Vort

Mormons are historically, uh, frugal. Thus the screaming nickels.

Thanks for spotting the typo. That'll teach me not to proofread my posts, even short ones.

Actually, I was answering your original question. Don't know much about Vegas slots.

I love the entire Book of Mormon. I could not possibly pick a favorite book or chapter. I have read the Book of Mormon through, cover to cover, at least 25 times, am currently in the middle of a study project on it for personal scripture study, and have again begun reading it with my wife. I will say that I have always had a special attraction to Nephi's writings, despite the Isaiah chapters, which took a few readings for me to be comfortable with.

The nickels screaming in agony are a dead giveaway.

1. 2008 2. 1838 3. 2160, when I would be 197 years old. (The sentence can end here, if desired.) I believe Christ's second coming is imminent, but I doubt I or, probably, my children will live to see it.

A first glance at your topic title left me thinking, "Hung Your Cat Day? What kind of celebration is that?" Seemed somehow inappropriate, and I'm not even a cat lover (except in the sense that they taste like chicken).

This is hardly surprising. My observation is that Islam, like Judaism (and many strains of Christianity), is a religion that produces a social construct closely bound to rules and their interpretation. We are all familiar with the anal-retentive, hidebound nature of the Pharisees of Christ's time, which apparently led many Jews to become, in Jesus' words, hypocrites. Islam seems often to resemble this. At least, it seems that way to me.(Please note that a hypocrite is not "someone who says something but doesn't do it". That's called an imperfect human being. A hypocrite is someone who puts on a false face as a means of getting gain or achieving status while still participating in the actions he publicly condemns. Telling your kids that smoking is bad while you're puffing away on your cigs is not hypocrisy. Urging your followers to donate liberally to the Work of God that you're running while you siphon off money to live a lavish, and probably promiscuous, lifestyle is blatant hypocrisy.)

JudoMinja, I appreciate your willingness to respond and actually converse, and also your willingness to engage without taking offense. Such discussions are a pleasure, even when we don't see eye to eye. I don't understand every nuance of what you are proposing, but I do think I see the broad outlines. If I understand you correctly, you are concerned that many children are being held back by parental laziness, fear, or ignorance. Your objective is to remove the roadblocks caused by the parents by insuring that all children get all the education they want, without forcing them into "education" that they don't want, and therefore won't really be getting educated. Here is why I disagree with that idea: When a child is born, he (or she) is helpless, utterly unable to care for even his most basic needs. Literally, the most he can do is breathe and suckle while his body carries on his life processes. The duty for providing life's necessities, both morally and legally, rests with the parents. They are expected -- indeed, required -- to provide a minimally healthy environment for the child. Please note: In many cases, this means forcing the child to do things he doesn't want to do, such as eating his spinach or going to the doctor for immunizations. We assume (especially in the West, and especially in America) that adults are capable of fending for themselves. We allow them to make choices and suffer the consequences of their actions*. To this end, we establish an "age of majority", at which point we assume the helpless child has developed into a responsible adult. We know this to be a fiction, on many levels: Many adults are irresponsible, the age of "adulthood" cannot be legislated for each individual by fiat, some adult actions have consequences that ought to be mitigated, etc. Still, this is the best we can do. Doing otherwise means assuming that adults cannot make such determinations for themselves, and instead puts the state in the position of decision-maker. Western thought values individual liberty, so we abhor this idea. (*Well, except for those who promote a nanny state and seek to remove all consequences from actions. But that's a separate discussion, probably best addressed in a different thread, if at all.) But there are obvious problems in seeking to extend this personal liberty to minors. If the kid doesn't want to eat his spinach, or insists on chocolate cake over oatmeal, the parents have the right -- indeed the duty -- to enforce their will over him. Similarly, if the kid prefers Xbox to school, the parents can and must enforce their opinion over his. He may honestly believe that his Xbox "training" is of more value than school. More likely, he just doesn't care, and simply WANTS to play Xbox. In either case, it doesn't matter. He will do what his parents adjudge best for him. Why? Because he's a minor. THEY are his decision-makers until he reaches that age of majority. What you propose shifts the responsibility for this decision-making from the parents, who are assumed to be capable and responsible, to the child, who is assumed to be incapable and irresponsible, and to the state, a soulless entity that by definition cares nothing for the child. This is utterly, absolutely unacceptable. This is ancient Sparta, or Middle Ages serfdom, or 20th-century Russia. The most important thing to preserve is not the possibility for educating the child. The most important thing to preserve is the liberty of self-determination. This means that (within reason) I determine what happens to my children, not you or the church or the state or any other entity. We can determine some reasonable bounds that the large majority will agree on -- you can't beat your child to death, you can't lock him in a closet until he's 18 -- but outside of that, such decisions as how the child is to be education must be left to the parents. To abrogate that power is to destroy the very foundation of liberty. This is why I (and, I assume, LM) have had such a seemingly strong reaction to what you propose. It's not personal against you; rather, we see this idea (one common to many more people than you alone) as one that destroys our liberty and ultimately takes away our very ability to bring up our children as we see fit.

