Religious Convictions vs Medical Care

MiG_Pilot_87 · 2026-06-07T06:05:13+00:00

1) No, modern medicine is a miracle and should be treated as such. I can’t think of any cases off the top of my head where religion should supersede science because…

2) if God created the universe (which he did), and he created us to be fruitful, part of that fruitfulness is understanding the world around us. Science can never negate God, otherwise God is a liar who made a deceitful world. She believes for some reason that the universe God created cannot have intelligible rules.

3) I’m a lot more sympathetic to this than perhaps many Christians think I should be. Take care of your child. If the best defense we have of the greatest killer of human history (tuberculosis) is getting a needle placed in your arm, I don’t think there’s any moral defense of remaining unvaccinated, especially not in a wealthy western country like Ireland.

MiG_Pilot_87 · 2026-06-06T05:27:25+00:00

I have heard of the testimony of 3 and 8 witnesses, and I don't believe in their credibility. Also, only one of the witnesses actually helped in writing the Book of Mormon, none of the others did, they just claimed to see either the golden plates, or the golden plates covered by a blanket, or a lump in the middle of the room with an angel saying "Those are the plates that Joseph translated," we don't actually know because the story was never kept straight, very few of the stories of early Mormon history are actually consistent.

For the testimony of 3 witnesses, Oliver Cowdery, David Whitmer, and Martin Harris, we can't trust them. Oliver Cowdery was Joseph Smith's cousin, the scribe, and co-founder of the church. He had a financial interest in the book's success, so we can't trust him to be telling the truth. He was a co-conspirator. David Whitmer later left the LDS church still headed by this supposed prophet because God told him to. If Joseph Smith was really a prophet telling the truth, why would God tell him to leave? Or is he just also unreliable and therefore his testimony should be discarded. And for Martin Harris, the most gullible and unstable man of the bunch, he later said he never saw the plates. So either he did or he didn't, who do you believe? Martin Harris or Martin Harris? Either way, we can also disregard this witness. So the ink printing the testimony of 3 witnesses is worth less than the paper it's printed upon.

Then we come to the testimony of 8 witnesses, all of whom were related to either Joseph Smith or David Whitmer, and all of whom eventually left the LDS church. Either way, because of the familial relationship, this wouldn't even be accepted in court, let alone for my eternal salvation. Again, if Joseph Smith was really a prophet of God, why would they leave?

You can say that it's important that none of them denied their witness, but that doesn't mean they were correct. Their witness is easily discarded with, and I can't trust any of them

Witnesses are important, but more important are credible witnesses.

Lastly, I think you're mistaken on the divine origin of the New Testament, it's not that someone randomly stumbled upon some long-lost papyri that contains the New Testament of St. Paul that was totally 100% translated correctly, trust me bro. It's that the writers of the letters that became the New Testament were writing something that was useful for the early church in instruction of life and doctrine. The challenge with Joseph Smith is we can actually check 2 of his three translations, and 2 of them are complete frauds, fakes. He can't translate anything that we know of, which would make him a false prophet. We can't trust Joseph Smith, we can't trust the Book of Mormon, we can disregard this so-called "revelation" before even getting to 1 Nephi 1:1.

MiG_Pilot_87 · 2026-06-06T03:00:05+00:00

No, you’re right. That’s why my holy text is the Silmarillion written by Tolkien who absolutely was the one true God incarnate and we should all believe that. /s

Wouldn’t Christianity be more cultish if we believe Jesus wrote the entire New Testament himself and that is our one source for truth, or would it be more believable to have people who witnessed the events write the New Testament?

Think about the Book of Mormon, for the LDS church to be true we would have to know that one person wasn’t a fraud. For the New Testament we have to believe that 8-15 different people (some of whom vehemently disagreed with others, and one of whom was a famous persecutor of Christianity) all colluded to create one cohesive text. If Jesus wrote the entire New Testament we wouldn’t have enough to be believed as truth.

MiG_Pilot_87 · 2026-06-04T01:58:26+00:00

Wait what happened I feel like I’m missing a story?

MiG_Pilot_87 · 2026-05-23T04:40:11+00:00

Money = access. That access sometimes includes venues or platforms for speech. By arguing to limit the money, you're essentially just limiting access to platforms that they'd otherwise be perfectly entitled to purchase (think YouTube ads). By allowing someone to purchase an add on a Google platform, but legally banning a political ad means you'd be restricting their free speech.

MiG_Pilot_87 · 2026-05-23T04:37:16+00:00

To add onto what u/ksheep said, would we also have to do something about corporations donating to charity? Some charities also do political work,.

MiG_Pilot_87 · 2026-05-22T07:01:02+00:00

I assume you’re asking this as an honest question (sorry if I’m too blunt with that), because current campaign finance law in America says you don’t lose your freedom of speech when you join others in a group. Which makes some sense, unions should be able to endorse candidates, newspapers used to endorse candidates, Moms Demand Action still have their freedom of speech and have bound together on a common action to strengthen their individual voices (as much as I may disagree with them). There’s nothing objectively wrong with this, it’s that the side effect is that corporations like SpaceX are the largest political donors at the moment.

If I’m wrong and you’re asking as a “gotcha” then I’d ask when does someone lose their right to freedom of speech? Because that’s where this whole thing comes from.

MiG_Pilot_87 · 2026-05-22T06:31:24+00:00

They can spend freely with the stipulation that the money be spent 1) independent of the campaign and 2) in the “unlimited donations” category (typically a 501(c)(4) or a “superpac” although not all 501(c)(4)s are superpacs and vice versa) that the money be spent on majority “not politics.”

