Vort

Each sentence of this essay's first paragraph is self-referential in some way or another. That includes the second sentence. Whatever you do, DON'T READ THIS SENTENCE! I've found that it's often not until the fourth sentence that a paragraph actually gets around to saying anything; haven't you? Don't try answering me, because I can't hear you -- you're a human being, after all, and I'm only a sentence. This sentence contains ten words, eighteen syllables, and sixty-four letters. This whole paragraph, including this last sentence, contains ninety-six words, one hundred fifty-six syllables, and exactly five hundred letters. It might be possible to write a paragraph about self-reference. Such a paragraph might examine self-reference in some detail, while simultaneously referring to itself in some manner, either directly or indirectly. One method might be to create a sort of "self-swallowing" paragraph. It would not truly be self-swallowing, of course, since it couldn't completely reproduce itself; logically, it could not contain a second complete copy of itself within its own body. However, it could approximate the effect by including a shortened version of itself, recapping most of the important elements. Such a self-referential paragraph might look something like the following example: "One could write a paragraph on self-reference. It could both explore the topic and incorporate it into its structure. This might be done by making it self-inclusive, though it would not be perfectly so, since it couldn't contain its own complete copy. But it might come close by including an abbreviation of itself, touching the major points. It could resemble the following: "A paragraph could be made to simultaneously explore and incorporate the idea of self-reference. It might be imperfectly self-inclusive, appending only a relevant abridgment of itself, in this manner: "Writing a self-referential paragraph exploring self-reference could be done by embedding a shorter version, for example: "A self-referential paragraph on self-reference might contain itself in miniature, e.g. "A paragraph on self-reference could talk about itself like so: "A paragraph can refer to itself thusly: "This paragraph is self-contained.""""""" I wish now to talk about various levels of reference of the first word of this sentence; for example, in this sentence, it refers to the author of the post, namely, Vort. But now, I am the post itself, that starts with my self-referential paragraph, and ends with the name of my author -- but I am not he, and you shouldn't confuse the two of us. In this case, I am the paragraph you are reading, that begins (inappropriately enough) with the words "I wish" and ends with the words "bizarrely self-referential". Now I'm this particular sentence, not any larger construct which may contain me, like a paragraph, post, or human mind. In this last case, "I" is simply a word, and so refers to nothing in particular -- and yet in a strange way, it means itself, and thus is still bizarrely self-referential. The last sentence of this essay is superfluous, so don't bother reading it. -Vort I wrote this in October 1999 after reading Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. (Except for "Vort", which I hadn't yet come up with. :)) Just stumbled across it looking through an old hard drive, and hoped you might find it as entertaining to read as I found it to write.

Of course the Church exists. What an absurd statement. You might tell your friend that Jesus Christ has no legal standing in the US, and thus "does not exist" in the eyes of the law. What of it? I doubt the planet Mars is formally recognized by the US government, either.

In my opinion, this is the crux of the question. If and when you receive personal revelation to the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon (and other aspects of the gospel you are praying about), you have what is commonly called a testimony. With this foundation of personal revelation, or testimony, you can build the structure of faith that will serve you for the rest of your life and beyond. Look, the idea of some fourteen-year-old kid on the American frontier conversing with God is a bit preposterous. No more than many other things we freely believe, but still, it's not an obvious thing to swallow. But once you have that personal revelation, it is not only easy, it's the most natural thing in the world. Of course Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon. Of course the Priesthood was restored through him. Of course Thomas S. Monson holds the keys today and presides in the role of prophet to the world. My suggestion is to study, ponder, and pray about these things. It will probably help you immensely to talk with the missionaries, and maybe your local bishop. My advice: Don't worry about this. The "horror stories" are almost certainly overblown. But if this Church is what it claims to be, it is worth any price. And if you receive that revelatory testimony from God, you will be strong enough to pay whatever that price may be. Don't let it be. Ignore that fear. Besides, to whom would you "grovel"? The bishop? The congregation? Missionaries? Preposterous. Perhaps you must "grovel" before God, in some manner. Let that be as it may. We all may feel to grovel before our perfect Father, but he expects only humility and obedience -- self-effacement, but not self-mortification. I am your same age and an elder. I love my Priesthood quorum and our discussions. Certainly I'm at a different stage in life than many of the other men. What of it? If their comments sometimes seem naive or occasionally even silly, so be it. They are only men, just like I'm only a man. We're all doing our best and trying to help each other. They are not perfect, and neither am I. But they don't condemn me for my imperfections, and I try to return the favor. When you watch a performer on the stage, do you greedily anticipate the point where he drops the balls he's juggling or misremembers the punchline of his joke? On the contrary, the tendency for (non-sociopathic) people is to root for the success of the other person. It's highly doubtful that many, or even any, people will be just standing by with bated breath waiting for you to mess up. On the contrary, the likelihood is that they will want to welcome you as a brother and help you on your path. Anyway, best of luck. Let us know how you're progressing.

