LeSellers

So, God created the devil and his angels. Did He create them out of love or hate? No, I'm saying that it is inconsistent to claim God created us because He loves us, yet He, knowing that vast majority of His loved creatures will end up in an unending torture chamber, went ahead and created it. Lehi

Nah, Bond was aiming at the wall. Lehi

No, Vort, you're wrong. It's only true that the bullet misses if it's the bad guy. Good guys always hit what they're shooting at. Lehi

Gun-related deaths are not "rocketing" in USmerica. They are falling dramatically, except in those cities that have the most stringent (and unconstitutional) gun control ordinances. Were it not for Chicago, Baltimore, Atlanta, and a few others, USmerica would have one of the lowest gun-related death rates in the world. Other countries, Columbia, for example, that have strict gun control laws have far higher rates than USmerica's. Guns do not kill people, people kill people. Lehi

SCotuS has repeatedly told us that the police have not duty or responsibility to protect us. The case that horrifies me is the one where a woman had a restraining order, her stalker killed her and her heirs sued. SCotuS ruled in favor of the police. When seconds count, the police are only minutes away. (Well, sometimes it's hours: 911 ain't what we wish it were.) Lehi

People focus on "gun-related" deaths. Why? Violence is not limited to guns, homicides are not all gun-connected. And there have been some impressively bloody killings in the UK and Australia since your total bans on firearms. Guns do not kill people, people kill people, and they will use any tool at hand for the job. Lehi

It's important to know that if you're going to shoot someone, you'd better be in fear of your life. If that's the mandatory case, you had best shoot until the threat is eliminated. The problem is, you do not know, you cannot know, what the threat actually is. Drug addicts are notorious for being able to hurt you even after they are technically dead. Rage creates a hormone that can make almost anyone able to continue to attack after being technically dead. Is the attacker pretending to be incapacitated? I would not be able to figure that out, I doubt that too many people could, either. An "unarmed" man is still able to attack and kill you. A man with a knife can kill you at 30 feet (9.8 m). One with a gun can kill you within one second, before you can draw your own weapon. If he has his holstered, he can take it out and shoot you within three seconds. You'd better shoot him earlier rather than later. The old "joke" is only a joke because it presents the reality of lethal force: "Why did you shoot him nine times?" "Because I only had nine bullets." DISCLAIMER: I am not a lawyer. I am not your lawyer. Seek licensed legal advice before acting on anything I say here. I must post this because the federal government thinks you too stupid to make your own choices, and because my insurance company doesn't want you to sue me. Lehi

Just how would the issue resolve itself without that second man with a gun shooting back? In the cases we are discussing here, the first man is not going to stop until one of these things happens: 1) he runs out of ammunition (but even here, if he has a knife or other weapon, a club, he could still continue his rampage) 2) his weapons become unusable (with the same concern) 3) he is incapacitated (and, we hope dead — because dead men cannot kill you, and dead men do not require trials or treatment, either). The only thing that will stop a bad man with a gun is a good man with a gun. Lehi

I'm sorry. Where do we find the power of the federal government to disarm anyone, anywhere? I don't see it in the Document. We do read there: "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." I'm one of those who believe what's written. Not only do we have the organic, untrammelable right to keep'n'bear, we have the obligation to form and train as militia (every able-bodied man from 16 [or 18] to 55 [or 60]). Lehi

If you thought that there could be a desperate widow with five small children who had diarrhea who needed her bathroom floor grouted, you might carry that float. Admittedly, the odds of this are low to the point of insignificance. Your not having your float with you would only incur the loss of a few minutes to go and retrieve it if it ever did happen. But the odds of coming across an armed, desperate thug in a grocery store is significantly higher (and growing). The repercussions of not being armed in such a situation are far more serious. Again, you can choose to keep'n'bear as you wish. No one, least of all I, would compel your to do so. It's just that I find the logic behind these decisions to be from a blindered (or rose-colored) perspective. The consequences can easily be lethal. Lehi

Your choice. I can't imagine anyone here insisting that you buy a weapon. However, I can dispute your logic. You have reduced the possibility that anyone will be shot with the weapon you do not have. You have infinitely increased the possibility that you will be shot with a weapon someone else brings into your home. I submit that it is that other weapon that is the greater threat. Lehi

It's in this very ^ post. If yours is the "Full definition of CREED" as you have adamantly said again and again. any other definition must be something less, (which is, by definition, "substandard"). So. one might ask again, how did Merriam Webster become the one, true dictionary, while Random House is apostate? Lehi

Well, if we modify the phrase "the Articles of Faith are not a classic creed", would that satisfy you? Lehi

