Vort

"Penultimate" = "second to last". Methinks you mean "ultimate", or perhaps "quintessential". Or, hey, I don't know, maybe you do mean "penultimate". Personally, I'm hoping for the antepenultimate answer. That will give me two more chances to get it right.

Go to the Lord in honesty and tell him that men are not as virtuous as women...he'll make it very clear that is not the truth. Words of wisdom for all those who insist that men are less righteous than women.

You are now. Bingo.

The statement was made that young women should not disqualify a man from dating consideration just because he was unable to serve a mission. I was simply pointing out that young women routinely disqualify men from their dating pool for all sorts of reasons beyond the man's control, so why should being an RM be any different?

No. Rather, what is being said is that men, as a group, are given the Priesthood because they are unworthy when compared with women, as a group.Do you agree with this? How about this: The reason women do not have the Priesthood is because they are not worthy of it. By their natures, women are simply too petty, too distracted, too unable to work mighty works and think mighty thoughts for God to entrust his sacred Priesthood into their pitiful hands. But that doesn't mean I look down on women! Not at all! Hey, I'm not talking about ALL women here. I'm just saying, women as a group are not strong or righteous enough to hold the Priesthood. Nothing personal, just stating an obvious fact. Political correctness aside, everyone knows that what I have just written is true. Right? No? Well, I don't know what world YOU live in, but you certainly shouldn't take any offense at what I've said. If you can't handle the truth, keep quiet about it. And if you seriously think I am wrong, then you are in denial about the truth. Everyone for thousands of years has understood that men are better than women. Hey, it's a basic fact of life, just like the sun coming up in the morning. In any case, don't stir up contention about it. I was simply stating my opinion. No need to get defensive or whatever. The false premise that men are given the Priesthood by God because they are less righteous than women leads inexorably to the determination that Christ had the Priesthood because he was less righteous than women. I was simply pointing out the obvious.It may be in poor taste to declare that the emperor has no clothes, but poor taste or not, the emperor is naked. (The pervert. No wonder the emperors are all men.)

You betcha! Just doing my best! If that falls short -- well, hey, I'm a man. It's to be expected. Since women do not, in fact, bear the Priesthood, it is obvious that they do not need to do so. But they still need the Priesthood every bit as much as men, even though you claimed they did not. Men do bear the Priesthood; it is the duty given them. Both sexes need the Priesthood.I assume that you believe that Jesus Christ was too carnal and devilish without the Priesthood, so that is why he held it, but not (for example) the woman taken in adultery. Or the Samaritan woman with five previous husbands who was living with a man she was not married to. These women were simply too virtuous, too righteous, too pure to need the Priesthood, unlike that filthy male, Jesus Christ, or his apostles. I don't buy it. This is new doctrine. I have never heard of Priesthood authority being "shared" between a husband and wife. Do you have a reference for this unorthodox idea? Another shameful thing is to make a broad judgment against an entire group of people that you have no authority nor ability to make. A world that doesn't devalue men for being male. Not from where I stand. Nor sure what honey life is. Does it have to do with telling my sons that they are by their very natures less Godly than their sisters?

Marriage is such an individual choice and is predicated on so many silly things, so what's the matter with "RM" being on the list? Heck, most guys date and marry women they find attractive. How high does "pretty" rank on the list? Pretty high (forgive the pun). Would you date and marry someone with AIDS? Would it make a difference if s/he got AIDS from an infected needle that poked him/her while working to save a junkie's life?Would you date and marry someone you knew to be mentally or emotionally unstable, even if you also knew it wasn't his or her "fault"?Would you date and marry someone with chronically, incurably bad breath caused by body chemistry issues?Would you date and marry someone who was four feet tall?Would you date and marry someone who was too shy to talk with you or ever be alone with you?These are arguably much less immediate and relevant reasons than "not being an RM" for refusing to date or marry someone, yet most of us would act in some, many, or all of the ways portrayed. So to me, it seems nonsensical to understand and accept the actions listed above, but then condemn a girl for insisting that she will only date RMs.

And I might agree with you. I have little patience with "creationists", and next to none at all with "scientific creationists".

