Calm

That doesn’t preclude what I am thinking of, which does not include people turning off their brains once he has spoken and getting spoon fed. He seems the kind of person who would prefer to be known for triggering great discussions rather than the person at whose feet others sit quietly and listen to in awe.

First, does it matter to you one way or the other? Given your past discussions on the subject, my guess is it does matter as it might feel too much like you aren’t trusting God’s acceptance of your son if you accept the offer as if doing so implies a doubt which you do not have. Or perhaps it’s something else that makes it just not feel right for your son or your family. If there is any discomfort or even just a lack of willingness, you should not feel the least troubled to simply tell them no, thank you and if they persist and you feel the need to say something, perhaps just tell them you think it better to wait until it feels like something that should be done. My view is if you are thinking “maybe”, than it should be a “no, thank you”. You should not be making a decision when your feelings are likely quite unsettled, maybe even making it difficult for you to know exactly what you and your wife want with this. There is no need to be rushed, that feeling is another stromg sign you should say “no”, imo. This could be something you could be thinking about a long time if you end up unhappy or even just uncomfortable if you say yes out of a desire to help someone else. If the person knows your family well, it may be their way of dealing with grief, their own and yours, focusing on what gives them hope. But that’s not your responsibility to fill for them in matters relating to your family, especially not now. They should be there to mourn with you, not for you. Saints seem to often need to be about doing things, we have a strong streak of Martha in us, I suspect, including wanting to solve others’ problems for them (even if it’s not actually a problem), help make their lives smoother, better, happier. We are taught to care and many do deeply, but we are not always trained how to care well. We are taught to go about doing good, but some are so anxious to get to doing it, they don’t stop and think about the why and how, but just the what. Many of us need to learn that part of serving others includes sitting and listening or even just being there, simply another presence so the other feels less alone or at other times giving space without disappearing. Perhaps there is something else you would appreciate, such as suggesting while you don’t believe the proxy ordinances are appropriate right now, you would appreciate your family’s names being placed on the temple roll to be prayed over. Or something that reflects memories of your son. Just if it would actually help, don’t create more work for yourself by attempting to come up with a ‘need’. There are other members who enjoy the opportunity to do proxy work, it’s very meaningful for them and so they may offer for your family even if they don’t know you well. There is other work for them to do. There is something special about doing the work for someone you have personally known, but it’s very important it gets done with respect for those it would impact and sometimes that means not getting it done at all, but stepping back. Summing up, I think Tacenda said it well. Go with your heart and soul.

I think I understood, sometimes it satisfies an ‘itch’ for me to say something publicly even if I don’t expect anyone to respond and in fact no one responses. If it is a minor irritation, by saying something I scratch it enough to be able to stop thinking about it. I was, it’s more than a minor irritation to me, but you seemed to want to simply say something and then let it go, so I didn’t give in to the impulse. I have always wanted to pursue a doctorate, first and foremost to pursue my love of learning in a systematic way while engaging with others similarly interested and second, to prove to myself I had the self discipline to follow through to the end. Alas, health interfered. I am well aware that amateur studying/research is not the same thing even if important insights can at times come from such.

I think it’s more than that, I think he views himself as an authority of some type, someone others should listen to.

Insomnia….a word burned into my brain.

Maybe because so many were done each year they thought it better to announce them all at once so the press would still pay attention. 😛 It would be nice if they start giving more visibility to the Area Presidency, more need for the locals to pay attention. I say that having no idea who my Area Presidency is. added: Now if only I can retain these names and faces unlike most other names and faces I learn these days. https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/my-home/areas/utah/utah-area-presidency?lang=eng

I think it’s most likely because we don’t typically study other faiths at all except as a framework for what we have that they don’t, which descriptions tend to be in very simplistic and often derogatory throw away lines. This method unsurprisingly gives us strawmen rather than educates us in others’ doctrine, pretty much how much of antimormon tactics misrepresent our doctrine and history.

I am not sure how you get from self-critique to “taking their own selves too seriously”. I am wonder if I use the last phrase differently than you do.

I would love to see studies showing how people rate their ability to suppress biases vs the reality as it seems likely this would be an area our self appraisal isn’t that great…since our biases would affect our judgment. We often don’t recognize our own biases after all, hard to suppress what we aren’t aware of. decided to look and found this https://www.cmu.edu/news/stories/archives/2015/june/bias-blind-spot.html#:~:text=It has been well established that people,biased than others have been less clear. Not sure how this applies to when we recognize our biases rather than ignore them and attempt to control them.

