Vort

Perhaps "Abinadi" is some form of "ab'n Adi", "son of Adi", or something similar. Abinadi may not have been a person such as we are familiar with, but a name title such as was common among many American aborigines. Thus, he comes among them in disguise but them immediately, it seems, identifies himself. Maybe we aren't reading it right.

It's a miracle you have children. Brother MorningStar is a patient and determined man. Time for me to go home for a late date with my mate!

Stick around a while. We aren't so bad once you get to know us. Like moss and athlete's foot, we kinda grow on you after a while.

Hmmm. Somehow, I kinda doubt that Maureen is in danger of saying anything she will regret.

You mean...it's not? I thought everything was about me. I do appreciate the pronoun, though. PS john doe and Pam may have gotten the idea that you were specifically commenting on things said on this site based on the second sentence in your original post: "I'm new to this forum, but already I've been very surprised by some of the responses to questions directed toward the LDS faith, and I truly believe many of these questions to be misunderstood." That does sound like you're commenting on things written to the forum.

Are such personal attacks really warranted, Maureen? You haven't yet answered my questions.

Glad to hear it! Not everyone appreciates my sense of humor. There are many friendly and fun people on here. As a middle-aged married father of five, I'm probably not among the peeps you were looking for (though I do have a massively cool avatar). But rest assured, they're here.

How does it being my opinion make it nasty? How so? What on earth made you think that I believe LDS temple rites "are appreciated or sought after by people of other faiths"? What an absurd belief that would be. I am quite sure I have never even suggested anything of the sort.

Hi, Kristin! I'm friendly and probably share your beliefs! Unfortunately, I'm not fun. Sorry.

Hmmm. I suspect Lossie Bear is talking about, er, me. Maybe the shoe seems to fit, or maybe it's just a sneaking guilty conscience. Or maybe it's that she specifically quoted my entire response to Zerosoul... Anyway, I agree that I probably overreacted to Zerosoul's post. I should have given him the benefit of the doubt. In my defense, I didn't attack Zerosoul personally, just lamented the continual rehashing of tired old lies against the Church. But I guess every generation has to rediscover those lies for themselves. Also, Zerosoul is LDS, so I certainly was not attacking his faith. I believe I have never attacked anyone else's faith or denigrated anyone for adhering to a faith I don't believe.

Which nastiness might that be? That I think bigotry is at the root of complaints about temple proxy root? That's not nastiness, that's my opinion on the matter. You are wrong. It is not rhetorical, it is a sincere question. Let me restate it, in context, so you can answer it. You seem to think that doing temple ordinances harms the survivors. This suggests that you find the ordinance work itself intrinsically offensive. Why?

If you noticed, most of the hikers were tied onto a steel cable running beside the trail.

Ah, I see. I did not know to which comments you were "Disagree"ing.

Elaborate?

Square!! Didn't you know that "Hola" is Swedish for "curse you and your family for ten generations"?!

Then there are those of us who see illegal entry as a huge deal indeed, but do not necessarily put much blame on many of the "illegals". For the most part, these are people seeking to make an honest living, not villains intent on destroying our way of life through drugs and gangs. The onus is on us to secure our borders, not on destitute people to refuse to cross an imaginary line because someone else thinks their honor depends upon it.

Point your browser to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (lds.org).In the search box on the upper right, type in "social networking" and hit 'Enter'.Scan through the results. Pick a promising one, e.g. the second link.Scan through the article, looking for possible hits, e.g. the fourth paragraph in the above link.You could also do an "Advanced Search" and specify "Apostles" or something of the sort. Teaching a man to fish, Vort

Not true; there are parents that do not ask the child for their permission - my husband was not asked.Good point. I should have said that it is improper and unusual for a child to be baptized without his or her consent. Your husband is a rare, though probably not unique, exception. That still does not negate my point. I am not, because we don't do any rituals for people who don't give their permission. Such a thing is not possible. If the person does not give permission, the ritual is of no effect. This has been explained to you repeatedly. You would prefer that they didn't have a say at all?You have not understood me, or you have ignored what I said. We never baptize people, even by proxy, without their explicit permission. And this suggests that you are paranoid and suspicious of other people's comments. Why is that Vort?I think your nastiness is both inappropriate and unnecessary. I am neither paranoid nor suspicious of others' comments. Now please answer my questions.

I probably do not understand your point. A child most certainly can give consent; no child would be baptized against his or her own will. But in addition to his or her own consent, a minor child requires the consent of a guardian adult. Such a proscription does not apply to a dead person, and certainly not to a dead adult. I don't understand why you keep coming back to this point. I am not worried about others. I am content with doing proxy work for my own family. This is not a question of what I want to do; it's a question of how and why people find things offensive. Again, I probably do not understand what you're driving at. It sounds like you are saying that people who are not Mormon and who die are unlikely to accept the gospel in the next life. If that is what you are saying, then I disagree. I see no reason to put such limitations on people's choices. Because it costs me little, and the surviving family nothing, for me to submit their name to have their work done. And if I do the work myself, I'm volunteering the effort, because even if I didn't know the person, I believe him to be a child of God and thus worth the rather minimal effort of a few hours' time. You seem to think that doing temple ordinances harms the survivors. This suggests that you find the ordinance work itself intrinsically offensive. Why?

Have you ever read Douglas Hofstadter's Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid? It won the 1979 Pulizer Prize, and may be the most enjoyable book I have ever read. In it, the author demonstrates applications of Kurt Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem to show how any sufficiently complex system (in my own words) contains within itself its own seeds of self-destruction. I believe our society is like this, and I think so-called "extreme couponing" is probably just one manifestation of that inborn weakness. I do not think that those who engage in this practice are dishonest. If it is not profitable to the seller, s/he can simply quit offering coupons. But the ultimate problem is the structure of our society and economy, not the actions of the couponers.

Because the person for whom the ordinance is being performed is dead, and thus cannot give his/her consent. You seem to think that performing the baptismal ordinance means the person is being baptized. This is incorrect. The person is being baptized conditionally, that condition being that the person desires and consents to the baptism. No consent means no baptism. Generally speaking, this is exactly what is done. Still, the question of proxy baptism for a dead adult is much different from the baptism of a living minor. If this were the case, then there would be no objection, for the reasons explained above.

The nice thing about predicting impending disaster is that you will always be right.

Speaking of physical appearance...

I don't think I have ever actually told this story to anyone before. Once, fifteen or more years ago, I received a spam email. Back then, spam was still rare enough that you typically read the spam emails you got. This one was very different from most, however. The writer was desperately asking to find someone with a temporal vortex. He "knew" time travel was possible and wanted to cut through the hooey and find someone with a temporal vortex. I didn't know what his game was, exactly, but I decided to play along. I created a hotmail account under the name "mistervortex" and replied to him, giving him a schedule of all my temporal-related services, including a large dose of nonsensical, sci-fi-type terminology. The guy got back to me, telling me he'd pay and desperately pleading for me to help him out. I was baffled. I told my brother about it, and he said the guy sounded mentally ill. Honestly, that had never occurred to me. I immediately felt bad about it and didn't send the guy any more emails. But I liked the name "mistervortex" so much that I ended up making another one, "vortexman". The name associated with that account was, predictably, "Vort Exman". PS I just went to sign on to my old mistervortex account, which I probably haven't done since Microsoft bought out Hotmail. Guess what? Didn't exist. So I recreated it. I'll probably never use it, but doggone it, I'm MisterVortex!

This is brilliant.