Driving Religion out of Public

Elder Oaks spoke of the threat of attempts to remove religion from the public sphere. In reaction some have claimed this does not happen. They clearly do not look broadly enough.
Every year since 1945 there has been a display of the nativity scene on the median in Mound Road close to St. Anne's Church just north of Chicago Road in the north end of Warren, Michigan.
Last year the Macomb County Raod Commission told them to take it down arguing that religios displays are not allowed on public land. The very fact that they are trying to exclude the display on the grounds of it being religios is a clear violation of the 1st Admendment. The Thomas Moore Law Center has now filed a suit on behalf of Mr. Sabawa, the man who puts up the display (it was his father who built it back in 1945) to force the County Road Commission to allow it. There is clearly a war to exclude religion from the public sphere.

Racism and stupidity

For those who did not see my brothers link, here is an article about a racist judge in Louisiana. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/oct/16/louisiana-bardwell-interracial-marriage-licence .
It is people like this who justify us in calling people like Maxine Waters who has attacked Ward Connely for being married to a white woman as racist.
What other logic could this guy use. Let us see, since Mormons are a smaller minority in Louisiana than children with one black and one white parent, and they at least in northern Louisiana are hated by most people, should this guy exclude Mormons from marrying at all?
Beyond this, if he thinks refusing people a marriage license will keep them from having kids, he is truly out of touch.
I might also cite a great group of black men with white wives, from Clarence Thomas to Jesse Thomas and from Thurl Bailey to Alex Boye. Then there is Larry Caulford, the well praised hometeacher of one of our speakers at my ward yesterday. Brother Caulfor was originally the wife's hometeacher, the man who was our speaker was not a member, but due to Brother Caulford's dilligence and boldness, the man who spoke to us met with the missionaries and got baptized. Brother Caulford is of European descent, but his wife is an African-American.
Of course, some of the most self-assured liberals I have known, such as Adrienne Allard, my high school quiz bowl coach who despised Rush Limbaugh, have also been ardent opponants of inter-racial marriage. She may have seen Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, but her thought processes were still those of the girls parents at the start of the movie.
The fact that this man was fired for his actions is encoraging. The fact that this was his apparently his fourth denial of marriage is disturbing, and the fact that he was doing it in Louisiana, a state with a long history of inter-racial mingling, even if they often made such unions illegal, the state that produced Mr. Plessy who had to turn himself in for violating the railroad segregation laws because he only had 1/8th African-Ancestry and looked to be a man of European descent so well, that if his goal had been to benefit from the better services in the "white" cars, he could have done it.

Elder Oaks defending Reigious Freedom

Elder Oaks gave a wonderful talk on religious freedom at BYU-Idaho today. For those who know about Employment Division v Smith, he implied that was a false decision. This is not at all surprising, although he never said that outright, but he presented a view of religious freedom at variance with that decision.
He brought up the attack on the Church after Prop-8 was passed and said some things that are so like what I have been thinking, but so much better put, I decided to provide a quote.
"It is important to note that while this aggressive intimidation in connection with the Proposition 8 election was primarily directed at religious persons and symbols, it was not anti-religious as such. These incidents were expressions of outrage against those who disagreed with the gay-rights position and had prevailed in a public contest. As such, these incidents of “violence and intimidation” are not so much anti-religious as anti-democratic. In their effect they are like the well-known and widely condemned voter-intimidation of blacks in the South that produced corrective federal civil-rights legislation."
What else could be used to describe things like launching a boycott on a business to force them to fire an employee, especially when the actions that caused the hate towards the employee were the result of that person following the counsel of their religious leaders.
Religious leaders have a full right to speak on any political issue. This was upheld by a court in New York which defended the right of Rabbis to urge Jews to vote a certain way (although, if I remember corretly the Rabbis in question were actually just urging Jews to vote, they did not say how they should vote).
You can find the full text of Elder Oaks talk at the Church website. I really liked his long mention to Mongolia, but I was unable to find with a quick search any more information on the issues.

