How I Lost My Religion Through Prayer

I was initially going to name this post "how I lost my faith through prayer", but then I realized I really don't know what faith I have or don't have. What I do know is that I don't have a religion, and that I feel very comfortable with that. I've written my story is so many different ways, but seeing time and time again the age old "pray and follow your answer" explanation of what I should do in life this seems appropriate as a condensed story.
Since I was a young child I had always been taught to pray. Morning, night, before meals, and just whenever I felt like it. I grew up spiritual, but not until I turned ten or so did I really start praying on my own consistently. I had been taught stories of Book of Mormon characters who had amazing visions and answers to prayer. There was Joseph Smith who saw God in person because of a prayer. I also had high expectations. At church and in the scriptures I had been taught that an answer to prayer comes from a "still small voice" or a "burning in the bosom". So I looked for those, and hoped for something bigger.
When I prayed to know if the LDS (Mormon) church was true, I typically got a strong emotional feeling. I took that as an answer yes. I struggled with other issues in my life and received all kinds of strange answers. In fact I had an answer to a prayer once when I was very young that I would become an Olympic athlete. Before I go on, many might say to me that I'm interpreting my answer to that prayer wrong. The issue being that the feeling I got when asking that question was the same feeling I got for everything else that taught to me. My entire belief in my religion relied on that feeling.
While that feeling was a simple feeling, I always wanted more. I would love to see God or an angel just to validate my beliefs. It's hard to believe in something or someone you can't see, touch, taste, hear, and really feel. I felt that maybe I just didn't have enough faith to get that kind of an experience, or perhaps I wasn't worthy to receive it. I went most of my young life feeling inadequate because although I got an emotional response to prayer every once in a while, I just couldn't shake the feeling that it was my own thoughts and emotions getting in the way. I felt like I wasn't good enough to receive a real answer to prayer.
As I got older I had deeper questions to ask. Some were about my own self, some about other topics. As I prayed about these things I got answers. The problem being my answers weren't always orthodox. They were the answers that I felt were right, but not the answers that leaders of the church said were right. Until I left to serve as a full time missionary for the LDS church the issues were never large enough to cause problems.
As a missionary we were taught to pray about everything. I had some pretty weird experiences that I really have no explanation for other than either coincidence or miracle answers to prayer. These experiences were rare enough to really chalk up to coincidence, but I'm open to it having been divine intervention. The biggest issues I had with the mission in general was how we were to act as missionaries. To me I always feared going on a mission, being an introvert I hate pushing my beliefs on others. In fact I hate sharing about beliefs with others because it's a deeply personal thing for me, and so are everyone else's beliefs (I sometimes fear having this blog public because of how offended someone might get with my opinions, but I figure you don't have to waste any time reading it if you're not interested). So you can imagine being told to make so many contacts a week, teach so many lessons a week, and have so many baptisms a week did not mesh well with me. I also hated that taking time out for service was looked down upon because it detracted from proselyting time. But I digress, when I prayed about how to do things and how to teach things to people I got one feeling. Some people weren't supposed to get baptized yet, and that's what I felt was right. I was told that I was in fact wrong about that. I was told to stop wasting my time teaching and visiting people who weren't progressing towards baptism fast enough. I felt that God was telling me the opposite. My mission president received "direct revelation from God" about a certain way of doing missionary work. I had already received my own answer from God about how to work and serve others and the two contradicted each other. It was at this point that I started to question the very foundation of the religion that I believed in.
After I came home from my mission experience I began to start asking more and more questions. I still went to church every so often, but I became a skeptic. I still believe all the weird stuff despite it all because I had an "answer to a prayer" that it was all true. I had doubts like why did Brigham Young start a ban on anyone with African blood having the priesthood, and then no other church leader changed that "policy" until the late 1900s. I had doubts about polygamy in the church, and why it stopped just to appease the US politically (I figured God can do what he wants, why care about what people do. After all in the Old Testament he destroyed entire civilizations). I had doubts about the extremely unscientific stories of the Bible and Book of Mormon. I also had doubts as to why the church was so secretive about their finances, and why they cared so much about numbers not people. But like I say I had an answer to prayer, and that was the thing keeping me going.
This line of thought provoked a new experiment. What if I prayed about the LDS church NOT being true, and what if I prayed about the Book of Mormon not being the word of God. Strangely I got that same emotional feeling that I had received previously when asking the opposite. After time I started to receive a new answer which was "Mormonism was great for you, it developed you into who you are today, and it's a part of you, but it's time for you to move on". This was good enough for me to start my process of becoming a new person with a new set of beliefs. I won't go into the rest of the details as it's unrelated to the topic.
I do remember listening in church while visiting my parents one Christmas shortly after all this had occurred. It was a recent convert to the Mormon church talking, and he was describing his experience praying. It made me doubt my decision a little inside, and so I said a quick prayer in the moment to ask what I was supposed to do. I received an overwhelming feeling of happiness accompanied with something along the lines of "you're free to choose your own path, and that's the path that is right for you". I keep this experience in my pocket as it keeps me going when I doubt myself and the path I've taken in life.
Now I won't say that prayer is a bad thing. I still have no idea to this day who (if anyone) I was talking to, but I appreciate the experience of it. I remember being a missionary and just hating everything about it. I just sat there and complained for two hours to God about how awful life was. After my huge rant I was expecting a huge reprimand from God. I simply received a loving reply of "I'm not going to chastise you because it's not what you need. You needed to say that, and I understand." That was exactly what I needed to hear to keep going. I also remember that experience as impacting my life. I now view prayer as a way of meditating. It's a way for me to gather my thoughts. Though I no longer pray as I feel strange doing it since I have no idea what higher power I believe in, I still think it's a great way to meditate if you do it right. I hate the long lists of "I want this" or "I need this". After I left Mormonism I realized how really conceited the religion is to think that God would care more about your lost car keys or getting you pickup truck fixed than he does about dying children in impoverished countries. I actually love the Duck Dynasty prayers as they're pretty much just giving thanks for all they have in their lives. Even if you don't believe in a God, I feel that being thankful and acknowledging that spirit of thanksgiving is a great thing. It actually meshes really well with my meditation treatment of prayer.
So I guess the short story is prayer led me into a die-hard belief of the Mormon church, and then it led me right back out. I have no idea what it was, who was talking to me, or why it happened the way it did. Was it my own mind playing games with me or was it a higher power leading me on my own personal path in life? I have no idea, and I feel just as happy not knowing. If I get an answer one day, I'll accept it, but for now when people tell me to pray about the truth I simply tell them "I already have."

On Entropy

               One of the troubles I find with science education in society is thinking we understand things because we've oversimplified them. This is one of my biggest qualms with most things I hear from non-scientists or even a good number of physical science teachers. One of the biggest oversimplifications I hear is the idea that entropy=disorder. I can’t remember how many dozens of times I have heard this and then seen people take it and run with it. I've even seen some chemistry teachers post videos on YouTube preaching this idea in the completely wrong context. I have seen a quite a few videos lately as well as this gem that has been floating around facebook. While entropy does have to do with disorder in a sense of the word the common understanding of disorder (like a messy room) has nothing to do with entropy. So, I’ve decided to clear up the misconception and attempt to prevent people from associating the word entropy with disorder. If you get lost in the middle you can go ahead and skip to the bottom few paragraphs since I’m sure there is no one that’s actually dedicated enough to read this whole post (if you understand entropy you have no need, if you don’t you probably have no desire).

                First let me explain the simple example of disorder that relates to entropy (the one that I’ve heard most). Think of a room full of nicely organized things, then over time you use the stuff without putting it back. You wear your socks and throw them on the floor, the desk has pens and pencils randomly laying everywhere, and your bed is no longer nicely made. Many people would call this a high state of entropy because of the level of disorder of things in the room. Since the stuff is not neatly organized with must have high entropy. This actually has nothing to do with the actual definition of entropy. Mathematically (which is really the best way to describe it) the entropy of a system is a measure of how many microstates are possible within a single macrostate. For those of us who don’t speak geek I will explain. A macrostate describes the contents of the system and a microstate describes how those contents are arranged. Let me give an example so it makes sense. If I have 6 coins on a table there would be 6 possible macrostates: 6 coins heads up, 5 coins heads up and 1 coin tails up, 4 coins heads up and 2 coins tails up, 3 coins heads up and 3 coins tails up, etc… The microstate would then describe which of the coins would be heads up and tails up. Now that we have that all covered let’s talk about the entropy of this system.

