Professing to be a mormon is a logical decision if your culture is mormon.
Disinterest in pursuing a more empirical world view is not illogical if one would have to damage their relationship with those closest to them in its pursuit.
(Sorry about the pretentiousness of that (and this) sentence, I can’t find a more vernacular way of expressing these ideas succinctly).
What you said (and such defenses of religion) makes me think: If I see someone ready to jump off a bridge, and I can stop them against their will, should I? I mean, inside their brain they are ending their suffering. They don’t see value in life. But I do. Whose worldview is more important?
What if it was drugs, should I stop them? What if it was drinking every weekend? What if it was refusing to go outside without a mask in the middle of a pandemic?
What if it was following the cult of their parents, which encourages abuse & discrimination of women, opression of minorities, supression & regression of scientific advances and further indoctrination of future generations? If I have the power to get someone out of their cult against their will, should I?
Or what if it was continuing to feed a system that brainwashes people into thinking that monetary gain is what’s important in life, that the system is infallible, and no alternatives exist?
Should we act against what we perceive as wrong, even if it’s against the will of other persons? Where do we draw the line? Who decides what is right and what is wrong?
No, there are plenty that do it. Not weekly, but most do it yearly. I’ve known nondenominational places, lutheran, baptist, episcopalian, and methodists that do.
It is a little different when your origin story is very obviously a mediocre conman having his shitty cons described by multiple eye witness accounts and having your myths be 2000 years old with no first hand accounts.
Like I said, it’s different when you have the actual daily journals of people calling it a con.
Or his wife calling him a liar after he stuck his head in a hat to get his prophecies.
Like, regardless of the fact that to religious types the age of the belief has value, it’s just a whole different level of obvious bullcrap beyond simply believing in the supernatural.
Not just as easy. There’s a lot of room for someone to say “this was actually just metaphor” or even “these are just stories to convey values”.
Take the tower of Babel, for example, we know it never happened. However, a more progressive Christian or Jewish tradition can use the story to talk about how sometimes cultural differences are simply surface level, we are all ultimately the same people. Mormons aren’t so lucky because the book of Mormon was pitched as a literal history and part of the book has literal refugees from the tower of Babel.
Unlike the Bible, we have the author of the religion who very well documented how literal everything is. We don’t even know who authored nearly any book in the Bible or their motivations.
I’m not arguing for a god, I’m an atheist exmo. However, there’s a pretty big difference between a bunch of old stories compiled together into a book and a book of fiction that the author went out of his way to claim was “the most correct book ever written”.
I mostly agree with you, though the babble has the upper hand with older and better-funded propaganda campaigns spanning more time and regions and organizations using it for political manipulation. It’s had more polishing, rewriting, adapting, and state-backed proliferation (including by use of armies to wipe out competitors). It also borrowed many more mythical elements from other existing religions. Joseph Smith’s version is newer, and the mythology a bit sloppier, so the average person can conceivably judge the odd parts of its modern context easier. One is star wars and the other is an underfunded filler show on Netflix on its second season in 10 years by comparison. Which one has the better chance of having someone in your life convince you to give it a shot, and disincentivizes you from criticizing it in social settings more?
It’s always so hard to read and understand when people start using them/they when referring to a single person. Please stop, it’s okay to say him/her, nobody will die.
Examples of the singular “they” being used to describe someone features as early as 1386 in Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales and also in famous literary works like Shakespeare’s Hamlet in 1599.
“They” and “them” were still being used by literary authors to describe people in the 17th Century too - including by Jane Austin[sic] in her 1813 novel Pride and Prejudice.
And you completely miss the point where it’s much harder to comprehend what people are talking about. Had it said “he/him” it would have been 100% clear without a doubt immediately, and it would have insulted NOBODY.
Nobody was insulted by him/her since forever, now we can’t use that anymore because somehow it’s exclusionary, insulting or “assuming the obvious gender”
I hope she’s a good distance runner since there’s no mass transit in much of Utah. It also explains why Japanese internment camps were located there and modern juvenile detention centers can often be found in places like Blanding, Utah: it’s difficult to physically and anonymously escape.
I’m not apathetic about religious people because unfortunately they continue to occupy positions of authority in our society.
If religious people were actually dismissed in the way you describe I could understand your perspective. They are not mocked liked this though and are very much taken seriously.
unfortunately they continue to occupy positions of authority in our society.
No need to pick on religious people in this case. There are plenty of people with various character flaws in positions of power / authority.
If religious people were actually dismissed in the way you describe I could understand your perspective. They are not mocked liked this though and are very much taken seriously.
