NOM

I totally get why they're doing it - I just think anyone who steps back and thinks about it would realize that if they were truly that proud of their engagements, they'd open up comments and the like/dislike buttons. The church itself does this on social media, although they don't go out and brag a...

I agree. I also appreciate the grace extended by those here when I don't quite word things properly. I have a tendency to write and rewrite trying to think about every possible interpretation. I am so glad that I can make small errors and get the chance to better express myself. It's a difficult tim...

I was a young man at church when a speaker gave a talk on the perfection of the human body. He pointed out that if your elbow is stuck to your side, your arm is just long enough to reach your mouth. The human body is designed to feed itself according to this speaker. I was an adult when I realized t...

I was guilty of sharing a missionary half-story. One day we were proselytizing. We offered a man a Book of Mormon, and he told us he already had one. He had found it the day before. He seemed excited by the serendipitous sequence of events. I excitedly wrote home about the story. I failed to follow ...

I think "In Sacred Loneliness" by Todd Compton given about as much information about all the wives as I've seen.

I have to wonder about terms like "biological sex at birth." Isn't our psychology part of our biology? They want to set down rules without having to just state, "babies born with penises can hold the priesthood when they get older; the rest can't." When stated that way, the rule looks as silly as it...

I know this was deeply on my mind when I was last a ward clerk. I wasn't worried about being alone with children, but I had a lot of responsibility for people's donations. That weighed on me a lot. It also became clear, from the stories told in training, that the church was most concerned with prote...

I have no great meme, but the conjunction of Saturn with his son Jupiter on the winter equinox clearly indicates that the gods have forgiven the inhabitants of Earth for the sins which they identified at the beginning of this year. Just kidding. 1 in a million happens about 3 times per month. Howeve...

I have to wonder if the response would have been different if RMN had been gutsy enough to put his name on the statement. My understanding is that past congratulatory notes have been signed.

If I wanted to encourage thought and try to understand devout believers better, I might ask: “ How well does the Book of Mormon promise work? ” Badly. When I was eight, I interpreted it quite literally. It said that "the truth of all things" could be known. I was certain that if I read the BoM and ...

I kind of think they're wanting to acknowledge the lameness of apologetics but they can't just come out and say that, so they just shove it onto the same broad continuum with anti-Mormonism and fundamentalism and tell you just to stay in the gray middle zone. I don't see what's "radical" about that...

The most recent episode of Hidden Brain seems to me to apply to these events. You can find it here: https://hiddenbrain.org/podcast/screaming-into-the-void/ . It deals with the outrage cycle. The way to get attention in our social media world is to be outraged. Using emotion and ridicule get people ...

It seems to me that they are loosing enough in the 15-30 age bracket that they are willing to sacrifice anybody who might find this objectionable. Is this a "Hail Mary" to try to stem the tide? They may be assuming that members who would find the videos objectionable won't ever see them. I can't be...

I was listening to the Hidden Brain podcast. The most recent episode ( https://hiddenbrain.org/podcast/a-conspiracy-of-silence/ ) is about preference falsification. We all have hidden preferences. These are the things that we want, but we don't voice them because of social pressure. In some cases, w...

On the one hand, the temple was weird. I never figured out what was supposed to be learned. I read McKonkie who said that anyone who had been through the temple would understand why the creation accounts are different. I could never get an inkling of what he meant. On the other had, I found the temp...

There's no such thing as a bulls-eye — that's not how scholarship works. The Book of Mormon is fully consistent with its composition timeframe, c. 1829-30. The anachronisms make an ancient origin impossible. So "NHM" has zero explanatory value. One of the Books of the Bible is "Nahum" — the Bible i...

That was great. Now we know why we have a vaccine!

"Yeah, God could cure your problems, but it seems you only paid 10% tithing on your gross income. Come back once you've begun paying 20% and have the receipts to prove it. We'll fire up the ol' miracle walkie-talkie and see what we can conjure up." Elder Bednar came up with the novel idea of having...

The part of this talk that I had a problem with was when Pres. Nelson referred to himself twice as, "a man of science." I present the following evidence to the contrary: (bunch of quotes that should be embarrassing to RMN) I thought about this a lot while watching. It was an argument from authority...

Just had a thought.... Suppose OAKS was the World faith leader at this time. How would his message have been different? I. Thanks The world uses the word "thanks" to express gratitude. Typically, it is expressed to someone around you. Converted Latter-day Saints know that thanks should also be expr...