Try looking at it this way:We must have the Spirit with us. If we have the Spirit, we can know and even do all things required of us. Our testimony grows brighter, our attachment to the world lessens, and we come unto Christ. As we have the Spirit and read (for example) the Book of Mormon, the Spirit teaches us the truths in that book, and we come to love and value it even as our testimony of its truthfulness and divinity deepens. Fornication and other transgressions of chastity cut us off from the Spirit immediately. Few things are more effective in severing the lines between us and our Father in heaven than chastity violations. So when you "overstep bounds in chastity", you deafen yourself to the voice of God and, in effect, strand yourself alone in a vast wilderness. No wonder you find your testimony wavering! Now, people who do not violate the laws of chastity can nevertheless find themselves struggling. This is the common lot of humanity and a necessary condition of our mortal existence; we are cut off from God and we must struggle to find him and come unto him. So the point is not that you are experiencing these things only because of fornication. But violating the laws of chastity does make it a great deal more difficult to feel the Spirit and hear the voice of God. My suggestion: Shelve your doubts for the moment. Continue reading your scriptures and talking with your bishop. Put your heart and soul into changing your life and your attitude so that fornications are no longer any part of you. Once this change is taking effect -- and that might take weeks or months, or perhaps even longer -- then take stock of your situation and see if you still feel the same way about the Book of Mormon. My guess is that you won't; but if you do, you will be in a much better position to pray about things and hear the voice of God testifying to you.

Is that the final word on truth, or is it just your present understanding?

I remember a PSA (or maybe it was a commercial for Arco or Esso or something) from the '70s, probably during the initial OPEC "energy crisis" during the Carter years, that featured a droop-tailed Brontosaurus*-looking animation getting sucked into the ground, along with other dinosaurs and plants, then "becoming" oil and being pumped into the gas tank of the happy car owner. I was a young teen at the time, and I wondered even then why they would put something so obviously wrong on TV (and, as is typical for me, whether I was in fact the one who was wrong, and somehow petroleum actually did derive from the flesh of ancient reptiles).*I realize there's no such thing as a Brontosaurus, but this animation was no Apatosaurus. Very much a Gertie the Dinosaur type dino.

Yet this is exactly the situation to which lack of vouchers condemns many children -- children whose parents would choose alternatives to public school (private schools, homeschool, etc.) if only they could use the tax money toward something other than the government-owned, teacher-union-lobbied public schools.

Ram and I have been hitting on each other for almost twenty years. Practically coming to blows a few times. Wouldn't you say, Ram?

If you had known how to use the past perfect subjunctive mood and the past conditional, would you have done so?

Oooh, sorry, grantstine. You made a typo. You have accidentally arrived at stinkingapostatescumbags.net. Ouch. Better luck next time.

How can you be "done" with discussion when you haven't yet begun? So far, you have stated your judgment. Others have asked for clarification. You have responded by restating your judgment. Rinse and repeat. You have yet to enter into any discussion, so I'm not sure how you can be done with it.It's like the March Hare said to Alice: You mean you can't have any LESS tea. You can always have more. Especially when you haven't had any to begin with.

Believe it or not, I have one sadder than both of those: I actually noticed that I had left one of the "O"s out of my acronym, but I was too darned lazy to insert another O. Instead, I intentionally misspelled "no one", thinking that it was so common that noone :) would care, or probably even notice.Now that's sad.

"Way"?

Wing, which is sadder: That you have bought into the linguistic conspiracy that gives that sad Pinocchio "anymore" status as a real word, or that you actually went through my acronyms to determine that I misspelled "no one"?

Just curious: Are you a girl?Are you Mormon?Are you good?

Sounds like a great plan, grantstine.

Take every atom in the universe, and reshape it to look like hungrytrash's number above. Then take each of those and arrange them in a power series, so you're taking one number to the power of the next, and so on. Then read the number presented.That many years...not even close to Graham's number. Just saying.

This is a great suggestion. Thanks. Do you have any specific scriptures that you suggest I concentrate on? It seems like there are just so many. Maybe you could help me get started. Yes, I know. Nothing about cars, meteors, or linguistic metaforms, either. What do you make of that? The conversation has admittedly been a bit one-sided, but thanks.