Remember Planet Nibiru? It's (Not) Back!

Some people never learn. The Washington Post reports that a poor NASA scientist is having to field questions about a mystery planet known as Nibiru or Planet X, and predictions that it will cause catastrophe for Earth tomorrow (having failed to do so in September and October). According to the article,

Nibiru theories have by now become so abundant that if you spend long enough on YouTube or PlanetXNews.com you can find an apocalypse scheduled for just about any given day of the week.

If this sounds vaguely familiar, that's because this isn't the first time the fictitious planet has caused concern. In 2011 I highlighted the same hysteria. At the time, the prediction was for destruction in 2012, and it's the same scientist having to reassure people that this is not a thing. I don't pay as much attention to this kind of crap as I used to, but I figured I might as well document it again for blog posterity.

For more, see my previous post: 2012 Cosmophobia

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Why It's Hard for Me to Get On Board with the Pro-Life Movement

Few topics in politics get as heated as abortion, and the Church is pretty clear about its policy on the matter. Why, then, do I find it hard to get on board with the Pro-Life movement?

Before I jump into my list, I should stipulate that I don't follow the issue closely, and I'm not steeped in the various legal nuances. I'm just giving my perspective as a regular guy who happens to also be a Mormon and a scientist. Also, I said that the Church's position on the matter is pretty clear, but let's make it explicit. The Church opposes abortion but recognizes three classes of exceptions, as stated in Handbook 2:

The Church opposes elective abortion for personal or social convenience. Members must not submit to, perform, arrange for, pay for, consent to, or encourage an abortion. The only possible exceptions are when:

1. Pregnancy resulted from forcible rape or incest.
2. A competent physician determines that the life or health of the mother is in serious jeopardy.
3. A competent physician determines that the fetus has severe defects that will not allow the baby to survive beyond birth.

Even these exceptions do not justify abortion automatically. Abortion is a most serious matter and should be considered only after the persons responsible have consulted with their bishops and received divine confirmation through prayer.

I support the Church's position, while recognizing that in a diverse society there will be disagreement about where the line of acceptability should be drawn. Nevertheless, I believe that any public policy regarding abortion must at least accommodate these exceptions. With that as background, here is my list:

1. Insufficient confidence that the exceptions above will be respected: In the 2016 Republican presidential primary, several of the candidates expressed opposition to one or more of these exceptions, and this hard-line stance seems to represent that of an increasingly militant pro-life movement. It's fine and dandy to debate these exceptions as abstract concepts, but it becomes serious business when they apply to you or a loved one. The moment a proposed law or legal interpretation significantly impinges on the exceptions above, I'm out.

2. Giving embryos personhood status: Many pro-life activists would like to grant embryos legal protection as persons, and have attempted to do so through ballot measures. This seems to be as much a legal strategy as an expression of belief. If you can get the law to recognize a fertilized egg as a person with rights, then the very concept of abortion becomes much more difficult because now that 'person' has just as much legal protection as anybody else. It has a certain attractive simplicity to it. Every person was once an embryo, therefore every embryo is a person. However, I don't believe this is defensible on scientific or practical grounds [1], and it would lead to all manner of absurdities. Also, see number 1 above: How do the exceptions work if an embryo is legally recognized as a person?

3. Animus toward birth control: Obsession with the well-being of embryos leads easily to attacking contraception. Some people believe that if a birth control method prevents implantation or in any way disturbs a pre-implanted embryo, that it is tantamount to abortion. In this view, pretty much any hormonal or pharmaceutical form of birth control might cause abortion because, hey, can you be 100% sure an embryo was NOT disturbed, disrupted, or inhibited? (If you don't believe me, just Google "contraception abortion". The first result I got claims that hormonal contraception is abortifacient because the uterine wall becomes less receptive to implantation.) Such people are welcome to their belief, but in my mind this takes us back to absurdities because many embryos never implant and are naturally eliminated from the body, nevermind the medical conditions that are treated with hormonal contraception. Further, it is strange to me that people who abhor abortion wouldn't want the next easiest solution to be broadly available. Of course, if you re-define abortion to include the mechanisms of contraception, then I guess there's no difference. But I don't think most people equate the two, and such reasoning doesn't apply to other methods anyway. I recognize that some people have a religious objection to birth control (not the LDS Church, by the way), and I respect their right to refrain from using it. But the moment anti-abortion slips into anti-contraception, I'm out.

