Wall of text. TLDR? All good. How my spirituality changed.
I haven’t truly, deeply tried to access my own spirituality and put my spiritual experience into written word; to bare my soul so to say. I have also always wanted to be liked and can be a bit of a pushover. I don't like to be the guy who holds things up or makes things more difficult or causes a delay. I don’t want to stand out so we take care of a specific need I have. I tend to buckle in an argument or negotiate my way around differences. Because of this tendency to worry about other’s needs before my own it's hard for me to quit something I've started because I don’t want to disappoint anyone or inconvenience them by leaving them in a jam. It's just who I am and what I do. This essay is about the internal struggles of waking up from a lifelong social tradition. You could say it’s about betrayal or treason but the situation is so common and yet so unique I can’t think of the appropriate word to describe it. I changed but the world I was cocooned in did not, let’s say I found things better outside the hive. Some ground rules:
I am not actively against anything except cruelty. If you're hurting someone for enjoyment I am not your friend or ally.
I am happy with who I am, I like me, more so now than ever before.
I believe in God, in Christ, and in the Holy Ghost.
I believe that being a vibrant, active, believing adherent of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints can get you into heaven as can being a Buddhist, Catholic, Agnostic or Evangelical. God is no respecter of persons and he’s worried about your heart not your wrapper. Think of yourself as bread; God doesn’t worry about what brand of oven you’re baked in as long as he gets to knead the dough. I do not intend to change your mind, heart or habit. I am not trying to pry you from your faith tradition or create disdain or dislike of another.
I was an active, sometimes confused member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I am no longer a member. If you are familiar with LDS traditions you should know this: I did not go a two year mission. I have served as Young Men’s President, Elders Quorum President and Counselor in the Bishopric. I have taught adult Sunday School (Gospel Doctrine, all curriculum except OT) and have been in the Sunday School Presidency as well as the High Priests Group Leadership. I am what some evangelicals call a “Temple Mormon” meaning I was endowed and sealed in the Temple. My worth is not defined by those titles, positions or affiliations; they describe what I have done, but not who I am. I am a child of God, he wants me to live with him forever and sent his only son to make sure I can and that alone is enough to let me know my worth. God loves us all and there’s nothing we can do to change that. I have always had trouble with LDS theology and culture that teaches a “conditional worth.” Conditional worth is the idea that “God loves you if you’re (insert behavior here)” which is more clearly stated “God doesn’t love if you (insert behavioaffiliation/cologne here).” I disagree. God loves you regardless of whom or what you are. You’re his child. He loves you even when you smear poop on the walls or don’t tithe, or you cuss, or if you’re a Ford guy or a Chevy guy. In the construction of this essay I realized that unless you’ve been immersed in LDS culture you might not understand that there are “Official” church doctrines and “Social/Cultural” church doctrines. This represents the difference between theory and application. Official doctrine is that sort of thing you can go to www.lds.org and say, “There it is, right there.” Social (or cultural) doctrine is a slipperier beast, these are the doctrines as they are applied in LDS society. One of the greatest examples ever was the idea that Mormons couldn’t drink caffeinated beverages. I believe the root of this is that coffee has caffeine and if you combine a desire to know why you don’t drink coffee with a powerful urge to comply with ecclesiastic law regular folks jumped the shark to ditching all caffeinated products. If you don’t think this is an issue check out: http://www.heraldextra.com/news/state-and-regional/lds- church-clarifies-stance-on-caffeine/article_e4e357d0-ba5d-5a6c-8e78-dd1e791a34b2.html
Often Latter-day Saints don’t know why they do what they do or even clearly understand the doctrines they “believe”. It can be tough to find a common ground with Mormons on what a doctrine really is. Case in point: does the Church discourage interracial marriage? I believe the answer is yes. Maybe. Sorta. They use codewords like Cultural Differences. Look here (with an eye to the “quotation/discussion” section): https://www.lds.org/manual/aaronic-priesthood-manual-3/lesson-31-choosing-an-eternal- companion?lang=eng where it says:
“We recommend that people marry those who are of the same racial background generally, and of somewhat the same economic and social and education background (some of those are not an absolute necessity but preferred), and above all, the same religious background, without question”. (“Marriage and Divorce,” in 1976 Devotional Speeches of the Year [Provo: Brigham Young University Press, 1977], p. 144).
That’s all good advice…I guess. I would have left out the “racial background generally” bit but I’m not writing this stuff. Can you see how people from different generations can cherry pick that to support their own prejudices? In this essay I will try differentiate between “Official” doctrine and “Social/Cultural” doctrine by putting in links like the one above to highlight official doctrine. If you’re reading this and saying, “Fetch, the church isn’t like that!” I’m not going to fight you because members carry personal and regional bias as well as economic and social and education bias. Yes, a broad brush is dangerous, appropriate and tricky to use. My cultural experience may be different than yours. The world isn’t homogenous, every ward is different and unique just like all the rest. In the spirit of honesty I’ll give you a glimpse of how my religious train got derailed. Growing up Mormon I was taught some very clear “facts” about the LDS Church, its beginnings, doctrines and history. Church history was taught to me during Primary (children’s organization), Mutual (Youth group) and Seminary (semi-required daily instruction of all LDS in high school). Those “facts” taught were undoubtedly “true”. In fact, the common way of expressing belief in the church is to start or finish a statement with “I know these things are true”. As I grew older I began to investigate church history and found odd and troubling things. When I mentioned them to folks at church I was assured they were lies told by outsiders who were trying to destroy the work of God. The recommended course of action was stop looking around and no more questions.
Fast forward thirty years and every single one of those “lies” I first asked about is now taught as official church history. That is a little freaky if you know what I mean. Part of this is due to the internet and the ability for any person, anywhere to access a complete church history that hasn’t been spun to help it or hurt it—the academic historical version is available. One of the ways the church is taught is that it is “all or nothing”. It’s either all true or all false. In missionary work this line of reasoning is simple: If you pray and receive a witness that the Book of Mormon is true then Joseph Smith is as prophet and the church and all teachings are as well. Unfortunately the backside of this is a single verifiable fact can create a situation where belief is a house of cards and can fall with one card removed. For example I have been taught all my life to test the church on one axiom: if Joseph Smith (founder) is a prophet then everything is true—you have to believe it all. The unspoken converse being if he isn’t a prophet then by default it’s all false. Latter-day Saints have always been accused of worshiping Joseph Smith, which they don’t, at least not in the religious sense of the word. There is a cult of personality that surrounds Joseph that feeds his “all or nothing” status and creates an environment in which he can bear no blemish.
Given the famous LDS catch phrase: “Joseph Smith has done more for the salvation of mankind save Jesus Christ himself” is there any wonder that his image must remain pure? Due to his position Joseph’s character is in an untenable place because he needs to be perfect to support the weight of the church. Joseph wasn’t perfect. He was an intricate and unique person who was incredibly interesting, charismatic and apparently a very nice guy. That said, Joseph had his quirks and was entirely human complete with all the associated faults. One piece of history antagonists seize on is the matter of “The First Vision” where God first appeared to Joseph. There are widely varying accounts of this event given by Joseph himself. The Church now acknowledges this (https://www.lds.org/topics/first-vision- accounts?lang=eng) due to the availability of those accounts. Opponents use these variances to debunk Joseph but I think it plays again to the problem of his humanity. He might not have remembered it well and, although this can be offensive to Latter-day Saints, doesn’t every story get just a little better with each telling? We tailor to our audience or realize that we need to extend the second act in order to make a bigger splash with our punch line.
I have no problem with changing accounts of the First Vision, I’m a storyteller too. I get adjusting the script. What did me in was polyandry. Joseph married other men’s wives. Some call these “spiritual marriages” but the evidence is clear they were wives in every sense of the word. Most Latter-day Saints don’t even know Joseph was a polygamist. He was. If you’re LDS and thinking I’m lying, look it up! There’s a Family Search record:
https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.2.1/SP6X-Q65 (remember Joseph died in 1844, this is one of 33 or so brides).
I didn’t know Joseph was a polygamist. My father had taught me that Joseph had posthumously been sealed to several women and that was misrepresented by anti-mormon factions to discredit Joseph. As mentioned the dates on Joseph’s own LDS church record prove that point false. My heart was further broken when I learned that some men willingly gave their spouses to Joseph and others were coerced with threats to their family’s eternal salvation, still others were sent on missions and their wives married Joseph while their husbands were away. God would not do that, ask that, nor would he approve it. In conversation once a wonderful, knowledgeable gentleman for whom I have the greatest respect put forward the idea that “This may have been a test, like Abraham and Isaac.” To which I immediately replied, “Where was the ram in the bramble?” The idea that the Lord could require me to give my wife to another is more than I can bear. The idea of Joseph demanding sexual access to another man’s wife or daughter is, to me, proof positive that, in this at least, Joseph himself was clearly not following the Lord’s instruction.
The fact that men willingly gave their wives up completes a circle of evil I do not want to be a part of. I cannot fathom a God who would in any way encourage such a thing. The very foundations of my belief structure crumbled. How could this be? I cannot express you in words the feeling that tore into my soul. I was crushed, repulsed and angry both at the lies and by the truths. Part of me tried to hold tight to the immaculate Joseph or integrate a fallen Joseph into my system of belief. But if Joseph is a fallen prophet the question then becomes when did that happen and is everything before his fall still true and can post-fall doctrines be true? Compounding my problem is the fact that the church is constantly evolving in doctrine and scripture. Church doctrine has gone from Book of Mormon peoples being the “primary ancestors” of Native Americans to their being “small and isolated populations”. https://www.lds.org/topics/book-of- mormon-and-dna-studies?lang=eng
Millions of people are now a few, all of those ruins in Mesoamerica suddenly are not Nephite or Lamanite but just plain old ruins and the context of the Book of Mormon is utterly devastated. In some ways worse, the translation of the book is no longer word for word but done by Joseph using a “peepstone” while burying his head in his hat. It was “inspired translation” and he never actually “read” from the plates, they sat on a table covered in a linen cloth. This is now LDS doctrine. As a kid I was taught it was a word for word translation done with the Urim and Thumin. No more, “inspired translation” is the term used. While not “automatic writing” it does seem a tad like “channeling”. Look at the church’s official website:
https://www.lds.org/topics/book-of- mormon-translation
these were “horrible lies” but are now accepted, confirmed truths. It was, to put it lightly, a serious mind hump when all the “lies” turned out to be true and truth now flowed the other way. God’s truth, as taught by his chosen and anointed, changed. All those folks who lied about things just to hurt the church were in fact telling the truth it turns out. Even the actual text of the Book of Mormonwas changed to reflect a less racist God and then, Brigham Young went under the bus as “The Racist” and all racist doctrines were laid on him.
https://www.lds.org/topics/race-and-the-priesthood
Placing the “Racist” mantle on Brigham really messes with the ‘If the Prophet were to lead the church astray he would be removed from his position’ as the President of the Church. The backside of being removed if you stray places the Prophet in a unique position of infallibility. For more see:
https://www.lds.org/manual/teachings-of-the-living-prophets-student-manual/chapter-2-the- living-prophet-the-president-of-the-church?lang=eng
Latter-day Saints don’t like to admit it but our lives are much easier with an infallible prophet and a factual faith. That’s how we “know”. We believe as we believe that George Washington crossed the Delaware. You could say that with the destruction of the “facts” that held up my belief my personal religious gravity was broken, the world simply dropped away and I was anchorless and floating on the winds of confusion.
This essay is my attempt to explain how I deal with distancing myself from a rigorous religious tradition that claims absolute truth and is led by an infallible leader. I’ve found in my wanderings about the internet that there are a fair amount of really angry, bitter ex-Mormons as well as ex-Catholics, ex- vangelicals and every other “ex“-flavor folk. Religion often asks for such a complete immersion that leaving can be very painful and a bit like trying to extract yourself from a tar pit; you will lose some skin and take some tar with you. Some feel like they’ve been taken advantage of and lied to and that makes for some strong feelings. I am not one of those. I understand anger at being lied to, I get the frustration of investing years of effort and trust into a system that can’t withstand rigorous inspection. I get it.
I have empathy. But my anger faded quickly, I didn’t indulge it, or feed it, or nurse it to keep it alive. I got over it and I got over it fairly quickly, that’s not to say there aren’t emotional echoes out there. Often in these sorts of situations anger can be a choice. I choose to be like Christ. On the third day he didn’t rise and say, “Where’s that Roman dude with the hammer?” Jesus let it go without a fight. I also did not lose the entirety of my faith. I am still a Jesus guy. I believe in a benevolent, active and loving God. Perhaps that helps, perhps not. All I have to offer is some simple rules that help me with my everyday life. I choose not to be paranoid. I choose not to indulge my desire to wreak vengeance on innocent bystanders or destroy their faith. I choose to live and let live. If any of the this helps you I’m happy; if it doesn’t then I’m sorry I could not be of more service. Either way we have the ability to choose what to do with our emotions. I choose to push to the positive and always assume good intent, from both organizations and people.
It is what Jesus wants me to do.

Introduction

This is part two of a series explaining Congress from the inside. You can read part one here. I talked about House leadership in my last post, but Congress' job is to legislate and listing out the duties of the folks in charge of that job isn't going to clear too many things up. So let's talk about legislating.

