webbles

You should talk to your bishop and ask that it is discussed. Maybe he'll do it or not. But the church, as an organization, is not the one that is hiding it. Elder Snow admitted that they did a soft rollout to try and contain any bad press. That was back in 2014. To say that the soft rollout in 2014 is an attempt to hide them in 2025 sounds silly to me. The church published them, they are easily found. They are definitely valid material to talk about in church lessons where they fit the lesson. I, personally, didn't enjoy the lessons on them in the classes I attended because a 50 minute lesson can not do a deep dive into the topic. I much rather prefer really learning about the stuff vs just getting a high level picture. For me, the articles were a bit of a non-issue because they weren't anything new besides having an easily accessible church approved place that I could point to if needed (I've never needed to do that so they really didn't do anything for me).

I've been to firesides that discussed these topics. I've been to fifth Sunday meetings that discussed this. I've been to Sunday School classes that brought up the essays. I've read plenty of books published by the church and distributed by church owned organizations that talk about these. Maybe your ward and stake is scared to discuss these things, but the church, as a whole, is not. And if you want them to be discussed in your church meetings, talk to your bishop, elder's quorum president, or sunday school president.

You said: That seems to indicate that the members in your family who consumed the material are no longer believers but just playing along because of fear. I also don't believe the church is opposed to people learning about information. Are there some leaders who are? Yes. But not all. So it depends on when and where you are. At sometimes in the past, it wasn't a problem. At other times it was. A lot of times, you can find a reason why the church went defensive. During the Tanner's hey day, the church was pretty defensive and I, personally, feel that was just a reaction to them (and other outside scholars). But you can find inside scholars who got access to a lot of stuff that they wouldn't have let the Tanner's see (for example, the early First Vision document).

I've seen you mention that the scripture is clear on who will burn several times but you seem to be misreading the scripture. It is clear on who will NOT be burned ("he that is tithed shall not be burned at his coming"). It is not clear on who WILL be burned. It doesn't say that those who do not pay WILL be burned. I believe someone already mentioned that there are other scriptures that say that many non-tithe payers will not be burned. So not-paying tithing is not an automatic burn card.

EQ has always been that way for me. There's really old jokes about how EQ is like that. I believe High Priests is where crazy discussions used to happen but I guess merging High Priests with Elders has tamped down the enthusiasm for crazy discussions.

I find it interesting that you find the exposure to info as being detrimental. To each their own, but I have always loved learning about it. I learned about the seer stone when I was in high school and absolutely loved it. I learned about Joseph's polygamy in elementary school and loved it. I've always known about weird polygamy situations (my personal ancestry has probably the only church approved pioneer sperm donation). It has always fascinated me and I've enjoyed reading everything I can about it. Yet, none of it has caused me to have a faith crisis with the church. I understand that people do have faith crisis because of it but I'd rather have the information easier to find vs having to dig through libraries. Though, I still sometimes have to dig through libraries because the internet is still missing so much about church history.

Probably depends on the bishop or stake pres. I have a dead relative that was in a study group that ended up deciding that they needed to practice the Law of Consecration in a more correct manner. It was a small branch in the west of Utah and the study group ended up including the branch president and a few other leaders in the area. As they tried to implement the Law of Consecration (without guidance from stake leaders or higher), they came to the conclusion that wives also need to be consecrated to the entire branch. So they began to basically practice wife swapping. It wasn't really polygamy as the wives were shared amongst the members of the study group. It wasn't until an apostle was notified of it that things were shut down. I also have another relative who led several study groups and they did discuss some of the more exotic information (I received a ton of really cool books from him that are definitely not correlated). I don't know of any consequences he had. He continued to do these study groups up until a few years before his death. The groups discussed wide range of material, including plenty of uncorrelated data.

Most recent I know of is in 2002. Elder Holland was the area president in Chile and Elder Oaks was area president in Philippines. They resided there. https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/ensign/2002/05/news-of-the-church/two-apostles-will-serve-overseas?lang=eng talks about those assignments and other similar assignments. It is definitely rare.

That is terrifying that law enforcement is doing that. Wonder how many false positives it finds. Probably will send some innocent people to jail.

My understanding is that it is a floor. To itemize charitable donations, the amount must exceed .5% of AGI.