Sending a letter is much easier than going through the interview process, the baptism itself, confirmation, and the rest of the initiation process. Exactly. Lehi

Yes, I do. Maj Hassan was a military member who killed and wounded dozens of soldiers shouting "Allahu Akbar!" In the opening days of the war in Iraq, a Muslim US soldier threw a grenade into a tent full of his comrades-in-arms. Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and nearly all the other battle zones we are engaged in have seen similar events. I'm sure that most military Moslems are reliable, but there is no way to distinguish between the good guys and the renegades. Have other-than-Mouslem military members done such things? Well, yes, they have. But the proportions are out of whack. So, again, my answer is yes, I doubt their loyalty. And, worse, I can't think of a way they could change my mind. That's sad. Lehi

If they really considered themselves not active members (which does not automatically mean they don't want to be part of the Church), there is a relatively simple method of having their names removed from the roles of the Church. It is easier than getting baptized in the first place. Why do they not just do it? Lehi

So you're not going to even consider that you may be wrong? I was where you are. I found additional information that made me stop to think. The more I investigated, the more it became clear that government has no legitimate business in educating children. Lehi

How did this get to be the "full definition of creed"? I found a different dictionary, and it has another definition, one that's more detailed. How did yours become the official definition and the one I found get labled substandard? Lehi

That may be, but these alleged schools with their alleged mediocre teachers have one thing going for the students that a grtf-welfare school cannot have: the students or the parents can fire the school by simply walking away. They cannot do that in a grtf-welfare school. You might lose that bet. There are numerous studies that show that not only do schools of education in any college have, on average, students who performed most poorly on any of the standardized admissions tests. Further, of all graduate students, those in schools of education have even worse scores. The administrators are, of all otherwise similar people, the least intellignet. When a student drops out of an engineering program (and it is most likely for poor performance) or other technical program, they most often end up in the school of education. I am not saying, I am not saying, I am not saying that all teachers are dumb. I am saying that the statistics show that, on average, teachers are the least intelligent, and school administrators are, on average, the least intelligent of teachers. Tax credits, vouchers, and other such schemes may provide short-term benefits, but there are a couple of reasons I strenuously oppose them: 1) Politicians and bureaucrats do not gladly give up power. They will write these laws and regulations in such a way that all hitherto private education (schools F-CEd, etc.) will become more and more regulated. The tendency of government is to get bigger. Tax credits, vouchers, and so on, will not change this trend. 2) As this money is “taxpayer money”, the people will insist on oversight, and limits as to how “their” money is spent. So, even if the bureaucrats were not going to force private education into the mold of the grtf-welfare schools, the public would. In a pluralistic society like ours, the man who believes most and who has the highest standards will eventually have to give way to the man who believes less, and whose standards are lower. And he to the next guy, and so on until the man with no beliefs and no standards will dictate what the others can do. Lehi

You can't have it both ways. Either the grtf-welfare schools do or do not really educate children. If the parents won't do it themselves, there is essentially no chance of the grtf-welfare schools' doing it, either. Illiteracy runs in families because the parents don't care. Yes, even with all the control and all the cost, and all the interference in family life, government cannot educate children unless their parents co-operate, nay, insist the children learn. So it does not matter if the government is involved or not: the uneducated will be uneducated. There is, however, an opposite problem, a real one, with a real solution. Schools were designed so it would take much, much longer to learn anything than it should take. Why? Because there are three reasons for grtf-welfare schools: 1) to divorce children from their parents and their parents' values. 2) To keep children out of the labor market. 3) To indoctrinate children (and the adults they will become) into the religion of prytaneolatry (the worship of government). The second one is the reason it takes so long to learn. An adult who wants to learn something does not interrupt himself every hour to learn something totally unrelated. Retired after thirty years in the classroom, John Taylor Gatto, twice New York City Teacher of the year and once the state laureate, calls this teaching the disconnectedness of everything. (Read his magnus opus, The Underground History of American Education, for free at johntaylorgatto dot com.) Do not mistake: he was a superstar as a teacher, and loved teaching. He hated the school system precisely because it is not about education. He wrote a letter to the editor of the Wall Street Journal where the last sentences were something like: “I'm retiring in September. If you know of a job where I do not have to hurt children for a living, please let me know.” Schools are, by their very existence, hurt children, hurt parents, hurt taxpayers, and hurt teachers. Call it a conspiracy theory if you must, but the evidence is overwhelming to an impartial investigator. we are rapidly becoming a third world country as it is. Einstein famously said two things that apply here: 1) You cannot turn to the same people who caused the problem to solve it. 2) Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results is the definition of insanity. Lehi

