I was watching an IMAX documentary tonight, I have a few of them on DVD, and I've always loved watching them.  Tonight, it was Cosmic Voyage, a really great one that explores how massive our universe is, and how much life there is in it.  It's a really cool movie to watch.

As a Christian, I have a unique perspective on the origin of the universe that doesn't agree with the secular conclusions.  However, unlike mainstream religions, I do not believe that science and faith are mutually exclusive.  I believe in evolution as much as anyone else, since, for one, it's not only scientifically plausible, but proven.  I draw the line that evolution was the cause of the origin of life though, instead taking the doctrine on faith that man was placed here by God, with a purpose to life that He has since revealed to His children through prophets, which have been recorded as scripture.

I never know quite how to explain my perspective, since it's so different from everything else, and probably pretty unexpected to start with.  It'd be easy to gloss over my take on things and just sum me up as another crazy creationist that thinks some invisible force created everything then dumped us here to let us figure things out.

And so, in an effort to meet critics on their own grounds, I'll ask the hard questions myself, but provide the answers the best I can.  I'm not trying to convince anyone of the truth -- and it's not my belief that it should be forced on others involuntarily, in school or any other setting.  But I would like the fair chance to present my side.

How was the earth created?

First of all, going to the creation of the earth.  There is a misconception that God created the universe ex nihilo, or, out of nothing.  This belief springs from a poor translation of the original text.  In Hebrew, the book of Genesis says that the earth was organized, not created -- meaning from existing matter.  In modern revelation, the Lord has said that "the elements are eternal."  Science would agree that matter can be neither destroyed nor created.  My religion concurs.

How long did it take to create the earth?

The truth is, we don't really know.  There are a few accounts given of the creation (Genesis, the Book of Moses, and the Book of Abraham), and they all offer a few more details.  In Abraham's account, each of the creationary periods are called a "time".  For example, "And it came to pass that it was from evening until morning that they called night; and it came to pass that it was from morning until evening that they called day; and it was the fifth time." (emphasis mine).

You can read the whole account of Abraham's record of the creation, starting with chapter 4, although the entire book covers some amazing doctrine.

The next question is more interesting, though, I think.

Why doesn't the Lord reveal to us the details of the creation?

The answer to that is pretty simple, and I imagine probably going to be a little frustrating to some, and maybe some reason to scoff to others.

The answer is it's not necessary to our salvation.

The reason we are here on earth, living our mortal lives, is to see if, once we have left the presence of our Father in Heaven, we will choose to obey him.  A knowledge of the creation of the earth is not a prerequisite to living the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  However, the Lord does at times reveal knowledge of the mysteries of creation and of life as a testimony of His work, and to strengthen our faith.

In a more simple analogy, say you were taking a test on mathematics ... it wouldn't do you much good to study lots of history before going into the exam, because it is superfluous and not necessary for our passing grade in that area of study.  Likewise, we don't need to understand all things to be able to successfully pass the mortal test, to follow God, choose the right, and achieve happiness.  He requires of us a willing mind and an obedient spirit, something that everyone can give individually.

That is not to say that God does *not* want us to know these things, though.  It would be an incorrect conclusion to assume that since God does not reveal His word to us, that He has no interest in us finding these things out.  The Lord gave us many tools, both personally and collectively, to study these things out for ourselves.

He has said, "Teach ye diligently and my grace shall attend you, that you may be instructed more perfectly in theory, in principle, in doctrine, in the law of the gospel, in all things that pertain unto the kingdom of God, that are expedient for you to understand;  Of things both in heaven and in the earth, and under the earth; things which have been, things which are, things which must shortly come to pass; things which are at home, things which are abroad; the wars and the perplexities of the nations, and the judgments which are on the land; and a knowledge also of countries and of kingdoms." (emphasis mine)

Also, just because the knowledge is withheld, does not mean it will always be that way.  Just as parents teach their children principles line upon line, precept upon precept, our Heavenly Father does not burden us with things that would be too hard to grasp at this point in our existence -- partly, because they would prove unto us a stumbling block (even the limited knowledge we have now is a struggle of faith for many, and keeps them from believing).

He has promised to eventually reveal to us "things which have passed, and hidden things which no man knew, things of the earth, by which it was made, and the purpose and the end thereof--Things most precious, things that are above, and things that are beneath, things that are in the earth, and upon the earth, and in heaven." (emphasis mine)

So, while it may be frustrating, now, to not know the reason and purpose behind all things, they will eventually be revealed to us -- either in this life or the next.  In the meantime, we can rest safely in the knowledge that it is not required of us to understand.  That in no way excuses us from either trying or should prevent us from wanting to understand though.

How can we take things on faith?

I think a simpler way to ask the question might be, "how can you really believe all that stuff?"

Well, to be honest, for me it comes pretty easily, so I have a really hard time understanding how it would be hard sometimes *not* to believe it.  So I apologize in advance if my explanation of things seems a bit simple ... a bit of a loop, saying "I believe it's true because I believe it's true."  There's actually a base to that -- and that is a witness from God, that comes by asking sincerely if these things are true.

One last quote, this time from the book of Alma in the Book of Mormon.  Alma (an ancient prophet of God) says, "all things denote there is a God; yea, even the earth, and all things that are upon the face of it, yea, and its motion, yea, and also all the planets which move in their regular form do witness that there is a Supreme Creator."

It's a curious pasttime of mine to try and find parts of those "all things" that denote the existence of God.  The complexity of life goes deeper than just a testimony of the existence of God, they are actually living parables -- analogies that to the simple and humble are opened up, and show similarities to the Gospel itself.

For example, the seasons of the earth are just as the stages of mortality are.  Spring represents the birth and renewal of life, summer the prime of our lives, fall is the stages of death, decay and our twilight years, and then winter, in all its glorious white, represents the resurrection of life.

