What if Sunday School were more like actual school?

Have you ever disagreed with Church leaders? Did that make you feel guilty? Why?

Did You Know----- Joseph Smith encouraged members to argue about politics and theology? Debates among members were very popular at the time. Winners were declared, and participants felt intellectually stimulated and exercised as a result.

What if the Church was like that today? It would be a change, to be sure. It seems that the main purpose of Sunday School and other organizations in the Church today is for correlated validation of our beliefs. This is good, and often needed, but what about when the kids go on missions or have non-member friends and don't know how to respond to disagreement?

What are your thoughts?
1) How do you feel when you disagree with Church leaders?
2) Would you like to see more energetic discussion in your Sunday School classes?
3) If yes, any ideas on how that could happen?

Check out more: 

http://www.wheatandtares.org/15467/would-joseph-smith-have-liked-the-bloggernacle/

P.S. I secretly hope to one day be an actual part of "the Bloggernacle."
Edit: Thanks Justin for the correction, that Joseph Smith didn't actually organize any of the meetings.

A White, Mildly Depressed Mormon RM Unveils His Secrets

This week on Tuesday I went and saw my counselor, Dr. McBride, because I've been feeling a lot more down than usual for the past couple of weeks.

All pictures blatantly stolen. This one's from "drhurd.com," which is a site I have never heard of and have absolutely no affiliation with or (obviously) loyalty to.

Even though I didn't learn anything earth-shattering, it's always helpful to have someone that I could talk to about my feelings when I'm down and can't seem to get back up. I first started seeing Dr. McBride back in April, when my post-mission depression was at its worst. Seeing him was a major part of the turning point I experienced, where my depression started to actually get better instead of worse. (The other parts of this turning point were 1) talking to my parents about it and 2) getting a priesthood blessing. My parents were the ones that set me up with Dr. McBride.)

At that time in April, I took a "depression/anxiety test" thing, in which you rate yourself on severity of a bunch of sympoms; anything under a score of 10 is pretty normal, 20ish is mild depression, 30 is moderate, and over 40 is getting pretty severe. (... I only very roughly remember those numbers so don't quote me on them.) 

Back in April I felt super depressed and scored I think a 21. This week I took the test again and scored a 17. I think that's accurate too, since I'm definitely not feeling near as bad as I was in April, but still bad enough that I need to change something in my life (which I hope to effect by seeing a counselor). 

When I had a girlfriend this last summer, a big mistake I made was always expecting her to completely fix any emotional negativity I might have felt at the moment. Since breaking up with her ~2 months ago, I've learned a number of coping strategies, things I can do on my own when I feel depressed. It is empowering to have these coping strategies, because this way I feel I can control my own emotions and not just expect someone to see that I'm sad and magically fix it. 

I sat down the other day and wrote in my journal some of the things I've done that have been most effective. I thought it might be interesting and perhaps even slightly helpful to someone to share them here. Presented in the order in which they came to mind (so perhaps subconsciously sorted by how well they stick in my mind, or perhaps by how recently I've done them):

1. Going on long solitary walks
2. Going on long walks with friends
3. Distracting myself by watching a movie or TV show (one of my roommates (who is awesome by the way) allows me to use his netflix account, which, by the way, is completely legal, although I totally judged my big brother for using his mother-in-law's netflix account before I found that out)
4. Getting in touch with my feelings, as opposed to sweeping them under the rug (i.e. writing about them, singing about them, listening to music that expresses them, playing music that expresses them)
5. Talking to people specifically about being depressed (i.e. counselor, home teachers, friends; anybody that has suffered from any degree of depression is especially helpful)
6. Getting enough sleep
7. Exercising
8. Playing trumpet/piano/guitar/singing
9. Spending money (movies in the theater, concerts, new clothes, toys, computer games, etc.)
10. Mindfulness Meditation
11. Getting out into nature (Y Mountain is the closest piece of nature to me these days)
12. Getting enough to eat, and staying hydrated

These are all things that I've done over the past 2 months. One of the things I like best about this list is that only two of them absolutely require any other person's involvement: #2 and #5. Some are awesome and easy and effective to use often, at least for me, e.g. #1. Others I try to limit (#9). Many of these are not options on a mission, unfortunately; I think it would be helpful if missionaries who were feeling stressed out were allowed to simply walk around town for a bit outside of proselyting time without talking to anybody and simply relax because that's something that has helped me tremendously now I'm back.

In my admittedly quite limited experience, the most important principles I've seen are to 

1) take responsibility for your own mental and emotional well-being, that is, not blaming it on anyone else (because you can change yourself, but it's really hard to change others) and 

2) find what works for you. If you were to hypothetically tell me that you're suffering from mild depression for the first time in your life and not sure what to do, I would recommend to you A) meeting with a counselor AND (not "or") B) getting a good book on the subject to help you understand the phenomenon in depth. I read When Panic Attacks by David Burns (he also wrote a very popular book called Feeling Good) and felt that reading the book helped me understand the mechanics of what was happening in my mind, whereas meeting with a counselor helped me to feel encouraged and apply the principles to my life. Plus, my counselor was the one that recommended that I get a book like that in the first place.