The House Rules Committee

The one leadership position I didn't explain in the last post was the Rules Committee Chair, mostly because that position doesn't make much sense without understanding what the Rules Committee does.
The big job of this Committee is to control the process of considering bills on the House Floor. Before I get into that, I have to say that every Committee in Congress has a particular "jurisdiction." For example: the House Armed Services Committee has the jurisdiction to review legislation in the House involving ongoing military operations, and a whole laundry list of other things.
The Rules Committee's jurisdiction has two categories: original jurisdiction matters and special orders. Original jurisdiction matters are easy to understand: legislation has to go through review by the Rules Committee if it involves changing the standing rules of the House (like how you can't wear a hat on the floor, real thing btw), or if it changes a measure that contains special rules (like the common example of trade promotion authority). These are interesting topics but they aren't the reason this Committee and its Chair are so important, because they aren't the only reason a piece of legislation would end up in front of the Rules Committee.
Special orders, aka "special rules" or just "rules," provide terms and conditions of debate on a measure or matter that's moving through the House. The Rules Committee writes these special rules, and the House votes on them. For the most part these things explain what kind of amendments can be made to a bill and for how long, but honestly a special rule could be fucking anything, man. The Rules Committee can write a self-executing amendment that can rewrite any part of a bill (including EVERY part of a bill), and if a simple majority (50%+1) of the people in the House say "ok, sure, I'll vote Yea," then boom that's real now. The Rules Committee can write a self-executing amendment that just says "This bill passes," and the House says "why not? Yea," and wow that bill just passed the House all of a sudden.
Don't believe me? Listen to them themselves, last paragraph on this page.
This is what the Committee spends most of its time doing, again usually in the form of green-lighting amendments to bills, and the whole thing is stacked as hell in the majority's favor: the thing's made up of 9 members from the majority party, and only 4 from the minority party.

Da Rules

Remember how last time I talked about how at the start of every new Congress the House passes a Rules Package, and how nobody reads the whole thing?
I'll say it again if you're too lazy to read the old post but this thing is like 700 pages and it has language in it from 200 years ago. Why? It's mostly copy-paste.
Whenever the Leadership is preparing the Rules Package they just take all the rules of the Congress they're currently in, then maybe they change some things that annoyed them or they add a new rule to fill in a gap somewhere and hey, look at that, Rules Package. One thing that upcoming House leadership does spend a lot of time on is setting up a series of tools that suit the legislative agendas they'll have for the next two years, usually in the form of providing avenues for the Rules Committee to write those overpowered special orders from the last section.
With these tools the Rules Committee can make the following types of Special Rules to apply to bills that are brought up on the House Floor: open, modified open, structured and closed. Here's what they all are:
Open Rule If a bill is being governed by an open rule, it means that anybody can add any amendment at any time to it as long as they follow all the reestablished Rules of the House (from that document written at the beginning of a Congress). Basically there's no extra rules that Representatives have to play by. Rare to see this type of legislating in place, you'll see it with super specific hyper-focused bills and with the 12 approps bills but not much else.
Modified Open Rule Basically the same as an open rule except without the "any time" aspect. Amendments have to be pre-printed in the Congressional Record before they can be considered. This opens lots of strategies for House Leadership to control a piece of legislation as it moves on the floor. For example, if the minority party adds an amendment that might be super popular but might tank some other part of the bill, House Leadership could pull language from that amendment, have somebody from the majority party propose only the good parts, vote on that new amendment first, just to nullify support for the original amendment.
Structured Rule These are pretty common, basically all amendments to a bill from the floor have to go through the Rules Committee. The Rules Committee then takes all the amendments they approve of and list them out on the published rule for the bill in question. You gotta remember the Rules Committee is pretty stacked in favor of the majority, and only a simple majority needs to vote "Yea" on a rule for it to be adopted. Say it with me kids: the House is partisan and majoritarian.
Closed Rule No floor amendments. If the bill is gonna change, that change has to come from either the Committee review process, or from the Rules Committee.

The Floor

In like every other context, being on the floor isn't something to brag about. Here? This is the big time.
It's the Majority Leader's domain down here, and like I said before Steny Hoyer deciddes when the House is in session, what the hourly schedule will be, and most importantly what legislation the House is even going to consider on the Floor.
There are five legislative procedures that Steny can use to pick which bills come to the House Floor: unanimous consent, suspension of the rules, special rules (which I just talked about), privileged business, and a discharge petition.
Unanimous consent is when the majority and minority parties both agree to bring up a piece of legislation and they both agree on the parameters of consideration (the debate time, the amendments, etc.). No surprise but this thing has to be unanimous, if even one member objects then all that work goes in the garbage.
Suspension of the rules is kind of similar to unanimous consent. House rules only let this kind of thing happen on specific legislative days (Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays) and that bills considered under a rule suspension have 40 minutes of debate time (20 for each party) with no amendments allowed. If a bill wants to pass like this, they need two-thirds of those present and voting to approve it (290/435).
Special rules procedures are the most common way things get to the House Floor, and we talked about those already.
Privileged business procedure means that the bill in question is special and it needs to be the focus of conversation ASAP. Usually this procedure is in place for the General appropriations bills (and Continuing Resolutions), Budget Resolutions, the adoption of special rules from the Rules Committee, and resolutions involving Membestaff conduct from the Ethics Committee.
The last way a bill could end up down here isn't actually Steny Hoyer's decision at all, anybody can make it happen: filing a discharge petition. These discharge petitions are a way to force legislation out of committee and onto the floor, they're filed with the House Clerk and if 218 Members of the House sign one of these things then the legislation has to come down to the Floor and be debated in accordance to rules set within the petition itself. Usually these things stick around with the Clerk for a while and they slowly gain votes, so when the number gets close to 218 the Majority Leader might bring the legislation to the Floor himself just to make sure the bill is debated under favorable rules and not the rules laid out in the petition.

The Committee of the Whole

Sometimes the House isn't the House at all. Fucking weird right?
The Committee of the Whole House is not the House of Representatives. It's a Committee, made up of a select group of * checks notes * every Representative in the House. Ok, but it's chaired by ... the Speaker of the House.
Aside from how dumb this thing is, this thing is actually kind of interesting. There are different rules when the Committee of the Whole is meeting that allow for business being conducted on the floor to actually be meaningful. Debate during this thing is supposed to be a discussion of questions and answers instead of the speech parade we see in the regular House, it has no quorum requirements (meaning there isn't a minimum number of people who have to be present for business to start), and votes are rolled into a series (meaning for related items they go debate-debate-vote-vote instead of debate-vote-debate-vote).
This is how they handle Appropriations, and I honestly don't think they use it for anything else.

Caucuses

Both parties in the House have a party caucus that serves as a party conference: the House Democratic Caucus, and the House Republican Conference. Hate the names yet? These are the other two major congregations of people in the House other than the actual Chamber itself and the Committee of the Whole.
These things are, how do I put this nicely, inefficient but necessary. Both of these organizations adopt a series of rules that define what they are and how their members can behave. You can read the Democrats' rules here, and the Republicans' rules here.
Within these rules, these organizations lay out who they are, who their party's leadership is, how they elect them, when the group meets, organizations within the Caucus, how Committee assignments are made, how Committee Chairs are picked, and a bunch of other things.
Shoutout to u/GilmanB for calling me out, but he was right in the last post, the Committee assignment / Chair assignment process isn't an excercise in despotism, the whole Caucus does vote on it. Why would I lie to you? Well I work on Capitol Hill.
These aren't complicated procedures but they are tedious, they can be changed pretty easily, they switch out every Congress and they don't apply evenly to all Members. That being said, these rules are more commonly read than the Chamber rules by people on the Hill (though most of the time you'll only read the rules that apply to your member). You should check them out.

Conclusion

The House is partisan and majoritarian. Next time we'll learn about Committees.