                Like I said before entropy is a measure of how many possible microstates there are. High entropy correlates to a high number of microstates, and low entropy is a low number of microstates. To make things easier to follow I’ll take the number of coins down to four and let’s say they’re all different (a penny, a nickel, a dime, and a quarter). Let’s say I’m OCD and I like to have all my coins facing heads up on the table. I have created a system with very low entropy statistically. That is because there is only one way to arrange the macrostate (all coins heads up) which is to have all the coins heads up. So therefore the number of possible microstates in this macrostate is one. Now lets say I have a really noisy neighbor who has a huge subwoofer which shakes my table while I’m gone. The coins will now start flipping on the table all day. If I were to make any bets on how the coins would be arranged I would say that there would be two coins heads up and two coins heads down. Why? one might ask. It is because two coins heads up is the macrostate which has the most number of possible microstates which means that it has the highest level of entropy in the statistical sense of the word. Let’s look at it closer. I’ve made a table to make it easier to follow. You should note that there are 6 different ways of organizing these coins with two coins heads up and two coins tails up. That’s 5 more microstates or ways of arranging the coins than having them up heads up or all tails up! So while I would know to bet on the macrostate, I would also know not to bet on the microstate as my odds would be lower.

Penny	Nickel	Dime	Quarter
Heads	Heads	Tails	Tails
Heads	Tails	Heads	Tails
Heads	Tails	Tails	Heads
Tails	Heads	Heads	Tails
Tails	Heads	Tails	Heads
Tails	Tails	Heads	Heads

Just to convince that this is the highest statistical entropy state let’s look at the number of ways you can arrange the coins with three coins heads up. The number of possible microstates of this macrostate of the system is 4. That’s still more ways to arrange the coins than all heads up, but less than two heads up and two tails up.

Penny	Dime	Nickel	Quarter
Heads	Heads	Heads	Tails
Heads	Tails	Heads	Heads
Heads	Heads	Tails	Heads
Tails	Heads	Heads	Heads

This phenomenon is also seen in the statistics of flipping a single coin many times. If you flip a coin fifty times you should notice that on average you will get 25 tails and 25 heads. The macrostate would be flipping a coin 50 times and getting 25 tails and 25 heads. The microstate would be the order in which you got the 25 tails and 25 heads. If one were to flip 25 heads in a row it wouldn’t be defying statistics because each flip has a 50% chance of either heads or tails and the previous flip has no affect on the next flip statistically. It would be a rare thing to see however because it would be one of about 126 trillion different ways of obtaining a 50% heads to tails ratio from 50 flips. While it is true that this coin flip example does not happen exactly 50% heads and tails 100% of the time, if one were to take an average of all the unbiased coin flips in the world it should average to very close to that (to the point of being in practical language exactly 50%). Now this is just a statistical explanation of entropy, how does this apply in the real world?

Well it is easiest to see in the sense of an ideal gas system. This is a system made of gas particles that act like billiard balls in a container that see no gravity, no air resistance, no friction, and the collisions are purely elastic (the system does not lose any energy in the collisions). Let’s say I have all my billiard balls arranged so that I have slow moving balls on one side of the container and fast moving balls on the other side of the container with some kind of magical barrier in between. Now before we continue with this box example I can tell you that on average all the balls on one side will have the same average speed. How? Because that is the state with the highest entropy, and the second law of thermodynamics states that a system will always increase in entropy until it reaches maximum entropy. This maximum entropy is often referred to as thermodynamic equilibrium. When one ball collides with another it will transfer some of its kinetic energy to the other ball. After a long time all of the balls will have collided with each other multiple times each. Each collision causes each ball to essentially share its kinetic energy with the other balls. Eventually they will have come to a point where they all have the same average kinetic energy. If this is true than there are many ways of arranging this system since I can say that any ball can be put in any other balls place. If only one ball had all the kinetic energy then that ball is the only ball that I could rearrange which limits my number of microstates.

So now we go back to the box with the magical barrier. Let’s say that there are x number of microstates for each side of the box. That means there are 2 times x number of total microstates in the box since the only way I can rearrange this system is by either putting the fast balls on the right or the slow balls on the right. Now I take the barrier out, what happens? The fast balls start colliding with the slow balls and after a certain amount of time I have all the balls with the same average speed again. That average speed is faster than the average speed of the original slow balls, but slower than the average speed of the original fast balls. That means that the balls could all be rearranged to replace any other ball in the box which correlates to high entropy. Now why would we call this disorder? It is because this system we know very little about. All I can tell you is the average speed of each ball in the box. Before I took the barrier away I was able to tell you a little about the two different average speeds (the slow and the fast).

Now let’s say I rewind time even further and say initially I had only one ball that was moving on each side of the barrier. Well then I can tell you that only two balls are moving at some exact speed, and the rest of the balls are at rest. You see initially I had a highly “ordered” system because I had only two balls with any kinetic energy and I knew exactly what their energy was. After some time the balls bounced around and collided with other balls causing my information about the system to be even vaguer. I do not know anything about any one particular ball now, but I can split the box in two and know that in each half the balls will have some average speed. Now when I take away the barrier I know even less about the system, only that all the balls now have one average speed. One could conclude then that as entropy increases the knowledge one has about a particular system decreases.

This doesn’t mean that 1010 is a low entropy organization of ones and zeros because it repeats a pattern (and therefore probably contains some good information). It merely means that if I had four binary digits that were changing randomly then after some time I would end up with a collection of arrangements of two 1s and two 0s (which includes 1010 as well as 0101, 0011, 1100, and 1001). That means that I know have to guess between 6 options now rather than if they were all 1s I would only have to guess one out of one option. So when you are trying to get rid of information on a hard drive there a repeated pattern of 10 is just as worthless to the NSA as all 1s and then all 0s which is just as worthless as a random assortment of 1s and 0s which are half 1s and half 0s. The information isn’t lost in the actual arrangement; it is lost in the number of possible arrangements. So if there are random 1s and 0s left on your hard drive, but there are more 1s than 0s it makes the NSA’s job easier because it limits the possible combinations of 1s and 0s that contained your actual information previously.

But I digress, now I will get to the whole point of this explanation. Many people say that evolution violates the second law of thermodynamics since our bodies are highly ordered organisms. That would kind of be like saying that because you are using your computer right now you are cheating the laws of physics. In order to get this point across I’m going to take in terms of mass-energy. General relativity states that mass can be converted into energy and vice-versa. This happens all the time not just in fusion in the sun and fission in power plants but in chemical reactions. You see our bodies are highly ordered mass-energy systems. But in order to make our bodies (and keep them running) we actually cause more disorder. For example we eat things which are highly ordered (plant and animal matter or even synthesized chemicals) and we use up the energy that is provided by the chemical bonds of this “fuel”. Well over time we get hungry again. That is because we used this energy and a good portion of it was lost from our body leaking body heat. That energy was partially radiated as electromagnetic radiation and partially lost due to convection in the air or conduction in your clothes/blankets/couch/whatever you are touching. That energy that left you is now “simple” or “less ordered”. This is just like our nuclear fuels which go from high energy density (“high order”) to lower energy density (“low order”). It’s the same with fossil fuels and basically anything that could be rearranged into a lower energy state. This is what is theorized by some to be the “heat death of the universe” or when the entire universe will reach thermodynamic equilibrium. All the higher ordered mass-energy of the universe could eventually all become the same low-ordered mass energy in some form. This would be like everything in the universe evaporating into radio-waves. While no one knows how the universe will end (if it ever “ends”) this goes to show that evolution has no impact on the second law. Yes it is creating “higher order” out of “lower order”, but the total “high order” being converted to “low order” was a net loss in the end.

In conclusion: entropy isn't what most people think it is, and is a very abstract thing that is hard to understand. The one thing I've learned about physics: if you think you know what you’re talking about, you probably don’t.

