Testimony Damage and the Problem of Assumptions
(This is the first half of an article based on a 2013 FairMormon Conference presentation)
A Relief Society President searches the Internet for material on a lesson. A High Priest Group Leader follows various links on the Web preparing for a talk. A returned missionary watches some “Mormon” videos that were sent to him from a friend in his student ward. All three eventually leave the Church because of testimony-shaking material they “discovered” on the Internet. Most of us know someone who might fit such general scenarios.
Not only do they discover unsettling contra-LDS information on the Web, but they might not know where to turn for answers or help. They may feel that it wrong to question or doubt. They may be apprehensive about expressing their questions, concerns, or doubts to other Church members (or even to their spouses or other family members) because they fear that they would be looked down upon by others. With nowhere to turn, they often turn back to the Internet and sometimes right into the arms of those critics who are eager to feed the struggling member more unsettling information.
Most of us have heard the expression: “Church is a hospital for sinners, not a museum for Saints.” Every single one of us struggles with imperfection, sins, and testimony. Unfortunately too many members seem to think that a weakened testimony or emerging doubts is indicative of increase sin or a desire to sin. My friend Paul McNabb-a Stake Presidency Counselor who has advised bishops with struggling members- once noted:
“…doubt is a natural part of our mortal sojourn. It is not sin, nor does it always (or even mostly) stem from sin. Faith is not belief without doubt, but rather faith is obedience to imperfectly-understood-but-true principles in the presence of doubt. In general, I would counsel leaders to not assume that doubt stems from transgression and to not assume that doubt is in some way the fault’ of the individual experiencing it. I think leaders can best serve those going through a crisis of faith by being understanding, sympathetic, and compassionate.”[i]
It’s important that we understand that questioning the things we do, believe, or accept is normal and part of the process that leads from youth to maturity, as well as from maturity to wisdom. There would be no growth without questioning. Questions lead to answers, resolutions, solidifying convictions, and even to discarding false assumptions. Many doctrines and teachings were revealed as the result of questions petitioned to God.
Questioning traditions, folklore, and scripture resulted in Joseph Smith’s First Vision, the revelation known as the Word of Wisdom, an increased understanding of the Spirit World as recorded in D&C 138, and the expansion of the priesthood to all worthy males as recorded in the D&C Official Declaration-2. Personal application of prophetic and scriptural directives come as we question the meaning and relevance of the Word of God in our own lives, and academic questions have led to greater understanding of early LDS history, biblical history, as well as the world in which ancient prophets lived.
Unavoidably, questions have also led to loss of testimony and a rejection of a belief in modern prophets, scriptures, or even in God. The affect questions and doubts have upon our personal spiritual convictions varies greatly depending on the individual. For some, doubt may appear suddenly, emerge periodically, or it might plague believers all of their lives. While about 95% of Americans believe in God, for example, nearly half-including those who consider themselves to be religiously devout-seriously question their faith from time to time.[ii]
For some, doubts and questions may simply be part of one’s seeking nature. In our evolving world of ever-increasing information some may not feel content with any answer and may always be searching for the next best academic evaluation. For many, however, questions can surface because of what seems to be reliable information that contradicts long-held beliefs. The doubt and questions that arise from such discoveries often create emotional, spiritual, and intellectual heartburn and pain. Troubling discoveries can cause sleeplessness, depression, tears, and even physical maladies. Typically this pain is generated when assumptions and expectations are turned on their heads.
It’s human nature to make assumptions. Assumptions are those things which we take for granted-things we don’t critically examine. We’ve all been told not to judge a book by its cover, but that initial response is an unavoidable characteristic of human nature. We make evaluations and judgments on what we see or perceive even though those perceptions may not be accurate.
Our assumptions typically offer a base-line or starting point for many of the things we believe. We can’t know all the answers to everything so we make assumptions based on information we do have and fill in the blanks with inferences based on our assumptions. In other words, we infer, or come to conclusions about things around us, based on our assumptions.
We couldn’t function in any society without assumptions and inferences because we can’t possibly examine everything around us all of the time. This leads to the unavoidable fact that we will often make false assumptions and inferences-fed by our own personal world views or by misinformation, a lack of information, or the inability to comprehend or internalize additional information. All humans – Even prophets-can, have, and will make false assumptions.
Non-LDS psychologist Dr. Daniel Kahneman has argued that we think in two distinct (yet metaphorical) systems. System 1 is our intuitive thought process and the process to which we typically turn first. “…the intuitive System 1 is more influential than your experience tells you, and it is the secret author of many of the choices and judgments you make.” System 1 “continually constructs a coherent interpretation of what is going on in our world at any instant.”[iii]
System 2’s process is much more laborious and requires focus and concentration. “System 2 is mobilized when a question arises for which System 1 does not offer an answer….”[iv] “The defining feature of System 2,” writes Kahneman, “…is that its operations are effortful, and one of its main characteristics is laziness, a reluctance to invest more effort than is strictly necessary.”
As a consequence, the thoughts and actions that System 2 believes it has chosen are often guided by the figure at the center of the story, System 1. However, there are vital tasks that only System 2 can perform because they require effort and acts of self-control in which the intuitions and impulses of System 1 are overcome.[v]
System 1 is not a bad system. It is what guides us through our everyday lives. Our intuitions are typically formed from experience with similar situations and System 1 can quickly and accurately help us maneuver through obstacles and routines that are not too difficult. System 2 kicks in when System 1 is overwhelmed and needs extra muscle. And while System 1 is linked with our emotions, studies indicate that we need our emotions in our decision-making endeavors. Studies show that that “people who do not display the appropriate emotions before they decide, sometimes because of brain damage, also have an impaired ability to make good decisions.
“[vi]
Latter-day Saints, like all people, create their own stumbling blocks by automatically and uncritically accepting the unexamined assumptions that frequently flow from System 1. All of us embrace concepts, beliefs, or positions that we unquestioningly accept primarily because we have never thought of questioning the belief, position, or concept-System 1 is the easier path. Unfortunately, we occasionally confuse beliefs on peripheral teachings-such as rumors, traditions, or personal opinions-with LDS doctrines.
Critics may unconsciously or consciously take advantage of the natural inclination that most people-most of the time-will rely on the quick and easy answers supplied by System 1. A critic, for example, might create a list of problems with the Book of Mormon, Book of Abraham, or the character of Joseph Smith. At first glance, such a list can appear impressive and detrimental to LDS truth claims. Critics give the impression that the issues are simple (perhaps black and white) and therefore the conclusion they propose (that the Church is false) is obvious to any unbiased observer (which, of course, is a faulty assumption because there are no unbiased observers).
The problem is that, more often than not, the issues are not simple-they are frequently complex, especially when we have to compare or understand the issues in context of time, circumstance, or even culture. A lot more ink is required to respond to an accusation then to make an accusation. Generally, we tend to avoid turning to System 2 to analyze the complexities of the issues and the rebuttals. System 2, as Kahneman notes, is lazy. We may intuitively (and incorrectly) accept the conclusion of System 1 (the easy list of anti-Mormon arguments) and reject the more difficult System 2 (the rebuttals) simply because the accusations are preferred because of their ease of acceptance. Once the conclusion is accepted (that the anti-Mormon’s simple list is the correct one) the arguments supporting the conclusion are accepted as well. As Kahneman notes, “…when people believe a conclusion is true, they are also very likely to believe arguments that appear to support it, even when these arguments are unsound.”[vii]
Assumptions often feed expectations. Most of our assumptions in life lead to low expectations and we aren’t really bothered if we discover that some of our assumptions are false. We may assume, for instance, that the Great Wall of China is the only-made made object visible from the moon. If we find out, however, that the Great Wall becomes invisible to the naked eye long before reaching the moon, our world would not likely crash down around us.
False assumptions within important relationships, however, can be destructive because we have greater expectations. Such relationships would include those with your spouse, parents, children, government, employer, Church, or God. All of us have certain expectations when we are involved in a relationship. The more invested we are in the relationship the greater the expectations and therefore the greater pain when our assumptions collide with a new image that contradicts those assumptions.
It would not matter, for example, if we discovered that we were incorrect about Joseph Smith’s clothing styles, hair color, or pitch of voice. It would likely matter, however, if we discovered information implying that Joseph was a fraud or delusional or that the Book of Mormon was merely fiction.
We should tread lightly if we assume that our understanding of the Gospel will not change, that the history of the Restoration is always neat and tidy, that all prophets always behaved as we hope prophets would behave, that all those who recorded scripture remembered everything accurately, or that scripture accurately reflects scientific and historical truths.
As members of Christ’s Church, as members of our individual stakes, wards, quorums, or Relief Societies, we should not assume that we know the hearts, the spirituality, or righteousness of others or why they might struggle with a testimony.
Our assumptions may not only contribute to the diminution of another member’s testimony-by making them feel unworthy for questioning-but our unexamined assumptions about the Church, history, science, or Gospel topics could potentially impair our own testimony when we discover that some of our assumptions are weak or erroneous. False assumptions could cause us to become testimony-struggling-members who are on the receiving end of the judgmental assumptions of other members.
[ii] George Bishop, “The Americans’ Belief in God,” Public Opinion Quarterly 63 (1999): 421-434, cited in Paul Froese and Christopher Bader, “Does God Matter?: A Social Science Critique” Harvard Divinity Bulletin, n.1 and 2; available online (accessed 2 December 2012).
