Vort

I used to get really annoyed with the cutesy or clueless testimonies that families give. I remember just sitting there and rolling my eyes. Now that I'm a parent myself, a young one with a young child (still figuring out the parenting thing), I've become more tolerant and understanding of the (sometimes chaotic) improvising. I like Vort's thought process of guiding children with sharing their testimony during family home evening. That just seems like a better setting to help get kids ready for fast and testimony meeting at church. But kids can be unpredictable too, and despite preparation, things don't always pan out as planned...
 
I totally "get" the elderly rambles. When I was a nurse I did a lot of one-on-one care with folks, and many of them felt that I had no idea what hardship and sacrifice was. I also encountered a good handful of them that referred to me as the "coloured girl" even though I wore a name tag. With these guys, I just took it for what it was, they'd lived a life and in a to,e that I knew nothing of. It was different then. So I gave them that, and I'd just smile, and let them get on their soap box to rant, rave, and tell their stories. The one thing I did correct was my name, I'd say, "My name is Bini," every time I got called something else.

The following is a partial list of the many privileges I enjoy:
- Tall guy privilege
- 1st world country privilege
- Live in the world's only superpower privilege
- College educated privilege
- Born to two married parents who loved and raised me privilege
- White privilege
- Male privilege
- Live in a stable democracy that values personal liberty privilege
- etc.
 
The following is a partial list of disadvantages/handicaps/misfortunes/whatever the opposite of privilege:
- Overweight
- Introverted to the extent that it affects my body language
- Tragic background that it occasionally hampers my happiness
- Mormon, in an area that doesn't much value religion
- Lack of coordination
- Poor, deteriorating eyesight 
- Prone to certain medical conditions
- etc
 
You'll notice that both lists contain both 'blessings of birth' over which I have no control, and things that are indeed in my control.
 
Everyone has a similar list.
 
Ya single one out, ya limit your destiny, or your options, or what you can accomplish in life, or however you want to think about it.
 
And that's just goofy.

A wonderful philosophy, as far as it goes. But what motivates the actions and ideas that determine "the level of virtue of our characters" if not our underlying belief systems? This is much like saying, "I don't care how this computer program is coded so long as it fulfills all of my requirements." Translation: "I care a very great deal how this computer program is coded."  Not to focus too narrowly on wording, but this point #1 -- "Heaven gets to be opened" -- seems to betray a heavy underlying (and probably unconscious) bias on your part: Heavenly admission must be perceived as fair by you, based on your personal judgment. But this is absurd. Whatever "heaven" may be, its entrance requirements are set by God. So unless you are God, your opinion is worth exactly squat. As a non-God being, your mission is not to set or determine heavenly entrance requirements, but to discover them from the actual Source. Another way of saying this is: What constitutes a "good" person? Perhaps you would agree that a "good" person is one who seeks after truth and then lives by whatever truth he manages to find. I cannot speak for other religions, of which my knowledge is limited, but you may be relieved to know that LDS doctrine teaches that people will be judged by what they become, by the intent of their hearts, and not by what they achieve. If a person becomes someone who desires to know God and to dwell with Him, then that person will accept truth when it is presented to him in a form he can understand. That means when a Mormon missionary knocks on his door or talks to him on the street, if he senses truth from this young man or women, he will humble himself enough to make time to see him or her. And for those who die without having this opportunity, they will have (and are having) that opportunity in the post-mortal sphere. In support of this effort, we living Mormons engage in temple work such as baptism for the dead.  Again, remember that your opinion plus a dollar will buy you a dollar's worth of stuff. Jesus himself taught that a man "must be born of water and of the Spirit", or he will not enter heaven. If salvation is offered by Christ, and ONLY by Christ, then it is self-evident that all who will be saved must be Christians. This is so obvious that it almost does not need saying. If you are in a room with 100 doors, one of which leads to freedom and the other 99 of which lead to ravenous wolves, will complaining about the unfairness of the situation help? There is only one door, and that door is Christ. Period. No exceptions. How is this fair? It is fair because all have been or will be given the opportunity to accept or reject Christ, as they see fit. What appears to you as some sort of cultural imperialism is plain old reality. Christians are not "better" than other people, and not everyone who calls himself a "Christian" really is. But all those who desire truth and seek after it will eventually find it. If you don't perceive the fairness of this situation right now, that's because your viewpoint is not sufficient to allow the correct perception, not because the situation really is unfair (in an eternal sense).  In the end, it is only the true doctrine of Christ that leads to repentance and salvation. This is not a matter of being born to the right family or being a member of the right club; it's a matter of "Whence truth?"

