lostinwater

@2ndRateMind i largely share your sentiments. i left the Mormon Church because i found Something - not because i lost something. And i think maybe those who stay in the church find what i have found outside of it, inside of it. That said, i'm not sure you'll ever find someone who can provide intellectual justifications like what you're asking for. At least not ones that make sense to anyone other than the person providing them, in the moment they are uttering them. i'd say generally, it because they get something out of it. They get a sense of hope, purpose, meaning, and community. It will take an army of social scientists dozens of times smarter than me to explain all the reasons different people get those from different denominations. Probably a lot to do with who we are and the things we've experienced. i don't think religion is something you can persuade a person of - at least not most adult people existing outside the most restrictive cults. It's like trying to persuade someone to fall in love with you. You might have a lot of good reasons, but it's not an intellectual endeavor. And for the record, i think you're a delightful person. In a religious denomination or not, i am sure you touch a lot of people for good.

Beautiful! Happy Mothers Day!

It's smoky here in Washington State too . For the record, i don't like marijuana. Never tried it, never will. But given the choice between being around someone who has been drinking and being around someone who has been smoking marijuana - i'd definitely choose the person who has been smoking marijuana 99% of the time (at least after i account for the "this person is behaving strangely in less familiar ways" factor - and for the fact that i really hate breathing in 2nd hand smoke) From where i sit, marijuana's being illegal does more harm than it's use does. i think we feed the cartels by driving it's supply chain underground and fill our prisons with a lot of good people. But i agree with you - legal "medical" usage is a stone on a very short path to making it totally legal. i am guessing consuming it while claiming to need it for unsubstantiated medical reasons just makes lawmakers feel less in violation of federal law. i strongly suspect this is going to be made legal (or at least less illegal) at the federal level soon - which would make this all more or less a moot point - and causing any reluctant state dominoes to topple a whole lot faster. http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/383068-gop-senator-says-trump-agreed-to-deal-on-marijuana-legalization https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/4/20/17261496/chuck-schumer-marijuana-legalization

Good question - thank-you for posting. i believe in re-incarnation (as humans again). i think in Revelations (which is a book i typically avoid like the plague - but will cite here/indulge in the very common practice of scriptural cherry picking as it advances this particular narrative) it talks about people who overcome as "going no more out". i've sort of interpreted that to mean that you'll have to do something till you get it right. And i've read a bunch of near death experiences where some people who attempt take their own lives are told that if they stay, they will just have to go back later and experience everything that led them up to that point over again. But i agree - the ways in which we typically experience joy and happiness make heaven sound like a pretty boring place. i guess a lot of what we do here on earth that makes us happy has an expiration date. We love the park or the hike or the song the first dozen times, and then it grows old. Helping others/feeling liked and appreciated i guess are exceptions here. But hopefully you take my meaning. But i read once someone say that in heaven, there are fountains of joy - like it is just joy itself - not a bunch of experiences from which joy/happiness have to be extracted. And i also heard once that heaven is so vast, you'd be able to spend eternity and still be experiencing things for the first time - enjoying the novelty of it all. And my idea as to what the final judgment will be like is i know very unorthodox. i think good and bad will be sorted. People/souls will go to the place of whatever they cling to - and if they can get over things/let go of the bad, will have the opportunity to move "up". CS Lewis' The Great Divorce is probably my favorite depiction of what i believe the afterlife will be like. i think you'd enjoy that book - from the tone of your post. But i guess nobody really knows (least of all me, despite all the guessing i've done).

Interesting post. Thanks. Just my opinion. Good (and bad) advice comes in every kind of packaging. i'm wary of people who just point the label on their advice and are either unable or indignantly unwilling to unpack it much beyond that. By no means disqualifies - but i would approach something that looks and smells like nonsense with extreme caution - no matter what label the giver has attached to it. And for the record, that advice in the example above sounds like good advice to me (and yes, i agree what i think about it doesn't matter even a little bit - only mention to avoid sounding too contrary).

i feel for you Vin. FWIW, the things you cite aren't disqualifiers - to me at least. Most people are not at their ideal weight, and teaching is the most divine of professions (my opinion). Gobs and gobs of money tend to make a person worse, not better. And then just something i've noticed. Most people feel this mixture of confusion as to why more people don't like them more, and shame/guilt over their own inadequacies. Maybe it's not universal - but it's close. My guess is the people you are waiting for to come ask you are also waiting to have you come ask them. Also, membership in the Mormon church has a tendency to shrink the dating pool. Maybe try casting the net on other side of the boat - another ward, online dating, etc., Anyways, i hope this doesn't sound overly harsh. It's not meant to be. i guess what i'm saying is that you shouldn't write yourself as a lost cause. Not only because i don't believe any person is a lost cause - but also because you don't meet any societal definition of lost cause that i'm aware of.

