Thoughts from Simon Southerton Regarding the Worldwide Fast

[Hermey]

From the brilliant mind of Simon Southerton comes this observation:

"As many of you well know, President Nelson has called for a global fast to help in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic. It's a very well timed call because the scientific data is telling us that in the next week or two, rates of infection will begin slowing in many countries, including the US. This will be ENTIRELY due to the science-led introduction of social distancing rules, but get ready to hear Mormons claiming it happened because they skipped two meals.

"I cycle every other day, at a safe distance, with a math teacher (I'm allergic to math ). He has been plotting a curve on the case growth data for each country and using the curve to predict when cases will peak. A few weeks ago, before social distancing began in earnest, these curves looked very grim. It was looking like many millions of Americans would get infected in the next month resulting in the hospital system being totally overwhelmed. Just a week ago the peak was looking like half a million. If he just uses the growth data for the last three days it is looking closer to 200-250,000 for the US. This does not mean in a couple of weeks we go back to normal life. It hopefully means the hospital system may be spared being utterly overwhelmed and many people dying from other causes.

"This same slow down can be seen in many countries. We will almost certainly see a flattening of the curve in new cases in the next week or two. The death curve will flatten out a week or two later. To keep it low we will need to keep isolating, but we could probably start to see some restrictions being lifted.

"Let's not forget who REALLY helped the world avoid a major catastrophe here. The flattening of the curve that we will soon see is due to honest, hardworking scientists in a wide range of fields. It will not be due to a sadistic being who allowed the pandemic to kick off and then jumped in at the last minute to save us."

[Exiled]

This is just like a testimony meeting I attended years ago. A good brother had been diagnosed with cancer, was treated and was then in remission. During his testimony, he spoke glowingly regarding the excellent care he had received at a local hospital from the doctors, nurses and staff. The chemotherapy had worked and although it was difficult, he was now in remission and all seemed well. After detailing the treatment he received from medical professionals who undoubtedly had studied long hours in order to be able to give the right diagnoses and treatment, he went into detail about a priesthood blessing he had received and then gave the lion share of the credit to the blessing and God for being healed. I remember thinking that but for medical science, the blessing would have been obviously worthless and the good brother might have died. However, since the good brother was healed, all credit to the hocus pocus.

[Hagoth]

Is the idea of fasting FOR someone an entirely Mormon thing? It has never made much sense to me. I thought the whole purpose of fasting was to purify yourself and to gain some personal perspective about spiritual nourishment vs. physical nourishment. How to you do that FOR someone else?

But then it kinda makes sense in the Mormon context if you consider that sacrifice and obedience are important landmarks for making sure you're on the right track. Going hungry is a sacrifice, a form of self-punishment to show God that you really are serious about Him being merciful to someone else. God isn't merciful enough on his own, He apparently needs to see some people suffer before He is persuaded to take action. Taken too far you could starve to death because ultimately you might be personally responsible for the deaths and misfortunes of everybody else because of your unwillingness to go without food.

[Hagoth]

This is just like a testimony meeting I attended years ago. A good brother had been diagnosed with cancer, was treated and was then in remission. During his testimony, he spoke glowingly regarding the excellent care he had received at a local hospital from the doctors, nurses and staff. The chemotherapy had worked and although it was difficult, he was now in remission and all seemed well. After detailing the treatment he received from medical professionals who undoubtedly had studied long hours in order to be able to give the right diagnoses and treatment, he went into detail about a priesthood blessing he had received and then gave the lion share of the credit to the blessing and God for being healed. I remember thinking that but for medical science, the blessing would have been obviously worthless and the good brother might have died. However, since the good brother was healed, all credit to the hocus pocus.

When you call in the elders for a blessing, any number of things could cause it to fail. It could be your lack of faith, or the lack of faith of the person giving the blessing or of the person anointing, or some transgression that any of you might have committed... or it might be because someone failed to fast, so God. Or maybe God is teaching you a lesson. Or maybe you don't have the faith to NOT be healed, in which it sounds like it's better not to have faith, but either way you still don't get healed.

If you look at it from that point of view you might be tempted to believe that the lack of healings in the church are evidence FOR priesthood power. If people were getting healed all over the place willy nilly, you might be tempted not to take all of these requirements seriously.

As always, it all points back to us letting God and each other down.

[Spicy McHaggis]

I fully expect there to be a cornball movie by next Christmas about how the whole world was healed by the miracle fast.

[Hermey]

I fully expect there to be a cornball movie by next Christmas about how the whole world was healed by the miracle fast.