In my own ward: Neither of our last two Relief Society presidents served a mission.Our previous elder's quorum president never served a mission.Neither did the one before him. This one also had been divorced, with three children from his first marriage.The one before him didn't have any children and had only been a member for a few years.Our current RS president was divorced and has three children from her first marriage.On the other hand, I personally: Served an honorable full-time missionMarried in the templeHave a bunch of kidsHave not divorcedAm the sole wage-earner in my home, as has been the case for almost two decadesWork as a professional (not especially highly paid, but we make enough to get by)Have always payed a full tithe since childhoodHave always held a temple recommend since adolescenceHave always been active at ChurchHave never declined a calling of any sort at any timeAm significantly more polite in person than on a discussion list (just wanted to clarify that :) )By your logic, I should be the stake president! So after a lifetime (I'm on the far side of my mid-40s) of faithful service in the Church, what mighty positions have I held and do I now hold? I am an elder, not a high priestI have served as a counselor in a few quorum presidencies, but never as presidentI am currently an assistant adviser in the young men's programPositions in the Church are not "earned". God calls whom he wants to serve in a position, for whatever reasons he has. True, they should meet minimum qualifications of worthiness and ability; but this idea that only people that have some certain laundry list of "accomplishments" are considered for "leadership advancement" is simply false, on many levels.

By "pigheaded evolutionists", I was not referring to any and all who believe in the idea of evolution. Rather, I was referring to the pigheaded ones. :) More specifically, I was referring to the academics who, when teaching the principles of evolution, always stress the abiogenetic origin of life. There was no ad hominem attack, though I'm sorry you perceived one.

Because full-time missionary service is a Priesthood duty.

I agree with you about one thing, funkymonkey: My response was unkind. I have edited it to be, hopefully, more positive and less cutting, and will endeavor to be more careful in the future about writing such a response.

Michael, Congratulations on your calling! I loved serving in the elder's quorum presidency. You have the opportunity to do a lot of good for your quorum members. Here are my suggestions: 1. Ask your president what he wants to accomplish. 2. Don't be afraid to suggest things to him. For example, home teaching is a top priority in an EQ presidency, so you might suggest some in-quorum training or other measures to improve home teaching. 3. Follow the president's lead, but don't be afraid to talk with him if you have concerns. You are a counselor. Counsel him. 4. If you are given a home teaching district (typically a third of the quorum will be assigned to report HT results to a presidency member each month), get to know your district members and take opportunities every Sunday and throughout the week to encourage them. 5. If you are not given a home teaching district, suggest to the president that he divide up that responsibility. 6. Be an example in every aspect of your life, starting with your home life. Make sure you are always 100% as a home teacher. (Seriously, home teaching is vitally important.) 7. Seek to help the quorum instructors know what they need to address and how. Suggest quorum lessons and give ideas for presentations at your presidency meetings. Volunteer to teach a lesson every month or two, if appropriate, and model how you want the quorum taught. 8. In public or in front of ward members, refer to your president as "President" or "President Jones" rather than "Bob". Yes, we all know he's a close friend and that you go fishing together every Friday, but his calling is an important one and you can help to encourage respect toward that calling by showing respect toward him in your address. Remember that there are typically only four men in a ward that hold Priesthood keys of leadership. He is one of them.

Can you provide a citation for this claim?

I share your frustration and agree with how you feel about this. Nevertheless, I challenge you to find a single college-level text on evolution that fails to present ideas of abiogenesis as the foundation for what comes later. Evolutionary scientists as a group are in fact aggressively atheistic, and they do insist on an atheistic origin of life.In short, the pigheaded evolutionists have brought this problem on themselves.