That does often occur. What I stated does not suggest it doesn’t. I suspect it may be a majority as well….Which is another reason why I used “this makes sense to some degree”. However, some stuff is blaringly obvious. Take your example of abortion. If someone has read any articles supporting abortion, they are probably familiar with the fact that legal abortions are generally low risk so if they see someone arguing for the banning of abortions based on the stat 45% of global abortions are unsafe, that is going to be a major red flag and likely cause them not to trust any arguments made by whoever did this. (Note: there are good arguments for restricting abortions imo, essentially using the WHO stat showing globally illegal abortions are dangerous to argue for making abortions illegal is definitely not a good argument). Someone who has read articles supporting the banning of abortions is less likely to be aware of the problem with such use of the stat because they may not be as familiar with the safety stats of legal abortions and are more likely to have heard claims abortions are dangerous (including possibly accurate ones comparing risks of childbirth vs late legal abortions, I say possibly accurate as I have seen claims of such but haven’t delved into latest stats to see which competing claims are most accurate).

No, as I said self taught isn’t a guarantee they can’t critique the quality of their own arguments…nor is academic training a guarantee they can, but when passing a class and getting a degree and thus not wasting time, money, and effort depends on the quality of analysis, one tends to pick up skills on how to critique one’s own arguments, looking for gaps of knowledge, inappropriate assumptions, use of poor sources, bad logic, etc. In many cases people who disagree with someone’s political or social argument will look for what the person did wrong in constructing that argument to justify their disagreement…they won’t always outright dismiss arguments as bad. They may look for poor construction of arguments as in poor logic, using less credible sources, etc. If they do find things they see as red flags, demonstrating poor skills, then it is often reasonable to assume such poor skills carry over to other subjects. There will be those who look for red flags in arguments they agree with, but I am guessing that occurs significantly less often. PS: also notice I said “it makes sense to some degree” meaning it’s understandable, not inherently appropriate. That would depend on the overlap of skills exhibited in their arguments about abortion. For example if they used made up stats from poor sources or misused accurate stats from good sources to argue against abortion instead of taking the time to look for actual ones, why should someone assume they would put in the needed effort and accuracy into researching the art to produce informative, accurate work?

This makes sense to some degree though. If you don’t trust someone’s self taught ability to analyze political or social issues, there is solid reason not to trust other self taught skills. Self taught isn’t inherently a reason to dismiss, but it is a reason to be cautious as the person may not have received training in how to be critical of their own work, they may not be aware of gaps of knowledge, etc.

Did his political/social views impact the book?

But was it a good book?

I think I don’t know enough yet to have an opinion. Biology isn’t as clear cut as it is often presented as demonstrated by the brain studies and intersex variations for one thing. And I certainly know little about the legal history of protected classes and the reasoning behind them.

This is a derail, but feel the need to add the info…. Family histories can be lost. I have known people who don’t know where their great grandparents are from. I have even known people whose grandparents refuse to share their background for some reason, so genealogy goes only back two generations. There are people who have been adopted who know nothing of their parents even. I have heard of people lying about their ancestry. Family history is not reliable enough, imo. Theoretically it’s 50% DNA from each parent, 25% grandparents etc, but that is on average (due to recombination). I think it’s 5 generations when it becomes a decent probability that one ancestor’s DNA is no longer present, it could be much sooner, though unlikely. It is not uncommon (10% iirc) for 3rd cousins to share noDNA. Example…one great grandparent moves from Korea to Britain and marries someone with Scottish heritage and none of their children marry someone with Korean ancestry and so forth until you get to the greatgrandchild. It is possible no greatgrandchildren show Korean DNA. For some reason the knowledge the great grandparent was from Korea was lost (say prejudice made the British family embarrassed to talk about it and everyone who didn’t know assumed he was Chinese). No way for a great grandchild to know ancestry goes back to Korea. I can find an article that goes into disappearing DNA if you want. As far as scrutiny, what level of scrutiny would you suggest? These two young women are twins. The picture is from FB, so found this link instead: https://www.cnn.com/2015/03/03/living/feat-black-white-twins

If it becomes possible to differentiate between cis and transgender brains as some studies are indicating it might be, would you be supportive then of changing the law to give transgender people protected or quasi protected status? (If that is the correct language)? https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9374880/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8955456/ https://www.nature.com/articles/s41386-020-0666-3 ***need to add here I am simplifying and the question of how to differentiate is likely going to be more complicated than just brain structure or activity just as it is with those who identify as cis.

