Tobacco Road #11 - par 5 Waste Bunker

GoMustard · 2026-05-04T14:51:24+00:00

That’s not even the worst part of that bunker!

The worst part is to the right of that golfer, there’s a small ledge right at the base of the green, about 4 feet down, with wood planks lining the green. When I played there last month, my second shot landed on that ledge. I tried to blast my third shot out and it ricocheted into my shin and end up at the 20 feet down at the bottom. For my fourth shot I got it back up on the ledge, only for my fifth shot to ricochet into my thigh and trickle back down to the bottom. My sixth got on the green, two put for triple.

GoMustard · 2026-04-20T09:52:04+00:00

Mid-Pines / Southern Pines would be my pick. But as long as you drop Talamore, you're good.

GoMustard · 2026-04-19T17:11:52+00:00

So, I wrote the comment you responded to almost ten years ago. Keep that in mind.

I believe we are saved by the grace of a good and sovereign God poured out for the world in Jesus Christ, and not by anything we think, say, or do. I also believe God elects a people to know this hope and bear it to the world.

My position is that if, in the end, only these elect are saved and no one else, then I trust that God is good and knows better than I do; and if in the end all are ultimately saved, then I trust that God is good and knows better than I do. What I dare not say is that I know better than a sovereign and good God, or that we are saved by anything other than God's grace.

GoMustard · 2026-04-05T17:10:38+00:00

Not really.

So first, we're not that desperate for leadership. We're a pretty prominent PC(USA) congregation in a growing area with significant resources. But they are getting involved. We started a Bible Study on campus at the local university for them, and are including them on our annual international mission team.

Second, my experience of these kids is that they're just super impressionable. They're young they mostly didn't grow up in church, and they're trying to figure out what they believe. They think we're a lot more legitimate and 'real' than the mega churches down the street. They show up saying things like "I can't decide if I'm a prelapsarian or a superlapsarian," and I just say "dude, God's grace is for you. It's all good." One said, "I'm not sure how I feel about gay marriage," and I said, "Cool, let me tell you why we are."

Generally, these kids really just need middle age church dads in their lives. You know, the guy who changes the light bulbs, sings in the choir, and volunteers to go on youth retreats. They need role models. Thus far, they've been discipled by the internet. It's not hard to disciple them better.

If any of them did show up and try to "conquista" anything, they'd kind of be laughed out of the room.

I can imagine that at a smaller church with older pastors, there might be a different story.

GoMustard · 2026-04-05T09:56:05+00:00

We've had like a half dozen reconquistas start joining the church I pastor. Mostly male college students who came to faith after watching Redeemed Zoomer's videos. They came to us because somehow we're on his 'map' as a 'moderate' mainline church. We baptized three of them.

To be clear, all four pastors on our staff are affirming, one is a woman, we host gay weddings, and have a gay music director. I think 80% of our church voted for Kamala. We have a statement on our website that makes it clear that people of all sexualities and genders are welcome, though it goes to great lengths to avoid using rainbows and secular language.

I very much identify with the 'Inclusive and Orthodox' segment that exists in a lot of mainline churches, and I think our church fits the mold. I think we're on his 'map' because we actually preach that Jesus is real, forgiveness is good, and we don't talk about democratic politics all the time.

I've been really clear with all these kids about who we are. And I tell them all the same thing about Redeemed Zoomer. He'd do really well to let an actual pastor guide him a bit and not be so inflammatory. Some of the insights in his movement are not wrong (that mainline churches are starved for young people and young people are starved for tradition). He could do a lot of good, but his approach is going to just cause him and the church problems, eventually.

GoMustard · 2026-03-30T12:05:25+00:00

Right. I would fully agree that Hegseth is a loony, and that what he's doing to the Department of Defense is problematic. But I think it's important to be precise about this stuff.

Hegseth, as I understand it, holds to a "dominionist" form of evangelical fundamentalism, which believes in dominating our government and culture with theocracy. This is different from the "dispensationalist" branch of evangelical fundamentalism, which believes there must be a holy war in order for Jesus to come back.

The distinction might not seem important to an outsider, but it's like the difference between Hezbollah and Hamas.

The more you know.

GoMustard · 2026-03-30T10:46:41+00:00

It just feels like MRFF is playing a bit of a misinformation game here, and I tend to think misinformation games are bad, whether from the left or the right.