There's lots more examples, and I was trying to think of one that I had come up with when writing this, but nothing is coming to me right now.  I went looking for one in my notes on scripture study, and I couldn't find one quickly either.

That's generally how my presentation feels though -- a little lacking on the solid examples, and I feel like I'm not really getting my point across too well, but I can rely on the fact that I believe and even know that these things are true, and I can't deny that ... even if I can't explain it eloquently.

There was also this great quote from Brigham Young about how all truth was circumscribed into one whole (or maybe it was Joseph Smith).  Anyway.  I remember President Young would talk about it a lot at length.  I'll have to go find my book of his quotes somewhere.

But yah, the simple point I wanted to make is that science and religion actually are the same pursuit of truth, and application of that knowledge.  There is no conflict between the two for true religion, for God operates by eternal laws, many of which we don't understand yet.

Alright, I'll stop preaching now.   I just wanted to point out that for some Christians, there is no conflict .. no crisis of faith when presented with science.  It's a common tactic that those who actively try to undermine the faith of others will use the fact that "you can't explain it" as a reason to disbelieve.  Instead of letting this despair me, I actually consider it a requisite of my faith.  The Lord wants me to grow spiritually, physically, mentally and emotionally, and each of those require risks ... stepping out into the dark, having faith that if I follow the best path, that I will grow and be redeemed and rewarded after my labor is done.  I don't know everything, that is true, but I do know the basics and have a testimony of their truth.  I know enough.

Basically, a recent occurrence in my life for the past couple of months has been a renewed effort to find out what purpose the Lord has in store for me in this life.  I really have no idea, to be honest, but I'm trying to find out a lot of answers.  Not just my purpose generally, but what I'm supposed to do with all this free time and resources that I have.

Well, one habit I used to hold dearly was that I would study the scriptures a lot.  That hasn't really been a focus in my life as much as it was before, for probably eight years or so.  I mean, I have been reading them on a regular basis, but generally not more than anything other than a sense of obligation at times.  Never anything I'd really call "studying".

Not too long ago, though, I got a new idea for an approach I could develop towards studying.  It mostly came because I was getting exasperated a bit by following the letter of the commandment (read your scriptures daily) rather than the spirit (feast upon my word).  I like to mix things up now and then, and this time was no different, and I don't doubt that this current idea will eventually fade away and I'll be trying something new later on.

For now, though, what I do in the morning is I read the scriptures (the Book of Mormon) until I find a passage that I find interesting.  It doesn't matter how much I read, but as long as I find something that stands out -- that either makes me ask a question, or consider the passage, or something I just find kinda cool.  Then I write it down in my little notebook.  There's nothing cooler than going back to old notebooks, where I've recorded previous thoughts and questions, and seeing what I wrote years ago.  It's a lot of fun.  So far though, my new method has been very effective, if not the most effective I've had yet.  The reason I say that is because I find myself thinking about that scripture during the day or week.

One thing that I do to get myself to ask questions while reading, is I'll look at a passage and say, "Now, why did they put *this* in there?  Who cares?  What does it matter?  Is that important?"  And that kinda stirs the mind and gets me thinking about why it would be included, what importance it could have had to the author (think of all the stuff we write in our journals that seem important to *us*, but to anyone else it would be a bunch of fluff).

As an example, I'll use the one I found this morning.  It's in the book of Mosiah, chapter 10, verses 4 and 5.  They read:

4. And I did cause that the men should till the ground, and raise all manner of grain and all manner of fruit of every kind.

5. And I did cause that the women should spin, and toil, and work, and work all manner of fine linen, yea, and cloth of every kind, that we might clothe our nakedness; and thus we did prosper in the land--thus we did have continual peace in the land for the space of twenty and two years.

Now, aside from the comment about continual peace, there's not really anything of substance there on first glance, it would normally seem like to me.

However, this time when reading it, verse four caught my mind, and I thought it was interesting how he said "all manner of fruit."  When I was thinking about it later during the day, I realized that it may stand as a bit of a description of how their culture was advanced and organized that they could have not only the technology to raise all different kinds of fruit, but the agronomy and sciences to do so.  Like, for instance, grapes grow differently from bananas, and they are not the same as pineapples, apples, oranges and peaches.  It would take some skill and organization to be able to handle *all* manner of fruit.  I dunno.  I just find it interesting.  The same thing with the cloths as well ... the different types have to indicate that there were artisans trained in different skills.  Anyway.  Interesting.

So, that approach of study is working for me well so far.  I'm having fun with it.

Going back to my earlier point, though, and with my recent discoveries, I'm remembering how much I enjoy studying the scriptures.

When I served my mission in Argentina, I studied them voraciously during all my free time.  Early on, I had the goal to finish reading the entire standard works.  Every free moment I had, I would read, and I got through it rather quickly.  Once I was done with that, I colored all my verses with a coloring scheme I had developed, and marked up my scriptures quite a bit.  I still have that set today, and it's great to reference them, because I can flip open my books to almost any chapter in any book and find something I've highlighted.

I'm a bit of a perfectionist though, or more accurately, fixated on progression and refining my processes.  My original approach to highlighting verses was to do it on a dialogue basis, which works well for the Book of Mormon or the Gospels where there are a *lot* of conversations, but that doesn't apply to every other book.  So, I'm taking it much slower this time around and I'm trying to categorize each book and see how I can distinguish it as to what a good markup scheme would be.  Doing that entails reading through the book first and getting a feel for what the common themes and topics are ... something that gets pretty frustrating at times, because I'm so eager to start marking things up.  In fact, I'm already planning on doing a third refinement of my approach that I've done with Isaiah (the first book I've looked at, yet), because I couldn't wait started using colors before thinking it all through.

