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I think they need to be more blunt. They are worried about offending climate change deniers in their own body. Do they really need this level of coddling?

I assume you mean the New York will be underwater by 2010 prediction as that is the most common one. Which he didn’t make. So their cunning plan was to have this girl call out the UN for failing the future in order to create a global totalitarian dictatorship that *checks notes* no one is seriously agitating for, has no support, and the UN doesn’t have the authority to create. This is conspiracy nonsense. Only the stupidest of fundamentalist evangelical rapture enthusiasts think that all nations are eager to lay down their sovereignty. Why are you doing this?

No, it is an accurate description of that biblical text. Dan takes his professional work seriously. If the facts give someone reasons to doubt the culprit is reality. LOL, have you watched Dan’s videos (Grok doesn’t count)? Or read any of this books? He is very methodical. He does his best to avoid spin. He will tell you what the text says and what the intentions appear to be based on the majority of the scholarship. He does this even when he dislikes what the Bible is saying. The irony is that a lot of his opponents attack him claiming he is a Mormon shill. Occasionally he has a good laugh about that and says that Mormon viewers don’t like what he is saying about as much as most Christians do. He is talking about Christians in general and yeah, he does do that because that is what the data points to. He won’t lie or obscure things to make people feel better. He is good at his job. So you’re just gonna assume Grok gave you the full context there then? You do know he is still active and participating in the Church right? He did put out a video as to why he doesn’t do a lot of textual criticism of the Book of Mormon, his views on the book, and some linguistic work he did do on the Book of Mormon: Oh, and if you want to have a lot of fun look up his video on trans issues.

I might agree there is an intentional dynamic in how the Church approaches public messaging around environmental issues. Church leadership rarely uses any political phrasing or explicitly name terms like "climate change." However, the Church seems to emphasize action over rhetoric. It will ground its environmental messaging under terms like "stewardship" (like in D&C 104), framing things like wasting resources or degrading the land as a breach of a spiritual duty. Conservation resonates across all members without triggering pushback. Instead of arguing over these multi-decade causes of climate trends does less immediate good than proceeding to change how water, energy, and land are actually managed today. Enacting real, large-scale environmental action.

As I was suffering after being told my youngest son would never speak and have the intellect of a five year old for his entire life, I found comfort in the rest of God. Was that screwed up? The 30+ years since have prove the doctors’ prognosis to be accurate, but in those 30+ years the rest of God has both given me peace and taught me the truth of the scriptural teaching that God allows physical and emotional challenges that His grace may be made manifest. There are scores of people who can testify of eternal insight they have received as a result of my son’s life, a life those not aware of His rest might characterize as unfair or tragic.

I have rarely had trouble trusting God and I think it is because the idea of God creating hardships for us never rang true to me. It's just not how I have ever felt or known parents to work. I mean there are some specific occasions like if your child wants to gain muscles you might hand him a heavier weight, but the majority of time I think just being mortal and living in an imperfect world throws you enough hardships that a parent or Heavenly Father doesn't need to give you more. Now I have had a hard time trusting that God is all powerful because he allows so much pain because I did trust him, but now that I have let go of him being all powerful and feel that he is not able to help all the time I no longer struggle with that.

I don’t know that there is any doctrine that supports the idea that God creates hardships for the purpose of teaching a specific lesson. I know our Sunday language suggests that but I really don’t know that anything backs that up?

They do have many of them except being everlasting with regards to their permanency but they do seem to have angels under them, even Satan has "his angels". I'm not certain they have a throne exactly, but they might. Jesus is one of them, I think he had a throne, and like them he became mortal, and had to be exalted again with a body and regain a throne. But Abraham 3 does say Jesus suggested that "we" the noble and great spirits should make an earth and Abraham 4 "they, rather the gods" make the earth. Are they two separate groups?

