A note from Stan Tenen


Note: The following is a private message that Stan Tenen sent to me on March 17th, 2010, via my Facebook account, concerning the post Bringing Stan Tenen and The Meru Foundation to the Attention of all LDS [alternate title: Doing what4anarchy’s Job] and its comment section.

While searching for something else, I ran into your LDS Anarchist website, and found the materials related to me and my work.

This is all very sad. It’s a sad commentary on the state of education, and on the emptiness of our society.

Instead of engaging a new idea, it just gets picked to death by children.

This is why I’ve pulled away from LDS (which previously was a strong supporter of my work from several quarters) and other religions. People involved in religion — with rare exception — are, as Marx and Freud taught, merely hiding from their own mortality. Intellectual honesty is not possible from people who are “scared to death of death”, and don’t even know it.

For people who don’t understand why I’m elucidating the fluid rabbinic form of the alphabet, all I can say is, you really haven’t a clue about how science is done. I follow the data.

I didn’t know that the letters at the beginning of Genesis would form a particular geometry. I didn’t know it would be a model hand. And I didn’t know it would be related to the alphabet, or any particular alphabet. I followed the data.

The letter-text led to a particular geometry.

I first took this geometry to represent a model light or flame.

Later, I realized that this was not functional, even though it generated shapes that matched all the Hebrew letters of a particular alphabet.

Later, during an exploration of the Jewish ritual of tefillin, I realized that what I had taken to be a flame was actually a model hand, and given the known properties of our hands, everything else then fell in place.

I didn’t choose the alphabet. I found the shapes that matched, and then identified them. I’m sorry if religious believers and scholars have become fascinated by many other alphabets. I didn’t have a choice. When you’re doing science, you don’t force-fit. You take what you find and try to make sense of it.

Anyone going to the trouble of actually checking out more than the headlines of what I’m proposing would know the audit trail from the Canaanite to the modern letters. (I’m proposing two separate lines of development.)

I’m no Newton, but I like his methods. Newton taught how gravity worked, but said he didn’t have a clue as to why it worked that way.

It’s for critics to explain how come one alphabet comes from hand gestures and the others don’t.

I found the alphabet in the letters of the first verse of Genesis. I found the letters matched a particular alphabet, and not other alphabets; and I provided a theory that makes sense of this — i.e., hand gestures are universal among all self-aware creatures. (All intelligent creatures know that when you point to something, you’re drawing attention to it — etc.)

Please feel free to post any or all of this if you’d like.

If there are any serious responses, please pass them on to me via email. I don’t do websites, and I don’t do blogs. (Life’s short.)

Have a happy LDS Passover/Easter. Whichever, whatever.

Be well,
Stan

Previous Stan Tenen article: Bringing Stan Tenen and The Meru Foundation to the Attention of all LDS [alternate title: Doing what4anarchy’s Job]

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Monson and his constipated physics redux; or, how electric gravity makes hollow earthers happy


I’ve mentioned Milton W. Monson and his curious book once before on this blog, but without really explaining its impact on me.  Whatever you think of him, after reading the book, it is hard to get it out of your mind.  A look at the reactions to it by the physics boys who’ve actually read it shows that although most give it a bad review (as in bad physics and bad mathematics), they all concede that the book is unforgettable.  How could it not be?  His was the first book, that I know of, that attempted to tackle physics using algebra alone, as well as to unite the sciences.  Plus, it was really funny.

I was one of the few individuals (actually, I don’t know the precise number of individuals) who contacted the author after reading the book.  It was then that I learned that he sent out S.T.R.R.I.P. Tease bulletins to those who contacted him, free of charge.  (S.T.R.R.I.P. = Society To Restore Rationalism In Physics, or something to that effect.  Yes, he was a dirty old man.)  The S.T.R.R.I.P. Tease bulletins were further physics lessons that he had not included in his book.

Monson was/is (I don’t know if he is still alive) an atheist and dedicated an entire chapter to debunking religion, but despite that, I had to send him some emails concerning the similarities I found in modern revelations with the physics he was proposing.  Needless to say, finding a spiritual counterpart in his theory didn’t make him very happy and he tried to convince me of the errors of my ways.  I had fun corresponding with him and I think it was fun for him, too, as he was getting up there in age and most people just thought of him as “old Monson with the crazy space balls.”  (Space balls was a theory he invented to help explain physics phenomena.)