It's fun, though.  But really, I'm glad to have found something I can do with some of my time.  Some of the happiest moments in my life so far have been me hunched over a little desk in 25 de Mayo or Neuquen or Esquel, trying to understand the scriptures.  I'm not nearly at the same level as I was before, but I'm having a fun time trying to get there.  Good times.  I tell you what.

It's difficult to do a secular study sometimes, because it's so easy to look beyond the mark.  I was reading a favorite commentary on the Old Testament the other day called The Fourth Thousand Years (by Cleon Skousen), and while I was reading, it occurred to me that I was studying the secular history of the people, the promises and the events that were to happen.  It kind of bothered me a little bit -- not the text, but the discovery of what I was doing.  This is a difficult point to make, so I'm going to try and carefully explain it.  I believe there is great worth in studying the history, background, and relationships of the history in general surrounding the scriptures, but I do not believe that studying the gospel should be an academic exercise only.

One scripture that can help illustrate my point is Isaiah 6:8.  In this chapter, the prophet accounts his calling from the Lord.  It reads:

Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then said I, Here am I; send me.

I'm finding it hard to think of any real commentary that I can add to that.  One thing I like, that Skousen pointed out in his book, is that Isaiah didn't know or ask what it was the Lord wanted him to go and do ... and it didn't matter to him.  He volunteered, and asked the Lord to put him to use.  I can testify that when we ask the Lord to use us in His service, He will.

Okay, well, I can't think of a good ending to write up to that, and I have a *really* hard time writing up these posts.  I feel okay about the first part, but can't come up with anything else, and in my experience it's better in those cases to say nothing.

Edit: It occurs to me after walking away for a few moments that my sense of high expectations of self will only serve to keep me from writing any more similar posts in the future, so I think I'm going to go back to my usual mix of stream of consciousness mixed with an overall sense of not trying to offend anyone.

I've been studying it all week, and I've been having a lot of fun with it.  My initial markup of the entire book went fast -- I got it all done in two days (Sunday and Monday).  Since then, I've been going back over it, and finding more stuff.

The prophets writing style is pretty amazing.  He will switch from theme to theme all the time, sometimes mid-sentence.  The topics he seems to cover the most are: the restoration, the last days, the final judgement, the second coming of the Lord and the millennial reign.  On top of that, there are constant promises, reminders, and prophecies to and concerning the house of Israel (the saints who have accepted the covenant).  There's just so much.

I'll quickly share a few verses that have really stood out to me lately, though I can't go into much detail because of time right now.

Isaiah 5:1-7 is a cool parable of sorts.  I like it because it paints a cool picture of what the Lord has done.  Here's the actual text from the King James version:

1. Now will I sing to my wellbeloved a song of my beloved touching his vineyard. My wellbeloved hath a vineyard in a very fruitful hill:

2. And he fenced it, and gathered out the stones thereof, and planted it with the choicest vine, and built a tower in the midst of it, and also made a winepress therein: and he looked that it should bring forth grapes, and it brought forth wild grapes.

3. And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem, and men of Judah, judge, I pray you, betwixt me and my vineyard.

4. What could have been done more to my vineyard, that I have not done in it? wherefore, when I looked that it should bring forth grapes, brought it forth wild grapes?

5. And now go to; I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard: I will take away the hedge thereof, and it shall be eaten up; and break down the wall thereof, and it shall be trodden down:

6. And I will lay it waste: it shall not be pruned, nor digged; but there shall come up briers and thorns: I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it.

7. For the vineyard of the LORD of hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah his pleasant plant: and he looked for judgment, but behold oppression; for righteousness, but behold a cry.

This one touches upon the apostasy of Israel, an event that has happened on numerous occasions.  One thing that stands out to me is in verse 2, documenting all the things the Lord did for His vineyard, he "planted a tower in the midst of it."  That phrase, "in the midst of it" has been popping up in my brain lately, and it's interesting to see where it occurs.

When the risen Lord visisted the Nephites in America after his ascension ... well, I'll just quote the verses from 3rd Nephi 11 and point it out there:

And now it came to pass that there were a great multitude gathered together, of the people of Nephi, round about the temple which was in the land Bountiful; and they were marveling and wondering one with another, and were showing one to another the great and marvelous change which had taken place.

2. And they were also conversing about this Jesus Christ, of whom the sign had been given concerning his death.

3. And it came to pass that while they were thus conversing one with another, they heard a voice as if it came out of heaven; and they cast their eyes round about, for they understood not the voice which they heard; and it was not a harsh voice, neither was it a loud voice; nevertheless, and notwithstanding it being a small voice it did pierce them that did hear to the center, insomuch that there was no part of their frame that it did not cause to quake; yea, it did pierce them to the very soul, and did cause their hearts to burn.

4. And it came to pass that again they heard the voice, and they understood it not.

5. And again the third time they did hear the voice, and did open their ears to hear it; and their eyes were towards the sound thereof; and they did look steadfastly towards heaven, from whence the sound came.

6. And behold, the third time they did understand the voice which they heard; and it said unto them:

7. Behold my Beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased, in whom I have glorified my name--hear ye him.

8. And it came to pass, as they understood they cast their eyes up again towards heaven; and behold, they saw a Man descending out of heaven; and he was clothed in a white robe; and he came down and stood in the midst of them; and the eyes of the whole multitude were turned upon him, and they durst not open their mouths, even one to another, and wist not what it meant, for they thought it was an angel that had appeared unto them.

9. And it came to pass that he stretched forth his hand and spake unto the people, saying:

10. Behold, I am Jesus Christ, whom the prophets testified shall come into the world.

11. And behold, I am the light and the life of the world; and I have drunk out of that bitter cup which the Father hath given me, and have glorified the Father in taking upon me the sins of the world, in the which I have suffered the will of the Father in all things from the beginning.

