domain:eigenrobot.substack.com
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
2hr ago
Not to mention the nonnas.
3472094371
2hr ago
OliveTapenade
2hr ago
Nitpick: in my experience Sunni Muslims and Shia Muslims do not try to exclude each other from Islam. In Islam there is a very strong consensus that anybody who says and sincerely believes the shahada is a Muslim. Sunni-Shia differences are obviously very important and a major driver of violence even today, and heaven help you if try to change from one to the other, but I have never heard a Muslim trying to suggest that a member of the other party is not a Muslim.
That said, I don't like the analogy to early Christianity that much because I think what we're looking at in early Christianity is a young tradition forming itself, and as part of that formation, it went through a process of debating and coming to understand its own doctrine. 'Christianity' as we know it today is largely a product of that process.
I'd suggest that most people have an intuitive sense that there is a point at which a Christian-derived or Christian-influenced religious movement ceases to be Christianity. The most famous example is probably Islam itself. We know that the first Christians to come into contact with Islam understood it to be a heresy - Muhammad was a deluded man who misunderstood the scriptures and preached his own revelation. I think we have a spectrum of dissent where, say, Protestantism is clearly Christianity, Islam is clearly not Christianity, and in the middle there's a grey area. Pentecostals? Christian. Adventists? Christian. Jehovah's Witnesses? Ehh, getting pretty heretical. Mormons? A bit further out. Candomblé? Influenced by Christianity but definitely not. And so on. I understand that different people will, in good faith, draw the Christian/non-Christian line in different places.
My personal model would be concentric circles, if that makes sense? At the centre we have 'Christianity', which I define in terms of the ecumenical creeds. It contains Catholicism, Protestantism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and maybe Oriental Orthodoxy. The next circle out is what I term 'Jesusism', which includes any religious tradition in which Jesus Christ is the central or decisive figure: this includes Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, Iglesia ni Cristo, Hong Xiuquan, and so on. The next circle after that is 'Jesus-influenced': this includes any religious tradition in which Jesus is a major figure, but not the central one. This would include Islam, the Baha'i Faith, CaoDai, and so on. Finally, beyond that, we have religions that have nothing to do with Jesus whatsoever: Hinduism, Daoism, Scientology, and so forth.
But I grant that there are plenty of people for whom 'Christianity' means everything within my 'Jesusist' circle.
But again: somehow the rest of the world did. Their precious tooling using only Troy ounces, Whitworth screws and French inches except when needing 尺 instead was swapped decades ago. Weird how the other 96% of the globe somehow managed.
TowardsPanna
2hr ago
I expect that finding the right words for the various components of the aroma will help the brain discern and sort them in the future. This is not that simple to implement though. Because there's no "answer key" and you're not necessarily standing there with the dictionary ready on your phone and because you might not know which is which in the mix. I'm thinking it could be a good idea to buy a "sample set" of lots of distinct ingredients in order to build a bigger vocabulary and knowledge base.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
2hr ago
I mean, let's get real, French food is kinda meh, even German cusine is better.
IGI-111
God was a dream of good government.
3hr ago
European food is bad across the board
I just felt a great disturbance in the force, it's as if 60 million Frenchmen just groaned in an instant.
MayorofOysterville
3hr ago
They themselves presumably agree on this principle, because as you note, they believe that all traditional churches have fallen from the faith.
I think this is the key issue we've been going round on. Mormons don't see Christianity as synonymous with the true faith. The see Christianity as a big tent full of many denominations and their own Church as the true faith within that big tent. This is also why I don't think the trinity is a useful tenant for determining what is and isn't Christianity. Because from extremely early on the umbrella of Christianity. This is my personal view as well. I see Christianity as a big movement of many mutually exclusive Christianities even from the beginning. (see Paul's letters) And I don't think removing them from the category of Christianity is much use, we'd just have to come up with another term to categorize these Jesus worshipping movements. Also for someone without a Christian background the trinity may not even seem that that important. To someone not primed to see it, the father son and holy ghost being one in purpose but not in being versus different aspects of God together and separate in divine mystery, doesn't seem THAT different. Especially compared to things like worshipping graven images or praying to the saints and Mary.