So lately I've been feeling alright about this whole depression thing. I admittedly don't suffer from very severe depression, just a mild version, so I urge us all to be mindful of people who do. If someone seems offended too easily, or withdrawn, or angry all the time, or unproductive, or lazy, or unfriendly, or self-absorbed, please keep in mind that it could very well be that they're depressed. When I feel that way I am extremely grateful for friends that offer love, attention, and acceptance that is in no way attached to what I achieve.

(Sorry if that last paragraph was preachy.)

Question: What do YOU do when you're stressed or depressed or anxious? What are the factors in your life that seem to affect your emotional state the most drastically? I'm actually really dying to know so if you would comment that would be fantastic.

Mission-feelings, naiveté, returning, adjusting

One week while I was in the MTC, my brother David wrote in a letter to me that "on your mission you'll experience both the highest highs and the lowest lows of your whole life." It's certainly true that the emotional impact of events on missions is amplified because everything that happens has eternal consequences. Along with that, we have very high expectations for behavior, competence, and results, which is hard for everyone, and coupled with my tendency for perfectionism led to a mild version of the mental and emotional health problems we call "stress," "depression," and "anxiety." 

All pictures on this blog blatantly plagiarized from the Interwebs

One of the things that kept me going during hard times on my mission was the hope and expectation that after my mission, my life would be fine and dandy and I would be able to forget about all the bad experiences and remember only the good, spiritual, faith-building ones, which I would detail in Sacrament meeting to the awe of all 17-year-olds present. I totally expected the crazy high and low emotional swings to stop when I got back from my mission, but they didn't. I expected that my life would return to exactly what it was pre-mission, when everything seemed calm and my life seemed simple because I only had a few goals -- live the Gospel, serve a mission, do well in school, and avoid romantic relationships -- and I knew how to accomplish these goals because I felt I had been absolutely nailing them my entire life. 

On the contrary, my life since getting back from my mission has involved taking responsibility for the rest of my life and facing huge life-altering decisions such as what major to choose, and who to try to date and marry, not to mention how to try to carry with me the positive habits I developed on my mission while somehow adjusting to civilian life. The latter carries with it such challenges as how to spend my free time, and how to not feel bad about watching movies and doing other fun things that don't further the cause of God although they certainly further the cause of my happiness and pleasure. Although that could debatably be said to be part of God's cause. Either way it sure is a big change from a mission, where for 725 straight days I knew exactly how much free time I should be spending and exactly what fun things I needed not do. Other post-mission issues for me to deal with included/include adjusting from being a big, successful, Latvian-speaking fish in a small pond of missionaries to being just another jobless, hobby-less, moneyless, and sometimes friendless 21-year-old RM in the Provo-Orem area; as well as finally confronting my anxiety and loneliness, and the issues that caused them, all of which are things I had been sweeping under the carpet during my time as a missionary so I'd have more time to focus on more important things. 

I believe that in many ways my mission marked the beginning of my (so far admittedly short) adult life. It marked the beginning of me taking responsibility for my choices, my happiness, my emotions, and my abilities. It's hard to be an adult. As Oliver Queen, the crime-fighting Green Arrow's billionaire alter ego, heard from a Russian guy on a prison boat after he'd been shot in the side by their captors and then handed a first aid kit to patch himself up: "life is not for the weak." (If the voice in your head did not read that sentence with a strong Russian accent, go ahead and read over it again. You're missing out.) Sometimes I wonder how my attitude during my mission would've been different if I had realized what hardships lay in store for me after my mission. It seems like it would've been nice to know, at very least so that it wouldn't have been such a shock when it happened. At the same time, I'm not sure if that would've been good for me on my mission; looking forward to such a naive mental picture made it easier to grit my teeth and bear the pains of mission life. 

Thoughts?

Discovering that the Church Doesn't Actually Stifle Critical Thinking On Purpose

Today I had a couple good experiences asking people questions I have about the Church and getting answers. I’ll start by explaining a bit about my questions.

A confused person.

Since getting back from my mission and especially since coming back to BYU and studying engineering, I've tried to consider myself a science-oriented, rationally thinking human being. As a result I've become a bit more skeptical. This is also somewhat left over from my mission, during which I had many, many heated conversations with non-members about religious things, where all my beliefs were closely examined and called into question. I have questions about lots of different things, like evolution, homosexuality, feminism, polygamy, faith and reason, and so forth. Since none of these are typical sacrament meeting or Sunday school topics, I've tried to do some investigating on my own. For example, I read most of a book called Evolution vs. Creationism: an Introduction over the summer. That helped broaden my perspective quite a bit, and I feel more comfortable with the idea of God using the process of evolution to effect what may have been described figuratively to Moses as the Creation. However, none of the ideas I encountered in the book or in subsequent searching are definitely or obviously the correct, final answer to this or any other of my questions. 