There was a discussion about this a few weeks ago but it appears to have been deleted during the spam purge. The published paper about this can be read at https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.ads6284. "Clovis-first" isn't widely accepted anymore. There have been a lot of sites found that pre-date clovis. Some very early (like the white sands footprints). But the people in this "lost group" are still related to ancient native americans. They aren't a separate people. They have no descendants, but their genetics show that they branched off of the native american dna. Completely different than what the Book of Mormon posits. It is useful to show that people can become "lost" genetically. Another study that showed ancient native american dna was introduced to polynesian also showed this. They could show the native american dna in the polynesian population because of the small population size. But they can't yet find polynesian dna in the native american population because of the large population size. I'd love it if we could find skeletons from 600 BC to 600 AD in the various sites that are possibly related to the Book of Mormon and do dna work on them. I haven't see any of that yet.

In Sheri Dew's biography of Ezra Taft Benson, she writes about discussions between Benson and President McKay on whether he should accept an offer to be a presidential candidate. (page 383) So ChatGPT is a little wrong. Thurmond was definitely a vice president pick for this ticket. And Benson definitely knew about it. He just wasn't allowed to promote or hinder it, per President McKay.

Maybe he is talking about "The Devil" article from Whittaker. See page 77 at https://books.google.com/books?id=skgEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA76&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=2#v=onepage&q&f=false

The construction work on the Salt Lake Temple have finished moving the temple to its new footings. It is now official free of the earth. Still have over a year to finish everything else. https://www.deseret.com/faith/2025/07/01/salt-lake-temple-back-on-feet-milestone-footings-seismic/

If 20k self identify, then I would assume close to 100% go to church or desire to go to church but can't go for some reason. I think it would be fairly rare to self identify as a member of the church and not desire to go to church. How many PIMOs would self-identify in a private, anonymous census? I would think they would say they aren't LDS. I would love more statistical data from the church, but it has never done that and I don't expect it to ever do that. I doubt there is any nefarious designs. I feel it is really only useful for data nerds. As an example of what we can tease out of the existing statistics, https://ldschurchgrowth.blogspot.com/2025/04/2024-statisical-report.html points out that the church has a "children of record" issue. In 2024, only 91,617 were recorded which means that only 0.53% of the church membership is babies. Compared to 1982 (which was 2.5%) that is abysmal. Either lots of women stopped having kids or the women who are having kids are not recording them with the church. I suspect the later. It could be that most of the new converts are men (doubtful) or already had children (and so the kids would be converts and not children of record).

The latest census showed that the self-identified members had barely changed since the last census. See https://ldschurchgrowth.blogspot.com/2022/07/self-affiliated-latter-day-saints-in.html So even though the church baptized over 200k, only 20k were retained.

There hasn't been a sudden stake and ward growth. The requirements that you mention actually make it harder for stakes and wards to be created outside of the US/Canada area. It does make it easier for stakes and wards to be created in the US/Canada but most of the growth is outside of US/Canada. You can see an analysis on what the requirement change means at https://ldschurchgrowth.blogspot.com/search/label/Standards for Creating New Units Also, the blog does deal with PIMOs. The person behind it has done surveys with members and tries to figure out what the actual membership count is for active, believing members. In some areas, it estimates the actual believing members is barely over 20%. You are correct that the church has had declining membership in areas of the world. In 2020-2021 period, 22 US states declined in membership. The fact that you see declining membership in Gilbert is already seen and accounted for by the blog. That's why I like that blog because it looks at a more holistic view. Just because the church is shrinking in Gilbert, AZ doesn't mean it is shrinking. And just because the church is growing astronomically in DR Congo (they gained 57 new congregations last year) doesn't mean the church is growing astronomically. Ever year, the blog will put out some posts around the statistical report. These are really useful in looking at the long term growth/shrinkage of the church. Here's the latest on dealing with congregations - https://ldschurchgrowth.blogspot.com/2025/04/congregational-growth-by-country-in-2024.html You can see that US lost 15 congregations but, shockingly, it is less than it was loosing previously (last year it lost 21 and the year before that it lost 62). The post analyzes whether that means that the church is trying to "hide" the shrinkage but it shows that the number of members per congregation has barely changed. So, they aren't packing more people in a congregation nor are they making a lot of tiny congregations.