Of what evidence do you speak? The evidence that direct manipulation of our physical brain can remove our memories and even change our personality as a result. How is this "evidence to the contrary" that we are more than the sum of our biological parts? All of the phenomenon we experience seems to have an explaination within our biological parts without the necessity of something more. So what? Lack of evidence for something != evidence against something. You claimed, "It is a pleasant thought that we are more than just the sum of our biological parts, but I have seen a lot of evidence to the contrary." I don't believe any such evidence exists. I am simply asking you to present your evidence. Untrue. For example, changes to our brain do not affect our fingerprints. It wouldn't. Who says that personality or memory changes are changes to our spirit? No one has made any such claim. That's an incorrect assumption on your part. I was inferring from what people usualy refer to when talking about a spirit, if you want a well structured debate, I suggest you define spirit explicitly and what all it entails before we go any farther. Actually, I was simply responding to what you had written. I would suggest that it is you who ought to define his terms. For my purposes, here is my explicit definition of a human spirit: A human spirit is an object with all of the following properties: - It is the ultimate root of personality and decision-making ability in a person - It is created of a form of matter not measurable or affected by normal physical processes - It is a creation of God through a process of birth (though not necessarily similar to the process of physical birth) - It houses or in some other sense encompasses the uncreated root essence (called the "intelligence") of the person - It does not "die" or "decay" in the sense we normally associate with those words Not sure why I'm the one laying out terms, since I wasn't the one throwing the terms around initially. But there you are. 1. Nothing even approaching the abstract complexity of the human mind exists, or as far as we can tell has ever existed, throughout history -- except, of course, for humans. Having evolved the most complex brain of any animal is evidence of what? Of the existence of the spirit. Aren't you following the thread? I am quite sure I made no such statement. Either we are reading two different threads, or you are inferring an awful lot into my words that simply isn't there. You want evidence of the existence of a human spirit. The fact that the human mind is absolutely unique in Earth's evolutionary history, with not the least indication that any life form before or since has developed anything remotely resembling man's ability to reason and communicate using an astounding level of symbolic abstraction, suggests that there may be a reason for that uniqueness. The presence of a human spirit behind the mind of man would help explain that development. (It would, in fact, beg the question, but for the purposes of our discussion that's irrelevant. We aren't discussing the purported origin of spiritual thought.) Yes, of course. The glove didn't fit OJ's hand. Is that evidence of his innocence or is it not? Of course it is. That doesn't mean he was innocent. Or are you using some special definition of "evidence" that actually means "incontrovertible proof"? Because it explains the event. So what? You asked for evidence, I presented evidence. Again, please clearly define what you are proposing a spirit is before we go into evidence for or against. You seem to have our roles reversed. I was not the one making claims; I was merely responding to your claims. It is not for me to define my terms when you were the one making claims. (Yet, ever the peacemaker, I have done so anyway. :) ) Yes, I realize that. What evidence do you have of that? (Note that you will first need to lay out your definition of what constitutes "consciousness".) A feature (or actually a lack of feature) that is greatly missed.

As far as I know, there is only one scientific theory of evolution, and I think just about any scientist would agree.I am positive you are mistaken. Witness, for an obvious example, those who argue for parallel evolution of modern humans between east Asia and Africa and those who argue for a completely African-centric, displacement view of modern human evolution.I believe it is you who are mistaken. The theory of evolution refers to the mechanism by which organisms change, not the details of which organisms came from where and when.But rameumptom didn't talk about "the theory of evolution". Rather, he spoke of "theories of evolution" and stated that he has found there is more than one. I took his words at face value, and they are certainly true; there are indeed many competing evolutionary theories about all sorts of aspects of evolution.Even if we accept your narrow definition of terms, surely you cannot believe that evolutionary scientists are in unanimous agreement as to the specific mechanisms of evolution. Huge questions still remain: What are the mechanisms of chromosome differentiation through time? Does widely spaced intraspecies "convergent evolution" (as it is called) exist to any significant degree, and if so, how much does it account for observed changes? What is the role of retroviruses in evolutionary history? Heck, I'm not even a scientist, and I came up with these off the top of my head. Anyone really versed in the current state of evolutionary science could rattle off two dozen more. You may wish to reconsider this rather rash statement...

Your testimony is false. Women need the Priesthood every bit as much as men. Perhaps you should avoid generalizing your own failures onto everyone else. The fact that you are so spiritually inferior to your wife does not therefore imply that other men are spiritually inferior to their wives. Again, you are mistaken. Men are called to serve missions because they hold the Priesthood, and full-time missionary work is a duty of Priesthood holders. Shameful, indeed. But again, you would do well to avoid generalizing your own shortcomings onto everyone else.

