- Mike Winder on Outer Darkness, Voids, Dark Nebulas, and the End of the Universe: “Similar to your idea of Outer Darkness (I like your capitalization of it when imagining it as a proper place) being a place without light, I like to think of the depth of the Atonement of Jesus Christ as being a place completely without the Light of God. “My God, why hast thou forsaken me?” is a natural plea when all light is withdrawn. In the physical world, absolute zero (-273.15°C, or -459.67°F) is the temperature when 100% of all heat is absent–the coldest of cold. Spiritually, the depth of the Atonement when the Savior felt all pains, sufferings, and sins, is spiritual “absolute zero”–the level completely without God’s light that cannot get any darker. Is Outer Darkness similar?” Feb 20, 23:29
- on Abraham: A Study in Humanity: “John-I agree, it is a wonderful moment when you realize faith no longer requires constant mental gymnastics and suppression of your conscious. Rose-excellent point! I totally should have included Isaac. I can’t imagine what that must have been like for him. It’s interesting that afterwards Abraham dos not go back to Sarah’s camp, and there is no record of them interacting again. I hope Isaac went back to Sarah. Also, it is astounding how often Abraham is used as justification for doing something…troubling. Another example that comes to mind is “lying for the Lord” :/” Feb 20, 15:23
- on Abraham: A Study in Humanity: “You write, “My heart breaks for all the people involved in this story—particularly Hagar, Ishmael, and Sarah, as well as Abraham.” We add might, Isaac, whose father was willing to offer him as a sacrifice to God. That story used to inspire me–until it didn’t. How many faith traditions have used that Abrahma’s story to justify homicide, genocide, and war? How many religious zealots have used his example to justify slavery, homophobia, and sexism? How many do today?” Feb 20, 14:02
- on Abraham: A Study in Humanity: “Great article. Much better to accept leaders in their weaknesses than to jump through convoluted hoops to say wrong behaviors were right. Thanks for sharing!” Feb 20, 12:38
- on CFM 2/23-3/1: Poetry for “Is Any Thing Too Hard for the Lord?”: “I’ve been reading Richard Rohr lately, who talks a lot about the cross and the death of Jesus in it’s symbolism, etc., taking often a non-traditional view. With that caveat, what jumped out at me in this is one of the primary differences between Jesus and Isaac. Now perhaps God and Abraham could be said to be in the same role, but I don’t know that Jesus and Isaac were. Jesus had a complete and full understanding of what to meant to allow himself to be sacrificed. Did Isaac? Since we don’t have his age confirmed, there’s no real way to know. But Jesus did understand the bigger, purpose, meaning, value of his sacrifice. I can’t imagine that Isaac did, even if he was in his 20s. No conclusions. Interesting ideas only.” Feb 20, 11:41
- on Are Religious Gay People Unhealthy?: “It’s not that non-religious people have a health advantage necessarily, just that the religious health advantage goes away, so it can be statistically tied. And in a sense yes, self-identified “spirituality” is a stronger predictor than self-identified “religiosity,” but in practice the two typically go together (“spiritual but not religious” people are actually quite rare), and a religious sexual minority is, on average, healthier than a non-religious one. Yes, there is indeed always the chance that venue/spirituality or whatever is actually just proxying for a deeper variable.” Feb 20, 07:44
- on Are Religious Gay People Unhealthy?: ““The advantage doesn’t hold when the study sampled from gay venues like bars or gay organizations, and the health benefits for self-identified spirituality are greater than they are for self-identified religion.” Are you saying that changing the study sample venues to gay bars or organizations changes the results so that non-religious people have the health advantage? (What other venues were used?) And are you also saying self-identified gay spiritualists are more healthy than self-identified gay religionist? The thought that I kept having as I read the article (I would have loved to examine the chart but my eyes just aren’t that good) was that perhaps the causal relationship to health is a deeper element than what is mentioned here and what is being measured is correlated to the deeper element not these more superficial ones (like venue and spiritual vs religionist vs none), if that makes sense.” Feb 19, 22:58
- on Brave Like Eve Art Exhibit Open in Bountiful, Utah: “dlc, I’m glad to hear you went!” Feb 19, 22:33
- on How Many Stakes Worth of Immigrants Are There in the Church in the US?: “Majority of our very large for the UK ward are immigrants. It is an interesting challenge that members here are embracing, frequently supplying the needs of entire households. They are rejuvenating the church here for sure.” Feb 19, 12:57
- on Outer Darkness, Voids, Dark Nebulas, and the End of the Universe: “My take on outer darkness: God loves all his children, and has created a plan that in the end gives everyone what they most want–what will make them happiest. Unfortunately, what some people most want is to exercise unrighteous dominion over others. To control. To abuse. If they want to change, God will do anything to make that happen. He’ll sacrifice his Son. He’ll put them through hell in the spirit prison if that’s what it takes. But if they utterly refuse to change, he will not force them. If they really want to spend eternity making other people miserable, he’ll let them. What he won’t do is let them make his other children miserable–that ends with mortality. So he puts all these sons of perdition in one place so they can make each other miserable. I presume God will make it a physically comfortable place if they’ll let him. But they’ve definitely “opted out” of all his efforts to make them better people: no influence of the Holy Ghost, no Light of Christ. So it’s the worst of the worst, at their worst; “L’enfer, c’est les autres” indeed. It sounds like an absolute nightmare to me, but it is the one place in all eternity where people can exercise unrighteous dominion over others, and for those who dwell there that makes it worth it. I hope the experience will eventually cause them to change their minds, and I’m sure God will embrace them if they do. But maybe by the time they get there they’re beyond that point.” Feb 19, 11:14
