Vort

Looks like that's a three or three-and-a-half hour drive for you. That's not outrageous, but it's hardly close enough to comfortably do a day trip to clean, much less string electrical and lay pipe. I'm wondering what the folks in charge envisioned as the outcome to their plea. A well-organized group of professional plumbers and electricians would drive seven hours round-trip to do some free work at a professional level? If so, that plan might actually have worked had the stake president called the men individually and specifically requested their help. Many Latter-day Saints take their covenant of consecration seriously. But to throw out an invitation like that and then be surprised, or at least act surprised, that the whole thing collapsed in a jagged heap strikes me as naive at best, disingenuous at worst.

Of course, the thought was not to keep the girls in the dark, figuratively or literally. The thought was to hurry up and get things all fixed up so the girls would never know there had been problems. This is well-meant foolishness. The stake president or someone else in a leadership position (the buck stops with the stake president, but it could have been a bishop or the stake or ward young women's leader or even just a concerned parent) should have blown the whistle. A workable solution might have been to text the parents, saying that the girls' camp was in danger of not happening until X, Y, and Z were completed, and asking for help. That said, laying pipe and stringing electrical sounds like the kind of thing a do-it-yourselfer who owns a home might do. But when we're talking about a girls' camp, these things need to be done by a professional who knows what he's doing, whether or not the work has to pass a formal inspection. The above example appears to illustrate a failure in leadership from top to bottom. I don't mean that as a criticism; heaven knows I've been the weak link many times. But if we're standing around scratching our heads and trying to figure out how this situation could possibly have developed, we should be looking at the leadership.

Hyrum's looking good!

There are roughly one trillion (1012) grains of fine sand per cubic meter. "Mountains" is not a precise specification, but for a small mountain/large dune, we might guess roughly a million cubic meters. (Maybe a billion for a somewhat larger mountain.) So taking the one million figure, we're looking at around 1018 (a quintillion) grains of sand. At a million years per grain carried away, it would take 1024 (a septillion) years. This is such an absurdly long period of time that we have no good way of even getting our minds around it. For comparison, it is roughly 1014 times the estimated age of our universe. That means if you lived the life of our universe from the so-called Big Bang until this moment, then went back and relived it again, and kept repeating that a total of ten million times, that amount of elapsed time would put you one ten-millionth of the way to a septillion years. You would have to live ten million universe ages ten million separate times. As one segment of a wonderful series of lectures, the famous computer scientist/mathematician Donald Knuth (a faithful Lutheran) described what Graham's number was and then tried to describe what it would be like to live Graham's number of nanoseconds. His conclusion was that, from any human standpoint, such a thing would be indistinguishable from eternity. Well, of course that is simply false by definition, but I think Knuth wasn't looking for doctrinal truth. I think he was trying to describe how monstrously enormous the numbers that we construct in our numbering system can become. And, of course, that literally unthinkably huge Graham's number—far, far, far, unbelievably far greater than the septillion years we just talked about—is vanishingly tiny compared with all positive numbers, almost 100% of which are a very great deal larger than Graham's number. That being the case, eternity cannot even reasonably be contemplated. So I'm not actually going anywhere with this. Just responding to @lonetree's comment. EDIT: Donald Knuth, "Things a Computer Scientist Rarely Talks About"

As someone who was in mid-teens by the late '70s, my perspective is that few people actually believed that the lunatics could possibly ever constitute a serious threat. Sure, there were child molestors and rapists and groomers of little boys and female teachers who "turned boys into men", but scumbags have always existed. Just a tiny minority of people. The price of freedom is eternal, unending vigilance. We did not pay that price, because for many of us (and not just high schoolers), the 2023 reality was literally unthinkable back then.

I see so much stuff like this that starts looking to my eyes like media manipulation; my inner cynic says that this was $100 invested that will return a lot more in YouTube payouts. But my inner Saint tells my inner cynic to shut up and just enjoy the idea of seeing a person helping out someone in need. I like that the guy chose a hug over a handshake.

That's kind of like saying, "The larger Mafia has been hijacked to forcibly incorporate al Qaeda."

In the lovely innocence of childhood, children are pretty disgusting.

Isn't that "The Spy Who Loved Me"? Indeed. I've always wondered about your so-called "surgeries". Double-O Mik on the job.

