Vort

This is a fiction. The Old Testament's Jehovah is not cruel. Unlike basically all of the pagan gods, Jehovah expected His people to be like Him—kind, patient, loving, generous.

I agree, the backstory to Amazing Grace is touching. That does modify my feelings toward the hymn, but not enough to make me a fan of it.

What Carb said.

No one laughed. Ah, well. Sometimes you score, and sometimes not so much.

Hymn of Thanksgiving (We Gather Together) A favorite hymn; I'm disappointed that we sing it only once a year, around Thanksgiving. On the other hand, I'm grateful that we do sing it once every year. The tune is pretty. The 3/4 time signature gives it a sort of waltz-like quality. But it's a staggered cadence, in that the second beat gets dotted and held out (every other line at first). That cadence serves to emphasize the rhyme scheme, which is the second-most notable thing about the hymn (after the meaning of the lyrics, always the most important aspect of any hymn). The rhymes come often, but sort of jump around. The first two verses are structured identically, while the third verse is notable for taking some liberty from the pattern set by the first two. We gather together to ask the Lord's blessing; He chastens and hastens, His will to make known. The wicked oppressing now cease from distressing. Sing praises to His name; He forgets not his own. The first line consists of four three-syllable metrical feet. The first two feet rhyme with each other ("gather"/"together", an almost-rhyme), as the color coding indicates. The second line follows the identical pattern, though with different rhymes ("-asten" vs. "-ather"; "chasten"/"hasten"). The third line then contains an internal rhyme of the second and fourth metrical feet ("oppressing"/"distressing"), though more widely spaced than the first two lines, providing a notable contrast. The fourth line contains no internal rhyme, but the end rhymes with the second line, thus tying the whole thing together. Simple but very effective, at least to my ear. The second line follows exactly the same pattern: Beside us to guide us, our God with us joining, Ordaining, maintaining His kingdom divine. So from the beginning the fight we were winning. Thou, Lord, wast at our side; all glory be Thine! This comforting second verse gives us confidence that the Lord fights the battles of His faithful people. The third verse dispenses with the internal rhymes of the first two lines. To me, this seems to draw our focus to the verse by violating the paradigm established by the first two verses. But in this verse, the third line's internal rhyme remains, and the fourth line celebrates by tieing it all together with the expected rhyme with the second line, bringing the hymn to a triumphant conclusion. We all do extol Thee, Thou Leader triumphant, And pray that Thou still our Defender wilt be. Let Thy congregation escape tribulation; Thy name be ever praised! Oh, Lord, make us free! Just a beautiful hymn, brilliantly constructed. The original was Dutch, and I believe it was somewhat similar in rhyme, but it was not a congregational hymn of thanks. That's an English version thing. Wish we sang it more than once a year, but at least we do sing it once a year.

I mean that God is fully localizable in time and space, and the vision He showed to Nephi was not just a filmed recreation (or precreation) of the scene. God deals in truth, not in mere portrayals of truth. And as we know, truth is a knowledge of things as they really are, as they really were, and as they really will be. Nephi was seeing a vision of what would actually come to pass—the real thing, not just a simulation of it. How does this work? I have no idea. Like you, I believe that God experiences time; I suspect the whole idea that God may exist "outside of time" is nothing more than a pagan and/or apostate conception of reality. Yet He has access to past, present, and future, all before His gaze. Again, I do not pretend to understand what this means; at the risk of sounding like a Roman Catholic proclaiming something to be a "mystery", I suspect that we in our mortal state are not in a position to understand it. Anyway, if Nephi was actually seeing The Real Thing, which I believe he was, then Jesus Christ was there present in the form of a newborn. It would be impossible for the Lord to be there at that moment in any other way. But of course, these are just words, spoken (written) by someone who is as ignorant as anyone else in this world. I'm claiming that I believe my words to have actual solid meaning, but I openly admit that I might well be wrong. I wonder if those who insist on the God-outside-of-time idea are as candidly honest. I agree with the above paragraph. I take all that people (certainly including myself) say on this subject with a grain* or two of salt. *The expression "to take something with a grain of salt" apparently refers to the practice of putting salt in questionable foods to proactively sanitize or disinfect those foods. A grain is a measure of weight equal to a little under 1/7 ounce; think "a pinch of salt". To take an idea "with a grain of salt" would therefore mean to keep the idea at arm's length, not accepting it uncritically but instead cautioning yourself so that you don't become an unwitting victim of a falsehood.

Has nothing to do with prophetic infallibility. It has to do with what God wants for His kingdom. President Woodruff was quite clear in teaching that a prophet would be taken (i.e. would die) before he would be allowed to lead the Church astray.

