There has been lots of talk about Twilight on the Mormon blogs over the last few years.  The author of the series, Stephenie Meyer, is a practicing Mormon and it is not too hard to sniff out the Mormon influences in the story in my opinion.

One of the complaints occasionally lodged is that no real guy could possibly compete with the fantasy that is Edward, the romantic hero of the story. On some levels this is obviously true: As a vampire Edward has super strength and super speed, plus he is independently wealthy as a teen, plus he is magically handsome, plus he can read minds. But I’m not sure those are really the most important things that make Edward desirable. It seems to me that Edward has other things about him that regular guys (single or married) can compete with: (1) Tremendous self discipline, (2) a powerful moral compass, (3) a desire to understand the girl, (4) a drive to protect and defend his loved ones, and (5) skills at being a tease. Plus regular guys can take advantage of important attributes Edward lacks: (a) A sense of humor, (b) a tan, (c) the ability to intermingle comfortably with human beings, and (d) the ability to live in a sunny place.
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…a Crematorium. 



 

 

I decided this a while back because one of my good friends passed away growing up and her funeral expenses nearly ruined her parents financially, coming in at over $10,000 dollars (which is fairly common for a coffin, phermaldahyde, etc burial). On the other hand Cremation costs around $600. I can’t stand the idea of leaving a financial burden like that to the kiddos, and I figure it is my way of repenting to mother nature, as I figure the land I would have been buried in is approximately equivilant to the amount of land I used in landfills by using disposable diapers. (6 ft deep, by 7 ft long,  by 4 ft wide, you do the math)

But I have heard that there are some LDS concerns about this. I mainly blew them off as outdated ideas with no place in the worldwide church, but then, upon the urging of some, I looked up one.

The latest I found was an opinion of a GA which noted that burial is preferable as it leaves the body to decay via natural means and scriptures site “You were made from Dust and to Dust you shall return”. First, I was raised Catholic and I am pretty well aware of the whole “Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust” idea. Second, there is absolutely nothing natural about injecting preservatives into my body, locking it in an airtight metal box and burying it. Third, nothing says “Dust to Dust” more than being reduced to the same.

So I ask you, does anyone have any legitimate objections to cremation?

Dear Oregon Department of Transportation,

This weekend I took a group of scouts on a winter camping trip to Mt. Hood. We left on Friday morning at around 8am and arrived at Frog Lake at roughly 11am. The driving conditions were terrible as they always are in Oregon when it snows and freezes. The shoulders of the roads were littered with cars and semis that had slid or rolled off the road. When we arrived, we donned snow shoes and hiked in about a mile from the parking lot to the lake. It was a beautiful hike with some light snow and gospel conversation. The assistant scoutmaster and I discussed the implications of belonging to a Church run by imperfect prophets who make mistakes and often reflect the biases of their times and culture. (more…)

Dear Family & Friends,

This morning I was going over my long holiday to-do list and saying to myself, “This is out of control! I’ve got to get rid of some of this stuff.” I ran my finger down the paper and stopped at “Send out Christmas letters and cards”. Yes, that would be the first to go. No Christmas cards from the Js this year.

Then a picture came to my mind of everyone chasing down their mailmen and shouting, “Where is the J’s Christmas letter? I haven’t gotten it yet and the holidays won’t feel right until we get that letter!”

The harried postman would reply, “Look lady(or dude), I just deliver the mail. Call the Js and ask them yourself where their stinking letter is.” So, for the postman’s sake I decided to write the letter.
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Let’s imagine that there were a race of immortals. I mean real immortals that literally cannot die — not pseudo immortals we read about in fiction that are hard to kill but can die if you know the trick (decapitate, stake through the heart, burn, whatever). And by cannot die I mean they outlive every planet and every star. They are truly immortal with no beginning and no end. Now let’s further imagine that these immortals are vastly intelligent and they all have matching mental and physical potential and capacities, which capacities are far beyond our mortal human capacities. Further let’s imagine they live within the also-beginningless universe and that there are Universal laws by which they are bound.

Do you think it is safe to assume that this race of immortals would figure out how to be maximally happy over the infinite time they exist? I mean if they are that intelligent then it would be the reasonable thing for them to do after all. (more…)

As the next in my series on evolutionary psychology I wanted to highlight the unusual take that Satoshi Kanazawa gave on the subject of polygamy over at his blog. Here are some excerpts:

Contrary to popular belief, most women benefit from polygynous society, and most men benefit from monogamous society. This is because polygynous society allows some women to share a resourceful man of high status. George Bernard Shaw (who was one of the founders of the London School of Economics and Political Science where I teach) put it best, when he observed, “The maternal instinct leads a woman to prefer a tenth share in a first rate man to the exclusive possession of a third rate one.”