The fundamental problem with pushing for gospel scholarship is that the true Saints and angels are not always scholars. Academic scholarship per se forms no part of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. Truth does not come from careful scholastic analysis, but always and only from the Spirit of God. I understand your concern, and I would be lying if I pretended I hadn't shared it. But upon reflection, I believe that the testimony from God comes from the Spirit and is granted to all those who earnestly seek. For some, scholarship might be a part of that seeking. But the kingdom of God must teach the fundamentals of knowing God to a wide, diverse Church that includes all kinds of Saints, including many who neither know nor care about academic scholarship. I love and miss the Nibley touch, but in the end it is a particular vantage point from which to observe and analyze gospel truths, and frankly a vantage point from which comparatively few Saints will actually see things.

The difference between a "good catch" and a "creep" is whether the woman finds him attractive. Truman Madsen wrote (and said in a lecture words to the same effect): Joseph Smith made many prophetic statements that last to our day. Some of them seemed preposterous at the time. Lillie Freeze recalls one such. "He said the time would come when none but the women of the Latter-day Saints would be willing to bear children." It's inevitable that some of the world's ethos will leak over into the thoughts and actions of the Saints.

mik, did you watch the previous videos? Because they were not mere opinion.

McConkie, Mormon Doctrine, 1958: "God has commanded his children to multiply and fill the earth, and the earth is far from full."

The edit function must be returned to the bottom of the post.

Does God love Satan? If you answer no, then you are probably comfortable with the idea that "unconditional love" is not a Godly attribute, and in fact does not exist at all. If you answer yes, then there is more work to be done. Is Satan still a subject of potential salvation? - If so, how does this square with the doctrine that Satan and his angels are forever lost, as indicated by the name "Perdition"? More importantly, how does this not encourage lawless behavior and selfishness? I mean, if Satan himself can still be saved, then why not eat, drink, and be merry? For it shall be well with us. - If not, then what good does God's "love" do for Satan? God has warm, squishy feelings toward Satan, and that somehow means something? God's love is manifest in his blessings that he bestows. (In this, I guess that means God's love language is giving and receiving gifts.) If God will not or cannot bestow blessings, then his love is not manifest. Therefore, by any utilitarian definition of "love", God does not—cannot—love the wicked and rebellious to the same degree that he loves the humble and penitent. To put it another way, God loves the humble and penitent more than the wicked and rebellious, as demonstrated by how he blesses the former group above the latter. I don't see another reasonable interpretation of the idea of God's love.

Have you actually read those responses? @mikbone asked no question, but made a statement that has been discussed in the thread. I think several people have covered the topic from various directions. If you think that Elder Nelson was mistaken and that "unconditional love" truly is a Godly attribute as taught in scripture, you should make your argument after making your assertion.

Such examples might include: Voting for someone you don't like because he's vastly less objectionable than the other person you could vote for Working with people who have historically hated you and even sought evil against you because they're on the same side as you regarding far more destructive, heinous, and hateful ideologies Taking a job you dislike because open, socially sanctioned bigotry prevents you from working in a field you're otherwise well-qualified for Keeping your perfectly valid opinions to yourself because making clear that you believe something will get you dismissed from your job, excluded from your education, or otherwise damage your professional and social prospects

I'm no expert, nor do I play one on the internet. But I found this rather convincing.

To be clear, I don't even know if the above (mine, not mik's) is true. But I perceive a deep truth to it, whether or not it is literally so.

From Facebook, but despite that, I thought it was good enough to share here. “Do you know how whales die? They drown. They spend their whole life living in and swimming in a world that eventually kills them. “Do you know why that is? Whales are mammals. Most mammals walk on the face of the earth, but the whale lives in a world that they are not of. “They are in the water, but they are not of the water. So while fish can swim around for their entire lives with gills, breathing in the water, the whale most come up out of the water to live. There is a life source that is not in the world that he lives in that he needs access to. “You are in this world but you are not of this world. You are not just a mind. You are not just a body. You are a spirit wrapped up in a man or a woman. And in this life you need God—you need to pray, you need to worship, you need to read the word of God. “Because if you don’t learn to come up for air, you will drown.” - @russelldafourth

It appears that there is a Velum (one "L") Hypothesis in evolutionary circles, having to do with how the jaw is supposed to have developed. But the one-L "velum" is the Latin word for "sail", as in a ship's sail, so that's a different thing from the two-L "vellum", which is from the old French for "calf", as in a baby cow.

