Iconochasm
2. Bootstrap the rest of the fucking omnipotence.
3m ago
My issue with Trace is that he wants to be simultaneously a Serious Investigative Writer Thinker Guy and also a Sassy Bitch Merry Prankster. And that's fine, really, but he also refuses to offer that kind of consideration to others, and also freaks out whenever anyone doesn't offer friction-free clown-nose code switching to him.
Take away any one of those clauses and he's fine. But when you add them all together... bro, what are you even doing?
OliveTapenade
4m ago
Well, I think I was implicitly tabooing 'Christianity' here. What I assert is that there is a broad category of belief into which Catholics, Orthodox, and Protestants generally fit, but which Mormons do not fit into. I assert that Mormon belief and doctrine is significantly qualitatively dissimilar to that of these other groups.
It seems to me that two things are going on when people say "Mormons aren't Christian". The first thing is just "you don't believe what I believe" or "you don't worship what I worship". There are implicit claims about differences in doctrine and practice. The second is "you are not my people". They are attempting to differentiate themselves from Mormons in a tribal sense.
Thus when I, for instance, say "Mormons aren't Christianity", what I'm actually saying is "you're not affiliated with me!"
ulyssessword
9m ago
The longer the gay acronym, the leftier it is. "LGBT" is table stakes at a score of 4, "LGBTQ" is a bit more progressive and scores 5, and the CBC uses "2SLGBTQIA+" for a score of 10, with bonus indigenous points for putting two-spirited people first. "LGB" is downright rightwing at 3 points.
OliveTapenade
10m ago
Because I think that historically the Christian community has defined and policed its boundaries in ways that place Mormons outside of it - I apologise if that was not clear.
MartianNight
11m ago
As far as I can tell the Star Wars license expired already in 2023.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
18m ago
That's a quite uncharitable account.
"Lying to people to make a political point is a Good Thing, Actually" is commonly argued by people who think the Sokal or Sokal Squared hoaxes are good things, of which I am one. My observation was that Trace's hoaxing of LibsOfTikTok was fair enough, though I didn't think it proved what he seemed to be claiming, but also that the overwhelmingly negative reaction he received was very clearly both tribal, unreasonable and unnecessary. And sure, he eventually flounced out of here. Most of us have or do sooner or later. I did, more or less, once upon a time, and the only reason I'm back is because I managed to throttle it down to about 2% of what I originally wanted to say. The Culture War poisons us all sooner or later.
He's got the Schism, and he's grinding away at the mainstream conversation, from what I've seen. I have profound disagreements with his values and views, but everything I've seen shows me he's attempting to act in good faith to this day.
faceh
23m ago
Where in the Middle East, at this point?
The Taliban 'officially" controls Afghanistan, ISIS doesn't have much territory to speak of, the Petrostates are pretty much uncontested in their borders. I guess Syria is still chunked up after the rebels actually got Assad to leave.
anti_dan
23m ago
See, I think this argument fails even worse than you. If you go back to, say 1875, and read what the opponents to immigration were saying, they seem quite prescient. They would argue things like that immigrants would congregate in cities and be exploited/power corrupt political machines that would eventually spill into national politics and the whole constitutional order would be altered... which all happened and culminated in the New Deal.
CertainlyWorse
No one is coming. It's just you.
25m ago
The food angle is standard boilerplate for multiculturalists. It comes with sub-arguments like 'no you aren't allow to cherrypick only the cuisine, you have to accept all of the culture's ethics and strange behaviours without complaint' and 'no you aren't allowed to just buy the cookbook and not let the immigrants come. That's cultural appropriation'
Stellula
26m ago
I, luckily, have no idea what your first sentence is talking about. Could you expand on this?
Onystri
28m ago
The have licenses for most major sports titles? FIFA, Madden, NHL, CFB, F1. (Think of that microtransaction money flow)
That is also without mentioning the Star Wars license.
naraburns
nihil supernum
29m ago
the fact that he said LGBTQ
That's a good point, I missed that entirely.
Whoa there buddy. It might seem to some people like you're making an interesting and valid point about the reality in which we're living, but are you sure you can't rephrase that in terms of statistics and case studies covering every possible angle, sourced from an academy hell-bent on avoiding the issue? Which publicly advertises that it forbids looking into such questions? For an audience trained from birth to ignore the possibility?
Seems to me you're just sketching out a picture of something you've personally observed and hoping it's congruent enough with people's own personal experience that they derive something valuable from the exchange.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
30m ago
No. Mormons are substantially less Christian that Christians are Jewish.
...I'm not sure Mormons would agree with the first part, nor Jews with the second. I agree, but then I would, wouldn't I.
I'd agree on the latter part, in any case. Whatever my theological disagreements with Mormons, people who wish them harm are my enemies.
crushedoranges
Can Marx explain the used panties market?
30m ago
He had a meltie about being called out on the whole LibsofTiktok hoaxing thing.
If he had just did it for the lulz, he would have been forgiven, but he had pretensions on becoming a Serious Intellectual. The whole affair became his cross to bear and he kept on doubling down on how lying to people to make a political point was a Good Thing Actually until he flounced out of here.
Shitposter fails to launch to serious political influencer career, many such cases.