12. And it came to pass that when Jesus had spoken these words the whole multitude fell to the earth; for they remembered that it had been prophesied among them that Christ should show himself unto them after his ascension into heaven.

Okay, I didn't intend to quote that much, but I didn't want to take it out of context, and it's easier to follow this way.

Verse 8 though, what fascinates me is that when the Lord descended, "he came down and stood in the midst of them".  When I read the verse in Isaiah, it jogged my memory about this event, and I find it interesting because I had always envisioned Him, for some reason, as appearing on the edge of the crowd and having them come to Him.  That's not the case, though -- He was right there among them.  I think that's pretty cool.

Anyway, lots of little realizations like that ... I could probably write a whole series of posts on the stuff I'm finding in here.  Good times, though.  It's really fascinating to study, I would recommend and encourage it yourself.

Today I was thinking of one of the Ten Commandments, specifically, to keep the sabbath day holy (Exodus 20:8).  It occurred to me that in order to keep this one, that a society-civilization would have to have some kind of a calendar system in order to keep it.  And with that, I started thinking of some of the principles related to that.  For instance, I believe that it could imply a sense of order in our own lives and houses.  How can you keep the Sabbath if you aren't prepared for it, or even know when it is?

I don't really have much more to comment on the matter, since that was really my only thoughts so far.  On a personal matter, though, I find it easier to "keep" the sabbath if I look at it from a certain perspective.  Growing up, I always had a pessimistic approach of it, where I basically considered it a day of all the things I couldn't go and do -- shopping, sports, whatever.  But now, I try to look at as a sabbatical, which oddly enough, has a more effective approach linguistically for me.

I believe that the Lord considers it a day of rest, and that's what I tell myself to do on Sundays: give it a rest.  If I wanna go play on the computer or spend time on video games (which I don't really consider all that bad, but wouldn't really say it's all that great either), I tell myself to just give it a rest for one day.

The other week I was sick for a few days, and was stuck at home doing pretty much nothing.  I decided to stay completely off the computer while I was at home resting, because I know that sitting myself hunched over a terminal all day long isn't really gonna help me get better much quickly.  What ended up being just a few days with a cough and some body pains, actually turned into an incredibly positive experience because I got to give the normal day-to-day routine of my life a rest, a real sabbatical, and it gave me some serious insight into my daily habits.  I had not only the time, but the peace of mind to read, to think about things, to write down my thoughts, and worship.  I was a little sad to have to go back to the daily grind.

Anyway, that's all.

I was saying a prayer tonight, and just suddenly the thought occurs to me that it is so amazing that in our raw, imperfect, mortal form here on earth, that it's possible to even create a relationship with Heavenly Father.  That is just so cool.  It really takes some work, but even with just a little bit, you can recognize how He feels about you and your current condition and path that you are on.

That's so amazing to me that its possible, because of *all* the things we have yet to learn and do in the eternities for our progression, it's possible to create a real, recognizable connection with God right now; that we have the capacity to do that is, again, amazing.

I'm sure that, compared to how things can be in a more perfect form it's probably not much that we achieve here, but you can still create a relationship that is as real and fulfilling as anything else here on Earth, and moreso, I imagine (mine isn't *that* strong, but I certainly can't deny it's there).  Amazing stuff, I'm really thankful for that.

Now, when I first started working on this -- years ago, I forgot how many -- I started writing the documentation in DocBook format. And I'm so glad I did. I'm kind of amazed, looking back, that I managed to pull it off, considering how little I knew back then. I do remember, though, that putting the original scriptures release was a lot of hard work for me. I specifically wanted to learn more how to use the console, so I used a very old Dell laptop (a Pentium 1, I think) with Gentoo on it, and would only use the console to do everything. That translates to a lot of work when you're accessing PostgreSQL, MySQL and SQLite 2 and 3 all at once on the command line, but it was worth it. It really taught me a lot more about the small and large differences between each database, and how to export stuff and transfer it between the two. Not to mention just learning lots more SQL in general.

I also wrote the DocBook XML just using vim. So, yesterday, I opened up the original file, and started poking at it. The documentation isn't complex, by any means, but for a total noob to all of this, I think I did pretty well back then.

Writing documentation is one thing I take very seriously, as I think it stands as sort of a legacy over time. As long as there's a copy floating around somewhere on the web or in an old package, people will read it. As such, I put a lot of pressure on myself when writing docs of any kind. I just wanna get it right, because I know that chances are that I'll probably never come back and update it once the project is finished, so it'll be that way for a long time.

What happens though, is that the process just wears me out. It's not that it's a lot of work, it's that I just pour a lot of energy into this. On top of that, this is a project I feel really meticulous about -- not only is it religious material, but I'm documenting how I've created a database schema for the standard works of the scriptures.

Anyway. It's just one of those few projects that I really can't work on it for more than an hour at a time or so, and just get a small amount of work done before I need take a long break again. Which probably explains why I've been putting this one project off for so long, for which I feel really bad.

I have no idea why I'm writing this either, I just thought it'd be interesting to write about. I hope I can get this done soon. It really is the last leg. The schema is done, even though in my mind I fret over it and look over it and double and triple-check the whole thing making sure I didn't miss anything. I can, of course, do a release update if I really did miss something, but this is one of things where I just want everything to be just right.

I realize it sounds kind of corny, only because I've always kind of been confused by the concept, but I guess this would be one of those "for God" things. Like, "skating for God" comes to mind (important point: that's not me or my video -- I'm not that good at skating, heh. Just found it on youtube.). I've grown up Christian, but I didn't really get a good feel for what other denominations other than our own was like -- something I deeply regret to this day (Even though I live in Utah, I didn't move here til I was about 22. I grew up in Missouri, Indiana and Georgia). As such, I wouldn't say I have intolerance for other religions, just a bit of social curiosity. What seems normal, culturally, to others in their faiths, seems a bit odd to me. I really wish I had a chance to grow up, around, and with people of other faiths more.

