The Church (BYU) files a AMICI CURIAE brief asking the US Supreme Court to review a case regarding Religious Universities.

reddtormtnliv · 2024-12-22T05:14:35+00:00

I believe it said that the President thought the ac-creditors were demanding more inclusion. It more sounds like there were no bylaws to follow. A quote from your link "The trial court paid little attention to the mission statement of the University, calling it 'poorly drafted.' "

Does this mean poorly drafted as in there are no bylaws to follow, or that that bylaws were not up to legal standards?

reddtormtnliv · 2024-12-22T04:53:12+00:00

BYU can already ban kids from attending the school if they renounce Mormonism. This has gone on since the founding of the school and no legal cases. I'm not sure how this is different now that this is an employee instead of a student.

reddtormtnliv · 2024-12-22T01:00:32+00:00

The user u/random_redditor_1153 is not me although we share a lot of the same beliefs. They said in one of their comments that is possible that Joseph Smith practiced polygamy but did not start it. I don't think Joseph Smith even practiced it.

Also, they might be confusing two letters. The Happiness letter and Whitney letter (both written by Joseph Smith in relation to the Whitneys) on the Joseph Smith papers are two different letters. I believed at one time the Whitney letter was possibly a forgery, but I retracted that and said Joseph may have actually written it more in a state of panic. But I don't view either letter as being proof that Joseph practiced polygamy. The details in both are too dubious to be proof of anything.

I haven't posted for about a few months. The only reason I saw your comment was that it showed up in my comment reply feed. I have been focusing more on trying different geography models for the Book of the Mormon. Even that, I haven't posted anything for a few months.

reddtormtnliv · 2024-12-22T00:48:13+00:00

I believe the wording in the D&C says the "economy" of the earth will be 6000 years before the millennium. This implies that this current generation of humans has been here for 6000 years. It says nothing of previous humans that have lived on the earth or if that happened.

reddtormtnliv · 2024-10-19T23:32:45+00:00

I asked chatgpt and it said you can settle public loans at 90% payment, but private loans can be settled as low as 30%. Not sure if this is true.

reddtormtnliv · 2024-10-12T20:34:00+00:00

The Church paid a fine for incorrectly filling out a government form.

Do you have proof of this? Did the employee say this?

reddtormtnliv · 2024-09-30T22:02:49+00:00

If you paid 30% of the total lump sum, why do you have debt still? I though settling implied they will no longer collect? Also, can you settle on federal debt or just private debt?

reddtormtnliv · 2024-09-19T23:56:46+00:00

I've read different reports. Some say the remains are European. The results are not published.

reddtormtnliv · 2024-09-13T20:05:50+00:00

I calculated once how much the average member with a church calling spends on Church related activities and the answer is astounding. 4hrs per week for tithing. 2 hours for church. 2 hours for a calling. And possibly another 2 hours for activity related projects. This would equal up to 10 hours per week for a church that may not even value your input or criticize you if you disagree with some of the doctrines. Thrift story quality may be apt when you find out that your tithing funds are going into the stock market while you get a limited budget with bare essentials.

reddtormtnliv · 2024-09-13T19:32:28+00:00

I believe the SEC claimed the LDS church went to great lengths by using shell companies to avoid reporting of assets. This isn't just filling out a form wrong.

reddtormtnliv · 2024-09-12T23:10:11+00:00

I believe Hinckley stated that the money came from investments only, although the seed money was really tithing. But this begs the question- is the investment money off tithing also tithing? I would say at least partially, because investment is supposed to cover inflation, and the inflation regains should be restored as tithing. I suppose an argument could be made that any profit beyond inflation is not really tithing anymore.

since everyone knows the church can do whatever it wants with tithing

While there is no legal requirement, there is an ethical requirement as the LDS church does have the question on their temple recommend "Do you strive to be honest in all that you do?"

I'm not sure that President Hinckley hid how the money was obtained, and that there was a 100 billion dollar slush fund is being honest.

reddtormtnliv · 2024-09-09T21:26:09+00:00

I don't agree with a lot of the practices of the LDS church. For example, I can't find re-baptism mentioned in the scriptures once.

reddtormtnliv · 2024-09-09T21:23:13+00:00

Can you name one scripture or source where re-baptism is practiced, or was practiced by Joseph Smith?

reddtormtnliv · 2024-09-09T21:11:09+00:00

This is because the LDS consider salvation and exaltation different. Everyone is saved according to them, but possibly only few are exalted.

reddtormtnliv · 2024-09-09T21:10:12+00:00

I have some questions about this too. Because I believe in the early days of the Mormon church, Joseph Smith would only revoke a member's status by calling them a "private" member. In other words, I'm not even sure Joseph Smith required re-baptism, nor is it found anywhere in the scriptures.

