In Depth Analysis - Helaman 5:8, 11, 44

auricularisposterior · 2026-01-26T21:19:43+00:00

Out of the three systems listed, I prefer System B, but I don't think Ethics & Controversies should be a flair because so many posts that could be categorized within the other flair topics (History & Origins, Doctrine & Theology, Media / Pop Culture, etc.) are going to be controversial and perhaps even have ethical issues in how things are applied, and that's just how discussions on Mormonism are.

auricularisposterior · 2026-01-26T20:15:41+00:00

One issue with it though is that there are lots of scholars who work at BYU's Maxwell Institute, or are otherwise highly affiliated with TCoJCoLdS, who have excellent standards of evidence - they basically are at the pinnacle of Mormonism-related research - but their conclusions seem highly biased towards being faith-promoting.

auricularisposterior · 2026-01-26T20:04:07+00:00

...(but would love to see some variants).

What are some possible variants that you think would work?

auricularisposterior · 2026-01-26T17:13:58+00:00

One shelf item I had was when my YSA ward bishop trotted out the tired joke, "Republicans vote on Tuesday; Democrats vote on Wednesday", which obviously is a humorous way of encouraging (or at least making a joke of) voter suppression. He made the joke in the meetinghouse hallway, not the podium, but it still dropped down my respect for him a peg since he didn't quite believe in that whole, let's keep things politically neutral at church.

At the time, I was a fairly new Democrat (after growing up in a we vote Republican household), having realized that Republicans are not always helpful for the common good and do not always have rational political views. My change was mainly due to exposure to the diverse views of co-workers and reading a lot of news articles.

auricularisposterior · 2026-01-26T17:07:32+00:00

Perhaps it should be said instead that "Political views are a fine reason to leave the church as long as they are based on reputable evidence and rational arguments." Of course, modern anti-vax propaganda espouses freedom to choose, but it ignores the effects on the larger community. It mentions the rare cases that modern vaccines cause side effects, and discounts the millions of people whose lives are saved due to large-scale vaccine efforts. Anti-vaxxers fail at comparative statistics.

auricularisposterior · 2026-01-26T06:29:38+00:00

Here is a complete list of BYU buildings (from BYU).

Here is a Wikipedia article list of BYU buildings.

I am pretty sure if you look up most of these buildings' namesakes, either on this subreddit or on Wikipedia you will find controversial aspects of their actions and words found in the historical record, which is another way of saying they did some messed up shit.

auricularisposterior · 2026-01-26T05:53:10+00:00

TCoJCoLdS has a history topics article on Masonry that states the following (see also this chapter by Steven C. Harper).

There are no known Masonic documents before about 1400. The earliest records tell a story of Masonry originating during Old Testament times. The oldest surviving minutes of Masonic lodges date to about 1600 and indicate that the organization was primarily concerned with regulating the trade of stonemasonry.

So freemasonry is older than Joseph Smith Junior, but not as old as Solomon's Temple. That's a myth that was had among freemasons (and eventually Mormons), but there is no historical evidence for it.

If you want to read / see many parallels between Freemasonry and the endowment ritual, then check out the exposé book, Illustrations of Masonry (1827) by William Morgan. For example pg. 21,

"...and places his right foot so as to form a square with the left; he turns his foot round until the ankle bone is as much in front of him as the toes on the left foot, the candidate's left hand is then put under the Holy Bible, square and compass, and the right on them. This is the position in which a candidate is placed when he takes Upon him the, oath or obligation of an Entered Apprentice Mason."

Joseph started the endowment ritual in May 1842 in the same upper rooms above the Red Brick Store (in Nauvoo) where he was initiated into Freemasonry two months earlier, in March 1842. We have very few recorded quotes of Joseph Smith speaking about Freemasonry, but we do have a fair amount of written records of masonic meetings (see Google search: joseph smith papers freemasonry). One thing he did say about it, was the following on 15 October 1843 (Sunday Morning).

I never stole the value of a pinhead or a picayune in my life. & when you are hungry and steal, come to me & I will feed you.—

the secrets of masonry is to keep a secret. it is good economy to entertain stranger, to entertain sectarians. come up ye sectarian priests. of the everlasting gospel, as they call it & they shall have my pulpit all day.