Since I don’t have a ton of time to investigate all these questions I have, and I’m also not quite sure where to start, I started feeling a bit frustrated when I heard several times in the space of a couple weeks (in sacrament meeting and then in general conference) Church leaders saying things along the lines of: “There are some people that doubt and question their faith and fall off the boat of faith and spiritually drown. This is sad. If only they were more righteous. But we welcome honest questioning, as in, when people listen to us and stop asking ‘why’.” Okay, I exaggerated that a bit, but only to demonstrate that I was feeling a bit bitter. I felt bitter because I kept hearing Church leaders say “please! Ask us honest questions!” but not seeing them actually provide any opportunities to do so.

I’m in an elders quorum presidency, and sometimes in our meetings, our elders quorum president asks how we can help people that were mentioned in the ward council as having special concerns like feeling lonely or having doubts about the Church. I remember thinking that if they knew that I was feeling lonely (this was a couple weeks ago, that is, a couple weeks closer in time to when I broke up with my now ex-girlfriend) and that I had questions and doubts about the Church, they would focus on me in ward council and then I would finally get the help I needed. (The bitterness just goes on and on.) In other words, I wondered why I wasn't receiving active help from the Church organization. I felt like people just assumed that since I am an RM, and have a calling, and come to Church and to ward activities, that I am doing completely peachy and the biggest problems I have are choosing which of my many adoring female fans to marry, which of the adoring law schools to attend, and which of my adoring non-member friends to baptize.

While I was wallowing in self-pity and thinking about how awful my life is, I started writing down my thoughts into a furious rant. I complained that the Church leaders say they want to answer questions, but never give us any chances to do so. I was even going through all the existing venues where a member could possibly ask a question (such as in sacrament meeting or Sunday school) and systematically tearing to shreds the possibility of anyone hypothetically getting a personal, satisfying answer to their question. And I was really doing a great job at it too, until I got hung up trying to prove that home teaching was a terrible place to ask personal questions.

I tried to prove that because I felt, as of then, uncomfortable when I thought about asking my questions to my home teachers. I suppose that was because as of then we had only had superficial conversations since they had only visited me once and just given the standard home teachers' 5-minute vague summary of that month's Ensign's 1st Presidency message and left. But then I was thinking of how nice it would be to have my own little highly dedicated missionaries to research my questions for me, and I remembered that quote in PMG which says “Home teaching is just missionary work to the members of the Church!” So I realized I was wrong, and after that, the only way I could think of proving that I couldn’t ask questions in home teaching was that my home teachers are just stupid. Unfortunately, they’re not. So after seething a bit more because my frustration and feelings of being the victim weren't completely justified, I was convicted by my conscience, and by the lack of initiative I had taken in actually asking my questions in Church or making it known to anyone other than my journal readers (who are, as far as I’m aware, nonexistent) that I had questions and doubts about the Church, so I decided to ask one of my questions to my home teachers.

It turned out pretty well. Today was the last Sunday of the month, so everyone did their home teaching (myself included) and when my home teachers came over, right at the end of the visit, when they asked me if they could do anything to help me out, I surprised them with a doctrinal question. I said something like this: in science, critical thinking is king. Scientists value questioning the prevailing theories, running experiments, and then adjusting the theories to match the truth that they see in nature. However, in the Church it seems like the opposite. We are taught the truth and told to accept it, and then leaders and missionaries are trained to help people kind of “get over” their critical thinking and logical concerns with the Church, by focusing on growing their faith instead. So how come we focus on faith in the church instead of on critical thinking?

Before I write a bit about their responses, let me just say that if any of you have thoughts about how to answer this question, and time to tell me about it, I’d be happy to hear it in the comments below.

My first home teacher responded by talking about how faith is necessary because we can’t truly know or prove doctrinal things. He shared an experience from when he was at the Conference Center and he felt the Spirit strongly right at the moment when President Monson walked through the door, and how this was such a strong confirmation for him that he hasn’t really had reason to doubt his testimony of the Prophet since then. He also talked about small little experiences he’s had, which are hard to remember the details of, but this resonated with me because I can think of lots of times when a good thing has happened and I have felt like maybe that was arranged by God to help me out, because it sure did make my life easier. My second home teacher responded by talking about repentance and his experience with feeling his sins wiped away, and how this is hard to explain psychologically. (He’s a psychology major.) This also resonated with me because I also remember having good, clean feelings when I’ve repented in the past.

I felt quite a bit more satisfied after asking my question and having a decent discussion about it. And it’s not even that my home teachers had extraordinary or mind-blowingly enlightening answers, but the fact that I just got the question off my chest and that they had any answer to it at all.