Mormonism: A Shallow Faith for Superficial People?
This article originally appeared on Daniel Peterson’s blog, Sic Et Non.
Some years ago, I was irritated by a gratuitous insult to my faith in Thomas Cahill’s otherwise interesting book How the Irish Saved Civilization. While discussing the ancient Iranian-born religion of Manichaeism, now long gone but once (for a few centuries) a serious rival to Christianity, Cahill suddenly, out of the blue, compared it to Mormonism and to the doctrine of Jehovah’s Witnesses. All are, he said, shallow and superficial faiths, “full of assertions . . . but yield[ing] no intellectual system to nourish a great intellect.”
I thought this remarkably unfair. While Jehovah’s Witnesses have been noted over many decades for their disdain for higher education, Mormonism has, to put it mildly, not been so known. Indeed, as far back, at least, as Kenneth R. Hardy’s “Social Origins of American Scientists and Scholars,” Science 185 (9 August 1974): 497-506, it’s been recognized that Latter-day Saints are disproportionately represented in scholarship and the sciences. (See also this article , by sociologists Stan Albrecht and Tim Heaton.) There exists, so far as I’m aware, no Jehovah’s Witness analogue to, say, the Association for Mormon Letters, the Association of Mormon Counselors and Psychotherapists, the Mormon History Association, the Academy for Temple Studies, Mormon Scholars in the Humanities, the Mormon Social Science Association, the Society for Mormon Philosophy and Theology, The Interpreter Foundation, nor even, for that matter, to Brigham Young University (in its three campuses at Provo, Rexburg, and Laie) or Southern Virginia University. The Interpreter Foundation will sponsor a conference, on 9 November 2013,dedicated to Mormonism and science. I’m aware of no corresponding conference sponsored by any association of Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Inspired by Elder M. Russell Ballard’s 2007 call to use the Internet more effectively to spread the Gospel, I had already been intending to someday seriously think about perhaps getting around to eventually maybe launching something like Mormon Scholars Testify . It was, though, Thomas Cahill’s unexpected slur that finally impelled me to act.
I would, of course, agree with Mr. Cahill that Mormonism hasn’t yet produced its equivalent of St. Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologica. However, mainstream Christianity took twelve centuries to produce St. Thomas – he died in March 1274; it’s not coincidental, by the way, that one of my sons, born on that same date, bears his name – and Mormonism, not yet two centuries old, doesn’t seem to me to be doing dramatically worse on the intellectual front than the early Christians were at roughly AD 213.
A few days ago, I posted several aphorisms from the eighteenth-century German physicist and satirist Georg Christoph Lichtenberg. Two of them, I said, reminded me of the reactions of certain critics to the Book of Mormon: “A book is a mirror: if an ape looks into it an apostle is hardly likely to look out.” (Ein Buch ist Spiegel, aus dem kein Apostel herausgucken kann, wenn ein Affe hineinguckt.) “When a book and a head collide and a hollow sound is heard, must it always have come from the book?” (Wenn ein Buch und ein Kopf zusammenstoen und es klingt hohl, ist das allemal im Buch?) But it seems to me that precisely the same things can validly be said about the reaction of certain critics to Mormonism as a whole.
Moreover, for various reasons, I’m not convinced that Mormonism should generate its own Summa Theologica. And St. Thomas himself might agree with me on that. The famous story is told of some sort of revelation given to him on 6 December 1273, roughly four months prior to his death, in the Dominican monastery at Naples. Although his works are voluminous, St. Thomas never wrote another line thereafter. He dictated nothing more to his socius, Reginald of Piperno. When Reginald begged him to continue with his work, Thomas replied “Reginald, I cannot, because all that I have written seems like straw to me [mini videtur ut palea].”
Failure to produce a Summa is not, in my judgment, tantamount to shallow superficiality. There is, I’m convinced, great depth in Mormonism – whether or not we’ve done much thus far to explore that depth.
But the Church and the Gospel aren’t intended solely or even primarily for Thomist philosophers or Hegelians. Our services and Sunday school classes aren’t academic seminars in historiography or systematic theology. Like every other broad demographic group, the Saints are mostly people who don’t spend hours each day worrying about ontology, epistemology, counterfactual conditionals, or Angst in the works of Sartre. And the saving message of the Gospel is for them, every bit as much as it is for intellectuals and artistes.
I’m convinced that people will find depth in Mormonism commensurate to their own, if they put the requisite thought and effort into studying and reflecting on it. But, just as the exclamation “Fire!” doesn’t have to be philosophically deep in order to bear life-saving meaning, so too the theological depths of the Gospel don’t have to be fully charted before it can lead us to life-saving repentance. It would be a fool, and very likely soon a dead one, who refused to budge while the flames drew nearer simply because the person who had warned him to flee had shown insufficient intellectual or literary sophistication while doing it.
A well-known story is told about the prominent Swiss thinker Karl Barth (d. 1968; author of, among other important things, the massive and famous thirteen-volume Church Dogmatics), who is generally considered the greatest Protestant theologian of the twentieth century: After a lecture at the University of Chicago’s Rockefeller Chapel – or, perhaps, at Union Theological Seminary in Richmond, Virginia, or perhaps in both places – a student supposedly rose during the question-and-answer period to ask Barth whether his entire life’s work could be summarized in a single sentence. Yes indeed, Barth is said to have responded. “In the words of a song I learned at my mother’s knee: Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.'”
Simple, yes. But, if true, profound. Profoundly important. And very richly meaningful.
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Addendum: My friend James McLachlan reminds me of an anecdote about the great first-century BC Jewish thinker and leader Hillel that I should have included as a very apt illustration:
Asked, once, by a non-Jew to summarize the Torah “while standing on one leg,” Hillel is said to have responded, “Do not do to others what would be hateful if done to you.
That is the whole of the Torah. All the rest is commentary. Now go and study.”
The Problem with Pondering
Mormons are incredibly industrious. The beehive, and the word, industry, were on the first flag when Utah attained statehood in 1896. And that pioneer heritage of working almost harder than is humanly possible, is still a cherished trait. Words like “striving” and “personal progress” are part of our vocabulary as we constantly take inventory of our efforts to excel and grow . “Be ye therefore perfect” rings through our culture like it has a 5 o’clock deadline.
And, despite church leaders telling us not to run faster than we are able, many of us have grown up with a good bit of pressure to “be about good works,” or at least be busy serving and doing. And here’s where the problem lies: Many of us have crammed our lives so full of tasks to complete each day, that we’ve cut out one of the most important directives of all: To ponder.
It’s hard for high achievers to ponder, or meditate. It looks lazy and unproductive, like daydreaming. People who ponder aren’t visibly working or sweating. It certainly isn’t something a honeybee would do. So off we dash in our effort to cross things off our list and get things done.
Satan is thrilled. He has cleverly disguised meditation as something you do when you have nothing else to do. He packages it as a dispensable idea for those times when you’re waiting in a doctor’s office and you’ve already read all the magazines. So you sit there and think. And, even then, he hopes you will think of trivial blather that doesn’t lift your spirit: What to fix for dinner, whether Sister Jones might agree to sub in Primary, do we really need new tires on the van?
He has also taken our industrious nature, and turned it on us. Because a strong work ethic is a good thing, he has convinced us it is every thing. He has sold us the idea that the harder we work, the better we are. Accomplishments reign supreme, and we stack them up like medals. Slowing down is indolent and lazy-speed up and show your worth.
We need to regroup, and take another look at what pondering actually is. It isn’t just a casual notion to think a little bit about the latest scriptures you’ve read. It isn’t something you can do as you fix meals, drive to work, or go shopping.
Gordon B. Hinckley said he once heard David O. McKay tell the Council of the Twelve that they didn’t spend enough time meditating. President Hinckley said we get extremely busy, running from one thing to another. “We wear ourselves out in thoughtless pursuit of goals which are highly ephemeral,” he said.
So what is it? David O. McKay called meditation a form of prayer, “one of the most secret, most sacred doors through which we pass into the presence of the Lord.”
Pondering is not simply sitting still and letting your mind wander. It’s a focused concentration on things of eternity, on matters of the spirit. It’s weighing and deliberating, reaching with our minds to a higher level, for higher answers. It can open our eyes to spiritual understanding, and unlock revelation.
Joseph Smith wrote, “On the third of October, in the year nineteen hundred and eighteen, I sat in my room pondering over the scriptures; And reflecting upon the great atoning sacrifice that was made by the Son of God, for the redemption of the world… As I pondered over these things which are written, the eyes of my understanding were opened, and the Spirit of the Lord rested upon me…” (D&C 138:1-2, 11.)
There is tremendous power in pondering. Sometimes it’s the only way to truly understand something you’ve heard or read. Jesus told the Nephites, “Therefore, go ye unto your homes, and ponder upon the things which I have said, and ask of the Father, in my name, that ye may understand.” (3 Ne. 17:3.)
Yes, we can learn a bit if we don’t meditate. But why settle for scraps? Why not magnify our learning tenfold by adding meditation to the mix? Henry B. Eyring says, ” We may be nourished more by pondering a few words, allowing the Holy Ghost to make them treasures to us, than by passing quickly, and superficially, over whole chapters of scripture.”
