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It isn't that I have successfully transcended my cognitive biases and you have not. I haven't transcended cognitive biases. That isn't my claim. My claim is that I am at least trying. That's not much of a difference. You're mindreading and imputing motives either way. Why should I believe you are trying to transcend your cognitive biases and I am not? Well, no. The Church would not sponsor its institutions of higher learning if principles of science, mathematics, and other inquiries were "the polar opposite" of how the Church teaches us to pursue knowledge and truth. This is just a lazy caricature, and a further demonstration of why you are not a reliable narrator relative to the Church. You just can't allow yourself to let the Church speak for itself, or to avoid glosses and disparaging terms. It's strawmen and "Bigot!" all the way down. I have read fairly widely, though with different emphases (I hew more toward jurisprudential lenses). Scout mindset, Sagan’s candle, Pinker on rationality: do not protect a conclusion from disconfirming evidence; do not treat intuition as a demonstration; do not confuse “I don’t know everything” with “I know nothing.” That is good advice. It is not a proof that Alma 32 and a lab notebook are two religions and you may belong to only one. Two goals is a smear of one of them. “See the evidence clearly” is a goal I share. “Get a testimony no matter what the evidence does” is a goal I reject, and not one the Church teaches, and yet that is how you characterize us . Those are not the only two programs on offer. A third is the Church's non-caricatured position: take historical, textual, and scientific questions as real questions, and also treat prayer, covenant, and moral experiment as real tests of a different kind of claim. You can botch the third program. People do. You can also botch scout mindset by deciding in advance that the only admissible evidence is the kind that already fits naturalism. That is not scouting. That is a filter. Alma 32 is not “ignore the control group.” The chapter is an analogy: plant a word, do not cast it out on unbelief, see whether it enlarges and enlightens. That is not a Nature protocol. It is also not “repeat the slogan until you feel it.” It is closer to try living under this claim and watch what it does to mind and life than it is to “choose feelings over facts.” Moroni 10 is a request for confirmation of a specific book, not a ban on asking where the plates were, what the text looks like, or what 19th-century context can explain. If someone uses those chapters as a reason never to read an awkward document, that person is misusing them. Misuse is not the official method. A few years back I introduced my wife to a phrase I had encountered on a blog: "Let us embrace the healing power of 'and.'" There are a lot of people, including yourself it seems, who are prone to present false dilemmas. An either/or choice when there are more options available. Here, you say intellectual and scientific inquiry are "the polar opposite of how Mormonism teaches." Again, that's just a lazy caricature. Daily scripture, meetings, and faith-promoting stories are formation. Every tradition forms people: journals, labs, conferences, and “here is how a rationalist talks” form people too. Formation is not automatically self-deception. The live question is whether you will let a contrary fact in. I have already said prophets have been wrong about some sexual folklore, that Miracle of Forgiveness is not the current handbook, and that descriptive history is not a standing commandment. That is not the profile of “protect the testimony at all costs.” You do not have to choose one instrument. Historians use documents. Chemists use assays. Juries use testimony plus physical evidence. People decide whom to marry with more than a regression table. “Only one method, ever” is itself a philosophical claim, and an unserious one. Pinker and Galef are not doing particle physics when they write about meaning and bias. Sagan was not doing particle physics when he wrote about wonder. They are arguing for a stance. I can take the stance—don’t lie to yourself, don’t confuse hope with a footnote—without granting that the only thing that exists is what an academic journal will print. Carroll’s line is right and is being overworked. Carroll is right when he says that we can know some things without knowing everything. The earth is not about to be put back at the center of the solar system. Granted. Restoration claims are not in that bin. “Joseph was a prophet” and “the Book of Mormon is historical” are not heliocentrism. They are historical and theological claims with arguments on both sides. “There will never be a Nature article reversing Copernicus” does not mean “therefore Moroni 10 is intellectually disreputable.” It means physical cosmology is settled in a way that 1820s New York is not. Intuition is not plausibility. Agreed. A burning spiritual impression is not a carbon date. I have not said it was. I have said that if God is involved and sends messengers, those claims are doing work in the argument. You say those premises are false. That is the disagreement. Quoting a style of rationality does not make the premises disappear, and it does not make “scout vs testimony” a forced choice. If the books taught you to prefer clarity to slogans, use them that way here: state the claim, state what would count against it, and stop treating every religious practice as a plot to avoid the data. Stop caricaturing people and ideas with which you disagree. Stop with coercive "Bigot!" pronouncements and other logical fallacies. Speaking of which... Fallacies False dichotomy. Evidence-seeking vs testimony-seeking as the only two goals. Again, we can and should "embrace the healing power of 'and.'" Straw man. Alma 32 / Moroni 10 as “succeed at feeling certain.” Category error. Settled cosmology used as a template for historical-theological claims. Remember our discussion about Caesar (or perhaps that was not you, I can't recall)? Motivated-reasoning special pleading. Formation on your side = rationality; formation on mine = bias. Thanks, -Smac

Here is the relevant line correct: "They do become Y if the act is not procreative or not strengthening the union between husband and wife." And it's just circular. Your interpretation of your church leader's interpretation of gods will says opposite gendered marriages are ok and same gendered marriages are bad. It doesn't matter if particular sex acts are procreative. It doesn't matter if the couple can have kids. So appeals to biology are specious. All that matters is that the sex acts occur between married opposite gendered people because god said so.