Mr. Mitchell revisited

Some people try to claim that Brian David Mitchell and the Elizabeth Smart kidnapping is a case that brings up issues unique to Utah.
However, these people never bother to wiegh in on whether he should have been excommunicated by the Church. Since these people tend to be those who shout things like "Excommuncation is a violent act" and to claim it somehow denies peoples "free agency", to be consistent they should louadly protest the Church for having excommunicated him and gripe that the Church ferreted out the secret fundementalists networks in the Salt Lake stake he was in to what extent they did.
However, ferreting out fundamentalists networks is one thing that at times requires aid to stake presidents from those higher up, and such things are constantly denounced by the Libertine Mormons. That even is not a good name, but these people believe in liberty from the priesthood, liberty from direction by Jesus Christ through his prophets, and liberty from any limits to doctrinal orthodoxy.
So the actual result of my assessment of Brian David Mitchell is that the only possible fault by the Church was not excommunicating him sooner, not making his bizarre views, including his desire to have multiple wives more public and letting him be anonymous. Of course, doing more against him would have been uncalled for, and you can not punish people for crimes they have not done, so I really do not think different actions towards Mitchell would be called for.
If we had open lists of excommunicated people it would probably contribute more to feelings of animosity in Utah. Yet, it is the Church's failure to openly urge its members to shun in everyway polygamists, the Church's failure to set up autos-de-fe and burn polygamists at the stake or at least throw them in dungeons, that leads to our enemies being able to claim we are too lenient on polygamists.
Some how the fact that Utah is the only state that has managed to convict Warren Jeffs of any crime does not prevent it from being accused of being too lenient on polygamists by residents of New York where there has never been any attempt at all to prosecute men for marrying second wives who are 15 when they are 35.

Defending Judge Kimball

This is a post in reaction to unsound gripes against Judge Dale A. Kimball of the Utah Federal District Court.
To Robert S,
In some ways I fear this will not get posted because it is too late, however I will post it on my blog then.
You are being highly unfair to Judge Kimball. There was not a federal indictment until March 5, 2008. That was because of federal prosecutorial decisions on convening grand juries. In fact, as far as I can tell the first interaction of Judge Kimball with this case was reported by the Deseret News on September 1, 2009. Before that other people were involved with it.

New Temples

I do not think I posted on this yet, if I did, well I am posting again. Actually, maybe I did, but it is always worth another post.
I am excited about all the new temples. Each of them is needed. I only hope that next year President Monson announces more than five at conference. Well, I am only sad that none of last years were built as fast as Detroit (it was only a year and three months from anouncement to completion) but we can hope none will take as long as Kiev (it is over 11 years and not dedicated yet, although with the statue of the Angel in place it is close).

Elder Holland's talk, the great divider

I really enjoyed Elder Holland's talk because it made it so clear you must accept the Book of Mormon as the word of God to be a faithful member. I love it when pure truth is declared, especially when it flies in the face of the sophistry of the Signaratis and a certain class of authros who tend to contribue to Sunstone and Dialogue (there are believers who have contributed to these publications, Elder Oaks was even involved in starting Dialogue, but sometime in the 1980s both came under the control of people who had embraced post-modernism to the point of rejecting knowable belief about anything, yet they ironically still tried to use modernist historiacal assumption to attack the LDS Church, they hate Louis Midgley so violently because he understands post-modernism enough to understand that at heart they present theories that do not add up).
I was contributing to the Deseret News boards, and getting mocked and insulted for speaking for the truth (although I think it is a balance, people either think Elder Holland's talk was a great one, or they claim he is an angry man or worse, however they confuse determination and zeal for anger) but I thought it was getting late and did not want my last comment to not be published, so I came here.
You will understand it better if you read the discussion on the Deseret News article about the history of the copy of the Book of Mormon Elder Holland held (although only a small part of that discussion relates to that issue).
From now it will be verbatim what I tried to post.
Along with the 7:14 commentator,
I think anyone who claims the Church condemns other Churches for using religious symbols needs to read the statement about crosses in "True to the Faith". It clearly says that the use of crosses is in general an act connected with true faith.
Beyond this, using a visual image or item to emphasize a talk is an acceptable method.
What Elder Holland's talk most reminded me of was Jesus statement that he will spew out the lukewarm. We have to be for the Book of Mormon and actively teach it as truly the word of God, or we will be against the Lord's work.

