September Dawn, what will this do to the LDS Church?

Film Review of September Dawn

I just watched the trailer for September Dawn. It encapsulated what I expected: idiotic. I applaud the PBS documentary "The Mormons" for its fair and introspective look at what Mormonism is about, but I'm flabbergasted by September Dawn for completely ignoring compotent historical facts.

The movie claims to reveal the truth about the Mountain Meadows Massacre that has been hidden... UNTIL NOW. Oh really? So completely ignore the academic research done on this historical event and listen to a small production company from Canada.

This is an exerpt of the linked review of the movie, "If only it had been that easy to escape September Dawn's steaming pile of historical tar-and-feathering. Cain doesn't even pretend to try to make the Mormons human; here, they're homesteading Nazis. His operatic nonsense accomplishes something I don't think he intended: By treating the Mormons with such laughable contempt, he actually made me feel sorry for them."

What do the CIA, the Vatican, and the Democratic Party have in common?

BBC NEWS Technology Wikipedia 'shows CIA page edits'

They all edit articles on Wikipedia. The BBC reports that all three organizations have altered articles about their opponents maliciously.

This has got to be reason number one why you need to be careful on Wikipedia. I'm not at all against Wikipedia but never, never, never use it as a direct source. It's a great place to get started on research but it's a complete joke to cite it.

Computerizing Health Records

Google and Microsoft Look to Change Health Care

As we approach the 2008 election year we are bound to hear bold promises concerning health care reform. What do the people want? Lower costs and greater access. I have some suggestions:

1) Just as the linked article above shows, we need to computerize records and create a better infrastructure for sharing information. Such a system will help us better monitor our health and eliminate costly paperwork that is much too common in our hospitals.

2) Reform medicare. What exactly are our goals concerning medical care? Do we want all to have sufficient access and manageable payments? Then lets make a committed effort to allowed increased government funds to actually reach the end of the row! Elminate costly administration.

Romney Faces the Mormon Challenge

Romney Argument on YouTube

Will the question of Romney's faith ever stop? Honestly, I don't see an end in sight. It's an issue that's as salient as having a black or female president. America was founded by Protestant Christian men and largely has been run by Protestant Christian men. Anything that deviates has always been an issue.

Here's another interesting article I just recently read. I think Evangelical Christians honestly need to put aside their dogmatic beliefs and instead focus on the enormous amount they hold in common with Romney.

How frank should we be about Church History?

I'm a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. I honestly believe I'm part of the best thing on the planet. One of my passions is being completely frank about church history and addressing pressing issues, or at least discussing them. Never at any time during my questioning of church doctrines or church history have I ever felt the church wasn't God's true church. I was reading today on lds.org as a break from my regular MCAT study and read this statement from Boyd K. Packer. This statement is from the FULL transcript from an interview given for the PBS documentary "The Mormons". And I quote:

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Helen Whitney: Is there a conflict between a faith-promoting work of scholarship and factual scholarship? Is there a conflict at all?

Boyd K. Packer: There can be. Some things that are true aren’t very useful. And
there are those in the past who have looked at the leaders of the Church,
for instance, and found out that they’re human and want to tell everything.
There are steps and missteps that don’t help anything. Some think that to be
totally honest they have to tell everything. They don’t. If they’ve got the
mindset for that, then they’re always grumbling — they have an appetite for
it. They’re free to do that, but it isn’t really productive, it doesn’t
really make anybody happy.

Someone you knew, say when you were in college, made a terrible mistake. You knew about it, and it was forgiven and lived beyond. There’s little purpose in going back and digging that out and speaking of it when their children might be present — a lot of things that are true historically aren’t very useful and don’t generate happiness.

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Fantastic! These are my exact feelings when I'm asked tough questions about my faith, and I think Elder Packer puts it wonderfully here. Here's the link to the article.