Thank-you. That makes more sense. To an extent, i guess we all build tall, electrified fences around the non-negotiable land of our belief system. An awful lot of arguing goes on though about what exactly that non-negotiable part should be.

Thank-you Sir. i did not mean my statement to infer that all sects do not espouse freedom of religion. i'd say that along with the belief that they are correct, most sects of Christianity also believe there should be freedom of religion also. But anyways, i could have been clearer there. "undeniably" was a poor word choice on my part - and i am indebted to you for the correction.

Thanks. Hard one. i feel this way at times, too. i guess all of us sacrifice some amount of reason on the altar of our beliefs (i know i do). Where blessed faith ends and where persistent schizophrenic delusion begin is, i guess, largely a matter of debate - at least for now. Of course, every sect (heck, every person inside every sect) claims that it's not a matter of debate and that they are undeniably correct.

Very glad to hear this. You are a wonderful person and this board is lucking to have you participating in it! For what it's worth, i think those who wrestle with that gnawing awareness of one's own social ineptitude and sense of "otherness" creates some very deep souls. i don't know how deep is too deep. As you have stated, the things one's feelings whisper about us are not always true. Like how pain whispers that we must be bad or how aloofness (being introverted in this context) whispers that we must be broken. i honestly wonder what will be left when the suffering - and it's effects - that shaped us is wiped away. i tend to think that those who looked the worst off will no longer look that way. Like a car carrying a 1500 pound load going crawling up the grade that suddenly loses its load and crests the mountain. If that makes any sense. Anyways, i hope you find the peace you are looking for. It sounds like you've found some of it just now.

Thank-you @Vort Sounds like we agree on the ending state. But that heated exchange you perfectly described (that began after XYZ was demanded) is i guess what i was alluding to.

You have some very obedient children.

Thanks for posting. Very interesting. My guess is this is more of a technology/expense problem than anything else. The list of exclusions seems less about social media and more about apps with really high bandwidth usage. Most companies i know of will back-haul their discretionary internet through a central location, and break out to the internet there - where they can perform more robust security on it. Assuming that is what the church does, they have to provide some form of secure connectivity back to (probably) Salt Lake or maybe one of a few regional hubs. That can get extremely expensive - especially if you're in a country where internet infrastructure is not so good and having to pay for private-line connectivity Maybe someone could do a bit of sleuthing for us and find out what their public IP is when connected to the network - and see where some geolocation site places that IP - how close it is to their meetinghouse. Also, no doubt the church dislikes having to employ an army of techs on Sunday to handle the onslaught of calls from disgruntled clerks who can't upload or download reports because all the youth are streaming youtube videos. Perhaps someone who works in or regularly interacts with the Church IT/telecom department can comment, as opposed to my guessing.

Not essential oils, but i have used curcumin (the anti-inflammatory compound in turmeric - that spice that makes curry yellow) as an ibuprofen alternative. Honestly, it's not as effective as ibuprofen - definitely not in the short term, but it doesn't burn holes in your stomach either. There's quite a bit of science behind it's use. Debatable as to whether or not the science is good or not.... but there is a lot of science behind it. i'll let you find a PubMed article to your liking - but below is one. Personally, i like the Meriva formulation - supposed to be more bio-available due to being converted into a form your body can use more. i go back and forth as to whether it's self-defeating to bio-engineer something natural to make it's natural properties more effective . i go for the patented formulations because at least then you are getting something that you know what's in it, and has been studied a little bit. i think there are a *lot* of people who stick something sort of yellowish in a gelatin capsule and market the heck out of it on Amazon as the best thing since sliced bread - and pay people to give it 5 star reviews. Anyways, it has helped my Dad's Arthritis some, and helped me also. Most at first, then you notice it helping less and less. i guess the body adapts to just about anything you pump into it. Anyways, sorry to hear about your sinuses and knee pain. Those are things that never quite go away. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23526055

i know there are a lot of people who feel this way. The uniformity of that preference even amid the most horrific kind of physical pain has struck me as being somewhat curious - at least for people who believe in the concept of a heaven which is generally seen as preferable to this earth. i hope everyone here has their medical directive all spelled out. Doing so spares one's family a great deal of pain. What confuses me is why the British government demanded that this child not receive treatment. That seems a lot different than saying they are not going to *pay* for treatment. Perhaps legal culpability for what might happen as a result of the latter is their justification for enforcing the former. Though i just can't imagine how they could be legally/morally that concerned, given that they removed the machinery sustaining life and let the parents perform some form of CPR until this poor child died. At least per the wikipedia article.