Monson was set in his irreligious ways, and accepted a great deal of mainstream science, while attempting to debunk the rest that he felt did not hold up to rational, physics scrutiny.  He either wasn’t aware of the plasma scientists and their experiments, or chose not to consider their results in his model of the Universe.  I believe that he simply didn’t know about it.  I also believe that if he had known about it, he probably would not have liked it, as the discoveries plasma scientists make tend to confirm the scriptures, and he, being an atheist, probably would not have liked that very much.  Also, as he tended to ridicule everything he felt was wrong, if plasma science was available to him, and he thought it was erroneous, it probably would have gotten a mention in his book.

Let me just say here and now to Monson, if you are still alive: I thoroughly enjoyed your book and am glad it was written, both for its witticisms and its portrayals of new concepts. And if he is not alive, then to his son and any other surviving family members: Your departed relative made an impression for the better upon at least one individual on this planet.  I hope one day someone takes up and finishes his foundational work.

Physics Is Constipated (Intellectually That Is)

That is the title of Monson’s book.  Even if the content was horrendous, the title alone would be hard to forget.  To his credit, though, it was engaging and fun.  Heck, even the front and back cover artwork and text were thought-provoking.  But it has been many years since I last read it.  So, what was my surprise when along comes an electrical theorist, Wallace Thornhill, proposing an electric gravity model in an electric universe and using words that seemingly conveyed the same types of thoughts as Monson?

Here is Thornhill’s shortened, but nevertheless interesting paper:

Electric Gravity in an Electric Universe

Gravity, Einstein and Scientific Saints

Gravity is the most familiar force. We are subject to it every day of our lives. Newton gave us his ‘law of gravity,’ which describes its effect but doesn’t explain it. “I frame no hypotheses,” he wrote.  (Thornhill, first paragraph of Electric Gravity in an Electric Universe.)

Unlike Newton, Monson actually attempted to explain gravity.  And his explanation, using only two material types,  which he called structured space and structured matter, made pretty darn good sense.  Thornhill seems to build upon this Monsonian base—has he read Monson’s book?—, including the all-important electrical connection.

Einstein wasn’t so prudent when he introduced his “postulates.”  Unfortunately, his unreal geometry doesn’t explain gravity either. The usual demonstration using heavy steel balls on a rubber sheet to represent ‘gravity wells’ relies on gravity as its own explanation!  (Thornhill, first paragraph of Electric Gravity in an Electric Universe.)

Thornhill throughout this article does the same thing Monson did: show the Einsteinian age as the death of rational physics.  Monson is a bit harsher in his denunciation of Einstein, whereas Thornhill at least gives Einstein the benefit of doubting his own words:

How has this situation arisen? In the 20th century technology perfected wireless communication and computers and got man into space, while fundamental science fell deeper into a ‘black hole’ of complication, illogicality and metaphysics. I consider the principal cause has been the usurping, since Einstein, of natural philosophy and physics by theoretical mathematicians. Meanwhile Einstein, perhaps to his credit, remained sceptical of his own work. (Thornhill, 6th paragraph of Electric Gravity in an Electric Universe, emphasis mine.)

Monson spoke of the scientific community with disdain as being made up of “scientific saints” and “scientific priests.”  In this paper, Thornhill quotes Mike Disney in his footnotes as saying:

The most unhealthy aspect of cosmology is its unspoken parallel with religion. Both deal with big but probably unanswerable questions. The rapt audience, the media exposure, the big book-sale, tempt priests and rogues, as well as the gullible, like no other subject in science.

The Aether and the Michelson-Morley Experiment

Monson was a believer in the Aether.  He rejected the concept that space was filled with nothing.  In his view, there were but two elements that made up the entire Universe: structured space and structured matter and the interaction between these two elements as they competed for the same volume of space accounted for all of the seen and unseen energy manifestations around us.  He believed in simplification as the key to the promulgation of the sciences among the masses.  The structured space was the motive element whereas the sctructured matter was basically just pushed around.  Each element was completely opposite in its qualities.  For example, one could be compressed and deformed like a hollow balloon whereas the other was a dense ball of super hard, indestructible stuff.  There was no volume of space that was not occupied by either structured space or structured matter.

