Spencer, my oldest son, recently completed training to be a missionary for the LDS Church. As I and many others who have gone through it can attest, the training includes a relatively strong emphasis on obedience. That caught Spencer's attention. And that's led me to gather some thoughts on the subject.

Timothy Killian authored a critique of the New God Argument (NGA). Entitled "An Analytic Review of Lincoln Cannon's 'The New God Argument'", the critique includes some interesting thoughts about NGA's assumptions. The critique also includes numerous mischaracterizations of NGA, the Simulation Argument (SA), and their relationship. And the critique includes numerous logical errors.

Bryan Johnson is a rising star among celebrity technologists. After selling Braintree Financial to Ebay for $800M in 2013, Bryan founded OS Fund to encourage development of emerging technologies in the fields of biotechnology, machine intelligence, and space exploration. And he recently launched a new business of his own, Kernel, which is building neuroprosthetics to improve human intelligence.

When others learn that I identify as a Transhumanist, or when they see me reference Moore's Law or Kurzweil's Law with enthusiasm, they often assume that I identify as a Singularitarian. That is, they often assume I'm someone who advocates the idea of the Technological Singularity. It's an idea that persons interpret and express in different ways. Basically, though, we could say that the Singularity would be a time when technological change is so rapid that, given our present intelligence, humans would be unable to predict or control the change. However, despite those assumptions, I do not identify as a Singularitarian. Here are four reasons why.

In the spring and fall of each year, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints holds its annual general conference. Hundreds of thousands of Mormons converge on Salt Lake City for two days of sermons from top leaders of the Church, which with around 16 million members is by far the largest Mormon denomination in the world. The most recent conference was held yesterday and today. Below are 59 thoughts, from me and others, that I collected as I watched the conference and discussed it. The thoughts range from affirmations to criticisms, and from questions to assertions. I intend them to provoke reflection, questions, and comments, and to contribute to a meaningful engagement with the ideas generally.