Vort

A suggestion: Start by reading the Testimony of Three Witnesses and Testimony of Eight Witnesses, then read the frontispiece (the page that begins, "The Book of Mormon: An account written by the hand of Mormon upon plates taken from the plates of Nephi. Wherefore, etc."). The testimonies make up one rather short page, as does the frontispiece, and the frontispiece is actually a part of the translation of the Book of Mormon, having been written by Mormon (I assume).

FWIW, here is a synopsis of the Book of Mormon that I wrote some years back for @Sunday21. You can check out the thread, if you want. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1CceWZW7dZiR-tMr4NRWB1p-yNheirGDc92CtrjSRdO8/edit?usp=sharing I haven't updated this or even looked at it in quite some time. I'm sure there are elements here and there where I would change what I wrote back then. But this might provide a reasonable 50,000-foot overview. That's about 113° C for you metric folks, or 25.7 kg.

I heartily second this. I'm happy to have @zil2 or someone else (even me) sort of take charge of the reading schedule, but this particular reading is primarily for @Jamie123's benefit. So Jamie will ultimately determine how fast we go. On the other hand, it's easy to stop and dwell on various aspects, and I personally have little problem "getting in the weeds", as long as our overall purpose doesn't get lost. I propose that we generally sort of shoot for an end-of-December reading rate, with the understanding that we can move slower, even much slower (or for that matter, faster) if desired. That's about a five-page-per-day reading rate or a tad more, which is fairly ambitious but not at all unreasonable, IMO. My experience has taught me that reading scriptures as if you're reading a novel misses much of the point of scripture study, and reading scriptures as if you're reading a textbook tends to obscure the narrative—and in the case of the Book of Mormon, moreso than any other book of scripture, the narrative is an important foundation for understanding what you're reading. I also propose (though this is completely at Jamie's discretion) that we restart at the very beginning. The book of 1 Nephi sets the stage for everything that follows, so I think it's worth rereading for an endeavor like this.

What you call fear may simply be a recognition that the supposed "science" of psychology is no such thing, and hasn't been in probably two generations. We have licensed as "therapists" and "counselors" people who accept highly speculative and brittle models of human interactions and the human psyche, and who lead their patients to evil ends using the imprimatur of their supposed authority. Good, useful counselors exist. Perhaps even good, useful therapists exist. But the psychological community as a whole is unmoored and drifting aimlessly and dangerously. I would not trust such people to sit my dog, much less to advise my children.

The biggest problem I have with atheism is that atheists literally have no idea what religion is about, or how God might be perfectly knowable and not utterly subjective, and how they affirm their ignorance with no thought that maybe, you know, there's more to it than they perceive.

https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-65553748

I would love to participate in such a thing. My personal study at the moment is actually currently in the Bible, but I'm always happy to read the Book of Mormon.

I heard a lot of that "spiritual, not religious" crap growing up, too. Those who say, "I love spirituality but I don't practice any specific religion" might as well say, "I love linguistics but I don't speak any specific languages." Even within my own family, I heard one beloved aunt being referred to as "very religious", as if that were some ersatz form of being spiritual. (She was in fact very spiritual, but unabashedly religious.) Since that time, being the stubborn, stonehearted fool I am, I have openly embraced the label of "religious", both in and outside my family. Yes, I'm religious. Very much so. The fact is, I'm not all that spiritual, certainly not where I would like to be. But I'm religious. And I don't even have the good sense to be ashamed of it. I don't think that's backward at all. Religiosity leads to (or at least can lead to) spirituality. I do not believe that irreligiosity helps one be more spiritual. President Nelson gave a talk in General Conference a few years back where he investigated the etymology of the word "religion", demonstrating how it meant "to tie [one] back [to something]". That's the idea of religion, isn't it? To tie us back to God. I have little patience for those who insist that religion per se is a crutch or a weakness. They can believe what they want, but I reserve the right to label their idiocy for what it is.

@Jamie123 may not like this, as it references the American "The Office". But everyone else may ponder its profundity.

Extruaneous U's toutally rulue!

I think the Savior's work is never done. I don't know at this point whether this is a meaningful insight or just a game with words.

