For a long time it's baffled me when I bring up evolution and someone says something like "We didn't evolve, we were created!" It's struck me as a very silly false dichotomy. Because basically I'm saying "God's process of creation is evolution" and then they're saying "No, God's process of creation is creation." They act as if they're presenting an alternative theory when in fact they're not even explaining what it is. What is "creation"? Even if, for the sake of argument, the inconsistent creation accounts in Genesis (and the Pearl of Great Price and the endowment ceremony for Latter-day Saints) are taken as entirely accurate factual accounts of literal history, they don't give any appreciable level of detail. "And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul." Okay, but how? What physical laws and processes did God employ to do this? In place of mutations and natural selection - what?

I may need to reevaluate my position a little, though, since my recent discovery of an apocryphal document that, while still confusing, expands on some aspects of the Genesis narrative and answers some of those questions. It's obviously very old and valuable but someone clearly didn't realize that, because it ended up at the used book warehouse where I work. I translated it during break one day. (If a manager reads this, no, I didn't take it home in violation of company policy. I put it back on the belt.) I don't actually know Hebrew or whatever language it was in, but I do have an English degree, and any translator will tell you that it's more important to be fluent in the target language than the source language. So without further ado I present this fascinating and, I believe, essential contribution to the ongoing debate.

Now it came to pass that after God had created this world, he looked it over and noticed that it had no wars, pollution, police brutality, or unnecessary franchise reboots. And he decided to change that because he was bored.

So God passed through an airlock in the dome above the Earth, pausing on the other side to admire the stars embedded in it, and descended to the ground.

And God gathered a lot of dust, and he used static electricity and tree resin to stick the dust together in the approximate shape of himself. And when this was done, he gave the dust doll mouth-to-nose resuscitation, and it transformed into a living man with bones and organs and everything.

But God noticed that the man's anatomy incorporated several flaws and quirks that would have made sense if it had been the product of descent with modification from earlier life forms, but which were quite frankly embarrassing as the direct product of an omnipotent being working from scratch. And God said, "Oops, let me start over."

But it was too late; the man had instantaneously achieved sapience and the abilities to walk, talk, and count on his fingers. And the man asked, "Why isn't my spine built to support a bipedal gait?"

And God said, "None of your business, that's why." And he decided this was good enough for now after all, and he named the man Adam. But Adam wouldn't stop asking questions.

So God planted a garden eastward in Eden, a beautiful perfect paradise where no death or suffering existed, which rendered its existence somewhat superfluous because no death or suffering existed in the entire world. And when God had finished planting, he picked Adam up between his thumb and forefinger and carefully deposited him inside the garden.

And God said, "Run free, Adam, and name the animals and stay out of my way until I'm ready to deal with you. Help yourself to the fruit from any of these trees, except for this one tree that I put here even though I don't want you to eat from it."

And Adam said, "Isn't that entrapment?"

And God said, "Yes, but entrapment isn't actually illegal. Just don't eat it or you'll die."

So Adam ate the fruit of all of the trees except that one. And because he didn't actually need sustenance, he ate only because he was bored. And because death had not yet entered the world, every cell of every piece of fruit somehow remained alive as he chewed, digested and excreted it, which is pretty horrific in a "I have no mouth and I must scream" kind of way.

And Adam made friends with all the animals, and named them. His favorite was a Velociraptor named Tiffany. She was a cunning predator who used her speedy legs, sickle-shaped claws, and serrated jaws to eat grass. He trained her to fetch sticks and told her she was a clever girl.

But it came to pass that Adam grew lonely. Even though he inexplicably had at least 98% of his DNA in common with chimpanzees, transcription errors and all, he still didn't have much in common with them, and his dates with them never ended well. 

And Adam said, "God, I'm lonely."

And God said, "Are you talking to me or just moaning to yourself?"

And Adam said, "The first one."

And God said, "I'll see what I can do."

And God gave Adam knockout gas. And God said, "Kali Ma... Kali Ma..." And God reached right into Adam's torso with his bare hand and pulled out a rib without even leaving a scratch. And God said, "Hocus pocus, flippity flam, arazzamatazz, and alakazam!" And the rib expanded and morphed into a real life honest to goodness living breathing woman.

And the woman asked, "Why isn't my spine built to support a bipedal gait?"

And God said, "Shut up."

And Adam woke up and saw the woman and his eyes got really big. And God said, "Ta-da! I hope you like her, because she's all you're getting."