A couple hours later, my home teaching companion and I went to visit our home teachee who I respect a lot. He’s a super smart Physics major and I've always assumed that he was the perfect Church member with 100% enthusiasm and no questions. For some crazy coincidence, he took the chance today during our home teaching visit with him to candidly express a concern about not receiving revelation as strongly as he did on his mission. It kind of morphed into a discussion about knowing the Church is true in general, and we had a good talk, about doubts and questions and faith. I felt like we could relate really well and I was super happy to be talking to another person that also loves science and critical thinking, and is strong in the Church, yet has similar doubts and concerns to mine.

Anyways. Today I had a great experience, and the moral of the story is, when active members of the Church have serious doubts or questions about the Church, home teaching is actually a good place to start asking these questions.

Questions for you:
1. Have you expressed personal concerns in an official Church situation? If so, how did it go?
2. How do you think the Church could help active members discuss legitimate questions?

Why on earth you'd want to be converted to Jesus Christ

This post is a transcript of a talk I gave in sacrament meeting.

My assigned topic today is "How do we know when we are truly converted to the Gospel of Jesus Christ?" This is a pertinent question to those who already have a desire to become more converted to Christ. However, today, and hopefully under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, I have chosen to speak about a question that I believe is more poignant (for myself and where I am in life, as well as) for people who are not in the Church, or not even Christian, or who don’t even believe in God; or, for those who are in the Church but are struggling with the question of whether following Christ is what they want to do with the rest of their lives.

It seems to me that in the Church we spend a lot of time talking about how we each have the huge responsibility of gaining a personal testimony and being converted to the Lord, and how this is really what we should do and is really important, but we don’t talk much about WHY. I for one took this question very much for granted at the beginning of my mission, and I think many of you can relate. There I was, a Utah Mormon boy thinking I’m off to conquer the world, and when an atheist asks me why in the world he would ever want to consider believing in God, I have no idea how to answer. I think it’s a hard question to address, especially when you’re on the spot. My goal today is to try to answer this question, at least, as much as I can in 10 minutes with my limited knowledge and experience.

The first reason that I can think of for WHY it is valuable to follow Jesus Christ and strive to be converted to His Gospel is that there are certain laws and principles found in the Gospel that if we follow them we’ll avoid pain and suffering. I’d like to illustrate this principle using a story:

Once upon a time, there was a village of people that lived happily in the middle of the mountains. (Let’s say, Hurricane, UT.) This village was near a very large cliff, and the children from the village loved to play outside near the edge of the cliff. Every once in a while, a kid would get too close to the cliff and fall down. Sometimes they died, sometimes they survived, but always with major injuries. After a while, the village council got together and decided they needed to do something about the situation. They decided to have a morgue car and an ambulance always stationed at the bottom of this cliff, so that whether the falling child was dead or injured, they would be ready with the correct response.

*The end*

The point of this story is to provoke in each of your minds the question, “Why on earth didn’t they just build a fence?!”

I like this story because at times we all view fences as restrictive of our freedom, but this story helps us see a situation when a fence is obviously beneficial. The Gospel of Jesus Christ puts up fences, or commandments, things we should and shouldn’t do, -- there’s the symbolism you were all waiting for -- and I, like any good missionary, would like to argue that these restrictions are for our benefit, in that they keep us from making short-sighted, destructive decisions. Here are a few examples of said decisions that I can think of off the top of my head:

1. Premarital sexual relations, which undermine Stability of Marriage and Family Life. In the culture of the world today, or at least the United States and Europe, it is culturally acceptable to have sexual relations with … anyone, as long as you’re both okay with it. Essentially all of us have these strong sexual desires that at times admittedly can be hard to control. However, scientific research plainly shows that people who, fulfilling their sexual desires, have premarital sexual relations with people other than the one they end up marrying, are significantly more likely to break off their first marriage. I know my dad’s parents divorced when he was pretty young, and it’s not an easy thing. I think it’s probably safe to claim that any given person would rather have one happy marriage throughout their lives rather than multiple marriages that are good for a while, and then end in divorce. So in this way, the law of chastity is a safeguard.
2. Addictions. One thing I learned, when discovering the “real world” on my mission, living outside of Happy Valley for essentially the first time, was that not everyone who drinks alcohol or smokes tobacco, is hopelessly addicted and a terrible person. [That was the impression I’d gotten while growing up from hearing over and over in Church the evils of substance abuse, and simultaneously living in Utah Valley and not actually having any close friends that smoked or drank or that weren’t, to my knowledge, active in the Church.] In fact, there are lots of people in the world that occasionally smoke or occasionally drink alcohol, and apparently suffer no long-term ill consequences. However there are also many people whose lives are significantly worse as a result. In the extreme, substance abuse can totally ruin a person’s life and split apart their family and possibly send them to jail, or the hospital, or death.