Sure. There are two purposes, after all: procreation and strengthening the union between husband and wife. In the ethic I have been defending, sexual acts between a husband and a wife that do not conceive—and that cannot conceive this time—are still inside X. Those acts do not become Y because a child is not possible in that hour. They do become Y if the act is not procreative or not strengthening the union between husband and wife. That is not a new patch. Again, I have said from the start that sex in marriage has two ends: generation and the union of husband and wife. If the only permitted act were the one that might conceive tonight, the second end would be empty words, and every infertile or postmenopausal couple would be in Y. I have already refused that. I'm not inclined to create a catalog of particular acts that are permissible and acts that are verboten. My public line is not a bedroom ordinance list. It is this: the pair is husband and wife; the act is their sexual union; generation need not occur this time; the act is not shared with a third person and is not a substitute for turning the marriage into a different kind of pair. If a particular act is rejected, it is rejected as a limit inside the marriage, not because “it didn’t make a baby, therefore it is the same as two men.” Why this is not the same as same-sex acts “Does not generate in this instance” is not the moral category. “What kind of pair, and what is the act for” is. Husband and wife, oral sex, no conception tonight: still the marital kind. The bodies are the two sexes; the bond is the one that can generate; this act serves union inside that bond. Two men, any sexual act: not an infertile night in a marriage of husband and wife. There is no marital kind of that sort to be serving. You are collapsing “this particular motion does not fertilize” into “therefore the pair and the institution do not matter.” That is the same move as Andy/Abigail versus Bob/Brady. I already answered it. Frequency and technique do not rewrite kind. If your test is “name every act that cannot conceive and put it in Y,” you are not describing my ethic. You are describing a fertility-only ethic I have declined. If your test is “if any non-procreative marital act is allowed, then same-sex acts must be allowed,” that only follows if the pair is morally idle. That is the premise I do not grant. I will not turn this thread into a catalog of techniques. The answer you asked for is: non-procreative sex between husband and wife can be licit in this ethic because union is a real end of that marriage. That does not license every other pairing that also fails to conceive. Fallacies False equivalence. Non-generative act in a man–woman marriage = same-sex pair. Moving the goalposts. From “kind of pair” to “this motion fertilized or it didn’t.” Continuum fallacy. If some marital acts don’t conceive, no line remains. Whataboutism. Bedroom details used to evade the pair distinction. Thanks, -Smac

Latter-day Saints are fortunate, in a sense, to have all sorts of people going out of their way to tear down our faith. To that end, I have spent many, many years listening to such voices, and then re-checking re-assessing what I believe and why. The Restored Gospel still requires faith, but it holds up remarkably well. Of the less appealing attributes of our critics is that they characterize themselves as being earnest in their pursuit of truth, but then deny that same zeal to the Latter-day Saints. As an attorney, I have had ample opportunity to observe how different people, having had different experiences and made different efforts and reached different decisions about what to emphasize and de-emphasize, and having different aspirations and motives and such, can then look at a set of given facts or postulations and reach very different conclusions about them. For example, you find my beliefs patently absurd. Not just a difference in taste or preference, but patently and obviously false and incongruent with reality. You attribute this to cognitive biases, me reflexively accepting what I was "taught from the cradle," and so on. I find your ideological position on some matters patently absurd. A man can "become" a woman by "identifying" as one. That a person of your obvious intellectual rigor can affirm that not only with a straight face, but with earnestness, is baffling to me. Your utter refusal to articulate any limiting principles as to entry into sex-segregated spaces is less baffling because a man "becoming" a woman is wholly incongruent with reality, not even a close call (just as incongruent as "a man can 'become' a {space alien} by 'identifying' as one" or "a man can 'become' a {six-year-old by} 'identifying' as one." You being an unreliable narrator (overstating/misstating Carroll, profoundly misrepresenting and misapprehending Givens) is also less baffling. Where you think I am in the thrall of a religious tradition "taught {to me} from the cradle," I think you are in the thrall of ideological capture and obligation. As an outside observer, I find the trans movements "you're either with us or your a bigot" schtick to be pretty offputting. This thread, as with so many other examples, has once again demonstrated the intellectual paucity of that ideology. Yet again: I think the "Bigot!" schtick is so frequently utilized because it's all you've got. I can articulate a reasoned basis for my position. I don't think you can, either that or you are so immersed in your own worldview that you cannot accommodate the possibility that viewpoints divergent from yours might be reasonable. So you and yours retreat to name-calling. You guys often even begin with name-calling out of the gate. As a Latter-day Saint, I have had all sorts of opportunities to re-examine