jerome1232

This is not quite correct. True, our spirits were created before our birth -- in fact, before the world was created. But it is not LDS doctrine that "if something goes wrong in the in-utero development process, the spirit will simply get a different body at a later date." That is purely inference. In fact, God's methods for determining the time, place, and circumstances of our birth have not been revealed (at least not publicly).
It's also misleading to say that "LDS theology...allows abortion in extreme cases." The Handbook does not ever explicitly "allow" abortion; rather, it says that, in some circumstances, abortion may not require any ecclesiastical intervention. Some will say this is just a matter of how things are phrased, but I see an important distinction. The Church never says, "This abortion is O-Kay! Approved! Go for it!"

fatima, God forces us in nothing. If we truly do not wish to be with a spouse, God will not "make us do it", even if we're sealed to that spouse. But God also does not remove the consequences of our choices. So no, an LDS spouse doesn't have to stay with his/her spouse through all eternity against his will. As others have pointed out, if we accept the exaltation God offers us, we will be made perfect through Christ. Because of this, we may assume that we will have grown beyond being upset with or frustrated by or bored with our spouse.
Reading your post, I'm less concerned about LDS vs. Catholic theology and more concerned about the state of your marriage. If your husband is basically a decent person, not abusive or hateful, but simply not as involved as you would like, there are ways to help him grow -- and to help yourself to grow, as well. You married him because you saw something about him that attracted you. Now your expectations haven't been met. What do you do?
This is the time to show him, and God, and yourself, that you were serious about those marital promises you made. Now is the time to invite your husband to join you in remembering why you married in the first place, and renew that commitment in a more mature manner. God bless you in your efforts.

You do know that they've asked speakers NOT to ask the congregation to follow along in their scriptures, right?  For some reason, the Church has decided that Sacrament meeting should be a time of speaking and listening, not reading (unlike the other 2 hours).  I don't think it such an awful thing to just follow their counsel.  And, frankly, I have to think that Apostles know what they're about, so if they council to not use these tools during the ordinance of the Sacrament, I'm more inclined to think it wise to follow their counsel and learn a better way to focus on what I should, than to make a list of all the good reasons for using the tools (like @Carborendum, I think there are plenty of good reasons, and I don't doubt that others know them without my help).  Similarly, I have learned through experience that following priesthood counsel is wiser than not following it, regardless.

Maybe I shouldn't even post, but I think you just touched on why most avoid apologetic like activity on social media formats. All of those keyboard warriors aren't out to get a better shared understanding of each others beliefs, they are there to publicly humiliate each other and display their intellectual prowess in public. I don't believe such situations are conducive to the spirit teaching. I also don't believe such behavior is something I would encourage in a disciple of Christ.

I've known this for a while now - ever since wife and daughters started doing 4H and having chickens and turkeys and stuff.  I noticed the young flock of turkeys would run across a yard to see something, looking and sounding exactly like the velociraptors from Jurassic Park.  And looking into a chicken's eyes, you can see an ancient rage, as if chickens realize they used to be top of the pecking order a few million years ago, until it was all ripped away from them by meteoric chance, and now they live these ridiculous and offensive short lives of subservience to a bunch of hairless apes who eat them.  It's in their eyes.  They don't like what evolution has dealt them, and they are just inches away from launching a global chicken revolution and regaining their former glory, but then they get trapped by a straight piece of fence or something, and can't make it to the last meeting.  
 
 

 

 

 
 

I just wanted to make a single observation regarding this verse

The Greek of this phrase in John 20:17 is “…Μη μου απτον ουπω γαρ αναβεβηκα προς τον πατερα μου...” The word rendered “touch” also means “to hold”. The word απτομαι is not merely “touching” in many ancient usages, but it is often an aggressive "holding onto".

For example, in the OGIS Papyri (315.56) of 164-3 b.c.) the word is used “ηπτετο μαλλον ημων” when "holding onto" a viewpoint and "pressing" one’s view "upon another" person. It is difficulty with "letting go" of something.

The Syll Papyrus (849.6) of 177-176 b.c. uses the words ““ει δε τις κα απτηται σωσιχας...”. In this sense, the word is used in the sense of “Laying hold of” or “appropriating” a thing. In this ancient usage, it is not merely “touching”, but a holding onto something that is being referred to. It is the context that determines whether it means to "touch" or to "hold onto" or the more aggressive use "to appropriate" something.

Because the word is so often used as "to hold onto" (aggressively), I believe the Lord is gently telling Mary not to “hold him” in the sense of preventing his leaving her. In this model, he is offering a tender expression such as when someone tells another beloved, “I really have to go” when another duty calls (as it did the risen Christ who had other cosmic duties).