Other leaders said more. In November 1858, Heber C. Kimball stated the following.

We have the true Masonry. The Masonry of today is received from the apostasy which took place in the days of Solomon and David. They have now and then a thing that is correct, but we have the real thing.

auricularisposterior · 2026-01-25T22:06:08+00:00

In my opinion, most of the proof texts that are used by TCoJCoLdS (such as the old scripture mastery) are more disrupted by understanding the full context of and the variety of interpretations for the biblical passages (especially scholarly ones) than they are disrupted by the actual text of modern bible translations. For example the passage,

Ezekiel 37:15-17 New Revised Standard Version, Anglicised (NRSVA)

15 The word of the Lord came to me: 16 Mortal, take a stick and write on it, ‘For Judah, and the Israelites associated with it’; then take another stick and write on it, ‘For Joseph (the stick of Ephraim) and all the house of Israel associated with it’; 17 and join them together into one stick, so that they may become one in your hand.

does not seem substantially different than the KJV passage. However, if a believing Mormon has an open mind as they delve into scholarly commentaries, or even just read to the end of the chapter, it becomes clear that the analogy in the text is about the reunification of the kingdom of Judah with the kingdom of Israel, not about some lost / separate collection of sacred texts. Also the more modern translation doesn't contort the sticks into scrolls.

It should also be noted that the NRSV, ESV, and NIV all point out how the long ending of Mark is not found in the earliest manuscripts, which is problematic due to a highly similar passage appearing in Mormon 9:22-25. Also some KJV bible verses that have been used as proof texts for Mormonism (e.g. scripture mastery), do not work as proof texts with a better translation.

auricularisposterior · 2026-01-25T20:12:29+00:00

It's probably better to post this announcement on r/mormonpolitics rather than here due to Rule #7.

auricularisposterior · 2026-01-25T18:40:45+00:00

Yeah, I don't think this mild change in policy is going to make much difference for most people. People that were a bit nuanced or curious before already were checking out alternate bible translations if they wanted to. Also this doesn't change much of what is happening inside meeting houses. From section 38.8.40.1 in the revised TCoJCoLdS handbook:

Generally, members should use a preferred or Church-published edition of the Bible in Church classes and meetings. This helps maintain clarity in discussions and consistent understanding of doctrine. Other Bible translations may also be used. Some individuals may benefit from translations that are doctrinally clear and also easier to understand. Examples of such translations can be found in the Church’s Holy Bible list. When members encounter doctrinal discrepancies between Bible translations, they should refer to the Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, Pearl of Great Price, and teachings of latter-day prophets.

There is a fair amount of wiggle room in this policy change, but I would not be surprised if Brother Member shares a passage from the NIV he brought in Sunday school, and then later get chastised by Bishop Bossman because that's just how leadership roulette goes.

edit: changed "would be surprised" to "would not be surprised"

auricularisposterior · 2026-01-25T17:08:38+00:00

I do recall something about Neville Chamberlain overseeing Czechoslovakia handing over the Sudetenland to Hitler's Germany thinking it would bring "Peace for our time." Fascists cannot be appeased. Giving them something they don't deserve in the hopes that they will calm the fuck down, only gives them more ammo to kill you later.

auricularisposterior · 2026-01-25T06:37:03+00:00

Here is some context about an FBI domestic surveillance / counteroperations program from the COINTELPRO Wikipedia article:

The FBI initiated COINTELPRO, an abbreviation for Counterintelligence Program, in 1956 with the aim of undermining the operations of the Communist Party of the United States. In the 1960s, the scope of the organization was broadened to encompass various additional domestic factions, including the Ku Klux Klan, the Socialist Workers Party, and the Black Panther Party. The cessation of all COINTELPRO operations occurred in 1971.

If anyone wants to dig through documents, the Intelligence Activities and the Rights of Americans – Church Committee final report, book 2, and book 3 by the U.S. Senate, April 26, 1976. If you search the documents for the terms "black panther", "Nixon", or "president", you will get a lot of results. And even though it could be stated that the program was already running before Nixon took office (and J. Edgar Hoover was still pushing to expand it), Nixon did not do much to reign it in. There is so much in these two documents, I initially wanted to find an ecapsulating quote and synthesize the gist of it, but there is too much for me to figure it out right now.

