When Lehi leaves Jerusalem, he builds an altar in the wilderness. The Levitical law forbids offering sacrifices anywhere than the temple, under the authority of the Chief Priest. Lehi’s altar shows that he is establishing a new church – not with different beliefs and practices, but with a different community and organization.
In the mid 1800s, two of the planets were discovered to move slightly differently from what was expected from Newtonian mechanics: Uranus and Mercury. Although the discrepancy in the data looked similar, the underlying cause was very different. In one case, it meant that there is an additional planet. In the other, it meant that Newtonian mechanics was wrong.
I prefer using data to help understand history. Noticeable changes in relevant data indicate that something important happened here – and you should figure out what that was. I am looking at the recent history of Mormon missionary work, using the data for the number of members, missionaries, and convert baptisms published by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Some changes are easily visible, like shorting the length of a mission in the early 1980s and lengthening it again or the age change in 2012 are immediately obvious. Others, like Raising the Bar and Preach My Gospel, can be seen but are more subtle. I have no explanation for the biggest change: in the 1990s, the number of missionaries and number of baptisms decoupled. Missionaries continued to increase, but baptisms began to fall. We have never been able to get to this number of baptisms since. If we could figure out how to return to the pre-1990 relationship between missionaries and baptisms, we would have hundreds of thousands of additional converts every year.
Indo-European is by far the most successful language family. Of the 15 most commonly spoken languages, 10 are Indo-European. This is not just a result of European colonialism: through most of history, including today, the largest Indo-European state has been centered in either India or Persia. Who were the original Indo-Europeans? How did they come to such dominance?
We scientists like to think that information follows from the observations upwards through various intermediate steps to the theories we use to describe, predict, and control our world. Our ideas are determined by our observations; our observations are not determined by our ideas. If there is a disagreement between our observations and our ideas, the ideas must change, not the observations. This isn’t entirely the case. Our ideas can also influence our observations. What we see is influenced by what we think exists. I will present one example of how our observations are influenced by our ideas.
Some people use the word ‘freedom’ to mean personal anarchy. Other people use ‘freedom’ to mean using discipline to increase your capabilities.
A child asks: “Why is the sky blue?” What are you supposed to say? You don’t know the answer. The technical answer is Rayleigh scattering, but that seems like the sort of thing you learn about in a graduate class on electromagnetism. I hope to give you an answer that you could explain to a child.