So you don’t know about:
Bill Maher
Bill Hicks
George Carlin
South Park
any comedy movie that involves a religious character
Notably those examples make absolutely no difference on how religious people in authority positions frequently use their religion to guide how they use their authority (which ain’t fucking cool)
I can use whatever word for church you want, bud, theyre all the same thing with a different title. Temple, parish, mosque, its all big rooms with a speaking spot up front
Please tell me how south park poking fun at you, as they do with everyone, affects your ability to legislate. Last i checked the jokes haven’t stopped anyone from cramming their religion down our throats
Being in a family that is nice to each other is not exclusive or in any way more likely for Mormons, or really any religion.
If anything it could be easily argued that it would likely trend away from religious households, but without solid data I think it’s better to assume it’s most likely to just be the same likelihood regardless of religious or spiritual beliefs.
However, in the case of Mormons, they actively train their followers to effectively disavow even their own family if they choose to move away from the religion.
As someone who has worked with and for Mormons, it's a special kind of hell. Usually some flavor of narcissist stunted at a middle-school level of inward development.
The funny thing is, I grew up with a bunch of Mormons for friends and one teacher I know of, and I never found out about most of the stuff they believe until much later. At least they (the ones I grew up with anyway) have the decency to not go around spreading their dogma to non-believers until they’ve already thoroughly roped them into their cult.
Fun fact: “blood transfusions”-less techniques are useful to develop in case of blood shortage among other reasons. So Jehovah witness’s stubbornness at least have some benefits for medecine. Sucks that it also kills some of them though.
Let’s assume I didn’t know about vaccines and I went to ask for advice to someone. How would I know if what they told me was good advice?
I would ask myself, are they an authority on the subject? Where do they draw the advice from? Who says they are an authority? What did they have to do to earn that authority? Do other authorities say the same?
Are mormons authorities on logic? Why trust advice about logic from someone that doesn’t follow logic?
A liar can say that lying is bad. A killer can say that killing is bad. It just so happens that the advice is good, in spite of who said it.
Yes, it’s emotional to disregard advice you know is good. However it is a logical reaction to have.
It is logical for humans not to trust or accept advice from a hypocrite, even if that advice may be good. It’s not about the advice itself, but about who gives it. That was my point.
Unfortunately humans have emotions, and those emotions factor into our so called “logical decisions”. To ignore our emotions is to pretend we are machines, and machines wouldn’t be in these situations, as a machine wouldn’t give advice it doesn’t follow itself.
Now, if we were machines, sure, if the advice is good, it’s good, doesn’t matter who gives it.
Furthermore, if I already know the advice is good, did I receive advice?
Actually, mormons think they are very logical. I’ve seen many instances of people talking about how Brandon Sanderson being Mormon is why he’s so thorough at world building.
The flaw of the meme isn’t that it’s picking on religion, the flaw of it is that it assumes illogical views negate logical views. Believing that angels hid golden plates in New England doesn’t negate good looks at a P&L in the same way that a Christian working at NASA that believes a dude rose from the dead doesn’t negate good math to get a satellite into space. In the same way that me being agnostic doesn’t mean I’m always logical and rational in every situation.
I argue the opposite and I think the difference is that you believe religious belief can be demarcated in a persons mind where I think it influences all decision making.
I.e. Does my boss make decisions on P&L because they are good at business or because they prayed on it?
You and my boss might look at all the same information and arrive at the same conclusion except how can you be sure that the path my boss took reflects your own logic and not prayer?
If the information about your world passes through a filter to determine if it fits your world view or not it’s possible to serendipitously make the logical decision but it doesn’t mean fundamentally you accept the logic of the situation at hand.
If your foundational understanding of what constitutes possibility, I.e. that when Jesus died he was transported to north America for 3 days prior to being resurrected I have trouble believing this doesn’t influence your day to day decisions.
Reminds me of the rabbi whose congregation complained about his many vices, saying that he’s supposed to be better, he’s supposed to show them the way. So he brought them to the edge of the town and showed them a direction sign.
“Does it show you the way? It does. And do you want it to go anywhere?”
Most people don’t actually know what logic is. I would ask him to define logic to see where he’s coming from. Because most people either don’t have a definition or if they do it’s different than the one the person they’re talking to has. But to do that, you’ll also want a definition you could explain to someone else going into asking the question.
I’ll take a swing at it. I’m curious how I’ll do if I just wing it.
Logic is a set of rules that can be used to form repeatable results based on given information. It’s often built using one’s own knowledge and experience. Logic does not require producing accurate results. Flawed logic is still logic. Logic also does not guarantee that the results are the desired results, this is sometimes described as “garbage in, garbage out”.
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