The whole concept kind of just clicked for me though -- it's basically just trying to do the very best you can with your limited talents and skills, and have the work dedicated to the Lord -- or more specifically, to building up His kingdom on earth.

It may seem like "skating for God" would be, in that vein, pretty irrelevant, but the fact of the matter is that anytime you build yourself or anyone else up, you are building the kingdom of God (Cue a quote from some religious talk I can vaguely remember). That's the real reason this is taking so long, quite honestly, is that all this is for Him. It's a dedicatory work.

Well, I really didn't intend to go off on a tangent like that, but now you know how I feel about some of the stuff I work on.  I'm still not really sure how I feel about it, or how this all mixes together.  In fact, merging a religious lifestyle and a cultural lifestyle has always been a confusing topic for me.  I actually like the way evangelists carry it in their lives so much, and make it such a positive aspect of their life all the time, and so freely talk about it.  There's definitely some characteristics like that I'd like to apply in my life.

For the record, I don't take much interest in politics and law in general, and my personal approach has always been one more of practicality and principle more than anything else (do good, don't harm your neighbor). In that vein, fair use seems evident as long as I'm doing no specific harm when it comes to something simple as ripping DVDs for personal use. I can understand, practically speaking, the Hollywood side of it (even in their misguided capitalist philosophies) that legally given any loophole, it will be abused by those skirting the law. Practically speaking, though, honesty is the best policy. Simply say that something is wrong and expect people to abide by it and everything will work out wonderfully. That doesn't happen of course, which is why we have laws and then enforce them. Unfortunately, just as there are unjust people, there are unjust laws. And that's where I get a bit confused as to where the line should be drawn when abiding by them.

Religiously speaking, as Latter-day Saints, we believe in upholding and sustaining the law, and so as a matter of congregational membership, I'll confirm that as my stance as well.

Joseph Smith, when asked what the basic precepts of our religion were, compiled a short list which was later considered as modern-day scripture and compiled collectively as the Articles of Faith. The 12th (of 13 total) states: "We believe in being subject to kings, presidents, rulers, and magistrates, in obeying, honoring, and sustaining the law." As a matter of principle, I think the 13th actually applies just as well when it comes to proper government: "We believe in being honest, true, chaste, benevolent, virtuous, and in doing good to all men; indeed, we may say that we follow the admonition of Paul--We believe all things, we hope all things, we have endured many things, and hope to be able to endure all things. If there is anything virtuous, lovely, or of good report or praiseworthy, we seek after these things."

As things go down the crapper for this nation, as our civil rights and liberties are systematically removed, I often find myself wondering how much we are held to the 12th Article of Faith to sustain and uphold the law, when it is completely unjust. Historically, in the Book of Mormon, the Lord has preferred an evil, corrupt government to none at all. I'm not going to go into great detail of the story, since you can read it in 3rd Nephi (starting around chapter six for the actual events, but reading the whole book would encompass much better the whole story), but I'll try to paraphrase some points the best I can.

The Nephites (native Americans, circa 30 to 32 A.D. at this point) were having internal problems nationally from secret societies who were trying to overthrow the democratic government in order to establish a king. Well, they succeeded in killing the chief judge (the leader of the gov't), but instead of establishing a king, a mix of anarchy and mobocracy established itself, and the people united into tribes.

Very shortly after was the death of Christ in Jerusalem, and there were great storms in the Americas that changed "the whole face of the land" and destroyed many cities. In chapter nine of 3rd Nephi, the Lord Himself bemoans the destruction of the people, and mentions many of the great cities that have been destroyed. Of the people that destroyed the government, this is what He had to say: "And behold, that great city Jacobugath, which was inhabited by the people of king Jacob, have I caused to be burned with fire because of their sins and their wickedness, which was above all the wickedness of the whole earth, because of their secret murders and combinations; for it was they that did destroy the peace of my people and the government of the land; therefore I did cause them to be burned, to destroy them from before my face, that the blood of the prophets and the saints should not come up unto me any more against them."

I'm not going to claim to be a religious or historical scholar, but I find the whole thing interesting. A corrupt government is better than none at all, though I'm having trouble figuring out why. I can only infer that it is because it provides *some* certain rights, privileges and peace to the people that without that basic structure, it makes the Lord's work even harder. I suppose, in a sense, it's simpler to reform government by reforming the people individually than it is to massively recollect a divided continent of people wandering in lawlessness. I'm just guessing here. Feel free to draw your own conclusions.

Anyway, when it comes to the moral ground of obeying unjust laws, I'm a bit perplexed on the matter of what stance we should take. I haven't made it a serious study, and if I did, I'm sure I'd find some answers, it's just something I've been thinking a lot about lately, and I thought I'd do a bit of a brain dump on the matter.

I had a great comment on my last post from a self-proclaimed atheist, which basically noted that it's possible to extract good principles from religious ones without attaching the supernatural to it. And I would totally agree.

I have long had a motto in life that demonstrates my tolerance for a lot of personal decisions people make in their lives -- to each his own. Growing up, I like to look back on the fact that I've been able to both be friendly and make friends with people with whom I wildly disagree on moral issues. I respect their right to explore and choose what they think works best for them in their lives, just as I've done the same for myself. In doing so, I tend to not try to unload my own moral values on them unless they show any interest, and even then, I'll only respond in equal scale. I'm not going to dump a library of books on someone's head just because they ask one question, nor would I drag them to church and haunt them for the rest of their life just because they showed a small interest.

Okay, I totally forgot where I was going with all of this. More proof that writing this stuff is not going to be nearly as simple as I thought it was going to be. I did have one example that I wanted to share, so maybe I'll just cut to that.