Just as many Sunni Muslims try to exclude the Shia from Islam and insist they aren't Muslims. This just devolves into silly language games. The Ebionites, the Marcionites, the Arians obviously all fit under some category with the Orthodox. Virtually every university and textbook everywhere calls that thing Christianity and if we exclude them from it then we need to create an umbrella term for them. Which again seems redundant when we already have terms for these. But this debate actually only seems to come up in relation to modern American religions because Mormons seem weird to Americans and nobody uses they word Heretic anymore so they get excluded from Christianity.
But I think Christianity is too big a tent to do that. Fundamentally woke high church Episcopalians and Independent Fundamentalist Baptists believe extremely different things and live extremely different lives if they can be under the umbrella of Christianity so can the Mormons because the word Christianity does not describe one particular tradition but rather many disparate traditions which is the whole reason we have denominations in the first place!
jake
3hr 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.
jkf
3hr ago
And the fuckers keep following you unless you run many tens of meters (or over a hundred).
I've had them follow me for miles while I was driving away in the truck! Not sure if they were clinging to the side, tracking my scent, or flying supernaturally fast, but either way I drove to a place previously without horseflies and had a handful of them at again as soon as I got out.
Pretty much all of the most stirring and wondrous fiction I have read is inextricably tangled up with existential horror. Oddly enough, I think this feeling is most straightforwardly illustrated in a 1908 children's book, The Wind in the Willows - it's all based on bedtime stories the author told his son, and in line with this the vast majority of the book consists of extremely comfortable and idyllic stories of life in the English countryside. But there's one chapter that's completely distinct from the rest, named The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, in which the Mole and the Rat venture into the woods to look for a lost baby otter, and start being lured into the wilderness by a pagan god:
Slowly, but with no doubt or hesitation whatever, and in something of a solemn expectancy, the two animals passed through the broken tumultuous water and moored their boat at the flowery margin of the island. In silence they landed, and pushed through the blossom and scented herbage and undergrowth that led up to the level ground, till they stood on a little lawn of a marvellous green, set round with Nature's own orchard-trees— crab-apple, wild cherry, and sloe.
'This is the place of my song-dream, the place the music played to me,' whispered the Rat, as if in a trance. 'Here, in this holy place, here if anywhere, surely we shall find Him!'
Then suddenly the Mole felt a great Awe fall upon him, an awe that turned his muscles to water, bowed his head, and rooted his feet to the ground. It was no panic terror— indeed he felt wonderfully at peace and happy— but it was an awe that smote and held him and, without seeing, he knew it could only mean that some august Presence was very, very near. With difficulty he turned to look for his friend. and saw him at his side cowed, stricken, and trembling violently. And still there was utter silence in the populous bird-haunted branches around them; and still the light grew and grew.
Perhaps he would never have dared to raise his eyes, but that, though the piping was now hushed, the call and the summons seemed still dominant and imperious. He might not refuse, were Death himself waiting to strike him instantly, once he had looked with mortal eye on things rightly kept hidden. Trembling he obeyed, and raised his humble head; and then, in that utter clearness of the imminent dawn, while Nature, flushed with fulness of incredible colour, seemed to hold her breath for the event, he looked in the very eyes of the Friend and Helper; saw the backward sweep of the curved horns, gleaming in the growing daylight; saw the stern, hooked nose between the kindly eyes that were looking down on them humourously, while the bearded mouth broke into a half-smile at the corners; saw the rippling muscles on the arm that lay across the broad chest, the long supple hand still holding the pan-pipes only just fallen away from the parted lips; saw the splendid curves of the shaggy limbs disposed in majestic ease on the sward; saw, last of all, nestling between his very hooves, sleeping soundly in entire peace and contentment, the little, round, podgy, childish form of the baby otter. All this he saw, for one moment breathless and intense, vivid on the morning sky; and still, as he looked, he lived; and still, as he lived, he wondered.