4. Animus toward research using fetal tissue: Organ donations save lives, and some people donate their bodies to science (e.g. anatomy labs). These things are generally viewed favorably [citation needed]. But for some reason, when tissue or cell lines are derived from a fetus, many people think an unholy line has been crossed. It would be wrong for women to get pregnant and/or abort just for the sake of science, and I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that we have laws against, say, paying people to donate their fetuses to science. But given that abortions and miscarriages do and will occur under the best of circumstances, why should it be taboo to use fetal tissue and cell lines for research purposes? It is a historical fact that some embryonic/fetal cell lines have played an important role in medical science, including production of vaccines. In fact, as irony would have it, the vaccine for rubella--a virus that damages fetuses--is grown in a cell line originally derived from an aborted fetus. I don't think that we should view fetal tissue research any differently than organ donation, which is to say that it is legitimate but governed by ethical constraints. As a side note, I'll mention here that the Church has twice stated that it has no position on embryonic stem cell research.

5. Late-term abortion scaremongering: Late-term abortions are not common and are almost universally for reasons covered in the exceptions above (see, for example, articles in Forbes and USA Today). As you might guess, this very assertion is a matter of contention. Nevertheless, 43 states have laws governing late-term abortions. I'm fine with limitations on late-term abortions as long as the exemptions are respected, but the issue seems to be more of a political and cultural rallying point than one of substantive public need [2].

6. Abortion as the axis of politics: Public polling shows that most Americans think that abortion laws should not be absolute (for or against). And yet, the issue has polarized political parties to the point that candidates must increasingly pass purity tests to be acceptable, and many people feel that their vote for a candidate of a particular party translates directly to a vote for or against abortion rights and defines which side of a culture war they are on. This is not healthy for our society. Pro-life nitwits are not preferable to competent pro-choice candidates or vice versa.

So that, in a nutshell, is why I can't fully align with the pro-life movement, in spite of being a Mormon [3]. Does that make me pro-choice instead? I don't think I easily fit in either category, probably like most of America. Maybe we need to make another category.


Notes:
1. What do you mean it's not scientifically defensible? Fertilization brings together a complete genome. Therefore a unique individual--or person--now exists. Sure, but there is still an opportunity for twining, or formation of chimeras. Or it might fail to develop further. So a fertilized egg can represent the beginning of somewhere between zero and multiple persons (in the normal sense of the word).

2. Surely, the number of women who carry a fetus past 20 weeks and then decide to get an abortion of convenience must be dwarfed by those who have made it to 20 weeks only to face serious and heartrending problems.

3. I'm being a little ironic here. Many people (including some Mormons) think that the Church's positions line right up with the pro-life movement. But aside from its opposition to abortions of convenience, there's not as much overlap as one might think, as I've hinted at along the way.

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President Erying, His Father, and the Letter

In two different General Conference addresses, President Henry B. Eyring has briefly recounted his role in a letter that his father wrote to an Apostle about science and religion.

October 2014:

My father was once asked by a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles to write a short paper on science and religion. My father was a famous scientist and a faithful priesthood holder. But I can still remember the moment he handed me the paper he had written and said, “Here, before I send this to the Twelve, I want you to read it. You will know if it is right.” He was 32 years older than me and immeasurably more wise and intelligent.

October 2016:

Once [my father] was asked by an Apostle to write a short note about the scientific evidence for the age of the earth. He wrote it carefully, knowing that some who might read it had strong feelings that the earth was much younger than the scientific evidence suggested.

I still remember my father handing me what he had written and saying to me, “Hal, you have the spiritual wisdom to know if I should send this to the apostles and prophets.” I can’t remember much of what the paper said, but I will carry with me forever the gratitude I felt for a great Melchizedek Priesthood holder who saw in me spiritual wisdom that I could not see.

BYU-Idaho has a video documentary titled, Mormon Scientist, about the life of Henry Eyring (based on the book of the same name) that includes an interview with President Eyring (at about the 5 minute mark) [1]. President Eyring recounts the story above, but with some interesting added details, including a subsequent phone call from David O. McKay. He clearly connects the story to Joseph Fielding Smith's book, Man, His Origin and Destiny.

So far as I am aware, these are the only public statements by President Eyring that exist about the disagreement between his father and Joseph Fielding Smith. The story of that letter--twice mentioned in General Conference--including the full text and response by Joseph Fielding Smith, can be found in Agreeing to Disagree: Henry Eyring and Joseph Fielding Smith.