Is it any wonder that members of other Christian sects are scandalized by the LDS belief in (for want of a better term) the deification of man? Yet the idea has existed throughout the history of Christianity, being a fairly obvious extension of bedrock Christian beliefs. But most people had the good sense to keep the idea private and discuss it only among those to whom the idea was not offensive. At this point, the cat is 180 years out of the bag, but perhaps we should learn not to cast our pearls before swine by parading certain sacred beliefs and practices before an unbelieving world, including an unbelieving non-LDS Christianity.

Numbering the gifts of the Spirit is like counting our blessings. It's an exercise in gratitude and humility, not a task that can be achieved. The gifts of the Spirit are countless; as you point out, "we could technically call any positive attribute a gift of the Spirit". The latter, I would suggest.

I would change the order of preference. Pay tithing because: 1. we love the Lord and want to help our fellow man 2. we fear fire and want to purchase fire insurance 3. we are guilted into it by our friends and family 4. we want to virtue signal to the ward The first case is virtuous, the second is suboptimal but pragmatic, and the third is a bit shameful but, I would argue, better than disobedience. In the last case, I think paying tithing actually does no good for us at all. It's pure hypocrisy. We have our reward. I would also add a Step 1.5 (that is, between 1 and 2): Pay tithing because we have covenanted to do so and we want to obey our covenants. I think this is a pretty good reason, a step on the pathway to acting as we ought because we love the Lord and our fellow man.

Very glad it was worthwhile for you. My experience has been otherwise, but I'm happy that at least some people benefit from them.

Discontent leading to apostasy comes from all directions. I have probably seen as many people I care about go off the rails on the side of "freedom fighters" as I have seen go off on the side of wokeism.

High school classes are mostly a waste of time. AP classes teach like one semester of a college course in an entire year, and in my experience don't do a very good job of it, because it's a high school teacher trying to teach a college course. Simply taking the class at a community college is generally a far better experience. And so-called honors courses? A complete waste of time. Worse than a waste of time. A negative experience. You would be better off taking the non-honors course, which itself is just a regular crappy high school course, but without the worthless extra homework and posturing that you get in an "honors" course. If high schools taught reasonable courses at a reasonable rate with reasonable expectations, I would be much more likely to get behind an effort to make post-high-school education more like a trade school. But high school graduates today often lack basic academic skills that are developed only after the students start at a college. In that case, the gen ed requirements serve not only to provide a broad, "liberal education" foundation, but to teach and hone basic academic skills such as taking notes in lecture and keeping up on the homework. The US is generally considered to have the best overall collegiate-level educational system in the world. I think the general ed requirements are an important aspect of that, something that differentiates American diplomas from the much more trade-school-ish degrees found in most of the rest of the world. I'm willing to be educated on why I'm wrong, but until someone offers an argument I find convincing, I will remain pro-gen-ed for a bachelor's degree.

I would laugh, except I fear there might be some truth here. That would break my heart.

BYU needs to get a handle on this sort of thing yesterday.