On Goals

                As I was writing my last post there were many things that I started thinking I’d love to write about. Of all the things the one thing I remembered I wanted to talk about was goals. Goals are such a strange thing because they are so different for all of us. When we talk about goals they can range anywhere from getting a degree to gaining a new perspective. Sometimes they’re physical or tangible, sometimes academic or mental, and others could be emotional. Some goals are difficult to achieve, some impossible, and others might be trivial. No matter the case it’s goals that mold us into who we are, because our goals become our aims and objectives in life.

                When I was growing up I always dreamed big. I loved to plan out the rest of my life. Even if it was just a fantasy it was fun to do so. I had many goals in my life at a young age, and still have many. As I grew older my goals and life dreams changed a little. Some were because my interests changed, others because I matured, and others because I gained new perspectives on life. But nonetheless all of my goals have always been inspiring to me. So what is there to talk about goals anyways? Isn’t it just “people make goals, and that’s it”? Well I just wanted to write some thoughts because of the struggles I had in life when I made goals.

                I grew up Mormon, and there were many things thought about setting goals in church. I think this article the LDS church posted gives a pretty good summary of the Mormon Church’s perspective on goals. Since no one will probably read through that, the basic summary is that we should set worthy, high, but realistic goals. I think this is good encouragement but I just want to express why I think there are issues with the emphasis on those three things. First the value of goals and who sets them, second what makes a goal “high”, and third why do goals have to be realistic.

                The value of goals is something completely arbitrary. It’s just like a moral code, or personal ethics. Society has rules because we like to feel safe, but that doesn’t mean society makes things of personal value to you. Sure there are things like currency, diplomas, resumes, poll numbers, and other things society can give to you. It is innately you, however, that gives those things any value. If one day everyone decided that paper money was worthless the money would lose its value. So when parents, churches, schools, governments, or other people determine the value of your goals then the goal loses its personal value. That’s not to say that personal values can’t agree with social values, but that personal values shouldn’t have to agree with social values. I think one thing I struggled with so much as a child was the value I put on things. I put much more value on some things that were considered of no worth. When I got my eagle scout, I had a goal to finish it before I turned 14. My board of review (the last interview/final check-off to say you passed) was a week before my 14^th birthday. The council representative told me that birthdays are just a line in the sand and that if he’d have known that we would have scheduled for the week after my birthday. Clearly the value of the achievement to him was not about the when, but for me the when did hold personal value. There were other things that I did not value, and sometimes was criticized for my lack of finding “worthy” goals in life. Serving as a missionary I hated the fact that my goals needed to be things like how many people did I baptize or how many lessons did I teach. My goal as a missionary was not teaching lessons or baptizing people but merely to make other’s lives better. I never wanted to treat anyone as a waste of time just because they weren’t interested in baptism. But my goals could never be achieved because church leaders told me what goals held value and what goals didn’t. Personal goals should always have personal value, and if they don’t they shouldn’t be personal goals.

                What makes a goal “high”? So many times growing up I set extremely high goals for myself. I still have extremely high goals, and plan to achieve many of them. But what happens when we have too many goals that are too high? For me what happens is that I lose sight of the entire point of the goal. Some people set goals to lose weight, and when they set too high a goal they run the risk of losing focus on the purpose. When we are so worried about being “perfect” we run the risk of forgetting who we are becoming. When we go to church we often hear about how imperfect we are and what we need to repent of. When we go to school we’re sometimes reminded of how little we know, and how much we’re supposed to have learned. When we go play sports we’re sometimes reminded of our athletic ability and how out of shape or uncoordinated we really are. But if these things help to motivate us are they bad? Absolutely not, but for some of us they don’t help to motivate us. Sometimes I set really low goals for myself because I need to feel like I’m making progress. But those “low” goals often get repeated day by day and turn into great achievements. I have often felt so depressed because I’m constantly reminded of how imperfect I truly am. But when I focus on the little things in life my perspective is so much brighter. If I wake up every morning saying I’ll give a good effort that’s way better to me than writing down big numbers. You might say well you really should have set a “high” goal and then broken it down into smaller goals. You’d be right in saying that, but that’s not how I think. I’m very big picture, and very small picture. I’m not good with the medium picture. So until you think like I do stop trying to tell me how to set my goals. The difficulty of the goal doesn’t matter as much as the value of the achievement. Then again who am I to say that, you make whatever goals you feel are best. But don’t tell me it’s not worth it just because it’s not “high” enough.

                The idea of realistic goals is a very practical view on life. I always had influences on my life telling me to set realistic goals. Sometimes it was in a nice but pushy wording like the church article above. Other times it was being told in a way to “put my money where my mouth was”. For some reason dreamers are resented in our society, I never understood why. One of the reasons an ex-girlfriend broke up with me was because I sometimes have “high (and often unrealistic) hopes and dreams”.  I love making unrealistic goals for myself. If I set a goal that’s within reach how can I determine what is out of my reach? I do understand that if you fail to achieve your goals it might encourage an attitude of quitting. Making ridiculously high (possibly unrealistic) goals might make you come off arrogant. And there is no doubt that some people don’t see any value in the goal that you never achieve. All of these attitudes are fine, but remember that goals are personal. I actually developed what I call a quitting complex because when I was younger I was always told I couldn’t achieve my goals. Because of that my self-esteem suffered and it took a long time to work myself back up to the point of feeling like I could achieve things in life. So parents, teachers, church leaders, and everyone else please let the dreamers be dreamers. You may think different, but just think how you might have felt if you had a dreamer as a parent and teacher. They might have told you things like “you have no aspirations in life because you’re not willing to stretch yourself” or “you are weak because you think impossible is a thing”. If your way of setting goals for yourself works do it, but make sure you encourage anyone to set goals how they feel is best.

                Having gone to some counseling (which is good for anyone, not just if you have “problems”) I was able to realize that my goals were important. My dreams do matter, and because I have had dreams and aspirations I’ve achieved things in my life. I once compared it to climbing a wall or a mountain. For me it’s not about getting to the top that matters, but more the experience of the journey. We gain strength in trying the impossible. If we don’t achieve the impossible, we’ll certainly achieve many things on the way. There’s always an advantage to improving, and setting a goal that’s higher than reach just encourages us to stretch as far as we can. Life is a journey, and you determine the destination. But sometimes it’s not the destination that matters, but the experience on the way to get there.

Selfish Altruism

                Personalities are strange complicated things. I don’t understand why we have them. Is it genetic? I’m sure that has something to do with it. But I’m sure there is also a significant amount of social factors in it as well. Having taken many personality tests I have decided that the MBTI is the best description I can find for at least my personality as well as my close friends. Also the MBTI is the only test I've actually taken where I sat down and paid money for it (it was for a class so I had to take it). Well that was when I was a sophomore or junior in college a long time ago, and I was significantly younger (17 or 18, who knows and who really cares). While taking the test I had not yet really developed fully as a person, and also I had no knowledge of the test prior to it. So when I answered the questions I answered them without much bias and without reading into the questions so much. I got my results back and tested INFJ. I was happy because the results described me perfectly! I was also very upset because my list of suggested careers included: social worker, religious clergy, teacher, dentist, counselor, etc… As a young physics major none of these appealed to me, and I was so sad to be “stuck” with a personality belonging to the social sciences. I guess it’s no secret that most in the physical sciences look down upon the social sciences questioning if they can even really be called “science”. Even within the hard sciences you have a pride competition on who is the most useful or the purest of all the subjects. So for me as a cocky youngster, I could never dream of “lowering myself” to one of these petty careers. Little did I know that a few years later I would half regret my decision. I love the field I’m in, but often times wish I would have gone into psychology and counseling.

If you know anything about the MBTI then you would know the INTJ is known as the scientist. I was borderline INFJ/INTJ and I thought that maybe I was some kind of hybrid. I've looked deeper into the personalities and the details behind the letters, and I am definitely an INFJ. If you are also on the edge of deciding which you are, or if you think you are a “hybrid” I would suggesting reading this page. If you are an INFJ and decided to study or pursue a career in the sciences then you are not alone! There are advantages and disadvantages to our personality in the field, but that is a discussion for another day. Today I want to discuss the one part of an INFJ that one probably recognizes the easiest: extraverted feeling. INFJs are introverts, we love to think to ourselves and have time for ourselves. We love to have freedom to do as we please, and hate social commitments. We don’t like to be in the spotlight, don’t like to be publicized, and don’t like to be in large groups of people where it prevents us from one on one interactions. (Aside: At this point I will stop using the term “we” and use the term “I” or “me” because I can’t speak for everyone, just for myself.) Despite my introverted nature I have this innate extraverted feeling. It’s something I often wish I could turn off, but I can’t. What it means is that I feel what other people are feeling. I can sense people’s motives, and I can read people without realizing it. I have often come to quick judgments about some people throughout my life and been criticized for it. Then months later I end up being right about my analysis of the person. So this sounds awesome, one might ask why I would ever want to turn it off?