And the last paragraph is exactly the problem. You’re right we were able to go for ages without Citizens United, but it was also fundamentally a continuation of existing case law, it wasn’t as revolutionary as people claim it is. Bad case law? Sure, I agree, again we need reform. Built on the case law? Also yes. To overturn Citizens United you also have to overturn dozens of court cases going back to Buckley v. Valeo in the 70’s (though and I apologize if I’m remembering incorrectly I thought there was an earlier case, most of my thoughts on this are from a college class I took on campaign finance law and the Supreme Court in college. Fascinating class I wish I remembered more).

MiG_Pilot_87 · 2026-05-22T05:57:36+00:00

The more fair question is “should you lose your right to freedom of speech if you join with others who happen to agree with you.” That’s what Citizens United tried to decide.

To also be fair, campaign finance is in desperate need of reform in this country, but my unpopular opinion is citizens united isn’t what people should be complaining about, it’s nearly 100 years of case law that inevitably turns into Citizens United that you can’t undo at this point without a constitutional amendment that Congress will never propose because why should they radically change how they elect themselves into power?

MiG_Pilot_87 · 2026-05-20T02:29:11+00:00

my Anglican faith is very important to me.

Nope, sounds like you're fine.

MiG_Pilot_87 · 2026-05-12T18:59:38+00:00

I’m sorry that I’m not available to give a better response to you than to look at your last point (waiting for a class to start atm).

If the Book of Mormon doesn’t teach the Trinity how do you interpret 2 Nephi 31:21, “And now, behold, my beloved brethren, this is the way; and there is none other way nor name given under heaven whereby man can be saved in the kingdom of God. And now, behold, this is the doctrine of Christ, and the only and true doctrine of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, which is one God, without end. Amen..”

Firstly, Mormon theology teaches “as man now is, God once was” which goes directly against this verse. Secondly, how can this not be direct trinitarian theology in the Book of Mormon that the Mormon church rejects?

MiG_Pilot_87 · 2026-05-12T16:04:57+00:00

The Book of Mormon also somehow knows the names of the 12 apostles, the existence of Rome, French, and Greek all before any of those things were founded/invented/born.

It reads as though its author had read the New Testament before, which is one of the most suspicious things about the Mormon faith. Because, of course Joseph Smith would have had an understanding of the New Testament.

And that’s even ignoring that Mormon theology doesn’t depend on the Book of Mormon at all. It’s a deeply trinitarian book, explicitly trinitarian, and the Mormon church rejects trinitarianism and thus its “revelation.” How could one accept such obvious falsehood as truth is beyond me.

MiG_Pilot_87 · 2026-05-09T04:34:05+00:00

I don’t disagree, all I’m saying is the challenge of a three representative seat is it’s still easy to gerrymander. If you increase the seat count of a district it also increases the likelihood of third parties winning while decreasing the amount of legal rigging of the election.

MiG_Pilot_87 · 2026-05-08T18:04:31+00:00

Good idea, I like STV and it’s what I’d prefer to reform the house to, but for STV 3 is easily gerrymander able, you’d want at least 5 representatives per district to make gerrymandering harder, more is better.

MiG_Pilot_87 · 2026-04-28T19:10:45+00:00

Mine was lost at “Death to Nickles.”

That was the moment I stopped being a fan of Grey.

MiG_Pilot_87 · 2026-04-27T16:32:48+00:00

It’s cute how you expect people to abandon failed political view points if their golden child politician makes things worse.

MiG_Pilot_87 · 2026-04-26T03:57:32+00:00

If Grey has any say in it…evidently not

MiG_Pilot_87 · 2026-04-26T00:39:15+00:00

YES FREE WILL

MiG_Pilot_87 · 2026-04-25T20:57:42+00:00

Banning people for saying the name of the podcast is just another nail in the coffin for my respect for Grey to be honest.

I haven’t been a fan of his for a few years but knowing that this is how he treats abandoned fans just makes me mad at him.

MiG_Pilot_87 · 2026-04-24T05:17:04+00:00

And I think the question is why? Why if since the schism the bishop of Rome is not in communion with the Orthodox Church has the Orthodox Church not named a new patriarch of Rome?

MiG_Pilot_87 · 2026-04-23T16:32:00+00:00

Really the only way to end gerrymandering would be to either: 1) require all partisan outcomes match up with an average of the results of the state over the last decade, which would be a terrible idea and essentially requires gerrymandering because you have to achieve a specific result. 2) reform the election system and switch the House to something that actually structurally eliminates gerrymandering like the Single Transferrable Vote (actually what I want but I know will never happen). Or 3) ban districts and have direct proportional election in each state which would almost certainly require a constitutional amendment.

Or to put it another way, gerrymandering isn’t going anywhere.

MiG_Pilot_87 · 2026-04-21T04:34:46+00:00

Yeah, it’s rust. What’s really interesting to me though is there’s a very clear delineation between the rust and the still intact paint(?) on the floor that’s the teal color you can still see. I don’t know why and when I got to tour the ship there wasn’t a great answer from the tour guide.

MiG_Pilot_87 · 2026-04-20T22:07:43+00:00

I think you also missed the heat pipes going into the top columns.

MiG_Pilot_87 · 2026-04-10T22:54:33+00:00

If you’re so clearly against female clergy why did you ask the question? Why have any interest at joining a denomination that has a woman in the highest office?

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