There is a huge diversity of belief when within the mainstream LDS faith, with possible differing opinions on many topics. Here I will explain what my current opinions are on various common LDS disagreements.
My basic principle behind all these opinions is "quality of evidence over quantity of evidence." In general a witness statement is more accurate: 1) how soon it was after the event happened, and 2) from a first hand witness. When we get into recollections from long after the events happened or start playing the telephone game, evidence deteriorates in quality. This has caused me to be what I call "Vanilla 90's LDS." In the 90's we generally considered embarrassing "facts" about the Church to be attacks by anti-Mormons:
1. I think the Book of Mormon took place in Mesoamerica, at the dates suggested in the book. The quality of evidence for the Mesoamerican hypothesis is superior to alternative theories:
2. I don't think Joseph Smith Jr used a "magic rock" to translate the Book of Mormon, I think he did it with the tools that came with the plates...
3. I seriously doubt Joseph Smith was a polygamist. In a nutshell:
4. I think polygamy has always been a sin, and that when ever it has been practiced, it has been a mistake. I don't think God has ever commanded anyone to do polygamy, I think it's a social contagion that forces of evil use as a weapon of mass destruction against humanity:
5. I don't have a big problem with Brigham Young going off the rails and the LDS Church still being of God. Jesus had Judas, that doesn't mean Jesus wasn't the real deal. Normally when organizations change as much as the LDS Church did between the time of Joseph Smith Jr. and the time of Brigham Young, that organization will continue to go off in that crazy new direction. Instead with the LDS Church we saw big course corrections making it like what Joseph Smith Jr. established in the first place. I take this as evidence that this is not "The Church of the Prophets of Latter-Day Saints," but "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints."
"Ex Nihilo" is the belief that God created the world out of nothing. The "Problem of Evil" is an argument against God existing: it is impossible for a Good Creator of the world to exist because the world has so much evil in it. This Problem of Evil argument depends on God creating the world out of nothing and thus intentionally bringing forth evil.
But the Problem of Evil's premise of Ex Nihilo is totally and completely wrong:
God created (past tense) the universe out of chaos? Consider all the great religious teachers throughout history, Buddha, Muhammad, Jesus, more recently Martin Luther King Jr., Joseph Smith Jr., Pope Francis, etc. What is the one thing they all ask us to do in the name of God? Be better people than we are NOW. IF God has spoken through ANY of these leaders, God is using this world as a tool to help make us better people. Therefore God is creating (present tense) the universe out of chaos.
As evil (chaos) preceded good (creation,) when one of God's creatures exercises free will to chose evil over good, that's not God's fault. Evil was already there, and bringing forth creatures with free will into the universe IS more opportunity for creatures to choose good and thus become good. Creating creatures with free will is a risk God takes in order to make the universe a better place.
Some have wondered if evil is the shadow or absence of good, or does evil have it's own agenda? I say it is both: the status quo of the Universe and our world is dark and chaotic (as Earnest Becker said "...red in tooth and claw, destroying all she creates...") and that the only significant justice and mercy that comes to the Universe that we know of is established by humanity (literally through humans.) God is literally using his children to make the world a better place. Evil is the default state of the universe, and good is thus the shadow or absence of evil.
But I mean shadow here in a most sinister sense: a predator stalking it's prey. Good consumes evil: bad situations are a creative opportunity to create better situations. Evil can cry and squirm and tell nasty stories about good, and though much evil may eventually escape good's hunt, evil's protest will not keep good from having it's feasts. The universe is a massive lemon grove with no delicious fruit, but God & friends are lemon-aid enthusiasts.
Push Hands refers to a wide range of exercises within the Martial Arts. Most fighting styles that train in push hands do not practice all these types of push hands. Here I will describe the general types of Push Hands:
The most common form of push hands is done as an exercise to build the attribute of of feeling what your your opponent is trying to do. The most common of these drills is single-hand push hands in Tai Chi (though there are also other sensitivity drills in Tai Chi that are both one handed and different from this one, and two handed sensitivity drills):
Again push hands is trained in many different fighting styles. Here are push hands sensitivity drills found in Goju Ryu Karate:
Tai Chi is well known for improving the attribute of balance, aka fall prevention. Part of how this is done is with push hands drills were two resisting partners try to get each other to move one of their feet. There are actual completions in this type of stationary push hands, and most "internal" Chinese fighting styles have practitioners who participate:
Resticed Step (or "fixed step") Push Hands is a bridge between Stationary Push Hands and free sparring. Because no one wins fights by simply getting someone to move their feet, Fixed Step Push Hands allows for higly limited foot movement in order to create the kind of momentum that can result in putting the opponent on the ground or out of the ring. There are different variations of Fixed Step Push Hands competitions, and each variation is very technical:
Moving Step Push Hands is essentially the safest possible form of free sparring. The object is to get the opponent out of the ring or off of their feet; basically Sumo without the head contact. The most injurious techniques such as slamming your body down on your opponent, striking, joint locks, etc are not usually allowed:
There is a lot of variation in Moving Step Push Hands. In some schools or competitions they allow elbow or shoulder strikes to the body, or wrist locks, and various other grappling techniques not usually seen in other Moving Step practices. For example here is a training video from Chen Village which shows an in house Moving Step Push Hands workout allowing quite a bit of head contact:
You know how in boxing it gets boring when the referee has to break up the fighters from the clinch? Moving Step Push Hands is essentially that fighting which should be allowed instead of having referee interference. Moving Step Push Hands is then a base to build on for other types of free sparring, such as fighting on the Lei Tai or sparring with weapons.