I have long chafed at the equivalence made by many in the Church between motherhood and Priesthood. The counterpart to motherhood is fatherhood, obviously. To equate motherhood with Priesthood seemed to me to denigrate the role of fatherhood as some second-class thing. What I have been meditating on recently is the idea that perhaps Priesthood is fatherhood. This sort of makes sense to me, and to use a Joseph Smithism, it "tastes good". I don't understand all the implications of this -- for example, what is the significance that the Priesthood is conferred on a man? -- but I think it's something profitable for me to think about for the next few decades.

Actually, MrShorty is LDS. His question is about the beliefs of non-LDS Christians.

Orson Pratt.

I'm thinking Broadway.

By definition, babies and brides are beautiful. So his statement was trivially true.

The lesson is not to teach about the temple. It is not to investigate the symbolism or discuss the rites performed or anything of the sort. The lesson is to inspire people to attend the temple. You say that you have always been bored by such lessons. Perhaps this is because the teachers were ill-prepared or taught without inspiration. More likely, it is you who lacked the inspiration and thus lost many opportunities to be taught by the Spirit. Here is your chance to change that. What do you find inspiring about temple attendance? Tell them. What do others find inspiring about temple attendance? Ask them. Discuss the things that arise in our lives to prevent us from temple attendance and what we can do about them. Discuss the idea about setting up groups of friends or acquaintances to carpool. Maybe turn it into a date with your spouse and others, going out to eat afterward. The point is: How can we increase both our temple attendance frequency and our temple attendance inspiration? Lots of good veins of ore to be mined there.

This is perhaps the most absurd thing I have ever heard. You may have been told this, but unless your mission president was a psycho, I don't believe it for a moment. Masturbation is a FAR more serious transgression than they who don't believe it to be a transgression suppose. So is sneaking Halloween candy from your mother's stash. But anyone who thinks that masturbation is tantamount to forsaking your ministry has a twisted and sick view of sin and of sexuality.

If this is true, it is one of the most outrageous things I have ever heard. Being sent home from a mission is a life-altering event, and is done because the missionary has forsaken his ministry. I do not believe that a missionary would be sent home for masturbating. I think this is false. If so, there would be a whole lot of missionaries lying to their mission presidents' faces. But if it's true, it means either that masturbation is far more horrific a transgression than some of us give it credit for, or that some mission presidents show unbelievably poor judgment.

Better? Worse? How long before you're pining for the doe-eyed Icelandic chick?

Just opened up an IE9 window and PMed you. Seemed to work fine.

See, now that's what I'm talking about.

No one on this forum can answer that question. You need to talk to your bishop.

To repeat: "You make the mistake of thinking I was offering a reasoned, logical rebuttal. I was not. The comment was absurd on its face and did not merit a reasoned response."

It's a logical fallacy only if it's employed as a logical argument.

The Jewish state exists in Palestine because the western powers, including the US, put them there. We could have carved out part of the US as a Jewish state, but we did not. We put them in the most contested place in the world. We cannot just leave them to fend for themselves; that would be immoral. By the way, I'm pretty sure you meant "exacerbating" rather than "exasperating". But that's another thread. I beg to differ. :)

You make the mistake of thinking I was offering a reasoned, logical rebuttal. I was not. The comment was absurd on its face and did not merit a reasoned response.

Why? That would be treating the comment as if it were worthy of a reasoned response.

Stupid Israel, with all those darn Jews and stuff. Bunch of punks, feeling all sorry for themselves just because six million of them were burned up. Whiners. Can't really blame all those Arab and Persian countries for wanting to finish the job, and replace their corrupt democracy with a stable, righteous Islamic republic. Then the world would for sure be a much better place.

He was highly intelligent. His temple even said so.

Is a doubling of your current salary sufficient? I can make up the difference myself.

However, note that merely bumping a thread is much different from offering a genuine reply, even to an older thread. As long as the topic is still relevant (e.g. "How do you prepare for a new baby?" vs. "I'm having a baby in a month! What should I do?"), thread "resurrection" per se should not be viewed negatively.