Sound familiar?  When I brought to his attention Lehi’s writings of that which acts and that which is acted upon (see 2 Ne. 2: 13-14) or the Lord’s revelations in the Doctrine and Covenants about the Light of Christ filling the immensity of space (see D&C 88: 12), etc., he wasn’t too happy, but I was pleased to see that he had come to these conclusions on his own, independent of the word of God, merely by observing nature.

Monson’s major problem was the Michelson-Morley experiment, which had apparently failed to detect the aether.  His solution was a modification to that experiment that, in his estimation, would have shown that the aether does, in fact, exist.  (He believed that the experiment failed because the experimenters didn’t know what to look for.)  At any rate, as the experiment had been discredited as a failure, any newbie (such as Monson) contending that the aether was real was laughed at as a crackpot.

Thornhill in this paper brings up the same Michelson-Morley experiment, adding, though, that Dayton Miller repeated the experiment and found an aether drift! Monson, apparently, was not aware of that fact, as Miller was written out of the text books, which would have helped his case immensely.

Structure, structure, everywhere

As stated above, Monson believed the Universe was composed of structured material of two types.  Thornhill, likewise, addresses the Universe as structured, even taking the electron and breaking it down into smaller structures called subtrons.

Gravity, Electromagnetism and Inertia

Both men tie gravity, electromagnetism and inertia to the same common source: the aether.  Whereas Monson contended that the aether “deformed balloons” pushed back at structured matter to produce gravity, Thornhill explains that the minute, structural, electric dipoles align in one direction to produce gravity.  In either case, all manifestation of any type is explained from a single source.

Gravity is a Variable

Both Monson and Thornhill come to the same conclusion: gravity varies depending upon the aether environment. Monson described the aether environment in terms of compression and torsion and Thornhill describes it in terms of charge and electricity.

The speed of light and gravity

Both men also address the near instantaneous speed of gravity, no matter how far the distances, and the slowness of light.  Both Monson and Thornhill address the e=mc2 equation, including when the speed of light is put into the equation.  Neither man gets time slowing down or Alice in Wonderland Effects.  Everything remains based in reality and rationalism.  However, Monson, again, explains things using compression and torsion, while Thornhill explains it in electrical terms.  Both men, though, make sense.

Mass

Monson and Thornhill both explain mass in terms of the aether environment and not as “quantity of matter.”  As a result, this opens up the possibility that mainstream science’s expectation of fluffy, spongy or hollow bodies could turn out to be solid and dense while the expectation of solid and dense bodies could turn out to be hollow or spongy.

Thornhill, in fact, draws from recent cometary and asteroid evidence, which should have shown fluffy snowballs (the comets) but instead showed apparently dense rocks, suggesting that our models—of what type of a body ought to produce the gravitational field were are seeing—are inaccurate.  Monson, whose book was written in the 1980’s, never had this astronomical data to work from.

Electric Gravity and Hollow Planets

Electric, or aether-generated gravity opens up the very real possibility of the planets being hollow.  The current thoughts on gravity, that it requires a certain amount of matter to have a certain amount of gravity, preclude many planets from being hollow.  They must be solid in order to account for the amount of gravity detected.  So, if gravity is shown to have an electric connection, the main obstacle to hollow planets vanishes altogether.

Although Monson never intended to promote the hollow earth theory, his model could be equally applied to both solid and hollow planets, without destroying it (the model).  Likewise, Thornhill’s model is also consistent with hollow spheres or structures, both on the subatomic level and on the planetary or galactic scale.  The electric universe theorists usually do not categorically state that their model favors a hollow planets scenario, as they are marginalized by the mainstream scientists enough, as it is, but as one reads more and more of their findings, it becomes apparent that it does.

Black holes

The major break between Monson and Thornhill is their opinion of black holes.  Whereas Monson accepted that black holes do, in fact, exist, Thornhill and the other plasma scientists think it’s just a mathematical invention, an imaginary device that has no counterpart in the real world.  But, again, Monson didn’t have the plasma data to work with.  If he had, he might have discarded the notion of black holes, too.

LDS Scientists: Pay Attention

The plasma theorists and scientists are on the cutting edge.  Despite being largely ignored by the mainstream, they are forging ahead and breaking new ground.  It would be to our benefit (as an LDS community) to pay attention to their findings.  The day may come that we will have to rebuild society.  If and when that happens, a proper understanding of all physics findings will be needed to correct the errors perpetuated by the current scientific community, your non-LDS peers, otherwise we LDS will be no better off or no more enlightened than any other people on the planet, regardless of the gospel knowledge we possess.  The electrical connection may be the most important of all.