My main point was that people can extract a lot of good principles from religious living without necessarily subscribing to the whole. The gospel of Jesus Christ does not just encompass moral living as related directly to moral issues, but it also has instruction and guidelines on how we can live healthy good lives that will benefit all of mankind, personally and collectively, socially and individually. I can't deny, though, that the best benefits to both person and world will only come from living the whole gospel instead of piece meal. To each his own, though.

A good example of practical, provident living that is taught by our church is the Word of Wisdom, which is a set of instructions related to diet. Anciently, the Jews were given dietary restrictions as well, and these were given both as guidelines for health and also to separate the Jewish nation culturally from others, as they would be mingled in with the rest of the world. Today's revealed guidelines are much simpler in nature, but they are also tied to the religious belief that harmful substances not only damage the body, but the spirit as well.

I won't go into a lengthy explanation of what the Word of Wisdom is, especially when Wikipedia has a decent entry on it. I will add this note though -- that clarifications have been added to the law as it was originally given, and that that is also a part of our religion -- ongoing revelation. The Lord has changed, altered, simplified or straightened His commandments in the past, so it stands to reason that He still can do so, and does. An example would be that we are not required to give animal sacrifices anymore. Thank goodness, too, I'm not sure I could stomach whacking any animals over the head.

This is the interesting thing about carnal commandments, though, is that there are benefits to living them and the Lord will bless us whether we regard the spiritual counterpart or not, or even believe in God for that matter. There is a law in heaven that says that God will bless us when we obey any of His commandments. Pretty cool stuff, actually.

Alright, that's enough for me. If this post sounds too preachy, sorry about that ... sure seems that way for me. As I said, I'm still trying to find the right medium to do this, so forgive me if it comes across a bit heavy-handed.

I figure I should throw in some personal experience to the mix here. Uh. Let's see. I've never smoked or drank any alcohol, and I feel great. How's that. I can't even drink any carbonated soda though without hiccuping immediately afterwards, so I'm pretty sensitive to some stuff anyway. I can't think of anything else. I sure hope these posts get better. My sister is much better at this than I am.

One thing that keeps coming to mind is that I should blog a bit on religious topics.  I've always been extremely hesitant to do so for a variety of reasons.  For one, I hate being preached to when I'm not interested in input, and because of that, I tend to go out of my way not to preach to other people who may not want to hear what I have to say.  Add to that that I'm extremely tolerant of people's lifestyles, regardless of what my moral compass tells me how I should live.  I'm just open and accepting, but also strictly guard my own personal values, and try not to impose them on others.  Still, I get the distinct impression that I should share some my opinions a bit more, so I'm going to do so, but I'll tread carefully.

Part of the problem is that I have a hard time in social relationships distinguishing between what should be private and what should be public.  When it comes to spiritual matters, I consider it all succinctly private, and rarely tell anyone anything.  So, it's going to be a bit hard for me trying to find that middle ground between what I should say and what I shouldn't.  Even writing this post is a bit of a difficult task -- I'm never too sure how much information to reveal.  Living the gospel and it's effects are, in my opinion, a highly personal affair.

Another thing I worry about is that I certainly do not want to sound like I'm tooting my own horn.  A holier-than-thou attitude annoys me just as I'm sure it does anyone else, and I certainly don't want to be going off telling people about what I'm doing, as I think it may appear as vanity.  I'm also not one for trying to point out where the world is wrong and needs to change.  I'm a firm believer in progress, but also practicality.  Life changes are gradual, and the only way to gauge how a person is doing is to do a self-examination and honestly ask how you're doing, and to consult the Lord.

So, that pretty much covers everything I'll avoid doing -- blatant finger-pointing, yelling, criticizing, grandstanding and terrifying the masses ... but I still don't have a clue what I am gonna share.   Probably my opinion in mild form, some small personal examples, and my beliefs.

Yah.  I have no idea what's gonna happen.  So, we'll see.  I'll try not to keep it too over the top or anything.

I went through each section and cleaned up the links, so they should all work now. I cleaned up the content a little bit ... there's some work that still needs to be taken care of, but I'll get to it.

Perhaps most importantly, I've got the snapshots for the recent lds-scriptures schema that I'm working on, which will be the main downloads for the 3.0 release. It fixes a small oversight on my part in that Doctrine & Covenants was missing the answers from the verses in section 77. You can still see it on my demo page.

Other than that, if you look at it, you'll see the schema has changed completely. Basically, it's cleaned up and normalized for once. Should make it a lot easier to query. Downloads for MySQL and PostgreSQL are available right here. I'm glad that's out there. I feel a lot better now. I'll get to the other ones, but it takes a little time to get them exported to the other formats, and then I want to finish the documentation (I have to rewrite almost the entire DocBook) and get it polished before pushing out the final package. Until then, comments are welcome about the current format.

I know the database is being used in a couple of third-party applications, and I feel really bad for putting this off for so long. It's just something I've never seemed to get around to. Bah. No excuse, really. Sorry, guys.

One last major thing to do is to bring the Gospel Art Gallery back online. It was really popular back in the day, and I made it because I thought it was so hard to find LDS artwork in a central location. I've got to work out a few issues due to copyright, but I should have something up real soon. I've still got all the old code, just need to add some FAQs and stuff.

That's gonna be it for today, I think. Making progress.

The fortune modules already has a new release and there's no indication of it on the page.

The scriptures project is the worst -- I've had a new 3.0 release done for a *long* time now, I just need to finish the documentation and push it live. Plus, the docbook HTML disappeared somehow. And, I've been meaning to reorganize the layout since it's so cluttered.

The art gallery I've been meaning to bring back online for ages. It's all done, just not polished and pushed live.

And I think the homepage scripture text has a typo in there somewhere.

I could go on, but there's little bugs everywhere. I can't believe I've been so negligent. Especially since this is the first major, public project I ever worked on. It got me started working with LDS OSS, and eventually more into other open source projects, which is where I am now.

I'm pretty embarrassed by the state of things overall. I need to get this stuff cleaned up and corrected.

I'm gonna try and get it all done by the end of the year.  So much of it is just little tweaks, that once I'm done, I'm done.  It's really not that much work.

Normally I wouldn't comment at all, but the fact that they protested outside an LDS temple kind of struck me as odd. For the record, I'm a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, so it's not hard to guess what my stance on the matter would be.

Really, though, there's only one comment from the article I want to refute:

"I'm fed up and disgusted with religious institutions taking political stances and calling them moral when it's nothing but politics," said Dennis Williams, 36.

The commentor seems to think that there is a natural division between politics (philosophies of law) and morality, when the fact is, they are completely united.

Law is nothing more than a third party (government) dictating what is right and what is wrong. Morality is the reference for the laws -- they reflect our moral viewpoints. You could just as easily debate whether murder is right or wrong based on the same approach. Something inside us, which the majority of people agree with, tells us that taking someone else's life is "wrong", so we pass a law that makes it a crime.

Similarly, if a nation is filled with Christians, expect the laws to reflect Christian points of view. If the majority thinks that gay marriage is wrong, then there will be laws to reflect that moral point of view.

Law is descriptively deciding what we as a people agree is right and wrong, okay or not okay, permitted or not. As far as I see it, its just morals applied.

Two (of the five) sessions were really memorable for me.  The first one, when President Monson got up and spoke, he mentioned that there were going to be five new temples built.  One of them was in Cordoba, in Argentina.  I was so excited when I heard that.  I served my mission in Argentina (99-01), in Patagonia (Neuquen mission), and while Cordoba isn't that close to us, it's really awesome to learn that the country is going to get it's second temple, after the one in Buenos Aires.  I'd love to fly down there for the dedication.

It got me thinking about my mission, though, and the people I worked with, and how the Lord really looks after even the least of us.  There is so much poverty and sadness in the areas I served, but the saints try hard to live the gospel.

I imagine the temple is going to be one of the smaller ones, and it reminded me of this small city in my first area.  My first city was Esquel in the province of Chubut.  Near us, there was a really tiny town called Trevelin which couldn't have had more than a couple thousand people.  I remember walking down this long stretch of barren road, where buildings were dotted across the landscape, sometimes half a mile apart or so, and out in the middle of nowhere, was a little LDS chapel.  The Church only had a small branch in Trevelin, but I don't think I've ever seen a smaller, prouder little building that they had.  Generally speaking, the Church doesn't build a building unless the membership is either strong or large, and they are paying their tithes, so it really stood as a monument in mind to the faith of these very few members in that little town.  I really wish I had a picture of it, I remember it so vividly.

I do have a picture of us going to the falls there once, which the city was actually famous for.  I don't have a scanner at home, so it'll have to wait for now.  I do have a picture of me in my first area, though.  This was actually taken the day I was transferring from Esquel to an even smaller town, 25 de Mayo in La Pampa.

Notice the heavy coat.  It was freaking cold, there.  I remember wearing about five layers of clothes and still feeling like my bones were turned to ice.

Anyway, the rest of conference was good.  I've caught about half of every session so far, and I'll catch up watching the rest during the week.  I did actually make it to the General Priesthood session on Saturday night, which was really good.  In fact, this is the first time in like four years that I actually made it to a church to watch the thing, since something always seems to happen every year, like I'll get sick, or fall asleep or whatever.  I went with my friend Scott though, and it was great.

There was this one guy who got up, I can't remember his name, that delivered this really powerful direct talk.  It was just awesome.  He talked about how the way to cast out Satan in our lives is the same things that worked to cast him out of Heaven in the premortal life.  Ah, the memory is fading, and the talks aren't online yet or I'd quote him directly.  I remember there were three things, and one of them was the bearing of testimony.  Ah, I'm blanking.  Ah well, the archives will eventually be here.

The design itself hasn't changed, I just reorganized everything, and it seems much simpler to navigate now.

I should hopefully have that new release ready real soon now.  The problem I run into is that I'm so particular about details, that it never gets done.  It is, of course, much more important to get it out there, even with all my human flaws, then to keep it all to myself, but I just can't stand doing version bumps.  I like to have things done the first time.

Anyway, I'm glad this is finally cleaned up.  I like the layout much better.

I've mostly been cleaning up really small stuff, small bugfixes that have been annoying me for a while.

GPNL / Packages

For the packages website, I finally fixed it so that you can search by just package name again. It's still messed up where it searches way too much stuff by default, but that'll be fixed soon. It was originally searching by atom and description, so stuff like package$ would break.

I did, however, put the basic search I want to add to the packages website into GPNL: search by atom, package, category, description or all. I need to add changelog to that list. It's not much, I know, but it's a start on the long road to getting an advanced search going. I also cleaned up the front page a bit, and added a link to the nightly database dumps.

I also cleaned up the bash script to import the data. It actually has the beginnings of some error checking now, so you shouldn't be seeing blank pages anymore. And the database is vacuumed correctly, and on a regularly basis, so things should be slightly snappier. I'm also importing the entire portage tree 3x daily now instead of twice. The import script is actually a nice cleanup for me, because if something breaks, I can run parts of it partially, instead of having to manually fix it. It's much nicer.

My next big thing is getting RDEPEND searchable.  In the database, it's combined with the DEPEND variable, so I have to separate the two out.  Once that's done, we can finally dynamically query the tree to see where ebuilds need to be fixed for binary packages.

MPlayer / Transcode

Looking better, closed like eight bugs the other day for mplayer. Finally fixed some asinine bugs of mine for transcode, have one more to go.

Took out the masked libdvdnav because it will conflict and break libdvdread. I already wrote about how I put it in my overlay so if someone wants to use it, they can.

