domain:dynomight.net
ulyssessword
30m 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
31m ago
@CrispyFriedBarnacales
Is that his Mexican alter-ego?
MayorofOysterville
31m 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
33m 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_
42m 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
42m 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
46m 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
59m 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
1hr 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
1hr 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.
MayorofOysterville
1hr ago
Well but they celebrate the Eucharist, sing hymns, pray to Jesus, worship Jesus, put up Christmas trees, study the Bible for moral lessons, the content as well is virtually the same if you don't notice some of the books have different titles. It's not just the form is the same but the content as well. And the different scriptures thing while taken farther isn't really that unique. Protestants, Catholics and the Ethiopian Orthodox all have different scriptures. Their canon isn't the same. Catholics have Popes and Saints and pray to Mary, which Protestants don't. I agree Mormons fall outside modern Ecumenical orthodoxy. But I don't think their practices or even beliefs are farther apart then Catholics are from Protestants.
OliveTapenade
1hr ago
A heresy, I would say, is something that emerges out of Christianity but is destructive to Christianity. Does that seem a fair definition to you?
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
1hr ago
They have what might be described as a Newer Testament, which they see as a subsequent revelation to the Christian one, which is, you guessed it, now also closed.
The LDS church famously has an open canon, though the current books are considered the "standard works" that make up the existing canon. But it's perfectly possible in Mormon theology that the church could, by "common consent," add a new work if there was an overwhelming consensus that a text should be added to the canon.
atelier
Jimmys: unrustled
1hr ago
Because the founder took parts of things that worked and added his own theology? The typical protestant church service was REALLY working during the second great awakening.
You don't think that the claim that Hajnalis aren't whites and Tropicals aren't blacks is undermined a bit by the post itself? In the top-level post you describe very specific elements of Tropical culture and phenotype - you suggest that there are 'eastern' Tropicals with slightly lighter skins who are clearly Asians, but it's clear that your central example of a Tropical is a sub-Saharan African.
Likewise you describe Hajnalis with a very specific cultural and religious history - you cite, more-or-less unchanged, Henrich's argument that the medieval Catholic ban on cousin marriage shaped the Hajnalis. It is transparent that Hajnalis are Europeans - even if some Europeans have moderately darker skin, the identification is clear enough. You describe both World Wars and the American Civil War, attribute both to Hajnalis, and say that the latter concerned "the imported Tropicals". You then go on to describe 20th and 21st century troubles in American education in a way that clearly maps to African-Americans - yes, you've said that Asians are a type of Tropical, but these violent schoolchildren reaching puberty earlier and making schools less safe certainly do not sound like Chinese-Americans.
Look, I'm not blind, and this is the Motte, where you are allowed to just speak plainly. It just feels like needless pussyfooting.
On your goals more generally:
If I were you I'd worry that this isn't a practical way to make your point. It's not clear that you need all these digressions in order to explain your tiger. A skeptical reader like myself is not nodding along to all these points you're making in earlier posts and will then happily be led to your conclusion. The less credible the earlier posts seem, the less credible the eventual conclusion will seem.
I understand and connect with the general theme of order emerging out of chaos - I'm not disposed to be skeptical of that, or of the idea that the large, invisible forces under the surface might be drawing civilisation back towards chaos, or that we are in a time of collapse. But when you bundle that up with a lot of extremely tenuous theories about prehistory which, when examined more closely, seem to reduce to just 19th and early 20th century racialism, maybe that makes people less willing to take that journey with you.
Put it this way: if you want to convince people that Western commitment to the idea that everyone is equal will lead to disaster, I think you can make that case more strongly, persuasively, and succinctly without the grand historical narrative. You don't need a millennia-long just-so story to make this point. I applaud your patience and your very high level of courtesy and kindness to commenters through this project, but I'd gently suggest that the project is misconceived.
atelier
Jimmys: unrustled
1hr ago
And there stood one among them that was like unto God, and he said unto those who were with him: We will go down, for there is space there, and we will take of these materials, and we will make an earth whereon these may dwell;
MayorofOysterville
1hr ago
I don't think we actually disagree very much. But I do think the word heretic describes them much better as their services are essentially just American Protestantism except they also read from the book of Mormon and the doctrine and covenants.
I agree it's different but it's very similar to a lot of other sects that sprung up in America around this time. Such as the Christian Scientists, Seventh Day Adventists and the Shakers which are all very sectarian in character.