what I believe and why. There are certainly some things I struggle with, but nothing that I can say is demonstrably incongruent with reality. God's existence is not empirically testable, for example, so I am at liberty to reach a conclusion on grounds other than (or in addition to) empirical inquiry (such as the Spirit). In contrast, whether a man can "become" a woman is empirically testable. It can never happen. And yet you, the self-proclaimed "I'm squarely on the side of 'empirical reality'" guy, not only declare this, you seem to be entirely genuine and earnest about it. I have an ideology. Informed by my personal observations and experiences, training and education (particularly in the law), and so on. I am not in the "thrall" of it, though, as there are all sorts of ways a person can set it aside. You have done so. Many of my friends and relatives have done so. Had I not had the experiences I have had with the Restored Gospel, I may well have left also. My religion is, to me, too high-demand for me to stay with it for the sake of comfort or familial obligation. I also feel a moral obligation to myself to set aside falsehoods and bad ideas when I discern them. I stay, though, because I have had experiences that have persuaded me, many times over, that the Gospel is what it claims to be. I think trans ideology is vastly different. It operates by compulsion and coercion and control. It has no choice, really, because its fundamental tenets are incongruent with reality, so its advocates distract from that and paper over that with logical fallacies and emotional manipulation and blackmail. Again, this thread is a good exemplar of that. Folks like you and SU are quite smart, but you simply cannot resist resorting to ad hominem and other coercive tactics. It's all you've got. You can't defend your position using merit, reasoning and evidence, so you go with "Bigot!" Over and over and over. There are other elements of secular ideologies in play here as well. When I express a belief in God, I do so from a place of faith and humility. I am quite aware of my relative "nothingness," and my "worthless and fallen state" (Mosiah 4:5). It is not self-aggrandizing to consider myself a "child of God" because we all are. Nor is self-aggrandizement in any way compatible with discipleship and faith in Jesus Christ. King Benjamin put it well in Mosiah 4:11-12: The more I learn about the Gospel, and the more I apply it in my life, the more I grow, spiritually and intellectually. I feel edified. The further along I have walked the covenant path, the more I see D&C 50:24: "That which is of God is light; and he that receiveth light, and continueth in God, receiveth more light; and that light groweth brighter and brighter until the perfect day." The more I look at manifestations of trans ideology and other secular mandates, the more pitiable I find those in the thrall of it. The trans stuff in particular begins and ends with coercion and "in-grouping." It has nothing to offer on its merits, and so seeks to get people to accept it via shame and coercion, or else punishes them for failing to. I can say "I believe in God" and I may well be right. I can't prove it, but neither can it be disproven. Belief in a Higher Being is reasonable. In this perspective I acknowledge that others can choose to believe God does not exist. You can say "A man can 'become' a woman by 'identifying' as one," but you will never be right. It can be disproven. It is wholly incongruent with reality. And yet not only do you affirm it, you throw "Bigot!" at anyone who dares express disagreement with it. I find that pretty sad. Good thing, then, that I don't stick my head in the sand. Instead, I have spent decades listening to people like you and examining your critiques of my faith, and also studying the Gospel, and also seeking to apply it in my life. I am a fairly well-informed Latter-day Saint, both as to our doctrines, practices, history, and so on. It is sort of grimly humorous that, in your view, retaining and advancing well-examined religious beliefs just isn't possible. The only characterization you can come up with is "sticking your head in the sand" and "willful ignorance." My options are to either agree with you or I'm a "bigot." Agree with you or I am willfully ignorant. Yeesh. Pinker is right about CYA prose. “Allegedly,” “somewhat,” and “to some extent” on every clause is ugly, and a fair reader knows “Seattle is rainy” does not mean it rains every hour. I am not asking you to write like a consent form. That quote does not do the work you want. Scaffolding is not the load-bearing wall. Pinker’s point is that subordinate points can be phrased cleanly without a footnote. The shape of the earth is not a subordinate point in a geology paper, and it is also not what we have been arguing. “Science has shown the earth is round” is a fair unhedged sentence because the claim is not in serious dispute among the people in the conversation. “Your sexual ethic is false religious belief that science has shown harms people” is not that sentence. Neither is “you admitted womanhood transcends biology.” Those are load-bearing claims. If they are wrong, the argument falls down. Asking you to mark those as argument rather than as weather reports is not pedantry. It is refusing to let “So sue me” stand in for a showing. Charity is a two-way convention. Pinker says a classic writer counts on ordinary charity: do not take the least generous reading of an unhedged line (boy, is sure would be nice if you did that when evaluating the statements of the leaders of the Church). I have been asking for the same thing. “Kind of pair” is not “some infertile couples can have kids.” “Ordinary/legal/social sense” in a CAIS case is not “identity overrides