'Rat!' he found breath to whisper, shaking. 'Are you afraid?'
'Afraid?' murmured the Rat, his eyes shining with unutterable love. 'Afraid! Of Him? O, never, never! And yet— and yet— O, Mole, I am afraid!'
It is only a side story unconnected to the main narrative thread - this brief delve into the cosmic is completely out of place and comes out of nowhere, and plays no part in the story going forward - but it's by far the most memorable chapter in the collection. It was removed from many versions of the book because it was deemed too strange or too creepy for its target audience. Now, this chapter certainly has a lot more of a positive and uplifiting tone than much horror, but it does carry with it a haunting supernatural vibe that's merely incidental and necessary for such an encounter. I feel as if a lot of the best horror fiction gives me a more extreme version of that same feeling - it isn't gratuitous; it's just an intrinsic part of confronting something (an entity or a concept) that by nature inherently threatens your sense of security and place in the world.
Shock (the thing a lot of bad horror films optimise for) is one thing. Horror is another. Done right, it's deeply affecting in a way I barely find in any other fiction.
ulyssessword
4hr ago
I'm with you. Sometimes people might just be actively working to corrupt your data, and the ease and proportion of fraudsters matters. It took a lot of effort to create the hoax, and I suspect that a large fraction of her source material is genuine and mostly-accurate (accounting for sensationalism). Given that she wasn't looking for super-rare niche events, that suggests that most of her stories were true.
If they wanted to show she was spreading fake news, then it would have been much more effective if they found organic false stories instead. Heck, it would've been much more effective (but very dishonest) if they didn't advertise how much work it took to create one fake story.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
4hr ago
@CrispyFriedBarnacales
Is that his Mexican alter-ego?
MayorofOysterville
4hr ago
Well I think they are wrong. Mormons obviously fit a patter of American restorationist movements and just because they fall outside echumenical Orthodoxy doesn't mean they shouldn't be considered Christians.
MayorofOysterville
4hr ago
I'm also a nerd who is interested in doctrine. But for example in academia or in a published work it would be totally uncontroversial to refer to the Ebionites as Jewish Christianity or Valentinius' followers as Gnostic Christianity and their beliefs are (well at least the Gnostics) are surely farther from Nicene Orthodoxy then Mormons. A lot of Evangelicals insist that Catholics aren't Christians because they pray to graven images and violate the ten commandments so obviously they can't be Christians.
I think the fact that the Mormons are so inline 19th century restorationist tradition and the family of 19th century American Protestant offshoots and spin-offs as you say basically means they have to be Christians in the same way the Essenses were Jewish and the Ismailis are Muslim.
anon_
4hr ago
If you left Italy in the late 1800s, you couldn’t easily get back routinely to see family (whereas now it’s maybe a days travel). You couldn’t FaceTime them at a whim. You couldn’t text message them. The populations were truly cut off.
This probably cuts the other way. Everyone everywhere is already partially pre-assimilated to US cultural hegemony.
OliveTapenade
4hr ago
As a Protestant, this matches a complaint I have with many of my Protestant friends - there is such a temptation to water down the faith, to boil it down to the thinnest possible gruel, on the logic that anything beyond that constitutes a kind of obstacle. But praxis does not merely repel; it can also attract! And the Protestant tradition if you actually look at it is not an anti-intellectual one, nor one hostile to unique practice. There is thickness and depth here, if you dare to offer it! I find it extremely frustrating.
OliveTapenade
4hr ago
I suppose what this boils down to is the question of what you think is important in defining Christianity. I take faith and belief to be central. If Christianity is about, as I would argue it is, who God is, then a group's position on the Trinity or on Christology is extremely important.
I certainly grant that Mormonism is what you call 'sociologically Christian'. They are Christian-ish - they gather in buildings that look like church buildings (mostly; they reject crosses), they read from the Bible, they talk a lot about Jesus. I just don't think that any of that is enough to make a person or a group Christian. They themselves presumably agree on this principle, because as you note, they believe that all traditional churches have fallen from the faith.
