NOM

Hagoth wrote:This one really is being changed by science because we now have excellent medical record keeping that can be used to clearly demonstrate that Utah's disease recovery rates are no better than anywhere else.

One thing I find fascinating -- and I'm not looking this up before I post so forgive in advance any missteps -- is that apparently Utah rates for Alzheimer's dementia, Parkinson's and some other neurodegenerative diseases is considerably above the national average. Why I find this interesting is that there seems to be a negative correlation between moderate use of coffee and tea and developing these disorders later in life. That is, other things equal, coffee drinkers seem less likely to get Parkinson's or Alzheimer's. "Hot drinks" are good for the brain. (Like I, as a newly hatched coffee drinker, needed any extra convincing...)

Okay, I did a tiny Google search and found this, just FWIW:

Utah leads US with highest rate of Alzheimer’s disease

https://fox13now.com/2017/11/20/utah-le ... available/

I understand there are epidemiological studies underway to look for dietary and other factors that may explain the differences. They have the data and tools now to do this. If WofW-observant church members are more at risk, that would be both interesting and ironic.

On a personal note, my dad developed Parkinson's later in life. My mother blamed his coffee-drinking from earlier years, and so added guilt to his burdens. I just want to know what's really going on.

Acmeist wrote:Evolution, to a certain extent. “The Church has no official position on the theory of evolution. Organic evolution, or changes to species’ inherited traits over time, is a matter for scientific study. Nothing has been revealed concerning evolution. Though the details of what happened on earth before Adam and Eve, including how their bodies were created, have not been revealed, our teachings regarding man’s origin are clear and come from revelation.”

Biology and genetics has pretty much blown the story of Adam and Eve out of the water in recent years, due to the fact that there is just too much variability in the human genome to have gone through a bottleneck of just two individuals, or even eight (Noah and his kith and kin). As emeritus U of Chicago biology professor Jerry Coyne put it:

Coyne wrote:Genetic data show no evidence of any human bottleneck as small as two people: there are simply too many different kinds of genes around for that to be true. There may have been a couple of “bottlenecks” (reduced population sizes) in the history of our species, but the smallest one not involving recent colonization is a bottleneck of roughly 10,000-15,000 individuals that occurred between 50,000 and 100,000 years ago. That’s as small a population as our ancestors had, and—note—it’s not two individuals.

https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.co ... a-contest/

Ah but still it would be prudent to realize that with their guessing the scientists are trying their best, but they don't have the validity of scripture. For scripture came from God and God came from......er.......wait a sec, where did God come from? well I'll be darned, evolution...... those pesky scientists! Always trying to ruin our faith.