Stargazer

Not my question, but I have an answer. For the fun of it! And for @Nofear Nope, one cannot travel to God. This is because He is outside the Universe. Sort of. In his last book, Stephen Hawking wrote that "As we travel back in time towards the moment of the Big Bang, the universe gets smaller and smaller and smaller, until it finally comes to a point where the whole universe is a space so small that it is in effect a single infinitesimally small, infinitesimally dense black hole. And just as with modern-day black holes, floating around in space, the laws of nature dictate something quite extraordinary. They tell us that here too time itself must come to a stop. You can’t get to a time before the Big Bang because there was no time before the Big Bang. We have finally found something that doesn’t have a cause, because there was no time for a cause to exist in. For me this means that there is no possibility of a creator, because there is no time for a creator to have existed in." My answer is In order for a Creator to have created the Big Bang, He could not possibly have been in the universe He created, because it would have required that He create Himself. Which is an absurdity. So that which is the Cause of the universe had to have caused it from outside that universe -- and thus the argument that "there [was] no time for a creator to have existed in" fails. Because He is outside the universe, and created it, He can see all of it from one end to the other, and from time 0 to its end time. That's how I conceive it, anyway. Doctrine and Covenants 131:7,8 7 There is no such thing as immaterial matter. All spirit is matter, but it is more fine or pure, and can only be discerned by purer eyes; 8 We cannot see it; but when our bodies are purified we shall see that it is all matter. One aspect of this, which perhaps some might argue with, is that God rules over the universe because of His virtue. When He commands, He is obeyed because of His virtue, which flows from His perfection. What obeys Him? Matter itself. And this includes spirit, as well, in accordance with D&C 131:7. He has set all the laws of the universe, from gravitation to any and all other laws of physics. And because He set those laws, matter obeys them. This should imply that God or his authorized agent can modify one or many of his laws in a local frame, and thus cause things to happen which appear to be supernatural. Or He may command matter/spirit to do something other than what it would otherwise do in a given situation. Walking on water. Creating loaves and fishes. How? By operating according to the principle of D&C 131:7,8 and His own virtue, by His command. Note that this is my own idea, not anyone else's.

I can relate to what you say here, because I have intensely disliked some of what Dan has said/written. And unfortunately, I have a rather negative personal experience with him that I find it hard to shed. On the other hand, I myself have found that some of what I have had to say about certain subjects seems to elicit dislike and derision from people in my own church, so maybe I need to be more understanding with him. He actually makes sense, occasionally, so there's that.

Yeah, I found some of those comments to be very amusing. In a eye-rolling kind of way.

Far fewer needed overall, and probably also because recruiters got more cachet for recruiting 11Bs. And possibly due to a career arc that ended at E-6. You could be 11B all the way up to E-7. But at the time I was in, 11C ended at E-6, and there were so few needed (only four in an entire leg infantry battalion) that even the primary zone score requirement was quite high. To go further you had to move to a different MOS. And for 11Cs whose eyesight profile was below 2, they weren't eligible for 11B. That included me, since the reason I was 11C was because my uncorrected vision was lower than the allowable threshold for 11B. I understand about the hazing. And I heard some stories about it. I once read a Soviet defector's description of initial hazing in Spetsnaz, and it could be pretty intense. But if you were briefed in advance, you could avoid it. The story that he told involved when he arrived at his first assignment, and walking into the HQ tent. There was a clean white towel laid just inside the entrance. The towel was a trigger. If you hopped over it out of fear of soiling it with your muddy boots, the men inside would beat the crap out of you -- it signaled that you were a New Guy. But if you deliberately stepped on the towel and cleaned your boots on it, then you were a veteran, and you'd be welcomed heartily with no beating. His sponsor into the Spetsnaz, an up and coming general officer, had warned him in advance about the practice, so he avoided the beating. I did notice the degree of disdain for non-winged troops! We had a bit of an oddity in our battalion hq while I was serving there driving the battalion TOC vehicle as an E-4. The oddity was our Assistant S-3 (Air), who was a "leg Ranger." He was a 1LT who had the Ranger tab, but no jump wings! What had happened was he attended Ranger School before Airborne School, passed Ranger, but had a medical issue at Jump School. It was one of those weird injuries that temporarily, at least, made him unable to finish the Airborne course. So weird to have Ranger-tabbed officer but no jump wings! You're right about the 13F. Things change over time, but when I was a 13F you were assigned to the HHB of the battalion, and if you were not part of the battalion HQ FIST then you were attached out with one of the firing batteries for both billeting and general duties -- and that was the battery you would usually direct fire for. And since the line infantry companies needed a FIST detail when certain doing training, you'd go out with them when needed. Our battery was usually tasked to provide artillery support for my old infantry battalion, so I was frequently out there with them, including a couple of times with my old mortar section, where I knew practically everyone. Had lots of fun firing them guys out on the Ft. Lewis arty impact area. For Exercise Jack Frost in 1979 elements of the 9th ID went to Alaska for cold-weather testing/training, and my FIST team flew up there in support of 2/39 INF. I was with one of the platoons of A company, and we spent two weeks freezing our tushes off in an arctic tent. The warmest it got was 25 below zero, and the coldest was 55 below zero. My platoon was flown out into our boonie area in a Chinook, and I was first out of the chopper. Took one step off the ramp and my foot fell into powder snow three feet deep. So there I was, one foot on the ramp, and the other a yard deep in snow. It was hilarious, but not at the time, as they were about to slide the ahkio sled (with 300 lbs of gear) down onto me. Ah, those were the days, my friend. We thought they'd never end -- we'd sing and dance forever and a day.