I'm in Australia, not America, but anecdotally all of my in-person interactions with Mormons have been incredibly polite, and the Mormons have almost been falling over themselves to emphasise, "We're just like you, we believe in Jesus too, Jesus is at the absolute centre of our faith, we have so much in common", and they never bring up any disagreements.
This is my tension with the LDS as well -- the "we're just like you" thing backfires for me, not because I think Mormons are bad people, but because I think it waters down -- quite literally, "milk before meat" -- the elements of Mormonism as a theological tradition in ways that make it genuinely less interesting. A lot of the wild cosmological speculations of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young are really really interesting, really unique, really cool. It just is slightly frustrating when the things that are so distinctive about Mormonism are downplayed.
It very much is like Catholics watering down the cultus of the saints or transubstantiation -- this is your thing, guys, this is what makes you unique, this is what distinguishes you from your competitors in the marketplace of ideas and makes me want to learn more. I think attempts at Protestantizing both faiths weakens them: the only way the Papacy or the Presidency can survive as an institution is by offering unique religious experiences, values, and beliefs that support and validate the intense level of religious authority you're presenting. If what you're offering is equivalent to what they're offering down the street, but joining you comes with a measure of social ostracization from the religious mainstream and asks a lot from me in terms of religious obedience, why shouldn't I just go to the chill southern baptist church down the street, where they'll have a similar service and sing similar hymns?
But obviously the Mormon strategy is working for them in important ways, and I think they're very explicitly going for normie, straight-laced kind of people and not people like me, who are spiritual seekers with high openness to experience. They want to be a church for normal, well-to-do, kinds of people. But when I read the writings, speeches, and accounts of Smith, Young, and the early Mormon movement, they really do strike me as intense spiritual seekers with high openness to experience, and a lot of the elements of Mormonism that seem most fascinating have slowly been pushed to the sidelines or rejected altogether and the idea space of American religion is worse off for it. If you have a mystery cult, don't dress it in khakis and pretend it's just another sermon. Own the mystery.
OliveTapenade
4hr ago
I do agree with the comparison to other 19th century restorationists. It seems to me that Mormons are part of a family of 19th century American Protestant offshoots or spin-offs - Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, Christian Science, Seventh-Day Adventism, Christadelphianism, and so on. They generally share a common method (charismatic leader/writer and reinterpreter, extremely strong emphasis on scripture and dismissal of tradition, etc.), and frequently some doctrinal conclusions (nontrinitarianism, narrative of general apostasy, etc.). Go back a bit further and there are Europeans following the same model as well - the Swedenborgian New Church, for instance. Likewise there are more recent examples - Iglesia ni Cristo in the Philippines is another instance of the same model, and perhaps even the Unification Church.
At any rate, I don't think all the groups in that category are non-Christian - Adventists, for instance, seem pretty clearly inside the tent. However, I think some of them have placed themselves outside the bounds of orthodoxy.
I think you're probably correct that there's a scissor statement here. I am particularly interested in doctrine, but most American Christians are extremely ignorant of theology and embrace a number of heresies. (Though I should say that Ligonier, the people doing the State of Theology survey, themselves have a rather narrow and tendentious view of orthodoxy.) As long as Mormonism looks like church on the outside, only weird nerds like me will get stressed about what they actually believe.
MayorofOysterville
4hr ago
I mean isn't that just Protestantism. That's what Martin Luther and John Calvin did and why we have something like 50,000 Protestant denominations.
I stand corrected!
...my main point, in any case, is that in any of these questions of categorizing people, there's the answer from the people in the category, and there's the answer of the people outside the category, and neither is obviously correct.
MayorofOysterville
4hr ago
I dunno about destructive. I would say falls outside the bounds of Orthodoxy, but maybe that's inherently destructive idk.
I'm also not coming at this from a religious perspective so maybe my definition is useless to you. I'm just treating Mormons the same way I would treat Essenes, or Ismaliis or other hetrodox sects.
I certainly agree with that. They say Tokyo has excellent French food, although I can’t remember having had any.
More options
Context Copy link