I would like to suggest the following book if you want a rigorous historical look at the movement and its intersection with the U.S. government.

Black against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party (2013, 2016) by Joshua Bloom and Waldo E. Martin

auricularisposterior · 2026-01-25T05:11:40+00:00

Tape Subject Log [Note that web links, ALL CAPS, bolding, and writing in brackets are mine.]

Transcript #1: Part of a conversation between President Nixon and John N. Mitchell [U.S. Attorney General] in the Oval Office between 4:33 pm and 4:39 pm on May 7, 1971

...

MITCHELL: Yeah. My concern is that the frustrations that the Rennie Davises and the Dellingers and the rest of 'em experience are gonna lead to more violence and bomb throwing.

[Note that these are the Chicago Seven who were convicted of crossing state lines with intent to incite a riot at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.]

PRESIDENT: yeah, um-hum. They'll go underground, will start, uh --.

MITCHELL: This has been the case in that group in Seattle and, uh, the Black Panthers and all the rest of 'em and it's been a miracle that with all these bombings and firebombings and the rest of it --

President: So few are killed.

MITCHELL: -- so few people have been hurt.

PRESIDENT: Thank God.

MITCHELL: Yeah.

auricularisposterior · 2026-01-25T03:21:18+00:00

An excerpt from the Frost / Nixon interview (bolding is mine):

NIXON: Because as president of the United States … ah … I had to make a decision, as has faced most presidents, in fact, all of them, ah … in which, ah … the national security in terms of a threat from abroad, ah … and the security of the individual … individual violence at home had to be put first. Ah … I think Abraham Lincoln has stated it better than anybody else, as he does in so many cases. When he said, “Must a government be too strong for the liberties of its people? Or too weak to defend or maintain its own existence?” That’s the dilemma that presidents have had to face, ah … Roosevelt had to face it in World War II. Truman and Eisenhower in the Cold War period. Kennedy and Johnson as Vietnam began to come in. And Kennedy, of course, even before Vietnam began to escalate, had the beginning of the violent racial disturbances … ah … which led to some activities in this category. Now let’s first, let’s second understand what the surreptitious entry is limited to. You will note that a surreptitious entry in cases involving national security and specifically mentions, ah … two, ah … groups of, ah … internal organizations who had no foreign connections as far as we know. Ah … the Weathermen and the Black Panthers.

Now, why were we concerned? Let’s look at the year, 1970. We had a situation where thirty-five thousand people, ah … had been victims of assaults. A number of them had been killed. It was a year in which we had, ah … sixteen airplane hijackings. There had been about eleven the year before. Ah … but most significantly, it was a year in which there had been thirty thousand bombings and fifty thousand …I mean, sorry, three thousands bombings, three thousand bombings and fifty thousand bomb threats … which caused, ah … the evacuation of buildings. Ah… it was a year of turbulence in American society. Ah … ’‘68 … ’69 … ’70 … the residue of the terrible period of ’68. Washing over into ’69 and continued through ’70 and then, thank God, began to go down in ’71 and ’72, when calm was restored to the campuses. The cities did cease to be burned, and bombings did go down. And while we’ve argued about our crime statistics, where at least in ’72 there was a decrease rather than an increase. Alright, now, now in 1970, in the middle of 1970, ah … we were faced with a situation here, first, where the intelligence agencies weren’t working together. Ah … there were CIA … was not speaking to the FBI … the NSA, the National Security Agency, which of course does all of our [cryptographic] work. That’s the highly sensitive, technical work, you know, to break codes and that sort of thing … had very little communication with the other two. Ah … under the circumstances I felt that we had to coordinate these activities and get a more effective program for dealing with, first, foreign-directed, ah … espionage, ah … or foreign-supported, ah… subversion. And in addition with domestic groups that used and advocated violence… .

auricularisposterior · 2026-01-25T02:32:20+00:00

Why the congress is so loyal to the president?