I'm struggling a lot with this right now. I can absolutely see the hand of God guiding my life in numerous ways, but I'm definitely unhappy with the place that I've been guided to. It is really hard to deal with the idea that God's plan for you includes major disappointments that won't be fixed in this life, or that God is putting you through suffering that feels completely unnecessary or pointless. Or that God will block your efforts to improve your situation or is withholding good things from you that He freely gives to other people, because it's all part of God's plan for you. The idea that God would cause a bad situation to come to you, and there is nothing that you could have done to avoid it because it's God's will, is hard to deal with. I'm right there now. I do take a little consolation in the idea that if God put this bad thing in my life, then I am not responsible for causing it. I am still responsible for working through it, but I can exonerate myself of the responsibility for causing it. I completely get the trust issue. You can completely trust God, and your worst fears can still come true. You can give your life and your will over to God and still end up in the exactly the bad situation that you didn't want to end up in. I don't have a good answer. What I am doing right now is trying to frame it as the idea that I have to go through this bad situation whether I want to or not, and that at some point, it will be over. I'm even past the point where I would ask what I can learn from it or what God is trying to teach me. I just know that at some point, the situation will be over, because no season lasts forever. That's the best I can do with it right now.

Abraham 4 mentions Gods. I don't see any noble humans (premortal spirit beings) being involved.

Do the gods of Psalm 82 have these qualities?

This poor girl was used in a massive propaganda offensive designed to stampede the proles into voting for a totalitarian one world dictatorship - - -

Looks like Dan went on Joe Rogan's podcast: A Grok summary: I find this to be quite a facile assessment. From the vid comments: "My personal opinion, Dan is consciously subversive. He is a wolf in sheep's clothing. He likes the organization, but doesn't believe in it, and would see it hollowed out to a husk. Where all spirituality and meaning is stripped and all that is left is the oranizaion. He would cut the rose from the plant that produced it, and intellectually monitor it as it withered." I share that assessment, unfortunately. I think Dan is subversive. He's not even shy about it, really. How else to characterize someone who professes to be a "believing" Latter-day Saint repeatedly declaring (bragging?) on prominent social media platforms that he is "offering ... reasons" for Latter-day Saints to abandon their faith? This is intellectually lazy, IMO. He's far too prone to make conclusory declarations with no real effort to explain how he gets there. Apparently it's a "Trust me, I'm a scholar" sort of thing. He expressed this same sentiment (probably doing something right if I’m offering {} reasons for people to feel justified in not remaining faithful") on Dehlin's podcast. So it wasn't a one-off. Disappointing that Dan has done this, but not surprising. I hope he finds his way back. Thanks, -Smac

I am wondering if there will be more than one of this kind of event. One that will interface with the temple complex in Independence Missouri?

I'm glad you have your priorities straight! (Seriously, though: Good for you. I hope you and the grands enjoyed your day!)

This comes to mind as an explanation: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”

@longview One may reasonably ask to where this city will return. Joseph Young Sr. notes that “Joseph Smith said . . . in the hearing of some of the saints still surviving, that the City of Enoch would again take its place in the identical spot from which it had been detached, now forming that chasm of the earth, filled with water, called the Gulf of Mexico” (12; see also Widtsoe 365). https://rsc.byu.edu/book-mormon-fourth-nephi-through-moroni-zion-destruction/zion-zion-zion-keys-understanding-ether-13

I'll warn you in advance that I know this is all going to seem too trite, too pat, and too "just-so." I wouldn't blame anyone for getting frustrated with me because of that. I have discussed the litany of challenges I have experienced many times here. I won't bore you by reciting it, at least, not in full and not in detail, again. I am aware, fully and acutely, that many have and do experience challenges I can scarsely fathom. Those who endure, and who have endured, what I scarsely can fathom and who retain a long-range/eternal perspective have my everlasting respect. That said, I can only speak to what I know. Premature birth, highly questionable survival as a newborn, permanent mortal disability, two failed major operations (among several others) that set me back, in some ways permanently at least until the resurrection, to which I say, "Hasten the day!" But ... I suppose not. As Alma the Younger said, "But behold, I am a man, and do sin in my wish; for I ought to be content with the things which the Lord hath allotted unto me." Alma 29:3. I have labors to perform in the garden of life, for how long I know not, to what purpose, often, I know not. Spectacularly failed professional aspirations, and the only answer I've ever gotten as to "why" is, "Ken, you were where I wanted you while you were getting the degree." The "dog" of clinical depression alternating between nipping at my heels and threatening to devour me whole—until, mercifully, it simply ... stopped chasing me. I have no idea how or why that happened. I know only that, ultimately, it had nothing to do with more professionals with more brooms than I can count striving earnestly to help me "chase the bats from my belfry." They simply ... left. Is it something that simply comes with advancing age and wisdom to know to "not sweat the small stuff"—and to know that most all of it is "small stuff"? With wisdom to know to "not get caught up in the thick of thin things"—and to know that most all of them are "thin things"? Someday, sometime in the [too? not too?] distant future, I look forward to a fascinating, illuminating, Personal Priesthood Interview with Someone Who Knows All of the Whys and Wherefores that, as yet, I do not. As for why He hasn't told me yet, I have no reason to believe He won't—when He thinks I'm ready ("Ay, there's the rub!"). Have I simply gotten more adept at transferring more of the burden to Him whose yoke He invited me to take upon myself (see Matthew 11:28-30)? Perhaps. Incidentally, recently, I came to a epiphany regarding that scripture. Perhaps it would make all of you more insightful folks slap your foreheads and exclaim, "Duh, Ken!": Christ isn't asking us to take on an additional burden in that scripture. He is offering to shoulder ours! After all, isn't that what a yoke does, enabling animals to do far more together than either would be able to do alone. In a sense, the three-act—premortal, mortal, postmortal—play isn't fair because we don't remember the premortal first act, and the postmortal third act hasn't happened yet. Others' mileage may, and likely does, vary, and that's fine. I understand that completely. But I trust The Playright. What else can I do?