Notes:
1. A substantially similar, if not identical, video was previously available as early as 2010 at BYUtv as episode 13 of a series called "Inspiring Lives". However, it disappeared sometime before October 2014. Fortunately, the interview segment with President Eyring lives on in the BYU-I video.

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Donald Trump is Nothing If Not Meticulous About Facts

At yesterday's press conference, when asked why he didn't condemn the hate groups gathered in Charlottesville earlier, President Donald Trump said:

I didn't wait long. I wanted to make sure, unlike most politicians, that what I said was correct, not make a quick statement.

The statement I made on Saturday, the first statement, was a fine statement but you don't make statements that direct unless you know the facts. It takes a little while to get the facts. You still don't know the facts. It is a very, very important process to me. It is a very important statement. So I don't want to go quickly and just make a statement for the sake of making a political statement. I want to know the facts.

If you go back to my statement, I brought it. I brought it. As I said, remember, Saturday, we condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry, and violence. It has no place in America. I went on from there....

When I make a statement, I like to be correct. I want the facts. This event just happened. A lot of the event didn't happen yet as we were speaking. This event just happened. Before I make a statement, I need the facts. I don't want to rush into a statement. So making the statement when I made it was excellent.

President Trump makes a good point here. There are too many politicians and pundits who cast blame before the facts are in. It would have been a shame if, in the heat of the moment, Trump had mistakenly condemned the neo-Nazi and KKK marchers, or other fine non-racists who happened to choose to march with them, without the benefit of the facts. That wouldn't be fair to them, and it would risk damaging his reputation for accuracy.

However, Trump should take care that his cool head and sense of nuance doesn't lead people to view him, like his predecessor whose birth he so cautiously investigated, as arrogant and professorial. Americans don't like know-it-all elitists.

Disclaimer: Satire

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On Paris and Tribal Politics

I don't have much to say about President Trump's announcement today that the U.S. will pull out of the Paris climate agreement. It's certainly not surprising. It was a campaign pledge, and one that he could easily keep. Plus, it's another easy way for him to feel superior to Obama. Thus, the urging of many leading businesses to stick with it was not enough to change his mind. Trump is going to be Trump, and this decision is frankly not at the top of my list of political worries these days.

On the broader issue of climate change, I think Jonathan Chait is basically right.

The dominant spirit of conservative thought — or, more precisely, verbal gestures that seek to resemble thought — is not even skepticism but a trolling impulse. The aim is not so much to reason toward a policy conservatives would favor as to pierce the liberal claim to the moral high ground....

[The predominant conservative argument on climate change] contains a defiant refusal to take the policy questions seriously, combined with a gleeful reproach of the urgency with which liberals view the issue. A crude tribalistic impulse overrides any reckoning with the problem. The proximate issue in conservative minds is not climate change itself but the fact that liberals are concerned about all these things. Disintegrating ice shelves, extinctions, or droughts are abstractions.

Let me provide one modest supporting example: Back in 2009 on this very blog, I highlighted the following quote from Rush Limbaugh about climate change.

The whole thing's made up. And the reason I know it is because liberals are behind it. When they're pushing something, folks, it's always bogus.

If that's not the driving sentiment behind current conservative politics, I don't know what is. This mindset, it seems to me, has spread far beyond climate change, and is manifested by the increasing dismissal of experts, outside of conservative-approved sources, on a variety of topics (not to mention the propensity of conservatives to turn against their own policies when adopted by Democrats).

As a young Limbaugh-listening lad in the 1990s, I believed that Republicans were the party of smart policies. Whatever the truth of that proposition back then, for my money the party has increasingly become regressive, selfish, angry, and afraid of the future. (There are exceptions, of course.) I'm not sure what the driving reason for this is, though I am certainly not the first to suspect that the consumption for hours a day of conservative media that constantly tells people that they are being victimized is a big factor.

Donald Trump will not be the president forever, and many commentators see the trend of greening the economy (and the death of coal) as inevitable. The larger questions in my mind are how long conservative politics will be driven by tribalism combined with a sense of grievance, and how long will it be a winning combination?

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FIRM: The Misleading of Latter-day Saints by Latter-day Saints

Last week, while on vacation, my attention was called to an article in the Salt Lake Tribune: BYU and UVU scientists question research offered at a conference on the Book of Mormon. The article described the reaction of BYU and UVU scientists, as published in the BYU student newspaper, The Daily Universe, to a then-upcoming conference called the Firm Foundation Expo. In a word, they were horrified.