The keys to correcting the errors are the scientific anomalies, which invalidate many theories.  Often we don’t hear about these anomalies.  They are briefly reported and then swept under the rug.  Out of sight, out of mind and the current popular scientific theory remains intact.  Inform yourself about the anomalies. Bring them up, focus on them and seek to correct the errors.  A knowledge of the plasma research will help as that field of research addresses anomalies.

Next Plasma Theology article: Plasma Rods: A Theoretical Concept

Previous Plasma Theology article: The hollow earth theory, the plasma model and Mormon theology

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The Great and Abominable Church


2,575 words

© Anthony E. Larson, 2002

The Great and Abominable Church

Many surprises await the serious student of scripture and ancient history-revelations about our past and the true nature of the world we live in.  Most surprising, however, is the revelation that all is not as it seems in our culture and its most fundamental institutions.

For example, in the Book of Mormon we read about “a great and abominable church” seen by Nephi in his great revelation to emerge after the time of the original apostles and continue on up into the time of the Gentiles.  (Nephi 13:26.)  This vile institution is named disparagingly in both the Book of Mormon and the Doctrine & Covenants.  The natural conclusion is that Latter-day Saints should be able to identify it and thus avoid its dastardly influence.

However, as it turns out, the exact identity of this “church” is a matter of some conjecture and confusion among Latter-day Saints.  Most interpret Nephi’s statements to refer to the Catholic church.  However, that assessment may not be accurate since the great and abominable church was said by him to have “dominion over all the earth,” something well beyond the dominance of the Catholic church.  Others have argued that governments in general fill the bill of the “great and abominable church” for reasons that will become clear further on.

On the one hand, a careful reading of these scriptures indicates that Nephi simply spoke is general terms with the intent of depicting the division between good and evil in the world as churches.  “Behold there are save two churches only; the one is the church of the Lamb of God, and the other is the church of the devil …”-a point well made and easily understood. (1 Nephi 14:10.)

On the other hand, it appears that Nephi also intended to warn us of a specific institution in the world that would have a recognizable history and agenda.  He indicated that it would evolve as a religion.  Hence, it would be in a position to do considerable spiritual damage so that it would “blind the eyes and harden the hearts of the children of men.”  (See Nephi 13:26.)  Seemingly, any institution with such a history, sweeping influence and a despicable agenda should be easy to spot.  But the confusion among Latter-day Saints regarding this “church” indicates that this is simply not the case.

This begs the following questions:  How are we to guard against the wicked influence of an institution we cannot readily identify?  Is it possible, even likely, that this “church” is working its vile influence among the Saints today?  Does Nephi’s warning to us, the Gentiles, that we should avoid the trap, “that great pit,” that this institution might present to us goes unheeded since we do not seem to know which institution and ideas to defend ourselves against?

Clearly, a more careful analysis is in order so as to determine what this “church” might be and what harmful doctrines it may be imposing upon us.

To begin with, we must go back in history to see if we might thereby learn the nature and origin of this “church” and how it manages to “blind the eyes and harden the hearts of the children of men” in order to understand how it might insinuate its distorted ideas and values into our lives.

Additionally, what the Book of Mormon prophet foresaw as a “church” may appear to be an entirely different institution in our eyes.  Thus, the organization we seek may not appear to us to be a church at all, judging by a reading of all references to it, even though that word used by Nephi to designate it might also be appropriate, given its historical development from the true church. 

Let’s look at history to possibly learn more about this “great and abominable church.”

It is well understood by Latter-day Saints how the primitive church ceased to function in its purity when revelation ceased after the death of the early apostles.  History indicates that what was once the true church metamorphosed into the Catholic church, still preaching some tenets of the true church, but having denied much that is “plain and most precious.”  Hence, many have sought to show that the Catholic is the “great and abominable church,” but that may be an oversimplified, partial truth, as we shall see.

Moving forward in time, we see that the Catholic church grew to dominate Western cultures.  It came to be the universal church that largely governed the Holy Roman Empire.  Thus, it can be correctly argued that the church also became a form of shadow government, ruling all the empires of the West for centuries thru the Papacy.

This condition endured for centuries until a handful of reformers decided to challenge the precepts and practices of the mother church.  The Reformation, as this confrontation and religious schism came to be known, gave rise to numerous protesting groups or churches in Christianity, hence the term Protestant.  These new churches, even when taken together with the Catholic, fall short of the malevolent church we seek since they still fall short of a worldwide institution.