For comfort, I love our Outback except when it is adjusting the driver’s seat. Sometimes my knees start getting squished, just a bit, but it’s claustrophobia adjacent. The back is great support where I need it. Individual temp controls right and left are very nice as well, The screen right in front of the driver is fine, but the busyness of the central dashboard is distracting to me. I wish there was a way to hide many of the unused functions. It is not particularly user friendly imo. Taking us way too long to figure out all the variations of heating, cooling, and defrosting and since it may reset them, frustrating to have to repeat. Like having maps on it but my husband says better to use a phone app (I assume he means using that on the screen rather than whatever it comes with). I find it very inappropriate that it’s sending alerts for texts while driving while scolding me for my eyes leaving the road. I love when it has the speed limit, though that’s not every where yet. And the automatic stopping if getting too close to a stopped car does work. My husband got careless last week or so going way too fast off a freeway dismount, I don’t think I have ever been as scared in a car as I was that moment. (There were more dangerous times but didn’t have a chance to get scared before figuring out the danger was passed or slamming into the dashboard). Don’t know if we would had completely avoided a fender bender without the car taking over (he said he could feel it engaging the brake harder than he was). He loves the cruise control on the freeway as it keeps him a certain distance from cars in front of him. It may be a little too sensitive about veering too far left and right.

Simplistic summary… The law is or supposed to be the government doesn’t support one faith more than others (show favoritism) and the government doesn’t interfere with the practice of religion (limitations placed on the last depending on whether it breaks laws or not). But tell me what was the defensive legally pre established position in the Reynolds vs the US (1878)? Serious question, want to see how you think about it. While bigamy was illegal at least in some states earlier (maybe all, going from memory) but not US territories, non-civil religious marriages done with knowledge of all parties were not illegal until LDS were targeted and a law was made because of them (as cohabitation was not enforced in other territories iirc). Seems to me there is a difference between popular customs and the law. If a new law needs to be made to protect a practice wouldn’t that make the practice a custom rather than a law being defended? (Haven’t thought this all the way through, so may be quickly dissuaded from this idea) Not saying there aren’t customs that should get legal protection, but there are a lot that shouldn’t.

It’s happened before, we even had a candidate that supported their values better than the other if we are talking conservative Evangelicals/Fundamentalist and got more votes than the previous Rep candidate. https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2012/11/07/how-the-faithful-voted-2012-preliminary-exit-poll-analysis/ Would be interesting to take the Pew data on likes and dislikes and see what it says about trends in opinions towards LDS over the decades as we become in general more politically similar. I have things to do, so resorted to Chat to analyze Pew for me, so no guarantee of accuracy. According to them working with the conservative Christians more in the past 30 years has not helped. I would love to see Pew divided out conservative Evangelicals from Christian Nationalists and see if that makes a difference, but I doubt they have that data. added: currently 2/3 identify with or are favorable to Christian Nationalism according to this, need older measures. https://prri.org/press-release/survey-two-thirds-of-white-evangelicals-most-republicans-sympathetic-to-christian-nationalism/

Not the VWs I have been in, lol (classic Beetles, though we didn’t call them classic at the time)

Click on the reader option in the little page icon. They have had 5 or 10 years to change it, as long as they have had the paywall, so they must not care for some reason….at least not enough to do the additional coding or whatever it takes to remove the option like other sites do. If it was a small site, I might think it was the cost, but it seems unlikely for the Trib. I think the brand is more useful for Dehlin than Reel, it’s a better name for Dehlin’s purposes. It is, imo, a great name for a podcast. He has already had a lawyer volunteer iirc as well. I doubt Reel is making as much money and is much less well known (haven’t seen him in the news that I remember except a few articles on his excommunication), so less likely to be worth it for a lawyer to do pro bono for him. It would be hard to argue against the antis using it if they allowed pro or neutral, I believe. They have to be consistent.

This is what I think when I hear “we teach the ideals” (ideal of good, ideal of evil, no middling) 😛

Got it. I misunderstood.

And that isn’t condescending, lol