This cannot be done on the fly. We must set aside quiet time alone. Is that hard to do when you have a large family and many demands on your time? Yes, but aren’t you then the person who most needs help from the Holy Ghost? Stressed living requires pondering all the more. So choose a time and write it into your schedule (Boyd K. Packer recommends early mornings). Select a place free from distractions and noise. Turn off the electronics.
Ponder over your problems looking for solutions, not just feeling sorry for yourself. Allow enough time for the Holy Ghost to break through your pride/selfishness/stubbornness. In addition to opening our eyes and hearts to awesome spiritual insights, Church leaders have taught that pondering can build your testimony, refine your spirit, and teach you the right questions to ask in prayer. Meditation should always accompany fasting, and is a perfect Sunday activity. It can improve our relationships, direct our paths, and bring us joy.
No wonder the adversary wants to keep us so busy.
Listen to Hilton’s radio advice show at blogtalkradio.com/jonihilton on Thursdays at 2 pm PST.
Joni Hilton is also “Your YouTube Mom” and shares short videos that teach easy household tips and life skills at: https://bit.ly/YourYouTubeMom
Be sure to read her blog at jonihilton.blogspot.com.
She is currently serving as Relief Society President of her ward in Northern California.
Two in the Smoking Section
If I really want my mother to work herself into a lather, I’ll tell her I intend to be cremated. She won’t look up from her crossword puzzle, but she’ll be foaming, you know, on the inside.
Typically she’ll start with some injunction from past church leaders about the sanctity of the human body.
(Author’s note: I’m putting the link for the Church’s current position on cremation right here. Please don’t leave grumpy comments informing me that fill-in-the-blank general authority back in Ought-two said we’d be in a pack o’ trouble if we were cremated. The resulting slap fight tends to give the very patient Meridian editors acid reflux.)
I’ve never understood how sticking this precious gift of carbon in a hole in the ground to be devoured by ‘skin worms’ (you gotta love Job, or whoever was in charge of translating Job) shows any more respect than reducing it to five convenient pounds of ashes, but evidently someone, somewhere got their teeth into that one, and ever since then we haven’t been able to shift the sod fast enough.
In fact, teeth factor prominently into the confusion.
One of Mom’s favorite stories is about the time her hometown cemetery was flooded. Coffins were floating all over the place, seriously, they were just bobbing down the street like a giant rain gutter regatta, and months afterward a pair of dentures was spotted hanging in a tree. Evidently the water level had raised one unfortunate resident’s final resting place to tree level, and then-well, one must assume the chap held on while the tide receded. At least one must assume that if one is me.
You would think that reminding my mother that it’s unlikely she’ll be around to cast a vote would end the discussion, but no. Defying further religious tenets-these having to do with the visitation of relatives from The Other Side, but only as angels, never as ghosts-she promises she will haunt whichever of my children or spouses (you never know) gives the go ahead to fire up the oven. Given the enjoyment she gets out of leaving grandmotherly comments on the kids’ Facebook pictures while she’s still living (“Your profile picture makes you look like a hoodlum”) this threat of afterlife pestering carries weight.
Still, I think I’ve got at least one of my children on board, and since it’s Cori, who is five feet, nine inches of pure stubbornness, I’m fairly confident she’ll get the job done. Although, to hear her tell it, she ‘called’ cremation first.
“I’ve always wanted to be cremated,” she says, arms folded and bottom lip out, as though announcing those intentions means the rest of us will just have to come up with another way of getting our earthly remains out of the way. “And don’t choose cryogenics. I call that for Sadie.”
Sadie’s the dog.
Our attempts at usurping Cori’s special method of departure notwithstanding, I have no doubt that when the time comes, I’ll wind up in the urn of my choosing, or-and you should see how my mother reacts to this one; she rolls her eyes so far into her skull she risks spraining them-as fertilizer for a tree next to a park bench somewhere on our estate, to be enjoyed by generations of my posterity. I admit that currently our ‘estate’ consists of a quarter acre of grass on a residential cul de sac, but still, there’s enough room for a tree. One of those little ones, like a Bonsai.
When it’s clear I’m having too much fun at Mom’s expense, she’ll invite my husband into the discussion, casting him for this occasion as The Voice of Reason. He’s usually the one to peg in these situations.
Unfortunately, she has forgotten that in this case it’s two against one. My spouse has every intention of falling more in the ashes to ashes’ category than dust to dust,’ and reminding my mother of this just frosts her sixteen ways from Sunday.
“You’re a couple of ninnies,” she’ll say, taking a page from the Desperate Times and Measures Handbook. “The state should take away your right to think for yourselves.” We can also expect a bit of hand flailing and a shouted “Ish!”, a word which has never been adequately defined but as often as not speaks for itself.
Our reasons for wanting to be cremated are different: To me, there is something ridiculous in the idea that the fanciest piece of furniture I’ll ever own is the one I can’t show off to my Visiting Teachers. They may be on hand to remark on how simple-yet-elegant the polished wood and silver fittings are, but it’s not like I’ll have the chance to preen. Far better to spend the money on something showy, like a Coach purse or a Volvo.
For my husband, it’s a matter of claustrophobia. He has no interest in spending the intervening time between his death and the Resurrection stifling under six feet of topsoil. And don’t bother pointing out that he’ll have the whole universe to run around in until his number comes up; he’ll just shudder and shake his head. “No, thanks,” he’ll say. “Pass.”
Of course, resurrection is another one of those sticking points. “What happens when it’s finally your turn and you can’t find your kidneys?” my mom asks. “You’re going to feel pretty stupid then.”
I don’t know how it was with the original Resurrection-the one when all those graves opened and the dead just waltzed out like it was another day in the park-but I bet there were a few who’d been cooling their heels long enough that most of the good stuff was long gone. I have to believe that a brand new set of replacement parts is included in the Eternal Life Starter Kit, if for no other reason than I’ve never seen anything in the Bible about zombies.
Maybe this won’t even matter. Maybe we’ll be in that crew that is still around for the Second Coming, and we’ll be snuffed out and resurrected in the twinkling of an eye, as they say. Perhaps that’s what I should put in my living will: ‘All parts available after the twinkling. See cashier for details.’
Of course, knowing at least one of my kids, that may be harder rowing than you’d think.
“Twinkling?” Cori will sniff. “Pretty sure I called it first.”
Cartoon: Elder’s ‘D’ and ‘C’–No App for That
technology doesn’t have a solution for everything.
Shopping Tips for Healthy and Frugal Living
The foods you bring home from the store and put into your cupboard directly affect your health. When I began losing weight with Jackie Keller, one of my first health coach assignments was to clear my cupboards of all the foods I shouldn’t eat. Next was to purchase the right kinds of foods, bring them home, and organize them. Plan your menu for the week, and then make a market order.
When you shop with this in hand, you are less likely to buy impulse items. To make a market order, fold an 8 1?2 by 11-inch sheet into thirds vertically (from the top to the bottom of the paper), and then in thirds again horizontally (from side to side of the paper), making nine squares to write in. Starting with the top squares write “produce,” “dairy,” and “meat.” In the middle squares write “frozen,” “canned,” and “dry goods.” Across the bottom squares go “household supplies,” “miscellaneous,” and “other errands.” Under each heading I list everything I need then check the newspaper or Internet for sales on produce and other grocery items. This will save money as well as calories. At the store, shop the fresh produce aisle, then meat, dairy, cereal, bread, etc.
Try to buy the most nutrient-dense foods with the least amount of added sodium, and check labels to make sure they fall into your prescribed program. Wherever possible, avoid processed foods. I watch for sales on lean meat and buy in quantity. At home I cut it into individual portions (4oz per serving raw and 3 oz cooker) and freeze, thawing in the refrigerator a few days before using it.
Whole-wheat bread, which I also buy in quantity and on sale, freezes well. I save about 50 percent on both my meats and breads. I usually pass on foods without labels, except meat or produce, as the sugar, fat, and salt content are unknown.
One of my favorite activities is visiting farmers’ markets during the summer and fall. The only way I could have fresher food is to have grown it in my own garden. I enjoy meeting the farmers who have nurtured the crops and asking them questions about their produce. Each time I go, I bring home new techniques for preparing and storing my purchases. If you don’t have farmers’ markets in your area, look for roadside produce stands or locally grown produce in your favorite supermarket.
If you will take care about what you buy, it will benefit your health and your weight in so many ways. You will find many more healthful ideas on how to take care of yourself in Dian’s Healthy Living book: Tipping the Scales in Your Favor – paperback ?Permanent weight-loss is not a diet, it is a lifestyle change. There is no one “magic bullet.” Instead, it’s a matter of consistently incorporating a number of steps that include exercise, eating right and accountability. It’s like leading a symphony: You’ve got to have all the instruments playing at the same time or you don’t get the results.
In Dian’s new book, Tipping the Scales in Your Favor, she shares step-by-step what she did to lose over 125 lbs. and keep up an active lifestyle! The pages of the book come alive with practical tips, healthy recipes, over 175 beautiful color illustrations and her refreshing and honest story of the journey. For more info go to www.DianThomas.com and check out the book on the right side of the page.