The other concept is that we do not know what the entire conversation consisted of between Mary and Jesus nor how long the conversation lasted. Individuals who read the bible tend to think the bible is quoting entire and complete conversations rather than important snippets from an entire life time. John reminds us in 21:25 that Jesus said and did much that was not written down, so much that John hyperbolizes on those many, many, unrecorded discussions and acts, saying the world would not have room to contain the things Jesus said and did if one were to attempt to write them all down.

If Jesus and Mary had a lengthy conversation, I would expect that, at some point, Jesus would have said, “Mary, I have to go now". If she had held to him, then it is perfectly consistent for him to say, in essence, “let me go, I have other things I have to do.” After all, he had other things of cosmic importance to do for others whom he also loved.

While the concept of conversation is speculative, the meaning of απτομαι as a form of “holding onto” is solid, historical, usage.

Good luck in coming to your own models as to what happened and why.


Clear

Okay, as @jerome1232 mentioned, there are things more than 100x sweeter than sugar.  I think Brazzein (sp?) is 2,000x sweeter than sugar.  Brazzein is found in some town in Africa and the locals eat it because it is sweet.  The thing is, though, once they're used to the sweetness of Brazzein, they taste everything else as not sweet.  Now, from what I understand, the taste receptors of Gorillas have a slight difference from the human taste receptors such that they don't taste Brazzein as sweet.
So, that said, taste, unlike sound, is purely subjective.  Something that tastes sweet to some may taste not sweet at all to others.  Therefore, there is no measuring device (other than the tongue's taste receptor) that can measure taste.  So, just the fact that scientists can say Brazzein is 2000 times sweeter than sugar, means that there is a way to measure sweetness.  But this measurement is not based on chemical composition - like the amount of glucose or something.  Brazzein, for one, was discovered to have its sweetness come from some specific protein in its chemical composition.  So, unlike sound - which comes from vibration and can be objectively measured without the ear - taste is present (or absent) from all elements.  The only way to measure it is to conduct a taste test - usually in comparison to 2% sucrose solution.  They add/remove scaled amounts of the source of sweetness until it tastes the same as the 2% sucrose solution.  So, in this kind of measurement, it doesn't matter if one person's perception of sweet is different from another person's.  Each person simply compares the taste of the thing to be measured against their perception of sweetness of the 2% sucrose solution.  The "100 times sweeter" rating is then arrived at through statistical methods.
Like sound, though, the perception of taste is not solely experienced by the tongue.  Deaf people can perceive sound through touch, for example.  Taste can also be perceived through smell and vision.  In culinary arts, smell and visual perception is just as important as the sensation experienced by the tongue to produce the desired taste.
 