Yet, there was one institution born during the Reformation that deserves our special attention, one that declined to call itself a church yet has all the earmarks of a religion.  The tactic employed by this group was to denounce religion as anathema to logical, rational thinking and investigation.  This group proclaimed that all religion was misguided, that it was a blight on the quest for knowledge since religion employed faith rather than intellect.  Their group, they proclaimed, would avoid any such stigma by distancing itself from religion altogether.

Ironically, this newly born institution, which refused to call itself a church, took on many characteristics of a religion, or church, as we shall see.  As its adherents went about organizing this new institution, it evolved much as the other protesting religions with its own dogma, catechism and priesthood.

This institution is orthodox science.

Naturally, the implication that science might be part of Nephi’s “great and abominable church” might be shocking and outrageous to some.  Nevertheless, as we shall see, such may well be the case.  Normative science, as an institution, fits Nephi’s description in that it pervades all societies and cultures worldwide and it contradicts and disparages all the basic tenets of the true religion, all the while making it difficult for the faithful to understand vital parts of the restored gospel.  And while the search for knowledge is noble and proper, what passes as science, in too many instances, is actually institutionalized ignorance.

More analysis is necessary to establish the case in point.

History reveals that science began in the Renaissance as an alternative philosophy to religion, a reactionary rebellion opposed to the intellectual repression of the dominant orthodox church.  Galileo’s struggle with ecclesiastical authorities to prove that the Earth was not the center of the universe is a quintessential example.  In effect, it can be said that science was simply one of several Protestant movements, born in the Reformation, all of them giving rise to modern religious institutions.

Science, however, sought to convince the world that it was not a religion but a philosophy.  However, in practice, as an institution, science began to operate much like a church.  When one looks closely at science as a belief system and at its satellite institutions, it looks remarkably like a religion.  Hence, Nephi’s decision to call this new institution a “church” was accurate.

The similarities between the science church and normative religion are striking.  Consider, for example, that this new movement ultimately copied the organization it diverged from when it established its education and training arm: universities.  Education had formerly been the responsibility of the church clergy.  One had to be educated to become a clergyman and vice versa.  Today’s universities, the incubators for our young scientists and scholars, began life in the Renaissance as the educational arm of the church-seminaries, in effect-and they still carry remnants of those religious trappings.  Indeed, seen from this perspective, the role of the university is to indoctrinate or inculcate the precepts of the science church. 

As the result of its origins in arcane religious orders, the terminology used in modern universities still hearkens back to its roots.  For example, graduates don the robes, caps and gowns that can be traced back to ancient monastic and sacerdotal orders.  It is for this reason that Dr. Hugh Nibley, a former BYU religion instructor once asked in his opening prayer in a convocation exercise that God might forgive those attending for wearing “the robes of false priesthood.”  Additionally, upon graduation, universities bestow ‘degrees,’ a term still used in many religious orders today, such as Masonry, to designate the rank or status of practitioners.

We call those who teach in these institutions of higher education ‘professors’ rather than teachers because they originally did far more than teach; they professed a belief and faith in things metaphysical or spiritual to the initiates or students.  Those who enroll in universities are said to ‘matriculate,’ the word coming from the Latin ‘mater’ or mother, meaning that initiates had enrolled in the ‘mother’ church.

The science church established its own dogma or doctrine, which it promulgates through the universities.  It found its ‘catechism’ in Uniformity or Gradualism as well as Natural Selection or Evolution.  Its sacrament is Rationalism and Empiricism; the tenets of the Newtonian universe became its articles of faith.

Latter-day Saints should readily recognize that all of the above named theories stand in direct contradiction to many tenets of the restored gospel.

As a further example of science as a church, those who fail to adopt or contradict the science church dogma find themselves shunned or excommunicated from the scientific community, just as in religion, no matter how inspired or workable their theories.  The example of Halton Arp, a Nobel Prize winning astronomer, demonstrates the process.  In spite of his elevated status in the scientific community, when Arp brought forth evidence that contradicted some of the fundamental tenets of astronomy he was systematically denied telescope time and barred from teaching his views in any effective forum.