Well first off I do recognize it as who I am. I am happy with who I am, and if given the choice would probably not want to change. But there are issues I deal with every day that most people have no clue about. So let me describe a little of this extraverted feeling that happens in my life. When I watch a TV show I am the character. If someone is being tortured I “feel” the pain they are feeling. Watching breaking bad was one of the most depressing parts of my life because I was always trying to connect to the characters. I could never sympathize with any of them, but yet I was always rooting for the main characters. I hated myself because I was disgusted by how selfish and stupid all of the characters were. But yet I would end the show always feeling so depressed because the story in of itself is so depressing. I love war movies and TV shows, but so many times I watch them and remember that I would hate being a soldier. The fact that it is not any individual soldier’s fault they are in a war is what is so sad. Every soldier is afraid to die, but every soldier is ordered to kill. War truly is hell, and I feel so sorry for anyone who has ever had to participate in any way. If you are sick, I won’t be satisfied until I have done everything for you that I would have wished you did for me. It’s a favor to let me go buy you medicine, get you a drink, or make you food because I can’t sleep until I know there’s nothing more I can do to help. Even then I probably can’t sleep because I can’t stop thinking about the pain you are in. Sometimes this can make me come off annoying or way too involved so I apologize it’s just my instincts.

Many people might describe me as kind hearted, altruistic, or just a super nice guy. What they don’t know is that I’m really not all that nice. Everything I do that is nice is actually to make ME feel better. I do things because I’m always thinking in other people’s shoes. I always think “I wonder how he/she would/does feel about this” and act according to what would make them the happiest. Through this I gain happiness because when others are happy I am happy. So sure I might be altruistic. I do some things that normal people wouldn't do. I have very much a martyr personality where I will gladly put myself into a bad situation to get someone else out. Sometimes I take the blame for things that weren't my fault because I know the person at fault already has enough to deal with. So yes all these actions and thoughts are altruistic, but are they really? Why do I do anything that I do? It’s because I feel better doing it or have some sense of relief by doing it. I do some things because I would feel too guilty not doing it. If someone is cleaning, I feel the need to help them clean. Not because I want to help them clean, but because I feel guilty because the lazy POS who’s not cleaning. So really I don’t have such a selfless nature after all.

So you’re probably wondering why I’m writing this as it sounds like a horrible attack on me and my personality. It’s not meant to be like that; it’s more just a way to express how I feel all the time. Sometimes you see a really nice person and you might say “gee I wish I was like them.” That’s very well-intentioned, but often times we are so quick to look at others and compare them to ourselves. I do this all the time. But that’s not really fair; I’m very different from them. The funny thing is I look at people who are bossy and always get what they want. Then I think to myself “gee I wish I was like them.” Often times I put others above myself when I really shouldn't. But as I've grown older and learned to put myself first it feels like I’m losing a part of my soul. It’s a living hell where I feel awful not helping everyone, but by doing so I don’t get the help I need. There is a balance which we all need to reach, and each of us needs to determine the balance that’s best for ourselves. I just want to express that just because you’re not a naturally sensitive person doesn't make you a bad person. Some people might find you unpleasant to be around, but trust me as a sensitive person there are plenty of people that find me just as unpleasant. That’s just a social thing you’ll have to learn in time, which is ok.

So really I just want to say that everyone is different. We all have different personalities and struggles. When each person is compared to another there will always be strengths and weaknesses. The important thing is to stop comparing ourselves to others, and looking at what we are and what we can be. If we compare ourselves to others it hurts us in two ways. First: we may look at someone who is better than us at something. If that’s the case we hurt ourselves by “trying to be like them” rather than trying to improve that part of ourselves. Second: if we see something that were better at than others often times we become relaxed and stop trying. That can be dangerous because if it’s something we really do wish to improve upon we are crippling our growth. So in closing I guess the main point I want to get across is that it’s fine to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes. In fact it’s probably fair to say that most of us don’t do this nearly enough. But when we do we should remember that we live in our own shoes, and that’s ok. Some struggle with problems unseen, and to judge another person without knowledge of these struggles is extremely ignorant. We just need to remember our own struggles too, because to ignore our own hidden struggles would be just a ignorant. We all deserve to accept who we are.

The Truth About The Truthfulness of Science

                I recently saw this and read through it briefly. Now I have not actually watched the show COSMOS myself because I am too busy with my own vector calculus, but I would encourage all to watch it. I’m sure it’s a wonderful show, and will promote young people to go into science. But one thing that bothers me is some of Dr. Tyson’s wordings. Now as a humble graduate student I fully accept that he is probably a much more intelligent person than I, and also he has PhD in astrophysics so he is definitely not an idiot or a bad scientist. What bothers me personally is his political agenda tied to the way he talks about science. The nice thing about science is that we can leave the normal politics and religion outside when we walk into the lab door. Obviously there is politics in science, but it is very different. We argue about theories, experiments, funding, and the likes. So I will highlight the biggest problem I have with Dr. Tyson’s perceived agenda (perceived to me). Science cannot replace religion, it was never meant to. When you start to mix the two bad things happen. Like I have stated in earlier posts religion is all about a belief system. Science is a methodology and does not have beliefs tied to it. So while I agree Dr. Tyson really is smart and makes some wonderful points (which I fully agree with), some of the way he words things can make me cringe a little inside.

http://xkcd.com/1322/

                So the real point I’m writing all of this is that Dr. Tyson told Colbert, “that’s the good thing about science: It’s true whether you believe it or not.” Now let me explain why this has a large cringe factor associated with it. Oxford dictionary defines science as: “The intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment.” There is also an alternative definition as “archaic knowledge”. Now Dr. Tyson is using the archaic knowledge definition (I assume) in this context. This definition does not really cover to job of a scientist. Scientists merely practice science, or this activity of applying the scientific model to things. So calling science (the science that scientists practice) true doesn’t really work. Science isn’t really “true” or “not true” it is merely a method of modeling the universe. So while I applaud Dr. Tyson’s motives I would like to re-word his phrase. The laws of nature hold true no matter if you believe in them or not. The scientific models we have to describe the laws of nature are quite accurate. The nice thing about science is that you don’t have to believe the model; you can go out and test it for yourself. However, a good scientist will use his time and resources wisely. Therefore, he/she would be inclined to value peer-reviewed scientific papers and attempt to expound upon the models that have shown to be consistent with experiments and observations.

                One of the big problems we have in science classrooms is the perceived notion that what is in your textbook is the truth. The problem with this is that what is in all of your scientific textbooks is not “the truth” but merely the models that have shown to be fairly accurate in describing the laws of nature. Science doesn’t write the laws of nature, it merely models them. I feel that students should be encouraged to doubt what is in their textbooks. There is no reason for a student to believe it unless they can actually become a scientist themselves. That’s why demos are so important in all science classrooms. The demonstrations and experiments that the students participate in are the actual science of the class. The rest of the class is really just the philosophy part of science. The philosophy part of science is important in becoming a good scientist. The models/laws/theories/equations/postulates/whatever you want to call them are all models based on past experiments and observations. It would be a good thing to learn from past experiments as it would probably take more than one lifetime just to go through and perform experiments for every model past scientists have discovered. When Dr. Tyson talks about how opposing viewpoints are not necessary in every scientific debate that’s what he was getting at. The key to good science is in knowing how to use your time and resources wisely in testing hypotheses and attempting to create new models. I do not agree, however, that opposing viewpoints are not necessary in every scientific debate. If you can find just one example of how your model does not describe the behavior of nature then that model would no longer be viewed by the scientific community as valid and would need to be either thrown out or revised. Nothing can really be proved in science, so the way we try to show something is a good model is by trying to disprove it. If reasonable effort has been put in to disprove a model or a theory, and the theory/model still held/holds true then it means it’s probably a good model. In other words we haven’t proven the theory/model, we have only tested it. That means we should be open-minded to the fact that perhaps our model is wrong.

http://xkcd.com/242/

                Why is being open minded important in science? A great example is the discovery of quantum mechanics. Scientists performed experiments which exhibited behavior which violated the laws of physics up to that point. This is why it is so dangerous to say that science is “true” because that infers the models of science describe exactly the laws of nature. Quantum mechanics was not accepted by many scientists around the time it was being discovered because those scientists were too stubborn to accept that the “laws” of nature could be broken. Really we just discovered that although Newton modeled nature very well on a macroscopic scale, once you are in the context of small dimensions and high energies nature behaves differently. So instead of saying science is true, I prefer to use phrase such as, “an electron does what an electrons does, and it doesn’t care what you think.” I have to thank one of my professors for his simple yet strangely elegant insight. So science needs to be open to revision. Perhaps none of our models will work tomorrow. If that were to happen we would have to revise all of our models and equations to match that.