And Adam said, "Wow, compared to those chimpanees, she's beautiful!"

​And God said, "Smooth."

And the woman said to Adam, "Get lost, creep, I wouldn't date you if you were the only man on Earth." And Adam's face fell.

And the woman said, "Psych! It's a joke, get it? It's funny because you literally are the only man on Earth. Try this one: I want you to make me feel like I'm the only girl in the world."

And Adam said, "Haha! It's funny because you literally are the only girl in the world!"

And Tiffany the Velociraptor's face fell. And Adam scratched the feathers behind her earholes, which she had for some reason despite not being in any way related to birds, and said, "I didn't mean it like that, Tiff. Who's a clever girl? Yes you are! Yes you are!"

And the woman continued, "Mister, I feel like I've known you all my life. It's almost as if we were made for each other. Let's make this a world for two."

But God found her "jokes" so lame that he flooded the entire planet in a fit of rage, which created a momentary nuisance for all the immortal plants and animals but left behind no geological evidence. And he apologized, but wouldn't promise never to do it again.

And it came to pass that Adam and the woman sat in the Garden of Eden doing diddly squat. And they loved each other very much, but as the years went by the woman became so bored that she decided certain death didn't sound so bad.

And one day she ate the forbidden fruit, and after she had eaten the forbidden fruit and saw that she was still alive, she cast her eyes to the heavens and cried out, "Will this beautiful perfect nightmare never end?"

Little did the woman know, however, that the moment her teeth pierced the skin of the fruit, it released an oscillating wave of variable-frequency hypertronic alpha radiation particulates into the atmosphere, which immediately altered the subatomic structure of every living thing on Earth, introducing death, sin, pain, disease, and conspiracy theories into the world.

But the fruit tasted exquisite, so she took it to Adam. And he asked why she had eaten it, and she made up a ridiculous story about a talking snake, and he laughed and fell in love with her sense of humor even more.

And God made them put some clothes on, leave the Garden of Eden and get real jobs.

And God said, "Oh, also you can have kids now, which you couldn't do in the Garden of Eden because I want to get the deposit back."

And Adam said, "Well, I guess if we're going to have more humans running around, I should give the woman a name."

And God said, "Wait, what? You never bothered to give her a name?"

And Adam said, "It seemed unnecessary. She always responded to 'Hey, you.'"

And God said, "Oh, for the love of me. Fine, give her a name then."

And Adam said, "Hmmm... how about Steve?"

And God said, with inexplicable discomfort evident in his voice, "Um, I don't think so. Try again."

And Adam said, "Okay, just Eve then?"

And Eve said, "I see myself as more of a Jessica," but no one listened to her.

So Adam procreated with the woman made from his own DNA, and then their children procreated with each other, which actually explains a lot about the state of the human race today.

And Tiffany the Velociraptor had to be put to sleep after she tried to kill their infant son Cain. And Adam cried for days. But at least Cain was all right.

And it came to pass that one day Adam and Eve were going for a nice romantic stroll through the miserable wasteland when they caught God planting bones of Australopithecus, homo erectus, homo habilis, Neanderthals, anatomically modern humans more than six thousand years old, and various other imaginary creatures.

And Adam watched in astonishment and asked, "God, why are you doing this?"

And God said, "To test the faith of future generations."

And Eve said, "By lying to them?"

And God said, "It's not lying! It's... um... it's... look, don't question my ways, okay? My ways are not your ways. End of discussion."

​And it was.

Not too long ago, when I heard reports of police brutality, unjustified killings etc. as a conservative, my impulse was to be dismissive. I can't speak for all conservatives but I think most of them would fall in the same proverbial boat I did: the government is completely untrustworthy, but this country itself is above criticism. Any claims that racism is still widespread and/or that police systematically abuse their power must be rejected or explained away at all costs. If the police incarcerate or murder a disproportionate number of black people, it's not because of racism, it's because black people are raised in bad environments. Police rarely do anything wrong and if they do, it's just a few of them and shouldn't be blown out of proportion, and anyway, who are you to judge them when you don't know how hard and stressful it is to be a police officer? Government authority is bad but police authority is good. Even though the police are actually useless which is why you need to own a gun.

