I have been doing a lot of studying and pondering lately. I’ve decided I need to make sure I really believe what I believe, and what it is that I believe. I think every person in every religion should do this - faith, without some reasoning, in my opinion brings out a lot of weakness in religion. I think God should “make sense” and not just be someone people follow blindly. While blind faith may be a start for some people, I think people deserve to have some reasoning behind their faith. Yes, you can have reasoning with faith.

Joseph Smith said, “It is the first principle of the gospel to know for a certainty the character of God, and to know that we may converse with Him as one man converses with another, and that He was once a man like us; yea, that God himself, the Father of us all, dwelt on an earth, the same as Jesus Christ Himself did; and I will show it from the Bible.” I believe this is probably the phrase most criticized of Mormons - those against the Mormon Church love to use this to make us look weird and “non-Christian”. The thing is, I don’t really care what others think! Mormons should embrace this message! To me, this is the first principle of the Gospel, and Mormon or not, one must understand God most of all and that God must make sense.

I absolutely love Joseph Smith’s King Follet Discourse. Ironically, this link is from lighthouse ministries, I believe a Jehovas Witness site. Jehovas Witnesses and others, criticize away, but I don’t want anything else if what Joseph Smith says here isn’t true! I simply could not believe in God as a “mysterious being”. I want a God I can love, who will love me back, one I can talk to, will talk back, and who, Scientifically, just makes sense. The King Follet Discourse to me along with other LDS doctrine of the Godhead explain God in a way that actually supports science and can be explained “with reason”. No other religion I’m aware of has such a detailed view. Let me review a few things I’ve read about other religions’ belief in God. Please don’t take this as an attack against those religions - I respect your faith. I simply want to support the fact that Mormons do have a very detailed view of who God is, and why I simply couldn’t believe in a God if I didn’t believe in the Mormon view of God:

Catholics: “I pray to a God of mystery, a personal God, an approachable God, but a mysterious God nonetheless. Therefore, I have to bow my head and trust. God is not altogether unknowable, just not fully knowable, and never fully known this side of heaven.” (Reverend William J. Byron)

I think all other protestant religions share the Catholic belief above, as I can’t find a specific explanation of who God is out of the other religions. I would love to know if anyone can explain a difference. Here are searches for several under ‘(religion name) “character of god”‘ in Google: Baptist, Methodist, Jehovas Witness, 7th Day Adventist. I see many attempts, but no clear description like Joseph Smith. Ironically, the only clear descriptions in many of the search results are either in criticism of the LDS church, or quotes from LDS church members themselves. Have the Mormons been the only ones to actually try to explain the mysteries of God? Why is that a bad thing, especially if the attempt is through a belief in a Prophet who has talked to God?

Here is the Jewish belief, as I understand: “Although Jews have certainly considered the nature of God, man, the universe, life, and the afterlife at great length, there is no mandated, official, definitive belief on these subjects, outside of very general concepts such as the thirteen listed above.” (http://www.mechon-mamre.org/jewfaq/beliefs.htm)

And the Islamic belief: “Muslims hold to a monotheism which is closer to that of Judaism than Christianity, rejecting the Christian concept of a “Trinity.” Muslims believe that God, creator of all of existence, is just, omnipotent, and merciful. Muslims also reject the anthropomorphization of God which occurs in the theology of other monotheistic religions like Christianity or Judaism. For Muslims, God is completely “other” - God does not talk, does not walk and does not do anything like humans.” (http://atheism.about.com/library/FAQs/islam/blfaq_islam_basic.htm)

I love my God. He is a personal God. I can talk to him. He talks back. My God actually lives somewhere. Yes, I worship my God, and my God only, and I treat Him as my Creator. He sent His Son to redeem me. The thing is, my God makes sense! I don’t want any other God than the God I believe in. Other religions seem to miss the Character of God in their doctrines. They seem scared to approach it - I don’t get it, as I need something to back up my faith. If my God weren’t the God Joseph Smith explains, hey - Bhuddism looks kind of appealing… Who is your God and why do you believe in Him? Do you have a better God than the one Mormons believe in and can you explain it with reason? Or do we really believe in the same God, and you’re just missing some of the details? I’m very curious on other Christians’ thoughts about this.