Yes, that is all true, but it's still all very Christian, or Judeo-Christian, if you will. There are some things that a universal, of course, because we are all born with the Light of Christ. We live in a time of sad forgetfulness of who put us here, and why. Up until the mid-20th century, being Christian of one variety or another was relatively universal. During the Revolutionary War, many of those fighting were Christian ministers who sometimes led members of their congregations into the field. In the Civil War, worship was considered very seriously, and taken part in most seriously. Scenes from two films, Gettysburg, and Glory, illustrate this. From Gettysburg: And Glory:

I'm not entirely sure about the zero cachet thing. Being a career officer, @Notatbm probably has more direct experience than I did. Aside from my E-5 promotion board it never seemed to come up again. But I did get a little bit of personal chaff from from a couple of folks. Not bad, though. One of my mortar section mates, once he found out I was a Mormon, he just loved to get in digs every time he saw me, which was frequently. Like "How many wives do you have, again" "You don't drink? I thought you were an infantryman!" and so on. I don't remember his name, but I'll call him Jones. Just for fun. He was quite inventive in his little digs, but unfortunately I don't remember most of what he had to say in this vein. And it wasn't really unfriendly, just annoying banter. Very annoying, in fact! What finally happened was that Jones got engaged to be married, and he wanted our battalion chaplain to perform the ceremony. Note that our battalion chaplain was very well-beloved amongst all the troops. He was truly a model of a compassionate and engaged minister of the gospel in uniform. He was also LDS, which many did not know. So, the word got out that he was to be married by the chaplain. A few weeks before the wedding, I was sitting in the platoon day room, and Jones walked in. I said "I hear you're getting married!" He replied that yes, he was. I then asked him "So who's marrying you?" Jones gave me a very wry smile and replied "Some Mormon!" We got a good laugh out of that (I still laugh when I think of it), and he never gave me any of his Mormon digs again.

Wouldn't have happened because I wouldn't have told them that. Fact is, we were all MOH material. Something I knew but it didn't occur to me to mention was that the then Commandant of the Coast Guard was a Mormon. I suppose that wouldn't have helped my case. Well, I didn't think of saying such a thing because it didn't enter my head that my religion would even come up. The SSG that asked me the question wasn't what I would call much of a Christian, anyway. He was one of the more venal NCOs in our company, in my opinion. I think he just had a hard-on against Mormons. At the time I was in 2nd BN 39th INF, 9th Inf Div, Ft. Lewis, Washington. Later in 1st BN 11th FA. I served from 1975 to 1983, and nothing happened during that time that required me to be in combat. In that 8 years I spent 3 years as a mortar crewman, 1 year as an artillery forward observer, and 4 years as an electronic technician. The closest I ever got to a potential enemy was the 3 years I spent in Germany waiting for the Warsaw Pact to get off its duff and try for WW3. Great respect from me to you for your service! Oh, yes. The president of the board asked him to change his vote to make it unanimous. I was in the secondary zone for E-5 in my MOS, but it didn't take long to get promoted, since the 11C MOS needed E-5s like water. When I was in that MOS, of the 23 men of an 81mm mortar section, the TO&E required 8 E-5s. At the time, two of my section's squad leaders were E-4s, and two of the FOs also. Later, the Army consolidated forward observers into a single MOS (13F) and so the TO&E of the section lost 2 E-5s and two E-2s to the Field Artillery. Which is when I transferred over to 13F. By mistake, actually! You can read about it here: How I Became a Redleg Our battalion chaplain was a Mormon, by the way. He was a man greatly respected by all the troops. We felt we had a friend in him. Interesting!