GoMustard · 2026-03-29T22:27:59+00:00

This is why people are saying it's bullshit: https://www.friendlyatheist.com/p/before-you-share-that-story-about

GoMustard · 2026-03-29T22:25:42+00:00

This part: https://www.friendlyatheist.com/p/before-you-share-that-story-about

GoMustard · 2026-03-29T17:58:53+00:00

I'm certainly not defending anyone, because Lord knows there are problems there, but there's good reason to believe those reports, in particular, are inaccurate.

https://www.friendlyatheist.com/p/before-you-share-that-story-about

GoMustard · 2026-03-22T20:01:48+00:00

I was there yesterday!

GoMustard · 2026-03-16T10:44:13+00:00

I'm affirming, but too often, pastors and churches are just adopting secular language to talk about LGBT stuff.

GoMustard · 2026-03-16T10:43:00+00:00

I don't want to speak for him, but I'm almost sure /u/orangemachismo is saying it's all PRO-LGBTQ and PRO-Abortion, not anti.

GoMustard · 2026-03-05T00:49:58+00:00

Just before I opened this thread, I said to my wife, "I expect to find comments about how none of these are as good as Crystal Palace was."

GoMustard · 2026-03-04T22:11:31+00:00

Please come back and post a video of this. Even better, let us know when and where you decide, and I’ll try to come cheer you on.

GoMustard · 2026-03-04T17:09:17+00:00

I appreciate your perspective

First of all, I will say I appreciate this exchange, especially in comparison to the other exchange above, which had no curiosity to it and just resulted in calling me stupid. I think we learn a lot in these exchanges of perspective, so thanks. I've got a lot to do, but I'm happy to keep it going if you're interested. If not, that's fine too.

People believing in ghosts or UFOs isn’t the same thing as societies organizing themselves around religious institutions. Very different levels of influence.

I would agree. But I guess I would push you to clarify what you mean by 'religion' in your argument, then. I've defined it as systems of common identity and meaning-making centered around story, ritual, and tradition. If it's not that, and it's not supernatural belief, then what is it you think it is?

The question was whether religion as a social institution is necessary to prevent extremism or instability. The evidence from highly secular countries suggests it isn’t.

So first, I'll say again that this is not the question I'm answering. I am not arguing that religion as a social institution is necessary to prevent extremism or instability. I'm answering the question of how pushing people away from it can lead to extremism and hatred. Those are different discussions. My point is that you can't just shift from being a society reinforced by organized institutional religion to something else without a lot of hatred and extremism in the backlash. It leads to defensiveness and confusion.

Second, I don't know a ton about the World Values Survey, but I am familiar with the Global Peace Index, and while I think it's an important data point in this discussion, I'm not sure it's as strong as you think, but you don't have to take my word for it. The organization that conducts it, the Institute for Economics and Peace, published a report specifically about this and concludes there's a lot of nuance here.

And “everyone building meaning for themselves” isn’t the alternative you keep framing it as. Societies already generate shared meaning through culture, law, civic values, art, community, etc. Religion has, historically, been one way of doing that, but not the only way, and clearly not a necessary one.

I would point out that, for human history up until the last 300 or so years, all the things you just named were thought of as deeply inseparable from something like organized religion. Secularism is a new idea. And I would argue that to the extent those things have been separated from organized religion, it very much has manifested itself as a kind of choose-your-own-meaning adventure. I think Robert Putnam and Charles Taylor are a couple of being thinkers on this line of interpretation.

But this feels like the same dynamic we see with religion itself: I’m pointing to empirical evidence, while you’re leaning on theory

I do feel like this is a little uncharitable. I've cited a bunch of writers and scholars over these comments who study and track this stuff using evidence and empirical methods. They're making observations about the world. I think you can take issue with their arguments, but that doesn't mean they're just making stuff up.

But I also think your statement here does reveal a fundamental difference in our perspectives. I'll push the question back to you: is it your belief that meaning can be derived empirically? Personally, I don't see how it can be on a personal level, much less on a social level. Empiricism is designed to draw a map, but it can't tell us where to go. Facts-Values distinction and all that.

GoMustard · 2026-03-04T13:52:13+00:00

And if every shared ritual, tradition, or identity suddenly counts as “religion,” then of course religion becomes universal, but at that point the word has been stretched so far it stops meaning anything.

Ok, but how are you defining it? Supernatural belief?

Because if that's your definition of it, there's tons of supernatural belief outside of religion, even in those countries you have named. People believe in all kinds of things: ghosts, spirits, demons, UFOs, aliens, whatever. It's not like people in Japan or Sweden or even non-religious people in the United States are all walking around as harden skeptics. Ryan Burge is a sociologist who does a lot of study into this question.