I figured out a while ago that I was wrong to think that way, and if I've never made that clear before I am now. Probably the biggest turning point was a class discussion about police brutality a couple years ago which can be summed up with one exchange. The most obviously and consistently conservative guy in the class was like, "Maybe they just had a hard day..." and he almost seemed convincing until someone else was like, "If I have a hard day at work and I'm rude to a customer, I'll get fired!" Yeah, good point. The teacher capped off that exchange with something like, "Can we agree that some people just shouldn't be cops?" Yeah, that seems reasonable. I know I shouldn't.

Alas, by now I'm hopelessly biased in the opposite direction because of my own experience with Officers Hansen and Nelson of the Logan City Police, which traumatized the hell out of me and irreversibly destroyed most of my respect for law enforcement. I now see most police officers as narcissistic asshats who think they're gods because someone gave them a badge and a gun. That probably isn't a fair, charitable or accurate view and I probably shouldn't talk about this subject. Nonetheless, some do fit that description and because the consequences they face for their abuse of power range from laughable to nonexistent, crap keeps happening. I'm not sure if it's a mostly American phenomenon like mass shootings - I mean, the frequent racial aspect obviously is, since no other country has had such an impossible time getting over its leg-humping obsession with skin color, but I don't know what cops in general are like elsewhere. It's possible that the Australian police are even worse and it just doesn't make the news here. But I doubt it.

Until the recent national outrage, one police department in Georgia declined to take any action whatsoever against Ahmaud Arbery's murderers because one of them is a former member of it. Elsewhere, a group of officers in Kentucky murdered Breonna Taylor while executing a "no-knock" search warrant (which shouldn't be a thing) at the wrong apartment in the middle of the night. She was black, but I don't think the police were necessarily racist this time because it sounds like they just barged in and shot at anything that moved. Here in Utah, Officer Miguel Deras is in trouble because the public found out that he downloaded and shared explicit photograpraphs submitted as evidence by Lauren McCluskey - days before she was murdered because the police did nothing when she begged them for help, but that part is old news. I'm really pissed off and yet at the same time I feel a selfish schadenfreude every time the reputation of American law enforcement justifiably suffers. Lord forgive me. In fairness, I should note that by now even my conservative friends are pissed off. That's how bad it's gotten.

I am somewhat familiar with the police's side of things from reading a compilation of newspaper columns that Robert Kirby wrote as a cop in the early nineties (under the pseudonym John "Blitz" Krieg). He mostly wrote about what a crappy job it is and how stupid most citizens are. No argument here. He once wrote something to the effect of "Excessive compassion is why we have rapists and serial killers getting fat on macaroni and cheese and daytime TV instead of hanging from lampposts where they obviously belong." I completely agree in theory but there is the small matter of all the wrongful convictions that don't get overturned for decades. He wrote about the Rodney King riots and suggested that maybe the police beat the crap out of him not because of his skin color, but because he was low-life criminal trash. I'm not sure how I feel about that. I'm curious if and how any of his opinions have changed, as he's long since left police work and now writes humorous pieces about the LDS Church for the Salt Lake Tribune, and generally seems more liberal nowadays.

His book, in any case, gave me a sympathy and respect for the police that I'm trying to remember now as a counterbalance to my current hatred. But as far as I'm concerned the actual percentage of police officers abusing their power, or whether these instances are representative, is hardly relevant. Pointing to the majority of good cops and non-incidents to downplay or rationalize away the others is just a way of pretending the problem doesn't exist. The police officers who got into law enforcement to make a positive difference in their communities should keep doing things the way they're doing things, and the police officers who are massive dicks in uniforms they don't deserve should be held accountable and put in their place. That won't happen as long as a substantial number of people want to pretend nothing is wrong with their behavior. It's true, I don't really know what it's like to be in their shoes, but I know the difference between right and wrong, even if it took me a while to figure out.

ADDENDUM: Of course it comes to no surprise to me or anyone that two days after I posted this, yet another black man in the United States was murdered by white police officers. In Minnesota, George Floyd was handcuffed and pinned to the ground - in other words, not an active threat by any stretch of the imagination - when a grim-faced fascist in a blue uniform slowly crushed his windpipe as he begged for relief. The part that does come as a surprise is that all four cops involved, the murderer and the accomplices who stood by and did nothing, were fired shortly after instead of the usual "paid leave" bullshit. So maybe this country is making a modicum of progress that makes glaciers look speedy.