In a way, no. In the beginning of the Republic, some of the states did have state-endorsed churches, and even allocated government funds towards them. Yes, the US is culturally Christian, even if has no state church, and even if a good proportion of its people don't claim to be "believers." The thing is, the country was founded by Christians (and a few Deists), and both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are based in Christian values. One of the early laws, the Northwest Ordinance, encouraged education, stipulating that "Religion, morality and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged." In including "religion" they most certainly meant Christianity. When the non-religious of the US express their opinions about morality, that morality almost always has roots in Christian principles. So when someone attempts to tell me that the country isn't Christian, I tend to disagree. Yeah, me too. The problem with this is that the term is used, like "Fascism," more as a way to denigrate than to inform. That is my feeling, too. Agreed. My Basic Training took place in 1975, but pretty much the same thing.

Oh, please. Show me where this policy exists. Well, you can't, because it doesn't. I've been a member of the church since age 14, when I finally got my father's permission, and while I know that some families were shortsighted about this (like yours -- good grief what was wrong with those people?), there was not and there still is no such church policy. Did you know that neither President Nelson nor President Oaks served missions? And the reason why President Oaks didn't serve was because he was in the Utah National Guard and had been alerted to serve in the Korean War. Though his unit was not activated in the end.

Goodness knows.

Probably? I don't think anything like this was included. Besides, P2025 was put together by the Heritage Foundation, not by He Whose Name May Not Be Spoken.

I don't think most Christians who believe Mormons aren't Christian could articulate a good reason why they think Mormons aren't Christians.

Yes, I did read that. It's quite international, too -- even has associated churches in Poland! Some here are very suspicious of this body because the US Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, belongs to an associated church of this body.

I'd be careful accepting everything an opponent of a church wants to say about that church. Does Hegseth himself believe that women should be excluded from the vote? And while I believe that to be an incorrect notion, even if he holds that view he can't do anything about it (except in his own home), and I don't think this alone affects his ability to do his job. Saying this, I'm not entirely pleased with everything he's doing as SecWar. But I do believe he's doing a necessary house-cleaning. The place had been turned into a DEI madhouse, IMHO. According to Hegseth, he is a member of a church affiliated with the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches. This body teaches women shouldn't be in combat. Do you think that is incorrect? The point I'm making is that I do remember that President Obama was a long-time member of a church in Chicago, Trinity United Church of Christ, which he attended for about 16 years and was mentored by Pastor Jeremiah Wright. Do we hold Obama responsible for Wright's racist and anti-American sentiments that he expressed in his sermons and addresses? Were we worried that Obama would attempt to enact policies that conformed to Wright's sentiments? No, of course not. Same with Hegseth. If he believes things we consider incorrect, but he's not in a position (nor even perhaps would want) to enforce them, then we should give him the same grace.

When I went before my E-5 promotion board, one of the staff sergeants on the board voted against my promotion. He was the one who questioned whether I, as a Mormon, could perform in combat (I was an infantryman) because of my faith. I was unprepared for the question because I didn't think my religion was going to come into play, so I told him that it wouldn't be a problem at all. If I had thought it would come into play, then I would have researched to find the ten LDS members who had been awarded the Medal of Honor: PVT Thomas C. Neibaur - WWI - USArmy CAPT Mervyn S. Bennion - WW2 - USN - Pearl Harbor, Captain of the USS West Virginia PVT Nathan “Junior” Van Noy - WW2 - LTC Edward S. Michael - WW2 - USAAC PFC Leonard C. Brostrom - WW2 - USArmy PhM2 George E. Wahlen - WW2 - USN - Later joined the US Army and served in both Korea and Vietnam. SGT David B. Bleak - Korea - USArmy MAJ Bernard F. Fisher - Vietnam - USAF CPL Larry L. Maxam - Vietnam - USMC PFC Sammy L. Davis - Vietnam - USArmy - Footage of his award ceremony was used in the 1995 film “Forrest Gump,” with actor Tom Hanks’ head superimposed over that of Davis. Of the ten, LTC Michael and PFC Davis joined the Church after their wartime service.

