so that you can't prove it was the chair.

May your phone charging cord work only in certain positions.

On the topic of socks: May your sock be slightly rotated. May you step into a small puddle just after putting on fresh socks.

May your sock have a hole just large enough for your big toe to fit through.

May your pillow be warm on both sides. (For more intensity) May your pillow be warm and soggy on both sides.

May your belt loops get caught on every door handle.

What does this mean?

(The buried lede: Christ's criticism of Nephi for not keeping the records up-to-date by failing to record the fulfillment of Samuel's prophecy of the miracle of dead Saints being resurrected and appearing to many, a thing which could not reasonably have happened within mere days of Jesus' death, belies Tvedtnes' argument for an immediate-post-resurrection appearance of Jesus to the Nephites.) This article includes some uncharacteristic slipups by Tvedtnes—an accusation I don't make lightly, since I'm something of a Tvedtnes fan. His whole approach in this particular article seems to reflect an attitude of President-Smith-wrote-this-in-his-book-and-I-want-to-believe-him, to the point that Tvedtnes decides (rather arbitrarily, if you ask me) that the gospel of Matthew is more reliable than the gospels of Mark and Luke, because Matthew might have been written by an actual apostle and eyewitness. Too many suppositions and inferences there to list out in this post, and certainly too many for me to easily agree with him. I actually agree with Rameumptom's take, which in itself is not exactly unusual. Ram and I probably agreed more than we disagreed about such things. But I would not easily have guessed that I would agree with Rameumptom and disagree with Tvedtnes on a point of doctrine and scriptural interpretation. Tvedtnes' argument is basically as follows: When Mormon wrote "in the ending of the thirty and fourth year", he wasn't actually talking about when Jesus showed himself to the Nephites, but rather was writing about when the record-keepers of the time had actually written down the news of Jesus' coming among the Nephites. Yup, that's the argument. As Dave Barry might have written, I am not making this up. While I think that Tvedtnes' argument in defense of this is quite weak (and you're welcome to read it yourself and decide if you agree or disagree), I am surprised by at least one glaring omission that Tvedtnes makes. 3 Nephi 23:8-14 tells of Jesus commanding the records (scripture) to be brought to him. After looking them over, Jesus carries on the following conversation with his disciples: "Verily I say unto you, I commanded my servant Samuel, the Lamanite, that he should testify unto this people, that at the day that the Father should glorify his name in me that there were many saints who should arise from the dead, and should appear unto many, and should minister unto them." And he said unto them: "Was it not so?" And his disciples answered him and said: "Yea, Lord, Samuel did prophesy according to thy words, and they were all fulfilled." Then Jesus asks the following question and gets an interesting response: And Jesus said unto them: "How be it that ye have not written this thing, that many saints did arise and appear unto many and did minister unto them?" And it came to pass that Nephi remembered that this thing had not been written. Feminists and other wokeists have misinterpreted this plain recounting. To be fair, almost everyone gets sloppy in reading this and misinterprets it, at least until they read it carefully and actually think about it a bit. The common (and wrong) interpretation is as follows: Nephi and the other record-keepers had failed ever to record Samuel's prophecy, given probably more than 30 years earlier, of the dead Saints rising to life again and appearing to many. According to today's woke crowd, this is evidence of Nephite racism: Why else would they fail to record this mighty prophecy from a great prophet if not because Samuel was a hated Lamanite? Nonsense. But that's what people think. Look at the chapter header; even the apostle who wrote it (probably McConkie) appeared to take this view. The First Presidency apparently approved it. But that is not what the verse says! Read it again. Jesus criticized his disciples that "this thing" had not been recorded. What thing? The prophecy itself? No, the prophecy had been duly recorded thirty years earlier, when it was given. Jesus' criticism of his disciples was that the fact that the prophecy had been fulfilled was not recorded—"that many saints did arise and appear unto many and did minister unto them". It's as plain as day. Just read the words. Jesus asked whether Samuel's prophecy had actually come about, and was told that it had. Then Jesus asked why the fact that many Saints had arisen and appeared unto many had not been recorded in their scripture, and Nephi remembered that "this thing"—the fulfillment of Samuel's prophecy—had not been written, probably because Nephi himself was the one who had failed to do so in good time. Now remember, Tvedtnes' argument is that Jesus appeared to the Nephites within days of his crucifixion and resurrection—not months, not even weeks, but days. So assume that Tvedtnes' (and, to be fair and transparent, President Joseph F. Smith's) theory is correct. During the hours or at most perhaps a day (probably not two) after Christ's resurrection, some dead Saints had arisen, had appeared unto many, and had ministered unto them. Nephi knew about this, that it had happened... ...And hours later, Christ himself is chastising Nephi because, after all the momentous destructions that had taken place in the previous 72 hours, Nephi had not yet found time to go to the records and write, "Just pulled another survivor out of the rubble, but her parents didn't make it. Searched for food all day and found a source of clean water to keep people alive. By the way, some dead Saints were resurrected and appeared to us and ministered to us this morning, just like Samuel the Lamanite said! Going off now to make shelter for the wounded in hopes that they can survive the night." The absurdity should be obvious. For the risen Lord to have had the expectation that His disciples responsible for keeping the records should have recorded the fulfillment of Samuel's prophecy clearly indicates that sufficient time must have passed for the Saints to have arisen, to have appeared to and ministered to many, and for his disciples then to have opened the sacred records and written of the fulfillment of such a glorious prophecy. Eleven months after His resurrection? Makes perfect sense; Jesus is not happy that they have failed to record the fulfillment of such an important prophecy. Three days after His crucifixion? Nonsense. Yeah, I don't think so.