This has been mentioned a few times throughout this thread. Would it be so bold of me to ask if someone can explain this difference? Thanks!The endowment is a set of covenants and key concepts exchanged under covenant. The presentation (or "ritual") of the endowment simply refers to how those covenants and concepts are presented to the individual. The presentation could conceivably be made in any number of ways; the one that is presently used appears to be somewhat similar to (and may in fact be based on) Masonic ideas. I have no knowledge of that, since I'm not a Mason, but I also see it as pretty much irrelevant.There is a close relationship between the endowment and its presentation. I don't pretend they are completely separate, or separable, things. But I do agree that it's well to keep in mind that they are not the same thing, and that the endowment does to some degree exist apart from its specific presentation ritual.

I am positive you are mistaken. Witness, for an obvious example, those who argue for parallel evolution of modern humans between east Asia and Africa and those who argue for a completely African-centric, displacement view of modern human evolution.

Of what evidence do you speak?The evidence that direct manipulation of our physical brain can remove our memories and even change our personality as a result.How is this "evidence to the contrary" that we are more than the sum of our biological parts? It wouldn't. Who says that personality or memory changes are changes to our spirit? No one has made any such claim. That's an incorrect assumption on your part. Here you are making a logical disconnect:- If we have spirits, they "contain" our personality - Spirits cannot be damaged by purely physical means - Brain damage, a purely physical phenomenon, affects personality - Therefore, we don't have spirits But your premises are invalid. - What does it mean to "contain" a personality? LDS scriptures clearly teach that the spirit and the body together make the soul of man. How can you define the personality of a mortal being without reference to physicality? - What constitutes "purely physical means"? If you cannot define what a spirit is, how can you tell what constitutes the "purely physical"? (That said, I do believe it's pretty evident that purely spiritual matters are not directly affected by purely physical means. I'm simply pointing out the looseness of such language, and the futility of trying to impose rigid logic on such an ephemeral structure.) - Assuming the existence of individual spirits, why would "personality" be a purely spiritual phenomenon instead of, say, a deep interaction between the spirit and the physical brain? - The conclusion cannot be drawn from the stated premises, because the premises are ill-defined and not well understood. 1. Nothing even approaching the abstract complexity of the human mind exists, or as far as we can tell has ever existed, throughout history -- except, of course, for humans.2. A great many sober and truthful people have testified of the existence of spirits and a spirit world. 3. Near-death experiences have occurred to many unrelated and unacquainted human beings throughout history. 4. Many disparate cultures separated by huge distances linearly, temporally, and socially have shared the idea of a spirit that survives death. There are many other evidences of the existence of spirits, as others have already presented. That you might explain each of these away by non-spiritual means does not detract from their status as evidence of spiritual existence, any more than the moon-hoax believers' explanations about supposed lunar landing evidence detracts from that evidence's existence. Again, if you will give an example of what you mean by something that is more than the sum of its parts, perhaps we can communicate better.

Of what evidence do you speak?Perhaps it would help clarify things if you gave an example of a thing that is "more than just the sum of its parts". And therefore...?

Clearly, Jesus Christ was much more prone to error than his mother Mary, and thus needed to be held more accountable by holding the Priesthood.Not. I sincerely hope that you will learn to recognize the beauty and dignity of men as a sex, despite the failings of individuals. Your husband deserves this, as will your sons, should you ever be blessed to have any. Also, I apologize for my previous unkindness. I hope you reread this since my edit.

About four months ago, a friend asked me to help move her refrigerator, so I arrived and saw it on her driveway next to her neighbor's new car. I stuck a handtruck under the fridge to move it and promptly dropped the fridge on the neighbor's new car. A dent, a deep scratch, and I knew it would be hundreds of dollars (at least) to fix. Neither I nor my friend had any insurance that would pay for this. In that moment, I realized that no one had seen what I did, and if I simply walked away, the neighbor's insurance would pay for the damage. I knew with utter clarity that if I kept my mouth shut and left, no one would be the wiser, the neighbor wouldn't even see the damage until getting to work the next day and assuming it happened there, and everything would be juuuuuust fine. So I did the only reasonable thing I could do. I immediately went to the neighbor's door and told him I dropped a refrigerator on his car. Cost me $1400 out of pocket. Three weeks later I was laid off.

Review