jake
9d ago
I was looking for examples of specific theological beliefs or other aspects of Mormonism that might render Mormonism incompatible with Christianity as it's traditionally conceived
I can. The quickest one is they reject the oneness of God and Christ. This isn't in any standard nontrinitarian sense, it is in the uniquely Mormon polytheistic sense as they believe God, Christ, and the Holy Spirit are three distinct gods, among multitudes. They employ rhetorical tricks, they believe in a "godhead" that is "one" and you'll find that "one" often in quotations because it's an equivocation. As trinitarian Christians mean one in the literal sense of one essential being, Mormons mean one in the figurative sense, acting in a common purpose. You could say that of the religion, the Church of Latter-Day Equivocations. Smith used a bunch of words because they sounded Christian when he meant anything but.
Yahweh said to Moses "I am." Christ said to the Pharisees "Before Abraham was, I am." The Pharisees understood he was claiming to be God, that's why they tried to stone him. Mormons post-hoc their nontrinitarian beliefs by saying instances of YHWH/Jehovah in the OT actually refer to Christ. False to an absurd degree, in the number of verses clearly describing Yahweh as God the Father, and those that go on to say "and no other gods exist."
Smith followed in the line of Muhammad. He gutted a religion, wore it as a skinsuit, and in America exploited some of its inertia for his cult. There are nominally Christian sects that also reject the divinity of Christ. Same goes for them. That's not what's really relevant here, though. Apropos this discourse, you see among righties some saying "Christendom is under attack" and the retort spiral of "Mormons aren't Christians" / "Yes we are" et refrain. Christianity, most historically, is the belief in Christ and God as one. Most Christians today believe in Christ and God as one. They think Mormons believe the same. If they knew Mormons didn't, they would no longer consider them Christian but a deeply heretical, borderline if not overtly blasphemous, likely Satanic cult. Dante would find Joseph Smith in the Eighth Circle, Ninth Bolgia. Ever-cleft from groin to abdomen.
Personally, I find polygamy, especially polygyny, as so gravely wicked as to be self-apparently disqualifying of Smith and so all of his work. Today, a man who wants multiple wives hates women to a degree I don't know how to put into words, and he hates men even more. Smith had 30-40 "wives." And that's always what it's about, at least in the US. Men go to remarkable lengths so they can have sex with whichever women they want.
Yes, they had a "revelation" to stop the practice, because if they hadn't, the army would have done it for them.
jake
23d ago
politics so vitriolic that it threatened to overwhelm the grief . . . misbegotten ideology — “brainwashed” into believing he could help the poor and wayward . . . morally vacant critics
Sharing emotionally manipulative and outright deceptive writing is not an ideal way to service your point. The criticism of Carson was because of his activity on X. I could link any one of his posts, I'll link this one. At the NYPD, to which he replied "Your cops are subhuman." He was such a kind man, he only cared about garbage.
As someone who keeps a close eye on those righty circles and who doesn't shy from graphic content, I couldn't tell you the last time I saw his murder shared, but this could be selection bias. What I have seen are plentiful criticisms of his girlfriend for her behavior continuing from that night.
But really, this is accepting framing, and I don't do that. The righties criticize Carson for his belief that socioeconomic conditions precipitate the willingness of an 18 year old to wander a city and murder a stranger by repeatedly stabbing him. His beliefs directly related with and contributed to the circumstances of his murder. That's not why lefties are criticizing Kirk. Had Kirk agitated for and supported violence against his opposition -- actual violence, not the child's "you said mean words" -- he would have lived and died by the sword. He didn't. He hurt their feelings, and they say that's a reason to say he deserved it as they dance on his grave. These are not comparable.
jake
25d ago
The Annunciation shooting in Minneapolis last month and the Covenant School shooting in Nashville in 2023.
jake
25d ago
We have two instances of the trans-identifying carrying out mass shootings against Christian schoolchildren. Saying "one is too many" is smug; two is too many, two is pattern. The idea has been seeded, people are considering it. It will not be allowed to keep happening.