Alas, I fell into my old habits and argued with a Cro-Magnon on the internet who insisted that the video didn't show us the whole story and we didn't see whatever George Floyd obviously did to deserve what happened to him. (One guess as to his political leanings.) I struggled to explain to this waste of skin that literally no possible context could justify what the police did to him. Even if he raped a baby, shot his own grandmother and listened to Nickelback, the police had him safely in custody and he was entitled to a fair trial under the laws of this country, not a lynch mob. But if he didn't want to die, said this boil on the anus of humanity, he should have been more cooperative. Good hell. Police officers are not above the law and they do not have a right to kill harmless people for not showing them the respect they think they deserve, full stop. I know Nazi comparisons are passé, but I can't escape the thought that if a similar regime were to arise here, this poor excuse for a sapient being would be one of the guys enthusiastically torturing people to prove his blind worship of authority. I pray that day never comes but it wouldn't come as a surprise.

Mid-May marks the five year anniversary of this incarnation of my website, hosted by Weebly, after I moved it from the terrible company Webs that I had used since late 2010. I recently went back to my Webs account to try to recover something I had uploaded there, and they wanted me to take the exact same survey I already took twenty times when I used their company. I kept telling them how dissatisfied I was and they kept not making any improvements. But I took the survey again just to give them another piece of my mind.

Previously, I wrote blog posts whenever I felt like it. When I moved here I set a goal to write one every week, to be consistent so I could (in theory) build up a following. This forced me to adapt a little since I was now forcing myself whether the muse had hit or I had anything in mind to write about or not. The first two years of posts are juvenile garbage in terms of finding my writing voice and political philosophy, but at least I can track my progression and at least they're still better than most of the posts on my old site that are lost to time and won't be missed. The rest of my posts have ranged from occasional garbage, to mostly average, to the occasional gem that I know would have gone viral if anyone besides me had written it. My page views and search ranking have ebbed and flowed and consistently remained nowhere near where I'd like them to be after the countless hours of work I've put into this site. Has it been worth it? No, but if I quit now all that previous effort will have been wasted. So I'm here to stay unless I get hit by a truck or something.

On my home page I introduce myself as an

And now seems as good a time as any to unpack that statement and how each piece of it was carefully chosen.

Autistic - For most of my life, like everyone else in this country and probably several other countries, I've been bombarded with the loud and clear message that mentally ill or otherwise "weird" people should be feared, hated and ridiculed. So one of my highest priorities is to tell this country and probably several other countries loud and clear where they can stick that message. I hope that future generations of kids on the autism spectrum won't have to wait until their late teens or worse before figuring why they're different, that they won't face constant bullying at school for being different, that they won't be hit and yelled at by parents who think their differences are an "attitude problem", that their dating lives won't be absolute hell, and just in general that they won't learn to hate themselves for being different. I'm contributing to this shift in my woefully limited way by refusing to be embarrassed about the way God made me.

I got in an argument with my parents once about how I present myself to the world, as they subscribe to more of a "Just have a positive attitude and nobody will notice something's wrong with you" line of thinking. They felt that I was holding myself back by making such a big deal out of it (as if I'm the one who decided to make a big deal out of it?). They also didn't understand the distinction betweeen lower and higher functioning autism and didn't believe that I have the latter because I didn't match their understanding of the former. I disagreed with just about everything they said, but I did make the concession of changing "Autism" to "Aspie" in my blurb to reduce the potential for such confusion. I had used the terms interchangeably for some time anyway, alternately trading off diagnostic accuracy with name recognition. At first I resented being lumped in with the lower-functioning autistics but then I decided to take on their stigma and their struggle in addition to my own. But the term "Asperger's" and its derivative nickname "Aspie" remained in use despite no longer being a thing since 2013, and like many others, I had some irrational fondness for them.

But then just recently - and in my defense I believe this has only been known for a couple years - I learned that Hans Asperger actively colluded with the Nazis by essentially signing the death warrants for several non-neurotypical children. I don't particularly care whether he was a believer in the Nazi eugenics program himself or just yet another spineless piece of crap who cooperated with what he knew was wrong. In either case, the only way he deserves to be remembered is by pissing on his grave. So I removed the word "Aspie" from my blurb and elsewhere on my site. I'm fully autistic now. I'm not sure what this means yet for the deliberately provocative title of my planned memoir Ass Burgers but I don't need to worry about that yet. On the plus side, I can take satisfaction in the fact that my existence is a living "Fick dich" to Adolf Hitler and everyone like him past and present.