Nature will do whatever it wants, and is not bound by scientific models. We just assume that the laws of nature will be constant in time because they have been (we suspect according to our model and observations) for about 14 billion years. In science we make many assumptions and approximations in our models to save us time and resources. This is good science because it allows us to be more productive and make even more discoveries. We may make many statements like “information does travel faster than the speed of light”. That is because our model and observations show that nature has and seems to still behave this way. However, if we discovered something which did travel faster than the speed of light it would be ignorant to not look into this discovery further. That doesn’t mean you should accept it, only be open to the possibility. A few years ago scientists thought they had discovered just this, but it was shown to be experimental error. So I am of the opinion that information does not travel faster than the speed of light, but one day I said that nothing can ever go faster than the speed of light. One of my colleagues showed be that danger of a statement like that. I realize now the problem with my statement and am now very careful in my wording of scientific statements. It would most likely be a waste of time and resources to look for something travelling faster than the speed of light, but if something every did it would be ignorant to not look into it further.

http://xkcd.com/298/

So there is a link between the laws of nature and science. The difference between the two is science is a model, and does not give facts. It only will show the most likely patterns which will be repeated. I say this partly tongue in cheek because our models have proven to be so accurate that “most likely” does not give it justice. But there will always be a better model, new discoveries, and things we as scientists have overlooked.

http://xkcd.com/749/

So in closing I would just like to say that science and religion can co-exist. In fact if your religion teaches you to pray, and see if you receive blessings that’s technically science. You’re testing a hypothesis, and possibly getting results. If you took that last sentence to heart, all I can say is good like finding a way to put error bars. I won’t wish you luck on getting published or peer reviewed. If you’ve taken it that far for your own sake please just stop. Some people believe in claims that may or may not fit the current scientific theories. You believe whatever you want, but you are likely to be wasting your time if you try to use science to prove anything in your religion which disagrees with current scientific models. If you want to spend your time doing that that’s fine with me (and probably most of the scientific community), but please don’t put it into our children’s textbooks, use our research funds, or waste our time with your conversation. All of these things are precious to us, and I think that’s the point Dr. Tyson is trying to make. Also remember that science is also not something that you should believe in, nor is it a belief system. I have heard from many atheists that they have replaced religion with science. That is probably one of the most ignorant things I have ever heard.  You can’t replace a belief system with something that is not a belief system. If you think that scientific models disagree with the claims of religion that’s ok, but leave the religion behind and don’t get all preachy with the science. Like Dr. Tyson meant to say, the beauty about science is that you don’t have to believe it. Just go try it and you’ll see for yourself if it works.

When men become gods, and God becomes man

I recently saw this article that a facebook friend posted. I was reading it, and I realized that this talk represents the pinnacle of why I will probably never believe in the LDS religion again. I realize that so many people can brush this off as just being “the words of a man” but that is exactly why I cannot follow such a religion. Elder Oaks in this article says: “We must stress the fundamental truths on which our beliefs are based. Ultimately, these include the existence of God and the eternal reality of the truths and the right and wrong defined by His teachings and His commandments.” The question here is what is the “right and wrong” defined by “[God’s] teaching and His commandments”?

                After talking about Korihor (an anti-Christ figure in the Book of Mormon), Elder Oak’s goes on to explain that the idea of moral relativism and secular humanism is most influential in the world of higher education. I would definitely agree with this, because the more you study about things like physical science, psychology, sociology, and similar subjects the more you begin to understand that the way we as humans reason is through our experience. We look at situations and events and analyze how they reciprocate themselves over time. The biggest problem with religion is that it is a SUBJECTIVE topic which no academia can model. Each person will have his or her own experience with a God or gods or other beings. There is no consistent way of replicating one’s personal religious experience, so those in the higher education setting who are used to this methodology have a hard time accepting a belief in something that is not objectively proven.

                Elder Oaks then goes on to give this statement: “This is the belief applied by many in the popular media and in current peer pressure. ‘Break free of the old rules. Do what feels good to you. There is no accountability beyond what man’s laws or public disapproval impose on those who are caught.’ Behind such ideas is the assumption that there is no God or, if there is, He has given no commandments that apply to us today.” I completely disagree with the statement that doing what feels good to you is assuming that there is no God, or that he has not given any commandments. Moral relativism is just stating that there is no objective way of finding any all-encompassing moral code. For example in Islam there are many commandments which Christians break every day. This does not mean that Christians do not believe in God, but merely that their interpretation of God and his commandments is different. So how can one truly know what God’s commandments are except for doing what one FEELS good doing. Isn’t this in fact one of the ways that we are taught in Mormonism the spirit works with us. So what happens if I don’t feel right at church, does that mean that the spirit is telling me I shouldn’t be there? No matter how you look at it there’s no way of knowing if there is or isn’t a God, and what his commandments might be objectively. The only way we can find out is by our SUBJECTIVE experience with religion. Deciding which religion is the true religion is very subjective, everyone has different experiences and will interpret those experiences for themselves. That will lead them to conform to the commandments that a particular religion claims are his commandments, or maybe even they will adapt those religious standards to their own subjective understanding.

                I personally subscribe to the idea of moral relativism. I understand that I have my own thoughts on morality or what I feel is right and wrong due to my own personality and subjective personal experiences. I also accept the fact that others experiences will be different, and I can allow them their own personal moral code. I do not consider myself a secular humanist because although I do not feel like religion is my moral guide; I like to be open minded to new experiences that could change my opinion. According to my personal system of what is right and what is wrong, the only thing that I feel is innately right and wrong for everyone is allowing others to develop their sense of morality for themselves. Yes that includes things that could be harmful to society. That doesn’t mean that I condone their behavior, I only condone their feelings towards such behavior. I will discuss this later when I define the difference between social contract and morality. I would like to discuss (first) why Elder Oaks is so very wrong with criticizing secular humanists comparing them to the abominable church which claims they make themselves gods and their purpose is to get wealth and power over others.

                To call those that subscribe to the philosophy of secular humanism to the evil church or the last days is just as offensive as it would be for me to call the LDS church a cult (if not more so). Part of secular humanism is all about developing an altruistic morality, so why would one who is altruistic attempt to get gain from others or gain power over others? They wouldn’t, so by definition a secular humanist (if one truly subscribes to the essence of the philosophy) would teach all of the things Jesus taught minus the part about God. So to compare them to evil people teaching false doctrine to get gain is absurd. Last time I checked secular humanism is one the philosophies one could subscribe to without tithing or a donation plate being pushed on them. Church leaders have the potential to gain much more wealth and power than any leader in a humanist movement because humanists are all about equality and would avoid putting one person above another.

                Elder Oaks quotes a BYU professor in saying, “Humanism makes a man to be god, the supreme being, and the educated human mind becomes the arbiter of all that is true, good and beautiful.” This is an incorrect statement as god is a construct of religion. Humanism does not make man to be god because it does not talk about god at all. But if we look at it in this light, how do we follow God and know is commandments. Well according to the LDS church if something does not agree with the doctrine of the church then one can throw it out as false. What happens when one feels like the spirit is telling them truth, yet it challenges the teachings of a church leader which has been accepted as doctrine? That person then is typically told that what they received was in fact not revelation from God as it contradicts the truth God has given us through his prophets. So because a prophet is God’s mouthpiece, a prophet essentially becomes God. So although we may fear man becoming gods, should we not also fear the possibility that perhaps God has become a man? Essentially a leader of a church who teaches that he is in fact God’s mouthpiece on earth has Godly powers over his congregation. But is that power something God gave to him/her, or something that his congregation gives to him/her? I won’t answer that question, but I would encourage one to think about it.

