the narrator

Because you said so? What is the "gulf"--especially a MASSIVE one? What does the spirit offer a hummingbird (or human) that it's brain cannot? This isn't straining at a gnat. It's asking for a description of what you mean by the words. Rather than a gnat, I'm straining for an ostrich here, but I'm just getting air. As I've been saying, you seem to be making it clear that you have just been repeating slogans your whole life without asking what sense or meaning those slogans have, and you're definitely not offering any evidence to the contrary.

No. And you've offered zero reason to think so. To the contrary, you've just shown that even the smallest of brains are capable of amazing things. This conversation would be much better if you could first answer the questions I asked earlier so I can understand what you mean by the words you are using.

So you appeal to small brains being able to do tremendous things as evidence that larger human brains need spirits? I am so confused. This conversation would benefit from you explaining what you mean by the words you are using. I'm starting to suspect though that maybe you are realizing that you've just been repeating religious slogans in a catechistic manner without actually knowing what you are saying (which I think is the case for most Latter-day Saints).

Please explain the point of that. But before that can you please answer some of the questions I asked earlier so that I can understand what you mean by those words?

I was really hoping you could answer my questions though.

It doesn't on its own. Two key and unique aspects of human evolution are our bipedalism and larger brain (and thus superior intellect) relative to the rest of our body. A consequence of both is that our pelvic bones are relatively smaller than most other animals and our skulls much larger. This requires human babies to be born prematurely compared to most other mammals; otherwise our developing skulls would prevent us from passing through the pelvic bone. Thankfully, in tandem with our evolutionary development, humans also developed a genetic disposition to not only care for our young for longer compared to our primate relatives but to also live in societies and, importantly, to care for our grandchildren (which makes sense--a person who is genetic inclined to love and care not only for their children but also their grandchildren are more likely to see their genes continue on). So, in short, no, a baby does not have everything it needs to grow to be an adult. It also requires parents, a family, and a society to aid them. Our brains our sufficiently capable of doing the rest, and any retort that you offer has to be able to explain what a spirit provides that a brain is not capable of.

What is a sentient being that lacks a brain? In what way is it sentient? Unknown or incapable? Can something that cannot refract light have an "appearance"? What would it mean for it to "appear"? What does it mean to be a spirit child of Heavenly Parents? Are you saying that embodied beings had sexual intercourse and produced non-embodied beings? If not, then what do you mean? If so, then how does a biological process produce non-biological things? Is the Heavenly Mother[s] giving birth to these one at a time? Or does it look something like this? Would you be open to the possibility of heavenly parents producing spirit babies by shooting spirit laser beams from their eyes into a pool of spiritual ectoplasm, which they stir with spirit spoons until it's thick and then shape into little human-like forms before baking them in a spirit oven like spirit gingerbread people? Again, what is a spirit body? So like a ghost in a ghost in a shell? What does it mean for an "intelligence" to "inhabit" a "spirit body"? Basically, I see you lots of words, but it doesn't seem like you've given any thought to what these words actually mean.

What is a spirit body?

Ben, I've enjoyed your comments and have largely agreed with them, but can you break down what you mean by "true doctrines of the LDS Church"? Are you referring to doctrines of the Church that are true (doctrines that accurately represent the actual state of things), or doctrines that are truly taught by the Church (doctrines that the Church officially teaches, regardless of whether or not they correctly represent the state of things)? Given your recognition that doctrines of the Church change and can contradict each other over time (at least I recall you recognizing this), I assume you mean the latter. If that is the case, is your concern primarily whether or not longview and others are accurately portraying official Church doctrine as it is taught today? If the you meant the former, then can you help me make sense of how you determine whether or not the doctrines are true?