There is something intriguing from civilization's standpoint, how there aren't examples of men murdering their ex-wives and judges in instances where those men have been prohibited from interfering in hormonal treatments their child is receiving. I wonder if it's that there's something inherent to the men, both in what led them to pairing with the mothers of their children, and to their children undergoing such hormonal therapies. Meaning, that there are plenty of men who would kill their ex-wives and/or judges in those situations, but such men never find themselves in those situations.
The segue here is Tyler Robinson, it's loosely relevant for Luigi Mangione, and then relevant again for the past two trans-identifying school shooters, and for any other perpetrators of that sort of random violence. I think it must be concluded that radical rhetoric cannot bend a healthy mind to violence, I think if it could, we would have seen it far more often, left and right, and we haven't. That it takes an already unhealthy mind with a preexisting murderous disposition to move to violence. This does not absolve, it reinforces the culpability on that rhetoric, because it takes such people and gives them a target, a target who often throws gasoline on the fire of politics.
I recall someone wondering about something like this with people who would have been serial killers instead carrying out mass shootings. So maybe it is worth contemplating that Tyler Robinson maybe wasn't twisted out of normalcy by the internet but rather by some event, perhaps some trauma in his life, and that he would have murdered someone else, or multiple people, or tried to, if not Charlie Kirk. But equally, that a murderer chose Charlie Kirk because of leftist rhetoric.
jake
26d ago
As things stand, even now, the reward for these commentators is the next decade of watching powerlessly as their political party fades to nothing. At best their names will be remembered for when their presence is ejected from a reborn left that has wholly excised its bond with identitarian politics. These commentators themselves will fade into nothing and die in irrelevance. The punishment has been imposed, their deserts ever-coming.
At worst, for them not everyone, the violence continues, and each new perpetuation will be cause to take more scalps. The punishment then will also not be death, it will be what Stephen Miller wants, as he understands what is both the most effective and the most righteous punishment: exile.
jake
26d ago
I understand how difficult it is to see the gloating and then still see the person. I do for many, not all, but for many, what helps is the numbers. @Magusoflight mentions the "Charlie's Murderers" website has having totaled 20,000 entries; that's a rounding error, that's several orders of magnitude below lizardman constant. It could be a hundredth of the total who hold the sentiment and that total is still below the lizardman constant among Americans. It's noise.
The same is true for posts on X. I've seen lamentations of the number of likes on some very cruel posts and I've been surprised at how few people in the comments understand the likes are botted are else mostly originate in non-Americans. I do not live in a country where such a degree of callousness is present in enough leftists to total 500,000 likes on a snipe at his daughter. This country would look completely different if the leftist fringe were that numerous.
This doesn't make it not a problem that certain people are gloating. There are instances, specific to categories of profession, where they should face immediate termination. A doctor, as happened on reddit whereupon he was swiftly doxxed, should be fired and his license suspended pursuant to a lengthy readmission process that isn't so much about making him kiss the ring as it is browbeating him with the knowledge of "now any time there's an issue with a patient we're going to have to rule out willful misconduct" -- I'm deeply ignorant on this but I guess I just assume if you asked your hospital's lawyers "How bad would it be if I got caught publicly gloating about the assassination of a political figure?" you'd get Ted's thousand-yard stare. Obviously same for nurses and pharmacists, same for cops, minus being allowed to be a cop again, and same with teachers. I'll explain.
I have close leftists friends to whom I assume I come across as something like a highly contrarian perfectly-line-straddling libertarian with socialist leanings, probably because that's what I am in the strictest sense. It's meant since this happened I've been able to engage them in clear air, non-combatively. I was able to gently chastise those who mentioned Kirk and began to express positive feelings about his death. For each, I got them to take back their words, and though for each they said some variation of "Well . . . I don't know that I can feel bad about him" none of them said it as a petty retort. These were calls and face-to-face, I heard their understanding in their voices, I saw in some the actual moment of realization on their face, and I wasn't asking them to mourn the man, but perhaps mourn the state of things, to realize it's bad, and they did. This all because I can talk to them honestly because I know how to talk to them, and yes, because I don't raise flags as an enemy soldier. I shouldn't! I'm their friend, I love them dearly, it's part of why I felt so heartsick Wednesday and the psychic hangover Thursday, fear that my friends are going to get themselves killed.