LDS Fiction: UNEXPECTED Boasts a Plot that Honors its Title
Natalie has traveled from an unhappy, lonely teen mother to a second marriage filled with ridicule and put-downs. When her second marriage fell apart she went through a second divorce. When her ex took everything of value including her self-confidence and rarely paid child support, she began cleaning houses to support her children. Though divorced, her ex-husband still interferes in her life, runs down her self-confidence, and tries to take the children from her.
After eleven years as a highly successful attorney, Ross meets Natalie in his own kitchen when his regular housekeeper arranges for her to substitute while she takes care of a family emergency. The meeting doesn’t go well. Natalie has enrolled in several college classes and is determined to no longer let men walk all over her. After their first few disastrous encounters Ross and Natalie become friends, but he’s still suspicious of women’s motives and her low self-esteem tells her he couldn’t possibly consider her as marriage material, not that she has any desire to ever marry again.
Both Natalie and Ross are great characters and their healing and growth are important elements of the story. There are times when the reader will wish Natalie had a little more backbone and would stand up for herself more. And there are times when Ross’s seeming arrogance is a little over-powering. Natalie’s children and Ross’s sisters are also fun, believable characters. Other characters, though not drawn in as great detail, are well done as well. For a story that is largely plot driven, there is an enjoyable level of character drive as well.
The plot is fun and frequently shoots off in an unexpected direction. As in any romance there are certain predictable elements, but there are enough surprises to keep the reader satisfied and enjoying the ride.
Karen Tuft has a deep love of music and bills herself as a wife, mom, pianist, composer, arranger, and now writer. She attended BYU, but also graduated from the University of Utah with a degree in music theory. She has spent a good deal of her adult life backstage or in orchestra pits for theater productions along the Wasatch Front.
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UNEXPECTED by Karen Tuft, published by Covenant Communications, 245 pages, soft cover-$16.99, also available on CD and for e-readers.
The Saratov Approach: A Film that Finally Tells the Rest of the Story
This article also contains an interview with writer/director Garrett Batty by Seth Adam Smith.
On March 18, 1998 two missionaries for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints serving in the Russia Samara mission knocked on what must have been thousandth door of their church service. The scene is a familiar one to anyone who has served a mission. They knocked in the hopes that someone on the other side of the door would benefit from their message of Jesus Christ, but when the door opened what they found was far from a golden investigator.
Invited to this apartment by a stranger on the street who had requested an appointment with the elders to hear about the Church, Travis Tuttle and Andrew Propst were instead beaten upon arrival and taken for ransom to a remote location in Russia where they were held for five days.
The event made international headlines and desperate hope for their safe release brought the prayers of people of many different faiths from across the nation together. Now, 15 years after this traumatic and miraculous ordeal, their story has been made into a feature film. The film, from writer/director Garrett Batty, is The Saratov Approach and hits theatres October 9, 2013:
The kidnapping was covered by media outlets worldwide. In the early years of its publication, Meridian Magazine even published a feature interview with one of the elders, but the two had never really spoken together about the details of the experience until Garrett Batty reunited them last year. Batty had considered the story perfect for a screen adaptation for a long time, but “wanted to give the men sufficient time to heal.”
Finally, Batty contacted one of the two elders on Facebook and Propst and Tuttle gave the go ahead for this story to be brought to life and for the intimate details of the experience to explored. In 1998 when all of this happened it seemed that every news outlet took their chance to tell a story that started with a shocking abduction and ended with a miraculous release. But few if any told of what happened in the five days in between. This film bridges the gaps with intensity and inspiration.
Though they were in the possession of the kidnappers for less than a week, the days handcuffed in a tiny room with little to eat no doubt dragged on for what felt like years. The former elders, reunited after so many years sat with Batty and described in detail what that interim felt like, what they saw and heard and where their thoughts were in this time of such pressing peril.
Batty says that it was almost as if the two were finishing each other’s sentences as they reminisced over the details of the experience.
The following is an interview with Andrew Propst and Travis Tuttle about the event:
Adapting the five days of isolation in the Russian wilderness into something cinematically thrilling was no small task for Garrett Batty. Though the story has inherent elements of suspense and entertainment, he was presented with a challenge in capturing the psyche of the confined elders, the struggle of their worried families, the desperation of their captors, and the concern of the on-looking world. He managed to weave all of these elements together in surprising and compelling ways. Even with what was presumably a small budget, it feels like a big budget film.
The entire film was purportedly shot in only three weeks. The outside shots were filmed on location in Ukraine to capture the wintery wasteland feel of Russia (and to avoid those pesky Wasatch mountains that are always a dead giveaway when Utah is trying to pretend it’s Europe in the movies), and the inside shots were filmed in Salt Lake City.
The strong performances of the leads and the stunning construction of the story carried the film and expanded its scope far beyond the confines of a tiny, dirty room on the other side of the world. The members of the production were not all LDS, but it seems that all were touched by the experience of making the movie. Batty reflects on the spiritual element of this process in the video below (an interview conducted by Seth Adam Smith):
This film is thrilling in a way that can compete with any big-time Hollywood release and though the story is spiritual in nature, it truly has something for everyone.
With the increase of men and women going out into the field since the age-change was announced for full-time missionaries, this story becomes an even more compelling one (and not just in a way that will terrify all the mamas who just sent their 18-year-olds to places they know nothing about). You really come away from this film assured that these two missionaries and all the other missionaries that have followed are in the Lord’s hand and truly doing his work.
The Saratov Approach stars Corbin Allred and Maclain Nelson and is scheduled for release on October 9. For more information, click here.
Dan Brown’s Inferno and the Dangerous Myth of Overpopulation – “Footnotes”
[1] Dan Brown, Inferno, Doubleday, 2013
See also:
Laurence O’Bryan, “The Dangerous Lie in Dan Brown’s Inferno,” 5/21/2013, .
RPM Note: Please read this web page from another thriller/conspiracy novel writer about the overpopulation myths promoted in Dan Brown’s latest book “Inferno.” It is now being made into a motion picture starring Tom Hanks and directed by Ron Howard, slated to be released on December 18, 2015 . Remember “The China Syndrome” movie in 1979 about a nuclear power plant accident that helped extreme environmentalists to stop all new nuclear plants from being started or even brought online.
Laurence O’Bryan’s books include “The Istanbul Puzzle,” “The Jerusalem Puzzle,” and the upcoming new release “The Manhattan Puzzle.”
“Please don’t read this if your mind is closed to new ideas or if you dislike debate. You’ll simply be wasting your time and you may upset yourself. And I do know Inferno is fiction, too, but that doesn’t mean I’m not allowed express an opinion. … I am simply reviewing Inferno and putting forward a counter argument, which I believe Robert Langdon could have used in Inferno.”
“On page 215 of my hardback edition a character says; …our current path (population growth) is a pretty simple formula for destruction…the end will arrive very abruptly…it will be more like driving off a cliff.’ The main character, Robert Langdon, simply exhales in response as he tries to take in what he has heard. Then, near the end, a character asks is the villain of the book an evil man, or someone who loved mankind so much that he was willing to contemplate infecting humans in a way that would sterilize one third of us. The response given is that the end justifies the means.
“I believe that Inferno supports the idea that humanity is heading for disaster, because of population growth.
And that is a lie. The idea that world population is either too high already or heading that way is dangerous. Very dangerous.”
See also:
“Population 101: The Making of a Myth“
“Population 101: 2.1 Kids: A Stable Population,” Why the developed world is heading toward extinction via underpopulation.
“Population 101: Food there’s lots of it,”
RPMNote: I strongly recommend looking at the web site of pro-life sociologist Steven Mosher who is President of the Population Research Institute: www.pop.org . This site contains several short videos that explain these issues very well. https://overpopulationisamyth.com/ . The three referenced above are in this list of six great videos.
“Steven W. Mosher is an internationally recognized authority on China and population issues, as well as an acclaimed author and speaker. He has worked tirelessly since 1979 to fight coercive population control programs and has helped hundreds of thousands of women and families worldwide over the years. In 1979, Steven was the first American social scientist to visit mainland China. He was invited there by the Chinese government, where he had access to government documents and actually witnessed women being forced to have abortions under the new one-child policy.’ Mr. Mosher was a pro-choice atheist at the time, but witnessing these traumatic abortions led him to reconsider his convictions and to eventually become a practicing, pro-life Roman Catholic.”
[2] Circles of the underworld depiction, Infernopedia, .
“Into the blind world we must now descend,” – Virgil
[3] United Nations Economic and Social Affairs: Population Division, “World Population in 2300,” Proceeding os the United Nations Expert Meeting on world Population in 2300, United Nations Headquarters, New York, March 24, 2004, . [emphasis added to all quotes below in bold]
“The Population Division prepared five scenarios for long-range population projections.
All projection scenarios share the assumption that mortality will decline steadily after 2050. In addition, in all scenarios net international migration is assumed to be zero after 2050. In terms of fertility, the medium scenario assumes that the total fertility of each country will reach below replacement levels and remain at those levels for about 100 years, after which it will return to replacement level and remain there until 2300. In the high scenario total fertility after 2050 is assumed to be a quarter of a child higher than in the medium scenario and to remain constant at2.35 children per woman when the medium scenario stabilizes at replacement level. Similarly, in the low scenario total fertility is assumed to be 0.25 of a child lower than in the medium scenario and to remain constant at 1.85 children per woman when the medium scenario settles at replacement level.