There is another phrase that has a religious meaning about our value, but it makes zero sense to say we are "literal" children of God. I know what it means to say that I am a "literal child of my parents"--meaning that they sexually reproduced me, involving DNA from my father's sperm combining with DNA from my mother's egg, which were then gestated in my mother's womb until she gave me birth. I even know what it means to say that my adopted cousin is literally the child of my uncle and aunt through an adoptive framework (btw, this is what seems to be clearly taught in Abraham 3, where ALL intelligences/spirits [which seem to be synonymous in Joseph's thought] are eternally uncreated, and God, as the supreme intelligence offers to help them reach his intelligence). I'm totally fine if someone says "I'm a child of God and that means I'm special," and I think that the religious meaning of that phrase--espousing one's value--is clear and what most Mormons are conveying when they testify and say they are a "child of God." However, if you don't know or cannot say what it means to be a "literal child of God" then it makes no sense to claim as much.

I'm fully aware of what many/most "Saints believe"--or, rather "claim." Perhaps this is my autistic/Wittgensteinian brain at work, but (like much of LDS "doctrine"), I see the words being used but little clarity in what those words mean. What does it mean for spirit to be "material." Is it material like a gas? Composed of atoms? Plasma? Photons? What exactly is this "material" that cannot be measured, seen with normal eyes, described, defined, pointed to, heard, touched, etc? Or is it material in the same way if I said that "the number seven is material," "Santa's magic is material" or "uneasiness is material"?

Can you please explain what it means for a non-material thing to have an image? Our physical bodies are shaped the way they are because of our DNA. I don't have Asian eyes because my premortal spirit had them; it's because my mother is Japanese. Likewise, I have a chin, an opposable thumb, spotty hair on my back, stand upright, a relatively larger brain compared to my body, and no tail because of that same DNA. My physical body at birth was entirely formed the way it was in gestation because of DNA. That is where our physical form comes from, and that form is very clearly seen as a billions-years-long process of natural selection, going back to when the earth was covered in slime made up of our simple single-celled ancestors. But going back to the (nonsensical) image idea. What does it mean for a non-material being to have a shape--especially an anthropomorphic one? How big are these spirits anyways? Are their shapes fixed? And how does a material being create immaterial beings through sexual intercourse? Does God's material testes produce spiritual sperm with spirit DNA? What is spirit DNA composed of? (Spiritual adenine, thymine, cytosine, or guanine?) The list of why this makes no actual sense can go on and on and on and on. (To paraphrase the late DZ Philips, it makes sense to have a talking kettle in a fairy tale; it makes little sense to have a talking kettle in reality.)

BWAAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAH

A big problem with the "justice vs. mercy" framework that LDSaints tend to invoke is that in doing so they only see justice in terms of punitive justice. And thus end up with something like Packer's "Mediator," where the evil creditor is representative of . . . God?) This is largely due to the BofM largely incorporating later Christian soteriology; however, the form of justice that predominates the bible is one of restorative justice--that is, an emphasis on relieving the oppressed and impoverished (AKA those treated unjustly). If we take a restorative view of justice over a punitive one, mercy no longer stands against justice but is the means by which justice is achieved (and hence Jesus declaring, "Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy"). Unfortunately though, the BofM, particularly Alma's lecture to frighten Corianton into obedience, is so entrenched with this later view of justice that it would take considerable work to get LDSaints to view it differently.

In that case, it's really not about correct or incorrect views of God but rather about our moral living and relationships with others, which ought to be regardless of whether or not there is a God. If our beliefs about God are relevant, it's perhaps because our beliefs about God are generally derived from and reflective of our own moral perspectives.

A God who cares that much what others think of Him/Her/It isn't worthy of worship, IMO. One of my biggest fears is dying and discovering that God as described by most Mormons (or the cosmic reality he is bound by) is real--though I have much of that same fear of dying and discovering there is an infinite and unending afterlife. Truly, the most horrifying of cosmic horrors.

Keep fighting those strawmen, I guess. Best of luck to you.

My teens were a perfect time for me to learn how to play Dungeons and Dragons, and that was taken from me. Now I'm too old to learn.