                So now that we have all that out of the way, we can get to the true meat of what this talk was about really: protecting religious rights in America. With all this talk of same-sex marriage many religious organizations are feeling “oppressed” just because they can’t pass laws to force people to live a certain way. If one understands well the founding fathers of this country and their philosophies, then one would also be very familiar with the social contract and how that philosophy played a role in the forming of the US Constitution. Each person in this country is believed to have an unalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (or at least that’s what the Declaration of Independence states). It is my understanding that the Constitution and all the amendments thereof are to ensure all American people these liberties. I am no law expert so forgive me if I am misinterpreting all of this. A government is a man-made institution and the laws thereof where made to govern men. The revolution was fought for some because they wanted freedom from the Church of England. In the same respect religion was to be free of the government, but in the same respect government was also to be free of religion. So you see the social contract that we agree to live by as citizens is far different from any moral code given by a God or gods. But from my understanding this entire hubbub is all about how the government is getting dangerously close to violating the first amendment right of the freedom of religion. If that’s the case then God’s moral laws have nothing to do with it.

                So let’s talk about this freedom of religion. Congress cannot make any law respecting the establishment of religion or prohibit the free exercise thereof. So let’s talk about a good example: same sex marriage. Is making same-sex marriage legal making a law respecting the establishment of religion? I don’t see a connection at all between the two. Some say “marriage is a religious institution”, but then I would respond by saying that the rights given by marriage are through the government. Rights such as visitation, tax and inheritance, and legal stuff like wills are all governed by men not God. So I don’t see how marriage is a religious institution. Sure maybe God doesn’t accept the marriage, or a church might not accept the marriage, but that’s not the debate that’s going on. It’s trying to get the government to accept the legal marriage.

                I won’t go into the whole legal aspect of this stuff, the Supreme Court rulings, or the quotes from Thomas Jefferson because that would make this twice as long. I just want to point out that there is a difference between legal marriage and religious marriage. For example a temple sealing is the only thing that the LDS God views as a real eternal marriage anyways. So therefore it seems to me that any legal ruling on marriage does not affect the celestial status of marriage. In fact in other countries (such as Brazil) you are required to have a legal wedding outside the temple before being sealed inside. There is a clear separation there between religious marriage and a civil marriage. That’s all the US government is doing by accepting legal same sex marriages is saying that the CIVIL part of the marriage is legal. A friend did point out to me that the LDS church does put value into civil marriage. Actually since most Christian churches don't have temple sealings like the LDS church does I realize that this argument is fairly weak. So I would like to restate that a church will decide what marriage is accepted by God or not. There are states in the US and also other countries where gay marriage is legal. A church that claims homosexuality as a sin will claim that this couple's marriage is not condoned by God. So the problem isn't that churches don't give value to any civil marriage, the problem is that a church decides what marriage has value to God and what doesn't. After all the LDS church performed a good number of polygamous marriages after it was illegal in the US. So although these marriages were recognized by God they weren't recognized by the US government. I feel that the US had not right to say that polygamy should be illegal, but at the same time the church accepted that God would accept the marriage whether or not the government would.

                So let me explain to you why the freedom of religion is not under attack. Lawmakers are legally prevented from passing any law which gives any advantages or disadvantages to any religion. However there is a caveat that religious members must abide by the law of the land. The law of the land is always the higher law according to civil law. That’s because we live in a society of people, and we need rules from people. Someone who is LDS and always talks about church leaders “acting as men” should understand this very well. We have structure in the government because we deal with many people, and that structure is independent of any belief in anything. It’s purely people dealing with people.

                The fact that any church is getting involved in any way in the political process is actually a violation of the first amendment. Having a church pay for lobbying in Congress or fund and or provide materials and manpower as a church in any political activity would be to promote preferential treatment of that church or religion. Preferential treatment for any church or religion is exactly why we have the first amendment. So you see a church or religion getting involved in processes such as legalizing the use of marijuana or same sex marriage is in fact a violation of the separation of church and state set forth in the first amendment. This is because it gives preferential treatment lawfully to people of one church or religion and does not give equal rights to all. So all of you church folks complaining that your first amendment rights are under attack just know that you’ve been attacking the first amendment rights of others this whole time.

                Now don’t get me wrong there is nothing wrong with individual people who belong to a religion or church to lobby for what they believe in. Just know that Congress cannot pass any such law regarding religion at all, so in other words a legal marriage as defined by Congress is in fact not religious. So pushing for your religious definition of marriage would be to push for a law that does in fact violate the first amendment because you are pushing for it due to your religious beliefs. So think on that carefully next time you write to your congressman: is what I’m pushing for something that has to do with religion? If it is then you should probably rethink the constitutionality of what you’re pushing for. It’s true that forcing a church to perform a religious marriage that is against its own doctrine would be in my opinion unconstitutional, and I would fight for their right to not be forced to do so. On the other hand: to prohibit a church or just a plain civil marriage that doesn’t agree with someone’s interpretation of the Bible is also (in my opinion) unconstitutional. That’s true to make it illegal to teach creationism in school would also be a violation of the first amendment, but to not teach evolution also fits into that category. So let’s just teach our kids all the viewpoints and let them decide for themselves what they think. After all isn’t that what LDS doctrine believes life is all about?

                So I will just say this. To make man’s laws God’s laws would make God into a man and having to abide by man’s rules. To make man into a god would require that one puts themselves at a status of deity and the mentality of being a higher power. Neither of these viewpoints fits in with the founding fathers viewpoint of the social contract. I’m not saying we have to follow what they say or did, after all they expected society would change and if they really were smart would applaud the way that we evolve the government as society evolves. That is in fact a government FOR the people being changed BY the people. So all I want to say in closing is that God is not a man, and man is in no form a god. We are all just humans, however we got here no one knows. All we know is that if we have to deal with each other we should probably respect each other’s views. There is an appointed time for everything. And there is a time for every event under heaven. I view that as explaining that things are put into context, and taking things out of context makes for a big mess. So let’s leave the politics in Washington and the religion in church. Leave the parenting to the parents, the educating to the educators. If we all accept the role we play in society, and accept the role that others play in society in the scope of one’s own role perhaps we as a society can learn to function the way society was meant to: everything at the appropriate time and place.

Who Am I?

A simple question with infinite meaning can often times be ignored

Because the question one thinks is simple is often not simply answered

Which came first: the egg or the bird? We often have asked ourselves

And strangely no answer can come from the question upon which our mind may dwell

“Who am I” I ask, a question so simple but with no answer of which I’m aware

So how easy a question so simple and honest can be something deeper I’ll share

I often was taught that I came from a God who loves me and shows me he cares

Later at school I learned that a person is the clothes that he or she wears

Nature and nurture determine the person which we will one day become

Some traits are genetic, some traits come from parents, and those traits make up the grand sum

There’s Moses and Jesus and Darwin and Freud, and others with grand explanations

But can their answers be taken for truth without having further citations?

My feelings, my thoughts, my words, and my acts aren’t always unique to me

But ALL of my feelings, my thoughts, and my words in nobody else you will see

Some tell me of heaven and what I’ll become the minute right after I die

Some tell me that death is the end of this life, and you’ll never come back if you try

So often I wonder: does my existence have existence far beyond this small earth?

Can my existence exist on forever, and did I exist before birth?

Some give me answers without telling how, others the “hows” without “whys”

But no one can answer what happens hereafter until that same person dies

Some say we are one, just a different projection of who “we” really are

I’d say that’s an answer, but in my own answer I wouldn’t go quite that far

My answer is this, I know who I am, because who I am is me

And this person I am, or who I become is exactly who I want to be

I might not know all of the answers, like where I’ll go when I die

Or whether or not we lived before birth, or if God watches down from the sky

But the answer I know is who I am now, and knowing that sets me free

To do the things I feel I should do, and to be who I want to be

Some people may say I am lost or confused, or maybe I just lost my way

Because I choose not to believe, or to do, or to say the things that they say

You’ll never be me and I’ll never be you, so how can you know who I am?