This is just my thinking, based on some input, and there's always more input out there, waiting... So while I don't mind you quoting me to ghawd, let him know that open to amending this, okay?
The WoW bans "all hot drinks". That's it for ghawd's input to JoJu regarding what later became the ban on coffee and black/green tea. And of course, it wasn't a "ban", it was a suggestion... I had always thought that from February 27, 1833 until Sept. 09, 1851, the WoW remained merely a suggestion and a person's standing in the church had no relationship to the person's obedience to Sec. 89. But that appears not to be the case.
"...the Word of Wisdom was nevertheless regularly emphasized in the early years of the Church. In February 1834, the High Council of the Church resolved that: 'No official member in this Church is worthy to hold an office, after having the Word of Wisdom properly taught him, and he, the official member, neglecting to comply with or obey it...
"This statement was later reprinted in the November 1, 1836 issue of the Messenger and Advocate to answer "frequent applications ... for advice respecting official members of this Church relative to their observance of the Word of Wisdom.
In May of 1837, the Messenger and Advocate reaffirmed its previous stand and stressed obedience to all of God's commandments.
"The Quorum of Seventies voted to withdraw fellowship from non-observers (so far as not recognizing them as preachers of the Gospel) in July of 1837, and five months later this same group covenanted to keep the Word of Wisdom." --An Historical Analysis Of The Word Of Wisdom, pgs 27 & 28 https://archive.org/details/AnHistoricalAnalysisOfTheWordOfWisdom/page/n26/mode/1up?q=church+of+jesus+christ+of+latter+day+saints+conference+reports
But it appears that WoW violations, while cited as reasons for disfellowshipping, seem never to have been solely the cause: "In all cases where membership or fellowship was taken away, -- there were other accusations that were directed at the offender. In many cases, the Word of Wisdom violation appeared to have been considered less important than the other infractions. In fact, the evidence strongly suggests that Mormons were not expelled solely for violations of the Word of Wisdom except in the case of extreme drunkenness. --ibid., page 30
Then during September Conference, 1851 (Yeah, September! What’s up with that?), while John Smith, the then church patriarch was giving a talk on the WoW, BY got up and asked the ladies to agree to keep the Wow. The ladies voted in the affirmative. Then BY asked "...all the boys under 90..." to also vote to do the same. The record states that the voting was unanimous. (This is when the church's website it became a Commandment...)
But... "A later acceptance date seems more logical for the following reasons: (1) Brigham Young himself did not strictly live the Word of Wisdom until the early 1860’s. For example, Jules Remy, an English traveler, observed Brigham preparing "a quid of Virginia tobacco" in late September 1855 and in 1862 the Mormon President alluded strongly to the fact that he had recently over-come habits contrary to Word of Wisdom teachings.
"(2) Young said as late as 1861 that he never chose to make observance to the Word of Wisdom a test of Church fellowship.
"(3) The Mormon reformation of 1856-1857 was characterized by sermons advocating a return to a more strict adherence to Christian principles. During this period, a type of inquisitional catechism was formulated to provide an index to a Mormon’s faithfulness. The only question having to do with the Word of Wisdom was an inquiry concerning whether or not an individual had been drunk. The inference is obvious" --ibid, pages 51-53
Now we get to the point that has always been ascendant in my mind for the Big Three WoW items being labeled as the bad guys, Coffee, Tea & alcohol: From the moment of their arrival and settling of the Great Basin Kingdom, what they couldn’t grow had to be imported. And the importation of goods required hard money: gold and silver. The Saints could not use the territorial script with East Coast vendors. Here’s the view of Leonard Arrington:
“Separated as they were from the United States by over 1,500 miles of treeless plains, hounded as they had been by hating mobocrats, it was necessary for the Latter-day Saints to develop and maintain a self-sufficient economy in their Rocky Mountain retreat. Economic independence was a necessary goal of the group and every program of the Church tended toward that end. Economic independence meant developing all the agricultural, mineral, and industrial resources of the community under proper (i.e. church) leadership for the purchase of machinery and equipment needed in building a prosperous commonwealth. There must be no waste of liquid assets on imported consumer’s goods … Saints who used their cash to purchase imported Bull Durham, Battle-Axe plugs, tea, coffee, and similar ‘wasteful’ (because not productive) products were taking an action which was opposed to the economic interest of the territory. In view of this situation, President Young came to be unalterably opposed to the expenditure of money by the Saints on imported tea, coffee, and tobacco. It was consistent with the economics of the time that he should have had no great objection to tobacco chewing if the tobacco was grown locally. It was also consistent that he should have successfully developed a locally produced ‘Mormon’ tea to take the place of the imported article. Something more permanent and productive than tea, coffee, and tobacco was wanted for the building of the Kingdom, in view of the limited funds at the disposal of the Saints.” --Leonard J. Arrington, "An Economic Interpretation of the Word of Wisdom," Brigham Young University Studies Vol. 1 (Winter, 1959), p. 37.
With the coming of the railroad, the opportunities for the Saints to spend even more money for East Coast goods increased. Here’s a part of a BY’ sermon in September of 1861. Please note the lack of a will to enforce the WoW, but to please stop sending money out-of-state!:
“You know that we all profess to believe the Word of Wisdom. There has been a great deal said about it, more in former than in latter years. We, as Latter-day Saints, care but little about tobacco; but as ‘Mormons’ we use a great deal. How much do you suppose goes annually from this Territory, and has for ten or twelve years past, in gold and silver, to supply the people with tobacco? I will say $60,000.
“Brother William H. Hooper, our Delegate in Congress, came here in 1849, and during about the eight years he was selling goods his sales for tobacco alone amounted to over $28,000 a year. At the same time there were other stores that sold their share and drew their share of the money expended yearly, besides what has been brought in by the keg and by the half keg. The traders and passing emigration have sold tons of tobacco, besides what is sold here regularly. I say that $ 60,000 annually is the smallest figure I can estimate the sales at.
"Tobacco can be raised here as well as it can be raised in any other place. It wants attention and care. If we use it, let us raise it here. I recommend for some man to go to raising tobacco. One man, who came here last fall, is going to do so; and if he is diligent, he will raise quite a quantity. I want to see some man go and make a business of raising tobacco and stop sending money out of the Territory for that article.” --Brigham Young, Sermon of September 29, 1861, JD, IX, 35
The record shows that after the 1861 sermon, BY and others ramped up their efforts to get the Saints to agree to observe the WoW. There was increased hectoring from the pulpit and in church publications. But it was apparently for naught:
On October 30, 1870, Brigham Young indicated that tea and coffee sales were increasing among Church members. --Brigham Young, Sermon of October 30, 1870, JD. XIV, 20
In November 1871, Orson Pratt expressed regret that many Mormons remained unfaithful regarding the Word of Wisdom --“Minutes of the Salt Lake School of the Prophets”, November 25, 1871, HDC
Brigham Young, Jr., an Apostle, stated that the majority of Saints disregarded the Word of Wisdom. --Brigham Young, Jr., Sermon of October 8, 1872, JD, XV, 193-195
In October 1873, George A. Smith somewhat cynically remarked that not all of the tobacco sold in co-operative stores was being used to kill sheep ticks. --George A. Smith, Sermon of October 7, 1873, JD, XVI, 238
Back in the early 1860s, in recognition that the Saints were not heeding the WoW, BY had suggested that the St. George area start growing wine grapes. Things went well and tithing, being paid in kind, resulted in the St. George tithing office having 6,000 barrels of wine on hand! --Juanita Brooks, "St. George, Utah— A Community Portrait," Symposium on Mormon Culture held at Utah State University, November 14, 1952, p.4
Here’s one view of how the WoW was doing, as of March 25, 1877: “Do we as a people realize the importance of those precious words? Do we accept them as the word of God unto us? Are they observed by this people as they should be? Could we find fifty Latter-day Saints in the Territory who abstain from tea, coffee, whiskey and tobacco or consider that it is worthwhile to even give it a thought?
“Is it not high time to wake up and open our eyes and look about us. If the Lord had no purpose in giving the Word of Wisdom, why did he take the trouble to give it? And if it is not necessary for us to observe it, what is the use of having it? Do we not know that all stimulants taken into the stomach are unhealthy? We see our little ones swept from our midst, one here two there, and four and five of one family stricken down one after the other with this dreadful diphtheria. Do we realize that there is a cause and also a remedy for these things? Does not common sense tell us that their little bodies are charged with impurities ...?
“I do not address the ladies because I think the remedy lays altogether with them. No. The gentlemen are more culpable, they take for more poison into their systems than the women. I have heard of one or two women who drink whiskey to excess. And it may be that a few old ladies smoke their pipes; but I have seen nothing of the kind for years; and as to chewing tobacco (the worst poison of all) I do not think one lady can be found in our whole community that indulges in the filthy ... practice. Of course, it is not our province to teach the elders their duty, but we can plead and importune with them; but if they will persist in polluting with these filthy poisons, the Lord may find a remedy they think not of.” --Emily Dow Partridge Young, "Diary of Emily Dow Partridge Young, March 25, 1877, pg. 10, copy located in the Special Collections Library, Brigham Young University
Now here’s a weird thing I never knew: In a book titled “I was Called to Dixie”, Andrew Karl Larson reported that John Taylor, BY’s successor, asserted he received a revelation on October 13, 1882, which upgraded Sec. 89 to Commandment status! But no attempt to clue in the Saints was made for about a year. And the specifics of that 10/13/1882 revelation have not been preserved, at least for the commoners’ eyes. --Andrew Karl Larson, “I was Called to Dixie” (Salt Lake City: Deseret News Press, 1961), p. 607. Larson’s source citation read: By a revelation through President John Taylor, October 13, 1882. This writer wrote Dr. Larson, desiring more precise information, and soon afterward receive word that the original reference had been lost but most probably was found among papers in the St. George Temple.
Viewed as a ‘Second Reformation’, involving not only the WoW, but Plural Marriage and tithing, its success was likely the result of all the leaderships adherence to the following a new order. On September 28, 1883, Wilford Woodruff, as president of the Quorum of the Twelve, declared:
“I want to say to the First Presidency that we have been together as a quorum since this morning's meeting except for one hour. We have had a free and full talk upon our individual affairs-upon our family matters, upon the word of wisdom, the duties and responsibilities that devolve upon us as Apostles, etc. And we have come to the conclusion that we will more fully observe the word of wisdom, as we have all more or less been negligent upon that point.” --Minutes of the Salt Lake School of the Prophets, September 28, 1883, p. 52.
So observation of the WoW was ramping up in the church! Hearts were buoyed! The WoW was spoken of as being as important as the Celestial Order of Marriage!!
And therein lay the problem, beginning with the 1885 Supreme Court decision that allowed for the prosecution of men who practiced polygamy. Between 1885 and 1893, nothing of note was mentioned regarding observation of the WoW, basically, because most of the leadership was in hiding. They did not dare to schedule meetings that had notice of their attendance.
But things were not yet perfect. At April Conference, 1886, the First Presidency referred to those who officiated or participated in Temple functions, noting that it was "most inconsistent to carry in the smell of whiskey and tobacco.” In 1893 the general membership of the Church was chided for excessive use of tea, coffee, and tobacco.
Things were finally set straight during October Conference, 1894, when Wilford Woodruff declared, “The Word of Wisdom applies to Wilford Woodruff, the President of the Church, and it applies to all the leaders of Israel as well as to the members of the Church; and if there are any of these leading men who cannot refrain from using tobacco or liquor in violation of the Word of Wisdom, let them resign and others take their places. As leaders of Israel, we have no business to indulge in these things. There may be things contrary to the Word of Wisdom that we indulge in, and that we think we cannot live without; if we cannot, let us die.”
During that same conference, a young pup of an Apostle, Heber J. Grant, said to male members, “If you think more of a cup of tea or coffee, or a cigarette, or a chew of tobacco than your Priesthood, to resign your Priesthood.”
But there was still a lack of complete unanimity among the brethren! Here’s the written record of a meeting in May of 1898 regarding enforcement of the WoW:
“The subject of the Word of Wisdom and its strict enforcement was brought up for discussion. Pres, L. Snow having raised the question whether Bishops were justified in refusing to give members of the Church recommends to the Temple because they did not observe the Word of Wisdom. Brother J. H. Smith inquired what was meant by hot drinks. President J. F. Smith said it was defined by Hyrum Smith in the Times and Seasons; also that he (Bro. Smith) had heard President Brigham Young say that at the time the revelation on the Word of Wisdom was given prominent men in the Church were inveterate tobacco users and tea and coffee drinkers and that it was because of those practices that the Word of Wisdom was given.
“President L. Snow read the revelation on the Word of Wisdom and drew special attention to that part which relates to the use of meats, which he considered as that which relates to the use of liquors and hot drinks. He also referred to the revelation which says that he forbids the use of meat is not of God. He went on to state that President Taylor had expressed the view that some of the brethren talked too strongly against the drinking of tea and coffee. Brother Snow said he was convinced that the killing of animals when unnecessary was wrong and sinful, and that it was not right to neglect one part of the Word of Wisdom and be too strenuous in regard to other parts. President Woodruff said he regarded the Word of Wisdom in its entirety as given of the Lord for the Latter-day Saints to observe, but he did not think that Bishops should withhold recommends from persons who did not adhere strictly to it. --Journal History, March 11, 1898, p. 2
Obviously, the standard under which all of us grew up with in the church was not yet set. They were trying, but an outsider has to wonder, why didn’t they, prophets one and all, hit their knees and ask of ghawd, who giveth liberally and upbraidth not…?
People who tried to ‘lawyer’ their way out of compliance urged the point of view that pepper and ginger drinks were what ghawd referred to when he said ‘hot drinks’, not tea and coffee, which are just heated drinks…
And the initial language was examined and used as an excuse, because the first phrase says, “A Word of Wisdom, for the benefit of the council of high priests, assembled in Kirkland…” So only they might be subject to the greetings, which then says, “…not by commandment or constraint…” We’ve all tried to weasel our way out of something based on what we viewed as ‘flexible’ language.
In October 1902, President Joseph F. Smith wrote John Hess, a Stake President at Farmington, Utah, in answer to an inquiry regarding the granting of recommends to Church members who did not observe the Word of Wisdom. President Smith advised Hess to:
“(1) Use his own discretion in most cases,
“(2) Refuse recommends to flagrant violators,
“(3) Work with those having weaknesses,
“(4) Be somewhat liberal with very old men who had contracted the tobacco habit but insist that they refrain from using tobacco those days they are in the temple, and
“(5) Draw the line on drunkenness.”
All of which supports the contention that it’s not a hard and fast law of ghawd, right?
Politically speaking, Mormonism was in the dumpster, even in Utah, in the aftermath of polygamy, and the trifling with rules carried out by Apostles Cowley and Taylor, both of whom were sealed to ‘spare’ wives in 1905 and 1909, respectively, despite the 1890 Declaration and the 1904 Second Manifesto. Yeah, Mormonism as a dumpster fire…
And the leadership knew it. At October Conference, 1908, George F. Richards gave the keynote theme: "I am sorry to say that I do not believe there is another revelation contained in this book, the Doctrine and Covenants or another commandment given of the Lord that is less observed or honored than this Word of Wisdom, and that, too, by members and officers of the Church . . .”
Following the keynote talk, Anthon H. Lund, a member of the First Presidency, declared that General Authorities were now insisting that individuals accepting positions in Wards, Priesthood Quorums, etc., live the Word of Wisdom! Wowsers! BAM! In your faces, losers!
Then Apostle George Albert Smith sort of tempered things in the next talk, when he provided a note of positive encouragement to Saints with Word of Wisdom weaknesses by reporting that in the St. George Stake, (an area formerly plagued with some wine abuse) all members of the Stake Presidency, High Council, and Ward Bishoprics, with two exceptions, were living the Word of Wisdom. - I bet is sucked to be those two!
Adding to the muddy swirl of ‘what the hell is going on’ was the fact that the church, by all the evidence, was against Prohibition! State efforts to make Prohibition a state law were thwarted in 1908 and 1909, which caused confusion. If the Church was against alcohol, why not support Prohibition?
In 1915 the State Legislature tried again and a law was passed. But then Governor Spry, an active member, vetoed it. Later it was claimed by people supposedly in the know that he was ordered to do so by President Joseph F. Smith! Given an opportunity to refute this claim, Joseph F. Smith did not do so. But the word on the street was that Smith was just reluctant to meddle in Gentile affairs. But Prohibition did pass in Utah, in 1917.
Finally, FINALLY!, with the arrival of Heber J. Grant in 1919, the church (Heber) began to emphasize the WoW with constant firmness and fervor. It had become the binding principle all of us grew up with. But as to picking out a date when that switch was flipped is difficult, other than to point to the ascendancy of Heber J. Grant. Of course, there are those who want to maintain it was always binding, such as the church’s website, which identifies September Conference, 1851 as the date it became official. But that’s bullshize as historical events clearly show.
Heber J. Grant was always staunch in his support of the WoW as a gospel principle, but he wasn’t given the support he desired by those under whom he served, even as an Apostle.
In 1894 he wrote the following: “I confess to you, my friends and fellow-laborers in the cause of God, that I have been humiliated beyond expression to go to one of the Stakes of Zion, to stand up and preach to the people and call upon them to obey the Word of Wisdom, and then to sit down to the table of a President of a Stake, after having preached with all the zeal, energy, and power that I possessed, calling upon the people to keep the commandments of God, and to have his wife ask me if I would like a cup of tea or a cup of coffee; I have felt in my heart that it was an insult, considering the words that I had spoken, and I have felt humiliated to think that I had not sufficient power, and enough of the Spirit of God to enable me to utter words that would penetrate the heart of a President of a Stake, that he at least would be willing to carry out the advice which I had given.
“l remember going to a Stake of Zion but a short time ago and preaching with all the energy I possessed and with all the Spirit that God would give me upon the necessity of refraining from the drinking of tea and coffee, and I heard also at that conference a very eloquent appeal to the Latter-day Saints by a man who, I understood, was a president of a quorum of Seventy. But when we came to take our meal, he jokingly said that he could not do without his tea and coffee and he proposed to have it and suffer the consequences.
“I remember going to another Stake of Zion and preaching to the people on the necessity of refraining from tea and coffee and giving some figures upon the wasting of the people's means} and the president of the Stake remarked, after I got through, that he thought the Lord would forgive them if they did drink their coffee, because the water in that stake of Zion was very bad. I did not say anything, but I thought a good deal, and I had to pray to the Lord and to bite’ my tongue to keep from getting up and doing something that I never have done in my life, and that is, to pick out a man and thrash him from the public stand. I felt that God owed me a blessing for not publicly reproving that man, because I wanted to do it so badly.
“Now I had made up my mind before I came to this Conference that I would not open my mouth upon the Word of Wisdom. I have become so discouraged, so disheartened, so humiliated in my feelings, after preaching year after year both by precept and example, to realize that there are Bishops, Bishops’ Counselors, Presidents of Stakes, and Patriarchs among the Church of God whose hearts I have not been able to touch, that I had about made up my mind that I would never again say Word of Wisdom to the Latter-day Saints. I felt that it was like pouring water on a duck, s back.” --Journal of History, October 6,1894
That about wraps it up. We have ONLY Heber J. Grant to thank for making Sec. 89 a commandment. No other leader, prior to him, had a compelling notion that it was ghawd’s law. BY only got involved for economic reasons; he didn’t want the Saints sending money to the East Coast!.
Ghawd never visited a single soul with the realization that it was a Law, until the unique personality of Heber J. Grant made the endeavor a personal crusade.
So, YAY Heber!!
Anyone tells you differently, have them email me. F—k the church’s website explanation. It’s all bullshiz. Even if a ghawd spoke to JoJu back in 1833, that confused son of a bitch (either one, both!) never had another effective word on the subject.
Men: it's all the doings of unadorned male bullshittery. And you can quote me.
(The guy on the SCMC who has my file will be pleased with this effort; I've slacked off lately, but now he can be relevant again! You're welcome, and Merry Christmas!)

