Greg's Young Men's president would have sensed the evil |
Among this year’s presenters was Andy Roberts, who teaches
at the State University of New York at Palmyra.
Dr. Roberts argued that “we can anticipate that an LDS Brady family, living
in a very plausible alternative dimension, would have rejoiced as their faithful
home teachers gave Marcia a blessing to miraculously heal her nose before that
crucial dance.” Roberts continued that “an
inspired Young Men’s president surely would have called to warn Greg about the
tiki idol.”
Other presenters, like Dr. Janice Lawrence from the
University of Southern Central Florida, postulated the impact of Mormonism in
athletic events in other time dimensions. Dr. Lawrence established that the
1980 US men’s Olympic hockey team “would clearly have braved the baptismal
waters of Lake Placid just before defeating the Russian team in order to truly
bring to pass a miracle on ice and in the font.” She
also established a credible alternate world in which “repentance created more virtuous
football players at schools like the University of Miami and USC, players who
would not place success on the field above spiritual success.” As a result, explained Lawrence, “those programs
would eschew so called ‘national titles’ in order to be truly, eternally
successful, just as BYU’s football team has done in this dimension for almost 30 years!”
One of the most talked about presentations came from Dr. Kristina
Humphries who teaches physics and creative writing at the University of
Southern North Dakota at Hoople. Dr.
Humphries established a breakthrough theory about how the church has grown
exponentially in one alternative world.
According to Humphries, “two sister missionaries traveling to an
appointment near Los Angeles felt impressed to follow a particular SUV. When the vehicle stopped in a Brentwood
neighborhood, the sister’s followed an impression to knock on the door.” Dr. Humphries then explained how these
inspired sister missionaries “preached the gospel first to the people in the
home, who lovingly repented and forsook their sins,” and then the sisters “addressed
the cameras that had assembled so that God’s word (instead of the NBA) could be
heard throughout the nation.”
Though most presentations were well received, others received considerable criticism. When a professor postulated a world in
which Jon McNaughton could respectfully see the value of religious, cultural, and political
pluralism, he was roundly criticized as proposing “something so wildly
implausible and absurdly unthinkable” that “by its very nature may violate
fundamental principles of the space-time continuum as well is bring ParalleLDS’s
work into disrepute.” McNaughton reportedly responded with a life-size painting of Jesus weeping at the sight of McNaughton's critics, many of whom happened to be reading articles from the Mormon Tabernacle Enquirer.
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