The State of Mormon Apologetics

[Glenn101]

2 hours ago, Kenngo1969 said:

A reasonable doubt is a doubt that a reasonable person would entertain.  For example: (1) A Martian did it?  Probably an unreasonable explanation.  Or  (2) Witnesses only saw the perpetrator from a distance, it was dark, the weather was poor, and so on.  While the perpetrator is the same height, same build, and otherwise is similar in appearance to the defendant, the witnesses could not say for certain, given those circumstances, that the defendant is the perpetrator.  Ergo, reasonable doubt.

No disagreement there. I was just arguing what the facts is and isn't.

[lostindc]

On 8/9/2018 at 12:18 AM, Daniel Peterson said:

FairMormon, Book of Mormon Central, and the Interpreter Foundation are all doing quite well.

As of last Friday, Interpreter has published at least one article every Friday for 315 weeks in a row.

We've started up a weekly radio program.  We're working on a major film project.  In September, we'll cosponsor a major lecture on the BYU campus to mark the newest volume in Royal Skousen's Book of Mormon Critical Text Project, with which we've helped.  And, last week, we issued our latest book:

https://interpreterfoundation.org/books/name-as-key-word/

We're neither dead nor invisible.

Fair enough, Mormon apologetics appears living.  Do you know what happened to online debates between Mormon apologists and critics?  In years past, Mormon apologists jumped at the opportunity to debate the critics, what changed?  Speaking of apologists, is there a next crop of young Mormon apologists?  Ten years ago, I would've pointed to David Bokovoy as an up-and-coming apologists, a lot changed. 

Also, what's the focus of the Interpreter, meaning is the Interpreter's mission to provide answers to criticisms of the Church and provide evidences of the Church?  Does the Maxwell Institute and the Interpreter staff coordinate together on projects?  I hope life is treating you well.

 

[Calm]

Quote

In years past, Mormon apologists jumped at the opportunity to debate the critics, what changed?

FairMormon has avoided debates for as long as I have been a member, iirc (15 years).  Some members might do them as personal choices with no attribution to FM because they enjoy debates, using their brains and skills

FM has declined to get involved in any because we see little actual learning or relationship development resulting from them.

Edited August 22, 2018 by Calm

[Glenn101]

18 hours ago, lostindc said:

 Do you know what happened to online debates between Mormon apologists and critics?  In years past, Mormon apologists jumped at the opportunity to debate the critics, what changed?

They still do. Have you not been reading the debates on this board???

This thread is all about that. But I think that maybe a thread could be started on the sate of Mormon critics a.k.a. critics of the Church of Jesus Christ of latter-Day Saints. I think that it may possibly be in a worse state than apologetics by members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

Glenn

Edited August 22, 2018 by Glenn101
added an additional though as usual

[lostindc]

5 hours ago, Glenn101 said:

They still do. Have you not been reading the debates on this board???

This thread is all about that. But I think that maybe a thread could be started on the sate of Mormon critics a.k.a. critics of the Church of Jesus Christ of latter-Day Saints. I think that it may possibly be in a worse state than apologetics by members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

Glenn

 I didn’t realize the debates continued on this board?  Admittedly, I don’t frequent this board like I did maybe 8-10 years ago. 

 

As far as the state of Mormon critics, I think it’s less academic and more humor focused.  To many Mormon critics, Mormonism is already falsifiable so no additional research is required.  Although, there’s still a group of individuals that approach Mormon issues in an academic manner, for instance word print studies or analyzing a particular anachronism.  

 

Sadly, when types like Will Schryver left the arena of Mormon apologetics, then the momentum to boldly defend the Church began to leave.  I also believe the internal struggles, such as the hostile takeover of the Maxwell Institute, also hurt momentum.

 

[mfbukowski]

6 hours ago, lostindc said:

 I didn’t realize the debates continued on this board?  Admittedly, I don’t frequent this board like I did maybe 8-10 years ago. 

 

As far as the state of Mormon critics, I think it’s less academic and more humor focused.  To many Mormon critics, Mormonism is already falsifiable so no additional research is required.  Although, there’s still a group of individuals that approach Mormon issues in an academic manner, for instance word print studies or analyzing a particular anachronism.  

 

Sadly, when types like Will Schryver left the arena of Mormon apologetics, then the momentum to boldly defend the Church began to leave.  I also believe the internal struggles, such as the hostile takeover of the Maxwell Institute, also hurt momentum.

 

As I have said before the problem was that the academic emphasis shifted to Mormon studies.

Religious Studies in general requires that Scholars look at religion objectively. That means that they do not particularly support or condemn any religion but simply study it.

For a university to have credibility  It must employ scholars who publish in peer-reviewed Journals.

And the "peers" come from every religion and in most cases none. So to receive a good review the articles cannot advocate one particular religious point of view.  And it was plainly shown that those who are apologists are not allegedly going in a direction which assists the reputation of the university in being impartial, because apologetics by its very nature is partial.

In short being an apologist is not seen as professional, if professionals are supposed to be impartial in their analysis of religion.

That was Illustrated in the ridiculous Maxwell Institute midnight coup d' etat.

 So soon after that event, most of the serious academics left apologetics and this board with it.

But the good news is that it carries on in journal form in, for example, The Interpreter. We have had discussions here on Interpreter articles which have garnered support from academics.

If you are looking for academic support you might well want to start a thread on an Interpreter article.

[Physics Guy]

I had a reply last week that I somehow couldn't post, getting 403 errors. The gist of it was two points.

1) In response to Clark's comparison of apologetics to string theory. My background in string theory is that I avoided it—like most physicists. String theory was always the fad of an extreme minority among physicists that just happened to have good PR with lay audiences, and whenever strings seemed to be setting up for an orthodoxy they got smacked down, all along. Paul Ginsparg wrote "Desperately seeking superstrings" in 1986, for example. So from my point of view aggressive defenses of string theory by its partisans were indeed apologetics. Insofar as those apologetic defenses of string theory failed to convince anyone who wasn't already inside the bubble, they were wastes of time for the apologists. Insofar as they succeeded in diverting more time and money into string theory than was really warranted, they hurt science. As I said, Mormonism has no monopoly on apologetics or its faults.

2) I agree that professional academics can't afford to do apologetic research. Academic time and money aren't supposed to go to defend predetermined conclusions. Many issues that get used in apologetic arguments are in themselves neutral issues of fact, however, that are of genuine academic interest in themselves. Establishing that the Book of Mormon is so full of Early Modern English grammar that it can't possibly have been composed in the 19th century would be a career-making discovery in a branch of linguistics, for example. The fact that the Book of Mormon is a religious text would be irrelevant to linguists. They'd be just as excited by a similar discovery for David Copperfield. And there are lots of other issues like that, it seems to me.

Just how sure should we be that horses were really entirely extinct in the Pre-Columbian Americas? How tenable would it be to suppose that a few isolated herds somehow survived? It's a perfectly legitimate question, and if it hasn't already been thoroughly settled, re-examining it as a deliberate challenge to mainstream theory would be an acceptable academic contribution by anyone, if one did it properly.

Could it be that cultural transmission occasionally happens quickly, rather than slowly diffusing, through encountering a few travelers from afar and then adopting their ways? Some Mormon apologists have proposed this for Nephi's impact on local Mayans, I understand, but the question is of legitimate interest in general. Cases of this kind of sudden contact are known: Columbus and Cortés, of course; another example might be William Adams the English sailor who hit Japan in 1600 and taught ship-building.

Anything can be studied, in fact. So I don't see why problems for research or scholarship that are important for Mormon claims or interpretations can't be isolated from their religious implications and studied with real academic thoroughness, instead of being given the typical apologetic short shrift. 

 

Edited August 23, 2018 by Physics Guy

[Gray]

On 8/21/2018 at 9:20 PM, Calm said:

FairMormon has avoided debates for as long as I have been a member, iirc (15 years).  Some members might do them as personal choices with no attribution to FM because they enjoy debates, using their brains and skills

FM has declined to get involved in any because we see little actual learning or relationship development resulting from them.

Probably the only fruitful kind of debate would be a public, live, moderated debate. You often see them hosted at religious colleges. Anything online degenerates into fighting and trolling.

[Gray]

On 8/17/2018 at 12:01 AM, mfbukowski said:

Of course this is only true if you think religion is about objective facts instead of people finding meaning in the universe.

So you are just a hundred eighty degrees off that's all.

It's like criticizing a violinist  for not proving string theory. After all doesn't  a violin have strings? So shouldn't the violinist be an expert on strings?

It's hard to imagine how one could be more wrong.

If I were to quote this in my sig, would you be okay with that? I quite like this.

[Physics Guy]

I think I was the one than whom it was hard to imagine how one could be more wrong.

For me it's hard to imagine how anyone could be even a little bit wrong, about anything, if there is no such thing as objective truth.

[Calm]

4 hours ago, Gray said:

Probably the only fruitful kind of debate would be a public, live, moderated debate. You often see them hosted at religious colleges. Anything online degenerates into fighting and trolling.

Those don't really demonstrate much usually, imo, except who is the better debater.

ongoing written debates with references for each point can be useful if both involved actually engage what the other says.

Edited August 23, 2018 by Calm

[mfbukowski]

On 8/23/2018 at 2:48 AM, Physics Guy said:

 

Anything can be studied, in fact. So I don't see why problems for research or scholarship that are important for Mormon claims or interpretations can't be isolated from their religious implications and studied with real academic thoroughness, instead of being given the typical apologetic short shrift. 

 

So how does one study the effect of the atonement in one's life and it's benefits?

Does one study it perhaps as one might study the benefits of mindfulness meditation or does one study it as a historic phenomenon?

Does it matter who "discovered" mindfulness meditation and in what year?  And precisely which Bodhi Tree he was sitting under?

Or does one get out your atonement meter to see if it is real?

This difference is precisely why a physical approach won't work.

It is a psychological question not one about the state of the universe. One might use psychological statistical means to determine the efficacy of the belief, but it's physical existence as a measurable phenomenon simply doesn't exist.

Is mindfulness meditation "TRUE" in any sense which is verifiable?

It's a category error.

It's like walking through a college campus and looking all the at all the buildings and saying "well I see all these buildings but where's the "University?" I heard it was a good University but how are these buildings better than others?"

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category_mistake

 

Edited August 24, 2018 by mfbukowski

[mfbukowski]

On 8/23/2018 at 6:09 AM, Gray said:

If I were to quote this in my sig, would you be okay with that? I quite like this.

Sure!

[mfbukowski]

On 8/23/2018 at 7:19 AM, Physics Guy said:

I think I was the one than whom it was hard to imagine how one could be more wrong.

For me it's hard to imagine how anyone could be even a little bit wrong, about anything, if there is no such thing as objective truth.

Turn up the volume on this and listen to it till it makes sense.

We know what truth and falsity is we just don't know how to define it.

https://youtu.be/CzynRPP9XkY

 

Edited August 25, 2018 by mfbukowski

[mfbukowski]

It's interesting. I was raised on the notion of category errors almost literally. Gilbert Ryles book was published just a few years before I was born.

I have known about category errors philosophically since about 1966, and they are just a natural part of my life and the way I see the world.

It never occurred to me that people actually don't understand them.

If I had known that earlier maybe I just would have started with them here, but I think I kind of did a long time ago.  

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category_mistake

It seems like the post about the university and about the violin strings struck a chord.

[clarkgoble]

On 8/23/2018 at 3:48 AM, Physics Guy said:

IIn response to Clark's comparison of apologetics to string theory. My background in string theory is that I avoided it—like most physicists. String theory was always the fad of an extreme minority among physicists that just happened to have good PR with lay audiences, and whenever strings seemed to be setting up for an orthodoxy they got smacked down, all along. 

My apologies on that. I could have sworn from the other forum you'd said you did work in that area. My bad. Perils of writing the first week of school when I'm trying to adjust my sleep to waking the kids up at 6:30 for school while trying to go to the gym for a few hours once I get them down to sleep. (It's not exactly working out for getting 8 hours of sleep each night - throw a baby into the mix and things can get a bit muddled)

On 8/23/2018 at 3:48 AM, Physics Guy said:

So from my point of view aggressive defenses of string theory by its partisans were indeed apologetics. Insofar as those apologetic defenses of string theory failed to convince anyone who wasn't already inside the bubble, they were wastes of time for the apologists. Insofar as they succeeded in diverting more time and money into string theory than was really warranted, they hurt science. As I said, Mormonism has no monopoly on apologetics or its faults.