Latter-day Saint - This trait is one that I chose, kind of, but it's not really much of a choice. Because I know that the Book of Mormon, the gift of the Holy Ghost, and the power of the priesthood are true, my integrity compels me to stand by those truths and affiliate with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Choosing to leave, regardless of the reasons, would require me to pretend I don't know those things are true and would be dishonest. Of course the term I originally used here and in most cases throughout my site was "Mormon" - the nickname that most people know us by and which, for some time, the Church was spending millions of dollars to promote. But a couple years ago President Russell M. Nelson announced an unprecedented institutional moratorium on said nickname and I sacrificed a great deal of my already meager Search Engine Optimization to follow the prophet. I was kind of hoping God would bless me for my obedience by increasing my site traffic anyway, which didn't happen, but whatever.

I used to have a boundless enthusiasm and grand dreams of more or less converting the world through the internet, which were kind of trampled into dust when I realized how few people actually give a crap about the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. But it remains a major part of my life and who I am and I'll keep writing about it even if I'm essentially talking to myself. Being a Latter-day Saint makes me slightly less of a jerk than I would be otherwise. It gives me a reason to keep living and hoping when everything I see in the world around me compels me toward nihilism. I have no faith in humanity. I have no faith in society. I'm confident that our species, left to its own devices, would be extinct less than two centuries from now. Placing my faith and basic human need for a larger cause and higher purpose in some cheap secular alternative and pretending it was adequate would be laughable.

It's a frequent source of frustration that I still haven't figured out how to simultaneously cater to members of the Church and those who know little about it. I want to discuss the intricacies of history and culture and apologetics and philosophy and whatever, not re-explain the most basic stuff I've been hearing since I was five. And doing the latter as a hasty introduction to the former just feels lazy and inadequate. Nowadays I more or less operate on the assumption that both of the people reading any given post are Latter-day Saints or at least former Latter-day Saints. If I were Catholic or something similarly entrenched in the popular consciousness, I wouldn't have this problem. Hmmm...

Author - I write stuff, so that technically makes me an author even though I haven't yet published anything except one reused blog post in "Magnets and Ladders". In addition to weekly posts, I've put a bunch of the stuff that I've written over the years up on my site where it's consistently gotten not much attention at all. I have to wonder what I'm doing wrong when scores of people, friends as well as teachers and professors from third grade on up, have praised my writing and made it known to me over and over that I have exceptional skill, and then I upload it to share with the world and the world ignores it. I had hoped that by the time I get around to actually publishing books for money, I would have a substantial online following and I could tell them "Hey, I'm publishing books for money and you should buy them" and they would, but by now it's obvious that strategy isn't going to work out. So whatever. *hums Jordin Sparks' "One Step at a Time" to myself until I feel better*

Child of God - I added this after President Dallin H. Oaks said in General Conference last year, "Most important, each of us is a child of God with a potential destiny of eternal life. Every other label, even including occupation, race, physical characteristics, or honors, is temporary or trivial in eternal terms. Don’t choose to label yourselves or think of yourselves in terms that put a limit on a goal for which you might strive." This is a legitimate caution and similar to the concern my parents expressed. (It's not that I disagreed with them about the danger of labels so much as whether it applied with the way I was/am using mine.)

Of course, President Oaks would surely acknowledge that labels are a necessary evil for human beings to make sense of ourselves and the world around us. In God's eyes my autism may indeed be trivial, but in my current mortal state it's the exact opposite of that. So I use the label and I won't apologize for it. I imagine in the next world the label will vanish while the benefits remain. I regard the majority of people who get to decide how the world works as fake, shallow and stupid (no offense), and I'll have some choice words for God if he decides to "fix" my brain to match theirs. But I digress. I added "Child of God" to my blurb to balance out the other labels. In my church we also use the more specific terms "daughters of God" (which in practice, thanks to our chronic putting of women on pedestals, is often shorthand for "perfect angels who can do no wrong") and "sons of God", but of course this latter runs the risk of being confused with "the Son of God", and that would definitely be the case with the capitalization in my blurb so I didn't use it.

Pretty Okay Guy - I don't expect that anyone has ever gotten this reference. If you have, congratulations, you're a cultured genius. It's actually a mashup of two quotes. One from Strong Bad narrating a flashback about himself in Strong Bad Email #100: "Everyone loves Strong Bad. He is an okay guy."