As Saints, we strive to keep sacred things sacred, and sex is at or near the top of that list. We normally try to keep sex sacred by simply not talking about it openly. But this leads to a certain kind of naivete, a sort of opposing reaction to our sex- and filth-saturated world that so often portrays sex as "the nasty". It's one thing to not understand (or to refuse to understand) double entendres and degraded sex jokes; it's quite another to fail to see sex or sexual metaphor when it's used in holy writ. In the latter case, failing to understand the sexual nature of scripture, whether literal or metaphorical, can impede our grasp of what the scriptures mean. I have noticed quite a few examples of these, though I can't remember most of them. I haven't made a list of sexual mentions and metaphors in scripture; that might be a useful exercise. But consider that our most primal relationships are defined by the sexual act, either by engaging in the activity (in the case of a spouse) or by being the product of the activity (in the case of parents and children, brothers and sisters). We even call each other "brother" and "sister", implicitly invoking an intercourse-based relationship between us. As for our God, the Most High, the greatest Being of all, we call him Father—and this by instruction from our Savior and Redeemer (who is himself our elder Brother). The scriptures themselves mention sex openly, though often using euphemism (e.g. "Adam knew his wife...", where "to know" is a very old metaphor in many languages meaning "to have carnal knowledge of"). Perhaps just as often, it is built into the wording of certain verses, many of which we probably fail even to recognize as sexual metaphor. I remember reading Isaiah 51:1-2 (cf. 2 Nephi 8:1-2) many years ago and realizing it was probably a sexual metaphor: Hearken to me, ye that follow after righteousness, ye that seek the Lord: look unto the rock whence ye are hewn, and to the hole of the pit whence ye are digged. Look unto Abraham your father, and unto Sarah that bare you: for I called him alone, and blessed him, and increased him. I may be wrong about this verse, but when the metaphor idea occurred to me, the verses seemed to take on a more solid meaning. The earthy nature of the metaphor seemed to realize (i.e. to make real) the otherworldliness of what was being discussed. Now I am fully aware that many of the Saints of our day, and more especially the sisters, are sensitive to such things and find them distasteful. I have met a surprising number of women who are truly offended at the metaphoric reference to electrical parts as being "male" or "female". (I had a discussion about this with my wife a few days ago, the latest of a string of such discussions through the years. She assured me in all seriousness that she would very much prefer "innie part" and "outie part" to "female" and "male".) I have mentioned this particular issue to my sisters, my daughter, and a few family friends, and have found near-unanimous agreement among the womenfolk. Nevertheless, the raw earthiness that I perceive in the Isaiah verse above (for example) adds to the impact and personalization of the verse. I suspect there is a deep-seated idea, more common among the sisters, of the sexual act being not just private and sacred, but somehow a little...wrong. Or shameful. Or icky. Something like that. Whatever it is, it makes people (mostly women) uncomfortable when sexual metaphor is included in a place not normally associated with sex, such as electric fixtures or scripture. Anyway, my thesis statement is that if we are more willing to hear and consider such readings in scripture study, I think we'll get a much fuller picture of what the scriptures are addressing. I also realize that any time sex is invoked in a discussion, everything we write is likely to be viewed through a lens of double entendre. I have actually read back through and removed a couple of "no pun intended"s from this little essay exactly because I don't want to be perceived as jabbing my elbow in people's sides for some vulgar laughter. I mean this in perfect seriousness, no vulgarity or ribald humor intended.

I agree with @zil2. This is an example of reductio ad absurdum, a logical fallacy described by basically showing that the proposed argument is "If A, then B, but B is self-negating or otherwise absurd and impossible, so therefore Not A." In this case, A is "There is no Christ", and B is "we do not exist". In this case, A and B are connected by an intermediate step, C, which is "There is no God." So the line of thought is A→C→B, "There is no Christ, therefore there is no God, therefore we do not exist." Since we do in fact exist, it must therefore follow that God exists, and so therefore there is a Christ. Now, you may reject some premise or application of the logic. You may say, for example, that "no Christ" does not imply "no God", or that "no God" does not imply "we don't exist". But the logic is sound. The argument was apparently convincing to Jacob, who made it, and we may suppose to his hearers.

I would not put it in those terms; rather, I would say that the doctrine of the eternal nature of our own personal intelligence opens the door to resolving the otherwise insoluble dilemma of God our Creator being all-knowing and all-powerful, yet somehow still not responsible for our choices. The doctrine of premortal existence does not directly figure in to this, but does go hand-in-hand with eternal intelligence to suggest the faint outline of a process through which we, using our own (self-existent, uncreated, eternal) faculty of choice, could develop to our present state.

This gets to be largely definitional—and therefore not very interesting, IMO. Let me illustrate: God is "just", whatever that means. But God created us as flawed creatures, when he might have willed to do otherwise. God created our ability to choose. That ability leads some of us to hell for all eternity. God, being omniscient, knew this (of course) before he ever created us. God, being omnipotent, also might have created our decision-making ability differently from how he did. But God didn't. Therefore, everything we choose ultimately comes from God in his omniscience and omnipotence. In a literal sense, we were created to be damned, when God might have done otherwise had he chosen to. BUT—God is just. Okay, then. God is just. That means that God's perfect justice obviously means that God can intentionally and knowingly create ex nihilo a being who will ultimately suffer damnation for all eternity. And that's A-OK, because God is just. In this sense, the idea of justice has absolutely no resemblance whatsoever to our mortal idea of justice. It's a completely different thing. You might as well say that God is blurm, where blurm means "justice" or "loving" or "green" or "reptilian" or any other characteristic you care to put there. Because, you see, God's version of [insert characteristic here] isn't the same as our mortal version of that characteristic. That is to say, our linguistic tokens (words) don't actually mean anything when applied to God. Or rather, they mean something, but not anything we understand in this state. Therefore, saying that God is great, or God is good, or God is just, or God is loving, tells us absolutely nothing about the nature of God, because none of those words mean what we think they mean. This is why we reject such an approach. I do not doubt your sincerity, but perhaps with this explanation you can see why many don't find it convincing.