I think then the analogy worked. I was more worried you'd take exception to that point. I think the place the analogy breaks down is that I think there's value to staying in the church long enough to gain a testimony and progress in the spirit. I'm not sure there's value in String Theory beyond some of the interesting mathematics. Especially to the degree there's a fixed amount of funding. I should note that I don't think String Theory is alone in that. I tend to think a lot of high energy physics and fusion physics wastes ridiculous amounts of money that could be better spent in other areas of research. (Saying that after working in fusion for a while)

On 8/23/2018 at 3:48 AM, Physics Guy said:

I agree that professional academics can't afford to do apologetic research. Academic time and money aren't supposed to go to defend predetermined conclusions. 

Although I'd argue that a large section of the humanities - especially interdisciplinary work with a moderate emphasis on activism - ends up being little more than apologetic research. But I'd agree with the general thrust. You see this I think a bit at BYU where apologetics doesn't really count for much academically and may actually be an overall negative for those engaged in it.

On 8/23/2018 at 3:48 AM, Physics Guy said:

For me it's hard to imagine how anyone could be even a little bit wrong, about anything, if there is no such thing as objective truth.

For those more of a relativist bent it just wrong relative to a community's norms. You can then add in verification procedures although the results are interpreted relative to the group. But that can still lead to change either due to simplicity or new phenomena that contradicts some claim within the community in terms of community norms. So from a scientific perspective you get the beginnings of that with the speed of light & aether experiments by the very early 20th century. That then set the stage for Einstein's work. However the transition then largely becomes a conversation between two communities. One with the old paradigms and one with the new. While the two communities can still discuss a lot because most of their norms are shared there's clearly places where that's not as easy. You then get appeals to experiment, simplicity, and aesthetics. But in general what happens is what's popular with the young changes and the old guard dies off.

Again that's not my position although there are elements I agree with. But overall I'm a realist of sorts not a relativist. I do think experiences have meaning in terms of context - especially theoretical backgrounds. But I think over time reality acts on them in a fashion relativism doesn't really do well engaging with.

 

Edited August 25, 2018 by clarkgoble

[mfbukowski]

18 hours ago, clarkgoble said:

My apologies on that. I could have sworn from the other forum you'd said you did work in that area. My bad. Perils of writing the first week of school when I'm trying to adjust my sleep to waking the kids up at 6:30 for school while trying to go to the gym for a few hours once I get them down to sleep. (It's not exactly working out for getting 8 hours of sleep each night - throw a baby into the mix and things can get a bit muddled)

I think then the analogy worked. I was more worried you'd take exception to that point. I think the place the analogy breaks down is that I think there's value to staying in the church long enough to gain a testimony and progress in the spirit. I'm not sure there's value in String Theory beyond some of the interesting mathematics. Especially to the degree there's a fixed amount of funding. I should note that I don't think String Theory is alone in that. I tend to think a lot of high energy physics and fusion physics wastes ridiculous amounts of money that could be better spent in other areas of research. (Saying that after working in fusion for a while)

Although I'd argue that a large section of the humanities - especially interdisciplinary work with a moderate emphasis on activism - ends up being little more than apologetic research. But I'd agree with the general thrust. You see this I think a bit at BYU where apologetics doesn't really count for much academically and may actually be an overall negative for those engaged in it.

For those more of a relativist bent it just wrong relative to a community's norms. You can then add in verification procedures although the results are interpreted relative to the group. But that can still lead to change either due to simplicity or new phenomena that contradicts some claim within the community in terms of community norms. So from a scientific perspective you get the beginnings of that with the speed of light & aether experiments by the very early 20th century. That then set the stage for Einstein's work. However the transition then largely becomes a conversation between two communities. One with the old paradigms and one with the new. While the two communities can still discuss a lot because most of their norms are shared there's clearly places where that's not as easy. You then get appeals to experiment, simplicity, and aesthetics. But in general what happens is what's popular with the young changes and the old guard dies off.

Again that's not my position although there are elements I agree with. But overall I'm a realist of sorts not a relativist. I do think experiences have meaning in terms of context - especially theoretical backgrounds. But I think over time reality acts on them in a fashion relativism doesn't really do well engaging with.

 

I think you are mixing ontology with epistemology.

But I doubt that that discussion is relevant to Mormon apologetics, and probably for another forum.

Just saying.