Nevermind. Enough has been said about this.

It isn't? Au contraire, mon amis. With 65% Christian, the US is a Christian nation, just like Thailand is a Buddhist nation, and Egypt is a Muslim nation. From NIH "Demographic and Military Service Characteristics of Military Families": "More recent DoD administrative data focused on active duty personnel show that as of January 2019, approximately 70 percent were recorded as Christian (about 32% no denomination, 20% Catholic, 18% Protestant, 1% Mormon), 2 percent as Atheist or Agnostic, 1 percent as affiliated with an Eastern religion, 0.4 percent each as Jewish or Muslim, and the remainder (about 24%) were reported as 'other/unclassified/unknown'" I've found that the term "Christian Nationalism" to be pretty much a dog-whistle for anti-Christian. And what is this nonsense about "repeatedly publish the list"? As far as I can tell, they published the list once. The previous list, that included over 200 items, was also only published once. The whole purpose of the list is to give the military a better idea of how to support its members' religious preferences. How does including a religion that has virtually no adherents in the military help the military support such adherents? The evil Pete Hegseth said the following about all this: "The previous system had ballooned to well over 200 faith codes. … It was impractical and unusable, and many codes were never used at all," Hegseth said in March, adding that 82% of members who identify as religious use only six of the codes. In my opinion the previous list was so extensive because the touchy-feely types were desperately trying to avoid offending anyone.

Partly because some religions are invisible in the military. Among the reasons for dropping some of the classifications was because virtually no-one adhering to such faiths were serving. One of the faith codes eliminated was "Atheist." But how would the Army provide religious support for atheists, anyway? Another issue is that men and women are appointed as military chaplains by recommendation from the religious organization in question. Good luck finding a religious organization that can provide a recommendation for an atheist chaplain. Or a humanist chaplain. That's how leaders are supposed to operate -> they appoint delegates and trust them to operate reasonably. Is it the President's job to have his nose in every aspect of the executive department? I hope not, because if he's micromanaging details like this then he's not paying enough attention to things of much greater importance. And when I was in the Army as a sergeant, it was extremely annoying to have the company or battalion commander get all up in my day-to-day business as a squad leader.

As a software developer I can tell you this is not how it works. In a relational database, an indexed code (e.g. "CJ") would be used in the service member's personnel record, and that code would point at a separate table containing the list of faith codes, as values. And a competent database designer would make the max length of the value column long enough to accommodate the longest expected value. It is a waste of database space to write the full name of each faith in every single servicemember's record. And it violates important principles of database design.

How do the Jehovah's Witnesses even make the list? JW's don't believe in serving in the military. Any JW in the military is in violation of their faith and are most likely disfellowshipped -- and for that reason there can be no JW chaplains, either, since their leadership would never certify a chaplain in their faith. I served in the US Army from 1975 to 1983. In my first assignment, with the 2nd Battalion 39th Infantry in the 9th Infantry Division at Ft. Lewis, one of my platoon members wanted to convert to Jehovah's Witness. The JWs wouldn't let him be baptized while he was still a member of the Army, so he sought a discharge as a conscientious objector. The Army gave him a hard time about it, but after several months of hard work he finally succeeded. I think they gave him a "General Discharge under Honorable Conditions." He could have just waited another 2 years until his enlistment was up, but he was quite serious about the principle of the thing.

In reference to your signature... "Love the whole world as if it were your self... If you open yourself to the Tao, you and the Tao become one." - Tao Te Ching Laozi was quite the philosopher. In connection with the Tao and its ineffability, I once heard it said that "The Tao that can be explained is not the true Tao." Which I paraphrase as "The Atonement that can be explained is not the true Atonement." Speaking of the Atonement of Christ. As a computer programmer, I am familiar with "The Tao of Programming." It's a book written in 1987 by Geoffrey James. Written in a tongue-in-cheek style spoof of classic Taoist texts such as the Tao Te Ching and Zhuangzi, which belies its serious message, it consists of a series of short anecdotes divided into nine "books". I had a copy that I wore out referring to over my programming career. My favorite anecdote is: The Tao gave birth to machine language. Machine language gave birth to the assembler. The assembler gave birth to the compiler. Now there are ten thousand languages. Each language has its purpose, however humble. Each language expresses the Yin and Yang of software. Each language has its place within the Tao. But do not program in COBOL if you can avoid it. It was especially apt because I spent half my programming career coding in COBOL! I could not avoid it, because they paid me to do it!

