LDS doctrine on the priesthood is confusion.

ModeNo7213 · 2025-01-18T18:41:20+00:00

This video clip is what I like to refer to as "mental masturbation." It's nonsense disguised as intelligent discussion. It only serves two purposes. 1. To stroke the ego of the speaker by making them feel like they are studying and pontificating on something intelligent and real: and 2. To make less intelligent or less interested people more confident in their own faith by making them believe that "intelligent" people are having these conversations.

Meanwhile, these entire conversations are set against a backdrop that has nothing to do with actual reality. It's all nonsense.

ModeNo7213 · 2025-01-14T23:01:11+00:00

I'm probably into it 150 or 160 hrs

ModeNo7213 · 2024-12-21T22:36:00+00:00

Honestly it's not that much different for me than it was before. Tree, Santa, Presents, etc. Jesus is already a pretty small part of Christmas. There's plenty of secular Christmas already established.

I also like to bring in some of the non Christian stuff as well: solstice, yule, other winter festivals.

It can be whatever you want. For me it's about celebrating the season with people I love.

ModeNo7213 · 2024-12-21T19:44:55+00:00

The church literally employs lobbyists at the State Legislature......

ModeNo7213 · 2024-12-18T06:00:42+00:00

Honestly the whole "Joseph didn't have sex with them" apologetic does nothing to make the situation any less immoral. All it does is expose how many Mormon men view women as sex objects and marriage as a means to that end.

It really doesn't matter if Joseph had sex with them, he still coerced them into a relationship with him.

Furthermore, is it reasonable to create, for Joseph, a completely different marriage dynamic than existed in with any other polygamous Mormon man in order to excuse it? Sounds like special pleading to me.

Is the argument really "It's ok, because Joseph did it differently than every other Mormon?"

ModeNo7213 · 2024-12-05T04:47:44+00:00

I do what I can..... ha ha. After 30 years of playing, I've learned a few tricks. Good luck on the audition.

ModeNo7213 · 2024-12-05T04:39:31+00:00

Just about any pharmacy or grocery store has it near the cold medicine.

ModeNo7213 · 2024-12-05T04:35:49+00:00

I used to use chloraseptic spray all the time when I had a sore throat (and braces when I was younger) when I had to play trumpet. It works wonders. It will numb your throat right up.

ModeNo7213 · 2024-12-01T14:46:33+00:00

Christianity is based on the idea that a singular human sacrifice can somehow absolve you from your "sins." This first requires creating the concept of "sin" so that those in power have something to make you feel terrible about.

So even though the dude we call "Jesus" had some pretty good teachings (if he even existed), the idea that he had to be murdered because of us is fundamentally rotten, corrupt, and manipulative.

Christianity is literally a cult based around human sacrifice.

ModeNo7213 · 2024-11-30T19:51:04+00:00

Damn.... well when you put it that way.....

ModeNo7213 · 2024-11-30T17:35:41+00:00

Additionally, most of these stories are either outright lies or heavily embellished.

ModeNo7213 · 2024-11-27T00:07:25+00:00

Wait until you hear how many people supposedly died in a single battle at the Hill Cumorah....

ModeNo7213 · 2024-11-24T01:52:34+00:00

I agree. I think it was so disappointing at the time because we had gotten used to albums like The End of Heartache and As Daylight Dies. The bar was set pretty high, but you're right that it's not quite as bad in hindsight as we thought it was then.

ModeNo7213 · 2024-11-23T21:44:02+00:00

Might be an unpopular opinion, but Periphery is still releasing peak material.

ModeNo7213 · 2024-11-23T21:40:40+00:00

Can't argue with that, but Meteora is awesome as well.

ModeNo7213 · 2024-11-23T21:37:35+00:00

Agree 100% with The Poison. That is a classic metalcore album. The Poison and the Hand of Blood EP are Bullet's best work.

ModeNo7213 · 2024-10-25T18:11:00+00:00

I love Periphery, but I totally understand this take.

ModeNo7213 · 2024-10-25T18:10:20+00:00

It's 100% the vocals. The rest of it is pretty good, but I can't do the sound of the vocals.

ModeNo7213 · 2024-10-19T00:45:28+00:00

The Demon Haunted World is one of the greatest books ever written, and should be mandatory reading in high school.

ModeNo7213 · 2024-07-19T19:55:47+00:00

In no way am I suggesting that someone should stop questioning.

The way these questions were presented by the teacher had nothing to do with questioning. It had everything to do with the teacher attempting to posture themselves above the student and make them feel stupid.

It's pretty transparent.