I made this post in a "debate" sub a while back which got deleted for reasons that I'm sure are pretty obvious.
So I figured I'd post it here.
CMV = "change my view" (in the original thread).
Equal child custody is a legal concept that switches the starting point for custody to be 50/50 between the father and mother.
In legalese it is often stated to mean that the best interest of the child is defined to be a rebuttable, default presumption to equal custody. The terms rebuttable and default presumption means that equal custody is simply taken as the starting point in custody negotiations. It is not a requirement that is forced upon parents. Which means that alternative arrangements can be agreed to out of court, or argued for in court in the event of a disagreement.
Note that equal child custody is not the same thing as shared custody or joint custody. Joint custody has been interpreted by courts to mean "weekend visitation rights" or even "one day per month" in many jurisdictions. Equal custody is just that -- equal. Including when it comes to time with the child as well as when it comes to making important decisions for the child.
A couple points:

In practice this is only a thing in two US states

It is often surprising to people that this isn't already the legal standard that we go by. I can't speak to how common it is outside of the US because I don't have a formal source for that. But what I've seen is that this is very rare even outside the US.
The two US states where this is already practiced are Arizona and Kentucky.
Source:
2019 NPO Shared Parenting Report Card Highlights Some Progress and Great Disparity in State Custody Statutes. https://nationalparentsorganization.org/information-resources/2019-shared-parenting-report-card

Existing research indicates that equal custody is beneficial to children, or at least not harmful compared to giving custody primarily to the mother

There isn't a whole lot of research here but the above source links to a few studies on this topic for anyone who wants to challenge this.
Another source on this topic can be found here:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232984449_Comparison_of_Role_Demands_Relationships_and_Child_Functioning_in_Single-Mother_Single-Father_and_Intact_Families

Academic research demonstrates pretty clearly that fathers and husbands are discriminated against in family court under existing laws

Here are a list of sources found in this paper in one of the footnotes:

See id. (noting that fathers who seek custody prevail in half or more cases); Mason & Quirk, supra note 228, at 228 tbl.2 (citing statistics showing that fathers won custody in forty-two percent of custody appeals, mothers prevailed in forty-five percent of cases, and twelve percent of the cases involved some form of shared custody, including 9.2% with split custody and 2.8% with joint physical custody); Massachusetts Report, supra note 227, at 825 (finding that fathers obtain custody in 70% of cases). But see MACCOBY & MNOOKIN, supra note 13, at 103-04 (finding that mothers obtained their preferred custodial arrangement twice as often as fathers); Bahr et al., supra note 208, at 257 (showing that fathers in Utah were awarded sole custody in only twenty-one percent of disputed cases, mothers received sole custody in fifty percent of cases, seventeen percent of fathers were awarded joint legal custody, and thirteen percent had split custody); Fox & Blanton, supra note 101, at 261 (finding that when fathers in California sought joint custody and mothers sought sole custody, mothers prevailed in sixty-seven percent of the cases)

The numbers differ because different states have different statutes and legal standards. One study only shows a small bias (42% vs 45%) but others show much larger differences (21% vs 55%, "twice as often", etc).
Note that the Massachusettes study, which sticks out like a sore thumb compared to the rest of this research, is known to be fraudulent. And there are a couple of papers floating around that cite this source in isolation, sometimes by proxy (ie by citing a paper that cites that paper). I'm not sure why, but many people don't want to accept that fathers are being discriminated against, so this study gets cherry picked quite a bit.
The tldr is that the data from that study actually shows that fathers who ask for custody are a full 6 times less likely to get it compared to mothers, which is obviously evidence for discrimination. The authors pulled some academic shenanigans to make the results look different from what they are though.
The history of how that happened, and how one researcher was able to get ahold of the raw data (that they attempted to suppress), can be found here:

Rosenthal, M. B. (1995). Misrepresentation of Gender Bias in the 1989 Report of the Gender Bias Committee of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. Breaking The Science.

http://www.breakingthescience.org/SJC_GBC_analysis_intro.php
Note that even these studies which demonstrate a bias in the family court system fail to show the full picture. Mothers are given custody as a legal default in most places, and it is up to the father to find the money to hire a lawyer to fight this in court. So there is a selection bias where only the best equiped fathers with the best arguments for custody, and the most money to fight it, are the ones who show up in these sources. And they still tend to lose.
One of the issues is the fact that fathers even have to go to court to request custody to begin with; it should simply be the legal default.
One last point here is that even if it were true that men and fathers were treated fairly in court, passing these laws would end up not changing anything. So why not go ahead and pass a few bills and be done with it?

Around 90% of cases are settled "out of court" but this happens against a backdrop where the father knows he stands on unequal legal footing

I've seen this argument made a few times that fathers don't want custody. Which you can see when you look at "out of court" settlements where the father presumably gives up his custody rights freely.
The only problem with this is that these negotiations are made against an existing legal backdrop that disenfranchises fathers.
Something like 99% of all criminal court cases settle out of court, but that doesn't mean that the theoretical outcomes of those cases (if fought in court) don't influence someone's choice to settle out of court. Other factors like time and cost play a role as well.
Innocent people often take plea deals under the threat of what would happen if it were taken to court, for example.
Social norms also influence how much a father wants to be a parent. And those norms are influenced by legal statute. In fact if you go back approximately 150 years, fathers commonly received full custody of their children during a divorce. That was both the legal norm and the social norm at the time. This has only changed because our laws have changed.
So if you want fathers to be in the lives of their children more often, it makes sense to default to 50/50 equal custody.

There is activism around this topic, and there is significant resistance to this idea

The National Parents Organization has been fighting for these laws for a really long time.
Recently there's been some progress made in a few US states for joint and shared parenting (which is a big improvement over sole custody). But even those laws face quite a bit of resistance from lobbying groups who want to defend the status quo.
In one famous case, a comprehensive divorce and child custody reform bill in Florida that had over 80% approval among eligible voters was shot down by the National Organization for Women (NOW). Which is a powerful lobbying group that opposes these bills pretty much everywhere that they get put up for vote.
They did something similar in Canada back in 2014 by organizing a "walk out" to prevent a quorum to even be able to vote on the bill.
And the crazy thing is that groups like NOW frame themselves as being "progressive" and advocating for gender equality when clearly they are doing the exact opposite of that.
See for example:
https://nationalparentsorganization.org/blog/21752-karen-decrow-last-now-president-to-support-shared-parenting-dies

These laws provide the exact same clauses and protections for domestic abuse as existing laws

One of the claims made by people who oppose these laws is that they hide behind something that seems fair and rational on the surface only to protect domestic abusers behind the scenes. The argument is that these bills are designed to allow abusive husbands access to their children to continue their abuse.
To begin with, that's not how these laws work. They contain all the same provisions to adjust custody arrangements based on abuse that existing laws have. The only thing that changes is the "starting point". So this is little more than just propaganda put out by people who oppose these laws (with NOW being particularly bad about it through their social media arm).
Secondly, academic research shows that mothers are just as abusive, or even slightly more abusive, than fathers are.
Acting like there's this big problem of abusive fathers, and that mothers are never abusive to their children, is itself a harmful, sexist view that is not based in reality.
Sources:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16165212
https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/childmaltreatment-facts-at-a-glance.pdf
https://www.acf.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/cb/cm2013.pdf
https://www.odt.co.nz/news/national/children-most-often-killed-mothers

There are other issues around child custody that need to be addressed as well

In particular, it is often the case that unmarried fathers, by default, have no parental rights at all. A man's parental rights, legally speaking, are often tied to the mother through marriage. Outside of marriage, it is the mother's decision if she wants the father to be put on the birth certificate. And while there is at least a basic presumption for partial custody during a divorce, unmarried fathers are typically presumed to have no custody at all.
In the past, unmarried mothers who didn't want their children, but also didn't want the father to have them, have put them up for adoption without the father's concent. Such actions can even allow the mother to get out of paying child support in the event that the father is able to adopt his children.
There are laws in a few states that allow the biological father to receive preferential treatment during adoption proceedings, but the fact that a mother can even put up their children for adoption without explicit consent from the father (or at least a formal waiver from a judge), shows just how little we respect the rights of fathers.
Sources:
https://fox17.com/news/local/local-dads-fighting-to-make-joint-custody-the-default
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/07/paternity-registry/396044/
It really should just be the case that a father is presumed to have equal rights to his children as the mother, including even if they are not married.
Another problem I've seen is the outright denial that this is an issue. As well as related views that struggling fathers are just bad parents and deserve to be attacked and hated instead of understood and helped (like what we do for struggling mothers).
Denying this because it is inconvenient or because it demonstrates a "different type of sexism" that you don't want to acknowledge is harmful. And I'd even venture to argue is an example of sexism in and of itself (ie some people can be sexist in how they approach sexism and gender equality).
This topic should be viewed as just as important of an issue of gender equality as anything else. And the fact that we don't hear much about it really just proves how sexist society can be towards men and fathers.

1) Chemistry of Life

Content

Transpiration
- Hydrogen bonds pull water up like string and leave through stoma
- Stomata: leaf pores that allow gas exchange, most are on bottom side of leaf
- Xylem: tube-shaped, nonlining, vascular system, carries water from roots to rest of plant
- Epidermis: outer layer, protects plant
- Phloem: transports food
- Parenchyma: stores food
- Transpiration: evaporation of water from leaves
- Adhesion: polar water molecules adhere to polar surfaces (sides of xylem)
- Cohesion: polar water molecules adhere to each other
- Guard cells: cells surrounding stoma, regulate transpiration through opening and closing stoma
- Turgid vs flaccid guard cells
  - Turgid swell caused by potassium ions, water potential decreases, water enters vacuoles of guard cells
  - Swelling of guard cells open stomata
- High light levels, high levels of water, low temperature, low CO2 causes opening of stomata
- Water potential: transport of water in plant governed by differences in water potential
  - Affected by solute concentration and environmental conditions
- High water potential (high free energy and more water) travels to low water potential
- Hydrophilic = attracts water, hydrophobic = repels water
Water and its Properties
- Polar molecule due to positive hydrogen and negative oxygen regions
- Negative oxygen of one molecule to positive hydrogen of another water molecule forms a hydrogen bond, which are weak individually but strong together
- Important physical properties of water:
  - Cohesion and adhesion: cohesion creates surface tension and they both allow for transpiration
  - High specific heat: enables water to absorb and lose heat slowly
  - High heat of vaporization: allows much of it to remain liquid
  - Nearly universal polar solvent: dissolves a lot of stuff
  - Flotation of ice: insulates, transportation
Biological Macromolecules
- Polymer: long molecule consisting of many similar building blocks linked by covalent bonds
- Monomer: building block of a polymer
- ATP - adenosine triphosphate, energy carrier that uses bonds between phosphates to store energy
  - Similar in structure to a ribonucleotide
- Four Types
  - Carbohydrates
  - Lipids
  - Proteins
  - Nucleic Acids

https://preview.redd.it/xp12oli61w451.png?width=1098&format=png&auto=webp&s=cc897738989258c67bcc760ba040e2cee8f7875c

Functional groups
- Hydroxyl - carbs, alcohols - OH-, O-
- Amino - proteins - NH2, NH3+
- Carboxyl - weak acids - COOH, COO-
- Sulfhydryl - proteins - SH
- Phosphatic - salts, strong acids - PO
Directionality:
- ex: glucose alpha and beta
- ex: DNA and RNA 5’ and 3’ ends
Identification of Macromolecules

https://preview.redd.it/cb3oau2j1w451.png?width=1089&format=png&auto=webp&s=409e26f32c9996a3649bad81d17ed72769955ce9

Calculations

Number of bonds
- # of molecules - 1
- i.e. 20 glucose molecules linked together would have 19 bonds
Molecular formula
- # of molecules * molecular formula - number of bonds * H20 (from hydrolysis)
- i.e. when you bond 5 glucose molecules together you have to subtract 4H2O
pH/pOH
- -log[H+] = pH
- -log[OH-] = pOH
- pH + pOH = 14
Leaf surface area
- i.e. using graph paper to find surface area
Transpiration rate
- Amount of water used / surface area / time

Labs

Transpiration Lab
- Basically you take this potometer which measures the amount of water that gets sucked up by a plant that you have and you expose the plant to different environmental conditions (light, humidity, temperature) and see how fast the water gets transpired
- Random stuff to know:
  - It’s hard to get it to work properly
  - A tight seal of vaseline keeps everything tidy and prevents water from evaporating straight from the tube, also allows for plant to suck properly
  - Water travels from high water potential to low water potential

2) Cell Structure & Function

Content

Cellular Components
- Many membrane-bound organelles evolved from once free prokaryotes via endosymbiosis, such as mitochondria (individual DNA)
- Compartmentalization allows for better SA:V ratio and helps regulate cellular processes
- Cytoplasm: thick solution in each cell containing water, salts, proteins, etc; everything - nucleus
  - Cytoplasmic streaming: moving all the organelles around to give them nutrients, speeds up reactions
- Cytosol: liquid of the cytoplasm (mostly water)
- Plasma Membrane: separates inside of cell from extracellular space, controls what passes through amphipathic area (selectively permeable)
  - Fluid-Mosaic model: phospholipid bilayer + embedded proteins
  - Aquaporin: hole in membrane that allows water through
- Cell Wall: rigid polysaccharide layer outside of plasma membrane in plants/fungi/bacteria
  - Bacteria have peptidoglycan, fungi have chitin, and plants have cellulose and lignin
  - Turgor pressure pushes the membrane against the wall
- Nucleus: contains genetic information
  - Has a double membrane called the nuclear envelope with pores
- Nucleolus: in nucleus, produces ribosomes
- Chromosomes: contain DNA
- Centrioles: tubulin thing that makes up centrosome in the middle of a chromosome
- Smooth Endoplasmic Reticulum: storage of proteins and lipids
- Rough Endoplasmic Reticulum: synthesizes and packages proteins
- Chloroplasts: photosynthetic, sunlight transferred into chemical energy and sugars
  - More on this in photosynthesis
- Vacuoles: storage, waste breakdown, hydrolysis of macromolecules, plant growth
- Plasmodesmata: channels through cell walls that connect adjacent cells
- Golgi Apparatus: extracellular transport
- Lysosome: degradation and waste management
  - Mutations in the lysosome cause the cell to swell with unwanted molecules and the cell will slow down or kill itself
- Mitochondria: powerhouse of the cell
  - Mutations in the mitochondria cause a lack of deficiency of energy in the cell leading to an inhibition of cell growth
- Vesicles: transport of intracellular materials
- Microtubules: tubulin, stiff, mitosis, cell transport, motor proteins
- Microfilaments: actin, flexible, cell movement
- Flagella: one big swim time
- Cilia: many small swim time
- Peroxisomes: bunch of enzymes in a package that degrade H202 with catalase
- Ribosomes: protein synthesis
- Microvilli: projections that increase cell surface area like tiny feetsies
  - In the intestine, for example, microvilli allow more SA to absorb nutrients
- Cytoskeleton: hold cell shape
Cellular Transport
- Passive transport: diffusion
  - Cell membranes selectively permeable (large and charged repelled)
  - Tonicity: osmotic (water) pressure gradient
- Cells are small to optimize surface area to volume ratio, improving diffusion
- Primary active transport: ATP directly utilized to transport
- Secondary active transport: something is transported using energy captured from movement of other substance flowing down the concentration gradient
- Endocytosis: large particles enter a cell by membrane engulfment
  - Phagocytosis: “cell eating”, uses pseudopodia around solids and packages it within a membrane
  - Pinocytosis: “cell drinking”, consumes droplets of extracellular fluid
  - Receptor-mediated endocytosis: type of pinocytosis for bulk quantities of specific substances
- Exocytosis: internal vesicles fuse with the plasma membrane and secrete large molecules out of the cell
- Ion channels and the sodium potassium pump
  - Ion channel: facilitated diffusion channel that allows specific molecules through
  - Sodium potassium pump: uses charged ions (sodium and potassium)
- Membrane potential: voltage across a membrane
- Electrogenic pump: transport protein that generates voltage across a membrane
- Proton pump: transports protons out of the cell (plants/fungi/bacteria)
- Cotransport: single ATP-powered pump transports a specific solute that can drive the active transport of several other solutes
- Bulk flow: one-way movement of fluids brought about by pressure
- Dialysis: diffusion of solutes across a selective membrane
Cellular Components Expanded: The Endomembrane System
- Nucleus + Rough ER + Golgi Bodies
  - Membrane and secretory proteins are synthesized in the rough endoplasmic reticulum, vesicles with the integral protein fuse with the cis face of the Golgi apparatus, modified in Golgi, exits as an integral membrane protein of the vesicles that bud from the Golgi’s trans face, protein becomes an integral portion of that cell membrane

Calculations

Surface area to volume ratio of a shape (usually a cube)
U-Shaped Tube (where is the water traveling)
- Solution in u-shaped tube separated by semi-permeable membrane
- find average of solute (that is able to move across semi permeable membrane)
- add up total molar concentration on both sides
- water travels where concentration is higher
Water Potential = Pressure Potential + Solute Potential
- Solute Potential = -iCRT
  - i = # of particles the molecule will make in water
  - C = molar concentration
  - R = pressure constant (0.0831)
  - T = temperature in kelvin

Labs

Diffusion and Osmosis
- Testing the concentration of a solution with known solutions
- Dialysis bag
  - Semipermeable bag that allows the water to pass through but not the solute
- Potato core
  - Has a bunch of solutes inside

Relevant Experiments

Lynne Margolis: endosymbiotic theory (mitochondria lady)
Chargaff: measured A/G/T/C in everything (used UV chromatography)
Franklin + Watson and Crick: discovered structure of DNA; Franklin helped with x ray chromatography

3) Cellular Energetics

Content

Reactions and Thermodynamics
- Baseline: used to establish standard for chemical reaction
- Catalyst: speeds up a reaction (enzymes are biological catalysts)
- Exergonic: energy is released
- Endergonic: energy is consumed
- Coupled reactions: energy lost/released from exergonic reaction is used in endergonic one
- Laws of Thermodynamics:
  - First Law: energy cannot be created nor destroyed, and the sum of energy in the universe is constant
  - Second Law: energy transfer leads to less organization (greater entropy)
  - Third Law: the disorder (entropy) approaches a constant value as the temperature approaches 0
- Cellular processes that release energy may be coupled with other cellular processes
- Loss of energy flow means death
- Energy related pathways in biological systems are sequential to allow for a more controlled/efficient transfer of energy (product of one metabolic pathway is reactant for another)
- Bioenergetics: study of how energy is transferred between living things
- Fuel + 02 = CO2 + H20
  - Combustion, Photosynthesis, Cellular Respiration (with slight differences in energy)
Enzymes
- Speed up chemical processes by lowering activation energy
- Structure determines function
- Active sites are selective
- Enzymes are typically tertiary- or quaternary-level proteins
- Catabolic: break down / proteases and are exergonic
- Anabolic: build up and are endergonic
- Enzymes do not change energy levels
- Substrate: targeted molecules in enzymatic
- Many enzymes named by ending substrate in “-ase”
- Enzymes form temporary substrate-enzyme complexes
- Enzymes remain unaffected by the reaction they catalyze
- Enzymes can’t change a reaction or make other reactions occur
- Induced fit: enzyme has to change its shape slightly to accommodate the substrate
- Cofactor: factor that help enzymes catalyze reactions (org or inorg)
  - Examples: temp, pH, relative ratio of enzyme and substrate
  - Organic cofactors are called coenzymes
- Denaturation: enzymes damaged by heat or pH
- Regulation: protein’s function at one site is affected by the binding of regulatory molecule to a separate site
- Enzymes enable cells to achieve dynamic metabolism - undergo multiple metabolic processes at once
- Cannot make an endergonic reaction exergonic
- Steps to substrates becoming products
  - Substrates enters active site, enzyme changes shape
  - Substrates held in active site by weak interactions (i.e. hydrogen bonds)
  - Substrates converted to product
  - Product released
  - Active site available for more substrate
- Rate of enzymatic reaction increases with temperature but too hot means denaturation
- Inhibitors fill the active site of enzymes
  - Some are permanent, some are temporary
  - Competitive: block substrates from their active sites
  - Non competitive (allosteric): bind to different part of enzyme, changing the shape of the active site
- Allosteric regulation: regulatory molecules interact with enzymes to stimulate or inhibit activity
- Enzyme denaturation can be reversible
Cellular Respiration
- Steps
  - Glycolysis
  - Acetyl co-A reactions
  - Krebs / citric acid cycle
  - Oxidative phosphorylation
- Brown fat: cells use less efficient energy production method to make heat
- Hemoglobin (transport, fetal oxygen affinity > maternal) and myoglobin (stores oxygen)
Photosynthesis
- 6CO2 + 6H20 + Light = C6H12O6 + 6O2
- Absorption vs action spectrum (broader, cumulative, overall rate of photosynthesis)
- Components
  - Chloroplast
  - Mesophyll: interior leaf tissue that contains chloroplasts
  - Pigment: substance that absorbs light
- Steps
  - Light-Dependent Reaction
  - Light-Independent (Dark) Reaction (Calvin Cycle)
Anaerobic Respiration (Fermentation)
- Glycolysis yields 2ATP + 2NADH + 2 Pyruvate
- 2NADH + 2 Pyruvate yields ethanol and lactate
- Regenerates NAD+

Calculations

Calculate products of photosynthesis & cellular respiration

Labs

Enzyme Lab
- Peroxidase breaks down peroxides which yields oxygen gas, quantity measured with a dye
- Changing variables (i.e. temperature) yields different amounts of oxygen
Photosynthesis Lab
- Vacuum in a syringe pulls the oxygen out of leaf disks, no oxygen causes them to sink in bicarbonate solution, bicarbonate is added to give the disks a carbon source for photosynthesis which occurs at different rates under different conditions, making the disks buoyant
Cellular Respiration Lab
- Use a respirometer to measure the consumption of oxygen (submerge it in water)
- You put cricket/animal in the box that will perform cellular respiration
- You put KOH in the box with cricket to absorb the carbon dioxide (product of cellular respiration)-- it will form a solid and not impact your results

Relevant Experiments

Engelmann
- Absorption spectra dude with aerobic bacteria

4) Cell Communication & Cell Cycle

Content

Cell Signalling
- Quorum sensing: chemical signaling between bacteria
  - See Bonnie Bassler video
- Taxis/Kinesis: movement of an organism in response to a stimulus (chemotaxis is response to chemical)
- Ligand: signalling molecule
- Receptor: ligands bind to elicit a response
- Hydrophobic: cholesterol and other such molecules can diffuse across the plasma membrane
- Hydrophilic: ligand-gated ion channels, catalytic receptors, G-protein receptor
Signal Transduction
- Process by which an extracellular signal is transmitted to inside of cell
- Pathway components
  - Signal/Ligand
  - Receptor protein
  - Relay molecules: second messengers and the phosphorylation cascade
  - DNA response
- Proteins in signal transduction can cause cancer if activated too much (tumor)
  - RAS: second messenger for growth factor-- suppressed by p53 gene (p53 is protein made by gene) if it gets too much
- Response types
  - Gene expression changes
  - Cell function
  - Alter phenotype
  - Apoptosis- programmed cell death
  - Cell growth
  - Secretion of various molecules
- Mutations in proteins can cause effects downstream
- Pathways are similar and many bacteria emit the same chemical within pathways, evolution!
Feedback
- Positive feedback amplifies responses
  - Onset of childbirth, lactation, fruit ripening
- Negative feedback regulates response
  - Blood sugar (insulin goes down when glucagon goes up), body temperature
Cell cycle
- Caused by reproduction, growth, and tissue renewal
- Checkpoint: control point that triggers/coordinates events in cell cycle
- Mitotic spindle: microtubules and associated proteins
  - Cytoskeleton partially disassembles to provide the material to make the spindle
  - Elongates with tubulin
  - Shortens by dropping subunits
  - Aster: radial array of short microtubules
  - Kinetochores on centrosome help microtubules to attach to chromosomes
- IPMAT: interphase, prophase, metaphase, anaphase, telophase
  - PMAT is mitotic cycle
- Steps
  - Interphase
  - Mitosis
  - Cytokinesis
- Checkpoints
  - 3 major ones during cell cycle:
  - cyclin-cdk-mpf: cyclin dependent kinase mitosis promoting factor
  - Anchorage dependence: attached, very important aspect to cancer
  - Density dependence: grow to a certain size, can’t hurt organs
  - Genes can suppress tumors
- G0 phase is when cells don’t grow at all (nerve, muscle, and liver cells)

Calculations

Chi-squared

Relevant Experiments

Sutherland
- Broke apart liver cells and realized the significance of the signal transduction pathway, as the membrane and the cytoplasm can’t activate glycogen phosphorylase by themselves

5) Heredity

Content

Types of reproduction
- Sexual: two parents, mitosis/meiosis, genetic variation/diversity (and thus higher likelihood of survival in a changing environment)
- Asexual: doesn’t require mate, rapid, almost genetically identitical (mutations)
  - Binary fission (bacteria)
  - Budding (yeast cells)
  - Fragmentation (plants and sponges)
  - Regeneration (starfish, newts, etc.)
Meiosis
- One diploid parent cell undergoes two rounds of cell division to produce up to four haploid genetically varied cells
- n = 23 in humans, where n is the number of unique chromosomes
- Meiosis I
  - Prophase: synapsis (two chromosome sets come together to form tetrad), chromosomes line up with homologs, crossing over
  - Metaphase: tetrads line up at metaphase plate, random alignment
  - Anaphase: tetrad separation, formation at opposite poles, homologs separate with their centromeres intact
  - Telophase: nuclear membrane forms, two haploid daughter cells form
- Meiosis II
  - Prophase: chromosomes condense
  - Metaphase: chromosomes line up single file, not pairs, on the metaphase plate
  - Anaphase: chromosomes split at centromere
  - Telophase: nuclear membrane forms and 4 total haploid cells are produced
- Genetic variation
  - Crossing over: homologous chromosomes swap genetic material
  - Independent assortment: homologous chromosomes line up randomly
  - Random fertilization: random sperm and random egg interact
- Gametogenesis
  - Spermatogenesis: sperm production
  - Oogenesis: egg cells production (¼ of them degenerate)
Fundamentals of Heredity
- Traits: expressed characteristics
- Gene: “chunk” of DNA that codes for a specific trait
- Homologous chromosomes: two copies of a gene
- Alleles: copies of chromosome may differ bc of crossing over
- Homozygous/Heterozygous: identical/different
- Phenotype: physical representation of genotype
- Generations
  - Parent or P1
  - Filial or F1
  - F2
- Law of dominance: one trait masks the other one
  - Complete: one trait completely covers the other one
  - Incomplete: traits are both expressed
  - Codominance: traits combine
- Law of segregation (Mendel): each gamete gets one copy of a gene
- Law of independent assortment (Mendel): traits segregate independently from one another
- Locus: location of gene on chromosome
- Linked genes: located on the same chromosome, loci less than 50 cM apart
- Gene maps and linkage maps
- Nondisjunction: inability of chromosomes to separate (ex down syndrome)
- Polygenic: many genes influence one phenotype
- Pleiotropic: one gene influences many phenotypes
- Epistasis: one gene affects another gene
- Mitochondrial and chloroplast DNA is inherited maternally
Diseases/Disorders
- Genetic:
  - Tay-Sachs: can’t break down specific lipid in brain
  - Sickle cell anemia: misshapen RBCs
  - Color blindness
  - Hemophilia: lack of clotting factors
- Chromosomal:
  - Turner: only one X chromosome
  - Klinefelter: XXY chromosomes
  - Down syndrome (trisomy 21): nondisjunction
Crosses
- Sex-linked stuff
- Blood type
- Barr bodies: in women, two X chromosomes; different chromosomes expressed in different parts of the body, thus creating two different phenotype expressions in different places

Calculations

Pedigree/Punnett Square
Recombination stuff
- Recombination rate = # of recombinable offspring/ total offspring (times 100) units: map units

Relevant Experiments

Mendel

6) Gene Expression and Regulation

Content

DNA and RNA Structure
- Prokaryotic organisms typically have circular chromosomes
- Plasmids = extrachromosomal circular DNA molecules
- Purines (G, A) are double-ringed while pyrimidines (C, T, U) have single ring
- Types of RNA:
  - mRNA - (mature) messenger RNA (polypeptide production)
  - tRNA - transfer RNA (polypeptide production)
  - rRNA - ribosomal RNA (polypeptide production)
  - snRNA - small nuclear RNA (bound to snRNPs - small nuclear ribonucleoproteins)
  - miRNA - microRNA (regulatory)
DNA Replication
- Steps:
  - Helicase opens up the DNA at the replication fork.
  - Single-strand binding proteins coat the DNA around the replication fork to prevent rewinding of the DNA.
  - Topoisomerase works at the region ahead of the replication fork to prevent supercoiling.
  - Primase synthesizes RNA primers complementary to the DNA strand.
  - DNA polymerase III extends the primers, adding on to the 3' end, to make the bulk of the new DNA.
  - RNA primers are removed and replaced with DNA by DNA polymerase I.
  - The gaps between DNA fragments are sealed by DNA ligase.
Protein Synthesis
- 61 codons code for amino acids, 3 code as STOP - UAA, UAG, UGA - 64 total
- Transcription Steps:
  - RNA polymerase binds to promoter (before gene) and separate the DNA strands
  - RNA polymerase fashions a complementary RNA strand from a DNA strand
  - Coding strand is same as RNA being made, template strand is complementary
  - Terminator on gene releases the RNA polymerase
- RNA Processing Steps (Eukaryotes):
  - 5’ cap and 3’ (poly-A tail, poly A polymerase) tail is added to strand (guanyl transferase)
  - Splicing of the RNA occurs in which introns are removed and exons are added by spliceosome
  - Cap/tail adds stability, splicing makes the correct sequence (“gibberish”)
- Translation Steps:
  - Initiation complex is the set up of a ribosome around the beginning of an mRNA fragment
  - tRNA binds to codon, amino acid is linked to other amino acid
  - mRNA is shifted over one codon (5’ to 3’)
  - Stop codon releases mRNA
Gene Expression
- Translation of mRNA to a polypeptide occurs on ribosomes in the cytoplasm as well as rough ER
- Translation of the mRNA occurs during transcription in prokaryotes
- Genetic info in retroviruses is an exception to normal laws: RNA to DNA is possible with reverse transcriptase, which allows the virus to integrate into the host’s DNA
- Regulatory sequences = stretches of DNA that interact with regulatory proteins to control transcription
- Epigenetic changes can affect expression via mods of DNA or histones
- Observable cell differentiation results from the expression of genes for tissue-specific proteins
- Induction of transcription factors during dev results in gene expression
- Prokaryotes: operons transcribed in a single mRNA molecule, inducible system
- Eukaryotes: groups of genes may be influenced by the same transcription factors to coordinate expression
- Promoters = DNA sequences that RNA polymerase can latch onto to initiate
- Negative regulators inhibit gene expression by binding to DNA and blocking transcription
- Acetylation (add acetyl groups)- more loosely wound/ less tightly coiled/compressed
- Methylation of DNA (add methyl groups) - less transcription- more tightly wound
Mutation and Genetic Variation
- Disruptions in genes (mutations) change phenotypes
- Mutations can be +/-/neutral based on their effects that are conferred by the protein formed - environmental context
- Errors in DNA replication or repair as well as external factors such as radiation or chemical exposure cause them
- Mutations are the primary source of genetic variation
- Horizontal acquisition in prokaryotes - transformation (uptake of naked DNA), transduction (viral DNA transmission), conjugation (cell-cell DNA transfer), and transposition (DNA moved within/between molecules) - increase variation
- Related viruses can (re)combine genetic material in the same host cell
- Types of mutations: frameshift, deletion, insertion
Genetic Engineering
- Electrophoresis separates molecules by size and charge
- PCR magnifies DNA fragments
- Bacterial transformation introduces DNA into bacterial cells
Operons
- Almost always prokaryotic
- Promoter region has operator in it
- Structural genes follow promoter
- Terminator ends operon
- Regulatory protein is active repressor
- Active repressor can be inactivated
- Enhancer: remote gene that require activators
- RNAi: interference with miRNA
- Anabolic pathways are normally on and catabolic pathways are normally off

Calculations

Transformation efficiency (colonies/DNA)
Numbers of base pairs (fragment lengths)
Cutting enzymes in a plasmid or something (finding the lengths of each section)

Labs

Gel Electrophoresis Lab
- Phosphates in DNA make it negative (even though it’s an acid!), so it moves to positive terminal on the board
- Smaller DNA is quicc, compare it to a standard to calculate approx. lengths
Bacterial Transformation Lab
- Purpose of sugar: arabinose is a promoter which controls the GFP in transformed cells, turns it on, also green under UV
- Purpose of flipping upside down: condensation forms but doesn’t drip down
- Purpose of heat shock: increases bacterial uptake of foreign DNA
- Plasmids have GFP (green fluorescent protein) and ampicillin resistance genes
- Calcium solution puts holes in bacteria to allow for uptake of plasmids
PCR Lab
- DNA + primers + nucleotides + DNA polymerase in a specialized PCR tube in a thermal cycler
- Primers bind to DNA before it can repair itself, DNA polymerase binds to the primers and begins replication
- After 30 cycles, there are billions of target sequences

Relevant Experiments

Avery: harmful + harmless bacteria in mice, experimented with proteins vs DNA of bacteria
Griffith: Avery’s w/o DNA vs protein
Hershey and Chase: radioactively labeled DNA and protein
Melson and Stahl: isotopic nitrogen in bacteria, looked for cons/semi/dispersive DNA
Beadle and Tatum: changed medium’s amino acid components to find that a metabolic pathway was responsible for turning specific proteins into other proteins, “one gene one enzyme”
Nirenberg: discovered codon table

7) Natural Selection

Scientific Theory: no refuting evidence (observation + experimentation), time, explain a brand/extensive range of phenomena
Theory of Natural Selection
- Definition
  - Not all offspring (in a population) will survive
  - Variation among individuals in a population
  - Some variations were more favourable than others in a particular environment
  - Those with more favourable variations were more likely to survive and reproduce.
  - These favourable variations were passed on and increased in frequency over time.
Types of Selection:
- Directional selection: one phenotype favored at one of the extremes of the normal distribution
  - ”Weeds out” one phenotype
  - Ony can happen if a favored allele is already present
- Stabilizing Selection: Organisms within a population are eliminated with extreme traits
  - Favors “average” or medium traits
  - Ex. big head causes a difficult delivery; small had causes health deficits
- Disruptive Selection: favors both extremes and selects against common traits
  - Ex. sexual selection (seems like directional but it’s not because it only affects one sex, if graph is only males then directional)
Competition for limited resources results in differential survival, favourable phenotypes are more likely to survive and produce more offspring, thus passing traits to subsequent generations.
- Biotic and abiotic environments can be more or less stable/fluctuating, and this affects the rate and direction of evolution
  - Convergent evolution occurs when similar selective pressures result in similar phenotypic adaptations in different populations or species.
  - Divergent evolution: groups from common ancestor evolve, homology
  - Different genetic variations can be selected in each generation.
  - Environments change and apply selective pressures to populations.
- Evolutionary fitness is measured by reproductive success.
- Natural selection acts on phenotypic variations in populations.
  - Some phenotypic variations significantly increase or decrease the fitness of the organism in particular environments.
- Through artificial selection, humans affect variation in other species.
  - Humans choose to cause artificial selection with specific traits, accidental selection caused by humans is not artificial
- Random occurrences
  - Mutation
  - Genetic drift - change in existing allele frequency
  - Migration
- Reduction of genetic variation within a given population can increase the differences between populations of the same species.
- Conditions for a population or an allele to be in Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium are
  - Large population size
  - Absence of migration
  - No net mutations
  - Random mating
  - Absence of selection
- Changes in allele frequencies provide evidence for the occurrence of evolution in a population.
- Small populations are more susceptible to random environmental impact than large populations.
- Gene flow: transference of genes/alleles between populations
Speciation: one species splits off into multiple species
- Sympatric (living together i.e. disruption) Allopatric (physically separate, i.e. founder effect) Parapatric (habitats overlapping)
  - Polyploidy (autopolyploidy), sexual selection
- Species: group of populations whose members can interbreed and produce healthy, fertile offspring but can’t breed with other species (ex. a horse and donkey can produce a mule but a mule is nonviable, so it doesn’t qualify)
  - Morphological definition: body shape and structural characteristics define a species
  - Ecological species definition: way populations interact with their environments define a species
  - Phylogenetic species definition: smallest group that shares a common ancestor is a species
- Prezygotic barriers: barriers to reproduction before zygote is formed
  - Geographical error: two organisms are in different areas
  - Behavioural error (i.e. mating rituals aren’t the same)
  - Mechanical error: “the pieces don’t fit together”
  - Temporal error (i.e. one organism comes out at night while the other comes out in the day)
  - Zygotic/Gametic isolation: sperm and egg don’t physically meet
- Postzygotic barriers: barriers to reproduction after zygote is formed
  - Hybrid viability: developmental errors of offspring
  - Hybrid fertility: organism is sterilized
  - Hybrid breakdown: offspring over generations aren’t healthy
- Hybrid zone: region in which members of different species meet and mate
  - Reinforcement: hybrids less fit than parents, die off, strength prezygotic barriers
  - Fusion: two species may merge into one population
  - Stability: stable hybrid zones mean hybrids are more fit than parents, thus creating a stable population, but can be selected against in hybrid zones as well
- Punctuated equilibria: long periods of no or little change evolutionarily punctuated by short periods of large change, gradualism is just slow evolution
- Evidence of evolution
  - Paleontology (Fossils)
  - Comparative Anatomy
  - Embryology: embryos look the same as they grow
  - Biogeography: distribution of flora and fauna in the environment (pangea!)
  - Biochemical: DNA and proteins and stuff, also glycolysis
- Phylogenetic trees
  - Monophyletic: common ancestor and all descendants
  - Polyphyletic: descendants with different ancestors
  - Paraphyletic: leaving specifies out of group
- Out group: basal taxon, doesn’t have traits others do
- Cline: graded variation within species (i.e. different stem heights based on altitude)
- Anagenesis: one species turning into another species
- Cladogenesis: one species turning into multiple species
- Taxon: classification/grouping
- Clade: group of species with common ancestor
- Horizontal gene transfer: genes thrown between bacteria
- Shared derived characters: unique to specific group
- Shared primitive/ancestral characters: not unique to a specific group but is shared within group
Origins of life
- Stages
  - Inorganic formation of organic monomers (miller-urey experiment)
  - Inorganic formation of organic polymers (catalytic surfaces like hot rock or sand)
  - Protobionts and compartmentalization (liposomes, micelles)
  - DNA evolution (RNA functions as enzyme)
- Shared evolutionary characteristics across all domains
  - Membranes
  - Cell comm.
  - Gene to protein
  - DNA
  - Proteins
- Extant = not extinct
- Highly conserved genes = low rates of mutation in history due to criticalness (like electron transport chain)
- Molecular clock: dating evolution using DNA evidence
- Extinction causes niches for species to fill
- Eukaryotes all have common ancestor (shown by membrane-bound organelles, linear chromosomes, and introns)

Calculations

Hardy-Weinberg
- p + q = 1
- p^2 + 2pq +q^2 = 1
Chi Squared

Labs

Artificial Selection Lab
- Trichrome trait hairs
- Anthocyanin for second trait (purple stems)
- Function of the purple pigment?
- Function of trichome hairs?
BLAST Lab
- Putting nucleotides into a database outputs similar genes

Relevant Experiments

Darwin
Lamarck
Miller-Urey
- Slapped some water, methane, ammonia, and hydrogen is some flasks and simulated early earth with heat and stuff and it made some amino acids.