IQ stands for "intelligence quotient". IQ as such fails to have much (any) meaning past about 170. What does it mean to have an IQ of 300? Technically, at least originally (things might have changed), it meant that an adult with an IQ of 300 was three times the "intellectual age" of the average adult. By definition, all "adults" are 18 years old, and again by definition, the mean performance of a large group of randomly selected adults on a test of IQ is set at 100 using the formula IQ = (intellectual age based on test performance) / (chronological age) * 100 The 100 multiple is to give a number between about 50 and 150 instead of some fractional number between about 0.5 and 1.5. So a person who performs exactly as expected for his/her (adult) age will score an 18 (the chronological age of adulthood), and 18 / 18 * 100 = 100—the average IQ. Now the trick becomes, How does one assign an "intellectual age" to a person based on his/her score on some test? When we have a very large group of people who (we assume) will fall along a normal distribution, we can use statistical methods to figure out what score on what test indicates what IQ. So we just take the results of many, many iterations of the tests with various test-takers, and we "normalize" the scores such that the mean is 100 and the standard deviation is 15 IQ points. That gives us a table for each test that reveals the IQ (or at least the IQ score for that test on that day) for the individual who took the test. But up around an IQ of 150 or 160, how do you reliably distinguish between individual performances? You can't just keep making the questions harder and harder. The idea of "intelligence" has been that it is a fixed quantity with which a person is born, and it does not/cannot increase with practice (though it can decrease with disease, age, injury, and lack of performance). (You can see immediately why this whole approach to measuring a supposedly inborn and invariant quantity is doomed from the start.) Maybe you include some questions requiring an understanding of, I don't know, differential equations or particle physics or spectral analysis or Old English literature. But are you now testing that person's native capabilities, or his education? Because the two are very different quantities, though they are also very intimately related and even intertwined. By the time you get to measuring an IQ of 190 or so, the tests don't really mean anything. We do not have the ability to discriminate between someone with an IQ of 190 and someone else with an IQ of 210, much less between someone with an IQ of 190 and someone with an IQ of 192. So saying that So-and-so has an IQ of 300 doesn't actually mean anything, as far as I can tell. There are many who say that IQ tests are stupid and meaningless. For the record, I am not one of those people; they are wrong. IQ tests are not stupid, and they most certainly are not meaningless. IQ tests are the most reliable psychometric tests ever created, the most reproducible, absolutely solid statistical indicators of people's general ability to perform across a very wide variety of tasks. They are very meaningful, robust, and reliable as real-world performance indicators. But instead of "intelligence quotient", I think they would be better characterized as an "intellectual performance quotient" or something of the sort. Intelligence is not what psychologists of 110 years ago thought it was, nor is it what today's researchers think it is. Defining "intelligence" is probably not something that modern science can do in a useful way, except in a very narrow sense. The best definition is given by scripture: Intelligence is the light of truth. Science as such cannot touch this definition, because it's not useful to science. But it is most useful to human beings.