The zero-growth scenario maintains the same fertility levels as the medium scenario until about 50 years after the latter reaches replacement level and from there on the zero-growth scenario has fertility levels that ensure that the number of births matches the number of deaths in each population, thus ensuring zero-growth. Lastly, the constant-fertility scenario maintains fertilit y constant during 2000-2300 at the level estimated for 1995-2000.”
“According to the medium scenario, world population rises from 6.1 billion persons in 2000 to a maximum of 9.2 billion persons in 2075 and declines thereafter to reach 8.3 billion in 2175. After 2175, a return to replacement fertility coupled with increasing longevity produces a steadily increasing population that reaches 9 billion by 2300. Most of the projection population increase between 2000 and 2300 occurs in the less developed regions, whose population rises from 4.9 billion in 2000 to 7.7 billion in 2300. Although the population of more developed regions also increases, the change is considerably less (from 1.2 billion in 2000 to 1.3 billion in 2300). All scenarios result in significant shifts in the geographical distribution of the world population.”
“The low scenario results in a declining population that reaches 2.3 billion in 2300 and the high scenario leads to a growing population that rises to 36.4 billion by 2300.”
“Life expectancy is projected to increase steadily in all countries after 2050. No limit is set on the increase of life expectancy. As a result some countries reach very high levels of survivorship by 2300. The country with the highest projected life expectancies at this time [for 2300] isJapan, with life expectancy of 108 years for females and 104 years for males. “
“At the world level, the median age is projected to rise from 26 years in 2000 to 48 years in 2300 [RPM Note: unimaginably high median age for a stable society] in the medium scenario. The proportion of those aged 80 or over, which was just 1.1 per cent at the world in 2000, is projected in the medium scenario to reach 17 per cent in 2300.”
“Most of the discussion of the Expert Group was devoted to the results of the long-range projections and their implication for the understanding of future population trends.Participants expressed varying views about the range of total population in 2300, from 2 billion in the low scenario to 36 billion in the high scenario.
Some felt that the range was too large to be useful, while others felt that even such a wide range did not capture the true uncertainty about population that far into the future.”
RPM Note: Just a 0.25 difference up or down in the average fertility rate and the estimates vary for 2100 from 9.1 billion in the medium most likely scenario, 5.5 billion with 0.25 lower, and 14.0 billion with 0.25 higher. Plagues, wars, calamities-none of these things are included in these estimates. The judgments of God for forcing evil upon the world in the name of avoiding population explosion calamity-those are not included either. The low scenario is certainly likely in my opinion because with the mismatch in population age groups, the society can collapse and make the fertility rate even lower. The destruction of the family cannot be easily undone and without a strong family, children don’t come to earth and have a stable life. Just follow the case of Japan and think of ways except Nephite/Lamanite-like repentance that can turn around the powerful slow forces of population demographic decisions made fifty or more years ago. I don’t think that anything else will be successful. Thus, the medium scenario for Japan still never makes the fertility rate higher than 1.85, not enough to slow the societal collapse due to underpopulation. Even a huge baby boom in Japan right now would take years before it could help reverse the collapse. The more likely “low scenario” for Japan ends up in 2050 with children 0-14 going from 35% of the population to only 9%, working population 15-65 going from 60% to 44%, and 65 and older going from 5% to a catastrophic 47% of the population.
See Table 1 (page 9) for data for this population graph using the medium scenario. “EVOLUTION OF THE POPULATION OF THE WORLD AND THE MAJOR DEVELOPMENT GROUPS ACCORDING TO THE DIFFERENT SCENARIOS, 2000-2300”
“… consequently, whereas in 2000 the majority of the countries of the world have an increasing population, by 2100 the majority would have a decreasing population according to the medium scenario, and just three-Niger, Uganda and Yemen-would account for over half of the positive contribution to population growth at that time. Concomitantly, China and India alone are projected to account for nearly 48 per cent of the population losses [RPM Note: amazing projection but in line with current trends] projected to occur in 2100. Net population losses are still projected to occur in some countries around 2200 but by 2300, all countries would be experiencing population increases in the medium scenario.”
RPM Note: With the policies that they are implementing and encouraging countries to adopt and the effects of those policies on the life and death of millions and billions, note that these experts admit that there is much uncertainty about the whole area of predicting populations in the future. With it being far from a science and knowing that much of what they do to cause population contraction encourages breaking God’s laws, I would recommend instead the virtue of believing the words of the prophets of God.
[4] Karl Zinsmeister, “Supply-side Demography,” PRI Preview, 1993,.
“For more than two decades, population control groups have waged a powerful political and philosophical campaign to advance the proposition that a continued rise in human numbers is one of the world’s gravest problems. Professor Paul Ehrlich wrote a best-selling book in which he described population growth as a “bomb,” and claimed that during the 1970s it would “explode,” causing hundreds of millions of deaths, leading to war and violence, and destroying the planet’s ability to support life.”[The predictions didn’t come to pass.]
“Research by economists, demographers and social historians has show that much of the alleged harm from population growth has turned out to be nonexistent and that population change has often been used as a scapegoat for problems that actually have other sources.”
“Paul Ehrlich wrote in 1968 that it was a fantasy’ to think that India – which he cites as a paradigm of overpopulation – could feed itself anytime in the near future, if ever.’ One participant at the Second International Conference on the War on Hunger in 1968 argued that India’s 1967-68 grain production of approximately 95 million tons represented the maximum possible level. Yet today India’s annual grain production is over 150 million tons, and the country has become a net exporter of food.”
RPM Note: The predictions of these population explosion experts do not come to pass and yet we still consider them as experts. Why not hold them accountable?
See also: Jerry Taylor, “The Growing Abundance of natural Resources,” Cato Institute, .
“If we examine the earth’s resource base using those three yardsticks [“proven reserves, price data, and ultimately recoverable stock”], we do indeed come to a jarring conclusion: At the very time that the conservation lobby was convincing millions of Americans and legislatures everywhere that resource shortages were lurking just around the corner, the global economy witnessed the greatest explosion of resource abundance in the history of mankind.” [emphasis added]
“If there are indeed physical limits to the sources of materials and energy that sustain the human population and the economy, as is contended in Beyond the Limits, it appears that those limits are so far beyond the human horizon that they are for all intents and purposes nonexistent.”
“N.D. Historical Wheat Production,” North Dakota Wheat Commission,
Just look at the first few lines of this report and you can understand the tremendous revolution in agriculture that took place during these years after world war II.
Average yield per acre: 1941-50: 15.4 bushels, 1951-60: 15.2, 1961-70: 24, and 1971-80: 26, 1981: 31.5, 1991: 31.0, 2001: 32.2, 2013: 39.9. 15.4 to 39.9 bushels per acre, what an amazing increase!
RPM Note: Jeremiah had harsh words for false prophets in his day who claimed that the wickedness of the people would not have disastrous consequences that resulted in the destruction of Jerusalem and being taken into captivity into Babylon.
Jeremiah 14:13-15:
“Then said I … behold, the prophets say unto them, Ye shall not see the sword, neither shall ye have famine; but I will give you assured peace in this place.Then the Lord said unto me, The prophets prophesy lies in my name: I sent them not, neither have I commanded them, neither spake unto them: they prophesy unto you a false vision and divination, and a thing of naught, and the deceit of their heart. Therefore thus saith the Lord concerning the prophets that prophesy in my name, and I sent them not, yet they say, Sword and famine shall not be in this land; By sword and famine shall those prophets be consumed.”
RPM Note: When these population explosion prophets of doom make off-the-charts predictions that do not come true, why do we continue to give them credence? Why not this standard of righteous judgment: “Wherefore by their fruits shall ye know them.” (Matthew 7:20)
[5] Margaret Eby, “The Coming Population Crash: The overpopulation myth,” April 19, 2010,
“So these worries about overpopulation are unfounded?
“When Paul Ehrlich wrote his famous book [“The Population Bomb”], women were having an average around the world of five or six children; now they’re having an average of 2.
6. Fertility rates around the world have halved. That’s not just true in Europe and North America; they’re way below replacement levels in most of East Asia now. Not just China but Japan, Korea, Vietnam and Burma have replacement rates of fertility or below. Around the world, fertility rates have been coming down really sharply. So the population bomb as we’ve conceived it before really isn’t there. There’s still population growth going on, but that’s going to stabilize.”
“Should we be discouraging women in high-poverty, high-population areas from having children?
“In short, no. It won’t work and will end up being coercive. By and large, women want to have fewer children, even in high-poverty areas, and provided some basic conditions are met – access to contraception, obviously – they will do it. There are numerous examples. They don’t need persuading. The holdouts are generally communities with perceived serious “survival issues” like Palestinians in Gaza and ultra-Orthodox Jews in Jerusalem, or those where it is in their interests to have more children, like in parts of rural Africa, or where there are overbearing patriarchies that prevent access to contraception. Conversely, encouraging women in low-fertility countries to have more children won’t work without draconian measures. For proof of that, see the failure of the Catholic Church: It ends up encouraging patriarchal social norms that push women toward ultra-low fertility, such as in Italy.”
“So, you think the crash is probably going to be a good thing?