Relativism is about what the truth is. Realism is about what reality is.

Edited August 25, 2018 by mfbukowski

[clarkgoble]

18 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

I think you are mixing ontology with epistemology.

But I doubt that that discussion is relevant to Mormon apologetics, and probably for another forum.

Just saying.

Relativism is about what the truth is. Realism is about what reality is.

They blur in many positions. A realist thinks reality acts in such a way that it's epistemologically knowable. A relativist oft (although certainly not universally)  thinks that the nature of the universe is such that it's not knowable. There's then also the issue of whether we mean knowable in terms of an agent at given point in time or a community in the long run. 

[Gray]

On 8/24/2018 at 7:28 PM, mfbukowski said:

Sure!

Thank you!

 

[mfbukowski]

4 hours ago, clarkgoble said:

They blur in many positions. A realist thinks reality acts in such a way that it's epistemologically knowable. A relativist oft (although certainly not universally)  thinks that the nature of the universe is such that it's not knowable. There's then also the issue of whether we mean knowable in terms of an agent at given point in time or a community in the long run. 

REALITY acts?

Anyway as you know, the contraries of all these statements also apply.

I myself am an anti realist who believes that reality is completely knowable because reality IS what we know and experience, because we construct reality as we know it, and to some extent since everyone creates their own reality that would make me a relativist, because General statements about truth can't be defined.

So it's a bit complicated.

I just didn't want anybody to think that these categories are quite so clear-cut.

 But as I said these discussions probably aren't suitable for this forum anyway.

[canard78]

On 8/8/2018 at 10:37 PM, smac97 said:

A few thoughts:

1. There really isn't much new to discuss.  We end up re-litigating the same topics over and over again, or else minor variations of the same topics.

2. The topics that are discussed seem to have reached sort of an end-stage.  The data points and talking points are being recycled.

3. FAIR, Mormon Interpreter, BookofMormonCentral, Jeff Lindsay, and a few other resources seem to have addressed pretty much all of the substantive criticisms of the doctrines of the Church.  That is not to say that these explanations and such are undeniably persuasive.  There's still plenty of room to disagree.  But both sides have argued each other into a stalemate.

4. Online debates about the merits of the truth claims of the LDS Church can only get you so far.  Moroni's Promise, prayer, faith, humility, service, patience, endurance, and so on are, I think, the means God intends for us to use when seeking a determination on the Church's truth claims..  Adversarial discussions . . . not so much.

Thanks,

-Smac

I think you’re right on this. 

I started to work through the two sides of the arguement about 6 years ago. It was pretty much mostly worked out by then. The infamous CES letter was only a (poor) consolidation of the issues into a laundry list of what had already been discovered and debated previously. 

These days, the only new items of controversy tend to be new decisions or directions taken by the leadership (such as the Nov 2015 policy). LGBT+ apologetics (and perhaps gender equality apologetics) might be all that’s left for new content and debate. 

[jkwilliams]

18 hours ago, canard78 said:

I think you’re right on this. 

I started to work through the two sides of the arguement about 6 years ago. It was pretty much mostly worked out by then. The infamous CES letter was only a (poor) consolidation of the issues into a laundry list of what had already been discovered and debated previously. 

These days, the only new items of controversy tend to be new decisions or directions taken by the leadership (such as the Nov 2015 policy). LGBT+ apologetics (and perhaps gender equality apologetics) might be all that’s left for new content and debate. 

The only new stuff I can think of is Skousen and Carmack's work on Early Modern English in the Book of Mormon. I'm old enough to remember when real effort was made to situate the Book of Mormon peoples in an actual Mesoamerican setting. That seems to have gone by the way in favor of textual parallels.

[clarkgoble]

5 hours ago, jkwilliams said:

The only new stuff I can think of is Skousen and Carmack's work on Early Modern English in the Book of Mormon. I'm old enough to remember when real effort was made to situate the Book of Mormon peoples in an actual Mesoamerican setting. That seems to have gone by the way in favor of textual parallels.

I'm not sure that's true. It was just a few years ago that both Sorenson and Gardner had books out on the subject. I still read articles dealing with mesoamerica. Admittedly there's been less the past three years. (Last interpreter article I can see focused on mesoamerica was 2015) I actually half way thought about submitting an article on the problem of bows since I found the stuff there and at FAIR to be somewhat problematic after looking up most of the primary references. But then I got that blood infection, needed heart surgery and probably that's just not going to happen for a while.

