- Gary Bergera on Mormon Studies Books in 2026: “Thanks, Chad. Looks like a great year.” Jan 7, 09:15
- on If Religiosity Was Height, How Tall Would Latter-day Saints Be?: “@John Mansfield: Interesting point. Not to throw a grenade in here and it doesn’t deal with averages, but it does remind me of the point Larry Summers made (that got him fired from being President of Harvard) dealing with the effect of different standard deviations (if I recall correctly, don’t remember enough of the details to have an opinion about it) on outliers. @RLD: Your way of looking at it is super helpful. The probability of meeting somebody more religious perspective makes us see, more religious than my way; for some reason my intuition is that 6 foot people are more common than they are.” Jan 7, 07:53
- on Spiritual Experiences Going off the Rails: “That should read “performing AN exorcism”” Jan 6, 18:11
- on Spiritual Experiences Going off the Rails: “Jonathan Green, I’m not ji, but Chad Daybell was instrumental (if not a founder) of A Voice and a Warning (which held conferences and platformed speakers and ideas- Julie Rowe was often a presenter, and of course Chad himself) and was a founder of the LDS publisher Cedar Fort, and had a bunch of his books published with them. My (former) brother in law attended many of his conferences and came back to his family with some pretty wacky ideas (For instance, one night his wofe woke up to find him standing next to the bed ‘performing and exorcism’ on her). These organizations have tried to down play his leadership roles, but many people were taken in by him.” Jan 6, 18:09
- on CFM 1/12-1/18: Poetry for “In the Beginning God Created the Heaven and the Earth”: “I strongly resonate with the sentiment of this post. We as LDS people have largely lost our identity as “creators” in church. Our pioneer ancestors built Zion with their own hands. Today, being LDS means being correlated from SLC. We no longer envision or help build temples, create art for our chapels, write our own lesson plans or curricula, compose, or create humanitarian work. We primarily consume what is produced elsewhere and act as people power. Correlation has brought conformity, safety, and efficiency, but at a real spiritual cost. Correlation means we’re no longer a Zion-building people, but a Zion-maintaining people. It quietly removed opportunities for members to consecrate their talents and innovations. I’ve often wondered what it must be like to work in the church office building or as a GA. They belong to a different church. They are a temple-building people, we are a temple-attending people. They are a relief organization, action-focused on managing charity work across the globe (e.g. Sharon Eubanks). I belong to a donation-based church where I rarely see how tithing money is used, let alone engage in WORKING to put it into charitable action. Sure, I participate in volunteer.org and Mormon helping hands, but that’s not the same. If I could, I would invite creation back into discipleship. 1) Temples would be made using local materials and local LDS architects. 2) Saints would cultivate beautiful, native gardens around chapels and temples instead of acting as Saturday custodians. 3) Local LDS artists would be asked to paint, sculpt, and design sacred interiors as consecrated acts of worship. We’d not have “approved foyer art” we’d have a call for MORE Minerva Techarts painting the walls of Wyoming Chapels. 4) We’d call on local choirs, orchestras, dancers, poets, and playwrights, and ask them to rise to higher, sacred occasions. Maybe instead of always broadcasting the Tabernacle Choir at Christmas, PBS would not know which state or country to point its cameras because Tab Choir equivalents dot the world more frequently than our temples. 5) Maybe we’d finally see the Mormon Shakespeare, if we cultivated him/her by even just engaging them or better yet- challenging them to spiritual heights. I think we are cheating ourselves of the intellectual and spiritual challenge and power of asking ourselves questions like, “what would a temple look like that invited God to dwell there? What is the sacred geometry that literally connects earth and heaven? Draw it out.” Or, “What does the song sung in D&C 109 sound like? Compose it.” Or “What colors and interiors help people to feel spirit, rest, meditate, and attune their souls with heaven? Make the interior design.” Etc. Kudos to T&S and other areas of the bloggernacle for poetic posts, publications, research and books. It shows that we need an outlet, we could be of more service in liturgical settings. A Church that teaches eternal creation needs creators. We, the children of pioneers have aching hearts as the craftmanship of or ancestors still resonates in our hearts and hands, but is only used now for hobby or work, and is no longer needed. We should be calling the saints to deeply sacrifice, intensively aspire to heights of innovation, science, art, etc. in pursuit of Zion and ourselves. Here’s a beautiful and eco-friendly vision for temples. https://prairiesaint.wordpress.com/2025/09/19/garden-temples-eco-friendly-alternatives-for-spiritual-experiences/” Jan 6, 13:22
- on If Religiosity Was Height, How Tall Would Latter-day Saints Be?: “I like it…I’m always looking for good ways to help people understand group differences, and height has a distribution we’re all familiar with. Another way: if you meet a random person, there’s a 50% chance they’ll be more religious than average and a 50% chance they’ll be less religious than average*. If you meet a random Latter-day Saint (more precisely, a random person who identifies as a Latter-day Saint in the CES), these numbers suggest there’s about a 79% chance they’ll be more religious than average, and about a 21% chance they’ll be less religious than average. That’s a big difference, but it would still be dangerous to make assumptions about the religiosity of a particular person. (Of course if you meet a random Latter-day Saint *at church*, that changes things again.) *Assuming religiosity is normally distributed. If it’s close, the numbers will be close. If it’s not, all bets are off, including the 50/50 chance of a random person being above or below average.” Jan 6, 12:45
- on If Religiosity Was Height, How Tall Would Latter-day Saints Be?: “Yep. We are good at meetings.” Jan 6, 11:55
- on If Religiosity Was Height, How Tall Would Latter-day Saints Be?: “Correction: The US Navy pilot height limits are 62 and 77 inches, not 62 and 75. The numbers above are for the 77-inch limit (2.333 SD above a 70-inch mean).” Jan 6, 11:52
- on If Religiosity Was Height, How Tall Would Latter-day Saints Be?: “I suppose the reason for the perception about group differences illustrated with the drawing above is that a lot of attention is drawn by extremes. So polarizing! Using the height distribution above (70 inches as the mean and 3 inches as the SD), I considered the US Navy pilot training height requurement. Candidates must be between 62 and 75 inches tall. For a population with a 70-inch mean height 99.944% pass the height qualification. For a population with a mean 2 inches taller and another one with a mean 2 inches shorter (and the same 3-inch SD) the portions with qualifying height are 99.08% and 99.77%. No difference really when considering who passes this qualification, which is only one of many things it takes to become a Navy pilot. But if you look at who doesn’t qualify for training because they are too tall or too short, the differences are huge. From the 70-inch mean population 0.056% don’t qualify, from the 72-inch mean population 0.92% don’t qualify, and for the 68-inch mean population 0.23% don’t qualify. Those are rejection ratios of 16:1 and 4:1. Small differences in mean make large differences on the tails.” Jan 6, 11:43
