The wonderful thing about post-mormon life is that I can change my mind every day if I feel like it.

Exactly! But I find the reverse to be not just a Mormon thing. Our society in general would have us believe that we should pick a set of beliefs and stick with them forever; someone who changes his or her mind is often the object of distrust for doing so.

But I am not the person I was 20 years ago (and man, am I glad for that!). I am not the same person I will be 20 years from now. Why should I, or anyone, insist that I believe the same things then that I do now?

Immeasurable Changes in Mass: From the work of Albert Einstein (1879-1955), we now know that mass and energy are alternate aspects of a single entity called mass-energy. We also know that some mass does change into energy during any chemical reaction, but the amount is far below the limit of detection of the best modern balance. For example, when 100 g of carbon burns in oxygen, only 0.000000036 g (3.6x10^-8 g) of mass is converted to energy and, thus, not accounted for in the product, carbon dioxide. The energy yields of ordinary chemical reactions are relatively small; so, for all practical purposes, mass is conserved. (As you'll see later, however, energy changes in nuclear reactions are so large that mass changes are measured easily.) (Chemistry: The Molecular Nature of Matter and Change, 3rd Ed., Silberberg)

If I understand it right, this is the basis for nuclear reactions in fact--matter is converted to a vast amount of energy. Hmm, I should go back and look this up again...

Atoms? Humbug! Rarely does a major new concept receive unanimous acceptance. Despite the atomic theory's impact, several major scientists denied the existence of atoms for another century. In 1877, Adolf Kolbe, an eminent organic chemist, said, "[Dalton's atoms are]...no more than stupid hallicunations...mere table-tapping and supernatural explanations." The influential physicist Ernst Mach believed that scientists should look at facts, not hypothetical entities such as atoms. It was not until 1908 that the famous chemist and outspoken opponent of atomism Wilhelm Ostwald wrote, "I am now convinced [by recent] experimental evidence of discrete or grained nature of matter, which the atomic hypothesis sought in vain for hundreds and thousands of years." He was referring to the discovery of the electron. (Chemistry: The Molecular Nature of Matter and Change, 3rd Ed., Silberberg)

But if you have the evidence, any real and rational reason to believe, science will back it up, sooner or later.


Even so, that doesn't imply an understanding of everything now. There's lots that even our collective knowledge still isn't sufficient to explain (but that's cool, because that means there's yet more for us and our descendants to discover!). And more to the point, in our own individual lives, we have such a limited amount of knowledge that there's tons of stuff going on around us that we don't know. How many of you reading this can explain the physics behinds the electrons that carry the motions of my fingers to words that bring meaning to your eyes?

Yet, it's all perfectly natural, explained by the laws of physics (and still, if I'd shown this to my grandmother without any prior exposure to related technology, she might have considered it to be a tool of the gods...).


And then there's just the freaky stuff, the coincidences that seem too improbably to understand. Like this one--all my life, it's seemed like I just don't get rained on. Today, for instance, I walk outside between buildings to my class, and though it's been raining, there's nothing falling on me. I enter the building, go down the hall a few yards to get a drink, and as I come back to class, my real-time transcriptionist is entering the door, and I notice that her equipment bag is splattered with raindrops--she's right behind me, and she gets rained on, but I don't. A while later, the class takes a break and I head outside. A few people are standing around under the overhangs, which are dripping from fresh rain. But it's not raining as I walk outside for a walk. It's like that all day--I don't get rained on at all, yet, throughout the day there's a regular rain keeping everything wet and dripping.

And not just today--this has always happened, so much that I'm embarrassed to admit that when I was a TBM, I thought I had the priesthood power to hold off the rain just long enough for me to get back inside.

But does anyone really think I have some ability to control the weather? I certainly don't claim such. I'm perfectly willing to attribute this and other such seeming freaks of nature to simple coincidence. After all, I do get rained on sometimes. It's just that I tend to remember the times when other people get wet and I don't--that makes it special, and because I remember that, it seems to move beyond mere coincidence into something special, even supernatural.

And that's how we fall prey to false beliefs. If you really think something special is going on--make a diary of it. Note all the times that it occurs, and more importantly, all the times that it doesn't occur. You'll naturally remember the positives, and over time that will start to overbalance your perspective. But if you have a written record to refer back to, you can verify that the positive and false hits are well within statistical probability.

For that matter, I've heard from a bunch of people who kept prayer diaries...sometimes people think their prayers are really answered, but actually, they only remember the times that something does happen, and they forget when it doesn't. By keeping a log of this, they can look back at it and be reminded of all the times their prayers didn't happen, and then it becomes clear that the "miracles" were well within the realm of statistical probability.

Funnily enough, that's exactly what my Biology class requires of me--I have a logbook in which I'm supposed to keep a detailed record of everything I do, every measurement I take, etc, even the mistakes--everything. Because when you're searching for the truth, it all matters, and you never know when some little detail might become significant, and for that matter, even a lot of "mistakes" turned out to be something that advanced our knowledge.


But the essential point is--science isn't anti-god or anti-supernatural or whatever. It's merely pro-truth, and the nature of it is that it will only consider that which we can objectively verify, and the plain fact of the matter is that supernatural and religious claims aren't verifiable.

Virtual Reality and Pain Distraction

It is the aim of this study to answer the question of whether or not VR is an effective method of distracting children from the pain of venipuncture and to examine the degree of immersion required. Given previous studies of pediatric pain distraction and the initial support for VR forms of pain distraction, it is hypothesized that there will be significant differences in the pain experiences of children assigned to the three different groups. It is predicted that these differences will be detected in pain intensity, affective pain, and behavioral distress.

I daresay if you researched this topic via the web and such, you'd find all the answers to any questions you might have...