2ndRateMind, you start out correctly, but hidden assumptions lead you astray.
 
The Bible teaches that sin is transgression of the law. Perhaps a more useful distinction or definition is that sin is conscious transgression of the law. The whole idea of certain actions being "sinful" leads to divisions such as the "seven deadly sins" you mention. I don't think this is very useful; few actions are sinful by their very nature (other than things that are sinful by definition, such as disobeying God). Even the taking of human life, which we normally consider to be the most heinous act one can do, is not intrinsically sinful. But -- and this is the important part -- that does not mean that a great many actions are not in fact anathema to the Spirit of God, even for those who don't know the actions are bad.
 
You appear to have (at least) two false hidden assumptions, however: (1) That one need not know God in order to do his will and act virtuously; and (2) that being unconscious of the sinful nature of an action (e.g. homosex, or for that matter fornication in general) means that the act, not being strictly "sinful" in the way we discussed, is therefore harmless.
 
Proposition 1 must be allowed to be true, to some extent, else no non-Christian (and probably few Christians) would be capable of being a decent person who does good works. But it seems to me that at some point in spiritual progression, the Spirit of God must be present in a more immediate capacity. Spiritual inspiration is available to all, and can result in marvelous things, such as our present society. But we are capable of much greater if we become covenant people and live by those covenants. This is the great promise of "Zion".
 
Proposition 2 is obvious false on its face. We may not know that it's wrong to kill the children of our enemies; what could be more natural? Yet few modern Westerners would allow that such actions are either moral or useful in their results. Fornication specifically is a powerful inhibitor of spiritual insight. This has been recognized for thousands of years, inside and outside of Christianity, such that many cults, Christian and pagan alike, have been founded around the desirability of celibacy as a guiding principle. Yet the gospel teaches that not only is the sexual act not an undesirable or unGodly act per se, but quite the opposite: When used as God has commanded, it is ennobling and Godly. But we cannot know that without revelation, because it is not easily derivable from non-divine principles or observations. (See Principle 1.)

Liberal bile and straw men arguments.....

Man, I wanted to stand up and tell some people to be parents and not give in to their kids. We had several very small kids come up. At first some wanted to be there, but then chickened out, other children had to be told what to say. Just terrible.
 
If you don't have your own testimony that you can say without someone whispering it in your hear, sit the heck down. 

I imagine some kin of the Beverly Hillbillies writing them and asking if they get bored, since they no longer have to walk to the outhouse to take care of business, they no longer have to stock the wood stove, no longer have to hand wash their clothes, and hang them out to dry, etc.  They'd find it hard to explain their new lives, so they'd like respond that they are doing just fine, and not to worry.

On the other hand, while Nelson (in the sermon I link earlier) agrees with the distinction between abortion and murder (at least for those without "full understanding"); he does categorize it as shedding of innocent bloodThis respect for agency before the law, has its limits. Otherwise we wouldn't bother to criminalize murder, rape, or the selling of loose cigarettes--we'd just take the "pro-choice' position of politely asking those making such decisions to please reconsider, whilst shepherding into "free speech zones" anyone who made those requests with an uncomfortable degree of volume or persuasiveness.One problem with this line of thinking is that it suggests life is not life if it is incapable of independently sustaining itself unaided, or outside of a certain environment. The logical conclusions to such thinking is that it is also OK to terminate the existence of a two-week-old baby (since, left to itself, it will ultimately die); or to destroy a submarine or a spacecraft even though people are inside (since, in their current environment and but for a technological life-sustaining "womb" which I happen to have power to control, they are "non-viable").I don't pretend to know when "life" begins (I'm uncomfortable with the idea that life begins at conception), but I'm not sure post-delivery "viability" is the best philosophical analysis to apply.