These are just 2 instances where the rules are obviously, scientifically beneficial. I’m sure there are many more, and in addition to that, the Lord has said “34 Wherefore, verily I say unto you that all things unto me are spiritual, and not at any time have I given unto you a law which was temporal; neither any man, nor the children of men; neither Adam, your father, whom I created.” Therefore we know that in addition to these visible temporal benefits we also receive spiritual benefits, for example, having the Spirit with us, as a good, comforting feeling; guidance in our daily lives; confidence that God is guiding us; satisfaction and the feeling that God is pleased with the course of our lives; as well as power to resist further temptation.

So I think the first reason why it’s so valuable to strive to be converted to the Lord is that following His commandments, we reap great temporal and spiritual benefits.

Another reason why to be converted, or a second way we can benefit from it, is taken from an essay I recently read called “Confessions of an Ex-Mormon.” When I saw this title I braced myself for jeering about the church, but The “confessions” are actually basically the ex-mormon’s confessions of how he actually really likes the Church, and in fact misses it. This essay was written during Mitt Romney’s campaign for president when tons of people were bashing Mormons all the time – the author had all but forgotten his Mormon roots but when people started such intense mockery, he started getting a little worked up and realized that it was important to him after all. 

Anyways, he talks in his essay about how in the Mormon Church he felt a sense of belonging, which can be often elusive to children growing up, or teenagers, or college students, or, I suspect, anybody else. I personally remember that when I was a deacon first passing the sacrament, I felt like I was a part of something, something big and important. I felt much the same when I was a missionary, and even now when I serve in my calling, or participate in class, or give a talk in church. 

PMG explains it thus: “We are all brothers and sisters in the family of God. This knowledge gives us a sense of identity and belonging. It gives us reason to hope for eternal life in God’s presence,” And this eternal life will be kind of like a big family reunion if you think about it. That’s kind of the ultimate sense of belonging we can feel. So the second reason why we should strive to be converted to the Lord is that it helps us feel a deep sense of identity and belonging.

The last major blessing I can think of is that God gives us strength and inspiration to do things we otherwise couldn’t accomplish. I certainly wouldn’t have lasted 2 years following incredibly strict rules and learning a completely foreign language, Latvian, if I didn’t truly believe that’s what God wanted me to do, and if I didn’t believe that He believed that I could do it. I think whether we’re outside or inside the church, there’s a temptation to beat ourselves up for our mistakes and think we’re never going to change, but the Gospel teaches us that we can change, and faith in God and Christ gives us the power to do so. And as much as I dislike hearing about the pioneers and how they died horrible deaths on their impossibly long journey through snow without shoes, it does prove that people with great faith can surmount seemingly insurmountable obstacles.

I’d also like to note that if we want to really retain our faith, it’s important to act on it and to follow the commandments. When we let the commandments slide, we lose little by little our confidence and our conviction that we actually still believe in the entity that gave us those commandments. I believe that’s one reason why God seems more distant when we let more commandments slip. So I would urge all of you to remember that when you decide to trust God’s commandments, your mind will automatically trust Him more in general; His promptings will seem clearer, the scriptures will seem truer, and you’ll be more able to keep a hopeful, eternal perspective.

I’d like to end with my testimony that I believe that everything I’ve said to you is true. I know a lot of the time we who have grown up in the Church kind of take our lives in the Church for granted; especially when we’re surrounded by other members. Therefore I’d like to invite you to consider in your own lives what concrete differences the Gospel makes; what effect your trust in God has on your well-being; and why you live the Gospel. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

LDS Church's Official Statement on Evolution

The leaders of the Church very rarely make a statement on evolution: just four short documents ever, over the course of the past 100 years. Here's my favorite one:

"Upon the fundamental doctrines of the Church we are all agreed. Our mission is to bear the message of the restored gospel to the world. Leave geology, biology, archaeology, and anthropology, no one of which has to do with the salvation of the soul of mankind, to scientific research, while we magnify our calling in the realm of the Church....

"Upon one thing we should all be able to agree, namely, that Presidents Joseph F. Smith, John R. Winder, and Anthon H. Lund were right when they said: 'Adam is the primal parent of our race' [First Presidency Minutes, April 7, 1931]."

That's from the Encyclopedia of Mormonism entry on Evolution which is at the bottom of the page I've linked to. Wise words.

Reasons why even scientists who believe in God can't admit His existence in their work

This post is extracted from an email I wrote to my brothers who are on missions:

On my mission I talked to lots and lots of people that seemed to think that evolution proved the Bible wrong. Some people even claimed that science itself foreclosed the possibility of the existence of a God, for example, one guy that said to me, "Look at these cars driving, it's proof that science works! What are you guys doing here?" At the time I did my best to explain to them how I thought that religion and science really didn't clash, but I felt I couldn't offer a very good explanation or even an understanding of their side of the problem with the time and research sources (i.e. missionary library) available at the time. However, since getting back, I've wanted to investigate this much more deeply and so that's what I've been doing. So far my main source for research is a book entitled Evolution vs. Creationism that, although it is written by an agnostic scientist type, does a great job at defining the boundaries of what the respective fields of science and religion actually encompass.

In this and subsequent essays I thought I'd share some of the main things that I wish I would've known how to express better on my mission.