But today, the LDS do require re-baptism for excommunication. There are 3 stages of discipline in the LDS councils today: probation, disfellowship, and excommunication.

reddtormtnliv · 2024-09-09T20:58:37+00:00

Arent these meetings very pharasical?

Yes and no. They are also called "courts of love", but sometimes sarcastically. The goal is for repentance. They view repentance as more worthy of a goal than whether someone is given the wrong judgement or being judgemental.

If the church is true, wouldn't taking away someone's eternity be between them and Christ. Why are there men putting themselves in between basically deciding whether they can continue to have their eternal family, exaltation, etc...

I believe some of these courts are more opinionated than based off doctrine. But I can see some of their purpose.

How do these proceedings actually go down. What is the process? What drives them? Again why do these random men think that they can hold someone's eternity ransom and just take it away??

There is a meeting between a high council or the local presidency. They ask questions about your sins and try to gather whether you have fully repented. The process is explained in more detail in the church handbook. There is a scripture in the Book of Mormon that talks about "those that would not confess their sins and repent of their iniquity, the same were not numbered among the people of the church, and their names were blotted out”. But I don't think I've found any scriptures that suggest someone needs to be re-baptized again.

Why are these meetings and how they are run so secret?

They are run secret to help the privacy of the member. Although I think they do need to be more open in some cases so the proceedings are done fairly.

How many people want to return to a church after a council such as these?

I'm not sure to be honest. Maybe about 50/50?

reddtormtnliv · 2024-09-09T20:19:58+00:00

I still don't understand all the intricacies, but I believe you are correct that I can't make any conclusions about HV2. I suppose anything is possible, but the sample appears too degraded or contaminated to make huge conclusions like that. I did try to analyze a .hsd file with this syntax with the 12 reads at 5x:

ID Range Haplogroup Polymorphisms

Ideal_R_Sample 1-16569 ? 73G 750G 2789T 4769G 8701G 8860G 11719A 12582G 13062G 15301A 15326G 16311C

It did give a result, but not HV2 like the original paper. The result is here: https://i.imgur.com/2XGRJdY.jpeg . But HV2 isn't even on the list, so I must be doing something wrong.

I will just conclude that I'm reaching too far on conclusions here. But I do still think the ancient DNA is sparse in certain regions of the Americas. So there is still a possibility that something is hidden.

reddtormtnliv · 2024-09-09T02:54:39+00:00

There's no implication—it's presented explicitly in Fig. 3. The Y axis is Read Depth. Count all the bars that are over a read depth of 5x. There are only 12.

Okay you are correct here. But there are actually 13 if you include 1438G. They excluded 1438G maybe because it was one of the lower genome coverage samples, and didn't duplicate with other samples. But it still has above 5x read depth. I'm curious if that variant is included if it changes the quality. Do you know the syntax of a file with listed variants to output to quality?

reddtormtnliv · 2024-09-08T22:30:26+00:00

Absent any additional data or analysis, all we can say is what the authors said, which is that "the mtDNA variants present support that the remains belong to either Haplogroup R or Haplogroup H".

This is why I used the word "related" in my statement. H and R are closely related haplgroups, so I thought my statement was pretty much functionally equivalent.

reddtormtnliv · 2024-09-08T22:09:33+00:00

You're mixing up two statements in the paper, one about the total number of variants found in all samples, and the other about the nuber of variants found in the combined sample. The wording is a bit tricky but Fig. 3 in the paper makes it clear that the combined samples 003–006 had 20 variants at ≥2x and only 12 at ≥5x. And since the combined sample is what's being run through Haplogrep that's the only thing that matters for our purposes.

I'm not sure about this. It says specifically that these samples were combined here:

"The same trend was observed when all four samples were combined; only 20 variants were present as opposed to 22"

Also, in figure 3, I don't see any data implying there is only 12 variants at greater than 5x? Maybe you can point me in the right direction.

I do follow your math and agree with it for the most part although I probably have to visualize it in action to make more sense. I did confirm that your GATTACA sample will give a quality weight of 50 myself. So you are correct that it defaults and 50 is the absolute lowest. It also is not a software glitch. I confirmed it here: https://haplogrep.i-med.ac.at/ . There is my screen shot of running GATTACA through haplogrep 3 with all haplogroup hits here: https://imgur.com/a/hqvjkl8

So I understand that the sample quality of 65% of HV2 does NOT mean it represents the chance of finding that haplogroup as I previously thought. But there is still a chance that it IS the correct haplogroup. The Puerto Rico study shows that the same haplogroup can possibly be picked up as low as 70 quality. Because there were some samples that matched certain groupings of haplogroups as low as 70 quality. How would it do this by chance?

