Review of LDS Conference 2009

It is a delight as always to hear from the leadership of the Church and this conference is no different. In response to my previous post I'm going to cover some of the highlights of the conference.

We went to the local Stake Building (where we also attend church on Sundays) to watch the morning sessions on Saturday and Sunday. I went alone to the Priesthood session Saturday evening and out for wings afterward with a few church buddies. Mmm...wings. The afternoon sessions we watched at home because we can only handle keeping the kids reverent for 2 hours at a time.

The topics were tied to the issues of the today:

• Pornography = Bad
• Times are hard. Prepare for the long haul.
• Be good.
• Look for the good in the world.

Only one of the talks really stuck out for me, but for very obscure reasons. I approach my religion very logically and every once in a while I come across a loose end in my head that needs tying up. The talk given by Elder Scott cleared up one for me on the salvation of little children. It wasn't even the point of his talk, but one of the things he said just stuck out and it all cleared up for me.

If you are interested in seeing conference or just one of the talks you can watch Conference Online. For my crowd I suggest the talks of Dieter F. Uchdorf and Jeffrey R. Holland. They tend to appeal to the academic.

Be receptive.

LDS Conference

This weekend starts the 179th Annual General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. So many people aren't really sure what this is and even more have no clue that it exists. I'll take the time to explain what it is.

First some orginizational structure to help explain the conference. At the head of the Church is the Prophet (Thomas S. Monson). He is part of the First Presidency and has two counselors (Henry B. Eyering & Deiter F. Uchdorf). Under them is the quarum of 12 apostles. All of these reside in Salt Lake City, but they spend a lot of their time all over the world. The next tier is the Seventies and there are currently 8 quarums of the Seventy. These are assigned to geographical areas and reside in these areas. The 4th tier in leadership is the Stake Presidents and the Fifth Tier is the Bishops.

Ok, now that we've given some background on the structure of the church leadership we can talk about conference. The main purpose is for the general membership to hear from the Prophet, Apostles and Seventies. The Prophet and all the Apostles speak at every conference. A smattering of Seventies are thrown in to fill out the schedule. After fastig and prayer they prepare talks on current issues, old issues and church direction. There are five, 2 hour sessions of conference. Saturday: Morning, Afternoon & the Priesthood session. Sunday: Morning (geared for non-members) & Afternoon. Incidentally the Relief Society (Women's organization) holds a primer meeting a week before conference.

Conference can be seen at all Stake Centers and some church buildings via satellite. Many local cable companies carry the conference on their public access channels. The BYU channel, available through most digital cable and satellite services, also broadcasts conference.

in my family we have a tradition of going to the church to watch conference and having a picnic between sessions. Even though we can watch it at home I do prefer watching at the building.

It is interesting to note that as the church has grown that technology has grown to keep up with it. When members began to be so spread out that they wouldn't get to conference, magazines sent through international mail brought the conference. When the church was large enough that a significant portion of members would not be able hear it, radio began to be in wide use. When there was a significant number of people who would never see the leadership speak, TV began to be in widespread use. When there began to be a significant portion of members that lived outside the US, satellite transmission became available. Now the entire church can watch the conference at the same time all accross the globe. I am impressed whenever I think about it.

Be one.

Darwin is dead, long live Darwin

200 Years since Darwin died. Not long enough aparently. It seems the people of the world are still having trouble accepting the theories that he put forth. Let's talk about the two major ones he used:

Natural Selection: This is the idea that over the course of time nature chooses which animals survive and which do not. It's more focused on individual animals than entire species. The selection is if this specific animal is selected to survive or not. Some of the major criteria for selection are:

• Poor Fitness - An animal might have a defect, did not develop properly or is deficient in some way when compared to others of the species. These sub-prime animals are more likely to be eaten by predators, become ill and are less able to compete for resources with the rest of it's species.
• Good Fitness - It might have an advantage by being better developed or be better suited to compete for resources.
• Genetic Traits - Some recessive traits can surface at times that can give an advantage or disadvantage to a particular animal.
• Disease, Famine & the like - Some animals in a species will be better suited to survive these events and some are not.

All of these processes favor one individual over the other ensuring that the animals with the best traits have the highest probability of survival. Polar Bears are a good example of this right now. Those bears that have learned to fend for themselves on land will do better than those who still cling to the water.

Evolution: This is the aggregate effects of Natural Selection. Here are some key processes of evolution:

• Inheritance - The animal that has the best odds of surviving to adulthood will pass on its genetic material. These could be considered the "winners" of the Natural Selection game. As time passes the winners will outbreed the losers and the species will look more like the winners.
• Adaptation - Since an environments play a key role in the Natural Selection odds game, a species will slowly change to fit its environment. If swimming is an advantage then only the best swimmers win.
• Evolutionary Tree - If a species is in two different environments the winners for each location will have different traits. If this goes on long enough you will have to call them two different species.