I've mentioned FIRM before. Although the organization, led by Rod Meldrum, is primarily interested in Book of Mormon geography, it pursues the subject through a young-earth creationist lens (which is required in order to make their ideas work). This kind of science-bending thinking often leads to the proliferation of nonsense, which is what the BYU and UVU scientists were reacting to. Specifically, they responded to Dean Sesson's "Universal Model" that posits that Earth is filled with water. I grumbled a little to myself and thought it might make for an interesting blog post, and then mostly forgot about it.

I'm late to the party, but last night I saw that Ardis Parshall covered the Firm Expo at her blog, Keepapitchinin. She went so that we wouldn't have to, although she ultimately gave up because she couldn't stomach any more.

Her comments are here: Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6. Don't be intimidated; most of the posts are pretty short. However, if you don't read anything else, read the last part and her comments below it! But since I know you probably won't, I'll reproduce a few salient quotes after I share a few thoughts.

I try not to get too worked up over this stuff. After all, there is seemingly no end to the the kinds of nonsense people will push (and it sure seems like nonsense is the order of the day!), and my impression is that while many people may entertain wrong or crazy ideas, most of them don't take them too seriously [1]. Based on the program, it is clear that the FIRM Expo is fine example of crank magnetism -- which is the tendency of people with crank ideas to accumulate more crank ideas. Alternative science, alternative medicine, doomsday predictions, alternative economics, government nuttery, conspiracy theories...they're all represented. Hopefully the collective craziness is enough to warn most people that the Firm Expo is not a good source of information.

I'm sure that seeing that many crank-adherents concentrated in one place is depressing, but I think they are generally diluted to low-harm in the general population. That this kind of stuff takes place under the banner of more-faithful-than-you Mormonism is also depressing, but my general attitude toward people who think their purity of religion is better than mine (especially based on science) is to ignore them. Nevertheless, I salute Ardis for her effort and highlight some of her writing below.

My few hours at the FIRM Foundation Expo were a distressing mix of intellectual dismay at the continuous denial of the scientific method, and profound depression at the misuse of scripture – the misleading of Latter-day Saints by Latter-day Saints – that I could not bear any more of it.

To claim that you will always side with revelation against science when the two are in conflict implies that your understanding of both science and revelation is adequate – that you sufficiently understand the claims of science, and that you truly understand what revelation teaches. What I heard at this conference did not meet those criteria.

The conspiracist mindset somehow grasps the “truth” first, and then searches for data points to support the conclusion (whereas a scientist, who may well have a hunch to guide his initial research, reserves his conclusions until his observations are made and analyzed, and contraindications are addressed). That conspiracist mindset was on full display in the session about the origin of the Earth and its life: We were told first that the Earth is a sack of water, then were treated to a torrent of “data” supporting that conclusion – no coherence, no attempts to test the notion, but merely a flood of mishmash of sources: scripture taken out of context, somebody’s lawsuit about something, pictures and bits of text from sources that might have been reliable and might have been reported accurately but sometimes sounded as if they came from the Weekly World News for all the credibility they carried, rhetorical questions presented as evidence (“What if I told you that …” and “Have you ever thought about …”), and always – always – the scoffing at mainstream scientists for being wrong about this and that and not even looking for proof of this other thing.

Then there’s the bone-deep skepticism of “the world” as a place and a philosophy of deception and wickedness, and a confidence — exaggerated, in my view — that as the people of God we have all the answers to all of the great questions, and those answers do and must stand in opposition to the vain philosophies of men. That is, we simply know better … even, apparently about matters which God has not revealed. I think that generally unexamined belief runs very deep through Mormonism, although it is a byproduct, a misapplication, of Mormonism rather than anything intrinsic to it.

To declare that you will “stand with the Church” in a supposed science/revelation dispute, especially while failing to recognize that the Church has taken no stand, or that you will “stand by revelation” when you rely solely on a knee-jerk fundamentalism that doesn’t bear scrutiny, is no credit to the Church or to revelation.

Notes:
1. Lest someone accuse me, a Mormon, of writing that sentence without any sense of irony, I do see the irony. But that's a discussion for another day.