No. And we don't use repetition, such as one might need to use a Rosary for. "Our Father" is generally taken as an example of how one might personally pray. This doesn't mean that a Latter-day Saint might not say it as part of personal prayer, as @Calm indicated she sometimes does.

I can endorse that. The JST words it as: "And let us not be led unto temptation"

While I was spelunking YouTube the algorithm presented me with a YouTube channel from an LDS offshoot calling itself "The Church of Jesus Christ in Christian Fellowship"! See the link for their website. They're quite new, having come into being in 2015. They are, of course, a Restoration branch, and seemed at first to be an offshoot of the Community of Christ. But the Everybodywiki says this: "It was started in November 2015, by a former Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints elder David Ferriman after the church failed to accommodate for his high priest ordination, which he believes to have gotten from archangel Raphael." They're quite universalist, too. They have a prophet, seer, and revelator, who seems to be a man named David Ferriman. And a woman, Kristine Ferriman (possibly David's wife), is prophetess, seer, and revelator. She was given all of the keys of the Priesthood in 2019, it is said. Subsequently, in 2020, she received a revelation that apparently pertains to the ordination of women to the priesthood. Other offices in the church include "Evangelist," which is a "fourth-degree Apostle" and missionary, and there is a Rabbi. I'm not sure if the office of Rabbi was created specially, or they accept Jewish rabbis in their organization. They mention a man named David Larsen, "ordained Rabbi," who was given headship over the School of the Prophets. In 2025 a woman named Mistie Rehna was called and set apart as a member of their First Presidency. There is also a Council of Fifty. There is an apparent associated nondenominational Church of Jesus Christ as well, that seems to welcome members of other Restorationist branches. It appears that you can be a member of any other church while obtaining membership in the CJCiCF. Their scriptures include: The Bible; the Book of Mormon; Commandments and Revelations; Plates of Brass: Torah of Moses; The Plates of Brass: The Records and the Prophecies; Tsohar. They incorporate the Jewish Kabbalah somehow, and like to use the Jewish calendar in addition to the Gregorian. Everybodywiki says: According to David Ferriman, Kabbalah is “the original Israelite religion.”[8] One of the core messages Ferriman claims to have received from God is to “unite the Saints in Kabbalah.”[7] For The Fellowship, Kabbalah is “the power of God,” “a way to help mankind understand [God’s] Word,” “holy traditions” (identified with those of Moses), “mysticism,” “theology,” and “thaumaturgy,” “[God’s] doctrine,” and, therefore, “a mysterious art, for [God’s] doctrine is too simple for mankind to comprehend.”[9] The main focus of the Kabbalah for The Fellowship is “personal growth,”[10] which is in line with the Latter Day Saint doctrine of exaltation. Their Articles of Faith are similar to the LDS, but with 14 rather than 13 articles. Their First Article of Faith is: "We believe in God the Eternal Father and Mother, and in the Son, Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Ghost.” [Emphasis added] They ordain women to the priesthood, perform gay marriage and eternal sealings, and polygamy is allowed (though neither encouraged nor discouraged). In fact, it's more than polygamy, as it appears that group marriages are OK, as long as everyone taking part is of legal age. They have baptism for the dead, as well as an optional endowment. Well, now you know. In short, they have everything.

No, and you're right about rebaptisms. Today, it is done for those who have lost or resigned their membership (and their original baptism date is restored in the records upon rebaptism). But it has been done in times past for reasons other than (re-)joining the church or the remission of sins. Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery baptized each other after the resurrected John the Baptist ordained them and gave them the keys of administration of the Aaronic priesthood. They subsequently baptized others, but when the Church was officially founded and organized all those who had previously been baptized were re-baptized and confirmed as members of the newly-organized Church. After the migration to Utah, it was also done as a form of recommitment for those who came in the wave of immigration. This was ended in 1910. I knew about that already, along with the "baptism for health" that is no longer done. That particular baptism was done as part of a healing ceremony along with anointing and blessing. Here's an unofficial article on the topic I found interesting because I wasn't aware of the breadth of the subject: What Was Latter-day Saint Rebaptism?