No. The scriptures seem pretty clear that the sci-fi idea of encountering oneself in the past or future is nonsense. When the Spirit of the Lord spoke with Nephi (Nephi 11), at one point He showed Nephi Jerusalem and the birth of the Savior. Upon opening this part of the vision, the Spirit of the Lord departed from Nephi, and an angel from heaven came down to continue the narration of the Savior's birth. Even here, the Spirit of the Lord did not say, "Behold Me as I shall be in six hundred years!" He instead had an angel take that role.

Only evil will come from evil speaking of the Lord's anointed.

Your reasoning is circular. A teaching is disavowed. "That's because it's false and racist!" How do you know it was false and/or racist? "Well, it was disavowed, wasn't it?" Brigham Young was a prophet of God. If Brigham Young instituted a Church-wide policy of such magnitude, then it was clearly the will of God. Those who "blame" Brigham Young for the policy and call him racist are on the wrong side of the issue. I will stand with Brother Brigham, whom I am sure was a true prophet. I don't know why the policy was instituted, and unlike some (even in this venue), I will not pretend to such knowledge. The prophets at the time of the revelation (1978) did not change their words or deny their teachings (other than those teachings that were manifestly wrong, such as "No black man will receive the Priesthood until every son of Seth has the opportunity to blah blah blah"). They simply said that the time had come. "Disavow" does not mean "deny" or "proclaim as false". If you say it does, you are wrong.

No, the Church does not reject that doctrine. It disavows that doctrine, meaning it does not recognize that doctrine as one taught by the Church. Big difference.

Anathema Republicans!

This is false. If you insist it's true, please provide evidence that the Priesthood ban did not originate from God, as the Church clearly taught for over a century. The fact that a revelation was required to change the practice is strong evidence that the practice was indeed divinely inspired. They did not. They believed a revelation from God was necessary to abolish a Church practice.

I believe that, technically, speaking four languages is quadrangular. Or tetrahedronic. Something like that.

Then there's that English thing...

Introducing a fourth spatial dimension would easily solve many of the mysteries about heavenly beings à la Flatland, though that belongs firmly in the camp of untestable speculation.

Moroni dropped his TRUMPet and then Trump lost—only to return four years later? Mere coincidence? Eye thank knot!

The English word "meridian" is borrowed direcly from the old French meridien "midday", which comes from the Latin word meridianum "noon". By definition (original definition, not 21st-century American "daylight saving time" definition), noon is when the sun is at its zenith. In other words, noon is the "high point" of the day. Similarly, "the meridian of time" would be the "high point" of the mortal probation, which naturally would be when the Son arose and brought Light to the world. Noon takes place at around the middle of the day, as the mortal probation of the Son of God took place around the middle of the time of mortal probation. But any idea that we can somehow mathematically derive the coming of the Son of Man from the idea is useless. That is not how God works.

The story of Adam and Eve is very obvious sexual metaphor. For millennia, scholars and lay people alike have connected the "tree of knowledge of good and evil" with sex, just as the "tree of life" must be sex. Adam and Eve, naked and innocent in a beautiful garden, told not to partake but tempted of the serpent (another rather bizarre sexual metaphor) to do so. When they do, they are cast out of paradise and into a hostile world, where they start having children through sexual union. Interestingly, the woman falls first, then the man follows after her. Shades of the old Jewish legends of Lilith. Yet modern prophets have insisted quite clearly that sex was not "the forbidden fruit". So I'll accept their word. But that doesn't mean that I don't think there is obvious and intentional sexual symbolism. For example, many of our prophets have condemned, implicitly or at times explicitly, ideas of organic evolution. I have no doubt that at least some of them believed that organic evolution itself was wholly wrong and evil, a Satanic lie. I believe organic evolution to be an undeniable part of our mortal existence, yet I accept prophetic teachings, including their imprecations about evolution. I believe that society in general—that is, the natural man—uses the process of organic evolution as a sort of allegory or symbol of or excuse for misbehavior. In the 1990s, a popular misuse of science was to assign to President Clinton the role of "alpha" (as if humans are a pack of dogs) and then excuse his marital infidelity and abuse of his office as "just what alphas naturally do". This is a great example of the perversion and misuse of the idea of evolution. Of course, many who insist the loudest on the factuality of organic evolution are raging atheists, and they illogically build their aversion to theism on the foundation (as they lyingly claim) of organic evolution. To one who doesn't understand organic evolution, and frankly even to some who do, this puts evolution firmly in the camp of atheism and antiChristianity. In the same way, I think that the openly sexually metaphoric nature of the story of Adam and Eve in Eden has been perverted historically to say that women are naturally sexually licentious, or that women drag men down, or that sex is a dirty and disgusting activity that degrades its participants, or that celibacy is a higher and holier way of life than living as a sexually active spouse, or whatever other nonsense has been attached to the story. The prophets recently seem to have taken special pains to point out that the Fall of Man was a blessed event, however it was accomplished, and that we are not to vilify Eve for having partaken of the forbidden fruit. The presentation of the temple endowment itself has been altered to emphasize this. Scripturally, there can be no doubt that Adam rebuffed Satan's temptations and Eve succumbed to them, and that Adam and Eve as a result were cursed by being cast out of Eden; yet for all this, the modern prophets are unanimous in proclaiming Eve as a great woman, the physical and spiritual companion meet for her mighty prophet of a husband, one of the greatest beings ever to tread this earth. And so we are to honor and exalt our first parents, not vilify or blame them. Since those who have historically accepted the sexual nature of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil have portrayed the act as one of great evil with horrific consequences, it makes sense that modern prophets would correct this falsehood by wholly disclaiming their interpretations. If we're honest and careful about our interpretations, partaking of the forbidden fruit does not necessarily mean engaging in sexual relations. In any case, sex per se is not and never was the issue. (No pun intended.) @Ruben, Adam and Eve were called to bring forth the hosts of men after they had fallen into a mortal state. The gifts of fertility and reproduction appear not to have been granted them while they were in their paradisiacal, unfallen state. Beyond this, we know nothing of the mechanics of the Fall, so anything else we say would be mere uninformed speculation, useless at best. PS: Welcome to the board!