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Mitt Romney Supports A Carbon Tax / Dividend

Earlier this month, Mitt Romney posted the following message on Twitter:

Thought-provoking plan from highly respected conservatives to both strengthen the economy & confront climate risks: https://t.co/U6kmrQTPth

— Mitt Romney (@MittRomney) February 8, 2017

What is the Climate Leadership Council? It's a new advocacy group that includes prominent Republicans such as former Secretary of State/Treasury James Baker, former Secretary of Treasury Henry (Hank) Paulson, and former Secretary of State/Treasury/Labor George Shultz. It also includes Harvard professor Gregory Mankiw, who served as Chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisers under President George W. Bush [1].

So what is the CLC pushing for? Let's take a look at their position document: The Conservative Case for Carbon Dividends. It's a short document that outlines "Four Pillars" of policy. First they lay out the problem (emphasis added):

Mounting evidence of climate change is growing too strong to ignore. While the extent to which climate change is due to man-made causes can be questioned, the risks associated with future warming are too big and should be hedged. At least we need an insurance policy. For too long, many Republicans have looked the other way, forfeiting the policy initiative to those who favor growth-inhibiting command-and-control regulations, and fostering a needless climate divide between the GOP and the scientific, business, military, religious, civic and international mainstream.

On to the pillars of their proposed policy, which I list below with my one-sentence summary of each:

1. A Gradually Increasing Carbon Tax - Tax fossil fuels when they enter the economy, and increase the tax with time.

2. Carbon Dividends for All Americans - Distribute the entire tax revenue back equally to all American citizens.

3. Border Carbon Adjustments - Treat exports/imports in a way that is consistent with the policy.

4. Significant Regulatory Rollback - Remove regulations that are made obsolete by the above policy.

The idea, of course, is that making fossil fuels more expensive will make alternatives more attractive. Meanwhile, some of that expense will be returned to you. Use less fossil fuel and you can come out ahead (i.e. dividend > extra fuel expense). Aside from a reduction in the use of fossil fuels, the document then goes on to argue that the tax/dividend policy would have additional benefits including helping low-income families and spurring the economy.

Clearly, the CLC and Mitt Romney are trying to signal to Republicans that it is OK to be concerned about climate change, it is OK to want government to do something about it, and that it is OK to want a carbon tax [2]. Moreover, they argue that their proposal is the BEST policy for addressing the problem. The CLC documents take occasional swipes at Obama and Democrats (as if it never occurred to them to implement a carbon tax), but that's OK. We all know that Republican politicians think sticking it to Democrats is more important than implementing good policy [3]. If making them feel superior is what it takes, so be it. A little hypocrisy in the service of the greater good is tolerable.

Unfortunately, as The Atlantic notes, the biggest obstacle to implementing this conservative policy is Republicans.

The problem in fighting climate change has never been a natural Democratic love for onerous regulatory regimes. It has been Republicans who have long refused to even entertain the idea that climate change is dangerous or human-caused...

Last year, the House G.O.P. unanimously supported a resolution that declared a carbon tax “would be detrimental to American families and businesses, and is not in the best interest of the United States.”

Indeed. In fact, if you click Romney's tweet above and go to the original, you'll see that many of the replies are a testament to that point.

Is this the best policy for addressing the issue? I don't know; I'm not going to pretend that I'm a policy expert, but it seems like as good an option as any. Do I think it has a snowball's chance in hell of being passed? Not as long as Mitch McConnell is the Majority Leader of the Senate, given his representation of the coal industry. However, my longer-term view is more optimistic [4]. Is this something that Trump could get on board with? Who the heck knows?

But none of that matters at the moment. What is important is that Republicans (including voters) now have permission to support a carbon tax without feeling like they have taken on the identity of a liberal.

Mitt Romney says so!


Notes:
1. In other words, these are not a bunch of hippie liberal communists. Baker and Shultz, for example, served in, and for most of, the Reagan administration.

2. Romney's signal does have a bit of plausible deniability: 'Hey, I only said it was interesting.'

3. Oh, come on. You know it's true. See the presidency of Barack Obama.

4. McConnell won't hold that position forever. Not to be morbid, but if electoral politics doesn't take it away from him, death eventually will. In the meantime, the issue will only become more pressing and holdouts will become more isolated.