This is why I like the bigger push for members to do the initial work so missionaries are just giving the basic lessons. I would hope that converts who come through a member will have more understanding than one who only knows about the church through missionary interaction. I do disagree with your "no throngs of people joining the church". The church is growing fairly quickly (not what it used to do) and this is including those that leave. There are areas of the world where the church is growing impressively and retaining the converts. If you haven't seen https://ldschurchgrowth.blogspot.com/, I'd recommend reading it if you are curious about how well the church is growing or shrinking. It does statistics of the church growth. It looks at individual areas as well as the overall numbers.

It sure sounded like you said that. You had said this about a day ago: I guess after re-reading it, you are talking about quitting without the mission presidents approval. But my first reading of it gave me the understanding that you don't think BYU should ever accept Ryder if he left early, even if the mission president approved it. I was never talking about quitting without mission president approval. I'm assuming that he gets approval to end early and he isn't just leaving. His brother got approval so I expect Ryder would also get approval. I guess we are in agreement, then. We both agree that if he leaves his mission without approval from his mission president, then BYU shouldn't accept him. And if he does leave with his mission president's approval, than there is no problem with BYU accepting him. He isn't getting any special treatment from BYU or from the church. It would be solely on his mission president to decide if he gets to go home early.

Ok, so if the mission president allows Ryder to go home early, then would you still want BYU to deny him? I 100% agree that if the mission president doesn't allow Ryder to go home early and he still does, BYU should not accept him. I also don't believe this was discussed in any deal. Oregon would through a massive fit. Any interaction between BYU and missionaries is heavily scrutinized because of the potential conflict. There have been missionaries who flipped from a different school to BYU while on their mission and investigations were done. BYU is really, really careful around this. So, for BYU to make a deal with Ryder to let him come home early is extremely unlikely. Even a "wink, wink" kind of deal would be problematic. Oregon would bring it up as soon as they hear anything about it. Ryder will have to discuss his plans with his mission president who can NOT be influenced by BYU so if the mission president says no to an early release, then either Ryder goes somewhere else or he stays on his mission.

The person who gets to decide on whether he comes home early is the mission president. Why should BYU care about whether he returned early or not if the mission president approved it. That is who gets to make the decision. Because a mission president did this for a player at USC, it means that BYU isn't a factor in whether he comes home early or not. It is between him and his mission president. I don't think BYU should ever reject a returned missionary who was released by his mission president. That would be a really bad. In 2ish years, we should definitely revisit this. I bet that he will serve between 17 and 20 months. Earlier than 17 months makes no logistical sense and I don't see him wanting to do less than what his brother did. If he does more than 20 months, then he would have a red shirt year that he could still use but I don't know if that is worth it vs being on the practice squad. BYU might prefer him to do the full 24 months because of the logistics, though.

You keep ignoring his brother's experience just because it is USC. So it feels like you are fine with a mission president working with a young man to leave early as long as it isn't BYU. Or do you have a problem with what happened to his brother? Do you think his mission president was wrong? Do you think he was getting preferred treatment?

So, it is acceptable for a mission president to work with a missionary so that he can return home early to play football as long as it isn't with BYU? And can the missionary, after returning home and playing for one year, transfer to BYU and be accepted? Also, did you read the Church News article (the one about his brother)? It says: That makes it look like the Church News knew he was going to be returning home early. So I don't see how the church is in a tough spot when they apparently are already allowing it.

This discussion is about whether or not the 1 year mission that the news articles have mentioned about Ryder is really going to happen. Ryder's older brother is really similar. He left on his mission in January; Ryder is planning to leave on his mission in January (he will graduate early from high school). Ryder's older brother only served 17 months (instead of the normal 24 months). He returned home early so that he could do strength training and be ready to play at USC as a tight end. Ryder is probably planning on doing something very similar. You keep saying that the only reason they are shortening Ryder's mission is because he is a BYU quarterback, but we have an extremely similar situation that is dealing with a USC tight end. So the shortened mission is not BYU related.

His brother had only a 17 month mission so that he could play at USC as a tight end. This isn't about BYU or star quarterback.