“Yes, I think declining population can be a good thing so long as it isn’t too precipitate. Current fertility rates in parts of Europe could see whole populations basically shrivel up and die. That could be too disruptive. [RPMNote: “Disruptive?!” What an understatement for those that will “shrivel up and die.”] But a “soft landing” could be good.” [emphasis added, and just how from her discussion do you get that “soft landing?”]
RPM Note: This article is written by a feminist who is basically pleased with the direction and at least realizes the real trends. With an underpopulation implosion coming, I see nothing in the population control experts’ predictions or recommendations that can stop it. Instead, books like inferno will double down on more overpopulation control and propaganda, making it worse.
“The International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) is the largest and most influential family planning organization in the world. Since it was founded in Bombay in 1952, the IPPF has grown from the nine original national affiliates to 140 family planning associations (FPAs), and exerts unparalleled influence on national policymaking regarding population issues.”
“… No other organization has done more to spread abortion throughout the world than the International Planned Parenthood Federation. Not satisfied to rest on its laurels, the IPPF has forcefully and repeatedly stated its intention to assist in the legalization of abortion in every country of the world, regardless of the means used, and has also voiced its willingness to set up and equip abortion centers and provide the expertise required to perform abortions on a massive scale.
“This report uses IPPF and other documents to show, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that IPPF fully intends to aggressively agitate for the legalization of abortion in every country of the world, regardless of local customs, laws, beliefs or attitudes.”
[7] Steven W. Mosher, “China’s one-child policy itself leads to forced abortions,” The Lancet, Volume 380, Issue 9853, page 1558, November 3, 2012.
Steven Mosher website note on publication: “From the beginning of the one-child policy, the Chinese Party-state has tried to blame the myriad cruelties of this barbaric policy on out-of-control local officials.’ This is nonsense, of course, since local officials are only following orders on pain of punishment. So it was that when Chinese academic Yan Li tried out this excuse in an article The Lancet, the world’s leading medical journal, I had to respond.”
“In 1979, I was given the honour of being the first Western social scientist allowed to do extensive field research in China since the Communist revolution. From my vantage point, I was able to observe first-hand how the newly introduced one-child policy was being implemented.
“The draconian campaign that I witnessed began by ordering young mothers to have abortions, arresting them when they refused, and incarcerating them under conditions of extreme psychological pressure. Those who still refused were physically dragged into the local medical clinic, where they were held down on the operating table while they were aborted and sterilized. Many of these women were in the third trimester of pregnancy. Indeed, some were already in labour.
“The forced abortions so poignantly described by Yan Li (Sept 1, p 804) are not just an aberration of recent years’, in other words, but have rather been an integral part of the enforcement mechanism of the policy since its inception. It is difficult to say how many women have been aborted under duress but, given that the Chinese Government claims that 400 million births have been averted by its policy, it is safe to say that the number is not trivial.”
[8] VerLynn Brink, “My view: Some questions about Common Core,” Deseret News, August 23, 2013,
Speaking of government sponsored propaganda that fits the population control agenda, here is a sample question inserted into the official school “Common Core” curricula:
“Consider this question on a Core test (from my grandson’s practice tests while studying for the exam):
“What is the cause of poverty in third world countries?
A) Large families and large farms
B) Large families and small farms
C) Large families and no farms
“How does one answer a question like that? Is it learning or propaganda?
What kind of attitude is a child supposed to take away from this?”
RPM Note: This school propaganda example reinforces my perception that we are heading to the “low” scenario of the population estimate instead of a steady state replacement “medium” level. And that “low” option gives the whole world an even more severe underpopulation implosion, not anything close to a population explosion. We should be hitting the brakes on the overpopulation propaganda because populations are decreasing as we speak. Yet, because that does not fit the philosophy of our day, ant- religion and anti-family, instead they double down and speed up the “runaway train” heading toward a terrifying “train wreck.”
[9] Megan Willett, “14 Pictures that Show the World is too Crowded,” Business Insider, Jun 21, 2013,
[10] “World Population Prospects: the 2012 Revision,” United Nations, Department of Economic and social Affairs, Population Division, Poulation Estimates and Projects Section, 2012,
Graphs for this article are mostly generated from data derived from this web site where the historical and predicted data can be accessed using different variables, assumptions, countries, groups or the whole world together.
The medium variant is the default and assumed to be the most useful for predictions.
[11] op. cit. “World Population Prospects: the 2012 Revision,”
[12] Wikipedia commons area, From “John Ford” article, picture of “the Searchers” from trailer,
If you would like to try a great wallpaper picture, look at this monument valley picture.
“Wild West Monument Valley, Utah-Arizona-cowboy on his horse,” social wallpapering,
[13] op. cit. “World Population Prospects: the 2012 Revision,”
[14] “Runaway train,” Joblo’s Movie Posters,
[15] “1985 Movie Runaway Train,” Alaskarails.org, .
See also: Thomas Purifoy, “Why You and Your Kids Need to Understand Economics; Government Spending,” Compass classroom, July 30, 1013,
[16] Gabriele Vogt, “Demographic Development in Japan,” Berlin-Institut, November 2010,
“All three demographic variables – fertility rate, life expectancy and migration flows (Figures 1 to 3) – show extreme figures for Japan: The birth rate of 1.29 children per woman is one of the lowest worldwide, whilst life expectancy for men (79 years) and women (86 years) is among the highest in the world.”
RPM Note: I use several charts from this report.
[17] Amy Oliver, “Falling birth rates mean Japan won’t have any children under 15 by 3011,” Dailymail.co.uk, May 13, 2012, .
“Japan’s people could become extinct in 1,000 years because of declining birth rates, academics say. The population of Japanese children aged up to 14, currently stands at 16.6million in the country but is shrinking at a rate of one every 100 seconds, researchers in Sendai said. They warned that at the current rate, Japan would have no children left within a millennium.”
RPM Note: A bit tongue in cheek about completely disappearing children, but this is a horrendous problem and cannot easily be reversed. A bit of “humpty dumpty” to stop wholesale breaking of commandments and putting the traditional family back together again in time to stop the collapse.
[18] op. cit., “World Population in 2300”
RPM Note: Life expectancy in Japan continues to climb in predictions up to the year 2300. But with hardly any children or working-aged people to support them, what kind of wonderful golden years will they be?
“Life expectancy is projected to increase steadily in all countries after 2050. No limit is set on the increase of life expectancy. As a result some countries reach very high levels of survivorship by 2300. The country with the highest projected life expectancies at this time [for 2300] is
Japan, with life expectancy of 108 years for females and 104 years for males.”[emphasis added]
[19] Gregg Muragishi, “Japan’s population: Longevous, ageing, shrinking,” lingualift.com, February 2012,..
“A recent article from Thomson Reuters claims that Japan’s population will fall 30%-to below 90 million-by 2060! Why is this? Is there a new disease that is causing the Japanese to die young?
“Actually, it is quite the opposite. Japan has one of the longest life expectancies in the world, and by 2060, it is estimated that the average life expectancy will rise by more than four years (84.19 for men / 90.93 for women). With the increase of people 65 or older, the government must support those elderly through their social security program. However, the cost of social security is rising by 1 trillion yen a year, causing a major financial burden.
“Another cause for the decline of population is the low birth rate. The accepted fertility rate that is needed to sustain the population is 2.08 children born per couple. In 2010, Japan’s fertility rate was 1.39 and is expected to fall to 1.35 by 2060. The number of children 14 years old or younger is estimated to decline more than half to 7.91 million.”
[20] Y. Funatsu, “Future Population of Japan (2000-2050),” Meisei University, Tokyo.
RPM Note: The “all wise” “religion mocking” social engineers, after having weakened or destroyed the family unit to reduce the population, believe that they can then get the population fertility rate back to replacement levels and have a stable society. Like trying to turn a battleship, it is not so easily done. Once the stability of a righteous, committed family with two faithful parents, with strong religious underpinnings, is disrupted, it is most likely that the low replacement rate and high abortion rate will continue which leads to underpopulation collapse. Also, any improvement in fertility rate would take years to have an effect while the huge long-living retired population will overbalance the boat as it were, also causing a societal collapse.
[21] “Fertility Rate World Map,” Wikipedia commons, 2006, CIA World Factbook, ..
“List of sovereign states and dependent territories by fertility rate,” Wikipedia.org, CIA World Factbook, 2013,
[22] op.cit. , “World Population Prospects: the 2012 Revision,”
[23] op.cit. , “World Population Prospects: the 2012 Revision,”
[24] op.cit. , “World Population Prospects: the 2012 Revision,”
[25] Number of people = 7,000,000,000
Number per family = 4
Number of households = 1,750,000,000
Number of square miles in Texas = 268,800
Number of square miles in US = 3,794,000
Number of square feet in a square mile = 27,878,400
Square feet in Texas = 7,493,713,920,000
Square feet available for each household = 4,282
Size of lot available per household = 65 feet square
Square feet in an acre = 43,560
Size of 65×65 lot in acres = 0.1 = 1/10th of an acre
Texas is only about 7% of the size of the US. The key statistic to memorize is that there are seven billion people and seven trillion square feet in Texas, enough to have a thousand square feet per person.
“The earth is full, there is enough and to spare.” (D&C 104:17)
[26] “Texas Map Collection,” Geology.com, .