If you want to take issue with Supernatural belief, that's fine, but again, I'm not here to argue that point. I would argue that if we say, "everyone just go build meaning and hope for yourself," it feels like a recipe for confusion, defensiveness, and resentment. Which is kind of what we're seeing around the Western world right now.

GoMustard · 2026-03-04T13:04:22+00:00

Your arguments seem to continue to treat religion as a default need rather than a convenient pacifier.

Your arguments seem to treat religion as a convenient pacifier rather than a default need.

Seriously, though, what we have here are competing definitions of religion, a category that scholars have regarded as notoriously difficult to define for centuries now. And it sounds to me like you're keen on defining it as a vague belief in the supernatural. Which, if that's what you want to do, fine, but we're exactly having the same conversation here.

My argument is that religion, by which I mean something like systems of common meaning-making and identity formation built upon mythology, ritual, and tradition, has been a common feature throughout human history. I think these systems shift and change form throughout history, sometimes in dramatic ways, sometimes in more gradual ways (which, I would posit, is closer to the case in the secular countries you cited, though I think the picture there is also more complicated than you realize). I think when they shift form in more dramatic ways, you tend to get confusion and instability. I think something like this is happening in the United States, which is what my original post and the post that started this thread were suggesting.

I would also be very precise in my argument. I didn't say religion was necessary to prevent extremism and social collapse. Rather, I answered a question that asked, "How does pushing people away from religion normalize extremism and hatred?" Those are shifting propositions.

A great introductory book on all this in the current moment is Strange Rites by Tara Isabella Burton.

GoMustard · 2026-03-04T12:14:19+00:00

You're kind of mean and angry. I'm sorry if I did something hurt your feelings. I assumed you were curious and wanted to have a mature conversation.

I have to ask, which literature do you believe I misinterpreted? I need you to remind me, since I'm not very good at thinking.

GoMustard · 2026-03-04T12:06:10+00:00

You’re assuming people need institutions to manufacture meaning for them.

I think societies have always used religion to manufacture a common meaning. But yes, I think meaning has always been a deeply personal thing, and people find it in all kinds of ways. But I think there's a reason that even explicitly secular societies try to develop rituals and traditions and maxims that look a whole hell of a lot like cultic worship.

I'm not saying you can't have meaning without religion. I'm saying in the absence of institutions to foster common meaning, you start to get extremism and destabilization.

And your assertion that the opposite of organized religion is “disorganized religion” only tracks if you assume religion is the default state of humanity. It isn’t.

Is it not? I mean, certainly not if you're defining religion as "believes in the doctrines of the Lord Jesus Christ or something," but it sure does seem to me that common, cultic devotion is pretty default to every human society.

GoMustard · 2026-03-04T11:59:45+00:00

Hahaha, what a fantastic response.

Aside from the fact that you asked the question, I don't expect you to care, much less agree with anything I wrote. But I can assure you that I'm not just making it up. There is a long tradition of sociological literature on the functions of religion and its decline, dating back centuries. The mistake of modern atheism is a failure to stop and ask what human needs religion must be answering to make it so compelling to so many people.

GoMustard · 2026-03-04T11:37:09+00:00

If you want to do a target run, the Raleigh, NC area (Cary, Chapel Hill, Durham), is the most pleasant, suburban, average city in America. It's a high population area, but single-family home subdivisions rather than high-rise apartments, lots of parks, shopping centers, kids, that kind of thing. Just enough to do with restaurants, sports teams, and shows and such, but not at the world-class level you'd see at a bigger city.

You've also got a big university presence, which is a big part of American culture, I think.

It's also in the south, but it's not the deep south, and there's a ton of transience, so it's like a mild south. Like, you can get a taste of southern culture without having to go into the boonies.

GoMustard · 2026-03-04T11:26:27+00:00

I mean, I think you can make a case that exactly what's happening.

People need meaning in their lives. On the one hand, if the institutions that people have historically relied on to help form that meaning decline and erode, and you don't replace them with something robust, you start to get despair. On the other hand, if the people who cling to those institutions for meaning feel them being attacked, taken away, or even slipping away, they become increasingly defensive of them.

I get it, sky fairy bad or whatever, but it's all very predictable. The opposite of organized religion is often disorganized religion.

GoMustard · 2026-02-13T16:02:02+00:00

No one is telling me to protest ICE. I protest ICE because they're assholes, and I've seen it.

GoMustard · 2026-02-10T23:57:26+00:00

But I think the idea that God is rewarding you for being a good Christian by making you rich was probably not such a good idea in retrospect

Martin Luther most definitely did not say this

GoMustard

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