A. Methodological vs. Philosophical Naturalism, or, why lots of scientists find it convenient not to believe in God

"Methodological Naturalism" is a way to describe how science works, in that science is an attempt to use only natural (as opposed to supernatural) causes to explain natural phenomena. "Philosophical Naturalism" is the worldview that the universe consists exclusively of matter and energy and that there is nothing supernatural anywhere. Scientists at their jobs are required to be methodological naturalists, but they aren't necessarily required to accept philosophical naturalism and thereby reject the existence of a supreme being. Translation: scientists can't reasonably accept or talk about God in their scientific work but that doesn't mean they can't believe in him. 

In other words, scientists just acting as normal people are completely allowed to believe in God. However, there are 3 main reasons that scientists, when acting as scientists, cannot possibly accept or admit the existence of God: 

1. In ancient cultures, for example, in ancient Greek and Roman mythology, people talked about acts of God as a way to explain seemingly unexplainable events such as the tides, lightning striking, or a sudden severe drought. This is the main thing that people brought up to me on my mission: they'd say "there's no reason to think that God caused a thunderstorm. We know that clouds are formed by evaporation of water, then condensation in the sky, then air currents and ions and electrical charge building up, which causes a giant spark and a loud noise, blah blah blah." 

It's true that if no one had ever questioned the notion that "God caused the thunderstorm, that's all!" then we'd have a much more primitive understanding of weather in general. Indeed, one of the greatest strengths of the scientific method is the chance to question and put to the test any and all previously held notions. Scientists are used to saying "I don't know yet" and then going and performing an experiment. 

However, if Dad published a paper about a question involving physics and lasers and plasmas and stuff and his answer to the question was "because God wanted it that way," his paper would be rejected and mocked; this is not because Dad doesn't believe in God but because it is scientists' job to explain natural phenomena through natural causes. 

However, even though Dad understands what causes rain to fall and clouds to ... encloud themselves, if the sky just happens to be overcast on the day he runs 40 miles for his 49th birthday, he is still allowed to believe that God worked through those natural laws to make it overcast as an answer to his prayers not to be miserable. Thus in his job he must be completely scientific (methodological naturalism) yet in his personal life he can still accept the existence of God (i.e. the opposite of philosophical naturalism).

2. Actually I think I explained #2 as part of #1. Not sure here. Maybe there was another one I forgot. Anyways this whole thing is already super long.

3. "You can't put God into a test tube." That's a quote from somebody who definitely is at least a little bit scientifically viable because they got quoted in this book I'm reading. Their point is that the methods of science require you to hold certain things constant and only let one thing vary; for instance, if you want to see if one washing machine cleans better than a different washing machine, in order for that to be a fair experiment, you would need to use the same type of shirts with the same stains on them for both washing machines, as well as the same temperature, same wash cycle, same detergent, same everything else conceivable that could reasonably affect the quality of wash the shirts get. That's the only way you could really empirically (i.e. based on the results of experiment) determine whether it really is the washing machine that made the shirts cleaner. However, since God is by definition omnipotent, you can't keep His acts constant. There's no way to tell if He decides that every time you use a certain washing machine, the shirts are cleaner (for lack of a better example) ... there's no way to reproduce acts of God and there's no way to make sure that none happen while you're performing your scientific experiment so therefore, science is not a way to know anything about God. Hopefully that kind makes sense. 

Lots of scientists who are really deeply committed to their professions try to convince themselves that since only energy and matter are observable in the galaxy, that's all there is in the galaxy (i.e. no God or supernatural forces). They may even try to convince others of the same. That's a noble belief, but not the findings of a scientific experiment. (That's a paraphrase of a quote from another guy that is probably an anthropologist which really sounds scientific to me. Sorry I don't have the book with me right now.) 

[Editor's note: turns out I was running out of time while writing this so I may revisit it sometime in the future and rewrite it so it's less confusing. But hopefully you get the idea.]

Do evolution and creationism overlap?

On my mission I realized how big of a problem evolution is for the faith of so many people. I've started reading this book called "Evolution vs. Creationism" by Eugenie C. Scott and it's very interesting. The conclusion I'm coming to is that evolution and Christian faith (including faith in the Biblical story of the creation) are not incompatible because science and religion have fundamentally different spheres of authority. Here's a quote from the book:

"The question naturally arises, ... Is creationism testable?"

"As discussed, science operates by testing explanations of natural phenomena against the natural world. Explanations that are disproved are rejected; explanations that are corroborated are provisionally accepted. An important element of testing is being able to hold constant some of the conditions of the test, so that a causative effect can be correctly assigned.

"The ultimate statement of creationism--that the present universe came about as the result of the action or actions of a divine creator--is thus outside the abilities of science to test. If there is an omnipotent force in the universe, it would by definition be impossible to hold constant (to control) its effects. A scientist could control for the effects of temperature, light, humidity, or predators--but it would be impossible to control for the actions of God!