These friends, some of them still live with their parents, or else are renting an apartment or a house, often with a sibling. Not one of them owns a house. They work service industry jobs, or similar, at best nice and proper careers but nothing critical, nothing where lives are in their hands directly or effectually. They're single and at most dating but nothing serious, obviously no kids, and altogether, no meaningful expectations in their lives. They are stunted, they are immature, and they've been let down by so many people in their lives. I don't want to say they were let down by their parents, but they were, they were let down by their schools, and they were let down by their leaders. Their leaders do know better, their leaders do act from the conflict side, but just as I know that with certainty, I know my friends act from mistake. They don't understand what they're saying because they are still, essentially, children.
A doctor can't be a child, you can't have that level of trust invested in you and be a child. A doctor must know better, his thoughts must be adequately ordered in, if truly nothing else, understanding you can't out yourself as having such beliefs for goddamned upvotes. Children can be trusted with guns, some of them, in very specific circumstances, they don't get to arrest criminals, and we don't let children lead classrooms of other children. You could say it's exactly this last case that is responsible for so many problems in modern education. I don't disagree.
It would be wrong for me to treat this as all so certain. It is incredibly inflammatory, necessarily, in being maximally patronizing and almost maximally denying of agency when I say, oh, that's fine, they're just stupid kids, only kids could find such ideas compelling. I'll square this as best I can:
I think each position in their platform has some essential truth and reason it it. If they were correct about the world, their behavior would, largely, be in congruence with the Christian moral paradigm on which western civilization was raised. If policing in fact caused the problems it was purported to solve, it would make sense to abolish policing. If it were a racist justice system and racism-originating disparities in socioeconomic conditions, progressive "equity" based policies would make sense. If we were certain that tabula rasa was our objective reality and anybody could be an American if you raised them right, it would make sense to be extremely lax about immigration, though still to an extent, as moderated by the simple logistical problem of it all. If we were correct about the etiology of gender dysphoria and that self-harm and suicide occurs in such numbers solely because of a lack of social acceptance, it would make sense to treat it as quickly as identified and implement a measure of structural protections for such people. And if there really were a problem with fascism and neonazism among the right, it would make sense to come down hard against it, though what I mean by "hard" and what they mean by "hard" are very different.
Preemptive violence is not justified inside that Christian paradigm or outside in the at least idealized postwar order. Here I will put my foot down. It is maximally charitable and good faith to consider celebrating the death of a man who simply talked to college students as the behavior of a child. It is the behavior of a child to consider words as ever constituting violence and so respond to those words with violence. It is the behavior of a child to throw tantrums and threaten self-harm over real or perceived slights; it's also the most classic behavior of an abuser to threaten self-harm and suicide over real or perceived slights. It is the behavior of a child to outsource their thinking to the group and say whatever the group says to fit in. Children don't, or shouldn't, understand real violence. Adults do.
It's also charitable because of the alternative. I think the left needs to purge itself, and should probably be adequately coerced into it, but that ultimately it should still exist and be permitted to rebuild around its traditional strengths. If this is a movement where the majority of its adherents are agentic and have arrived individually and organically at the support for assassinations, the appropriate conclusion is the movement doesn't get to exist anymore.
jake
27d ago
Had Kirk survived the attempt this might have been appropriate.
This is highly eloquent sneering. You are grasping at straws to justify your smugness over a man who was in every way your better. If I were to give you credit, it would have been for the subtlety of your actual message that has eluded those responding to you: "He deserved it and I'm glad he's dead."
I admit I expected to get modded on moderately unfair grounds
No credit; if you were as sharp as you think you are you wouldn't have admitted it.
jake
28d ago
You said they wouldn't let Trump run again, then, that they wouldn't let him win. He ran and he won.