Oddly, since science rejected the Catastrophism of religion, it had no eschatology until the nuclear age dawned.  The atomic bomb and the nuclear holocaust it foreshadowed became science’s eschatological vision of a world-ending cataclysm and nuclear winter brought on by mankind’s super technology.

Still more odd, the religionists immediately agreed, thus abandoning their historic Catastrophist views, rooted in Holy Scripture, wherein God was said to be the agent of latter-day destructions.

The “Big Bang” hypothesis is simply the science church’s version of creation.  The Unified Field Theory is science’s Holy Grail, which is just as elusive and ephemeral a prize as the religious/mythical grail.

An objective examination of history thus reveals that the religion of science, having spread its influence world-wide, crossing every cultural and ethnic boundary, is clearly a candidate for the scriptural “great and abominable church.”  But the primary reason it qualifies is because it contravenes and contradicts the precepts of the restored gospel at almost every turn-much more so than the tenets of any other religious denomination.  Additionally, as we have seen, it emerged from the Reformation along with most of the other Christian sects.

As alluded to earlier, the basic doctrines of science are badly flawed.  Past Eschatus issues have delved somewhat into these faulty theories.  Catastrophism teaches us that gravity is not a constant, that the sun is not a thermonuclear engine, that there was no ‘big bang’ to start creation, that the galaxy and the universe are organized and powered by electrically charged plasmas, that our solar system did not coalesce out of raw matter circling the sun, that geologic history did not occur over “billions and billions” of years, as we have been taught, and that the world and its heavens have changed dramatically in historic times, just to name a few precepts.  Any Latter-day Saint who fully embraces the fundamental doctrine of the restored gospel knows that Evolution or Natural Selection is a flawed concept.  Thus we see, in summary, that on almost every count the fundamental doctrines of the science church are false.

By holding on like grim death to baldy flawed axioms in the face of mounting evidence against them, orthodox science does great harm to all mankind.  As in Galileo’s case where the Catholic church opposed a truly enlightened view of the evidence, holding on instead to its flawed dogma, now it is orthodox science that impedes progress by creating vacuous, ad hoc theories to explain phenomena that do not fit its doctrine while either utterly ignoring evidence that contravenes its doctrine or summarily dismissing it without consideration.  It is the science church that now stands in the way of progress.  Thus, the science church fulfills the scriptural prediction that it would “pervert the right ways of the Lord” and “blind the eyes and harden the hearts of the children of men,” fully qualifying it as the great and abominable church of which Nephi wrote.

Sadly, modern Mormons have been largely reconciled to science, generally accepting the doctrines of the science church as fact-something that would have horrified early Saints.  Mormons have accommodated the apparent conflict between science and revealed religion by living with a glaring dichotomy to which most turn a blind eye-a clear case of doctrinal denial.  On the one hand Latter-day Saints profess a belief in the gospel while at the same time accepting as fact the dogma of the science church that contradict those beliefs, leaving modern Saints with a kind of intellectual and spiritual schizophrenia that blinds their eyes and hardens their hearts, just as Nephi said it would.  No wonder he warned us so stridently about this “church.”  It has done precisely what he warned us it would do, corrupting the Saints’ understanding of the gospel, causing them to disregard, to one degree or another, the revelations from God.

Make no mistake.  This is not a diatribe against learning or discovery, nor is it a condemnation of the restored gospel and the religion that champions it.  It is a denunciation of Saints who allow themselves to fall into the trap laid by the science church.  This is a harangue against science as an institution, an obdurate organization that enshrines tenure and the status quo which that practice promotes, that uses a peer review system that stifles new approaches to problems and new ideas.  Not only does it not promote the dispassionate inquiry it so mightily proclaims, it works diligently against it by suppressing anything beyond its established, but flawed, paradigm.

That is not the way to enlightenment.

True science can have no conflict with revealed religion, as so many latter-day prophets and apostles have declared.  Yet, orthodox science continues to wage war with the Saints, demeaning and contravening gospel precepts at every turn.  The science church has become as intractable and detrimental as the church from which it disengaged.  It certainly qualifies as Nephi’s “great and abominable church” in every respect.  Clearly it is a fraud perpetrated on the entire world.

So, Nephi was right.

As “children of the light,” Latter-day Saints would do well to heed Nephi’s warning, to oppose the “great and abominable church” now that we have identified it.  We may oppose it by not letting it mould and shape our paradigm, by opposing its dogma and criticism of us.  Rather, we should test all theorems by the standard of the revealed gospel.

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