If you’re into the Indy film scene, and enjoy very creative and humorous writing, you might enjoy my brother’s blog, http://www.lukestay.com. He runs his own film company, Faber Films (Luke - do you have a url for that yet?), and has done behind-the-scenes technical work at various conferences in Las Vegas and now New York. He’s done work behind-the-scenes for some pretty famous celebrities and comedians, if I understand correctly. You can see a few of his films at http://www.lukestay.com/projects/.

So now you know the arts background in my family - my brother, the film writer and producer, and my sister, the Theatre Owner and Stage Manager. I have another sister that’s a singer.

I came across this article today:

http://www.networkworld.com/community/?q=node/15522

In the article, it overviews a new technology produced by a student at Carnegie Mellon University called reCaptcha, which allows bloggers and the like to make good with the Captcha images they are using on their sites to combat Spam. Captchas are little images of randomly-generated text that would be hard for any bot or the like to determine what it says. The user must read the image, type in the text in the image, and only then can their submission, comment, or subscription be validated. It ensures a human is actually the one interacting with your site.

The developer of the reCaptcha technology has worked with Archive.org to instead of just randomly generate text like most Captchas do, take actual images from archived texts, and slowly but surely allow users to transcribe those texts to searchable text, whether they are aware of it or not. It presents 2 words. One of those words is an unarchived picture of an actual word in an image of an untranscribed book on archive.org. The other word is a word they already know the meaning of. When your users enter both, if the known word is right, it assumes the other word is right, and sends it on to a couple other users until they can be sure it’s a pretty accurate transcription. So in the likes of SETI @Home, normal use of process is being used to help a good cause. It makes me wonder what other types of processes, UI designs, and other technologies we use every day could be used in similar manners. I can only imagine the applications of this software towards Family History archives, Genealogy, and the like. I hope the LDS Church could consider getting involved in this endeavor some how, or perhaps they could provide an API so applications such as this could tie into their imaging project.

I liked this project so much that I’ve decided to implement the reCaptcha in the comments on Stay N’ Alive. This is not to make commenting harder (aKismet does a great job at keeping the spam out), but rather to allow my users to participate in a good cause and encourage you to comment more. Now, when you comment on Stay N’ Alive, know you’re contributing to a good cause, perhaps without even realizing it.

So, if you see a blog using Captcha out there, please encourage them to use this technology instead! It is a very easy fix for Wordpress, and should be easy to implement into other blogs. If you see a blog that uses this, comment! Use the reCaptcha! Help spread the word!

We have a couple doorknobs in my house that I need to replace here soon. I’d like to replace them with a fingerprint-based system. Preferably, I’d like one that can send authentication to a computer via network and let the computer determine who has access and who doesn’t. WIFI is definitely a plus, but I haven’t seen anything of the sort. I’d also like something as cheap as possible. My question is, is anyone aware of such a system, and if so, what do you recommend? Have any of you had experience setting up such a system?

I just read this article:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1834425/posts

So, a girl’s friends get offended by Mormons, causing them to make inappropriate comments about Mormons. Then, Mormon Girl gets offended by those comments and says “That’s so Gay!”. School Administrators get offended (are they gay?), and suspend the girl for her comments. Girl and her parents get offended by School Administrators by her suspension, and file suit against the School District.

Thank goodness the judge put a stop to this! Should the girl get justice for her offense? Maybe, but when will this stop? Were she to win, would the school administrators be offended and file counter-suit? What happened to forgive and forget? I feel bad for the girl - I’ve been offended myself over similar comments about Mormons, never punished for my reaction for it, but I understand her feelings and reaction - I still don’t see the need to push this any further. Good for the judge - what’s done is done.

Notice all the adsense ads for this post - what does it have to do with “Mormon Underwear” (well, other than I mentioned the term “Mormon” once or twice)? I find it fascinating what Google can dish up some times.