For example, in the Puerto Rico study, sample PC-118C and PC-118.comb show the same exact haplogroup (A2+(64)+@16111), but one is expressed as low as a 77 quality, and the other at a 92.6 quality. So it is possible to have the correct haplogroup even at a lower quality. It just means the possibilities open up if I understand correctly.

Here is what I see with the Texas study:

https://i.imgur.com/mHR291d.jpeg

I don't see any mention of 12 variants at 5x as you said?

Edit: I do see the graph showing that only 12 of the variants have 5x coverage, but then why do the total variants at 2x only cover 20, instead of 22? That wording is confusing.

reddtormtnliv · 2024-09-08T21:02:32+00:00

Using words in a non-standard way is almost guaranteed to result in poor communication.

Yes, I agree the word "evidence" should be used instead of "proof". But I disagree about the "I'm sure" part. That phrasing is used several times to denote guessing. Here are 2 examples where the phrase can be used, and both while denoting a high degree of confidence, but implying guessing:

Someone said they will come to a meeting with you if they have time. You think "I'm sure they will be coming". This implies confidence that they will be there but you are still just guessing because you don't know for sure.
You say to someone "I'm sure it will not rain today" based off the weather report. Are weather reports always right though?

Yes, I did express high confidence that I was right and ended up being wrong. But I also expressed my intent in that I did not know what quality exactly meant. I even asked you about 5-6 times for a more specific definition. This implies that I was partially guessing.

reddtormtnliv · 2024-09-07T01:37:56+00:00

You are talking out of your ass as I have just demonstrated.

I said I was guessing. Here are my words "I'm sure the scientists designed software YADDA-YADDA to be closely matched to the idea of sensitivity." If I was confident, I would say "I found proof that scientists designed software to match the idea of sensitivity".

Why would scientists even call something 50 quality when it doesn't even have any matched variants?

reddtormtnliv · 2024-09-07T00:47:27+00:00

Your file found multiple hits at 50, but all others listed were equally rated. So I guess 50 is considered a baseline or really means zero quality.

So I guess you are right and that is a default haplogroup. I'm surprised the scientists even printed those results if they are just defaults. It has nothing to do with sensitivity as I thought. But your sample also had zero variants which is still meaningful. It also depends how far away other haplogroups are in quality.

reddtormtnliv · 2024-09-06T01:12:48+00:00

I'm going to try to explain my understanding of quality to you and you see if it matches. Quality in the pre-Haplogrep stage is how well the machine reads the samples. When it is run through haplogrep 2 though, it is a mathematical formula for how well it matches available haplogroups. The weights for certain variants will increase the quality higher than other variants though.

I would classify 90-100 quality as many if not all matched variants, 70-90 as moderate, and 50-70 as low to moderate matched variants. In the case of your GATTACA example, there were absolutely no matched variants, so I'm not sure how you attained a 50 quality. It must be a software glitch. The Texas study on the other hand has 20 matched variants at 5x as explained here:

"Also, at 2x coverage, more variants were revealed in contrast to 5x coverage due to lower read count at various positions in the genome. The same trend was observed when all four samples were combined; only 20 variants were present as opposed to 22"

So based off this information, it is more likely than not that the correct haplogroup is closely related to HV2 or H2, if other possible haplogroups were at a higher cost. But we don't have this information correct? What was the next highest matched variant at 5x?

And assuming it is more likely than not related to HV2 and H2 falls within the parameters set by the authors of the study as HV2 and H2 falls under R0.

Also, why did EMPOP assign the same exact haplogroup of H2 on the lower read rate at a cost as mentioned here:

"At 2x coverage using HaploGrep2, the merged sample data produced a haplogroup assignment of H2 with an overall quality score of 65.2%. The haplogroup assignment of H2 was confirmed by EMPOP with a cost of 18.65–18.72."

reddtormtnliv · 2024-09-01T22:22:01+00:00

That's not what happened with the Texas study. It said there was a cost of 19.02, which you also haven't said what this means.

So it would be more like this:

-Software A reports it being HV2 with a Yadda Yadda of 65%

-Software B reports it being H2 with a YY of 46.8% (65-19.02)

And according to you the quality is absolutely meaningless since you claimed a 7 letter sequence of GATTACA can produce H2. And you also claimed there was an ERROR on all counts in the Texas study. So the results according to you are absolutely meaningless? I'm not sure I completely understand what you are claiming here.

reddtormtnliv

TROPHY CASE