Anyone who has learned another language has discovered that there are two forms of referring to yourself, depending on whether you're talking about yourself alone (singular: I/me) or yourself with others (plural: we/us). Similarly, there are two ways of referring to other people, depending on whether you are talking about just one person (singular: he/him or she/her) or more than one person (plural: they/them). The same idea applies to how you refer to people you're talking to, depending on whether you're talking to just one person (singular: thou/thee) or a group of two or more people (plural: ye/you). This is how things are done 100% of the time in the KJV Bible, for example. Very simple. Very logical. Easy peasy.
Except that, in English, we don't use thou/thee any more. We conflate any "second-person" reference into the catch-all term you, which as all English speakers know often causes confusion.
(I remember my high school French teacher expounding about what an awful shame it was that English didn't have a second-person plural form, and how wonderful and brilliant it was that those from the US South used "y'all" as the plural form, which just made so much sense. I was still many years away from realizing that (1) it wasn't the plural form we were missing, but the singular; and (2) "y'all" is used as a singular as often as it's used as a plural, so it's no more useful than just plain "you".)
Why not? What's wrong with us? How did we introduce such a deficiency into our language, and why do we put up with it? It appears to me that, as with so many of life's problems, we have the French to blame.
Back around 1000 AD, the tribes in Brittania spoke various forms of what we now call Old English. Those tribes, along with their language, derived from people who lived in northern Germany, whom the ancient Romans called Saxoni (those on the north German coast around the Jutland peninsula) and Anglii (those living on the Jutland peninsula in a small area immediately south of what we today call Denmark). And so things might have continued, with those tribes speaking their Anglo-Saxon dialects and squabbling amongst themselves. Except for the French.
Directly across the English Channel lies Normandy, a coastal area in modern-day France. Around 1000 AD, this area was inhabited by French-speaking people who were actually of both French and Viking descent. This is actually pretty common; the Vikings commonly conquered and enslaved northern Europeans around that time, so as the Norse spread blood all over Europe, Norse blood was spread all over Europe. (Hah! See what I did there?) Long story short: The Normans decided to conquer Britain, and after some extended efforts, did so.
Now England, much of Wales, and parts of Scotland consisted of Old English-speaking people being ruled by nobles who spoke a French dialect. Remember that this was a heavily classed society; your social rank determined who you were and what you did. So Norman French became the de facto upper-class language. The dirty peasants may have raised sheep and pig and maybe even cow, but the nobles ate the flesh of muton and porc and boeuf. And so today we still call the animals sheep, pigs, and cows, but we call the meat they yield mutton, pork, and beef.
Another thing those wacky Normans provided was a linguistic trick to distinguish classes. You see, for the word you, the French used tu when speaking to just one person, but vous when speaking to a group of people. Normal. Natural. Singular versus plural.
Except...
Kings and other nobility were worth more than common people. When you spoke to a king, you could not just go and address him using tu. He is not just some man, you peasant! He's the KING! He's worth many of you! So you refer to him as such! You use vous on the king. Of course, this idea was generalized, so that French speakers used vous when speaking to anyone of a higher social rank, and reserved tu for conversations with intimates, equals, and those of lesser social status (including children, animals, and inanimate objects). The Anglo-Saxon peasants, wanting to get in on such a good thing, adopted this multitiered way of speaking, and started using ye and you when talking to social highers-up.
For some reason, perhaps because the English did not have the strong Roman tradition of public education (that's purely a guess on my part), within a few generations the English started to lose grasp on the difference between thou and ye. Both of them meant those other people you were talking to -- but when did you use one and when the other? People generally started using the object form you instead of the subject ye -- a common enough thing even today, when many of us say "Me and Bobby are going to the park." So the pronoun you started to take over, and as the generations passed, the more you was used, the less anyone outside of academia remembered how to use thou. By Shakespeare's time, thou wasn't used as much. Within a couple of hundred years, it more or less disappeared entirely -- except in the Bible, where old translations were well-established.
Enter the LDS usage of thou. Joseph Smith was familiar with it from his KJV Bible, and used thou extensively in his revelations and in the translation of the Book of Mormon and the elements in today's Pearl of Great Price. In the April 1993 General Conference, Elder Oaks explained that Latter-day Saints use thou because it is a scriptural term and because it is available for use in our modern language, having been abandoned by the rest of English-speaking society. He explained that we don't use it as an "informal" or even quite as an "intimate" pronoun. Rather, we use it as a "divine" pronoun, to refer to God. In Elder Oaks' view, it expresses both our respect and reverence for God and our intimacy and love for him.
So there's your non-authoritative historical/linguistic anecdote for the day.

Did you just trick me into clicking on vegetarian sites?!
That's the food my food eats. Please don't starve my food. Now I have to restore balance to the force by posting a picture of what cucumbers are supposed to look like.

Now we get to the heart of the matter. You believe we need more female leadership and are upset that we don't. 
1) Why do you think we need more female leadership in the Church?  Is it out of a need to feel like women are adequately "represented"? Is it a desire to ensure "equality"?  What is the basis for this idea?
2) What would you do to create more female leadership?  Young Women's is exclusively women. Primary is almost exclusively women. Relief Society is exclusively women. Out of the major Church organizations at a local level (YM/YW,Primary, RS, EQ, HP, Bishop) 42.8% is women lead and run. The same is true at the Stake level (if you add in High Counsel the percentage drops a bit).  So what exactly do you propose to add in more female leadership?  
The only way you could create more female leadership is either to a) create another organization for women to lead/run or b) give women the Priesthood so they can lead/run Priesthood organizations.
The entire 70s, GA, etc. all come from the Priesthood as in, it is the authority to actually you know run the Church.
This idea that people were "hurt" by only 1 speaker.  Come on please give me a break.  That is something my 6 year old says when she doesn't like what I tell her to do.  Did any speaker say anything nasty about women?  Did any speaker denigrate, demean, call names about women? Did any speaker say anything that in anyway could be made to seem as if they do not respect and honor women?
But just because there was only 1 female speaker they are "hurt".  (Nothing about the message, again only b/c there wasn't another woman). Man, if that is your idea of hurt these people must walk around being "hurt" every second of every day of their lives.  I bet they have no time to think about uplifting others, spreading the Gospel message, about raising a righteous family because they are so "hurt".  I actually feel quite sad for them b/c their lives must be so completely horrible as they walk around expecting everyone else to cater to their every whim b/c if they don't they are "hurt". Quite frankly, that has got to suck b/c I know if I were "hurt" every time something happened I didn't like I'd be living a miserable life.
I actually pity people who are like that-life is too dang short to go about being "hurt" every time something doesn't go your way.
 