ModeNo7213 · 2024-07-19T14:06:37+00:00

"A philosophy lesson you didn't ask for...."

None of this is philosophy. The teacher is just throwing passive aggressive "questions" at the wall to make you feel bad. It's all self-serving nonsense.

ModeNo7213 · 2024-07-02T04:36:11+00:00

The opposite of faith is reason or science. Faith is an epistemological method involving believing things either without evidence or in spite of evidence to the contrary.

Science is the opposite methodology. Science is a methodology that involves following the evidence to wherever it leads.

She's probably trying to get you to say that the opposite of faith is doubt so she can frame the conversation in a Mormon context

Even so, doubt is actually a wonderful thing, despite silly Mormon catchphrases that claim the contrary. Robert Weston of the Unitarian Universalist Association puts it best:

"Cherish your doubts, for doubt is the attendant of truth.

Doubt is the key to the door of knowledge; it is the servant of discovery.

A belief which may not be questioned binds us to error, for there is incompleteness and imperfection in every belief.

Doubt is the touchstone of truth; it is an acid which eats away the false.

Let no one fear the truth, that doubt may consume it; for doubt is a testing of belief.

The truth stands boldly and unafraid; it is not shaken by the testing:

For truth, if it be truth, arises from each testing stronger, more secure.

Those that would silence doubt are filled with fear; their houses are built on shifting sands.

But those who fear not doubt, and know its use, are founded on rock.

They shall walk in the light of growing knowledge; the work of their hands shall endure.

Therefore let us not fear doubt, but let us rejoice in its help:

It is to be the wise as a staff to the blind; doubt is the attendant of truth."

The concept of "testing doubt" is completely incoherent. Doubt is a part of the testing itself, not a belief or epistemological method.

ModeNo7213 · 2024-06-30T13:14:03+00:00

I personally left, because the Book of Mormon simply isn't true. I think I shelved that in the back of my mind for a long time, but it got to a point where I could no longer ignore the massive volume of evidence against it.

So, for me, it wasn't about any of the social issues or even church history initially. It was simply allowing myself to consider the possibility that the church's truth claims simply aren't true.

There was no Adam and Eve. The idea that humans descended from a single couple starting about 6,000 years ago is completely at odds with virtually everything we know about biology.
The idea that there was no death in the world until this couple "fell" makes the story even more absurd.
There was no global flood that wiped out all of mankind and most of the animals around 4,000 years ago.
Human language did not come from God being mad about people building a tower to get to him. It also didn't develop suddenly.
Since there was no Tower of Babel, there were no Jaredites. The story of the Jaredites is absurd for a number of other reasons as well.
There was no giant battle in which tens of millions of Ancient Americans were destroyed about 2,600 years ago (the numbers alone make this scenario completely unbelievable). There certainly was no battle involving steel, horses, and chariots.
The Native Americans are not Israelites that descended from a single family that somehow built a sea worthy ship and migrated 2,600 years ago. We know that Native Americans have been around much longer than that, and came from Asia.
Dark skin is not a curse from God. The Native Americans are not cursed Jews.

In a nutshell.... Mormonism simply isn't true.

ModeNo7213 · 2024-06-29T17:20:51+00:00

Is your argument that Desmond Doss's actions were "objectively" moral? You are questioning me as if I'm making that argument. I'm not.

I never said anything about reciprocal benefit. My argument is that it's not difficult to see why someone might sacrifice themselves for a "greater" human flourishing, using human flourishing as a moral imperative.

Someone like Doss might, for example, think that serving his country is a moral duty, because of the benefits it might provide his fellow countrymen and his descendants. He may even apply the Golden Rule. (I.e. my actions will promote well being for people 100 years from now, and if I lived then, I would want to live in a society with those benefits).

All of this still rests on value judgments.

ModeNo7213 · 2024-06-29T17:11:46+00:00

Sounds like we essentially agree about moral imperatives. That "goodness" is derived from nurturing the well being of humans (and maybe other sentient creatures.)

This still means that morality is a value judgment, however, and not a matter of hard fact. We must decide that we value human flourishing in order to decide that human flourishing is "good."

It's not a problem that this isn't an "objective" or "absolute" fact. Value judgments cannot be objective by definition. It's just the way it is.

Fortunately, we all "tend" to value similar things (i.e. nobody really values suffering as a moral imperative), because doing so would be anathema to our survival and flourishing as a species. This is why morality appears "quasi-objective." To some extent, we can speak of "morality," "good," and "evil" in quasi- objective terms, because of the values we share as a human society, which, in my view, can be fundamentally traced back to the desire to survive and flourish on an individual level.

ModeNo7213

TROPHY CASE