And the other from the song "So They Say" in "Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog":

This is perfect for me
So they say
I guess he's pretty okay
After years of stormy
Sailing have I finally found the bay?

I like this statement because it's so obviously tongue-in-cheek, yet legitimately self-affirming, yet too modest in scope to be boastful (which I also find more amusing now in juxtaposition with "Child of God"). I do think I'm a pretty okay guy. I make no claims to be a great guy. If anyone wants to think I am, they're welcome to, but I haven't set the bar that high for myself. "Let another man praise thee, and not thine own mouth; a stranger, and not thine own lips." (Proverbs 27:2) I just think I've done as well with the crap I've been given in life as anyone could but, and this will come as no real shock to anyone who's read many of my posts, I have plenty of room for improvement. It's a good thing I'm still young and have plenty of time for said improvement unless I get hit by a truck or something.

So speaking of arguments, you know where I wish it was more acceptable to express disagreement? Church settings like Sunday School, institute classes, and Come Follow Me groups. Of course, there's no rule as such within my faith tradition against vocal disagreement, but there is a general attitude of let's all get along and not cause any "contention" that could drive away the Spirit. Sometimes this means that one person says something that everyone else in the room knows is insane bullcrap, but they all just kind of smile and nod and try to move on as quickly as possible. I was in an Elders' Quorum class once where a guy asserted that homosexuality used to be good because it prevented overpopulation, but now we don't have to worry about overpopulation because we can go to other planets, so now homosexuality is bad. The teacher just kind of smiled and nodded and tried to move on as quickly as possible. You have to pick your battles. I didn't like that guy until he gave me a candy bar and then I felt guilty for not liking him. (Actually, he was the same guy who broke into the Logan Temple with an axe last Christmas. I'm not kidding.)

I experienced this myself when I filled in to teach a Sunday School lesson and a lady who was there for some reason despite being too old for a YSA ward made some comment, I don't remember precisely what, about the need to turn to God instead of the internet for knowledge. I personally get a little exasperated at people belittling "the internet" as if the source medium itself somehow invalidates the accumulated knowledge of humankind found therein. Yeah, it also enables the proliferation of lots of stupid made-up crap, but if you have a few brain cells and some common sense, you can usually tell what's what and find the internet a mind-blowingly useful tool for gathering information. So trying to constructively build off this lady's comment, I agreed and noted that the Holy Ghost can help us find sources and discern which are reliable. No, she insisted, we need to rely only on God, not manmade sources. The slightly manic look in her eyes advised me that pushing the issue would be futile. For the record, though, I think what she said was idiotic. I see little or no reason why God should tell you anything via direct personal revelation that you could find out yourself with a Google search.

Before the you-know-what canceled everything, I participated in and sometimes led a Come Follow Me group in the stake that I'm not even a part of anymore. And I enjoyed it but there are a few times I wish I could have critiqued what was being said. I could have, I suppose, but it would have ruined the illusory atmosphere of everyone agreeing with everything anyone in the group said because we're all part of the same church and that means we believe the same things. So I'm going to go on record with my disagreements here instead.

1. We were talking once about how death is just a step in the Plan of Salvation and not something to be sad about because we'll all be resurrected someday. The people in our group over sixty talked about how they weren't sad at all when their parents died at ripe old ages after living full lives. Everyone seemed to regard those examples as representative and sufficient proof of the point at hand. My parents (and grandparents for that matter) are still alive, so instead I thought of, but didn't mention, a friend of mine whose twenty-something brother was crushed to death in a workplace accident a couple years ago, leaving behind two very young children who probably won't even remember him. Everyone in this friend's ward tried to tell her it was okay because she'll be with him again someday. She found this so insensitive that she stopped going to church.

It's okay for death to be sad. Some deaths, in fact probably an overwhelming majority when the circumstances of most of the world's population is considered, are untimely, unpleasant and unfair. And knowing that you'll be with someone again at some unspecified future date doesn't mean you can't or shouldn't miss them here and now. Remember when Lazarus died in the Bible and, quote, "Jesus wept", close quote? Even though Jesus knew full well that Lazarus was going to be resurrected someday? And even though in this instance Jesus brought him back to life maybe five minutes later at most? He validated Lazarus' sister's mourning by mourning with her. He acknowledged that no matter who you are or what you know, death is meant to be sad.