"The question of whether God created cannot be evaluated by science. Most believers conceive of God as omnipotent, so God could have created everything just as we see it today, a theological position known as Special Creationism, or God could have created through a natural process such as evolution, a theological position known as Theistic Evolution.

"An omnipotent being could create the universe to appear as if it had evolved but actually have created everything five minutes ago. The reason that the ultimate statement of creationism cannot be tested is simple: the actions of an omnipotent creator are compatible with any and all observations of the natural world. The methods of science cannot choose among the possible actions of an omnipotent creator because by definition God is unconstrained."

good guys vs. bad guys, or, "how to make a fool of yourself and your political party"

One of the dumbest mistakes any religion or political party or ideological group can make is label or insinuate that their opponents are evil. It's one of the classic logical fallacies, an "ad hominem" attack, which means attacking the person's character rather than the actual problems in their reasoning that there necessarily must be if they are, indeed, wrong. 

And it is simply NOT TRUE. Conservatives that accuse liberals of being selfish brats and liberals that accuse conservatives of being selfish brats are wrong because the vast majority of both parties simply and sincerely believe that the policies and ideas they endorse are truly the better way to go, the way that will make the world a better place for more people. It's easy to find anecdotal support for anything, including the idea that your enemies are evil, but that doesn't mean it's the norm. Politicians that use this emotional way of marketing themselves at the expense of their enemies are being manipulative. That's called propaganda. People that simply laugh about the opposite political party's ideas and hand-wavingly, dismissively cite some ill-documented evidence for why that proposition is absolutely ridiculous, rather than actually giving some logical, factual, provable reasons why they're wrong, are victims of the propaganda mindset.

Another case in point: people who, for one reason or another, attack the Church and try to make it appear that we are evil and manipulative, use these fear tactics (inspiring fear about Mormons by magnifying and distorting obscure incidents from decades and centuries ago). Upon closer inspection, their arguments NEVER measure up to the size of their claims. True, they can ask questions that the most faithful and knowledgeable of Church members don't know the answers to, but they cannot prove that we are evil or worse off because of the Church because it's simply not true.

And this is my main point - we need to remember that the same is true about other churches. True, we Mormons believe with all our hearts that we have the true Church of Jesus Christ with all the correct doctrines. But that does NOT in any way give us license to speak with a condescending tone when we compare our church with other churches -- because the people in the other churches also sincerely believe everything they preach, and it makes them a better person. The things other churches do are not evil. People aren't bad, they're not selfish, they're not evil and they're not necessarily even going to hell right this second if they don't up and join the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints now.

The scriptures don't say that because a person was born in the church, they're better than everyone else. They say "the Lord doth grant unto all nations, of their own nation and tongue, to teach his word, yea, in wisdom, all that he seeth fit that they should have." That means that the teachings of other churches are basically good, not basically bad.

I guess the point of this whole thing is that sometimes in our missionary efforts we emphasize how right we are and how #1 we are more than we emphasize the Christian virtues such as love and tolerance and optimism.

This has been another of Heated Rants on Life with Jan. Tune in next time for "What were they thinking?"

"Follow the Spirit" does NOT mean "Distrust all your previous thoughts and feelings"

More stuff I've been thinking about lately: 

There’s lots of talk in the Church, I feel especially lately, of people saying things like “I had plans for myself, like I wanted to be there in that place, but the Lord didn’t want me to.” Or “I didn’t want to go on a mission, but I knew that I should.” Statements like this are oversimplified and convey lack of trust in one's own understanding or desires. It leaves out some crucial information.

Why?
If I don’t trust myself, my feelings, my thoughts, my beliefs, my opinions, my intuition, who is there to trust? God speaks to me through my feelings and thoughts. He doesn’t speak to me in some other language that somehow transcends human understanding. Yes, it's different than what we think and feel when we understand worldly things, but even the greatest testimony from God and taste of celestial glory is communicated to us through our thoughts and feelings and methods of communication that are familiar and somewhat obvious to us.

It can seem like a good teaching strategy early on in a child's religious education to teach them to doubt their thoughts because they are just learning to recognize the Spirit, but later this will bite them in the behind because they will start to doubt their spiritual experiences.

Going back to the original statements:
"I didn’t want to go on a mission, but I knew that I should.”
What does “should” even mean? It means that really, deep down, you did want to go on a mission because you knew that even though it wasn’t all going to be peaches, it would be hard work and it would be worth it. Deep down you had a testimony and you wanted to share the gospel with others despite your shyness or liking the current situation. Talking about doing things against our will implies a culture of doing things all the time that we don't want to do and call me a hippie but I think that is destructive to the concept of a healthy mind.

“I shouldn’t have trusted my own thoughts, I should’ve trusted the Lord”: It's not that you were and are stupid, it means that your thoughts and understanding of the truth changed over time. At one point you thought one thing and had certain plans, but by a series of experiences and step-by-step revelations, the Lord showed you and taught you and gave you a new point of view, a broader, more far-sighted one that helped you realize what choice would be in line with what you truly value.

