RussianAmericanMormon
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User ID: 4365
Hm interesting, never heard anyone claim that being well-endowed is standard issue among LDS women. Not when compared to the buxom jewesses in any case. Facially they're very cute, which is what matters most in my book. I'm glad to have such smokin' hot coreligionists as prospective wives and it strengthens my testimony that we are truly members of God's church on Earth.
Do let me know if you have any theological questions about my faith and I would love to be of assistance as I consider myself to be decently read in apologetics.
RussianAmericanMormon
2d ago
Lattimore aims to serve as a line-for-line, verbatim translation of the Ancient Greek into English, so if you're looking to replicate the experience of reading it in its language of origin without actually doing so, it's a safe bet. Fitzgerald uses a more vivid and contemporary prose without being highly verbose, while also not sacrificing accuracy.
RussianAmericanMormon
2d ago
Depends on your fields of interest. For rationalist-adjacent content you have the TPOT-sphere (That Part of Twitter) with the prolific posters being Eigenrobot, Growing Daniel, Cremieux, etc. Otherwise most of the Substack writers I peruse will typically also have a non-negligible presence on Twitter.
Well hey, it all depends on your frame of reference, I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to pursue JAPs prior to my conversion and pivot to courting BYU blondes. I don't think LDS mammaries are any bigger or smaller than the national average, you simply have to know where to look to find the size that works best for you.
I respect your disinterest in litigating a theological debate here and as such I will not actively proselytize, but I want to briefly clarify that as a rule of thumb, every theological debate is more nuanced than a 10 minute video essay or an /r/exmormon post, they don't have the last word on the founding of the church, far from it. Joseph Smith had eleven witnesses affirming that he did have the ancient records he claimed to possess, who stood by that testimony even after apostatizing following a feud and believing that Joseph Smith lost his divine authority in the restoration of the gospel. Disproved anachronisms, authentic Mesoamerican and Ancient Near East correspondences, the war strategies delineated in the Book of Mormon that weren't just poetic accounts of Napoleonic warfare contemporaneous to the time of translation, the duration of the translation process and use of Hebraic poetry all convinced me of the veracity of the Church's supernatural claims. If you are interested in critically engaging with LDS truth claims, anthropologist John L. Sorenson's Mormon's Codex is a fascinating read, my irreligious acquaintances who were not looking to be persuaded share this sentiment.
I don't think one's religious affiliation (or lack thereof) should be contingent on how compatible it is with one's priors. On the contrary, the entire purpose of religion is to instill humility and charity into people through their awareness of a higher power's existence, altering their calculus to one that is not aligned with the irrational and egoistic human nature. God is viewed as an entity possessing eternal intelligence, an asymptote we won't reach at this juncture if you will, and as such we believe our worldly intuition will inevitably serve us wrong and that we are meant to be inconvenienced at times, because ultimately that is what will maximize our well-being in the long term. In my experience, most Christian churches offer doctrines, services, etc. as ancillaries to entice people to join, i.e., you're Catholic because mass is cool. If you're looking for a good community, they fit the bill. Our church by contrast, emphasizes that one joins it because they believe it is truly the very church that Jesus Christ established during his earthly ministry, and has been restored through Joseph Smith.
We do not view coffee as a biohazard. I myself love drinking mock coffee made from barley and chicory and popping some caffeine pills, twice as potent as real coffee 😉 Tiramisu and coffee ice cream are superlative. We believe that upon our baptism, we have covenanted with God to abstain from coffee and tea as a sacrifice, similar to the Jewish abstention to shellfish which is not rooted in health grounds. I don't think it's a coincidence that tea, coffee, alcohol, and tobacco are all "rituals" served by hosts to guests in hospitality, transcending cultural barriers. There are obvious benefits to not partaking in substances like alcohol, but by refusing them and making ourselves stick out like sore thumbs in the crowd, it's a way of subliminally attracting publicity to our gospel.
As cool as it would be to boast about being a lifelong member descended from the original Scandinavian and English pioneers who migrated to Utah, I am a convert who took 8 months of my precious time to ponder over what the Church offered to me. I myself have long been beholden to coffee, booze, and cigars. After a little cost-benefit analysis, I arrived to the conclusion that if the Church is true, I should be able to find joy and purpose in life without these ephemeral niceties, but rather from the rich company and safety net I have thanks to my coreligionists. I don't think any less of people who don't share my outlook, I view it as a personal matter and they have not entered the covenants I have, there's no contract they are bound by to abstain from any of those substances. I do see benefit in alcohol at an individual level, though I believe strong social and institutional cohesion in a community is an even better alternative to the benefits alcohol does offer. Speaking of which, another reason we abstain from drinking and smoking is because we want to set the right precedents and stand in solidarity with the people who are less capable of drinking and smoking within reasonable measure, "for the weakest of saints" as we say.
I'm pleased to hear that. Our missionaries do tend to be more compassionate and less aggressive in their proselytizing tactics than the Jehovah's Witnesses, as the training programs for missionaries emphasizes not viewing prospective new members as statistics or homogeneous units, or treating their ministry as solely transactional, but rather gaining tangible experience in serving others and leaving one's comfort zone. You will have some inexperienced 18 year olds potentially ask you to get baptized 2 months after visiting with them, but they mean well. If you do decide to attend, I think your boundaries would be absolutely respected if stated clearly, as we absolutely enjoy building rapport with curious people of other backgrounds :)
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