I have an idea about how God has used the earth for his eternal purposes. It has been kicking around my skull for a few decades now. I am absolutely sure it's not original with me; doubtless I have heard others suggest such ideas and have simply been thinking about their ideas since then. This qualifies as speculation, and I certainly don't pretend it's some sort of revealed truth. Just an idea. But I find it intriguing and somewhat plausible, so I want to run it by those on this august forum and see what you think. For lack of a better term, I'll call it the Vellum Hypothesis. First, a quick explanatory note: Vellum is calfskin used for writing on. In ancient times, writing media were expensive and laboriously produced. For example, papyrus was local to Egypt and not typically of great quality. Many ancient scribes preferred to write on vellum, where possible. Still, at one calf sacrifice per five or so vellum folios, it was not a cheap method of mass production. If a vellum folio had been previously written on and it was decided that it should be repurposed to use to write something more important (or more urgent) on, the old writing would be scraped off the folio. The piece of vellum would then be available to write something else on. In this case, the previously used vellum was called a palimpsest. Interestingly, the old writing would not be completely removed; faint traces of the writing would often still be present on the palimpsest. Today, we can use ancient palimpsests to read not only what is written on them, but what was written on them before they were reused. For example, study of the Archimedes Palimpsest has recovered heretofore unknown treatises by Archimedes. We can profitably view nature itself, the birds and bees and bugs and especially the microflora, microfauna, and physical structure of the earth (air, water, land masses, etc.) as the canvas upon which we, as works of God, are painted. We have existence outside of this physical reality, but we exist for now within this reality and are defined by it. Take away the atmosphere, water, and/or microflora that surround and permeate us, and we cannot survive, any more than a Rembrandt portrait can survive being peeled off of its canvas. What I have termed the Vellum Hypothesis is the idea that this mother earth we live upon is a vellum on which we have been written. But this earthly vellum is actually a palimpsest, having hosted many forms of life for millions, or more likely billions, of years before we ever arrived. We have had many "scraping the old ink off" events, such as the Chicxulub impact 67 million years ago that wiped out pretty much all of the dinosaurs, along with about 80% of all species then alive. The so-called Snowball Earth events, vastly older than the Chicxulub impact, probably had similar or perhaps much harsher effects. Even in relatively recent times, the last two or three million years, there have been ice ages that wiped out much life and greatly modified our physical environment. I know of no evidence of pre-human human-like intelligence. But humans appear to have been around for quite a while. We do not know exactly when Adam and Eve lived, but the normal Bible-based chronology (both Christian and Jewish) puts them more or less at around 4000 BC. I think that number can be considered variable, but I doubt there would be many Bible believers who would suggest that Adam and Eve lived much more than, say, 10,000 years ago. Interestingly, this coincides with the approximate end of the most recent ice age. Yet it appears than anatomically modern humans have been around for maybe as long as 200,000 years. I wonder if the Lord has used this earth more than just for Adam's generation. I wonder if, perhaps, previous people, children of God much like ourselves, populated this planet. I wonder if our own genetic makeup demonstrates the palimpsest of our biological ancestry and our descendance from them. If so, we are apparently sealed off from previous iterations of human activity, and in any case we have our own problems to worry about. But it makes for some fun stuff to think about. As I said, nothing really original, except maybe the fanciful name I gave it. I put this thread in "LDS Gospel Discussion" because most of us are LDS and this is meant to be a discussion. But for the record, nothing about what I wrote above qualifies as LDS gospel doctrine. Just so that we're clear on that matter.

Gorillas don't use ordinance, but...

It's the zeitgeist of our day. Eat your seed corn. We have money carefully earned and sequestered by our ancestors down to our own fathers and mothers? Let's tap that resource! We have a corporation over 100 years old that we're guiding? Quarterly profits, baby! We have oil reserves created over hundreds of millions of years? Drill! The whole mindset is upside-down, inverted, cart-before-the-horse perversion. We need to have children! Why? For economic purposes, of course! How else are we going to keep the Ponzi scheme that is social security going if we don't have a next generation to pay us [a small fraction of] what was taken out of our paychecks throughout our lives? I saw an article a few days ago in which a young woman straightfacedly proposed increased incentives for unmarried mothers to bear more children. Even a generation ago, this would have been unthinkable. Welcome to 2023.

I am in sympathy with much of what you wrote, but for the record, the above constitutes, um...agreeing with Trump.