Yes, she did. She wasn't just a passive observer along for a ride. She advised her son and was key in getting Marks's support. Emma was also the literary agent of some of Joseph's writings, including the New Translation of the Bible, which she provided to the Reorganization. (I have spent over two decades in Mormon Studies and have overseen the publication of top biographies and histories of this period, including biographies of William Smith and William Marks.)

Emma played a strong role in the reorganization. It would not have happened without her.

Emma didn't want Marks as a successor. Rather, under Emma's advice, Joseph Smith III sought out Marks's support to reorganize the church because she trusted him, he rejected polygamy, and he had been the stake president of Nauvoo--making him the leading ecclesiastical authority following Joseph and Hyrum's death.

Can we please, for the love of all that is holy, put your strawmen down? I did not say a single thing about the "RLDS movement." In Joseph's often-secretive Nauvoo updates to the priesthood, primarily through the new temple rites, Emma was given far more authority and power than people tend to recognize. Brigham Young, who hated and despised Emma even more than she did him, was aware of this. While the succession crisis tends to focus on Young, Rigdon, Strang, and eventually the RLDS movement, there was much more going on behind the scenes between Young and Emma. The latter staked her voice on her priestly role in the so-called "anointed quorum," and the former based his claim on a likely fabricated--yes, fabricated--so-called "last charge" where Joseph reportedly secretively and completely changed the authority of the 12 from being over the missions outside of the stakes of the church to being over the entire church itself. That event was supposed to have occurred during a meeting of the council of fifty on March 26, 1844--and yet, something so important was not recorded in the Cof50 minutes. (As multiple JSPP historians have told me, the absence of this in the minutes was the biggest revelation of the published minutes--though for obvious reasons a great deal has not been publicly made of this by those in the CHD. Likewise, 50 years later, Wilford Woodruff would say of this day: Seems like a pretty remarkable event that the consummate diarist would have made a note of that day, but instead Woodruff had this to report of the day:

Thanks for the correction.

Note that this is precisely the committment that we see at the Waters of Mormon in Mosiah 18: The primary act that they are asked to commit to is to be "willing to bear one another’s burdens, that they may be light." They are called to confront the material sins of the world, and it should then come as no surprise that a people who makes this commitment together find "the burdens which were laid upon [them] were made light" (Mosiah 24:15).

By recognizing sin as a material harm/injustice/etc, the Atonement is no longer an act of Christ suffering to appease a vindictive deity, to pay off a powerful Satan, or magically cleanse nonsensical cosmic taints for violating religious codes. Instead, the Atonement is the culmination of Christ's revelation of God on earth and the archetype of what it means to be divine and to become a vehicle for salvation--that is to confront and seek to eliminate these sins. For much of Christianity and Mormonism, the importance of Jesus has been relegated to his death--to the point where we should ask why God didn't simply have Mary, Joseph, and the shepherds simply throw the baby Jesus off a cliff after he was born. This is why the the proposition by Ignacio Ellacuria (who was murdered by the US-backed Salvadoran military for his ministry for the poor), which I misattributed to his colleague Jon Sobrino above, is so important--that is, instead of asking why Jesus died, we should instead ask why they killed him. The former question treats Jesus's death in a vacuum, resulting in awful and nonsensical atonement theories and largely detaches Jesus from the world and human experience and leads to a theology that becomes more concerned with a 14 year old boy masturbating than children across the globe starving. The latter returns Jesus and his mission to his material historical reality and reinstates what it means for Jesus to be the revelation of God--that is, Jesus through his life, ministry, and death shows us what it means to be God. This was the message of the beatitudes opening Jesus's sermon on the mount in Matthew 5--where he announces good news to the poor (v. 3), distraught (v. 4), powerless (v. 5), and starving (v. 6) who find relief in the material, immanent, and earthy kingdom of heaven by those who provide mercy (v. 7), for the right reason (v. 8), without violence (v. 9), and while risking violence to themselves (v. 10). Here, Jesus is announcing the good news to those who are the victims of the sins of the world (vv. 3-6) and how that salvation shall be achieved (vv. 7-9), all of which are exemplified in Christ as the revelation of God. Hope that makes some sense.