See also:
“Episode 1: Overpopulation: The Making of a Myth,” overpopulationisamyth.
com,
[27] “The Family: A Proclamation to the World,” 1995, .
[28] Spencer W. Kimball, Teachings of Spencer W. Kimball, Bookcraft, 1982 , p 331.
Included at link: www.josephsmithforum.org/research/faqs/02-overpopulation-is-the-earth-overpopulated-is-there-enough-food-and-resources-to-support-our-population/
[29] Ezra Taft Benson, God, Family, Country: Our Three Great Loyalties, Deseret Book, 1974, p. 257.
RPM Note: President Benson was the US Secretary of Agriculture under President Eisenhower. So his comments on food supplies and famines are his professional expertise. He knows what he is talking about in more ways than one, professionally and as an inspired Apostle.
See also: John A. Widtsoe, Understandable Religion: A Series of Radio Addresses, Kessinger Publishing, 2010, p. 161-164.
“Not the least of the evils resulting from birth control is the failure to maintain the population of the land. The birthrate in the United States is on a steady decline. Per thousand of population it has fallen from 25 in 1915 to 17 in 1939, and appears to be still declining. In 1941 the reproduction rate in the United States was below the death rate. Such a condition weakens the race. The nations that will possess power in the future, will be those who maintain a normal birthrate.
“The Latter-day Saints, true to their teachings, have maintained a high birthrate, at present nearly twice that of the United States. Children continue to be welcomed in Mormon households.”
[30] Russell M. Nelson, “Reverence for Life,” Ensign, April 1985, .
RPM Note: This talk is so powerful that one would have to be very hard hearted to not be affected and persuaded as to the Lord’s point of view on these issues. This talk was given immediately after Bruce R. McConkie’s last talk “The Purifying Power of Gethsemane” in April Conference, 1985. Please read, listen to and ponder this talk. How could abortion, infanticide, euthanasia, forced sterilization and destruction of religion and the traditional family possibly be a solution for the so called problem of overpopulation. Breaking God’s laws and destroying his innocent ones and substituting tyranny and propaganda for freedom will not turn out well. Look at the book of Revelation and see if the current population control methods will give us peace and prosperity and a stable population or rather bring upon us the judgments of God for wickedness.
Russell M. Nelson, “Abortion: An Assault on the Defenseless,” Ensign, October, 2008,
Additional quotes:
“As sons and daughters of God, we cherish life as a gift from Him. His eternal plan provides opportunities for His children to obtain physical bodies, to gain earthly experiences, and to realize their divine destinies as heirs of eternal life.”
“This matters greatly to us because the Lord has repeatedly declared this divine imperative: Thou shalt not kill.’ Then He added, Nor do anything like unto it. Even before the fullness of the gospel was restored, enlightened individuals understood the sanctity of human life. John Calvin, a sixteenth-century reformer, wrote, If it seems more horrible to kill a man in his own house than in a field, … it ought surely to be deemed more atrocious to destroy a ftus in the womb before it has come to light.’
“Man-made rules have now legalized that which has been forbidden by God from the dawn of time! Human reasoning has twisted and transformed absolute truth into sound-bite slogans that promote a practice that is consummately wrong.”
“Some argue for abortion because of fear that a child may have a congenital malformation. Surely the harmful effects of certain infectious or toxic agents in the first trimester of pregnancy are real, but caution is needed in considering the termination of a pregnancy. Life has great value for all, including those born with disabilities. Furthermore, the outcome may not be as serious as postulated.”
“When the controversies about abortion are debated, “individual right of choice” is invoked as though it were the one supreme virtue. That could only be true if but one person were involved. The rights of any one individual do not allow the rights of another individual to be abused. In or out of marriage, abortion is not solely an individual matter. Terminating the life of a developing baby involves two individuals with separate bodies, brains, and hearts. A woman’s choice for her own body does not include the right to deprive her baby of life-and a lifetime of choices that her child would make.
“As Latter-day Saints, we should stand up for choice-the right choice-not simply for choice as a method.”
RPM Note: Hopefully these words of Nephi and Jacob as they marveled at man’s ability to ignore the powerful testimony of the prophets and apostles will further motivate us to find out and gain a testimony of the Lord’s view on these issues. I don’t know a better antidote to the false doctrine in the population control area than to read and ponder prayerfully these two talks of Elder Russell M. Nelson.
2 Nephi 32:7
“And now I, Nephi, cannot say more; the Spirit stoppeth mine utterance, and I am left to mourn because of the unbelief, and the wickedness, and the ignorance, and the stiffneckedness of men; for they will not search knowledge, nor understand great knowledge, when it is given unto them in plainness, even as plain as word can be.” [emphasis added]
2 Nephi 33:4-5
“And I know that the Lord God will consecrate my prayers for the gain of my people. And the words which I have written in weakness will be made strong unto them; for it persuadeth them to do good; it maketh known unto them of their fathers; and it speaketh of Jesus, and persuadeth them to believe in him, and to endure to the end, which is life eternal. And it speaketh harshly against sin, according to the plainness of the truth;”
Jacob 6:12
“O be wise; what can I say more?”
RPM Note: Elder Nelson points out examples of great people in history that probably would not be here if abortion were widely available in their time such as Ludwig Van Beethoven. A few more to point out: Thomas Edison, the seventh child of Samuel and Nancy Edison, Benjamin Franklin, the eight child of Josiah and Abiah Franklin, and, in a world where there are governments with “one-child policies” or in a day when you can get fired for having a third child (India), Louis Pasteur, the third child of Jean-Joseph and Jeanne Pasteur.
[31] James E. Talmage, Jesus the Christ, Deseret Book Company, Salt Lake City, 1922, Sixth edition, Gutenberg project, . Chapter 8, page 100, “Flight Into Egypt”
See also: Chapter 8, Note 3:
“The mortal end of the tyrant and multi-murderer is thus treated by Farrar in his Life of Christ, pp.54, 55:-It must have been very shortly after the murder of the innocents that Herod died.Only five days before his death he had made a frantic attempt at suicide, and had ordered the execution of his eldest son Antipater.
His death-bed, which once more reminds us of Henry VIII., was accompanied by circumstances of peculiar horror; and it has been asserted that he died of a loathsome disease, which is hardly mentioned in history, except in the case of men who have been rendered infamous by an atrocity of persecuting zeal. On his bed of intolerable anguish, in that splendid and luxurious palace which he had built for himself, under the palms of Jericho, swollen with disease and scorched by thirst, ulcerated externally and glowing inwardly with a ‘soft slow fire,’ surrounded by plotting sons and plundering slaves, detesting all and detested by all, longing for death as a release from his tortures yet dreading it as the beginning of worse terrors, stung by remorse yet still unslaked with murder, a horror to all around[Pg 108] him yet in his guilty conscience a worse terror to himself, devoured by the premature corruption of an anticipated grave, eaten of worms as though visibly smitten by the finger of God’s wrath after seventy years of successful villainy, the wretched old man, whom men had called the Great, lay in savage frenzy awaiting his last hour. As he knew that none would shed one tear for him, he determined that they should shed many for themselves, and issued an order that, under pain of death, the principal families of the kingdom and the chiefs of the tribes should come to Jericho. They came, and then, shutting them in the hippodrome, he secretly commanded his sister Salome that at the moment of his death they should all be massacred. And so, choking as it were with blood, devising massacres in its very delirium, the soul of Herod passed forth into the night.'”
[32] “Massacre of Innocents by Matteo di Giovanni,” Wikipedia commons area, .
Lesson 37″We Thank Thee O God for a Prophet”
As a young missionary for the Church I came to love the message of Amos 3:7: “Surely the Lord God will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets.” It has always given me a sense of comfort and confidence knowing that I belonged to the Lord’s restored Church lead by a living prophet. Having a living prophet being led by the Gift of the Holy Ghost creates a true and living Church (D&C 1:30).
Dispensations and Dispensation Heads
As Latter-day saints we know that the word of God is revealed in the context of gospel dispensations. The dispensation head receives the word of God for his dispensation. Elder Bruce R. McConkie explained the role dispensations and dispensation heads. He shows the role of apostles and prophets with the head of the dispensation within which they live:
Some background is essential to our understanding of what is involved. We all know that salvation is in Christ. He is the Firstborn of the Father. He was like unto God in the premortal life, and he became, under the Father, the Creator of all things. We look to him; our faith centers in him, and in the Father, through him.
Second to Christ stands that great spirit person Michael, who led the armies and hosts of heaven when there was war and rebellion in heaven, and who, being foreordained so to do, came here as the first man of all men and became the presiding high priest over the earth. The next person in this hierarchy is Gabriel, who came into this life as Noah. After that, we do not know the order of priority, except that singled out from among the hosts of heaven were certain who were foreordained to be the heads of dispensations.