Mormons remind me of Ismailis many Muslims think of them as non Muslims and they are obviously a heterodox sect but essentially all non Muslims still consider them Muslims. Heterodox sects are generally still considered under the umbrella of their big religion. I think the question of whether Mormon's are Christian thing is a bit of scissor question because they fall outside of ecumenical Orthodoxy but are at the same time obviously to any outsider a schismatic Christian sect. So since modern people don't use the word heretic then things get all muddled. But I think heretics, heterodox sect, schismatic sect and similar terms are all accurate whereas non-Christian really doesn't make sense for them.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
1hr ago
My assessment was that all of this was fair game. LibsOfTikTok doesn't follow "journalistic standards", this is plainly true, why bother claiming otherwise?
In my view, the problem comes when we claim that LibsOfTikTok shouldn't be listened to. LoTT doesn't need journalistic standards, because all they're doing is posting up primary sources. This means you can get them to post fake things, but it doesn't mean that all or even most or even an appreciable fraction of what they post is fake. Likewise, it doesn't mean that those "journalistic standards" prevent much or even the overwhelming majority of what Real Journalists output from being fake by any reasonable definition of the term.
The proper response to Trace's prank was to grab ten or twenty top-engagement stories from LoTT per week, week after week, and just check them off; this one's real, this one too, and this one, and so on, and note how even if they are operating through pure partisanship, and even if their standards of evidence are low, their approach to journalism requires so little trust from the audience that they are still highly effective and probably less deceptive than the NYT.
Well, that’s why this is a point of confessional faith. Saying “x is a Christian, y is not” is another way of describing what you believe to be essential to your religion in one way or another. It’s a faith statement of boundaries, not an attempt at a dispassionate analysis.
It’s painfully obvious to me that Mormons are Christians in a sociological sense — they’re very concerned about Jesus Christ (as they like to remind everyone constantly) and believe in their own interpretation of the Bible. Historically it’s evident that LDS doctrines have much in common with 19th century restorationism, but with a unique spin.
But I would also argue that their beliefs are about as distinct from other forms of Christianity, in terms that are seriously important to those other forms, as Christianity is from Judaism.
The big tension between Judaism and Christianity is that Jews believe Christians have fundamentally altered the nature of G-d by proposing the Trinity and associating Jesus of Nazareth with absolute divinity. And the big tension between Nicene Creed stans and Mormons is the former believe the latter have fundamentally altered the nature of God by rejecting the Nicene model of the Trinity, and insufficiently associating Jesus of Nazareth with absolute divinity!
It also goes almost without saying that the big accusation of Muslims against Christians is they believe Christians have lessened God by proposing that God can have a son who bore flesh, just as the big accusation of Nicene Christians against Mormons is they believe Mormons have lessened God by proposing -- at the very least, in the personal views and sermons of essential early LDS leaders like Joseph Smith and Brigham Young -- that the father of Jesus Christ once bore flesh. These are the kind of weighty debates that have always raged within and between Abrahamic sects, and divided one from another.
So it seems to be entirely predictable that Christians for whom the Nicene concept of the Trinity is the absolute most important element of their faith would look at the different LDS doctrine and go, “absolutely not.”
It’s also important to remember that the origin story of the LDS includes the belief that all other forms of Christianity underwent a Great Apostasy, which means that the authority of the apostolic faith and the associated priesthood were lost from the earth -- and Joseph Smith was tasked with recovering and restoring it. (Hence, discovering the undiscovered sacred texts written on gold plates.)
So it’s written deeply into the self-understandings of both Mormons and their Christian opponents that the other has broken in an important way from the truth about Christianity, even if Mormons are nicer with how they state it nowadays. But it’s embedded in the very name of the LDS church that it believes its membership to be uniquely the Saints of these Latter Days; “Christian”, as a term, just has less exclusive meaning to them. The actual equivalent question to “Are Mormons Christians?”, posed from the other side, is “Are Protestants and Catholics Saints?”
So, all that to say, of course Mormons are sociologically Christians. But Christians who are wary of applying the term aren’t idiots, and they know exactly what they’re doing, and why. And their position is far from unique among Abrahamic religious perspectives.
atelier
Jimmys: unrustled
1hr ago
Sure but one is in the worst land in the lower 48, very hot, less than a foot of rain per year and a population density that doesn't even round to 1 person per square mile while the other is within the biggest metro area in the nation.
MayorofOysterville
1hr ago
No that's why there is a distinction between heretic and heathen. A heretic is someone who goes about worshiping Jesus in the wrong way a heathen doesn't worship him.
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:
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 certainly takes 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 the same feeling - it isn't gratuitous; it's just an intrinsic part of confronting something (an entity or a concept) that by virtue of its very existence 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.
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