I've been reading all the threads about AVOW, Julie Rowe, Prepper etc on exmormon (incidentally, these threads are a hell of a read) and led me to an LDS forum, where they've been talking about Chad et al for years. One thing I learned that I hadn't read before was that Chad's forum on AVOW was a forum-with-a-forum, that also charged a subscription fee of $5. It was ran by "The Visionaries"--Chad himself, Hector Sosa, and Julie Rowe. All criticism of these three was strictly forbidden by site owner Christopher Parrett.
Here's one comment I found interesting "I was left AVOW when my subscription lapsed in February. I did not subscribe to the GRI newsletter. I can tell you I was getting or still get emails to join. It seemed for the emails the would put out a partial prophecy a week. The group involved was Julie Rowe, Hector Sosa, and Chad Daybell. They called themselves visionaries. They claimed that the prophets would come to them for answers during the tribulations. They were protected by the owner of AVOW Christopher Parrett and no one could say anything against the three or they would be kicked off AVOW. Chad spoke about the call out and New Jerusalem mostly from the teaser emails I would get each week. The problem with the visionaries is they would not tell you or predict what would happen next conference. Their prediction rate of getting things right in the future was abysmal."
And "Yes, I believe Christopher promoted a splinter group religion with teachings not supported by the church. Some people call it a cult. You were not allowed to speak against their visionaries, Chad, Julie, or Hector who claim the prophet would be coming to them to know what to do during the tribulations. I am not sure Christopher believed their weekly visions, but he was willing to make 5 dollars extra to promote their teachings."
Here's a post shared on the forum from Nov 19, before the welfare check was called. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cLzA4aWV2X0krFxey497WIFYP90mjosW/view
I have NO idea what this poster's backstory is, but based on context clues, I'm pretty sure "the pages" refers to the 116 "lost pages" of the Book of Mormon--what he has to say is pretty wild.
"This just makes good sense! If you're gonna knock off your Wife, predict her death first. This has the effect of quadrupling book sales, at least. Ramp up the TV and movie rights by molesting and killing the kids, and there's a ton of money in this! Michael and Nancy can handle the videography, and Keith should be able to handle the publicity, right?
Feels kinda creepy knowing I've had these people in my home, most at the same time.

Lisa and Rod (OP NOTE: Must be Rod Meldrum) while they were trying to steal the textual contents of the papers, and...
Michael and Nancy (OP NOTE this is Preparing the People folks) were booking auditoriums so they could get me to tell a bunch of lies for them, to a bunch of people, for a bunch of money, and...
Chad and Julie (Chode and Julie Rowe) were trying to get me to let them write a book about the whole thing (which included very few actual facts), and...
Jonathan (OP NOTE, still can't figure out who he is) was trying to get one of his child-molester friends to help find me a job so I'd give them to him for his collection, and...
Shawn (OP Note: This must be Shawn Littlebear) knew the location of a golden walled cavern which has portals to other dimensions, but requires the sacrifice of a virgin (male or female, doesn't matter) to gain 'crossover rights'. That cave also has the "116 pages", but they're in golden leafed notebooks, which he wanted to compare to the sheets I had control of to see if they are the same....

...just about everyone on LDSFF was trashing me for having found them, when all I wanted to do was get rid of them ASAP. Seems like almost all of you had your sights on the wrong targets (IOW, a very few of you shook the right tree, but the nuts are just now started to fall out - sorry, but I get a lot of satisfaction out of gloating). LOL
I just checked my old emails (some 2.000+) on this matter and if the whole story's not in there I'd be surprised. I'm pretty sure I've exchanged emails with the person who took those kids, and probably killed one or more of the dead spouses involved.
Pay attention in April, folks. I'll be gloating a lot more after that...."
Another rather alarming quote "I see these people that are falling all over the dreams and visions people as a doomsday cult forming inside the Mormon church.
The things these people are doing and preparing for are beyond excessive.
Seriously, every week there’s some new prediction on AVOW that has everyone riled up. Yet, the masters of all this nonsense are so good at stroking egos. Telling everyone they are the chosen ones and special and the only ones who really see and understand. [Reminds me of some on LDSFF, too...] As the leaders of those kind of groups continuously fleece them. I mean you can’t even read the visions unless you pay even more, cause that’s not money changerish at all. No.
But the worst thing about this doomsday cult is their naive acceptance of anything supernatural being from God, and therefore good. Because of this they are accepting blatant false doctrine from false visionaries (Spencer, Hector, Julie, etc. along with ANY NDE they read, They are accepting New Age Antichrist doctrine that ranges from subtle to blatant. They are being taught to look for the Antichrist and not the real Christ. They are accepting Energy Healing, and using the Priesthood in ways not taught in church.
It’s extremely frightening where this fear mongering and naivete have lead."
I have to stop reading this stuff and go to bed, but this Facebook link was posted and it clarifies A LOT. https://www.facebook.com/1557462021236368/posts/2504032356579325/
here are a couple of highlights "All during this time, a member of AVOW, who went by the avatar “fellowdreamer”, began to post her “visions” on AVOW. She would corroborate things like the call-out, and things in Visions of Glory and say she too had the same visions. She would also rip things out of the headlines and claim that she saw that as well. Fellowdreamer intrigued Chad Daybell, who got in contact with her, and together they wrote her NDE . Fellowdreamer is a woman named Julie Rowe. Her first NDE is called A Greater Tomorrow. Her book began very popular, not just among member of AVOW, but it spread all over LDS Facebook groups. People were giving copies of her book when they went visiting teaching (it was still VT back then). They gave copies to all their family members."
"There is so many heads in this hydra. You have a man named Avraham Gileadi who is a wannabe church scholar and has spread the idea that there will be a latter-day Davidic servant who will come from outside the church leadership to set things straight. There’s a man named Shawn Littlebear who claims to be the one who can bring the Book of Lehi from his native tribe to the church, as well as bring the Ark of the covenant from its hiding place to the new temple of Jerusalem thanks to his special bloodline and callings.
Then we get to MIke Stroud, who was excommunicated last year. He is a retired Seminary teacher who also is a believer of the Snuffer Doctrines of how to gain your calling and election and being personally taught by Christ Himself. And that when this happens, he claims you become a translated being and one of the 144,000 spoken of in revelation 7. He also teaches that men need to use their priesthood more fully so they can open portals for travel and command the elements. He teaches a deliverance doctrine. That all sickness, physical or mental issue is because you are possessed. So to heal he was teaching men to give what he called “quorum blessings”, which which is a group of four men who are fully using their priesthood and “aware” and to cast the demons out and then pronounce healing upon people. Stroud is also a huge believer in the book Visions of Glory. Stroud started a podcast where he taught his interpretation of the Book of Mormon from the stance of his Snuffer and Spencer beliefs. He also teaches that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is a telestial church and that when you get your calling and election via his methods, then you are entering a terrestrial church, which is called The Church of the Firstborn. This is not an actual church among these groups, but more a title and status symbol. If you look at Stroud’s teachings they are very much in line with the things we now know Lori Vallow believed it. There are many other people in these circles we could talk about. But this just gives you an idea about the many heads within these circles."
I like this quote because it gives some context about what the fuck Melanie Gibb was talking about at the end of the Dateline interview "After reading a PaP course on how to have visions and visionary dreams, they will use people such as Korihor, a Book of Mormon antichrist, to compare to those who don’t believe in their dreams. They use a LOT of out of context scripture and church leader quotes, which they will redefine words of (like meditation for example. They use quotes talking about how great mediation is, but then define this as the same thing as eastern meditation, which it is not.), and they set the definition of the idea spoken of. It’s pretty insidious when you look at it. They also will name or calling drop to make what they do look more legit."
So in conclusion? I think there are a lot more people following Chad Daybell and ALSO completely invested in Stroud's teaching (which seems to be the starting point for Lori and Chad's crazier claims) then a handful.
I would LOVE to get access to the Secret Chad Daybell Forum. I bet that shit is wild.

I made this post in a "debate" sub a few days ago which got deleted for reasons that I'm sure are pretty obvious (daring to argue in favor of gender equality for men).
But I figured it might be appreciated over here a little more.
Equal child custody is a legal concept that switches the starting point for custody to be 50/50 between the father and mother.
In legalese it is often stated to mean that the best interest of the child is defined to be a rebuttable, default presumption to equal custody. The terms rebuttable and default presumption means that equal custody is simply taken as the starting point in custody negotiations. It is not a requirement that is forced upon parents. Which means that alternative arrangements can be agreed to out of court, or argued for in court in the event of a disagreement.
Note that equal child custody is not the same thing as shared custody or joint custody. Joint custody has been interpreted by courts to mean "weekend visitation rights" or even "one day per month" in many jurisdictions. Equal custody is just that -- equal. Including when it comes to time with the child as well as when it comes to making important decisions for the child.
A couple points:

In practice this is only a thing in two US states

Existing research indicates that equal custody is beneficial to children, or at least not harmful compared to giving custody primarily to the mother

Academic research demonstrates pretty clearly that fathers and husbands are discriminated against in family court under existing laws

Here are a list of sources found in this paper in one of the footnotes:

See id. (noting that fathers who seek custody prevail in half or more cases); Mason & Quirk, supra note 228, at 228 tbl.2 (citing statistics showing that fathers won custody in forty-two percent of custody appeals, mothers prevailed in forty-five percent of cases, and twelve percent of the cases involved some form of shared custody, including 9.2% with split custody and 2.8% with joint physical custody); Massachusetts Report, supra note 227, at 825 (finding that fathers obtain custody in 70% of cases). But see MACCOBY & MNOOKIN, supra note 13, at 103-04 (finding that mothers obtained their preferred custodial arrangement twice as often as fathers); Bahr et al., supra note 208, at 257 (showing that fathers in Utah were awarded sole custody in only twenty-one percent of disputed cases, mothers received sole custody in fifty percent of cases, seventeen percent of fathers were awarded joint legal custody, and thirteen percent had split custody); Fox & Blanton, supra note 101, at 261 (finding that when fathers in California sought joint custody and mothers sought sole custody, mothers prevailed in sixty-seven percent of the cases)

Rosenthal, M. B. (1995). Misrepresentation of Gender Bias in the 1989 Report of the Gender Bias Committee of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. Breaking The Science.

Around 90% of cases are settled "out of court" but this happens against a backdrop where the father knows he stands on unequal legal footing

There is activism around this topic, and there is significant resistance to this idea

These laws provide the exact same clauses and protections for domestic abuse as existing laws

There are other issues around child custody that need to be addressed as well

In particular, it is often the case that unmarried fathers, by default, and unless voluntarily added to the birth certificate by the mother, have no parental rights at all. A man's parental rights, legally speaking, are often tied to the mother through marriage. And while there is at least a basic presumption for partial custody during a divorce, unmarried fathers are typically presumed to have no custody at all.
In the past, unmarried mothers who didn't want their children, but also didn't want the father to have them, have put them up for adoption without the father's concent. Such actions can even allow the mother to get out of paying child support in the event that the father is able to adopt his children.
There are laws in a few states that allow the biological father to receive preferential treatment during adoption proceedings, but the fact that a mother can even put up their children for adoption without explicit consent from the father (or at least a formal waiver from a judge), shows just how little we respect the rights of fathers.
Sources:
https://fox17.com/news/local/local-dads-fighting-to-make-joint-custody-the-default
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/07/paternity-registry/396044/
It really should just be the case that a father is presumed to have equal rights to his children as the mother, including even if they are not married.
Another problem I've seen is the outright denial that this is an issue. As well as related views that struggling fathers are just bad parents and deserve to be attacked and hated instead of understood and helped (like what we do for struggling mothers).
Denying this because it is inconvenient or because it demonstrates a "different type of sexism" that you don't want to acknowledge is harmful. And I'd even venture to argue is an example of sexism in and of itself; many people are sexist in how they approach sexism and gender equality.
This topic should be viewed as just as important of an issue of gender equality as anything else. And the fact that we don't hear much about it really just proves how sexist society can be towards men and fathers.

Also published here
Please enjoy, please comment, and if so inclined, please share.