Some tell me I’m this, some tell me I’m that, so how can I tell what’s the scam?

So I will decide what’s best for me, and you must decide for you

Because I am one, cause if I were we, then we would have to be two

So questions of who we become after death or what we were before birth

Don’t have to be all of or part of the answer of who we are when we live on this earth

I do things and says things that others find odd, but also I find others strange

But if we can just accept who we are, then acceptance requires no change

On Repentance

A friend of mine recently was wondering what my thoughts are on repentance. This is a tough question for me because I don’t really believe in sin anymore. So I am going to approach this in the viewpoint I had when I did believe in sin. I will attempt to use the scriptures that I had growing up in the LDS church to explain my reasoning. There are some scriptures which I was not happy with (namely some of the scriptures in the D&C [Doctrine and Covenants]) because I did not feel that they fell in line with the teachings that should be prominent in Christianity.

First I will say that sin is one of my biggest qualms with religion. People will refer to the Ten Commandments as their moral code. Others will refer to the Bible as a whole for their moral code. I don’t understand how either of these can be used to create a moral code. The Bible (namely the Old Testament, but parts of the New Testament) can be used to justify incest, slavery, polygamy, and one could even argue that it justifies genocide. Most people who defend the Bible as the word of God will claim that polygamy and murder of women and children are very evil deeds. It only takes one read through and you will find countless examples of both (All links are to the KJV that the LDS church has online):

-Killing: 1 Samuel 15:2-3, Jeremiah 48:10, Joshua 8:1-29, Joshua 6:20-21, Judges 20:48, and countless other examples

-Incest: Genesis 19:30-38, Genesis 38, Exodus 6:20, Genesis 20:12 (there may be a consideration that Sarah is actually Abraham’s niece, there are a few other examples of both “holy” men and unholy men which committed incest

-Polygamy: Genesis 16:1-11, Genesis 29:21-28, 2 Samuel 2:1-2, Countless other prophets and kings with their wives and concubines

I give these only as a few examples. The LDS church has an official explanation for the polygamy thing and as to why Joseph Smith practiced polygamy and several other LDS prophets after him until the official declaration was released, and later added to LDS cannon. I just want to make the point that the Bible is full of things that are not considered by modern society as moral things, but yet modern Christianity has set the Bible as its source of righteous standards and morals.

Why we have Ten Commandments in front of courthouses I do not know, but I’m not upset about it. I just think that it is more of a symbol than actually standing for a moral code. After all things like worshiping other gods, lying (when not in cases of perjury or fraud), saying the name of God in vain, committing adultery, not honoring your parents, coveting, making graven images, and not honoring the Sabbath day are all perfectly legal. If we count bearing false witness as in the case of perjury or fraud then there are in fact only three out of the ten that are illegal within the US.

Whether you agree with me on this or not, I don’t really care. I just have come to the conclusion that morality and ethics are determined by society and individuals. What “God has said” can change, and very well has changed over time and between religions. For some drinking is a sin; yet Jesus himself drank wine as it was the custom for his time. Some say that only being a drunkard is a sin, but if you read Noah the prophet got quite drunk one night and it is argued that Ham sodomized his father. When Lot’s daughters seduced him he was also too drunk to tell they were his own daughters suggesting that he also did his fair share of heavy drinking.

So as I was growing up I was told by the church what was and what wasn’t a sin. This was a long list of do’s: go to church, read scriptures daily, say prayers daily, pay tithing, serve in the church, etc… as well as a list of do nots: no sexual acts of any kind before marriage, don’t rebel against the church or your parents, don’t drink/smoke/drink coffee or tea/do drugs, don’t work/shop/do “worldly” things on Sunday, don’t lie/cheat/steal, etc… This is all along with a list of cultural do not’s and do’s which are not official commandments according to the church, but are implied either by being taught by a prophet of the church or just a cultural thing or “suggestions”. These include: not watching sports on Sunday (Kimball The Miracle of Forgiveness), not watching rated R movies (there are several talks on this, I only linked one), not dating until you’re 16 (For the Strength of Youth), no caffeine or sometimes just coca-cola, other taboo things like sleeping with someone of the opposite sex even if there are no sexual acts performed.

I was a confused young man in a world or so many do’s and do not’s that I felt like I had lost sight of what was really important. Jesus often criticized the Pharisees for their strict obedience to the law as opposed to following a higher law or the most important commandment which was to love God and to love your neighbor. So why is it that we put so much emphasis on the laws and commandments which Jesus is not found preaching in the New Testament, and instead focus on things that are only covered by a few verses in the entire Bible? I had often struggled with this, and therefore struggled with the idea of repentance. If forsaking sin is a stipulation for repentance then how am I ever supposed to repent if I have to worry about doing so many things all the time? I don’t think I ever fully grasped the idea of repentance because I was always stuck on feeling horrible about myself, instead of focusing on making myself a better person.

If church is for sinners just like a hospital is for sick people, then how come we focus so much on the sins in church? It’s like going to a hospital to receive chemo for your lung cancer, and instead receiving a long lecture series on how smoking causes cancer. I feel that we (or I felt that we) focused way too much energy as  religious people in condemning and defining sin that we lose the big picture or becoming better people. I feel that one of the biggest reasons that pornography is such a “huge problem” in the LDS church is because you talk so much about it. Guaranteed that a normal 13 year old boy that hears someone talking about the stuff he saw the other day on the internet is going to go home with only more desire to look at it.

But I digress; the whole point of this is to talk about repentance and my thoughts on it. The LDS church defines repentance as:

“A change of mind and heart that brings a fresh attitude toward God, oneself, and life in general. Repentance implies that a person turns away from evil and turns his heart and will to God, submitting to God’s commandments and desires and forsaking sin. True repentance comes from a love for God and a sincere desire to obey his commandments. All accountable persons have sinned and must repent in order to progress toward salvation. Only through the atonement of Jesus Christ can our repentance become effective and accepted by God.”

I think that repentance is about a change of heart (and LDS doctrine agrees) more than a change of behavior. A change of heart is not something that is given by a list of commandments or things that one must do to repent. If you don’t feel bad for doing something you cannot by definition repent. If you feel bad for doing something you’ve already started to repent automatically. One can’t just have a “change of heart” because they hear a talk in church or their bishop/priest tells them to. If you tell someone who is gay that they “must have a change of heart” or they’ll go to hell is like walking up to a democrat and telling them they must vote republican or when they die they’ll lose all their estate to the government (I use the term is like, there are obvious differences I’m just making a quick analogy). You’re asking someone who feels good about what they are doing (because that is what their natural inclination is) to stop doing what they feel they want to do.

It’s true that one could argue that almost no one is repentant because almost everyone feels good doing some kind of sin. I’m not trying to say that, I’m trying to say that if you feel BETTER keeping a commandment that you feel comes from God than sinning, that would indicated true repentance because you had a “change of heart”.

Feeling guilty for doing something is very different than feeling guilty for doing something you feel is bad. There is a difference between doing something that is wrong and worried about it affecting your salvation/church status/condemnation and feeling sad that you did something innately evil/upset God. Some people go to church because they fear hell; I’d argue that that person with that attitude wouldn’t make it into heaven because they feared God not loved him. The same could be said about the repentance process we have in churches, we fear the shame/punishment more than we feel upset for doing something wrong.

I sometimes hurt other’s feelings with the things I say. I genuinely feel bad because I hurt their feelings, but it would do no good to feel bad if it was just because I feared the social/economic repercussions of offending someone. Just like the brown-nosers are really annoying in a corporate world, I’m sure that Jesus would feel the same about those in the religious or spiritual world. The crazy thing about most people’s beliefs in modern Christianity is that God knows the intentions or your heart as well as your actions. In my opinion merely “going through the motions” isn’t repentance, it’s just trying to brown-nose God. So that’s probably why step one in repentance is having a change of heart because you can’t really do the rest properly without that part.