Funny, but not out of the realm of possibility.


How I used this with my wife was this....

Background:
She has been rolling her eyes a LOT during this whole Covid-19 pandemic business with how people refuse to take this seriously. She welcomed the suspension of Sunday church meetings and expressed disappointment of the canceling of the F1 race season. She is totally on board with Second Saturday church and today, we are catching up on much needed organizing and cleaning around the house. When the EQP (this is a neighbor, the former bishop I was clerk under, a former client because I formally resigned my church membership, and the guy who will literally turn and quickly walk the other way when he sees any of us) called a week ago to offer to have the sacrament brought into our home for my wife. She declined and was irritated at the stupidity and irresponsibility of the proposed visits. 'Home Church' of any kind is not anything she's interested in doing.

So, I mentioned the upcoming world-wide Mormon starvation fast to her and remarked how members, in a week or three, would then start posting stupid shit about it saving the world from Covid-19. She laughed and rolled her eyes at the impending testimony fest. I then shared what Simon had written. It got her attention and she's interested to see how this pans out.

What I was attempting to do was to innocculate her against the inevitable onslaught of associated testimony bearing that could possible trigger anything within her from the years of indoctrination that she's had. At least I now have a opening for discussions and reason. We'll see how that plays out in the coming weeks.

[wtfluff]

Is the idea of fasting FOR someone an entirely Mormon thing? It has never made much sense to me. I thought the whole purpose of fasting was to purify yourself and to gain some personal perspective about spiritual nourishment vs. physical nourishment. How to you do that FOR someone else?

But then it kinda makes sense in the Mormon context if you consider that sacrifice and obedience are important landmarks for making sure you're on the right track. Going hungry is a sacrifice, a form of self-punishment to show God that you really are serious about Him being merciful to someone else. God isn't merciful enough on his own, He apparently needs to see some people suffer before He is persuaded to take action. Taken too far you could starve to death because ultimately you might be personally responsible for the deaths and misfortunes of everybody else because of your unwillingness to go without food.

This entire post makes me want to giggle, and cry, all at the same time.

Giggle: One fairly recent, fairly popular method of "dieting" (at least in the USA) is Intermittent Fasting (IF.) Adherents of IF usually attempt to fast for a set number of hours every day. One of the most popular methods is to fast 16 hours a day, and "eat" for the other 8 hours; They more or less skip one meal each day. Calorie restriction based on hours. If depriving one'self of food makes one more spiritual, there are millions of folks out there who should be feeling the influence of Holy the Ghost for "health/fitness" reasons, and they don't even know it. In MORmON parlance, they should all be "drawn toward the church." I have a friend who preaches Intermittent Fasting like a religion. He's also a staunch atheist, and hasn't gotten any closer to joining LD$-Inc. or any other religion lately. (Maybe all of his friends besides me are being "blessed" and becoming more "spiritual?")

Cry: What about folks in developing countries who are lucky to get one meal a day? Shouldn't they be getting tons and tons of "blessings" reigned down from heaven for skipping meals? Seems like exactly the opposite scenario to me.


Did all the invisible deities in the sky not get the memo to spread "blessings" profusely to folks dealing with starvation - whether those folks are starving by their own choice or not?

[Reuben]

Cry: What about folks in developing countries who are lucky to get one meal a day? Shouldn't they be getting tons and tons of "blessings" reigned down from heaven for skipping meals? Seems like exactly the opposite scenario to me.


Did all the invisible deities in the sky not get the memo to spread "blessings" profusely to folks dealing with starvation - whether those folks are starving by their own choice or not?

Of course they got the memo. They're just waiting for all those folks to starve with an eye single to the glory of God.

[Sheamus Moore]

I’m thinking today’s warmup act will generate fodder for next weeks GeneralCon.

[moksha]

A day of fasting with just diet cola to drink will probably do me good. If I feel too sluggish a glass of regular Coke would bring my blood sugar back up.

While it is not in the news reports, do you think members will be asked for extra fast offering donations afterward?

BTW, is the Bishop's Storehouse and Welfare Square still open during this pandemic. When I volunteered there before, most of the workers were old people.

[RubinHighlander]

From the brilliant mind of Simon Southerton comes this observation:

"As many of you well know, President Nelson has called for a global fast to help in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic. It's a very well timed call because the scientific data is telling us that in the next week or two, rates of infection will begin slowing in many countries, including the US. This will be ENTIRELY due to the science-led introduction of social distancing rules, but get ready to hear Mormons claiming it happened because they skipped two meals.