Sword ebuilds

I finally got pretty much all the main ones in the tree that I wanted to get in. There's still two LDS ones that I have to make myself. Shouldn't be too hard. I hope. In all, there are 150 sword ebuilds in the tree. Freak. That reminds me of something else I fixed on the packages website: it lists the number of results. That's something else that's been annoying me for a while.

I still need to remove the old sword-modules ebuild and add a new virtual-type one that will pull in all of the ones based on which language they are written in. Not hard to do, just slightly tedious. Should be done soon.

lds-scriptures 3.0

Believe it or not, I'm actually planning on getting this finished this week. The actual data has been finished for a very, very long time... it's writing the documentation that I am extremely particular about because I plan on this being the final release.

That's about it for now, that I can remember.

Here's the new feeds right here. I have one for every volume of scriptures, from the Old Testament to the Pearl of Great Price, it's all there. I think it'd be fun to add some for the Gospels and Psalms.

 http://scriptures.nephi.org/feeds.php

Right now the feed will update every time you check it, though I'll probably come back later and change it to only update every 5 minutes or every hour or something.

To be honest, I'm not real proud of the quality of this thing right now, and I'd like to do it a lot better since I think it has some potential (like anonymous user preferences, or something), but the fact is I've been putting it off for way too long and I wanted to get something out the door. Aside from that, it helps me to read the scriptures more often by adding a bit of novelty to the mix.

Some other things I want to do for the feed is to have a link to the MP3 that is offered by the LDS Church on their scriptures website. Each entry feed will already link directly to the chapter page, but the naming scheme for the MP3s is slightly different, so I'll have to do a bit of poking around before I can throw that together.

Another idea I've been toying with for a long time has been a simple "chapter a day" RSS feed, but with a few options for users. For instance, it'd be trivial to add features like number of chapters or verses per day, the update interval, and where to start reading.

Anyway, there's a lot of really cool potential things to do, and I'm open to suggestions if anyone has ideas. With the database nicely normalized (and still lacking a formal release, sheesh I'm behind) it makes getting the data really simple and easy to work with.

The big change in this release is that the database is normalized and cleaned up considerably. Almost all the column names have been simplified, and I dropped a lot of cruft as well. You can see the current ChangeLog I have written up here.

The only thing that is left to do is write the documentation, which can be a little time-consuming. I want to make sure it's done right, because I most likely won't be touching it again for a few years. You can download the database dumps here.

Edit: An XML dump is available now as well.

Working on it sure brought back some memories, though. I really love that little site, and all my projects in general. They were pretty much the first real public works I ever worked on. I hate the fact that I've been neglecting them for years, especially since it's always been something in the back of my mind that I wanted to come back to and properly clean up.

One thing I had completely forgotten about was two short stories that I wrote, a long time ago. My first one was Gadianton's Bandit, which I wrote on my mission, I believe ... I'm not real sure of the exact timeline, but I know it was either right near the end or right after my mission. I do remember how I started writing it though.

Near the end of my mission, I was in the city of Neuquen (the province of Neuquen, in Argentina). For some reason, I got the idea to start writing a short story in my very limited free time, probably just as another measure to keep my sanity in a pretty stressful time. I started writing a short fantasy novel for another odd reason, and while it was a lot of fun, I had the hardest time coming up with a storyline that would fit and make sense. The writing was a lot of fun, but getting the story was near impossible. I made countless changes. I kinda gave up on the idea in frustration, and moved on after a few days. But then one morning I was reading my Book of Mormon and I read Helaman 11:33, which talks about the Gadianton robbers carrying away many people. I thought to myself, "Hmm, that would make a cool basis for a story," and the idea persisted.

I ran with the idea, and this time, the story just came to me really quickly and I manged to get it all down really fast. Just like my (very old) poetry, my writing style is kinda similar to a stream of conciousness ... I kind of just write the ideas as they come to me, with a general idea of where I'm going, and then after I'm done I make very few if any edits. So the story you'll see on my website is probably pretty darn close to the original that I wrote so long ago. I haven't read it again, yet. It'll bring back too many memories and emotions. Those were some hard, but very good times.

I wrote a second one, which I completely forgot about ... or rather, I knew I had started another one, but I didn't think I finished it. I guess there is a third one somewhere in my archives. The second one is A Division Among the People, this time about the evil king Noah, and some things going on around him. You can read the actual account in the Book of Mormon in Mosiah 11 to 19. I like that one.

I need to get back into writing some more. The stories obviously are not great quality, but it was a lot of fun, and a faith-promoting experience.

The major change was that I added a new table for the chapters. It seems a little odd having the chapter number in a table all its own, but for a normalized database schema it makes perfect sense. The only thing I don't like is now you have to INNER JOIN across four tables just to get all the information. Most of the time you won't need anything but book + chapter + verse, which is only three tables. I did create a sample view called view_verses which pulls them all together so you can easily run a select on some format like 'Gen 1:1'. The thing I don't like is that even that view is CPU intensive, so I may have to look at changing some stuff around.

Aside from that basic view, I've decided I'm not going to put all my fun ideas for functions and views in the packaged release. Instead, I'll just have them either as a separate release, or just post them on the website since I'm sure they will evolve.

One really cool thing about postgres that I love is that you can have overloaded functions. I started playing with them a while back on this database, and came up with some cool concepts. One idea I want to implement is being able to run a select statment using a between on two verses. An example query would be: "SELECT * FROM view_verses WHERE verse_id BETWEEN verse('Gen.', 1, 5) AND verse('Genesis', 12); where the verse() function would be overloaded to take between one and three arguments: book, chapter and verse.

It's pretty cool all the stuff you can do with postgres, and that's definately where I'll be focusing my attention in getting the goodies done.

Anyway, if you want to download this test schema, its available here. As always, feedback is welcome.