[amertune]

Heber13 wrote:

amertune wrote:

Given that the Word of Wisdom seems to align very well with mid 19th century medical/popular opinion…

I agree with your comments…it seems to be very well aligned with thinking of that time, as does many other things. Rough Stone Rolling has many examples of these, from what I studied.

amertune wrote:

and given that it doesn’t align very well with modern medical opinion (new and improved! now with science!)

…hmm…can you elaborate a bit more? It seems that modern medical opinion does not go against or completely disagree with healthy standards taught in the WoW (tobacco, alcohol, coffee, etc). Maybe you can clarify what you mean a little more for me.

I would say there is a difference on whether total abstinence or just moderation is debated in the medical community, but there is pretty good empirical evidence that WoW standards in general add to a healthy lifestyle. No?

Perhaps that was worded a little bit strongly. Aspects of the Word of Wisdom align well with modern medical opinion. For example, tobacco is bad and addictive. I don’t think that any doctor would argue for the benefits of tobacco.

Tea and Coffee have a weaker position–there are studies showing they can be beneficial, but not a lot of hard evidence. Moderation is important, but a complete ban doesn’t seem to have a medical basis.

Alcohol also has some benefits, although it has some major risks when taken to any extreme. Again, moderation is key.

I believe that if a similar revelation were received today, it would look a bit different. Maybe it would exhort us to moderate our sugar intake.

Modern medical opinion does not completely agree with the WoW, but it doesn’t seem to support it nearly as well as the 19th century opinion did.

[amertune]

So… If god was an alien, where did his planet come from? Was it also colonized by another alien/god, or did god/alien life evolve there?

Either way, I can’t see how this theory would come much closer to telling us where we came from. At best, it would require us to look into the history of one other planet to determine our genesis.

[amertune]

cwald wrote:

F4H1

Here is a Word of Wisdom thread from a couple of months ago that got pretty heated. Perhaps you might be interested in browsing it and putting in your two-cents.

This is my take, FWIW. JS got caught up in the culture of his day, and wrote up a document that suggested the saints follow certain health patterns of the time, as well as discouraged the saints from their prior cultural customs (tea). Brigham Young made it a commandment some years later. Over the next 100 years the “Prophets” pretty well did a lot of gutting of the document and used their own interpretation and personal opinions to decide what was okay and what wasn’t. In the 1920s. Pres Grnt, who abhorred alcohol, disregarded that beer was actually okay in the original document that Smith wrote AND that it was a health code, and made prohibition of the “forbidden four” a requirement to to enter the temple – which is the equivalent in mormondom of making it a requirement to go to heaven, be with your family forever in the CK etc. Over the next 90 some years, the WoW has become the one of the most defining/important “CULTURAL” commandment that the most LDS membership focuses on as an outward sign of righteousness.

That is just my opinion. Let the discussion begin.

Oh yeah, let me also state again for the record — the WoW as the membership practices it, IMO, has NOTHING to do with the gospel of Jesus Christ, NOTHING, and is the biggest deal breaker in the LDS church.

This is how I’m starting to view it, especially after I start to hear about Graham (creator of the graham cracker) and Kellogg (creator of corn flakes). They both created diets that all but banned any stimulating foods (alcohol, tobacco, meat, etc). These diets were also created in the mid 19th century, just like the WoW. The interesting thing is that their diets seemed to be designed to curb passion (especially sexual passion). I don’t think that Joseph Smith intended the passion curbing effects of the WoW, but I couldn’t say that for sure. The temperance movement was also gaining popularity.

I’ve heard that there was a debate raging over whether hot drinks or cold drinks were healthier, but /I/ haven’t been able to find anything to support that Idea.

Given that the Word of Wisdom seems to align very well with mid 19th century medical/popular opinion, and given that it doesn’t align very well with modern medical opinion (new and improved! now with science!), I am starting to think that maybe Joseph felt like he should encourage the saints to be healthier (run and not be weary, walk and not faint) by following a modern, medical dietary code.

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