In contrast, most men benefit from monogamous society. Given a 50-50 sex ratio, monogamous society virtually guarantees a wife for every man, even a third-rate one. Under polygyny, some third-rate men may not find a wife at all, or, even if they are lucky enough to find one, their wife will not be as desirable as the one they can secure for themselves under monogamy, because under polygyny more desirable women would have become the second, third, or tenth wife of more desirable men.

The exceptions to this rule are highly desirable women, who benefit from monogamous society, and highly desirable men, who benefit from polygynous society. A highly desirable woman can marry a highly desirable man under any circumstances, but under polygyny she’d have to share her desirable husband with other women, whereas under monogamy she can monopolize him. A highly desirable man can acquire multiple wives under polygyny, but must confine himself to only one wife (albeit a highly desirable one) under monogamy.

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I am currently Young Men President in my Ward, and in order to give the Young Men ample opportunity to learn to teach by basically rotating the responsibility of who teaches each week from person to person. (We do combined Priests and Teachers, so there are 8 guys between 14 and 18) I’ve been doing this for about 6 months now, and teaching hasn’t really improved much.

We currently have 3 rules:

1. Don’t Suck
2. Don’t be Boring
3. When paraphrasing a scriptural story, don’t attribute the curse words to members of the Godhead (more…)

I am a pro-science guy and I believe in evolution. That said, it seems to me from watching the Discovery channel and reading popular science articles that it is easy to get carried away explaining things based on evolution to the point that we forget what evolution is in the first place.†  Evolution is natural selection working on random mutation. Here’s an example from the NYT (hat tip: ZD sidebar) demonstrating how easy it is to slip from sound scientific reasoning into poppycock: (more…)

I have been fascinated by the theories and posts at this guy’s blog. I didn’t know much at all about evolutionary psychology before this week, though I was not surprised that such a field existed. Here is the definition of evolutionary psychology we get from the wiki:

Evolutionary psychology (EP) is a pseudoscience that attempts to explain mental and psychological traits—such as memory, perception, or language—as adaptations, that is, as the functional products of natural selection or sexual selection. Adaptationist thinking about physiological mechanisms, such as the heart, lungs, and immune system, is common in evolutionary biology. Evolutionary psychology applies the same thinking to psychology.

Evolutionary psychologists argue that much of human behavior is generated by psychological adaptations that evolved to solve recurrent problems in human ancestral environments. They hypothesize, for example, that humans have inherited special mental capacities for acquiring language, making it nearly automatic, while inheriting no capacity specifically for reading and writing. Other adaptations, according to EP, might include the abilities to infer others’ emotions, to discern kin from non-kin, to identify and prefer healthier mates, to cooperate with others, and so on. Consistent with the theory of natural selection, evolutionary psychology sees organisms as often in conflict with others of their species, including mates and relatives. For example, mother mammals and their young offspring sometimes struggle over weaning, which benefits the mother more than the child. Humans, however, have a marked capacity for cooperation as well. (more…)

Satoshi Kanazawa is an evolutionary psychologist and he blogs over at Psychology Today. Earlier this week he published a post called “How to be happy” (Hat tip to the BCC sideblog). Here are some relevant excerpts:

What can evolutionary psychology say about how to be happy? …

I would say that the best thing for people to do to become happier is to get in touch with their animal nature … Recognize and accept that we are animals. We are all designed by evolution to be certain way, and no amount of denial or fighting will change our evolutionary legacy and its implications.

One of the things that evolution has done is to make men and women very different. … One of the ways that men and women are different is in what makes them happy.

Forget what feminists, hippies, and liberals have told you in the last half century. They are all lies based on political ideology and conviction, not on science. Contrary to what they may have told you, it is very unlikely that money, promotions, the corner office, social status, and political power will make women happy. Similarly, it is very unlikely that quitting their jobs, dropping out of the rat race, and becoming stay-at-home dads to spend all their times with their children will make men happy.
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I bought it, and it’s a beautiful and very attractive book. I could go on about the soft veneer of the pages, the attractive binding, or the how beautiful the book is underneath the cover.

But, I probably won’t ever read it cover to cover.
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