So how can one truly feel this “change of heart”? Well according to LDS doctrine everyone receives what is referred to as the light of Christ which the Book of Mormon prophet Moroni teaches is basically our conscience. So God gave us this inherent gift to know what is right and wrong. Once you are baptized into the LDS church, you are given a further gift: the gift of the Holy Ghost which is like the light of Christ on cocaine (or whatever your stimulant or choice is). This often confused me because I was told that people that live in remote areas and aren’t taught Christian values are treated as innocent in the eyes of God. This as an answer to my question if you don’t believe in pre-destination and God is a fair God then what about people who aren’t taught about the truth and are evil (cannibalistic tribes, warlords, etc…). I was told they would still have a chance (and according to Mormon doctrine it will be in the spirit world in the life hereafter) to accept the truth. Other Christians have told me that they will be judged on what knowledge they were given. But according to LDS doctrine everyone is given the light of Christ which will help us determine what is good and what isn’t good. So then how come there are so many different opinions on righteousness and sin? I still have that question, and am waiting for a good response (if you think you have a good response, I’ve probably already heard it and don’t find it convincing).

So we’ve got the point now that we have to have a change of heart, and that magically comes from God through our conscience, the light of Christ, or whatever you want to call it. So after that what are the steps? Well Jesus taught a pretty good lesson when he said “Go and sin no more”. Obviously not doing the sin again is a very good measure of how repentant one is. But does that mean if we commit the sin again we aren’t repentant? The truth is I don’t know. I don’t believe that any man is at liberty to speak or to judge. Romans 14:13 expresses my best feelings on the topic, don’t judge but only work towards helping others towards their goals of righteousness. After all Paul argues earlier in the chapter that we will all stand accountable to God at the last day for our own actions, so why should we be concerned with others?

It is exactly this topic that I want to bring up another step in the repentance process: confession. In 1 John 1:9 we read that confession leads to forgiveness from God. I agree with this, because it is part of being honest with ourselves. If God knows everything, then denying something to God means that we don’t accept that we ourselves have done something. I view confession to God as something more for us to accept what we have done rather that the need of God to hear our confession. After all if God is all powerful and all knowing why would he need to hear a confession from us? But confession is brought up typically in a sense of confessing to God, so why do Catholics confess to a priest and why do Mormons confess to a Bishop?

Well James 5:16 seems to be the only evidence that one should confess publicly within the Bible. So as to the Catholic belief in confession I cannot speak to as I am neither Catholic nor did I grow up Catholic. Therefore I have no opinion on that matter. The LDS idea of confession does hold some scriptural value if you believe in the LDS cannon of the Book of Mormon and the Doctrine and Covenants. The high priest Alma was given the commandment from God to go and basically demand repentance of those in the church who had “been deceived” into sinning. In this case he basically was given authority to excommunicate from the church those members who would not confess of their sins and show a repentant attitude. D&C 59:12 refers to the same type of thing as James 5:16 that we should confess our sins to other members of the church. So of all the mountain of scriptural verses, only three clearly state you need a public confession (I lied, it’s actually four. There’s another story just like the Alma story above). But the point being why is it required for repentance if it is only stated four times in LDS scripture. On top of all that, the two from the Book of Mormon point more towards serious and open sinning rather than sin that is not open and more discrete.

It is my opinion (and kind of was as a believing member of the church) that sins are not required to be confessed to a Bishop because it really doesn’t have any doctrinally sound base. If the LDS church would actually be open about what they accept as doctrine and those things which are “the opinions of men” within the church leadership then it would be much easier to accept it as doctrine (although if the church accepted what all church leaders taught/implemented it would also open up a Pandora’s box). In fact confession to the bishop is in the LDS leadership handbook without a reason other than “someone along the line was inspired to put it in there”. The official stance of when to confess is very blurry, and the handbook contains information on what is required to confess to the bishop. Instead of going into detail I’ll just say it’s mostly “serious” sins such as anything sexual in nature or more serious word of wisdom problems (drinking, smoking, etc…). This article gives a really wishy washy explanation of when confession is required. Basically it says if you feel bad about it you need to confess.

Also this article gives the reason for confession: it is to relieve you of the burden of the sin. I have heard countless stories from bishops and in conferences about how much better everyone feels after confessing to the bishop. I can admit I have felt better after confession to the bishop. But why did I feel better? It’s because I was TAUGHT that in order to be forgiven I had to confess. Honestly I felt like God and I were good and that there was no need to confess to the bishop other than “that’s what you do”. I don’t feel that it’s necessary for anyone to confess to a bishop, if it really scarred you it’s much better for you and more appropriate to talk to a therapist. OK some people might feel better getting the sin off their chest by telling a bishop, but I think the number of people who “need” to feel that relief have the “burden” because they’re taught that they won’t even be forgiven until it happens. Some people feel the need to confess little things to their bishop and are told that confession of a sin of that nature is “not required” for repentance. They obviously felt bad enough about it to confess so drawing a blurry line of what’s required and what’s not required for repentance is ridiculous.

So let’s say you do confess to the bishop. What happens then? Well pretty much anything actually. The bishop has free reign of how to discipline you, and if he doesn’t feel comfortable about something he refers to the higher authority a stake president. Well even if I feel repentant the stake president can tell me I can’t give talks in church or attend the temple for a year if he feels it’s necessary. So even if you received revelation from God that he forgave you, a person in authority in the church can receive revelation contrary to your feelings and discipline you. So you say “it’s ok, he’ll be judged for that in the afterlife and he knows his responsibility”. Well then what was the point of you praying and receiving revelation for yourself if someone else is just going to override it? That’s the problem with this confession system; it takes away your ability to finish the repentance process on your own, and puts it into the hands of a “Judge in Israel”.

Another problem I see in the system is in the case of missionaries and students at church-owned schools. If a missionary at a young age had sex before his mission once, repented of it (all but confessed), and was a year and eleven months into his mission he could be sent home by the mission president for being unworthy. So he did all that work, and you praised him for having the spirit and being a great missionary all that time only to send him home because he had missed the confession part. What if he didn’t feel bad about it until that time in his mission? That means he didn’t need to confess it according to Elder Grow. There are problems in this system in that transgressions that were committed prior to a new obligation are counted towards you as if you had just committed them. Also the discipline is so inconsistent that it’s sickening.

You see it all just depends on your bishop or stake president. If you did something bad a long time ago some will say you’re ok, others will say that you are still in need of repentance. The honor codes at church schools that one signs are agreements for proper conduct while attending the school. They are not signed agreements for previous sins. So to send a student home from a church school because of previous sins (just like the missionary example) is much less warranted than the missionary example. I have seen this happen multiple times and it upsets me. If there was a need for repentance, then why do they need to go home and resolve it with another bishop? They are confessing to relieve themselves of the burden not to be formally disciplined right…?

To finish off, I want to talk about the inappropriate nature socially of confession. When one confesses to church leaders typically you have to go into discrete detail about the sin. For example I couldn’t just say me and the girlfriend got naughty last weekend, I’m sorry. I’d have to describe who touched what and how. That’s all fine and good (albeit creepy) for an adult to confess that, but when young men and women some as young as 11 are confessing these things to a sometimes older than 50 year old male it sounds absurd. Since women can’t hold the priesthood however these young women must go in and confess in detail their sins to their older male counterpart. I think in any other social setting that kind of discussion would be completely inappropriate.

So I have talked a lot about what is sin and why I think confession isn’t needed or appropriate in most cases. But all in all I think repentance is something that is a personal matter between you and God. If you feel the need to confess, then confess. If you feel guilty because someone told you it was required to confess, try to talk to God first and see what he thinks. After all in the end you’ll be judged by him, and I’ve been told he tries not to go back on his word. Just like sin is a personal thing between you and God so is repentance. You do it to please God, not to appease him. In that sense you should really be doing it to also please yourself if you feel that pleasing God is a happy thing. If you don’t think pleasing God is a happy thing then please re-think your religion/religious status.

I will just say that I live my by what Jesus taught “Judge not, that ye be not judged”. No matter what you believe or how you feel about repentance, as long as it helps you become the person you want to become I’m all for it (granted you do no harm to others). Jesus is kind loving and Christians believe he died for your sins. I’m pretty sure if he was willing to die for you and suffer horrible agony, then he loves you plenty enough to not be a prick about the repentance process.