Sometimes people say “I always have this tendency to go with what I know and what I think in my mind should be right, but I just need to pay attention to what I feel.” Well guess what. The Lord didn’t give you a brain just as a stumbling block. He doesn’t say “I’ll tell you in your heart,” He says “I’ll tell you in your mind and in your heart.” He says “reason it out first in your mind,” and then promises that He’ll give us either a confirmation, a burning in the bosom or in other words, a fiery conviction that what we have reasoned to is true, or He’ll give us reason to doubt what we thought before – new experiences, new thoughts, new information, a new perspective with new priorities; things that we can understand and know and feel. It’s not some mystical, magical, un-understandable, arcane information that we can never hope to fathom in our lifetime.

Probably the most important and correct paragraph in this rant: I bring these things up because I feel that from an early age, learning about revelation, I was taught (or maybe the teaching was good and I just misunderstood) that I should not trust myself or my reasoning or the things that I think are right, but that I should wait for some kind of mystical all-important confirmation from the Lord. The problem is that I didn't know quite what kind of confirmation to look for - event? epiphane? magical transformation? And since I had been taught from an early age to doubt my thoughts and rely on the Lord instead, I also doubted what I thought might have been the Lord, and there is a continual urge to also doubt my past testimony-building spiritual experiences. The Lord talks to us in our own language and we should not second-guess the Spirit. Elder Bednar says "stop worrying about it, just be good boys and good girls, do what you're supposed to, and later you will find that the Lord has guided you."

If you can't trust your own feelings, thoughts, and reasonings, who can you trust? The Lord helps us recognize and understand our thoughts and feelings, not throw them away.

anyways. I guess my goal is to point out what I see as an unfortunate side of LDS (and maybe Christian in general) culture that we try to exalt the Lord and His status and the miracle of communication through His Spirit by debasing and cheapening the miracle of human understanding. We humans are valuable. God calls us not his pets or his toys or even his servants, but his children. We, all 7 billion of us, are imbued with many God-like qualities and I believe we are good at heart. I hope we can remember that.

If you've read this far, I am truly impressed.

Editor's note: I originally posted this on Facebook, and here are some contributions from the comments section:

If you haven't already, you must read Ralph Waldo Emerson's "The Divinity School Address." It ought to be canonized. What you've written is an echo of the point he draws across in this short address, with one of his main points being that "intuition cannot be received at secondhand." Also, unfortunately, institutions (including, yes, churches) often pervert divine personal intuition.

Diversity, politics and the golden rule

Note: in the following rant I refer to "Mormons" as if I'm an outsider, so I just want to clarify that I believe in the Church and uphold its teachings. I'm only criticizing things about the Church that we as a body of Church members do that are painfully NOT in harmony with what we preach.

All I have ever heard, and especially on Facebook, is "Obama sucks, obamacare sucks, and all liberals are unchristian pigs." All this one-sided criticism against the political party that gained the majority of votes in the last not just one, but TWO elections, and such an astounding lack of diversity of opinion makes me really want to be a liberal, if for no other reason than simply to remind people that the world is not just us good guys vs. them bad guys, not just black and white but there are actual COLORS. Diversity of opinion is a great thing. I know we're all very unique people so I don't understand why it seems so much like everyone and their dog is a white homophobic republican Mormon ... and you might say okay, why is that a bad thing, we stick up for our beliefs, but think for a minute if you lived in a place other than Utah where Mormons are a minority. How would you want other people to treat you? You'd want them to treat you, before all, with love and respect. It seems like what Mormons preach first and foremost is that the Church is true. It turns out that there are a lot of other churches that also believe they're the true Church of Jesus Christ -- but how did Jesus say that all men would know we're His disciples? Did he say "it's the group that says the most often that they're the true Church" ?? Obviously not - he said "By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples - if ye have LOVE one to another."

Of course our beliefs are important. But in our hurry to make sure that everyone around us knows that we reject homosexualism and smoking and other practices, we often unlovingly reject the PEOPLE that do those practices and I'm sure when we do that, they don't feel the love of God through us. And how are they supposed to recognize the truth and feel the Spirit and have a desire to change their lifestyles if they feel threatened or attacked by the very people bearing the message?

All I'm asking is for everyone to please first and foremost LOVE THE SINNER and only after that is done, hate the sin.

I just noticed that this rant kind of changed topics in the middle there from politics to loving sinners. If you're interested in reading about the flipside to what everyone is always sharing on Facebook, please check out some of the following links:

Obamacare explained -- http://www.mormondems.com/archives/474
Food stamps explained -- http://www.mormondems.com/archives/679
Why a Mormon might not be opposed to civil unions for gays --http://www.mormondems.com/archives/203

Thank you for your time and consideration if you've made it this far. If I've angered you, please count to 10 slowly and then feel free to rant in the comments.