Amulek

Initial reaction: not a fan. If we're going to go back to weekly meetings in each class, then just go back to three hours. Don't get me wrong, I love going back to having weekly check-ins with the youth in both classes again - I see that as a positive change - but 25 minutes seems way too short to me. I would almost prefer they cut Sacrament Meeting down to 30 minutes, with a 10 minute overage / transition time, and then allow 40 minutes for each class. In most cases, that would just mean cutting a speaker and maybe an extra hymn or two, or (miracle of miracles) getting the High Council speaker to deliver a reasonably long talk. The only downside would be when it comes to Fast Sunday as there would be very little time for testimonies. I'm happy to give the new plan a shot, but I suspect you're still going to run into situations where sacrament runs long, the young men don't have enough time to break down the sacrament table, etc. and Sunday School is going to get short shrift. I know Primary has to put up with quite a bit of that already, but 8 year olds can get by with only a 15 minute lesson. For youth adults, that's barely going to be anything and is going to feel a lot like musical chairs.

From a believing perspective, the plates were necessary because they were the source – an actual ancient record – so their existence answers the "where did this come from?" question in a concrete way. Also, I'm not certain the plates were just there for the purposes of translation mechanics – they were about witness. Multiple people testified they saw / handled them. If Joseph was inventing a story, I tend to think that creating a tangible artifact others could examine actually increases the risk of being exposed, rather than decreasing it. And stepping back a bit, I would say this fits within a broader pattern we see in LDS theology. God doesn’t tend to work in a purely abstract, disembodied way. He uses physical things as part of how He reveals Himself. Not because He has to, but because that’s how He consistently operates. You see it all over: tablets for Moses, the Ark for Noah, the temple serving as the axis mundi between heaven and earth, ordinances involving water, bread, oil, hands, etc. I mean, even Jesus had to come to Earth to perform the Atonement. None of those are strictly “necessary” if the goal is simply to transmit information, but they serve to ground the divine in the real, physical world. The plates fit that same pattern. They’re not just about needing something to read from. They’re a physical witness that revelation is tied to real history, real people, real records. Even if the translation itself was revelatory rather than academic, the plates still function as an anchor to the claim that this record existed prior to Joseph. So calling them a “prop” kind of misses the point. If anything, they’re more like a recurring feature (and, hence, additional witness) of how God works.

Thanks for clarifying. I was thinking more about the leaders the overwhelming majority of members actually interact with on a regular basis. Even if we limit the discussion to the First Presidency and Apostles, I'd still be careful about drawing a straight line from 'it took a long time to change' to 'leaders must have mistaken policy for revelation.' That assumes we can see all the factors they were weighing, which we really can’t. Institutional change in a global church isn’t just about recognizing a problem - it’s also about timing, unity, consequences, and confirming direction (sometimes repeatedly). Even in the example you gave, there were leaders prior to 1978 who openly wrestled with the issue and sought change, so it wasn’t simply a matter of everyone uncritically assuming 'this is doctrine, full stop.'

Okay, but how would a Bishop or Stake President go about changing a policy they don't have authority to change?

How do you tell the difference between a leader who believes a given policy is doctrinally based (and follows it) as opposed to one to believes a certain policy is based primarily on tradition (yet also follows it)?

I think you’re putting your finger on a real pattern, but I’d frame it a bit differently. It’s not necessarily that every policy is officially taught as doctrine or revelation. Rather, there’s a very human tendency among members to treat existing policies that way - especially when they’ve been in place for a long time or are tied to sensitive questions. Stability can be perceived as confirmation. At the same time, the Church itself maintains a distinction (even if it isn’t always emphasized in day-to-day discourse): doctrine is generally anchored in canon and repeated prophetic teaching, while policies and practices can (and do) change as leaders respond to new circumstances, needs, or further light. What complicates things is that local leaders don’t operate in a vacuum. A bishop, for example, seeks revelation, but he also works within a defined structure and is accountable to stake and general leadership. So in practice, revelation is often exercised within an established framework rather than independently of it. That can also make policies feel more fixed than they actually are. So I don’t think it’s just hindsight revisionism when something changes. It’s more that we are watching the ongoing tension between continuity and adaptation play out in real time. That being said, I do think there are people who only recognize what was “just policy” after it’s been adjusted, but that doesn’t mean it was actually doctrine to begin with.