Being tired leads to "nothing ever happens". The "adults" on the right who knew the stakes just kept letting the left getting victory after victory... right up until Trump. And Trump started doing things (not all of which I like, but a lot of which I do), and you know what... the world did NOT end.
By tired I mean my patience has been exhausted. I spent yesterday afternoon and evening and now all of today so far explaining to my leftist friends how their political movement is dead. I wasn't doing this over Iryna Zarutska, hard as that was and much as I wanted. In their corner of the world, I am now the adult who has stood up and is telling them to be quiet.
This has plated and delivered 2028 to Vance. 11 more years of this? Between deportation and remigration, every red state that now has mandate to max out their gerrymandering, and all the potential SCOTUS picks where every single one will be someone right of Thomas -- the democrat party as it exists in this moment does not survive another 11 years. That's before we consider the indefinite possibility of more leftist violence. Everyone calling for severe measures are correct essentially to consider this casus belli against leftist organizations, they aren't correct politically. The responses yesterday in the celebrations from the bottom to the top, from the children on TikTok to MSNBC to dems shouting on the house floor, are just cause if any other major figure is assassinated.
If it's even necessary. They've already lost. These are their death throes. Victory does come in their destruction, you do win by winning, but that doesn't have to be fast, brutality doesn't have to be fast. It can be the decade they now face in the slow torture of watching the world as they thought they knew it fall apart.
jake
28d ago
You, as with Nybbler, confuse epistemically always betting on black with wisdom. Your hits don't come from reason, they come from pessimism and the scree "Nothing ever happens." When you are proved wrong you ignore and move on. I don't expect when I open the news tomorrow morning to see mass arrests as having been carried out overnight, but if they were, I know I could go to X and find Nick Fuentes explaining how it's only a win for Israel, actually.
You, as with Nybbler, are ahead of the curve in understanding there is a problem, that's it. You are both otherwise immature and motivated by bloodthirst. We have civilization because men stopped being motivated by bloodthirst, stopped hitting defect, and started hitting cooperate. The reason why the right hits cooperate even now is because on a blood-memory level they understand what it is they will unleash when they start hitting defect. I assure you, a murdered girl on a train, a murdered man at a college, and even several murdered children, are not enough.
This is the best time it has ever been for everybody, from the wealthiest to the poorest, to be alive in civilization. The amount of suffering, violence and death we avoid every minute of every day is a wealth beyond measure. And I'm just tired. I'm tired of the infantilization of leftist rhetoric, where they've so effectively cultivated their little sphere to have no remaining adults in the room to stand up and tell them to sit down and be quiet, and I'm tired of the infantilization of rightist rhetoric, like exactly here, where smugness meets ignorance. They aren't docile, they're the adults who know the stakes.
When it comes, if it comes, it will be exactly the moment it is necessary. And we won't just bounce back. It won't be paradise when only whites are left. We will have gone from a civilization that raised from nothing in this beautiful land, to one reborn wholly in blood. The specter will haunt us forever. You think you want this because you don't know better, and you mock meekness when you should rejoice that men still have hope.
I still have hope, even as this day is the hardest it has ever been. I will still hit cooperate, until the button burns out.
jake
29d ago
When we saw the most recent amp in Nazi rhetoric with "It's okay to punch a Nazi" I tried explaining to my leftist friends, as this was a point when I still could without risking pattern-matching to wrongthink, that the moral order of politics is specifically on violence not being an acceptable tool. Violence changes the moral equation, when a leftist punches who they call a Nazi in belief of preemptive violence being acceptable, what they are saying is the Nazis weren't wrong because of what they did, but who they did it to. No, the crime of Nazi Germany had nothing to do with who they targeted.
