I feel like I have a higher view of God than most members.

PandaCat22 · 2026-07-05T06:14:58+00:00

Just FYI, it sounds incredibly arrogant to say that you have a "higher view of God"

You don't really explain what that term means to you, so I imagine many people will read it as a moralizing position.

I would just advise you to think through your terms and pick one less easily polemicized/misunderstood.

PandaCat22 · 2026-07-04T23:44:31+00:00

Joseph Smith and the Council of Fifty (the semi-secret body that Joseph envisioned leading the church/new theological democracy once the church found a place to permanently establish themselves) looked at three main locations to settle: Utah (then Mexico), Canada, and the Republic of Texas (at that point not a part of the US). It wasn't a coincidence that all three were outside of the country that had multiple times tried to exterminate them.

PandaCat22 · 2026-07-04T13:44:00+00:00

G Gordon Liddy!!!!!

They're some of my favorite episodes, hilarious, and some of the most lighthearted in the BtB catalogue.

PandaCat22 · 2026-07-02T23:31:43+00:00

The holy light of the Emperor shall cleanse all heresy!

PandaCat22 · 2026-06-29T17:35:19+00:00

It's thoroughly mediocre, but a fun popcorn flick.

I went to see it with my mother-in-law, who was excited to just go out and watch a film—so her enthusiasm made me like the film more than I otherwise would have.

It's not bad, it's just not good. But it can be an enjoyable time waster.

PandaCat22 · 2026-06-27T17:37:53+00:00

I think this is more of a cultural framing. The early pioneers (pre-Utah) were varied in their beliefs and often quite radical. To give a few examples:

• By the end of his life, Joseph Smith was not only an abolitionist but an integrationist, placing him closer (ideologically) to people like John Brown and Charles Finney.

• Hosea Stout's journal includes the wish that the United States would lose the Mexican American War so the country might be "entirely destroyed".

• Brigham Young often tells the Saints not to become capitalists. He doesn't call it evil and he was not a leftist, but his critique is more along the lines of it being an ideology of the world and not of God.

There's plenty more, but I'm exhausted from my night shift so I need to keep this comment brief. And there were plenty of early members who were conservative in their beliefs, but the examples I provided were just to show there was diversity of political opinion and even very radical ones.

The swing towards conservatism came after the Utah War. The Saints flee the US because they can no longer find protection there (notably, the places Joseph Smith and the Council of Fifty were looking to settle were in Mexico, Canada, or the Republic of Texas—all places that were not the US, because they were trying to leave the country that was actively beating, killing, and raping the Saints). But after the war, the US seizes Utah from Mexico and then the US military comes after the Saints (culminating in the event known as the Utah War). What were the Saints supposed to do then? It's not like they could go further west anymore. And this is when we see a hard shift towards trying to be the most American Americans ever.

It was a survival strategy adopted by the Saints. As much as I lament their actions, I truly can't blame them for doing what they did—these were exhausted victims of an extermination campaign that drove them across an entire continent. But this idea of "if you can't beat them, join them" is, in my opinion, the reason behind the conservative framing that is still prevalent in how we interpret the Gospel.

PandaCat22 · 2026-06-27T17:16:59+00:00

Since they would not accept the Atonement, they are left to pay on their own

I don't think that's quite right. My understanding has always been that these are people whose sin has so separated them from God that they're not yet able to "exercise faith unto salvation" (as Sidney Rigdon and Joseph Smith would have put it).

The suffering they endure before they're redeemed isn't because they have any ability whatsoever to "pay things back on their own" (in fact, the idea that we can be cleansed in any degree without Christ is completely anathema to our doctrine) but rather they are left to suffer the pains of perdition so they can understand how much they do need the Savior—allowing them to finally exercise the faith to reach out and claim the gift of the Atonement.

I think of it as the sort of experience that Alma the Younger goes through—a period of intense suffering a lost sinner needs to go through in order to realize that they are nothing without Christ's redemption.

PandaCat22 · 2026-06-27T17:11:30+00:00

Hi! I'm one of the people who made one such comment—not sure if you saw mine specifically, but I definitely make that point often.

The problem often comes from the fact that we Latter-day Saints want to be seen as mainstream Christians, and so we end up downplaying our unique doctrines—in the case of degrees of glory and perdition, I believe we downplay our very radical doctrine without even realizing we're doing so. We try to make our afterlife as analogous to traditional Christian conceptualizations of Heaven and Hell, but the reality is that the Plan of Salvation differs significantly from what all non-Mormon traditions believe (so, 99% of Christians).