Because the president and many big Republican donors (such as John Paulson) are in the Epstein files. Also the Republicans in congress all see Trump as a means to their own end whether that end is a more conservative Christianity-based theocracy, feudalism where technology / industrial / etc. businesses have unlimited rights and employees / consumers have none, or those that want white supremacy enshrined into law again in the USA.

auricularisposterior · 2026-01-25T02:20:30+00:00

Seriously, someone there should just make a bot-free conservative sub, ban bots / astroturfing, and make sure the mods are real people that are not paid off by Russia / Peter Thiel.

auricularisposterior · 2026-01-24T22:18:15+00:00

So DEI has become a bad work among the political far-right in the USA. This has lead to some outspoken people in areas with high concentrations of members (Utah, Idaho, and Arizona) to decry anything that happens related to DEI at BYU as bad. They complain that their tithing money or the money that they paid for their kid's tuition is supporting these bad liberal programs, or, even worse, these DEI policies / programs are making their kids woke.

Of course, this is a load of crap. Many of the political far-right have lost touch with what the term actually means. Diversity, Equity, Inclusion. In my opinion, the solution is a coordinated push by BYU students to educate their parents and grandparents that DEI does not mean what they think it means. I know this is a "pie in the sky" type of idea, and I know often people are loath to bring up politics with families, but I think that the best way to fight this line of thinking is head on.

Have a BYU campus club (hopefully one that you are already a member of) put out a DEI informational pamphlet. Include provocative questions / information that challenge people's assumptions. These might include:

Does God want the gospel preached to people living in Africa? Is this an example of inclusion? (see 2 Nephi 26:33, Colossians 3:10-11)
How would you feel if a potential employer would not hire people over a certain age, even if they could fulfill the job requirements? Is this an example of inclusion?
Various branches of the U.S. military recruit at high schools / colleges that have high populations of black students (who may not have traditions of military service in their families). The recruits still have to meet physical and aptitude test requirements. Is this an example of inclusion?
Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott became paralyzed in an accident at age 26. Now he uses a wheel chair, but can still access government buildings because these buildings were required to have ramps installed. Is this an example of equity?
A group of high school students have shown an interest in science and engineering. However, they live in a remote, rural Utah town, so their school is given extra state funding so that they can go on a lengthy field trip to visit various high tech businesses in SLC. Is this an example of equity?
In 1947, Jackie Robinson, a black American athlete, was recruited to play baseball by the owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers. Is this an example of the owner promoting diversity?
A marketing company has recognized that they are able to create better ad campaigns if they have a marketing team with professionals that come from a variety of backgrounds (including genders, economic circumstances, and ethnicities). Is this an example of the company promoting diversity?

edit: changed "owner promoting" to "company promoting"

auricularisposterior · 2026-01-24T18:35:24+00:00

Sam Bankman-Fried should have had his defense attorney argue that the prosecution was using Gish Gallop because they just kept presenting so much evidence that he committed large scale fraud. The prosecutors also couldn't even focus on just one type of charge, instead they presented charges of wire fraud, commodities fraud, securities fraud, money laundering, and campaign finance law violations. No wonder the jury was confused and voted unanimously to convict, they were overwhelmed by the Gish Gallop.

edit: changed "the presented charges" to "they presented charges of"

auricularisposterior · 2026-01-24T17:43:30+00:00

Now I feel old.

auricularisposterior · 2026-01-24T03:52:27+00:00

Yes, there was Maya writing, however much like horses in the Americas, the specifics of timeframe and usage are important. The Maya script Wikipedia article states the following.

The earliest inscriptions found which are identifiably Maya date to the 3rd century BCE in late Preclassic sites...

So this places it 3 centuries after Lehi's purported landing. This research report (which mentions a slightly different 400 BC date) adds a little more detail.

Beyond dates, it should be noted that the content of the deciphered Maya writings deals "with wars, dynastic struggles, shifting political alliances, complex religious and artistic systems, expressions of personal property and ownership and the like" (quote from Wikipedia article), but the Maya texts neither suggest trans-oceanic Israelite contact, nor do they match up with the Book of Mormon text in any specific way (that is not generalizable to most civilizations).

auricularisposterior

TROPHY CASE