A trans-identified man murdered Catholic schoolchildren because he was conditioned in an environment that treats violence as acceptable. I plea to the trans, the backlash they face for sports, for changing rooms, for grooming children, this was a warning of stepping too far. If the trans phenomenon weren't in schools, if to this day it were restricted solely to 18 year olds, the trans movement would be in a much stronger position. Gays in the 80s and especially the 90s in following the agenda as outlined in After the Ball, knew the success of the movement was wholly dependent on peaceful, quiet coexistence and leaving children alone. When, and I'll happily call this fringe, when fringe members of the trans community advocate violence, when they say "What do you expect?" with their words explicitly conveying "Accept us or we'll kill more of your children" it doesn't end in their tolerance, it ends in the response being "Okay, we won't give any of you the chance."
Because this is might makes right, this is consequentialism, this is the Nazis were bad because they didn't target someone who deserved it.
And now Charlie Kirk has been shot.
Years ago on /pol/ I would go into slide threads with a simple point. I live in a very blue part of a very red city. I'm surrounded by trans flags and yes even BLM signs still and various other displays of leftist conforming. Such neighbors talk to me, they think I'm one of them. This is the story of this country. The leftists, for no fear (truly the greatest display of subconscious awareness of how they are the establishment) signal themselves everywhere, even among mixed company, who they believe agrees with them. Leftists don't understand they are surrounded by their ideological adversaries, leftists don't understand that they can't see their adversaries, but their adversaries see them. Their adversaries know where they work, they know where they shop, they know where they live, they know where they sleep.
If violence, if the American Troubles and Years of Lead happens, it will involve one side who wear their allegiance sometimes literally on their faces, and one side who is invisible and everywhere. I'd end my explanation, in those slide threads, by saying I'm trying to save your life. I am, I don't want violence, I know most people don't want violence, it's why we haven't become violent. We know it is the last resort, and even now we aren't there, but each senseless act convinces people violence is the only option.
Iryna Zarutska moved it some, Charlie Kirk moves it much, much farther.
As I've been composing this, constantly refreshing X, I see now Trump posted that Kirk has died. If the left is to continue existing, now is the time for its pivot. Admit you're wrong, your voters will forget, everyone will forget. Lord knows there's enough to advocate purely on improving conditions for American labor while attacking the abuses of wealth. There is no longer a win condition for the American left as it exists in this moment.
You believe the "godhead" is "one" in the "'scriptural' 'sense'" via the eisegetical interpretation your predecessors tore apart the scripture in service of making, not what Christians have held for most of 2,000 years.
The meaningful historic definition of Christian can be shorthanded as one who holds and espouses the beliefs found in the Nicene Creed. The LDS rejects this explicitly. You claim to be Christian because you believe in a figure you call Christ (cc. "LDE"), not because you believe in the same Christ as those of the Nicene Creed. This is a matter of historic distinction of groups. The grand intersection of Christianity with the macro of world history is those of the Nicene Creed. You are not in one measure the same as us but through equivocation. You may continue to equivocate, we are not the same. For the most visibly signaling theological distinction, the Catholic Church, Lutheran, Methodist, Presbyterian, and Baptist churches have interdenominational recognition of the validity of baptisms; all deny the validity of Mormon baptism. Mormons recognize no baptisms but their own. I repeat, and your leaders affirm for "The Great Apostasy," we are not the same.
I am also disinterested in matters of indeed settled theology. The Church is a monarchy, and while there is the priesthood of the laity, they are not charged with authority on matters of doctrine. The reason for this may be seen in many places but no better in its crudeness than the strained-to-shattered readings Mormon elders use to justify their doctrine. Stepping on John 1, which makes explicit the consubstantial nature of the Logos and God, to convolute John 17 as "This means there's 3 gods actually." Or far worse in the first LDS link, 1 Cor. 15:35-41 as Paul's secret code about resurrected states of being. This isn't even strained as I can say of John 17 and it's not the childish misunderstanding of the third heaven mention of 2. Cor. 12; it is not possible to have arrived at this interpretation without willful malfeasance. He's talking about astronomical objects, also called heavenly bodies.
The Septuagint condemns him. Solomon was tested with the lechery of his father, he failed, his chalice was filled with iniquity as the sin was visited upon him fully, the kingdom fell. There's a lesson in this.
The Edmund-Tucker Act preceded the "revelation" and this is what Woodruff is quoted as verbatim:
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