LDS Stake Medium Council

Sandy, UT -

Since 1997, “Inflatable Creations” of Sandy Utah has provided inflatable “bounce houses” and other activities for birthday parties and community events.  Seeking to expand into the lucrative LDS market, owner Sam Steed recently announced a new line of inflatable fun:
“We’ve noticed a huge fall-off in our business on Sunday afternoons as the majority of our clients go to Church and stay at home.  So we put our heads together to come up with some Sabbath-appropriate infaltables.”
The first in their line of “Sunday Fun-nies” is the “Book of More-fun”, an 8 foot tall inflatable Book of Mormon.  Already available for rent or purchase, Ward Primaries and YM/YW classes all over the Sandy area having great fun using them to teach about the Book of Mormon.

“I was teaching my Deacons a lesson the Book of Mormon, and I used a quote from Elder Holland’s awesome talk about the Book of Mormon, especially the part about people leaving the Church and having to go over or around it” says Deacon’s Quorum adviser Mel Monson.  “It was especially fun to be able to take my boys out to the lawn and let them really find out what it’s like to have to crawl ‘over, under or around’ the Book of Mormon.”  13-year-old Alex Binder agrees.

“When Brother Monson told us how people leaving the Church had to go like over or around or under the Book of Mormon, it didn’t really sound that hard.  It’s not very big.  I thought maybe they had a huge pile of them somewhere that they made them use.  But trust me, I just tried going over it that huge one, and it was impossible.  I guess when someone tries to leave the Church, the Bishop must bring them out here and make them do this.”

Madilyn Cramer of the Activity Committee for the Beaver, UT Stake reported on the popularity of the “Book of More-fun” at their last Stake Softball Tournament.

“We really had a lot of people trying out the obstacle course, and there really isn’t an easy way to go over, around or under the Book of Mormon, as Elder Holland said.  Unfortunately, we found that many people just chose to ignore that part of the obstacle course, and found something else to do with their time instead of trying to struggle over that big balloon.  Which I guess is how things can go in real life too.”

Tags: Uncategorized // 2 Comments »

Recently, a website was created to facilitate Testimony sharing for LDS scholars and scientists:

Mormon Scholars Testify

The Church has its own website where Prophets and Apostles have published countless testimonies, each of them fervent and heartfelt.  So why would a separate website be needed for the LDS intelligentsia?

It would seem that sometimes “scholarly” issues appear to attack the Church, presenting a situation where a Church member might feel like they have to choose one or the other.  A website like that can be helpful in showing that it’s possible to pursue academic or scientific knowledge while maintaining a testimony of the Gospel (and the Church).

Of course, a broader view shows us many situations where very smart people believe very false things (for example, almost every false religion could probably create a similar site with notable scholars sharing their testimonies in a similar fashion).

So this would raise the question, is it possible for a very smart person to have a testimony of something that is very false?

If the answer is “Yes”, then one theory on the matter has been put forth by Michael Shermer.  He suggests that it is possible for very smart people to believe false things because frequently the smart people formed certain convictions before they were “smart” (i.e. as young children, or before they had studied certain issues or fields of knowledge), and then they use their “smarts” to defend their false belief instead of analyzing it and questioning it.  As he puts it:

Smart people believe weird things because they are skilled at defending beliefs they arrived at for nonsmart reasons.

Rarely do any of us sit down before a table of facts, weigh them pro and con, and choose the most logical and rational explanation, regardless of what we previously believed. Most of us, most of the time, come to our beliefs for a variety of reasons having little to do with empirical evidence and logical reasoning. Rather, such variables as genetic predisposition, parental predilection, sibling influence, peer pressure, educational experience and life impressions all shape the personality preferences that, in conjunction with numerous social and cultural influences, lead us to our beliefs. We then sort through the body of data and select those that most confirm what we already believe, and ignore or rationalize away those that do not.

All of us do this, of course, but smart people are better at it through both talent and training. Some beliefs really are more logical, rational, and supported by the evidence than others, of course, but it is not my purpose here to judge the validity of beliefs; rather, I am interested in the question of how we came to them in the first place, and how we hold on to them in the face of either no evidence or contradictory evidence.

If that is true, than we would expect “smart” people to be found in every religion and belief system, even the false ones.  So, a website such as the one under discussion might show that it is possible for scholars and scientists to maintain belief in LDS Doctrines (which I suspect is the point, although I don’t know anyone who argues otherwise), but it wouldn’t speak to the overall truthfulness of those Doctrines.

Tags: Doctrines, Teachings, Policies and Traditions, LDS Apologetics // 3 Comments »

Many members of the Church struggle with polygamy, but apparently none moreso than the editors of the Church website.  I can only imagine the long meetings discussing how much detail should be included about the practice, with debates raging about openness and propriety.

A good example is the “Presidents of the Church” page on the Church website, where each Prophet is introduced to the world.

For an interesting study in the Church’s inability to deal with its polygamous past, I suggest the following:

1. Click on each President, then click on “Significant Events” on the left side of the screen.

2. Compare the list of “Significant Events” for the polygamous prophets with the list for the monogamous prophets, (or prophets that had multiple wives but not living at the same time).

Do you notice any differences? Why do you think these differences are there?

- Bonus Question: Three prophets married an additional wife only after their first wives passed away. Are these bios presented differently than prophets who married more than one living woman at a time? If so, why might that be?

– Bonus Bonus Question: Does Joseph Smith’s profile resemble the profiles of other polygamous prophets, or other monogamous prophets? Which would you expect, and why?

Discuss.

Tags: Church History, Doctrines, Teachings, Policies and Traditions, Joseph Smith, Polygamy // 4 Comments »

I recently came across a website of videos explaining LDS beliefs and culture, simplified for the unitiated:

Mormons Made Simple

All-in-all, they’re not too bad.  I think the narration is good, the animation is as good as it needs to be, and the claims are relatively solid.

Obviously, there are a bazillion nit-picky things that could be corrected just for the sake of being precisely correct (i.e. a video claims the Word of Wisdom was a commandment in 1833), but as a basic primer on the Church, you could do worse.

Check it out.

Tags: Doctrines, Teachings, Policies and Traditions // 1 Comment »