​2. The guy leading the discussion mentioned an incident here in Utah a few years ago where a teenage girl was shot in the head and left in a ditch by two teenage boys. She survived and made a remarkable recovery from her severe injuries. Most people regard this as an inspiring story. But this guy said that in court, when the boys asked for forgiveness, both the girl and her father were like "I hate you and I hope you're never happy again." How awful, the guy said, that now these boys have to live with that for the rest of their lives. What I said was nothing. What I wanted to say was "Are you -----ing me?"

Yes, we're supposed to forgive everyone, but that doesn't mean everyone deserves to be forgiven. If she had forgiven them, it would have made an inspiring and faith-promoting story precisely because they were scum and didn't deserve it. But because she didn't, I'm supposed to feel sorry for them? I'm supposed to feel bad that they have to live with the guilt of being attempted murderers? Maybe they could have avoided that by, I don't know, not shooting someone in the head? In fairness, I don't think they should have to live with that for long either because I think they should have been fed to wolves. But that's beside the point. Anyway, I know he didn't relate this story to be judgmental, but still I think it's out of line to bring up someone else's failure or refusal to forgive something that any normal person would find really really hard to forgive. It's not my concern or my problem. God will deal with everyone involved as He sees fit.

3. Any time someone says something like "I love science, but..." I brace for them to follow up with something stupid that makes a liar out of them. In this case, though, I was pleasantly surprised at first. The girl talking made a legitimate point about the built-in limits of scientific knowledge and the dangers of scientism (though she didn't use that term). And she made a legitimate point about the uncertainty principle limiting how much we can know about the universe whether in principle or practice. But then she went full-on god of the gaps. She said her faith is strengthened by how much we don't know, and scientists still can't explain dark matter so that proves God exists. She lamented that scientists refuse to let God be part of science or taught in schools even though they can't prove He doesn't exist. I'm paraphrasing from memory but that was basically it. I mentally decided that I would never try to date her.

One of the senior missionaries chimed in, "So we didn't evolve from pond scum?"

Everyone else: *chuckle at those silly scientists who are so dumb they think we evolved from pond scum*

Me:

Okay, first of all, we know a lot more than we used to and we're going to know a lot more in the future than we do now, exponentially more in fact, so basing her testimony even in part on what we don't know at this current moment in time is stupid. Maybe scientists will figure out dark matter and maybe they won't, but how awkward will she feel if they do? Does she assume dark matter is by its very nature inexplicable in terms of the physical world? Does she think it's just magic?

​Henry Drummond explained why this way of thinking is stupid more eloquently than I could, so I'll just let him take it from here: "There are reverent minds who ceaselessly scan the fields of Nature and the books of Science in search of gaps - gaps which they will fill up with God. As if God lived in the gaps? What view of Nature or of Truth is theirs whose interest in Science is not in what it can explain but in what it cannot, whose quest is ignorance not knowledge, whose daily dread is that the cloud may lift, and who, as darkness melts from this field or from that, begin to tremble for the place of His abode? What needs altering in such finely jealous souls is at once their view of Nature and of God. Nature is God's writing, and can only tell the truth; God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all."

On top of that, she contradicted her own legitimate points. As she pointed out, science has limits and can't explain purely spiritual things or the meaning of life. Why, then, does she think it should incorporate God directly into its theories? To plug the gaps, right, but you can't have it both ways. As she pointed out, they can't prove He doesn't exist, and that's precisely why they avoid the question altogether. Science deals with things that can be falsified. It tests them over and over again until they're proven wrong. If the theory of evolution by natural selection is not true, that can be demonstrated (though of course, no matter how much creationists try to pretend, it has not been). If God's existence is not true, that cannot be demonstrated. If scientists searched every molecule of the observable universe (which they can't) and failed to find Him, they still couldn't be sure He wasn't hiding in another galaxy too distant to reach, or another plane of existence untouchable by our human senses and instruments altogether. Keeping God out of the laboratories and schools isn't an attack on religion, it's just the way legitimate science has to be done. If He didn't want that to be the case He wouldn't have gone the whole "faith" route.

Of course, my overall experience in this Come Follow Me group has been quite positive and I hope for it to resume in the near future, but that's not nearly as interesting to blog about.