This guy knows all.  Totally gotta get his book.

I vote for staying and making it better. The new EQP and his counselors need your support, apparently much more than the old ones did.
Ask not what your EQ can do for you; ask what you can do for your EQ.

This is like when you find out your favorite teacher is going to be replaced. I do understand that you are probably upset a the recent change but calling the new presidency "anything but inspiring" is quite harsh don't you think?. Particularly, when they have been in the calling for just 5 months. Give them your support, ask them what they need, offer suggestions! (there is nothing stopping you from doing that) after all you *are* part of the Quorum. Come on, give them a chance. Do not compare them with the old presidency, it is not fair. You'll be okay.

No individual snowflake ever took responsibility for an avalanche. But yet they were still all a part of it.

Sure, a thought on your non-judgmental-judgemental post...
You are only here in an attempt to antagonize people and really could care less what we think. 

So . . . you mistrust the Church because it's a presumably wasteful, multi-billion dollar entity; but also despise its attempt to stretch its financial resources by constructing uniform, relatively spartan meetinghouses. You don't want to be judged by having others question your choices; but you reserve the right to judge the Church leadership by carping about the way they manage the resources voluntarily entrusted to them, and dismiss those who trust the leadership as--and I quote--"tithing check writing sheep".
I think the most pressing issue here isn't the arcane question of where your money winds up.  It's about building Zion.  And this "heads-I-win, tails-you-lose" approach you take to the mainstream Church membership and leadership, is ultimately more destructive to Zion than the fact that the Church's approach to charitable giving may in some ways be more Keynesian than Marxist.  
Do what you want with your money.  As you say, a financially powerful church doesn't *need* it; anymore than a universally powerful God *needs* it for well water or schools or clinics or micro-loans.  
But the way to Zion, both spiritually and temporally, lies with your local priesthood leadership.  That ever has been and ever will be so.

JST

https://www.lds.org/scriptures/jst?lang=eng


Joseph Smith Papers is an on going project to gather all existing documents regarding joseph smith and produce accurate transcripts

http://josephsmithpapers.org/

Some church history references
 
https://history.lds.org/article/general_church_history_research_guide?lang=eng

Ever wonder how Jesus, although able to eat fish with His disciples, being a resurrected being of solid flesh and bone, could still enter a room though the door was locked, passing through walls? Ever wonder how Moroni could appear to Joseph Smith inside his room without needing to use the door? Ever wonder how the heavens, though spacious in every dimension and also the earth will be rolled or wrapped together as a scroll though it is a sphere? 
I believe it is because God and angels dwell outside of time and outside of this three dimensional existence. Incidentally, I believe the earth is a sphere. But to our three dimensionally limited minds, a three dimensional universe can be acted upon by fourth dimension beings just as three dimensional beings can act upon a two dimensional world. Not that it's important. I was just a little bored and get carried away with random thoughts. These two videos explain what I mean. Gotta love Carl Sagan. Enjoy.
 

Ok I have to admit I had not heard of "virtue signaling" before...
Now that I have looked it up... frankly I don't want to be in any group where not assaulting (sexual or otherwise) a person (male or female) is considered a standout behavior...  I want to be with and in groups that consider that to be baseline normal required behavior... where not meeting it gets you in serious problems.

Uninvited kissing may well constitute traditional assault which is jailable even if non-sexual in nature; but in context of the transcript it is obvious that Trump wanted his hearers to believe that he (Trump) knew, from personal experience, that his wealth/status allowed him to grab women's genitalia as well as to kiss them.
If Trump's apologists want to deploy the "well, he was just lying" routine to paint their guy as a paragon of modern American manhood, that's their business.  But if they want to go further and show their guy's factual innocence, then they have to explain all those women who came forward saying "why, yes!  Trump did to me the same thing he boasted about being able to do to others."  and they have to explain why a Trump stooge (wrongly) told the press that Trump had a perfect legal right to rape his own wife.
Dismiss that as "virtue signaling" if you like, but you know what?  For all my sins, I've never boasted about or been accused of forcing myself on a woman.  I daresay that in this particular venue, that particular virtue is rather commonly shared.  So when Trump fans come on board and try to tell us what a virtuous guy Trump is--misdeeds like this are going to get mentioned and judgments will be made.