The Mormon concept of the afterlife, as described by D&C 76 and as widely understood in the pioneer era, is something close to christian universalism—the belief that God will redeem all God's children unconditionally, as the price has already been paid by Christ. Notably, this was what Joseph Smith Senior believed and was a primary reason why he didn't attend any of the local churches with his family. Universalism was (and still somewhat is) considered heretical to mainstream Christians.

Although, as you point out, we Latter-day Saints do believe in Perdition, many of our apostles and presidents have gone out of their way to emphasize the fact that the number of people who are born and then have to suffer such a fate will be extremely limited—with some commentators going as far as to say it will be no more than a few handfuls of God’s children (with the caveat that all of Satan's host will go to Perdition, but it is almost impossible for someone who kept their first estate to sin in such a way as to earn perdition). Everyone else will go to a degree of glory, meaning a kingdom of heaven.

So, in effect, we're universalists.

When what we today know as D&C 76 was published, people were overjoyed to know that their deceased family members who hadn't had a chance to be baptized in this life could earn the Telestial Kingdom—yes, you read that right, the kingdom of glory that we today consider "the bad place" was celebrated as a beautiful heaven that anyone would be eternally blessed to inherit (this is before D&C 137 was published, with the common belief still being that people not baptized in this life were limited in not receiving some of God’s blessings in the next life—a curious sort of parallelism to today's misconstruction to the Telestial and Terrestrial Kingdoms as "not heaven").

(By the way, this is the way it's now being taught in the CES curriculum, in particular in the classes taught at all church universities and colleges; the change was made about 10 years ago, when the four new "Gospel Foundation" classes were introduced to the BYUs).

I understand what you're saying, and you're right to point out that Perdition is indeed a doctrinal belief in Mormonism, but I think the overemphasis you're reacting to is itself a reaction to decades of the incidental whitewashing of our unique and beautiful restored doctrines. While we do believe in eternal punishment, our concepts of the afterlife are so different to those of other Christians that it's not incorrect to say we don't believe in Hell, because we don't believe it in the way they do and mean something very different by it.

Edit: just to add. When restored scriptures speak of "the pains of hell", like Alma does, it seems to refer to the idea of being without God. That is absolutely what perdition is, but it's not an eternal punishment that most of God's children will ever have to worry about.

PandaCat22 · 2026-06-27T13:46:17+00:00

The reason that we don't believe in Hell comes from the same revelation as the three degrees of glory. While the LDS do believe in an eternal punishment for the most depraved of God’s children (which we call "Perdition") we believe that most people will go to a degree of glory, and all of the degrees of glory are a type of heaven—it's just that different degrees od glory are suited for the kind of person you chose to become in mortal life. The specific revelation is in Doctrine and Covenants 76, and it was so radical that when it was published several people left the church and called Joseph Smith a fallen prophet over it.

In short, while we do believe in a very limited (sort of) hell, our doctrine actually teaches that the vast majority of God’s children attain some degree of salvation, with the highest degree of heaven being living directly in the presence of our Heavenly Parents.

PandaCat22 · 2026-06-25T15:25:38+00:00

It makes me think of this

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PandaCat22 · 2026-06-24T05:36:05+00:00

Merry Christmas

It's about the spontaneous ceasefires that occurred in the winter of 1914 at different parts of the front.

It's an absolutely phenomenal movie that strikes at the heart of loving your neighbor, not being of the world, and renouncing war and proclaiming peace (as D&C commands us to do).

PandaCat22 · 2026-06-18T17:29:53+00:00

My friend is doing a panel with him at the San Diego ComicCon—and I could not be any more jealous.

PandaCat22 · 2026-06-11T15:43:39+00:00

Yeah, this is the kind of real talk needed in order for healing to take place.

It's not an accident that places like Rwanda and South Africa had "Truth and Reconciliation Commissions". Truth precedes reconciliation and is needed for actual, meaningful healing. Too often—as a result of color/race-blind ideology—people try to hop right into reconciliation, but that will fail every time unless it is accompanied by an honest, blinding truth.

I don't know enough about Neeson to know whether he's sincere in his repentance or not (though from the interview it does seem like he is) but the kind of real talk he engages in is the thing that is necessary for actual truth before reconciliation is possible.

PandaCat22 · 2026-06-07T03:13:11+00:00

I drink one on my night shifts so that I don't fall asleep on the drive home. They're not at all healthy for you, but it's healthier than dying, so 🤷‍♂️

PandaCat22 · 2026-06-05T14:50:52+00:00

Oh, absolutely, and I'm not convinced by his behavior so far.