I am on a crunch to finish a software release at Work, so haven’t had an opportunity to blog in the last week. Here are some items I would have blogged about if I had the time. Maybe I’ll still write about them:

• Al Sharpton Apologizes to the LDS Church, coincidentally around the same time the entire Church learns about Forgiveness in Priesthood and Relief Society.
• “Utah Now” on KUED and Comments by the Commentators of “The Mormons” on PBS.
• Directed Light Power Station in Europe and how I think it would make a good Garden piece
• Arizona Mormon sues Government for right to not pay taxes, “since his church will already take care of him.”
• My Beliefs in God and Why I would probably be Bhuddist if it all weren’t true (expect this one soon)
• My Tribute to my Grandmother, who is sick in the Hospital right now

I have a theory my Dad is a CIA Agent. There - I said it. If this post is not here tomorrow you’ll know why. Oh, and all your minds are going to be erased after reading this.

You see, I had a friend in Thailand whose Dad was a CIA agent growing up. He posed as an Accountant, even worked for an Oil company in Thailand, and his family, as far as they were concerned, thought he worked for the Oil company.

One day his Dad never came home from work. After some worry and searching, the family came to find out their Dad was not at work at all, but was actually captured in the Killing Fields of Cambodia over the Thailand border. This guy also lived in Houston where I grew up, and I actually got to hear the story from the Dad while there. The Dad has an entire story of using Urine for mosquito repellent, eventually escaping from a hole in the ground, and running naked through the jungle escaping over the border into Thailand. Pretty cool, if you ask me.

You see, my Dad growing up would often spend up to a month oversees. He would travel to countries such as Nigeria, Kuwait, Egypt, Syria, and we even lived in Indonesia for three years. It was while living in Indonesia that the Libya bombings took place. He was actually in Soviet Russia just down the street while the Coup was knocking on the Kremlin walls. He was there multiple times before that (we have in our possession a Soviet General’s uniform, among several coins, Soviet memorabilia, etc.).

Then, in the US, he was working for another “oil company” in Houston during the entire time the whole Enron scandal was going on. He later moved to Virginia, and lo and behold 9/11 happens while over there. Not to mention the company he was working for at the time happened to have its own accounting scandal. He’s now in Boston - I wonder what’s going to happen there.

My Dad never talked about work much growing up. He was somewhat muscular. Maybe it’s the whole “superhero dad” thing, but I think I am left with no other conclusion. My dad is in the …. wait, I seem to be forgetting what I was typing about.

I just realized I had a ton of comments awaiting moderation. In switching to Wordpress lately, I didn’t realize I had moderation turned on. In noticing I wasn’t getting any comments lately, I went and checked, and sure enough, there were over 50 comments awaiting moderation. My apologies to those who commented to get no response from me. I will go through all the moderated comments now and try to respond to any pending questions. I need to decide now if I want to leave moderation on or just turn it off and risk a little spam here and there.

Recently, PBS released a Frontline Documentary entitled “The Mormons” (note the Mormon church now has a sub-path on pbs.org). Produced by Helen Whitney, the film strives to provide an unbiased viewpoint on the history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and what has gotten the Church to be as large and magnificent as it is today. Controversial topics such as Polygamy, the Mountain Meadows Massacre were covered thoroughly, with viewpoints from all sides presented, providing a generally unbiased viewpoint on the topics.

I thought it was fairly well done. While it would not be a missionary presentation the Church would use in teaching about their beliefs (why spend 1/4 of the first half on the Mountain Meadows Massacre, and why so much time on the Fundamentalists, and what about the whole excommunication part?), the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints put it best by saying, “At a time when significant media and public attention is being turned to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and when news media is so often accused of superficiality in its coverage of religion, this serious treatment of a serious subject is a welcome change.” The documentary was certainly a welcome relief to the biased accusations and anti-Mormon rhetoric presented to counteract Mormons in the public domain such as Mitt Romney running for President.

I only hope those not of my faith could feel the touching influence of the Holy Spirit reflecting truth as I did throughout the documentary.