So eventually all species will evolve as time passes. Darwin obsserved this at the Galapagos Islands. He watched the finches. Some had long beaks and some had short. When a drought came only the hard seeds were available and those birds with long beaks had trouble opening these seeds. The short beaked finches had less of a problem so they were the winners and because there were more of them on the Island. If the drought continued long enough only the short beaks would survive.

So how does this relate to religion? Well if all species evolve from a lesser evolved version and that animal in turn evolved from a lesser evolved version then it stands to reason that if you go back in time you will find that similar species evolved from a more generalized species. It also stands to reason that if you go back far enough that you will find that all species evolved from a single form of life. This idea that all life came from the same origins is now called Darwinism. It completely throws out the whole creation thing. If Adam and Eve descended from early hominids then God saying Alakhazam! is all wrong.

And there it is, the evidence is overwhelming and it doesn't bother me in the least. Why? No, I haven't disregarded it and chosen to ignore it. No, I haven't come up with some crazy "God was there all along guiding it" scheme. I just realize that nowhere in my beliefs, scripture or by any other authority in my religion has it been stated that evolution and darwinism is wrong. Wait I could be wrong.

Here's a Bible, lemme check...um...er...aaaaaand...no. It's not in there. Lemme check the Book of Mormon...ah...uh...no. The prophets? Nnnnnnnnnnnope. That's right it's not there and I'm ok with that.

Be evolved.

Gay and Prime Minister

Iceland has a gay Prime Minister, whoop dee doo! It's all over the news. "The first world leader who is gay!" And everyone cheers.

I hate to break all your bubbles, but nothing about any of those statements is true. Johanna Sigurdardottir is not the first gay world leader. There are enough leaders who we suspect were gay in the last two centuries that odds are one of them was actually homosexual. Buzzkill on that one.

Next what is implied is that she has been elected to this position as a "gay" candidate. Far from the truth. First off she wasn't elected Prime Minister, the old one stepped down and she was next in line, but she was a gay candidate right?

Wrong, she originally ran in 1978 with her husband (Þorvaldur Steinar Jóhannesson) at her side. She then did a great job as a politician for over 20 years before she married a woman in 2002. If she had started her career in 2002 as a "gay" candidate she would hever have been elected to the position, but a liberal country of 320,000 people is willing to forgive a lifestyle choice of a good and popular politician.

So this first gay leader is actually the most recent politician to be promoted by someone else's incompetence. Not something that screams wow.

Good on Iceland though for not kicking her out in 2002.

Be informed.

I have a theory...

Most people in the US know about of the "Theory of Evolution," the "Theory of Relativity," experienced the "Theory of Gravity" and heard of the "Theory of Intelligent Design." Noticing a theme here? The word theory, however correct its usage might be, has been misinterpreted by a lot of folk and I want to set them straight.

What theory is.

When viewing phenomena or the results of the phenomena a person might see some relation between the different events. The relationship observed might have some reason for the correlation between the events. A person can then come up with their own explanation for why the events work together. This explanation is a theory. At this point the theory is not usually well known because there is no specific proof to establish the theory and because they just came up with it.

Theories can take three courses at this point:

1. The idea is declared self evident by the creator of the theory and spread around like truth. This is quite often followed up with certain logical proofs that might or might not stand up to scrutiny. If someone does take the time to scrutinize the theory supporters of it will either attack the scrutinizer or dismiss the criticisms given by the same or both.
2. The originator or their colleagues find ways to test the theory by forming hypothesis and testing them. If enough evidence is given that the theory is correct then the theory is published with its supporting tested hypothesis. This publication is then distributed to people who would care about such things and they test the theory with the same or new hypothesis. If all this testing supports the theory then a new discovery is presented to the world with “Theory” in its name.
3. The idea is marked “interesting” by the originator and forgotten. It might be discovered later by someone else.

The major drawback to the idea of a theory is that it is inherently not certain. The best way to explain this is that a theory has a probability of being right. As we test the hypothesis related to the theory the probability of it being correct either moves toward or away from 100%. Theories, by their nature can never be 100%. They can be 99.9999% correct, but never 100%.

Oh yeah, but what about…

Two plus two is four, right? Well if I have a cup and I add water to it I have two items. Is it a cup of water? The water and cup are made up of billions of atoms. Are they more than one cup of water? Nothing is certain and that is why people have a problem with theories.

People like certainties. They know grass is green, like macaroni and cheese, CSI is their favorite show, 1+1=2, the sky is blue and Elizabeth Hurley is hot. They don’t want to forget to water their lawn, buy Mac & Cheese at KFC, see Big Bang Theory, pour water in a cup, or see Elizabeth get old. So when the scientific community says “we saw a correlation between these things, came up with a few theories, tested them and found this one to be the most likely with a 97% certainty” people tend to be a bit put out:

“What do you mean 97% certainty?”
“Well, a better revision of our explanation might come along.”
“So why did you tell us?”
“Well we thought it was important. It allows us to predict these other things that might lead to better technology.”
“Develop technology from an uncertainty. How can you build on a shaky foundation?”
“Can you come up with a better explanation?”
“No.”
“Then this is the best one you have.”
“Yes, but it’s not certain.”
“Augh!” Scientist goes to bang his head against the wall.