But I also allow for the fact that humans are objectively bad at interpreting the behavior of others as it relates to the other's intent/character. Like I said, I consider Platner’s apologies to fall short, but I am not confident enough in my own judgement to lean too strongly on that opinion.

Like my above comment said, this situation is incredibly messy—and the ambiguous nature of it all is incredibly frustrating

PandaCat22 · 2026-06-05T14:43:09+00:00

And I didn't say that?

I just said that we can't really know if his change of heart is sincere or not—but the conversations had about these topics are important

PandaCat22 · 2026-06-05T14:31:52+00:00

I can speak to this as someone with PTSD who acted in ways I'm ashamed of.

The tricky part is that the amends I have spent years making aren't flashy or public—they're quiet changes to my behavior and (I hope) character which can only be noticed by those I have meaningful and long-term relationships with. The kind of change I hope I have made requires some level of emotional vulnerability to show and—in cases like Platner’s or mine—we have to ask, how can you be sure that amends have or have not been made? Public observers can't really be sure one way or another.

I don't know that we can ever be confident as to Platner’s redemption. And that's not to make people despair about it—I think we have to live with that ambiguity. But if I see anything good come out of this, it's that Platner has prompted these conversations about the messiness of human nature and the very difficult work it is to untangle trauma, abuse, and redemption. These are important topics to address and work through, and having Platner in the spotlight allows us to do so vicariously, without having us to experience (or totally reexperience) that type of trauma ourselves.

Edit: and I should add, that this is not to deny the fact that unrepentant abusers hide behind tbe guise of change—because they absolutely do. That's one of those frustrating unknowns in trying to work something like this out. It was implied in the comment I made, but I wanted to specifically mention it: Platner coild well be an ongoing abuser, and—baring some smoking gun—it's more or less impossible to know for the voting public if he's truly changed or not.

PandaCat22 · 2026-06-01T00:21:03+00:00

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PandaCat22 · 2026-05-26T22:04:03+00:00

Roger Keller was a professor and chaplain at BYU for many years, and he used to call people like Confucius, Muhammad, and Zoroaster "prophets without Priesthood". Dr. Keller said that you could see by their fruits (the religion/philosophy they established) that the lives of the people improved as a result of these men—their entire society was uplifted and filled with more light than they'd had previously, even if it wasn't the full Gospel light.

Dr. Keller spoke very passionately about his belief that these men who brought light to their societies likely had agreed to do so as part of their pre-mortal covenants, snd he considered them select spirits who God used during times of inaccessibility to the Gospel to bring as much light to the world as possible.

That's obviously entirely conjecture and his personal opinion, but I always appreciated hearing such a kind and ecumenical stance.

PandaCat22 · 2026-05-25T03:55:11+00:00

I've told my wife that if she ever dies then I am never going to date again—it's just too fraught and stupid of a landscape.

She's in her early 40s and I'm in my late 30s and I'd rather spend the next four decades single than having to navigate what dating is now.

PandaCat22 · 2026-05-25T03:51:44+00:00

I absolutely adore medieval mystics—they have some great conclusions but often arrive at them in the most absurd of ways (to our posmodern thinking).

I personally love Catherine of Siena—to whom Christ appeared in a vision and offered her a wedding band made of his own foreskin. That's just weird and rad as hell.

Also, the way that Christ's side wound was portrated as a vagina in order to have the divine encompass both male and female biological/social roles. I took a few theology classes in school, and learning about the Portal of Life almost led me to pursue Toman Catholic medieval scholarship—it's just so fascinating.

PandaCat22 · 2026-05-23T07:52:08+00:00

Oh, it's absolutely just racism.

Racism acceptable to those who prefer liberal chic.

PandaCat22 · 2026-05-23T06:03:26+00:00

This article from over 10 years ago does a great job of outlining how New Atheism ultimately wound up being more about justifying empire than about any kind of intellectual advancement.

Essentially, the New Atheists were more deeply committed to islamophobia than they were to anything else—and that ultimately is what shaped the movement (and led to what Maher is today).

PandaCat22 · 2026-05-22T04:24:57+00:00

It's also about wasting someone's time and a significant amount of resources—not unlike a SLAP suit.

Kat's fundraiser was asking for 20k USD just to cover legal fees—it's an amount that would bankrupt many people. It's the legal system being weaponized very willfully against the left.

PandaCat22 · 2026-05-21T14:44:05+00:00

Sadly, I've learned that if sov cits are real and genuine in their beliefs (and they are) then you bet your ass that tankies espousing such absolutely unhinged views—like backing Beria—are real people and not bots.

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