Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert (who, with his book God’s Debris makes a bid for the stoner philosopher of the 21st centrury) just made, on his blog, an interesting comment about Mormons.

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There have been several analyses lately to the effect that Mitt Romney’s presidential chances have gotten a boost because of the universal health care plan he helped broker in Massachusetts. This is one of the best articles on the subject.

It included the following tidbit:

Indeed, it’s quite possible that what can only be described as anti-Mormon sentiment cost former Republican congressman Matt Salmon the Arizona governor’s office in 2002. Call it bigotry or old-fashioned identity politics, the Mormon Church will be issue, whether publicly or behind-the-scenes.

This has probably been discussed elsewhere in the Bloggernacle, but I missed it. What do we think about this claim? Did Salmon lose because of anti-Mormon bias?

UPDATE: Here is a good analysis of the Romney-supported health care plan in Mass.

Elder Nelson and Wendy L. Watson “were married today in the Salt Lake Temple. This is the second marriage for Elder Nelson and the first for Wendy Watson.” She’s a professor at BYU, getting ready to retire in a few weeks. I’m happy for the happy couple 🙂

According to a recently-released study, intercessory prayer doesn’t work. The post title is linked to the Slate.com story because it links to a bunch of other news stories (interesting for their commentary). The study itself is in the April issue of American Heart Journal. (This links to the editorial in the journal. The study itself is not available for free, but if it is worth $30 to you, you can get it here; it is fourth from the bottom.)

It’s an interesting topic to study, but wouldn’t the faith of those praying make a difference? How would you measure that to make sure those praying met the level of faith required? And what would be the level required? It seems there must also be a humility of “thy will be done” involved. In addition, the random prayer (in the sense that random people were assigned to pray for a random, unknown person, if I correctly understand what they did) seems almost pointless. Would you be able to have the faith that such a person would be healed? Would you really care that much?

I have a few quick thoughts on General Conference I’d like to share.

1)What was Pres. Hinckley referring to in his warning to priesthood members to avoid statements that can be interpreted as racist?
2)I thought Elder Wood’s talk on Sunday afternoon was especially applicable to the Bloggernacle.

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