You sound like a wonderful person to me. i wouldn't be too hard on yourself. i don't say that to discourage change/repentance, but just because regret that seeps too deep and stays too long can really be destructive. And you can help others in profoundly meaningful ways wherever you are - whether that's in a mission or somewhere else.

Wow - i am sorry about this one. i'm white (like pasty pasty Scandinavian white) - and i wonder if all the angry people looking for someone to take their anger out would use a racial slur against me if i were not white. i honestly tend to think they would. i frequent parts of Seattle that are largely black - and have been called 'whitey' or 'cracker' as i walked by. Mentally, i know it has happened only a tiny fraction of the time. And logically, i don't hate them and know they only do so because they are hurting - but it's something that has stayed with me way more than i would think it should have. i wonder why the color of our skin is such a big throbbing and tender thing, but it seems to be. And i think your English is fine! it's way better than my spanish! (or lack thereof) Anyways, i hope you won't write off America completely. i think racism only dies when you return a racial slur or discrimination with kindness - and you sound like a pretty nice guy to me - so hopefully whoever said that to you has had to rethink the warped racial stereotypes they were taught.

Disclaimer - i'm mostly inactive - or perhaps put in a more relevant way, emotionally divested. i was always conflicted over how to handle questions like this when i was in the Mormon church. i never thought someone else's faith was evil or an abomination. But i couldn't really accept it either - not fully. People had to join my religion before i would accept them fully, because anything else would be like a subconscious admission that what i believed wasn't true - or at least not the eternally important kind of true. i hope i never hurt anyone, and did what God and Jesus would have wanted me to do - but i know i didn't always in terms of interacting with people from other faiths. i was too pushy sometimes, and too quiet others. i remember one time i made a comment that the Catholic Church's rituals were like a "sterile/disinfected" relationship with the divine. It was a callous comment on my part that showed only my ignorance and personal biases - and i've always regretted it. i can honestly say now that i have almost nothing but respect for the Catholic Church. It tries - like it really tries - to do good. It's had its moments of darkness, just like i have, but it is a force for good. And someone or something that tries and fails and changes and tries again - that's where it is at, in my opinion. i'm not claiming to speak for anyone other than myself, though. Anyways, that doesn't entirely answer your question. But maybe it addresses what i imagine causes someone to ask a question like that.

Excellent points, Sir! Thank-you!

Thanks. i'd also wondered about that. Similar to how Germany stalled and lied and postured to build up their war machine in the 1930s. You'd think South Korea would be a bit too savvy not to see past that - though i guess it wouldn't be the first time the world has been snookered with fake diplomacy. But the things @anatess2 said about China's unwillingness to prop them up now (and that making them desperate) were very interesting. She's closer to it all than i am, for sure.

Wow - that's interesting. Thank-you @anatess2

This is all very bizarre. This is the same country that let several million (like 10%) of its inhabitants starve to death in the 90s as they rejected/embezzled the aid many countries were trying to send. This is the same country that a couple months ago was shooting missiles into the ocean and trading threats with Trump. i wonder what terrible things are happening to the people of that country to prompt this. That, or i wonder what tactics are in play. That South Korea is taking this seriously makes me worry especially about the state of the people there. i think Kim is a puppet though - so perhaps his OGD group has forced him to issue a reverse of course.

Wow - 19 countries! That's an impressively large amount of travelling. You are rare - in a very good way. Most are not so in the moment. i think most people get as much pleasure in the planning as in the doing. i might have to print this bit of wisdom of yours off to read the next time my plane gets delayed.....

Sigh. i wish i had one of my own. They are so much work/time though - and massively expensive if you board it out. All horses are ponies to me.... i just ride someone else's for leisure - probably not a bad way to do it. The one i ride is just north of 15 hands - so i guess not technically a pony (which are <14.2 hands at the withers). A big strong guy like you would probably be better suited to a draft. You should do a groupon for some lessons - it's FUN! But be careful about letting your kids on them - or you'll be attending horse shows for the next 15 years

Thank-you @Carborendum @Traveler and @The Folk Prophet You make excellent points. Have no need to argue any points. i've thought it over and feel at peace with it - and feel like God and Jesus say it's good. My beliefs are just between me and Them - as are any person's. But i've most definitely been wrong before. If i am, i'll make you all a cup of herbal tea (with cream) as an apology, and we can have a good laugh over my stupidity. Though if i'm right, i'm going to need to ask you all to muck out my pony's stall - after which we can all go on a gallop. Or perhaps one of us will burn in hell for eternity for our error - but i really hope that's not the case.....