An anti-Mormon's opinion and a dollar will buy you a candy bar. In all sincerity, I advise you to ignore anti-Mormons, refuse to engage them in any conversation, and avoid their web sites like the cancer they are.

An anti-Mormon's opinion and a dollar will buy you a candy bar. In all sincerity, I advise you to ignore anti-Mormons, refuse to engage them in any conversation, and avoid their web sites like the cancer they are.

Excellent. In that case, my answer stands as written. Divine truth is not like "literature, drama, and other arts, in colleges and universities, in politics and commerce". Divine truth is revealed from God. If not, it is unknown. There is no other way to receive divine truth except through revelation.
 
Understanding and appreciating the viewpoints of others is a worthy goal, but don't confuse such understanding with knowing divine truth. The two areas are unrelated. If you want divine truth, polling your friends and trading syllogistic arguments won't get you any closer.

Whether or not our prayers meet with the same answer is unimportant, as long as we are all receiving bona fide revelation from God. Truth is large and we are small. If you and I ask God the same question, both in faith, and we each receive an answer according to our level of understanding, we may be assured that each answer is correct. But since we are not identical people and are likely at different levels of understanding, your revelation and mine might be somewhat (or very) different in content. Thus, my revelation is mine, private, not generally shared, and the same with yours.  Then you probably do not understand what I'm talking about. Or maybe I don't understand what you're talking about; you refer to 'the Great Debate' as if it's a thing, a known quantity, an understood and ongoing concern, but I am not familiar with the term in the present context. My concern is not philosophy. All philosophy is foolishness, however much I personally may engage in it. What I ultimately care about is divine truth, and divine truth is not discovered through philosophical meanderings. It is discovered through revelation, and only through revelation.  
If you read the OP carefully, I think you will see that its motive was actually quite the opposite of that suggested by your warning. The "select few" who are privy to divinely approved answers are those who seek the Lord in sincerity, humility, and mighty faith. God is no respecter of persons, so this is a self-selecting "select few".
 
 
Two siblings were discussing the birth of their younger sister.
 
Billy: Sally came from the cabbage patch.
Bobby: No she didn't! The stork brought her!
Billy: That's ridiculous. A stork's wings aren't large enough to generate the necessary lift to carry an infant human. She's clearly from the cabbage patch.
Bobby: Don't be naive. Does Sally look like she's full of chlorophyll? Soft tissues are not generated by plants, which have rigid cell walls.
Billy: Hey, I know! Let's go ask Mommy!
Bobby: Shame on you for attempting to shut down our useful and informative debate.
 
My suggestion is not that inquiry cease. Rather, I suggest that we go to the fount of knowledge and drink deeply of the pure water, rather than drink downstream after the cattle have waded through it.

"White privilege", to me, seems to boil down to this:  A person inside a particular racial/ethnic group (e.g., "whites"), will find it easier to gain acceptance within that same group, than persons not members of that group will have to gain acceptance in that same group.  I imagine that the same is true for pretty much any other ethnic group.
 
You don't hear anyone talking about "Korean privilege" in Korea, or "Persian privilege" in Iran, or "Japanese privilege" in Japan, or "Arab privilege" in Saudi Arabia, or (ulp!) "black privilege" within predominantly black neighborhoods in various cities around the US.  They exist, and are symptomatic of a broader "herd mentality" that is innate to human culture.  But our intelligentsia isn't really interested in that; because on the whole they actually like herd mentality in principle (ask one of 'em how many openly Conservative or practicing Evangelical Christian friends they have)--they just happen to want to restructure the particular "herd" that we commonly call "whites"; and so they invent narrowly-directed terms like "white privilege" to make us believe that we're a singularly dysfunctional society.

The Mormon concept of attaining the highest degree of heaven, as I understand it, means that you're always a parent to an eternally-increasing number of offspring.
 
And the one thing about being a parent is--you're never bored.  :)

An anti-Mormon's opinion and a dollar will buy you a candy bar. In all sincerity, I advise you to ignore anti-Mormons, refuse to engage them in any conversation, and avoid their web sites like the cancer they are.