First Impressions from Conference

I really liked general conference. Elder Holland's talk declaring a powerful witness of the Book of Mormon truly stirred me. I also enjoyed Elder Sitati's reference to his children being married without dowry, although I wished he had mentioned what country was his home. I knew he was from Kenya, but I am sure others did not. I should point out that Elder Sitati is not only from Kenya, but was one of the very earliest members baptized there, he and his family having joined the Church in 1986. The Church has not been in Kenya nearly as long as Nigeria or Ghana. I guess officially the lag was only about eight years, but while in Nigeria there were groups seeking to join the Church even in the 1940s and the government of Ghana gave The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (although it was a group of people not actually part of the Chruch) official recognition in 1968, in Kenya the Church had few links when the Sitati's were baptized in 1986. The branch they joined was mainly expatriates, I think mostly people connected with various embassys in Nairobi.
President Monson's talk was very good. The themes of love and service seemed to be throughout. I also enjoyed President Monson's Priesthood session talk, although I felt rebuked for my at times loosing my temper.
The temple announcement at the start was awesome. On the Deseret News comment board many people have talked of long waits at the Ogden and Logan Temples, so Brigham City is a needed temple. Brigham City itself is cut between those two temple districts. The temple will also lessen the travel time to the temple for those in the Bear River Valley (not that long really) and from the far North-west areas of Utah (still not that long compared to many places). I am reminded of when President Hinckley went to visit the Promontory Branch. It gives you a feel for how remote some of those places are that they have branches in Utah.
Conceptcion is not that much of a surprise. True, it is closer to Santiago than Puenta Arnas or Antofagasta, but it is the only city besides Santiago with two missions, and it is not that close to Santiago. Valparaiso /Vina Del Mar and their surrounding cities form the third largest Metro-area in Chile, but they are 50 as opposed to 250 plus miles from Santiago. Beyound this, Concepcion is 250 or so miles south of Santiago, where as Valparaiso is basically the coastal city for Santiago. As such the Concepcion Temple does in fact cut the distance for the people further south, whie a temple in Valparaiso would hardly cut the travel time or costs for members in Antofagasta.
With Supporo it is good for those saints, and I am still waiting to hear how close that will put a temple to Vladisvostok. It will be the closest temple, and a shorter trip than to Tokyo, and MUCH shorter than to Kyiv.
Forteleza I was a little surprised because I think of it as close to Recife. However on looking at the map I figured it was probably over a 500 mile drive between the two, and places close to twice as far the other way from Forteleza than that by driving are still closer to Forteleza than to Manaus.
Fort Lauderdale was like Concepcion not surprising. There are more members in Florida than in any other state east of the Mississippi, although the three states that do have two temples east of the Mississippi (Illinois, New York and Tennessee) all have a situation where large chunks of the temple districts are outside of the state. In New York, much of New Jersey is in the Manhattan Temple District as well as some of Conneticut, while Palmyra beenfits from travelers from elsewhere, and I think has part of Pennsylvania in its temple district.
Chicago has much of Indiana and Wisconsin (and even some of the UP of Michigan) in its temple district, while the Nauvoo Temple also benefits from outside visitors, but takes in chunks of Iowa and Missouri in its district.
Tennessee has the Nashville Temple which takes in some of Kentucky, and the Memphis Temple which is on the border with Mississippi and Arkansas, neither of which has a temple.
On the other hand, with the possible exception of South Georgia, the Florida Temple District is Florida plus the Bahamas and maybe some other Caribean Islands. still I think there are more members in Florida than in Japan, and there is a good number in the Miami to Palm Beach corridor, so a temple is not surprising.