"I cycle every other day, at a safe distance, with a math teacher (I'm allergic to math ). He has been plotting a curve on the case growth data for each country and using the curve to predict when cases will peak. A few weeks ago, before social distancing began in earnest, these curves looked very grim. It was looking like many millions of Americans would get infected in the next month resulting in the hospital system being totally overwhelmed. Just a week ago the peak was looking like half a million. If he just uses the growth data for the last three days it is looking closer to 200-250,000 for the US. This does not mean in a couple of weeks we go back to normal life. It hopefully means the hospital system may be spared being utterly overwhelmed and many people dying from other causes.

"This same slow down can be seen in many countries. We will almost certainly see a flattening of the curve in new cases in the next week or two. The death curve will flatten out a week or two later. To keep it low we will need to keep isolating, but we could probably start to see some restrictions being lifted.

"Let's not forget who REALLY helped the world avoid a major catastrophe here. The flattening of the curve that we will soon see is due to honest, hardworking scientists in a wide range of fields. It will not be due to a sadistic being who allowed the pandemic to kick off and then jumped in at the last minute to save us."

Is there a link to the source for these quotes?

[wtfluff]

From Redit:

Fasting: Passive-aggressive hunger strike against reality.

[moksha]

Church Response to the Flu in 1918

'Everyone is sick’ — A look back at when Spanish flu pushed back LDS General Conference

https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2020/03 ... sick-look/

[slavereeno]

Simon nailed it.

This stuff is intentionally self-deceptive and destructive, I am having a hard time not getting frustrated by it.

[Hagoth]

BTW, is the Bishop's Storehouse and Welfare Square still open during this pandemic. When I volunteered there before, most of the workers were old people.

Yes it is but they are instigating some distancing measures and asking the older workers not to come.

[Hagoth]

Cry: What about folks in developing countries who are lucky to get one meal a day? Shouldn't they be getting tons and tons of "blessings" reigned down from heaven for skipping meals? Seems like exactly the opposite scenario to me.

Blessings are only provided if the person making the sacrifice shows proper gratitude toward 15 guys in SLC. Kind of like the way Trump doesn't want to give federal assistance to governors who don't adequately kiss his ass. Same concept.

[Apologeticsislying]

I’m thinking today’s warmup act will generate fodder for next weeks GeneralCon.

We can check the numbers on Saturday and see how well the fasting and prayer has worked for the first week, so whatever miracle stories are told we can check it with facts. Wouldn't it be great if God simply zapped the virus dead because of the fasting? I mean, considering we are told he really, *really* REALLY wants his children to love him, I would imagine this would be one spectacular way for people to see he is with the Mormon church and wow, think of the baptisms! But, we will be told when we ask this, that is not how God works. Providing proof destroys faith, and everyone knows faith is more important than life. And thus the crickets go on burping.

[Hermey]

Is there a link to the source for these quotes?

Posted (public setting) by an individual on FB. Simon did chime in on the thread. No disavowal made to the post.

[Exiled]

I’m thinking today’s warmup act will generate fodder for next weeks GeneralCon.

We can check the numbers on Saturday and see how well the fasting and prayer has worked for the first week, so whatever miracle stories are told we can check it with facts. Wouldn't it be great if God simply zapped the virus dead because of the fasting? I mean, considering we are told he really, *really* REALLY wants his children to love him, I would imagine this would be one spectacular way for people to see he is with the Mormon church and wow, think of the baptisms! But, we will be told when we ask this, that is not how God works. Providing proof destroys faith, and everyone knows faith is more important than life. And thus the crickets go on burping.

There will be stories of how the fast brought people together and comforted them. Some may believe their spirituality increased, whatever that means. It won't do anything objective for the corona virus but will remain in the subjective as all religious responses do.

[Apologeticsislying]

For the first time in a long time, I might actually be interested in watching this conference. If for no other reason than to count how many ad hoc excuses and reasons they give for being so powerless in the face of Mother Nature. I was taught as a child that the Mormon Priesthood had power over Mother Nature and the story of Enoch moving mountains and causing rivers to change their courses was used for the proof. Now, of course, this is all faith teaching, but now all these years later it is more damaging than helpful. It worked for a while anyway...
I hope in the interim of the last conference they have taken public speaking lessons.... gawd I hate their "righteous" drawling. It bores you to sleep. They imagine it is ungodly to actually show emotional apparently. They all really need speaking lessons. What ever happened to our favorite style as children of LeGrand Richards? Now THAT guy knew how to be interesting and excited. This still small voice thinking for public speaking is just wrong. Amazing they haven't figured that out after all this time.