Serpents and symbols

This article about serpents (messengers of the gods, some false, some true) may interest you. I thought I originally read about it in the Ensign but right now I can only find a BYU publication by Andrew Skinner on the topic.

If serpents can represent either a true Messiah or a false Messiah, that also lends an additional pleasing symbolic message to the way Moses' stick-cum-serpent ate the magicians' sticks-cum-serpents.

-Max

--
If I esteem mankind to be in error, shall I bear them down? No. I will lift them up, and in their own way too, if I cannot persuade them my way is better; and I will not seek to compel any man to believe as I do, only by the force of reasoning, for truth will cut its own way.

"Thou shalt love thy wife with all thy heart, and shalt cleave unto her and none else."

Evolution

I'm very interested in evolution and abiogenesis. I believe that it happened. I don't see a lot of evidence that humans understand HOW.

Anyway, Fred is often interesting and sometimes cogent. Here's Fred with an interesting observation on standards of evidence:

'Early on, I noticed three things about evolution that differentiated it from other sciences (or, I could almost say, from science). First, plausibility was accepted as being equivalent to evidence. And of course the less you know, the greater the number of things that are plausible, because there are fewer facts to get in the way. Again and again evolutionists assumed that suggesting how something might have happened was equivalent to establishing how it had happened. Asking them for evidence usually aroused annoyance and sometimes, if persisted in, hostility.

'As an example, consider the view that life arose by chemical misadventure. By this they mean, I think, that they cannot imagine how else it might have come about. (Neither can I. Does one accept a poor explanation because unable to think of a good one?) This accidental-life theory, being somewhat plausible, is therefore accepted without the usual standards of science, such as reproducibility or rigorous demonstration of mathematical feasibility. Putting it otherwise, evolutionists are too attached to their ideas to be able to question them.'

http://www.unz.com/freed/darwin-unhinged-the-bugs-in-evolution/

They say you can't get a PhD unless you have a burning question that you want to answer. Well, here's mine: WHAT MAKES IT WORK?!? How do you pose a machine-learning (parallel hill-climbing) question such that "complex multicellular ecologies" is the answer, as opposed to say "networks of self-replicating simple crystals"? Someday when I retire, I'll make that my PhD question and pursue a doctorate.

--
If I esteem mankind to be in error, shall I bear them down? No. I will lift them up, and in their own way too, if I cannot persuade them my way is better; and I will not seek to compel any man to believe as I do, only by the force of reasoning, for truth will cut its own way.

"Thou shalt love thy wife with all thy heart, and shalt cleave unto her and none else."

Partnership

Dear Y.A.,

This is a good husband. Remind me of this story some day.

Just this winter, I woke up one morning after a week-long battle with a particularly harsh bout of depression. I didn't want to get up. I looked out the window and noted that it had snowed: this was even worse. We were supposed to get up and go to church that day. The thought of even trying, of making what seemed like the Herculean effort to get out of bed, get everyone ready, be there, be pleasant, be social, just be at all, nearly crushed me. I told my husband, "I can't do it. I just can't today. Not today." My husband, who is kind and gentle and wise, and who I know just wanted to scoop me up and tell me that it was okay and to stay home, instead sagely said, "I know you don't want to go, and I know it is hard. But you can choose to go. And choosing to go is the right choice. Because if you choose not to go this one time, it will make it so much easier to choose not to go next time." And he was right. I was mad at him: I wanted him to give me an excuse to stay home, to wallow, to curl into myself in my bed and just not have to do this whole life thing for one day. But, he loves me enough to keep encouraging me to choose the light, even when it looks so dark.

And you, J.--thanks for being a good friend.

~B.C.

--
If I esteem mankind to be in error, shall I bear them down? No. I will lift them up, and in their own way too, if I cannot persuade them my way is better; and I will not seek to compel any man to believe as I do, only by the force of reasoning, for truth will cut its own way.

"Thou shalt love thy wife with all thy heart, and shalt cleave unto her and none else."