Personality and revenge issues aside, I'm often appalled at European reactions to free speech. (Note: Free speech does not include libelous statements or intentionally rousing a mob riot.) I have heard many Europeans, Brits and Germans in particular, insist that they have free speech, and then immediately start explaining why this or that (e.g. Holocaust denial) isn't really a matter of free speech. I heard a couple of Brits on a YT channel talking about anti-homosexuality ("homophobic" was their word) activists in the US being forcibly silenced. Their response was, "Well, good. That sort of speech is offensive, and no one should be allowed to say it." That was the same time period that I heard an online German apologist say, literally, "We have free speech in Germany. Of course we do. You just can't talk about Hitler or say the Holocaust wasn't real." SMH. The frightening part for us Americans is that there is a sizeable contingent (still a minority, at least for now) that agrees with these ideas about so-called "free" speech.

Have you ever considered the occupation of hatmaking?

Interestingly, my understanding is that elemental mercury is in the main completely inert and poses no chemical health risk to people. (Maybe it's dangerous if you drink it, for physical and possibly chemical reasons.) As a child, I used to play with mercury from broken thermometers and such. And look at me! I'm perfectly normal! Also, mercury per se is no more dangerous than any other heavy metal, e.g. gold, except that mercury combines into compounds more readily than gold and thus is more available for uptake into our bodies. Lead is much more reactive than mercury, and we all know how dangerous lead compounds are.

I didn't exactly enjoy Death Note—too dark and unrelentingly horrific for my taste—but it opened my eyes to the storytelling possibilities in the anime/manga style. It was really quite gripping (though not enough to convince me to watch it all the way through; two or so seasons was enough for me). And as is often the case, the medium isn't the point; that's just how it's dressed up for today's audience. The writing, as always, is the central feature that determines how compelling the narrative is.

Have you ever watched the anime (or read the manga) Death Note?

By the way, the ChatGPT explanation disallows Dr. Greene's explanation of entanglement. His description of entangled particles as being "instantaneously connected" is (according to ChatGPT and my own understanding) hooey. I think that his idea that entanglement and wormholes might somehow be the same phenomenon sort of makes sense in a way. But in that case the "wormhole", which we usually think of as having some length, would instead be a sort of zero-length connection between the two points in space, more like Portal than the normal idea of a wormhole. Worth noting that Dr. Greene appears to be a string theorist. Pretty much no one believes string theory these days, as the theory has proven to be non-robust, far too brittle to survive really, and seems to carry no predictive power whatsoever. Every string theory test has failed to produce results, and the mental gymnastics required to keep modifying string theory to allow for all the negative results makes the Olympics look like a competition of four-year-olds. At this point, string theorists are just collecting paychecks. Full disclosure: ChatGPT judges the preceding paragraph as unfair (Conclusion: "The paragraph contains elements of truth, particularly about string theory’s challenges and lack of experimental verification, but it employs hyperbole and dismissiveness that distort the reality of the situation"), so take it with as many grains of salt as you think appropriate.