I think this idea is at the foundation of pretty much any robust religious idea or theology. If God is unjust, then we are mere puppets that do not even pull our own strings. At absolute best, unjust gods are like the Roman pantheon, and perhaps we can flatter a god by pleading to it and receive some blessing or other as a result. But what is eternal existence with a fundamentally unjust god? Most Christian traditions refer to such an arrangement as "hell".

Please remember that Latter-day Saints do not have a theology in the Catholic sense of the word. We believe in reading and studying the word of God to receive revelation through the Spirit. We do not believe that God manifests his will to his people through the careful linguistic, literary, and historical dissection of scripture and tradition. That doesn't stop us from engaging in such dissection, which occasionally may even prove useful. But God speaks from his heaven to us through the Holy Ghost and through living prophets, from the president of the Restored Church of Christ right down to the ministering brother and sister. I believe that formal theologies are not a part of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. That said, here are my thoughts: Agency means the ability to choose whom you will represent. This is a separate question from how long you have existed and from whether you are eternal, backwards as well as forwards. That is, the answers to those questions don't actually depend on each other. But if you posit a case where the answers are inextricably linked, then of course things get a whole lot more interesting. Unsurprisingly, I believe that the questions are very closely linked, and as a result, I have a model in my mind about how these things sort of work together in explaining our origin and destiny. Please remember that my beliefs alone are worth what you paid to read them. But it's fun to think about. Rather than bury the lede by discussing relationships and therefores before getting to the meat of things, let me just blurt out that we as individuals are uncreated. Our parents created our bodies through sacred means ordained by God himself, and God created our spirit in some manner perhaps not far removed from that which our parents used (though of course such things are not publicly revealed). But even before our creation by God as spiritual sons and daughters, we existed in a form that the Prophet Joseph Smith referred to as "intelligences". Such wording is found in the Pearl of Great Price and in the Doctrine and Covenants. What our nature was as "intelligences" has long been debated, and to my knowledge no general revelation has been granted to clear up that particular issue. I take this to mean that our fundamental ability and will to choose Option A over Option B is innate in our very existence, and not created by anyone, even God. We are independent in that sphere, to act and choose as we will. I'm speaking in generalities because I don't understand what I'm talking about. But the general idea is: A computer programmer is 100% responsible for his creation. It's not the program's "fault" that it's faulty. If God "created" our decision-making capacity, then clearly God himself is responsible for our choices. This is inescapable, especially when we attribute to God characteristics such as omniscience, where before God ever created us, he knew what choices we would make, and such as omnipotence, where God might have willed to create us other than as he did (e.g. not sinful). To believe otherwise is to engage in nothing more than word games, which I find utterly useless and uninteresting. So our independent, uncreated existence as intelligence (or intelligences) puts the ultimate onus of our decisions squarely on our own shoulders. Of course, we can be deceived and misled. But God's plan for his children accounts for such deception and ultimately allows us to choose God, if that is our will, and in the end reach his throne. Our premortal life (or lives) is an unknown quantity. We do not understand what that life consisted of, its duration, its nature. Did we live in families, as we do here? I rather suspect we did, but I have no proof of that idea. Did we know all things? Clearly, we did not. Did we have access to God, and speak to him face to face? I think that idea is sort of implicit in the belief itself. But despite our knowing almost nothing about the nature of our premortal existence(s), the mere fact of its existence implies spiritual change and growth during that time. Therefore, what we experience today and how we choose to react to such experiences is inarguably influenced by our premortal actions and choices. We are an extension of what we were, and we will be an extension of what we are right now. Thus our agency that we exercise today is always and at every moment determined ("influenced" is probably a better word here) by our premortal actions, activities, and choices.