Carmack's work certainly has been the most interesting primary work of late relative to the Book of Mormon. But yes, much of the rest is either careful reading of the text looking at literary features (done by both The Interpreter and The Maxwell Institute) or more parallel issues largely about how the OT is used.

I should also throw out Brian Stubbs work on Uto-Aztecan, although I confess I'm very, very skeptical there and think he needs to hit a pretty high degree of evidence for me to take it too seriously. But it definitely is something closer to what Carmack is doing than the typical work.

 

 

[jkwilliams]

2 minutes ago, clarkgoble said:

I'm not sure that's true. It was just a few years ago that both Sorenson and Gardner had books out on the subject. I still read articles dealing with mesoamerica. Admittedly there's been less the past three years. (Last interpreter article I can see focused on mesoamerica was 2015) I actually half way thought about submitting an article on the problem of bows since I found the stuff there and at FAIR to be somewhat problematic after looking up most of the primary references. But then I got that blood infection, needed heart surgery and probably that's just not going to happen for a while.

Carmack's work certainly has been the most interesting primary work of late relative to the Book of Mormon. But yes, much of the rest is either careful reading of the text looking at literary features (done by both The Interpreter and The Maxwell Institute) or more parallel issues largely about how the OT is used.

I should also throw out Brian Stubbs work on Uto-Aztecan, although I confess I'm very, very skeptical there and think he needs to hit a pretty high degree of evidence for me to take it too seriously. But it definitely is something closer to what Carmack is doing than the typical work.

I guess I read Sorensen and Gardner differently in that they seem to be more about reducing possible incompatibilities between the Book of Mormon and Mesoamerica. But that's just my impressions. Yeah, I'm quite skeptical of Stubbs, too, but that's a good point: I had forgotten about him. 

[MickeytheMuse]

On 8/9/2018 at 12:43 PM, Peppermint Patty said:

Some would say that Melanie Trump is the actual president 😏.

Even outside the quantum level mathematics isn’t the truth. For example what is one raindrop plus another raindrop? It’s not two raindrops, it’s one bigger raindrop. There are thousands of areas that mathematics just doesn’t cut it.  It’s the best we have, but I wouldn’t say math is truth by any stretch of the imagination.

And try telling a flat earther that the earth is spherical.  That’s not their truth.

 

On 2018-10-11 4:29 p.m., Mickey Bromley wrote:

 I have had several very unusual experiences in and out of the Church. I have two Patriarchal Blessings...one given to  me when I first converted at 17 yrs old...and the other while I was on my Mission. One tells me I will understand the gospel to a remarkable degree...The other tells me I am to search knowledge from good books in and out of the Church. My research has lead me to understand that the world we live on is not a round spinning ball as we've all been taught.

I bore my testimony to my Bishop in a one on one meeting a few months ago while between classes. I told him that I knew the Church was true and that I had recently learned for myself that the earth was flat and not a round spinning ball. I told him that as crazy as that sounds I could present convincing evidence to such and that we also do not live in a Heliocentric Universe. When I spoke the Holy Ghost came into the room and we both felt it. So now that we know what I am talking about is true.....what do we do~? Joseph Smith translated Helaman 12:15 to support Heliocentric-ism. One can't help but wonder if he did so to avoid ridicule as there was quite a lot of debate over the subject at that time. People were being prosecuted for believing the world was flat. I read one occasion where Joseph Smith berated his brethren in the Council of Fifty for ridiculing a brother who still did. I know the Church is true, but I also know the world is flat....The evidence is there upon serious investigation which I've done, pondering and praying, which I've done, and confirmation by the Holy Ghost which happened just as I said above. So ......what now? Help me understand this discrepancy....I'm sure Heavenly Father wants all his children to not only find joy and peace on Earth, but to understand the wonderful home he has built here for us. This is his house.....we should not be taught falseness about it. If we don't stand against a lie, we are standing for it.....I don't think Heavenly Father wants the Church to be teaching anything that is false, so let's get down to this and clear up these issues and move on. There is not much time left as we all know, the time for this to come out in the Church is up to the Lord, but I feel moved by him to bring it to your attention....it's in your hands now....good luck~!