I would like to start by suggesting that if a voice in your head tells you to kill somebody, you ought to ignore that voice. If that voice tells that you ought to chop the head off of a person that is so drunk as to be unconscious, even if the unconscious drunk has property that you would like to steal, you still ought to ignore that voice.
But what if that voice in your head asserts that it is the voice of the Spirit of God? If The Almighty deigns to speak to such as you or I, surely we ought not ignore His voice…
I cannot speak for everyone, but if I had a voice in my head telling me to kill someone, even if (especially if?) that voice claimed to be the Spirit of God Himself, my most likely course of action would be to seek immediate treatment for mental illness.
However, in the LDS church, children are taught to sing a song that celebrates the very event described above. And even though it is in reference a story about following a voice in your head telling you to behead an unconscious drunk in order to facilitate stealing his property, it is sung for the purposes of teaching those children to always listen to God, to trust Him, and to be obedient to His will.
The song in question is #120 in the Children’s Songbook, “Nephi’s Courage.” The first verse tells us
The Lord commanded Nephi to go and get the plates
From the wicked Laban inside the city gates.
Laman and Lemuel were both afraid to try.
Nephi was courageous. This was his reply:
The chorus teaches the lesson that is to be instilled by singing the song:
I will go; I will do the thing the Lord commands.
I know the Lord provides a way; he wants me to obey.
I will go; I will do the thing the Lord commands.
I know the Lord provides a way; he wants me to obey.
The chorus and first verse of “Nephi’s Courage” are referencing a story contained in Chapters 3 and 4 of 1st Nephi in the Book of Mormon (BoM):
3: 7 And it came to pass that I, Nephi, said unto my father: I will go and do the things which the Lord hath commanded, for I know that the Lord giveth no commandments unto the children of men, save he shall prepare a way for them that they may accomplish the thing which he commandeth them.
Chapter 4 provides the details of how the Lord “prepared” the way (italics and underlining added for emphasis) for Nephi:
6 And I was led by the Spirit, not knowing beforehand the things which I should do.
7 Nevertheless I went forth, and as I came near unto the house of Laban I beheld a man, and he had fallen to the earth before me, for he was drunken with wine.
8 And when I came to him I found that it was Laban.
9 And I beheld his sword, and I drew it forth from the sheath thereof; and the hilt thereof was of pure gold, and the workmanship thereof was exceedingly fine, and I saw that the blade thereof was of the most precious steel.
10 And it came to pass that I was constrained by the Spirit that I should kill Laban; but I said in my heart: Never at any time have I shed the blood of man. And I shrunk and would that I might not slay him.
11 And the Spirit said unto me again: Behold the Lord hath delivered him into thy hands. Yea, and I also knew that he had sought to take away mine own life; yea, and he would not hearken unto the commandments of the Lord; and he also had taken away our property.
12 And it came to pass that the Spirit said unto me again: Slay him, for the Lord hath delivered him into thy hands;
18 Therefore I did obey the voice of the Spirit, and took Laban by the hair of the head, and I smote off his head with his own sword.
19 And after I had smitten off his head with his own sword, I took the garments of Laban and put them upon mine own body; yea, even every whit; and I did gird on his armor about my loins.
20 And after I had done this, I went forth unto the treasury of Laban. And as I went forth towards the treasury of Laban, behold, I saw the servant of Laban who had the keys of the treasury. And I commanded him in the voice of Laban, that he should go with me into the treasury.
24 And I also spake unto him that I should carry the engravings, which were upon the plates of brass, to my elder brethren, who were without the walls.
Leaving aside the amateurish implausibility of the story[i], when innocent and impressionable LDS children are singing this song intended to instill the lesson that it is brave to be obedient to the will of God, they are actually singing about a BoM story in which Nephi listens to a voice in his head that tells him to behead an unconscious drunk so that he can steal his property.
I don’t know if I can sufficiently convey how profoundly disturbing I find this.
I’m confident that the majority of us know family and friends who experience voices in their heads. Depending on the research methodology and operational definitions,10 -70% of individuals without diagnosed mental illness have experienced hallucinatory voices (one of the studies referenced in the endnote reports that 11% of otherwise healthy university students reported hearing the voice of God) [ii] And certainly many of us live with, or have lived with, mental illness; at minimum we all know people who have. In some forms of mental illness, the prevalence of hallucinatory voices can be as high as 80%.[iii]
Imagine the harm that the lesson of “Nephi’s Courage” could do to a young person with a tendency to mental illness. After having the lesson of this song instilled through the repetition of a decade of Primary or Sunday School, and after being repeatedly taught that the BoM is “the most correct of any book on earth, and the keystone of our religion, and a man would get nearer to God by abiding by its precepts, than by any other book…” (italics added for emphasis), a young person reads the BoM, recognizes the passage from the chorus of Nephi’s Courage, and reads on to discover that that alleged courage alluded to in the title of the song is the courage to murder someone when a voice in one’s instructs it. What lesson does a young person with mental illness take away from this?
Even without taking mental illness into consideration, I recall being taught that I needed to listen to the “still small voice.”[iv] I was told that the still small voice would never guide me wrong, and that I must always be obedient to it.
If the Church is going to teach children that we must always be obedient to the voice of the spirit, and that it is courageous to commit an act that, like Nephi, they find morally objectionable[v], perhaps that lesson needs to be accompanied with certain provisos.
(i) Maybe children’s Primary lessons need to include a section on how to distinguish between hallucinatory voices in one’s head from the actual voice of the Spirit of God. Surely to teach children that they ought to follow through on morally reprehensible actions when a voice in the head tells them to, yet fail teach them how to judge between the actual voice of the Spirit of God and hallucinations would be, to say the least, irresponsible. Every person that I know who has heard voices as a symptom of illness has described them as appearing absolutely real. Certainly the President of the Church, his counsellors, and the Quorum of the 12, being Prophets, Seers, and Revelators, must have a reliable method for adjudicating which thoughts in his head are revelations and which are his own ideas (otherwise they would have no business claiming to be prophets, seers, or revelators); how easy would it be for the 15 to cobble together a guideline for the children to help them avoid following any non-revelatory voices in their heads?
(ii) Should my Sunday School lessons have included a section that taught us to “always follow the still small voice, except when it is telling you to do something wrong?”
That would, presumably, be absurd, and would imply that listening to the still small voice is not a reliable indicator of what is right. It would also directly contradict the lesson intended by repeatedly singing “Nephi’s Courage”—that listening to the spirit, even it seems to tell us to do something prima facie morally incorrect, is courageous.
(iii) Perhaps, as a variation on (ii), children could be taught a comprehensive list of what is right and wrong, and then told to follow the spirit only when it corresponds with column A. But again, this would teach the children that the spirit is an unreliable guide to the good, and would further reveal that the spirit is unnecessary for knowing the good.
More generally, what lesson does any child take away from this?
For most right thinking people, killing an unconscious victim ought not be counted as morally acceptable. I would venture that most right thinking people would find such an act, not courageous, but morally abhorrent. Most need not be actually told that killing an unconscious victim is morally repugnant because most recognize it as intrinsically wrong. The wrongness of murder is not due to its illegality, rather its illegality is due to its intrinsic wrongness. The story of Nephi’s “courage” turns that order of operations on its head. It quite contradicts the intuition that murder is intrinsically wrong, because, in order for the story to make sense, the fact that God requires the murder of Laban makes it somehow morally praiseworthy. Consequently, a necessary condition for the story to work is that murder cannot be intrinsically wrong.
Even more generally, the lesson to be derived from Nephi’s courage is the lesson of Divine Command Theory[vi]--that morality is not derived from society, norms, rules, or laws, but from the will of God.
St. Augustine of Hippo defined sin as “a word, deed, or desire in opposition to the eternal law of God.”[vii] The LDS Bible Dictionary does not offer a definition of sin, however official LDS websites suggest that sin is “[w]illful disobedience to God’s commandments,”[viii] and explain that “[t]o commit sin is to willfully disobey God's commandments or to fail to act righteously despite a knowledge of the truth (see James 4:17).”[ix] Divine Command Theory is closely conceptually linked to the notion of sin. The various formulations of Divine Command Theory share a common core: that the only foundation for ethics is found in God’s command, that God’s will is the ultimate and only source/foundation of morality/virtue/the good. That being the case, morality/virtue/goodness is defined by whether an act is performed in obedience/conformity to divine will, while the bad/evil/sin is defined by being in a volitional defiance to divine will (1st John 3:4; Romans 7: 12-14).
To offer a sufficient critique of Divine Command Theory would be too time consuming, so I refer the reader to “Zeus’s Thunderbolt, Euthyphro’s Dilemma, and the Eliminative Reduction of Sin” or to a shorter version of the same (edited for Sunstone Magazine), “Sin Does Not Exist: And Believing That It Does Is Ruining Us.”
The lesson to be derived by impressionable Primary children by singing “Nephi’s Courage” and learning about the still small voice is that God is the source of morality. What lesson can be drawn from learning that even murder is not intrinsically wrong if God tells you to do it? That nothing can be intrinsically wrong if God tells you to do it? No matter how wrong an action may be seen by society, by norms, or even by law, if God tells you do it, it is a courageous act! And how does one know if God is telling you to do something? The spirit. The voices. The still small voice. Feelings.
I put it to you, gentle reader, that this amounts to the antithesis of morality, that it creates a moral vacuum in which anything and everything is permissible. If it is okay to do whatever your feelings tell you is okay, even if it would be otherwise morally impermissible, then NOTHING is actually morally impermissible, and the lesson of Nephi’s alleged “courage” risks contributing to a culture of amorality in Mormonism.
[i] The story is amateurishly implausible. If one person holds up another person by the hair it would be mechanically impossible to swing a sword with the other arm with the force necessary to “smote” the victim’s head off. Mime the actions for yourself, you will see what I mean. And after smoting off his head, the victim’s clothes would be soaked in blood; when Nephi stole Laban’s clothes to impersonate him and steal the brass plates, Zoram (Laban’s servant) would have been suspicious.

[ii] http://www.intervoiceonline.org/research-2/research-summaries/voice-hearing-prevalence

[iii] Hugdahl K. Auditory hallucinations: A review of the ERC "VOICE" project. World J Psychiatry. 2015;5(2):193-209. doi:10.5498/wjp.v5.i2.193

[iv] https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/liahona/2007/08/listen-to-the-still-small-voice?lang=eng
https://littleldsideas.net/primary/sharing-time-ideas/holy-ghost/sharing-time-the-holy-ghost-speaks-in-a-still-small-voice/

[v] “I said in my heart: Never at any time have I shed the blood of man. And I shrunk and would that I might not slay him.” 1st Nephi 4:10.

[vi] There are plenty of places to find definitions of Divine Command Theory. For example: https://www.iep.utm.edu/divine-c/, http://www.philosophyofreligion.info/christian-ethics/divine-command-theory/, and http://www.blackwellreference.com/public/tocnode?id=g9781405106795_chunk_g97814051067955_ss1-129

[vii] https://www.encyclopedia.com/religion/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/sin-theology

[viii] https://www.lds.org/scriptures/gs/sin

[ix] https://www.lds.org/topics/sin?lang=eng

LuxR- and Acyl-Homoserine-Lactone-Controlled Non-luxGenes ...

quorum sensing define

quorum sensing define - win

How I found my way out.

Congress 101: House Rules, the House Floor, and the Parties

Introduction

The House Rules Committee

Da Rules

The Floor

The Committee of the Whole

Caucuses

Conclusion

My opinion on the History of the Word of Wisdom in re its adoption as a commandment

CMV: Equal child custody for mothers and fathers is not taken seriously enough. It should be considered a basic civil rights issue and supported on the basis of gender equality.

In practice this is only a thing in two US states

Existing research indicates that equal custody is beneficial to children, or at least not harmful compared to giving custody primarily to the mother

Academic research demonstrates pretty clearly that fathers and husbands are discriminated against in family court under existing laws

Rosenthal, M. B. (1995). Misrepresentation of Gender Bias in the 1989 Report of the Gender Bias Committee of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. Breaking The Science.

Around 90% of cases are settled "out of court" but this happens against a backdrop where the father knows he stands on unequal legal footing

There is activism around this topic, and there is significant resistance to this idea

These laws provide the exact same clauses and protections for domestic abuse as existing laws

There are other issues around child custody that need to be addressed as well

AP Bio Guide (Units 8 in comments)

1) Chemistry of Life

Content

Calculations

Labs

2) Cell Structure & Function

Content

Calculations

Labs

Relevant Experiments

3) Cellular Energetics

Content

Calculations

Labs

Relevant Experiments

4) Cell Communication & Cell Cycle

Content

Calculations

Relevant Experiments

5) Heredity

Content

Calculations

Relevant Experiments

6) Gene Expression and Regulation

Content

Calculations

Labs

Relevant Experiments

7) Natural Selection

Calculations

Labs

Relevant Experiments

How Many People Actually Followed Chad? Digging through the Mormon gossip...

CMV: Equal child custody for mothers and fathers is not taken seriously enough. It should be considered a basic civil rights issue and supported on the basis of gender equality.

In practice this is only a thing in two US states

Existing research indicates that equal custody is beneficial to children, or at least not harmful compared to giving custody primarily to the mother

Academic research demonstrates pretty clearly that fathers and husbands are discriminated against in family court under existing laws

Rosenthal, M. B. (1995). Misrepresentation of Gender Bias in the 1989 Report of the Gender Bias Committee of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. Breaking The Science.

Around 90% of cases are settled "out of court" but this happens against a backdrop where the father knows he stands on unequal legal footing

There is activism around this topic, and there is significant resistance to this idea

These laws provide the exact same clauses and protections for domestic abuse as existing laws

There are other issues around child custody that need to be addressed as well

Nephi’s Alleged “Courage”

Nephi’s Alleged “Courage”

quorum sensing define video

quorum sensing define top