20% of voters said they despised both major candidates. 80% of those voted for Trump. Had Hillary garnered even half of those votes, she would have won.  It's an open secret that the vast majority of values voters picked Trump because he promised pro-life justices and Hillary promised pro-abortion ones. To pretend that there were masses of Christians bowing and scraping with fawning adoration over Mr. Trump is disingenuous.  Personally, he was in last place on my list, for the GOP side.  He still beat HRC, though. If a Christian turns atheist because they find out how I voted, might I suggest they were just looking for an excuse to jump ship?

And the reverse is also true... many supported Trump not because the liked or wanted Trump but because they wanted to stop HRC... But that doesn't seem to matter... Because even you held your nose while voting for Trump you are a sexist, racist, homophobe that clearly endorsed his every act as the New Gospel Truth
The hypocrisy of such is a stance is quite apparent to everyone, but those that are actually doing it.
 

You have already posted what I actually said, which was:  ". . . it was a confession of sexual assault.  PEOPLE GO TO JAIL FOR IT.  IN MY PREVIOUS WORK AS A CRIMINAL DEFENSE ATTORNEY, I HAVE SEEN IT HAPPEN."
Now, you're trying to force an interpretation where in my phrase "People go to jail for it", the "it" refers to a confession, rather than for the actual crime of sexual assault.  The trouble is--that's not what I meant at all.  I was addressing your trivialization of Trump's statements and your implicit suggestion that it is perfectly normal for men in "locker rooms" to admit to crimes that they did not in fact commit.  Getting into the pedantry of whether a confession alone is grounds for conviction, is quite beside the point. 
The point is, you voted for a guy who openly boasted of having committed what in Utah amounts to misdemeanor sexual battery if not felony forcible sexual abuse.  I'm sorry if that wounds the conscience of any Latter-day Saints who purport to abhor sexual predations yet nevertheless gave Donald Trump their full-throated support; but as I pointed out earlier in this thread--the rage some may feel at my open refusal to kiss Trump's ring is merely a evidence of their own wounded souls; and those wounds will not be healed by continued pedantry, misrepresentation or slander.

I could see the controversy if the choir sang at a party convention. In this case, the US is installing a new president.  If we were commanded to pray for Caesar, then it should not be too controversial to sing for the new president.  One would think the church would feel honored to be invited.

You can put your head in the sand all you like, but Trump is neither honest, nor good, nor wise; and we have been explicitly warned about the dangers of putting his ilk in positions of political leadership. You can blame Romney, or David French, or Bill Kristol; but none of them (nor even the media) made Trump a serial womanizer and philanderer, a predatory casino-owner, a deadbeat who stiffed myriads of vendors, a flip-flopper who put Romney to shame, a false accuser, a liar par excellence --excuse me, master persuader--and a mammon-worshiping blasphemer who openly disavowed any need to seek forgiveness from on High for any aspect of his miserable life until it became politically expedient for him to do so.  Trump did all that himself, and made a calculated effort to incorporate those traits as thoroughly into his public image as he had into his private one. 
If some Latter-day Saints chose to take their own scripture seriously even as others were selling out, the holdouts can only represent the highest form of collusion: that between a creature and its Creator.  The Romney-as-puppetmaster paradigm doesn't square with Romney's demanding fair-market-value for Team McMullin to purchase his donor list; it doesn't square with the lack of contact between Romney and McMullin prior to McMullin's candidacy; it doesn't square with Romney's lack of an endorsement; it doesn't square with Romney's lack of financial or logistical support to the McMullin campaign. 
Slanders against McMullin/Romney and prolonged "otherization" of those few (yes, the "NeverTrumpers") whose souls are still their own, may be an effective short-term opioid against the pain of a pricked conscience.  But the value of such balm, like that all other Trumpian patent medicines, will prove ephemeral; as Trumpers slowly come to understand the spiritual and social bankruptcy of what they have done.  They don't yet understand--they never understood--that progressivism was the symptom, not the cause, of America's problems.  The cause was moral decay, and the Trumpers have just enticed the Republican Party into standing up to be counted as being in favor of more of it.  What of cabinet picks, federal judges, and a short-lived regulatory rollback?  None of that will be any match for the mischief effectuated by a materialistic, profligate, loveless electorate that has given up trying to determine "truth" and instead votes wholly with its gut. 
I think it's wonderful that Trumpers have finally decided that party loyalty is a virtue.