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BYU and the Reconstruction of the Legend of the First Vision

Last year Richard Bushman generated a bit of a stir when he said,

I think that for the Church to remain strong it has to reconstruct its narrative. The dominant narrative is not true; it can’t be sustained. The Church has to absorb all this new information or it will be on very shaky grounds and that’s what it is trying to do and it will be a strain for a lot of people, older people especially. But I think it has to change.

He later clarified his meaning (here and here) to make clear that he simply meant that we need to bring new information into the way we tell the story of the Restoration, which the Church has begun to do (e.g. Gospel Topics essays, The Joseph Smith Papers, etc.)

This year's Gospel Doctrine curriculum focuses on the Doctrine and Covenants, and although the First Vision isn't actually in the D&C, it is the focus of Lesson #3. My observation is that we still have a lot of work to do to reconstruct the story of the First Vision. The story has been told from the exclusive vantage point of Joseph Smith's 1838 telling with added layers of popular interpretation for so long that historical inaccuracies are practically baked in. The problem is that the inaccuracies are almost as beloved as the vision itself. During the recent lesson in my own ward, I looked for opportunities to insert gentle historical correction. However, the traditional story (and associated interpretations) was presented (and reflected by the class) so strongly that I chickened out for fear of doing more harm than good.

With that as background, I want to draw attention to a publication by the BYU Religious Studies Center that I think represents a solid step in the right direction. In 2012 BYU's RSC published a book titled, Exploring the First Vision, which is now available online (and also at Deseret Book) [1]. Much of the book provides defense against various adversarial arguments. However, for the purposes of this post, I believe the most significant chapter is James Allen's essay, "Emergence of a Fundamental: The Expanding Role of Joseph Smith’s First Vision in Mormon Religious Thought." (Actually, this essay was originally published in 1980. It's a shame that it has had so little influence.)

In his essay, Allen discusses some of the history surrounding the USE of the First Vision and traces how it changed from a relatively minor story in Church history to a central pillar of the Restoration. In the process, the First Vision went from story to legend, and he dispels some of the historical inaccuracies that have become attached to it. Forgive me for quoting two long paragraphs, but I think they are important (emphasis mine).

As they began to use Joseph Smith’s first religious experience for various instructional purposes, Mormon teachers and writers were also creating certain secondary but highly significant historical perceptions in the minds of the Latter-day Saints. There was no intent to distort or mislead, but what happened was only one example of a very natural intellectual process that helps explain the emergence of at least some basic community perceptions. It seems to be a truism that whenever great events take place, second- and third-generation expounders tend to build a kind of mythology around them by presuming corollary historical interpretations that often have little basis in fact. In this case, the deepening awareness of the vision, along with a growing community sensitivity for how essential it was to Mormon faith and doctrine, created an atmosphere in which other historical inferences could easily be drawn. These included the ideas that (1) over the centuries, considerable “rubbish concerning religion” had accumulated that only revelation could correct; (2) most, if not all, Christians believed in the traditional Trinitarian concept of God; (3) the Christian world denied the concept of continuing revelation; (4) Joseph Smith told the story of his vision widely; and (5) he continued to be persecuted or publicly ridiculed for it, even to the time of his death. Such historical interpretation, much of it misleading, soon dominated popular Mormon thought. The challenge for individual believers, including Mormon historians, would be to separate the essential truths of the vision experience from corollaries that may not be so essential to the faith.

Once the vision assumed its predominant place in Mormon writing and preaching, it became much more than Joseph Smith’s personal experience—it became a shared community experience. Every Mormon and every prospective convert was urged to pray for his or her own testimony of its reality—in effect, to seek a personal theophany by becoming one with Joseph in the grove. Latter-day Saints did not forget the importance of the angel Moroni, but gradually the First Vision took precedence over the visit of the angel as the event that ushered in the Restoration of the gospel. It was only a short step from there to the expanded use of the vision as a teaching device whenever the doctrine of God or the principle of revelation played any part in the discussion. As the years passed, the list of lessons, truths, principles, and historical interpretations taught or illustrated by the vision grew longer. Each writer or preacher saw it as fundamental, but each also had his or her own private insight into what it could illustrate or portray.

This is admirably honest, sensitive, and straightforward. The next time I need to make a corrective point, I will start my sentence with, "I read a fascinating book on the First Vision that was published by BYU's religion department a few years ago. I learned..."

Now I just need a way to make the point that the First Vision wasn't as strange or unique as we think it was.

Notes:
1. In other words, the book is available from the most orthodox publishers there are, aside from the correlation department itself.

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