The Educated Fools

Those who try to claim that believing Latter-day Saints are the anti-intelectuals and deniers of the truth in the Book of Mormon DNA discussions miss the whole point.
Ugo Perago is the one who has an actual background in genetics, his opponant who isnsists that DNA disproves the Book of Mormon, Thomas Murphy, has no such background.
Brother Perago understands that there are limits to what DNA can tell us, and that this is particularly true when we are dealing with 2600 years of history.
One of Murphy and companies claims is that since the Lemba have been limked as Jews by DNA we should also be able to link Native Americans if they are in fact of "Jewish" descent.
There are three flaws in this arguement. The first is that a reading of the Book of Mormon shows the Lamanites became a numerous people. How did this happen. The easiest way to explain this is that Laman and his associates subjegated a large indigenous population. It also seems that Nephi and his assocites brought in more people through methods of conversion. Brother S. Kent Brown has suggested that a verse in the Doctrine and Covenants suggests that such incorporation of additional people occured in Arabia.
We also have the people of Zarahemla who had fought wars, forgotten the existence of God and so forth. The divergence of their language to being not understood is best explained by the incoporation of foriegn speakers into the population. All these factors then come together for the century after the appearance of Christ when we have "no manner of -ites" and everyone inter-marriaes, thus combaning the various ancestral lines of the time before.
Later we also learn that the Lamanites are at war at the end. These wars will create disruptions in the genetic sequence.
If there was at one point an elite-line that like the Lemba were a small group preveving the "Jewish" line they probably got dispersed in the post-Christian era, and who knows what happens after the end of the Book of Mormon.
That said there are a few others flaws with Murphy's claims. One is that the Lemba seperated from other Jews in about AD 1000. Yet the Lemba are as black as the day is long. So this gives the lie to some of the anti-Perago chanters who claim that the appearance of the Native Americans disproves the Book of Mormon.
Next we have the fact that none of these parties actually claims to be Jews. Lehi was a descedant of Manasseh, which would indicate he was different from other Jews for about another 1000 years.
Most importantly though the Lemba were not shown to be Jews, but Cohens, descendants of Aaron. There is not claim that any Cohen was among Lehi's party, yet this is the only DNA marker that can be used to somewhat show DNA connection of Jews, although there are also several non-Jewish groups that have the Cohen marker.
The fact that the Native American populations have suffered great disruption is another issue that needs to be considered.

Buildup to general conference

I am really excited for general conference. I can't wait to hear President Monson's talks.

Straw Man arguments against the Book of Mormon

This is what the so called "DNA Mormons" engage in. Murphy and Southerton only have any standing if they start with the premise that the Book of Mormon requires Lehi to have entered an empty continent.
However, this is only possible because they have never read either the Book of Mormon or the thoughtful scholarly asssesments of it. Maybe Southerton thought he read the Book of Mormon, but never with a critical enough eye to notice that the only explantion of Sharem, let alone huge other things, was that he must have come from some other unexplained people.
The basic problem is that Southerton, Murphy and company began by assuming the Book of Mormon is fiction, so they avoid ever having to explain how their narrow and twisted understanding of certain verses would make the Book of Mormon a possibly real account.
When we give as the first grounds for consideration that the Book of Mormon must be internally consistent, we realize that the easiest why to explain Cumorah being in the heart of Jaredite country, being reached quickly by those south of the "narrow neck of land" and being the place of the major record deposits is that Moroni never called the hill in New YOrk Cumorah, that this is a later interpolation by W. W. Phelps, that Mormoni in his wandering to escape the Lamanites went from central Mexico (or maybe even Nicargua or Panama) to New York. This system works WAY better than assuming that all the mentions to Cumorah mean a minor hill in New York.
In the same way when Lehi says the land is not know to other "nations" it must be a land that he concieves of, and since he has never spoken of major continents as a "land" there is no reason to assume he means all the continents, and anyway "nations" are not people but some organized grouping of people.
The easiest way to eplain the major and fast increase in the Lamanite population is their subjection of a foriegn element. Hugh Nibley's arguements that with the amount of time the various kings of the Jaredites took to gather forces there is almost cetrainly people of the descendants of Jared in the land not brought in (especially if they are groups who broke away from the nation before Ether's profesy, which is in no way rules out by the text, since it largely focuses on the history of Jared's people).
The odd thing is that Sorenson is the one who wants to read the Book of Mormon as a book that tells us about real history, while Murphy for all his claims to a connection with reality will not grant that the Book of Mormon can be telling us the history of what real people do.
It is the anti-Mormons who are set in their ways, and it is the pro-Mormons who accept multiple interpretations of history. It is Sorenson who has worked for 40 years to prove trans-oceanic crossings before the Vikings, and it is his view that has been vierified and makes more sense of actual human history.
Columbus was not the first to venture into the ocean, and corn was grown in medieval India. Ancient Egyptian mummies have traces of coca (the soure of cocaine) and tobacco in them, which proves some sort of contact between peoples in the ancient Americas and ancient Egypt.
Those who dismiss the Book of Mormon as false must do so by ignoring the scientific and archeological advances of the last 20 years. Of course, they can continue to do this since archeology like so many disciplines has so advanced that discoveries in it have little effect on the general body of knowledge.