Dispensations are those periods of time when the plan of salvation, the Word–the Eternal Word–is dispensed to men on earth. How many there have been we do not know. I suppose there have been ten; maybe there have been twenty; there could have been more. I am speaking now not of what sometimes are called dispensations in the sense that John the Baptist and Paul and some of the other prophets had special appointments. I am speaking of those great eras or periods, of those designated portions of the earth’s history, when the Lord, through one man, gives his word to the whole world and makes all the prophets, and all the seers, and all the administrators, and all the apostles of that period subject to, and exponents of, what came through that individual (emphasis added). What this means is that the head of a gospel dispensation stands as one of the ten or twenty greatest spirits who have so far been born on earth. (1)
Priesthood and Prophets
All true prophets of Jesus Christ testify of him and his divinity. In order to represent him with authority they must hold the Lord’s priesthood. The Prophet Joseph Smith explained the role of priesthood in the Lord’s giving his revelations to the earth:
Although there are two Priesthoods, yet the Melchizedek Priesthood comprehends the Aaronic or Levitical Priesthood, and is the grand head, and holds the highest authority which pertains to the priesthood, and the keys of the Kingdom of God in all ages of the world to the latest posterity on the earth; and is the channel through which all knowledge, doctrine, the plan of salvation and every important matter is revealed from heaven.
Its institution was prior to “the foundation of this earth, or the morning stars sang together, or the Sons of God shouted for joy,” and is the highest and holiest Priesthood, and is after the order of the Son of God, and all other Priesthoods are only parts, ramifications, powers and blessings belonging to the same, and are held, controlled, and directed by it. It is the channel through which the Almighty commenced revealing His glory at the beginning of the creation of this earth, and through which He has continued to reveal Himself to the children of men to the present time, and through which He will make known His purposes to the end of time. (2)
The Mantle Passes On
President Nathan Eldon Tanner left on record for church members the process that takes place as one prophet passes on and is succeeded by another. This account is given after the death of President Harold B. Lee who was replaced by President Spencer W. Kimball:
When Wilford Woodruff was the president of the Church, he said that it was the will of the Lord that no amount of time be allowed to pass between the death of the president of the Church and the time that the First Presidency was reorganized. Therefore, on December 30, 1973, just four days after President Lee’s death, President Kimball, the president of the Twelve, called the members of the Twelve together in the upper room of the temple for the purpose of discussing the reorganization of the First Presidency and to take whatever action was decided upon. Those who had been counselors to the President–that is, President Romney and myself–took their respective places in the Quorum of the Twelve.
President Kimball, upon expressing his great sorrow at the passing of President Lee and his feeling of inadequacy, called upon the members of the Twelve in order of seniority to express themselves individually as to how they felt about reorganizing the presidency of the Church.
As each member of the Twelve spoke, he expressed himself as feeling that now was the time to reorganize the First Presidency and that President Spencer W. Kimball was the one whom the Lord wanted to preside at this time. The sweet Spirit of the Lord was present in rich abundance and there was complete unity and harmony in the minds and spoken words of the Brethren. The only purpose and desire was to do the will of the Lord, and there was no question in anyone’s mind but what the will of the Lord had been expressed.
Elder Ezra Taft Benson then made the formal motion that the First Presidency of the Church be reorganized and that Spencer W. Kimball be sustained, ordained, and set apart as the president, prophet, seer, revelator, and as trustee-in-trust of the Church. This motion was seconded and unanimously approved.
In all humility, President Kimball stepped forward and made his speech of acceptance, praying that the Spirit and blessings of the Lord would attend him that he might be made able to carry out the will of the Lord. He said he had always prayed for President Lee’s health and strength and vigor and for the blessings of the Lord to attend him as he carried on as the president of the Church. He emphasized the fact that he had prayed sincerely with his lovely wife, Camilla, that this position would never come to him and that he felt sure that President Lee would certainly outlive him.
On this occasion I thought of the Savior in the Garden of Gethsemane as he prayed: “… O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt.
” (Matt. 26:39.) And he so accepted.
He then chose and nominated as his first counselor N. Eldon Tanner and as his second counselor Marion G. Romney, each of whom expressed himself in all humility and pledged himself to support and sustain President Kimball as the president of the Church and to fill his office to the best of his ability, and prayed for the blessings of the Lord to attend him.
Following this, President Benson was sustained as president of the Council of the Twelve. President Kimball then took his seat in the middle of the room, and as all those present placed their hands upon his head, we felt the Spirit of the Lord was truly with us, and this sweet Spirit filled our hearts. Then, with President Benson being mouth, in a beautiful prayer and blessing, Spencer Woolley Kimball was ordained and set apart as prophet, seer, and revelator and president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
It is my testimony to you and to the world that the plan and order of the Church has been followed, that the will of the Lord has been done, and that Spencer W. Kimball is his prophet and president of his church and kingdom here upon the earth. In the stake conferences since his appointment and in the solemn assembly today, the people have enthusiastically sustained him. It is the great privilege, honor, and responsibility of each and every one of us to accept and support President Kimball as a prophet of God and under his direction do all in our power to help build the kingdom, to further the cause of righteousness, and prepare the world for the second coming of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. (3)
President Kimball gave this account at the passing of President David O. McKay:
It is Sunday morning, January 18, 1970. A great heart stops beating and an aged body relaxes and slumbers. Like an earthquake sends a tidal wave around the earth, communications now cover the earth and millions of serious-minded people in even faraway places stop to pay saddened tribute to a mighty man of God who has passed from mortality.
For days, long lines of loving followers inch their way along the street, even in the rain, to see once more the visage of their departed leader.
The Tabernacle is crowded with those who loved him, and sweet tributes are paid.
The earthly body of the prophet, David O. McKay, is laid to rest in dignified reverence.
In our feeling of emptiness, it hardly seems that we could go on without him; but as one star sinks behind the horizon, another rises in the sky, and death spawns life.
The work of the Lord is endless. Even when a powerful leader dies, not for a single instant is the Church without leadership, thanks to the kind Providence who gave his kingdom continuity and perpetuity. As it already had happened eight times before in this dispensation, a people reverently close a grave, dry their tears, and turn their faces to the future.
The moment life passes from a President of the Church, a body of men become the composite leader–these men already seasoned with experience and training. The appointments have long been made, the authority given, the keys delivered. For five days, the kingdom moves forward under this already authorized council. No “running” for position, no electioneering, no stump speeches. What a divine plan! How wise our Lord, to organize so perfectly beyond the weakness of frail, grasping humans!
Then dawns a notable day (January 23, 1970), and fourteen serious men walk reverently into the temple of God–this, the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, the governing body of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, several of whom have experienced this solemn change before.
When these fourteen men emerge from the holy edifice later in the morning, a transcendently vital event has occurred–a short interregnum ends, and the government of the kingdom shifts back again from the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles to a new prophet, an individual leader, the Lord’s earthly representative, who has unostentatiously been moving toward this lofty calling for sixty years. The man is Joseph Fielding Smith.
Not because of his name, however, did he ascend to this high place, but because when he was a very young man he was called of the Lord, through the then-living prophet, to be an apostle–a member of the Quorum–and was given the precious, vital keys to hold in suspension pending a time when he might become the senior apostle and the President.
In that eventful temple meeting, when he has been “ordained and set apart” as the President of the Church by his brethren, the Twelve, he chooses his counselors–two mighty men of valor: Elder Harold B. Lee and Elder Nathan Eldon Tanner, with their rich background as teachers, businessmen, public officials, and especially Church leaders.
And a presidency of three and a newly constituted Council of Twelve walk humbly to their offices without fanfare or ostentation, and a new administration moves into a new period with promise of great development and unprecedented growth. (4)
Fourteen Fundamentals in Following the Prophet
Elder Ezra Taft Benson when President of the Quorum of Twelve Apostles gave fourteen fundamentals for us to remember as we follow the prophet, “for our salvation depends on them” (5):
1. The prophet is the only man who speaks for the Lord in everything.
2. The living prophet is more vital to us than the standard works.
3. The living prophet is more important to us than a dead prophet.
4. The prophet will never lead the church astray.
5. The prophet is not required to have any particular earthly training or credentials to speak on any subject or act on any matter at any time.
6. The prophet does not have to [page 8] say “Thus Saith the Lord,” to give us scripture.
7. The prophet tells us what we need to know, not always what we want to know.
8. The prophet is not limited by men’s reasoning.
9. The prophet can receive revelation on any matter, temporal or spiritual.
10. The prophet may advise on civic matters.
11. The two groups who have the greatest difficulty in following the prophet are the proud who are learned and the proud who are rich.
12. The prophet will not necessarily be popular with the world or the worldly.
13. The prophet and his counselors make up the First Presidency–the highest quorum in the Church.
14. The prophet and the presidency–the living prophet and the First Presidency–follow them and be blessed–reject them and suffer.
I testify that these fourteen fundamentals in following the living prophet are true.
If we want to know how well we stand with the Lord then let us ask ourselves how well we stand with His mortal captain–how close do our lives harmonize with the Lord’s anointed–the living Prophet–President of the Church, and with the Quorum of the First Presidency. (6)
Notes
1. Bruce R. McConkie, “This Generation Shall Have My Word through You,” Ensign, June 1980, 54-55
2. (Joseph Smith, Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, selected and arranged by Joseph Fielding Smith [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1976], 167.)
3. N. Eldon Tanner, “Chosen of the Lord,” Ensign, May 1974, 84-84
4. Spencer W. Kimball, Faith Precedes the Miracle [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1972], 313.
5. Ezra Taft Benson, “Fourteen Fundamentals in Following the Prophet,” Liahona, June 1981, 1-8
6. Ibid