Primaprimaprima
Aliquid stat pro aliquo
31m ago
...yeah, if that's all correct then it would be hard to call it Christianity.
Stellula
31m ago
I would imagine so? This is a pretty unambiguous teaching which is routinely affirmed by their leadership.
Primaprimaprima
Aliquid stat pro aliquo
31m 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. Looks like Quantumfreakonomics has it covered though.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
37m ago
To be fair, Nicene Christians do believe that we will eventually become God in some sense, via theosis, or union with God. It's definitely not the same thing as the Mormon vision, but I could see people getting confused if you squint.
Goodguy
41m ago
Is "God was a human that lived in an existing universe, and through good works ascended to God status" actually the belief of the average modern Mormon, though?
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
43m ago
I'm a follower on his page. Apparently he is having a lower profile due to career/school stuff for a while.
BahRamYou
43m ago
Personally I really enjoy the simple, no frills restaurants that just have 1-3 items on the menu and make them in large quantities but really well. Unfortunately a lot of people (boomers I guess?) still seem to love the menus with a huge thick menu of 50 different things, and interrogating the waiter to find out which one of them they should choose. Hopefully restaurants find a way to adapt, like those coffeeshops where a robotic arm makes the drinks.
personally I put them in a category that I think of as 'Jesusists', that is, religions that take Jesus as their central figure, but which are too different from historical Christianity to be understood as the same thing
I feel like this is an obvious place to taboo "Christianity," though of course--I can't imagine any self-identified Christians lightly acceding to that. In my years I have been fascinated to hear from Evangelicals that Catholics are not Christian; from Jehovah's Witnesses that Protestants are not Christian; from Wokists that Christians are not Christian. I have heard arguments about the "historical Jesus" and the "historical creeds," I've met "restorationist Christians" in the form of Seventh Day Adventists and Mormons, and I have to say: it sounds like a whole lot of wildly unproductive verbal disagreement to me. I've read my share of Kierkegaard and C.S. Lewis and others who have weighed in on the debate, I'm not ignorant of the stakes. But I haven't got a horse in the race, so to speak, so while that probably makes me a nicely impartial judge of the matter, it also seems like maybe the kind of disagreement for which none of the relevant parties want an impartial judge!
(FWIW, my own heuristic is that anyone who thinks Jesus was Divine can be comfortably regarded as a "Christian" for every practical purpose imaginable, and people who gatekeep categories with such practical value can in almost all cases just be safely ignored. Surely Mormonism as at least as much a "Christian faith" as, say, Denmark is a "Christian nation." I assume that I would probably feel differently if I subscribed to a different metaphysics, though!)
So it's hard for me to say that Trump's interpretation of the shooting is wrong, even though it is almost certainly clumsy. This was a targeted attack, and it was an attack on self-identified (if plausibly heretical) Christians, and it appears to have been an attack on their faith for adherence to their faith (as opposed to e.g. for their race or their presumed politics), which is a surprising and unusual thing here in the United States--though, crucially, not a historically unprecedented thing for Mormon congregations.
And I have to seriously wonder--did Trey Parker and Matt Stone have something to do with this? Did Hugh Grant, or Netflix, or FX, or Netflix, or Hulu, or Netflix? Other than the musical, those are all productions from the last four years--at what point would it be plausible for the Mormons to begin to worry that society is prosecuting an active vendetta against them?
One response might be that (at least some--there is no "Quran the Musical") other faiths also catch Netflix shade--Unorthodox and One of Us are relatively recent productions touching on Judaism, Midnight Mass and The Sinner seem arguably critical of Catholicism, etc. The Mormons aren't unusually persecuted, rather, Netflix (and perhaps Hollywood more generally) portrays all religion in maximally negative light!
And this is where I think Trump's comment becomes clumsy--or, if you believe some of the more extreme things sometimes said of him, not clumsy but deliberately Christian nationalist. This appears to be a possible case of genuine sectarian violence. How often does that happen, here? This Wikipedia list of attacks on churches in the United States is quite interesting to me, especially the "motive" column. "Anti-Christian" violence is clearly a thing, but it would probably be more accurate (and inclusive) to suggest that anti-religious violence is a thing.
Whether or not they are ultimately part of the "Christian" coalition, the Mormons are clearly part of the coalition backing Trump. I don't personally think Trump is actually trying to move the United States toward Christian nationalism, but if he were, it would have to be a Christian nationalism inclusive of Mormons--or else a Christian nationalism with no hope at all of maintaining rule over the Rocky Mountains.
Quantumfreakonomics
48m ago
Mormon cosmology is completely different from the Abrahamic religions. In Mormonism, God did not create the universe, he simply organized preexisting matter. God himself is part of and subservient to the material universe.
This leads to a bunch of strange (though arguably coherent) beliefs, many of which are explained in this less-than-sympathetic cartoon, although from what I can tell everything in it is technically correct.
Also, endless celestial sex. You can decide for yourself whether this is a positive or a negative.
Fair enough. I've probably underestimated the degree to which Mormon theology differs from mainstream Christian theology, cause of how much Mormons and mainstream Christians in the US at least largely seem to me to behave the same and life very similar lifestyles. Maybe I'm not aware of differences in lifestyles, either.
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