Fluent in Spanish and Portuguese. Can read classical Greek and some classical Latin.
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I actually take the same approach when referring to them. The middle initial is another layer of Mormon ass-kissing that I left behind when I resigned my membership. I don't give these men that extra dose of respect that they have come to expect from the faithful.
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It is an Aramaic loanword that means "riches" or "wealth". It has similar cognates in Greek and Latin.
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This actually raised a ton of questions for me both as a missionary and after my mission. I knew enough about the Bible to know that different authors write differently. Paul's style is his own, and he is different than Isaiah and everyone else. That the Book of Mormon used his exact words was very troubling to me. Other things that bothered me were: 1) Use of "Mammon" in the
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I was a convert at 15 and served a mission in Bolivia. Same deal as your mission - it is all about numbers and any type of manipulation is considered acceptable if it gets numbers in. I was horribly depressed after my mission, and BYU only made it worse. My best advice to you is this: Stick out your time at BYU until you have your degree. As you said, this will be a huge benefit to your li
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Yeah, I thought Compton details 11 women that were married to still-living husbands.
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http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2010/10/25/sister-wives-explained-a-fundamentalist-mormon-polygamy-primer/?hpt=C2 Painfully good analysis of Mormon history that lead to the various fundamentalist Mormon groups.
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This does happen, though it is extremely rare in the US. When I was a missionary in Bolivia one of our baptisms was a rebaptism due to lost records.
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My wife dropped around 50 lbs post-Mormonism. She had struggled with it quite a bit while we were LDS, but it wasn't even an issue after we left. When we first came out, the first thing that one of my wife's rather obese friends said to her was "Don't you dare leave the church and get skinny" as she had seen so many people do just that.
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n/t
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I am guessing that a lot of the "neat" things in the Book of Mormon can probably be found here. I came across Clarke some months ago when debating with some LDS folk on the textual critical problems in the Book of Mormon passages that clearly cite the Bible. Almost always, the Book of Mormon quotes, verbatim, the King James Bible. The problem is that the King James Bible often rend
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If it is arson, I really do hope that they catch the guy and throw the book at him. As much as I detest Mormonism, nothing they do gives people the right to take actions against them like this. It only serves to further inflame their persecution complex and feel, once again, like victims.
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I have some follow up questions. I ask these only because I try to dialog with LDS folk and want to anticipate their objections: 1) Was this program actually sanctioned by the church? Or was this just some graduate student's research project that only he and his advisor knew about? To what extent was the university and the church involved in this? 2) How long did this go on? 3) How
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I certainly don't dispute the claim. In the study, they rated the level of family rejection with 51 different questions. A score of 51 was the highest level of rejection that could be experienced, and they showed that, as rejection increased, likelihood of suicide along with many other negative health effects goes up considerably. My guess is that the "you can change" thing is par
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I see that the Department for Proving the Already Obvious is at it yet again. :)
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Thanks for this. This is the same study that I found when I looked last week. It certainly does make the case that negative family reaction to coming out can lead to numerous health problems, including suicide. However, in reading the article, I could not find a specific statement regarding parents suggesting change therapy as increasing suicide likelihood. Am I just missing this?
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There has been an Associated Press story going around in the wake of Packer's talk. You can get the full story here (among other places): http://www.kansascity.com/2010/10/07/2289296/utah-gay-activists-protest-mormon.html One of the big quotes in the article that caught my eye claims the following: "A 2009 study in the medical journal Pediatrics also found that telling teens they c
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Michael Ballam (old guy, Shakespearean actor) or Darryl Yeager (younger guy). My vote is for Ballam. He seemed more articulate in his evil. I especially loved the part where he threatens the temple patrons who don't walk up to all their covenants. It was definitely the highlight of the whole movie. Dying to know what everyone else thinks.
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that claims this: "A 2009 study in the medical journal Pediatrics also found that telling teens they can change their orientation often increases the likelihood of suicide." I did a search on the Pediatrics website for 2009 and found one article dealing with health factors and gay teens. It does show that teens who are rejected by their family have higher health problem rates (in
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I personally saw this as clever positioning in case they ever need to backpedal on this issue. Its one thing if the Proclamation is Doctrine (ouch for the Morg), but it is quite another if it is only a policy and cute guide.
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That was my immediate reaction as well. Birth defects, inborn sterility, hermaphroditism, and a host of other horrible things can happen to a person before they even take their first breath. It certainly seems very capricious on the part of a loving God to prevent only one very minor one that, incidentally, does zero harm to anyone.
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I certainly wouldn't hope for them, but could understand that some could happen that would be entirely benign. Most of the changes in talk are just simple grammatical flourishes that don't alter the substance of the talk. I could even see a number of these being part of the original talk on the teleprompter but were just garbled by the speaker. I definitely don't think that *any* discrepancy i
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Found one other change that I think is huge: Old: Some suppose that they were preset and cannot overcome what they feel are inborn tendencies toward the impure and unnatural. Not so! Why would our Heavenly Father do that to anyone! Remember, God is our Heavenly Father. New: Some suppose that they were preset and cannot overcome what they feel are inborn temptations toward the impure and unn
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Found one other change that I think is huge: Old: Some suppose that they were preset and cannot overcome what they feel are inborn tendencies toward the impure and unnatural. Not so! Why would our Heavenly Father do that to anyone! Remember, God is our Heavenly Father. New: Some suppose that they were preset and cannot overcome what they feel are inborn temptations toward the impure and
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Certainly there have been some edits. From what I can tell, though, they are fairly minor and don't cover any of the items in the talk that we hoped would be changed. Found a comparison here: http://mormonsformarriage.com/?p=299 Only one change stands out to me, and this in reference to the state of the Proclamation on the Family: Old: It qualifies according to the definition as a rev
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I just found a website that supposedly has all of the edits to the talk. Honestly, I am not seeing all that much that is different, save one item. Referring to the Proclamation on the Family we have: Old: It qualifies according to the definition as a revelation and would do well that members of the church to read and follow it. New: It is a guide that members of the Church would do well
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This was my experience in joining a Lutheran church after we left Mormonism. We attended quite regularly for about 7 months, going to both church services and activies, before even being *approached* by the Pastor about taking classes for new members. Even then, there was no pressure to take them. The classes lasted another 3 months and allowed for very honest discussion about real issues.
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Totally going through this as well. My wife posted her objection to prop 8 and to Packer's talk. She now has over 100 posts on her thread, most them being incredibly rude and idiotic comments from TBMs. I have about 8 other FB friends who are going through similar things. They posted unoffensive comments in opposition to Packer's talk and have been savaged by a number of their TBM friends a
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I was in a similar situation. I joined the church at 15. The missionaries were extremely kind (and genuinely so) as were the members. However, I felt extremely rushed by them. My baptismal date was set one month after my first encounter with the missionaries. I had plenty of doubts, but shelved them because I liked the culture and the missionary discussions seemed to make so much sense. I
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I actually was thinking the same thing. The Morg knows that he is the next to go, and so gave him the controversial topic. If it works, great, Packer gets to be a hero post-mortem. If it doesn't, the Morg can pull a McConkie and phase him out all the sooner.
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