To clarify this: Light has no "rest mass", but it does have "relativistic mass". This is very easily calculated from Einstein's famous equation E=mc². Solving for m gives:
 
m = E/c²
 
From here, it's as easy as plugging in numbers and getting your answer. Energy E in a photon is equal to the frequency f times the Planck constant h: E=hf. Substituting for E gives:
 
m = hf/c²
 
If we want to use wavelength λ instead of frequency f, they are inversely proportional: f=c/λ. So,
 
m = (h/c²)(c/λ) = h/λc
 
Plugging in the following numbers:
 
h = 6.62606957 × 10^(-34) m² kg / s
c = 299792458 m / s
λ = around 500 nm = 5 × 10^(-7) m for visible bluish-green light
 
gives the relativistic mass of a single photon:
 
m = h/λc
= [ 6.62606957 × 10^(-34) m² kg / s ] / [ (5 × 10^(-7) m) (299792458 m / s) ]
= 4.4204378e × 10^(-40) kg
 
So there you have it. The (relativistic) mass of a single photon is on the order of 5 × 10^(-40) kg.
 
For comparison, the mass of an electron, one of the tiniest pieces of matter known, is about 9.11 × 10^(-31) kg, or almost two hundred million times larger. Moral: Light doesn't "weigh" very much.
 
[EDIT: Had to correct my math, because 500 nm = 5 × 10^(-7) m, not 5 × 10^(-5) m. I always get tripped up by stupid little things like that. My wife still laughs at me for a class I took 25 years ago in electromagnetism, where I had some huge hairy awful triple integral that I couldn't solve correctly even after hours of work, and she glanced at it and said, "Wait, isn't eight times nine seventy-two?" Maybe that's why I'm a writer now...)

And I can hardly be held to blame that He agrees with me.

Note to PC:
 

Hi Vort
 
 Just so. I am not sure our belief system determines our actions, just has a significant influence on them, and that is why I said that I believe a Christian world-view is conducive to salvation. But I am sure that Christians do not have a monopoly on virtue, so, by any measure, other religions must have something of God's goodness about them.    Yes, I see the direction you are taking. Nevertheless, it seems to me that (to put in simplified terms) admission to heaven must either be a gift given to all, or a just reward. Or some combination of both. The gift must be universal, or else capricious, and unjust. Or the reward must be just, or else capricious. Either way, I reject the idea of a capricious disposal of our souls, because that would be inconsistent with any notion of God's goodness. Now, I admit (somewhat reluctantly  ) that I am not God. But I think our notions of justice, while necessarily incomplete and partially inaccurate, must nevertheless reflect, however imperfectly, God's idea of justice. Otherwise we are saying 'God is just, but His justice is not like our justice'. That is like saying 'God is red, but His redness is not like our redness', and carries just as much lack of meaning. If we are to assert that God is just, we must simultaneously assert that our own notions of justice have traction on the universe, or we are involved in the propagation of nonsense.   

I like the way you have put this. The idea of 'who someone might become' is entirely consistent with my idea of their 'way of being', in that we are not discussing their beliefs or works, just their nature. Best wishes, 2RM.

And I can hardly be held to blame that He agrees with me.

Skyfall. Amazingly stupid and offensive movie, a complete waste of time (and that's being generous). Reminded me of many of the reasons I hate Bond movies. Not snappy, not clever, lots of really eye-rolling (or stomach-turning) sex. Oh, yes, and now Bond, the quintessential heterosexual scumbag, has hinted that he's an equal-opportunity scumbag with homosex experience, as well. I don't remember the last time I saw a movie with such uniformly uninteresting, unsympathetic characters. The only mildly sympathetic character in the entire movie was, predictably, shot through the head. I can think of literally no redeeming feature of the movie.
I keep swearing I will never waste my time watching another Bond, and I keep lying. But I might actually be telling the truth now. After Skyfall, I honestly see no reason to watch another Bond, ever.

Hi Vort, I suspect that must've put you in Metaline Falls or thereabouts.  I work as a volunteer firefighter and have been up that way on a wildland fire this past summer.

As Brian Regan taught us, the plural of "moose" is "moosen".

Who do you have to pay off to get the warning points to go away?
 
(Not that I need to know personally, of course. I'm asking for a friend.)

And I can hardly be held to blame that He agrees with me.