Of course!

So far I’ve been talking about theories that take course #2 (above). These would include things like the Theory of Relativity, the Theory of Evolution and the Theory of Gravity. Course three would include the Theory of Evolution at least till Darwin got a hold of it. Gregor Mendel saw that his plants could evolve based on natural selection and marked it as interesting. Darwin picked it up later and said this was something more than just interesting.

Course #1 is where we find Intelligent Design. Someone came up with that, supported it with some circular logic and announced it to the world. Then the hypothesis testers got a hold of it and, well, tested it. It didn’t fly. The supporters of the Intelligent Design (who avoid calling it a theory) then dismissed the scientists as bias against their cause and promptly ignored the scientist’s findings. Sad. The Theory of Intelligent Design has a lower chance of being correct than the Theory of Evolution and so therefore we follow the Theory of Evolution. If something else with a higher probability of being correct we’ll follow that. I find this to be unlikely.

Gimmie the odds

Science is all about probabilities. It’s not easy to accept, but think of the things you accept every day that are not certain. Dinner. What if it gets burned? Job. You might get a better offer somewhere else. Girlfriend. Well, you’re not married. Jell-O? Wait, no. You can always be sure about Jell-O.

Be theoretical.

Skeptical Inquirer

I've got a new blog. One that I'll actually update once in a while. I guess my purpose here needs to be defined. Why am I here...at blogspot and such?

Well, being a Mormon Skeptic does not mean I'm against the LDS church. Quite the opposite really. I just apply good old fashioned Skepticism to examine the world around me. I also want to show that just because you want to use the rules of skepticism does not mean you have to be atheist (even though it often leads there). It means that I am willing to take a second look at things and change my views when I'm wrong.

Be good.

Catholic Geneology Ban

Ok, I wanted to wait until the follow up article or at least a statement from my church, but this irks me enough to say something before I have all the facts. So sue me.

Filing suit now.

This is in response to the information provided in this article:

Catholics told not to give LDS parish data

To sum up, the Catholic church disagrees with our doctrine of proxy ordinances so they are telling their priests not to allow our membership access to their parish records. You'll have to read it to get the long form.

Mormons, not allowed...

Ok, I get it, they don't like us. We like them though, but that's beside the point. We do geneology. That's one of the things we're good at and everyone know it. So, of course, I have a few problems with their request:

1. Since we are so good at geneology everyone comes to us when they want to do it. We have publicly available geneology libraries open every weekday in most cities in the US and most major cities around the globe. I visited one and found that about half the people there were not members of our church. So by cutting us off their cutting everyone off. Including nuns, priests and the Catholic membership. Real smart.
2. How will they know who is LDS or not? Can you imagine them allowing the public access to the records and not us? That's blatant discrimination. We're used to it and we probably won't do anything about it. Not our style, but what about the rest of the populace? Will they have to sign waivers stating they will not share the info with us and what if they convert? Will they have to give all the info back? Will they seek prosecution of people who do share any information by entering it into our databases? I'd love to see the stink that would cause. Even though we won't fight it, non-mormons will.
3. Three is a cool number. It's stuck there between the rather even and boring two and four. I like having it there to mix things up and tell us when we have a crowd.
4. The reason they don't want us to have access to these records is because we believe in vicarious ordinances for the dead. A better explanation would be that we believe that someone, somewhere will grow up without the knowledge of Jesus Christ. We also believe that everyone must receive the physical ordinance of baptism to enter paradise and that those who have passed do not have physical bodies. So those of us with physical bodies can stand in for them for baptism much in the same way that Christ stood in for our sinful penance. Those in the spirit world can then choose to accept this proxy baptism or not, it is ultimately up to them. So even though the Catholics believe in proxy they do not believe in our proxy and don't want us doing it. Hence the info access ban.
5. This is an amendment to #4. If they don't believe that what we're doing has an effect on anything why do they care? This ranks right up with accepting evolution and fixing the limbo mistake as one of the more contradictory statements they have made recently. Yay ignorance.

What now?

The LDS Church will keep on doing what they do best: work. We will find other indexes to file, records to publish and plod on until the Catholic records are made available.

Be reasonable.

Update 2013

No new statements, either from the LDS or the Catholic churches have established a change in this ban. I did find an article where they talk about parish records somehow making their way into familysearch.org. I guess it's a don't ask don't tell situation where as long as neither side acknowledges it, no action needs to be taken. Yay?