Please read what I wrote. I did not call for universal Family-Centered Education (F-CEd). I called for parents to reclaim their power to educate their children without the state's interference. How they do it is their call. (And before you ask, no, no one should check on them to see that it is done. Why? Because it's no one's business but the parents': as soon as there is a checking-up agency, there will be control. Government control is the problem, not the solution.) You claim not to live in an ideal world, yet you put up the government-run, tax-funded welfare schools' propaganda against the worst case for parental control. For those who will not educate their children, it is obvious that they are not getting anything like a real education now. We have a north-of-50% illiteracy rate, higher in many cities. The parents of these children are not assuring their education now, and there is no reason to assume they would do anything under a parental control scenario, either. With both options, these children are not getting an education. For parents who cannot educate their children, I first reject the proposition that these people exist in any significant numbers. Even if they did, there are a myriad of options they could choose: apprenticeships, co-op schools, Dame/Mom schools, grandma'n'grandpa, uncles'n'aunts, Khan academy, dozens of other online options, to name the first bunch that came to mind. In San Antonio, there was a private scholarship program that allowed parents to pay about $1,000 per child with the fund making up the difference for any of a dozen private schools. The waiting list was three times what the fund could cover, even though the poor parents had to make a substantial investment into their children's lives. If the taxes that now take a huge bite of people's money were to remain with them, both the number of people who could afford to educate their own children and those who would contribute to such scholarship funds would increase dramatically. Society is in massive failure mode right now, with grtf-welfare schools. And being in a minority makes me wrong? I submit that your being a Latter-day Saint puts you in a minority. Are you wrong? No! Prestige I dispute. Teachers are largely put on a major pedestal. Seen as martyrs and victims, they do have prestige. Do not forget that I was a teacher. I was on the path to a credential*. I know what goes on in the teachers' lounge. You claim relatives who are teachers. I'll put mine up against yours any time: sisters, mother, mother-in-law, father-in-law, cousins, aunts, and others. Would they be offended at my ideas? Dear Lord, I hope not. They cherish freedom, and they understand that parents are more important to a children than a school or the government. * Under the boots to classroom, aka troops-to-teachers, program. Ideas that insult say a lot more about the one insulted than about the ideas. Life is too short to spend it offended. Personal power is too important for you to give yours to me by being offended. Lehi

You're wrong. I do not "ignore the standard definition". As to seeking evidence to support my view, I plead guilty. The "standard" definition you cite is insufficient. Here's another standard definition: creed noun 1. any system, doctrine, or formula of religious belief, as of a denomination. 2. any system or codification of belief or of opinion. 3. an authoritative, formulated statement of the chief articles of Christian belief, as the Apostles' Creed, the Nicene Creed, or the Athanasian Creed. 4. the creed, Apostles' Creed. Of the four definitions, only the third supports your contention (which, btw, I agree with in general). The first two are too general to make your case. The fourth specifies what we have been saying, i.e., that the creeds form a subset of the general definition. And it is this definition that most people think of when they hear the word "creed". Please know that I understand you PoV. I simply do not accept it. In general conversation, the more restrictive definition is what is most useful. In more academic venues, yours is better. There are relatively few theologians in the world. The audience here is less educated in this matter. Yes, there are some antis (and a few others) who use the word in its more general sense, one that includes the Articles of Faith. Saints should know this. But to insist that we ignore the reality that "creed" means, to most people, most of the time, the class I've labeled the "Creeds", is to fly in the face of reality. Lehi

If He did "create" us out of love, why did He create a Hell to punish the ones He created out of love? Seems incongruous. Lehi

In a sense, but only in a limited sense, yes, I am. God "created" us because He is our Father. Fathers love their children — He loves us. But this "creation" was not what you see it as. We are His children, and He loves us, but He created us in heaven as part of His function, His role as God. To be a God, He must have been a Father. He was not lonely. He was not concerned about being worshiped. He wanted a Family, He was righteous enough to fulfill His duty. Lehi

Well, section 137 calls Shem "the Great High Priest", and Melchizedek has the same title elsewhere in scripture. Shem was still alive during Abraham's lifetime. I've seen some chronologies that show his dying after Abraham did. Nowhere does Melchizedek appear in scripture as the son of anyone. But Shem has a genealogy, both backwards and forwards to Abraham. Abraham was seeking for the priesthood from the fathers. We do not have an explicit statement saying that Melchizedek's name was Shem (which means "name"), but there is abundant circumstantial evidence that it was. Keep in mind, that Melchizedek is a title, not necessarily a name. BTW, for kicks'n'grins, "Melchizedek" means king of righteousness. He was the king of Salem, which means king of peace. Lehi