carbon dioxide

Of course the Book of Mormon does not condemn Moses, Abraham, Jacob and others who practiced polygamy. Gee I wonder why David and Solomon are the ones singled out. Perhaps they did some things that went beyond what was proper? I have never had a problem with the issue of polygamy. I personally would not want it. Monogamy is sometimes one wife too many. I have no problem with others doing it. I also can not understand those who support gay marriage but have a problem with polygamy. That is like Twilight Zone thinking to me but whatever.

Joseph Smith did not write the Book of Mormon. He orally dictated it to a scribe and did so on the first draft. For those who think that method is easy, try it. Find a friend or family member. Many say he did so by his place in a hat. Ok. Go ahead and try that. Find a hat. Put your face in it and compose a 4000 word short story that is coherent, internally consistent and sprinkle in a some complex hebraic structures like chiasmus and repeated alternate parallelism in the story and do it all on the first try. Once you speak a word and the scribe that is helping you writes it down, you are locked in. No do overs or revisions and do it on 1 day as that is about the translation rate that Joseph Smith dictated the Book of Mormon in a day of about 4000 words. Once you are done read it together and compare it to Book of Mormon. I have absolute confidence you will fail on a grand scale. Then consider that Joseph Smith did this every day for about 60 to 70 days composing a text of over 260000 words. Sorry but impossible. That is why no Book of Mormon critic has ever attempted to duplicate what Joseph did in real life and practice. They know they can't do it.

Or men are going to just check out completely or seek more traditional women in other countries. I don't think men care as much about their looks or the house being super clean.

Both Joseph and Jesus were big threats to the devils kingdom. Both had to be taken out but they both had missions to fulfill and they did so. The good news is those ho fight against them lose. All those who fought against Joseph are now in the spirit world in a world of hurt. They are not having one good day right now as they await their final judgement. It really sucks to be them.

Ever since I was a teenager I always understood that tithing was giving funds to the church to do whatever it needed to build up the kingdom. There was never an expectation that the church one only do certain things with the money. I think it is very wise for the church to build up a reserve fund as much as possible. Eventually the economy is going to go through a major crash. The amount of debt is not sustainable. We are probably going to spend 9 trillion in interest payments alone over the next 10 years on the debt. If the market goes down 50%, better to have a 100 billion before the crash and have 50 billion on the other side than have 10 billion before the crash and have 5 billion on the other side. Just seems logical to me.

Men and women are becoming more polarized just like our politics are. There has been a sharp increase in the number of women who identify as political liberal. About 45% of younger women while younger men are remaining stable around 25%. I think this division will only increase as time goes on. More women are going to college than men. It is about 60% women now. Women tend to date men who are at their academic and financial level or above. We see large numbers of women who are going to middle age single and childless. These numbers should probably increase over time as well. Should be interesting to see ho society evolves to over the next 20 years. Lots of middle aged single men and women and not wanting to do much with each other.

I partially misstated things. Men are pretty stable. It is the women that have gone off the rails. "Forty-four percent of young women counted themselves liberal in 2021, compared to 25 percent of young men, according to Gallup Poll data analyzed by the Survey Center on American Life. The gender gap is the largest recorded in 24 years of polling. The finding culminates years of rising liberalism among women ages 18 to 29, without any increase among their male peers.... The share of men who identify as liberal has held fairly steady for almost 25 years, according to annual Gallup surveys. Roughly one-quarter of men ages 18 to 29 term themselves liberal, year after year. Meanwhile, among young women, liberalism has exploded. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, fewer than 30 percent of women identified as liberal. The liberal camp grew through the second term of former President George W. Bush. It expanded further during the tenure of former President Obama. It reached 39 percent in 2017 with the inauguration of Trump. In the last two years, liberalism surged anew." https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/3675477-young-women-are-trending-liberal-young-men-are-not/ As to men being more attracted to conservative women, I say attracted not in the physical sense of course and there are plenty of men that will have liberal girlfriends but being a guy and having watched a lot of videos on the subject, men trend towards more conservative women. I would say to all young women if you want to increase your chances of dating and marriage, trend towards the conservative side.

When I say western nations re in decline I am looking forward not at the present. For example at current projections the US may pay up to 9 trillion on interest of the debt over the next 10 years. That is going to have an effect. You will see what I mean over time.

All of those things are reversible and much do to technology advances. One could argue the decline in the western economy is amount of debt that western countries are in. Also the outsourcing of manufacturing jobs to other countries making them more dependent on many things and are security risks to those countries. A example of demographic decline in the western includes a declining birth rate which leads to aging populations where there are not as many younger people to support the larger older population. Marriage rates are down in many places and at record numbers in the US with 25% of 40 year olds in the US have not been married. This is only going to get worse through time. There is a political gap between younger men and women that is growing in this country that will make marriage rates worse. Younger Gen Z women are getting more liberal while the men are getting more conservative. Men generally are not attracted to the more feminist type of women. So if this trend continues, the younger men will either just not marry or seek women outside the US. As the family goes downhill, so does the nation and society. Yes there have been many advances over time with technology but those are not sufficient in my view to overcome the problems that exist and will grow worse as time goes on.

There are a lot of areas that one could argue it is in decline from economic, cultural, religious, demographic, political, social, and moral, ect. Probably the only real area that I see we are advancing is technology but even that is a double edge sword.

I am just happy that the endowment has not been fully restored as I would not want to go through the temple rites that Nephi and others had to go through. David Butler goes through a great case that that the ancient temple rituals they went through included a ritual beating and that is why Nephi says it is important that he says even though he was young he was large in stature. He needed to be big at that young age to get through the rituals ok. Lots of good stuff. The good stuff starts around minute 25

They sure will and I am not bothered by it.

Sort of like what Jesus started. Nothing wrong with a high demand religion. Pretty much anything of value in life requires some sort of high demand. Being a doctor is a high demand practice. Who wants a doctor who takes the low demand approach. Same in sport. Taking a low demand approach to preparing for any sport probably means they are going to sit on the bench or get cut from the team. All the best athletes take a high demand approach to achieve success. I am glad the church is a high demand faith as Jesus taught. Low demand religion gets on placed on the left hand of Christ to be cast off from him. Those who subscribe to low demand religion can expect the rewards or lack of reward that come from it.

Don't worry about it. A purpose will be found. Even "all powerful" video game creators put NPC in their games for a purpose.