I meant to pull the case after it completed (here), but I've been super busy for the last few months and haven't made it around to the courthouse. But yes, the Church held a small groundbreaking ceremony which was comprised of a member of the Area Presidency and a handful of youth. Nobody from local government was in attendance, though I don't know if they were even invited. My understanding is that it was an intentionally low-key event.

Makes complete sense. This is yet another example of a policy change where the previous policy was rooted more in administrative tradition than actual doctrine.

Lost to my many deleted throw-away chats already. The main point I was trying to make is that AI is inherently limited when it comes to these sorts of questions. AI can't actually weigh sources with a transparent methodology; it doesn't model different frameworks in a defensible way; and it certainly doesn't resolve conflicting data the way a historian would (e.g., this account is late, this one is hostile, etc.). Instead, it tends to default to what its training data makes most available and narratively compressible - which, spoiler alert, is often going to correlate to what is popular online, not what is best-supported. As others have pointed out, it's also very vulnerable to prompt framing. So, even if your prompts says, "don't assume all these points are true," the mere presence of those points steers the answer that direction. While I believe AI may be the most transformative technology that comes along during my lifetime, certain questions are going to require us to find the answers on our own.

I asked the same model to evaluate the OP. Here's its response: The problem with this “ChatGPT hypothesis” isn’t that it’s secular. It’s that it’s a confidence-toned narrative that mostly says “here’s something that could have happened,” and then silently upgrades “could” to “most likely” without doing real comparison. A few specific issues: It bakes in metaphysical naturalism. The prompt explicitly asked for “most likely non-miraculous,” and the model obliges. That’s not “following the evidence”; it’s choosing the conclusion space up front. A method that excludes miracles by definition can never seriously evaluate a miracle claim—only redescribe it in secular terms. It uses unfalsifiable psychology as a universal solvent. Whenever witness data is inconvenient, it invokes “group expectation,” “social pressure,” “vision language,” etc. Those may be possible, but they’re so flexible they can “explain” almost any religious testimony. An explanation that fits everything fits nothing. It confuses ‘a mechanism’ with ‘the best mechanism.’ Yes, dictation is fast. Yes, stagecraft is possible. Yes, a prop is possible. But none of that establishes probability, especially when the hypothesis must also explain why multiple insiders maintained their claims across time, conflict, and schism. It ‘citation launders’ speculation. Notice the move: it cites reputable sources for neutral points (timeline; “seer stone in a hat”), then slides from those citations into high-speculation claims (“prop plates,” “sealed portion hides blanks,” “controlled tactile encounter,” “performative show”) that the citations do not actually establish. It ignores the strongest counter-question: If Joseph could author it by improvisational dictation while also running a long con with props and witness management, why doesn’t the historical record show clearer seams of planning, drafts, leaks, or co-conspirator collapse proportional to the scale of the alleged fraud? Bottom line: the AI answer is a coherent story, not a demonstrated conclusion. If you start by ruling out divine action, you’ll always end with a purely human mechanism—because that’s the only category you allowed. Shortcomings of using “ChatGPT” as an authority in this debate These are the vulnerabilities you can point out without getting bogged down in minutiae: 1) “Deep research” ≠ “truth machine.” OpenAI explicitly warns that ChatGPT can produce incorrect or misleading outputs and should be checked rather than treated as authoritative. 2) It’s extremely sensitive to the prompt’s framing and hidden instructions. If you ask for “most likely non-miraculous,” you don’t get a neutral evaluation—you get a best-sounding naturalistic synthesis. And if the user has custom instructions set (or a long chat history steering tone), outputs can drift further. 3) It often outputs “narrative probability,” not measured probability. Language models are optimized to produce coherent, persuasive explanations. That can feel like “validation,” but it’s not the same thing as weighing primary sources, resolving contradictions, and quantifying uncertainty. 4) It can “source-name drop.” Models commonly cite real institutions while making nearby leaps those sources don’t support. Readers then unconsciously transfer credibility from the citation to the speculation. 5) It will default to methodological naturalism unless asked not to. Not because “atheism is true,” but because most modern historiography and most of its training data treat miracles as not directly testable. So it tends to translate miracle-claims into psychological, sociological, or literary mechanisms.

My wife wanted to watch a rom-com the other night, but I was leaning toward sci-fi. So, we compromised and watched Groundhog Day. Granted, the romance isn't super deep, and the comedy is very much on the sarcastic side - which isn't for everybody - and it only 'technically' involves time travel. Still, I have fond memories of going to see this in the theater when I was a teenager, and I still very much enjoy it even after all these years. (Don't drive angry!)