I've finally internalized a truth that I've known intellectually for years: the vast majority of online arguments are a waste of time. The parties involved aren't looking to determine the truth and, if necessary, adjust their views accordingly, they're looking to win over the other party. This is true of arguments generally but even more so on the internet where the fact of having an audience makes people even less willing to back down. So I don't waste as much time arguing as I used to. Nowadays when I feel compelled to chime in on something or critique someone else's chiming in on something, I typically do so and then ignore subsequent responses. I know the subsequent responders are often mocking me in my absence, thinking I'm a coward or whatever. Maybe this behavior qualifies me as a troll of sorts, but the thing is I spoke up on something I felt was important, I said what I needed to say and now I'm done. I'm not going to change my view and the other person or people aren't going to change their view, so why waste both our time pretending that's a possibility?

In one such recent instance, people were asserting that same-sex romantic love is functionally equivalent in all respects to opposite-sex romantic love. No comment from me. I wouldn't know, as I've never been in love with a man, but I tend to assume it's more or less the same experience. It always sounds ridiculous to me when straight Latter-day Saints try to delegitimize the reality of same-sex attraction by pretending it amounts to nothing more than lust and desire for pleasure. I believe, however, that using faulty logic or false premises to support an accurate conclusion is still wrong, so I felt compelled to object to someone's statement that "Love can never be wrong." And they didn't like that at all so I dropped the subject pretty quickly, but this is my blog and now I'm going to explain why I think that's nonsense.

First, because English is the stupidest language in the world, we must define the term. "Love" can mean different things and it's easy to conflate them inadvertently or otherwise. There is a very broad, selfless love for all of humankind that followers of Christ are expected to inculcate, and if this is what we mean by "love" then I would agree that it can never be wrong, assuming it's properly understood and framed within proper boundaries. Loving a terrible person is a good thing; letting a terrible person screw you over because you love them is not. I would say this is the only emotion that's "good" in all circumstances. Others, including romantic love, are context-specific. And romantic love, hereafter referred to for simplicity's sake as "love" because English is the stupidest language in the world, is an emotion. It is created by chemicals in the brain like any other emotion. It is not magic. Yet this more mature and accurate understanding should in no way cheapen or deligitimize love. God designed us to live in a physical world dominated by physical laws for a reason. If God is embodied, as Latter-day Saints believe, then I presume even His divine infinite matchless love must have some chemical basis.

These people I argued with appeared to have a sense that love is somehow above and apart from other emotions by virtue of how beautiful and sacred it is, and this informs their conviction that it can never be wrong, but to me this just looks like circular logic. Love can't be bad because love is good. This circular logic then informs their response to my counterexample of cheating on one's spouse. Adultery is bad; therefore true love can't be a part of it because love is good. Admittedly I should have elaborated more. I wasn't talking about sudden, impulsive, lust-driven adultery like King David, I was talking about the instances where one falls out of love with one's spouse and in love with someone else, like, say, an old friend from high school that one looks up on Facebook and decides to share all one's marital problems with. Everyone knows this sort of thing happens. Though never married myself, I was in love with a married woman for a longer period of time than I'd care to admit. I knew that attempting to act on this love would be wrong regardless of how sincere and heartfelt the emotion.

Another example that comes to mind now is abusive relationships where the abused party loves their abuser. I would say that in an overwhelming majority of cases this love is objectively negative. Again, the abused should still have a broad Christlike love for the abuser and everyone else, but romantic love is something else entirely. The abuser does not deserve such love and should not be given such love. The abused should be kicking them to the curb with the other garbage ASAP. But many of us know people, mostly women, sometimes men, who love their abusive partners and stay with their abusive partners because they love them, and we recognize that this is a very difficult and unhealthy situation for them to be in. Everyone on the outside can see it. They themselves probably see it intellectually, but the emotions they've cultivated toward this person make it very difficult to do the right thing for their own health. Just because it's unhealthy doesn't mean it isn't really love. Unless, you know, circular logic.

Yes, by the way, romantic love should be earned. Being selfless and putting your partner's needs ahead of yours is all well and good, but if they can't be bothered to do jack for you in return then why would you even want to be with them? Romantic love, unlike Christlike love, should be predicated on actual reasons, some universal and some based on personal preferences, not unreasonable reasons but reasons nonetheless. This is also what I love about the love of a dog. You take care of a dog and it loves you. It doesn't expect you to be perfect, it doesn't hold you to an unfair standard, but it does require something of you to earn its love and if you meet this requirement you actually have a reason to feel good about the fact that you are now loved and actually deserve it. I miss my dog. If this post is as garbage as I think it is, I apologize, but the thing is I've gotten about six hours of sleep in the last three days.