The peace and calm that I feel from the presence of God, is more of a spiritual inner feeling. Rather than a general peace of calm, that I would feel from a walk in the woods or hike up a mountain.

How is this different though from say a walk in the woods or a hike to a mountain top that generates a sense of peace and calm?

Loving God as our heavenly Father, and trusting that he will at some point do what is right, for us his earthly children. I do not believe to be lop sided.

A specific sense of peace and calm.

i have lived approximately half my life in the Church doing all I was told God wanted me to do. Trying diligently to live a life that I was told God expected me to do. But in so many ways, it was not a life I enjoyed or wanted. When I came out and was severed from the Church, I felt loss and confused. It was like starting the second half of my life all over again, but this time without the Church and a much less structured life of what I was taught God wanted me to do. From where I sit now, I sometimes can not believe how much happier I am and really how joyous my life has become. Certainly finding a companion who I can love completely and who loves me for who I really am and not some forced false version of me. If the scripture that teaches wickedness never was happiness, then it is so difficult for me to think that I am some how more wicked than I was and still be so much more joyful. I learned to not trust God. He seems ok with that as well. Maybe the true test in life is to learn to stand on my own two feet, be responsible for my life and not rely on a God that was not all that consistent in giving me any help in solving what I thought was flaws in my spirit. Turns out, acceptance of reality seems to work better than pretending that God has all the answers.

I assume you are just expressing your own opinion, but if you are making a factual claim, I would be interested in you showing what his predictions were and where they fell flat so we can judge if your claim is falling flat or not.

I don’t accept the false dichotomy that there is a binary choice between God’s plan and embracing nihilism. Most atheists aren’t nihilists. Just because Hobbes had a negative take on people doesn’t mean I have to. And Hobbes ignores the fact that humans have always had societies and some form of government even if it was more informal so when did that nihilistic take apply? You are right that I put it as a choice, and that atheism and nihilism are not synonymous. I was not describing that. I was describing the choice I can actually live with. I do not think the only alternatives on offer to the world are the Plan of Salvation and despair. People find meaning in family, work, beauty, and one another, and I do not need Hobbes to be right about human nature to take that seriously. What I cannot do is treat the death of a child as nothing but an event. Disease and disaster do not have a face. A person who harms a child does. Both are terrible. One of them leaves me asking not only what happened, but what it is for, and whether the child is finished. Hobbes was describing life without a commonwealth, not proving that such a life ever existed in pure form. You are right that people have always lived in some society. I was using him for a narrower point. A society can reduce the fear of violent death. It cannot tell me that a child who died of disease is anything other than gone. That is the part I cannot settle by politics or by goodwill. So the dichotomy was mine. Nihilism, as I meant it, is the conclusion that there is no purpose in the loss, no continuation, and no one to whom the child still matters. I do not have to accuse you of holding that. I only know that, when I follow the question all the way out, that is the place I refuse to stop. The Plan of Salvation is the account that lets me say the child is not finished, and that the loss is real without being the last word. That is faith. It is also the only account I have found that I can hold without going cold. Thank you for sharing your perspective. -Smac