Inception Now that my daughter is out of the house and the boys hold the majority sway when it comes to family movie night selections, things are starting to get fun. I really like Christopher Nolan as a director. It's one of the only movies that I think does a good job of creating an authentically ambiguous ending. The funny thing is, when I went to go see this in theaters (years ago), I could have sworn that at the end of the credits - because I've always been a stay-to-the-final-frame kind of moviegoer - there was a sound effect that gave you a clue to the ending, so that's how I've always interpreted it. When we watched it on Amazon Prime though, there was no such sound at the end. Maybe I'm misremembering - or maybe I'm just still caught in the dream. Regardless, a good time was had by all.

I know I shouldn't say anything, but I needed to drop a quick proof of life post anyway, so what the heck, here we go... In my opinion, this sentiment hews much closer to the Protestant notions of total depravity and monergistic sanctification - where God acts, and humans respond but do not meaningfully co-produce holiness - than it does to Latter-day Saint belief. LDS theology in my view, is, instead, synergistic (i.e., God works with us, not instead of us). But, crucially, with us doesn't mean only when God is the active agent. In Latter-day Saint thought, humans are not all totally depraved. Because of the Light of Christ, all people are capable of recognizing and authentically choosing good. What would be the point of giving us moral agency if we were incapable of freely choosing good without God always having his thumb on the scale. No, that capacity is inherent in all of us. To suggest otherwise would make agency functionally inert without constant divine override. Thanks but no thanks.

I appreciate the careful thought behind these questions, but I think several of your conclusions rest on assumptions that the Church has not actually made, and that move tithing into a level of accounting complexity that Church leaders have consistently avoided. Let's discuss them, one by one: The Church has deliberately not provided a technical definition of “income” versus “increase.” The only authoritative guidance is the First Presidency statement that members should pay tithing on their “increase”, later paraphrased as “income”, and that the determination is ultimately a matter of personal conscience between the member and the Lord. Church leaders have repeatedly resisted defining income in accounting or economic terms. Any claim that the Church has been “clear” on a specific definition goes beyond what has actually been taught. This is a reasonable personal approach, but it is not a doctrinal requirement. “Realization” is an accounting concept, not a revealed one. Some members tithe when income is received, others when withdrawn, others annually on net worth increases. All of these approaches can be consistent with Church teachings. The Church has intentionally avoided binding members to professional financial standards. Again, this is a choice, not a rule. A member could reasonably consider reinvested dividends as income when credited, just as wages automatically deposited into a bank account are still income even if untouched. The key issue is not whether funds are spent, but whether the member considers them part of their increase. This is an area where members often differ, and Church leaders have not prescribed a method. Some tithe on gross income, some on net. Both have long-standing precedent in the Church. Treating tithing as a net-profit calculation is a modern financial framing, not a revealed requirement. This line of reasoning imports macroeconomic theory into a spiritual law that has - to my knowledge - never been administered that way. The Church does not ask members to adjust their wages, raises, or bonuses for inflation before paying tithing. If inflation adjustments were required, tithing would become impractical for ordinary members and impossible to standardize - precisely the outcome Church leaders have avoided. This again assumes that “intrinsic value” and “purchasing power” are the correct lenses for defining increase. Historically, they have not been. When members sell appreciated property, most simply consider the proceeds as part of their increase without attempting to decompose the gain into inflationary versus real components. Nothing in Church teaching suggests members are expected to perform such analyses. The consistent pattern in Church teachings is simplicity, personal accountability, and trust. When tithing becomes an exercise in inflation modeling, expense allocation, and economic theory, it has moved well beyond what the Lord or His prophets have required. Members are free to adopt whatever honest method helps them feel they are paying a full tithe, but we should be careful not to present personal financial frameworks as though they were Church doctrine.

I liked Elder Holland quite a bit. For those who want a nice remembrance, here's a list of his Top 10 most viewed talks available online: Lessons from Liberty Jail (~1.7 million views) “Lord, I Believe” (~1.4 million views) Cast Not Away Therefore Your Confidence (~1.0 million views)) Tomorrow the Lord Will Do Wonders Among You (~888,000 views) Like a Broken Vessel (~860,000 views) Broken Things to Mend (~798,000 views) Place No More for the Enemy of My Soul (~570,000 views) None Were With Him (~408,000 views) The First Great Commandment (~615,000 views) Motions of a Hidden Fire (~300,000 views)