In Tai Chi and other marital arts we often see instructors adding more striking techniques from forms to the Moving Step Push Hands for free sparring. Just for example, here is a casual Tai Chi practitioner in black pants applying his Tai Chi free sparring against a Kickboxer in a Lei Tai fight, and you can clearly see his Push Hands technique:
Another range of combat that can be built on Moving Step Push Hands is weapon free sparring. For example:
The term "Martial Arts" is vague and could mean anything from doing Tai Chi line dancing in a park to fighting in a Sumo tournament. But usually when people say "martial art," what they usually mean is training in a specific fighting style. This is complicated by people not understanding the difference between training in a fighting style vs training for open fighting. While fighting styles have self defense applications outside of open fighting, open fighting is any competition where different fighting styles can be used against each other.
Here are examples of different martial arts to help you distinguish between fighting styles and open fighting in the future:
MMA is the most obvious example of open fighting. One of the most famous MMA matches of all time was Holly Holm vs Ronda Rousey. Ronda Rousey had a winning streak of 10 undefeated MMA fights using primarily her background as an Olympian level Judo player, and she primarily relied on Judo inside of the cage. Holy Holm trained with the same Gym and coach as notorious MMA dirty boxer Jon Jones, with coach Michael Winkeljon, who learned to fight from Kenpo master Bill Packer. What proceeded was a classic Kenpo vs Judo MMA match, with Holm using Kenpo style low kicks ("oblique kicks") instead of Thai kicks to weaken Rousey's legs before knocking out Rousey with a classic traditional high kick, and during the fight used the "just stand up" strategy traditional martial artists insist fighters should use in MMA when entangled on the ground:
Wrestling is an example of fighting styles that are clumped together to be mistakenly referred to as a type of open fighting, when in fact these individual wrestling fighting styles aren't employed against eachother (outside of some other form of open fighting like MMA.) American Folkstyle is the most serious Get Up Grappling, Greco Roman studies how to grapple without using your weaker arms against the opponent's stronger legs, and Freestyle is what people typically think of as Olympic Wrestling. A wrestler in the USA might practice all three types of wrestling, but they will be the first to tell you that these three wrestling styles are strategically different from each other, and different approaches have to be trained to succeed in each one.
Judo is a good example of a fighting style that is often mistaken for open fighting. It is very rare that a non-Judo practitioner will try to participate in a Judo competition. Even though each individual Judo practitioner specializes in their own personal subset of techniques, all Judo blackbelts are expected to be able to competently execute the same curriculum of techniques.
Submission Grappling is actually a collection of different open fighting rule sets. Examples of fighting styles that compete in Submission Grappling competitions are Sambo, Catch Wrestling, Gracie Jiu Jitsu, 10th Planet BJJ, various styles of Japanese Jujitsu, etc.
Boxing is probably the open fighting most often mistaken for a fighting style. If you compare Floyd Mayweather Jr.'s "Philly Shell" fighting style to Mike Tyson's "Peekaboo" fighting style, both have practitioners who are famous and competent boxers, but everything about the fighting styles are different: stance, structure of their strikes, internal vocabulary for describing techniques, footwork, head movement, training methodologies, etc. This is also true of Muay Thai were many people mistakenly believe that all Muay Thai gyms share the same exact set of strategies, techniques, and training methodologies, which is not the case at all.
French kickboxing, known as Savate, generally has a the same set of techniques, strategies and training methodologies from gym to gym, and is thus a cohesive fighting style which other styles generally do not compete in. Same is true of Dutch Kickboxing, notorious for their brain damaging hard sparring practices, a hybrid of a Dutch style of boxing and Kyokushin Karate. Note that practitioners of the fighting styles of both Savate and Dutch Kickboxing have competed in Muay Thai open fighting.
Karate is an example of how many different fighting styles get confused with each other because they were put in a category together, even if they were never part of the same fighting style at any point in known history. This is also true of Kung Fu, but to a much greater degree because Kung Fu is much older.
Sumo is a classic example of a highly competitive fighting style, that though highly regarded as a sport in and of itself, is not regarded as open fighting precisely because only Sumo trainees fight in Sumo tournaments.
Moving Step Push Hands is open fighting similar to the fighting style of Sumo, but without palm strikes allowed and a more technical scoring system. A wide variety of martial artists from different fighting styles, often practicing different fighting styles from Tai Chi, test to see who is best at staying in the ring and on their feet.
San Shou is an example of how different nearly identical practices can be confusingly similar but refer to totally different martial arts, yet be called the same thing:
"Wushu San Shou" is the type of Wushu focused purely on fighting. This is the type of San Shou people earn degrees in at Universities in China. These fighters mostly fight only other Wushu San Shou fighters, and is thus a fighting style with best practices for specific techniques and strategies.
Tournament Lei Tai Fighting that uses a rule set similar the Wushu San Shou rule set, but which is used at tournaments for fighters from very different Kung Fu systems to compete against each other, is also sometimes called San Shou. This is is some of the oldest open fighting around today, with numerous fighters trained in different fighting styles participating. This is what was meant by "San Shou" before "Wushu San Shou" ever existed:
