The story of Adam and Eve, Mormonly understood, makes a mockery of the idea of salvation under the Law.

The standard Christian view is that Adam and Eve were given a strict commandment not to eat the fruit, the Serpent tricked them into eating it, so God in his anger cast them out of Eden. The Mormon view is that Adam and Eve were given two commandments which could not both be fulfilled, so one (don’t eat the fruit), had to give way to the higher one (multiply and replenish the Earth). Adam fell that men might be.

Elder Oaks explained, more clearly than I can ever hope to, the Mormon belief that what Adam and Eve did was a “transgression,” not a “sin”:

For reasons that have not been revealed, this transition, or “fall,” could not happen without a transgression—an exercise of moral agency amounting to a willful breaking of a law (see Moses 6:59). This would be a planned offense, a formality to serve an eternal purpose.

The obvious theological objection to our doctrine would be: “God is perfect and perfectly just, so why would he give a commandment knowing that it could not be fulfilled? How is that fair?” As Elder Oaks says, the need for such a transgression has never been fully explained, and I admit that this one used to bug me a little when I was younger. Eventually I shrugged it off; it was a one-off deal, so why think too hard about it?

Then I served a mission, got married, had kids, and realized that God gives impossible commandments all the time. (more…)

It’s been my impression that it is the policy of North Korea to scrape together all the loose fissionable material to found around the world, and when they have enough scrounged up for a critical mass, to make it into a bomb and blow it up. This seems like a useful service to the world. The interval between bombs had been three years (2006, 2009, 2012, 2016), but the latest came less than a year after the previous and released a larger yield.

The gentlemen here have some interesting answers to prayers.  God, it seems, trusts us enough to unbutton a little. (more…)

“Brookland Manor today has 134 four- and five-bedroom apartments. Yet when the new community is built, none of its 1,646 apartments or 114 for-sale townhouses will have more than three bedrooms, and a vast majority will have only one or two.

Brookland’s owner, Mid-City Financial Corp., based in Germantown, Md., told the city’s Zoning Commission that four- and five-bedroom apartments ‘are not consistent with the creation of a vibrant new community.'”
(link)

“Four- and five-bedroom units in the District constitute just 8 percent and 4 percent of available rental housing, respectively, with most of the properties in Wards 7 and 8, the city’s poorest areas, according a report last year.”

“What do you think?”

“I already told you.”

“You know the answer.”

“Duh!”  (As in “The answer should be obvious.”)

And after petitioning to “please bless so-and-so”, “What are you doing to bless so-and-so?” (more…)

A few links:

“6 things to know about independent presidential candidate Evan McMullin,” Washington Post.

“Meet Evan McMullin, The #NeverTrump Movement’s Last Hope,” NPR.

“Here’s why #NeverTrump candidate Evan McMullin is too late to get in the game,” all the missed and upcoming ballot deadlines at Conservative Review.

infogalactic bio.

They say that marriage and fatherhood takes away your fire and turns your blood to water.  Daddies, they say, play it safe.

Ha! (more…)

I’m looking at a recent traffic safety newsletter produced by Cape Fox, a company that does driver training programs for the military. An article on texting while parking (instead of driving) lists the U.S. states and territories where texting while driving is illegal. Six states are not on the list.

Which six states are they? Please restrict yourself to two states per hour in the comments.

His Majesty got back from a long campaign tour last night.

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Panaca, Nevada goes back to 1864 when it was Panaca, Utah, a couple years before Nevada’s boundary was moved another degree east to the 114th Meridian. It was an agricultural community supplying mining camps. “Tranquil and religious, Panaca never had an easy relationship with its rambunctious neighbors, but it has outlasted nearly all of them.” Today with a population of 900, it is the only dry town in Nevada. There is a Panaca Nevada Stake of the LDS church, a Panaca 1st Ward, and a Panaca 2nd Ward. The last time I was there was two nights before the 2012 eclipse. The next morning I visited graves in Enterprise, 50 miles east of Panaca.

A weird crime occurred there Wednesday evening. (more…)

At the end of my row was a Navajo man without much temple experience. The workers were helping him through the ceremony. Meanwhile I was going through the ritual motions in a particularly brusque fashion. I caught myself doing it. I realized I had unconsciously decided to affect being the old hand who has seen it all before. I laughed at myself.  (more…)

From “Table 2. Births, by age of mother, live-birth order, and race of mother: United States, 2014” in “Births: Final Data for 2014,” National Vital Statistics Reports, Volume 64, Number 12 are the following number of first-borns, second-borns, etc.:

1st: 1,550,475; 2nd: 1,267,334; 3rd: 667,446; 4th: 283,953; 5th; 110,565; 6th: 46,045; 7th: 20,771; 8th and over: 21,589; not stated: 19,898; total: 3,988,076.

That makes for the following ratios:

1st/2nd: 1.22; 2nd/3rd: 1.90; 3rd/4th: 2.35; 4th/5th: 2.57; 5th/6th: 2.40; 6th/7th: 2.22.

I wonder what my six children would make of this, particularly the youngest. The ratios correspond somewhat with my own experience as a potential parent: The choice to have a second child was never pondered independently—it was part of the choice to marry. After that, conception was a consciously considered matter, and considered one child at a time. The last two were on exception, though. Before conceiving a fifth child, we decided to also have a sixth if we could and then retire from getting and bearing. After the sixth was born, that seemed to be a good decision and we stayed with it.

As a rule, there are not many experiences more dull than being the only sober person at a gathering of drunk people. However, I have to think that even a teetotaler like me would have loved to be present the night that Sir Richard Burton sat down in American Fork, Utah for a “squar” drink with Porter Rockwell.

Here’s a parody blog making fun of Russophile paleocons:

http://www.splicetoday.com/writing/paleocon-diary-16

The parody unfairly lumps Russian Orthodox Christians like Rod Dreher in with Putin-adoring Lew Rockwell types, although the writer’s voice resembles nothing so much as one of those neoreactionary bloggers for whom Russophilia is just the next logical step after they’ve gotten bored with Dungeons and Dragons.

I find myself sympathizing more with the paleocons over time. While Putin is not a good man, and Russia is not a place I would like to live, the affinity for Putin’s Russia didn’t come out of the blue. I think I can demonstrate this with an economy of examples. (more…)

His Majesty was playing marbles with the cats this morning.

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