biology.” You took the least charitable reading, announced I was on the record for a view I did not state, and now quote Pinker against hedging. The slogan you want is the one you have not been using. Unhedged is not the same as settled. Writers can speak plainly and still be wrong. “Don’t hedge” is advice about style. It is not a method for turning a moral conclusion into a fact about the world. If you mean “I think the Law of Chastity is harmful and false,” say that. That is clean Pinker prose. If you mean “this has been established the way roundness has been established,” you need more than a style guide. I will keep writing in English instead of a thicket of qualifiers. I will not treat your unhedged "Bigot!" and "willful ignorance" insults as if they had inherited the epistemic status of the globe. Fallacies Category error. Style advice about hedges applied to contested premises. False analogy. Round earth = your claims about sex, harm, and my sentences. Special pleading. Charity for your bluntness; least-charitable reading of mine. I have found you to be an unreliable narrator, both as to "the science" and to the Latter-day Saints. I can't give you the benefit of the doubt, as I have too often found you to not accurately state or re-state what is being said by others. I've spent 22 years on this board listening to and interacting with critics and enemies of my faith because I am afraid to look at the evidence? That seems implausible. Thanks, -Smac

I'm circling back around to this. Are non-reproductive sex acts ok between married opposite gendered people? Is it ok for a husband to perform o*** sex on his wife so that she can orgasm? How does this fit in your sexual ethic? What about opposite gendered a*** sex? What about opposite gendered mutual masturbation? These acts do not generate. They are biological dead ends from a procreation stand point. They have no reproductive purpose or possibility. Are these acts ok in your sexual ethic?

In this discussion, has there been recognition that too much reproduction can be as destructive to the survival of the community as too little, especially given the high investment infants and young children demand in terms of time and energy and resources? If so, wouldn’t it be immoral for individuals to disregard the capability not only of the individual parents, but the greater community’s ability to care for children at least at a survival level (no starvation or death from exposure due to lack of enough food and shelter for all). It seems it is logically moral to therefore allow and support those who want to reproduce while not penalizing those who don’t as long as the number of children are sufficient for a functional and healthy community. I really don’t see how outside a religious or ideological framework one can label having children as moral and making choices such that one won’t or can’t have children as immoral if one is addressing what is best for a community…it depends on the greater context whether either behaviour is beneficial or not.

It isn't that I have successfully transcended my cognitive biases and you have not. I haven't transcended cognitive biases. That isn't my claim. My claim is that I am at least trying. I read books like Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters by Steven Pinker, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan, and The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don’t by Julia Galef. The core messages of those books are the polar opposite of how Mormonism teaches to gain a testimony through faith-based "experiments" (e.g. Alma 32, Moroni 10), praying, listening to testimonies, faith-promoting stories, daily scripture study, etc. One set of methods is based on trying to see the evidence clearly. One set of methods is based on trying to be successful at getting and strengthening your testimony. Two different goals. Two different methods. You have to choose one or the other. Sean Carroll talks about this in detail, of course. Just because we don't know everything doesn't mean we don't know some things. There just isn't going to be a journal in Nature that says, "New Discovery! The Heliocentric Model of the Solar System is Disproven! The Earth Really IS the Center of the Universe!" And just because something seems not only plausible but actually intuitive doesn't mean it's plausible at all. That said, I did have a fairly extended conversation with ChatGPT about all of this, and it did agree with you that saying something is "impossible" is materially different than merely saying it is "implausible," and it also agreed with you that I've been relatively sloppy about how I've articulated the confidence in my beliefs, and that the Pinker quote I gave above doesn't rescue me as much as I wanted it to, because these are my central claims. So here is a carefully worded statement of where I'm actually at: I lack belief in “God” in the broad, undefined sense. I don’t claim to know that no conceivable deity exists; without a clearer definition, there isn’t one precise claim for me to affirm or deny. The Mormon God is much more specific: an embodied Heavenly Father, literal father of human spirits, who created and governs the world, intervenes in human lives, and—according to Mormon teaching—has established strict rules about what consenting adults do in private, with severe spiritual consequences for violating them. Given what we know about evolution, the brain, physics, and the history of LDS teachings, I regard that God and the central claims built around Him as extraordinarily implausible. I have very high, though not absolute, confidence that this God does not exist and that Mormonism’s central supernatural claims are false. I can’t assign an exact probability, but I regard it as less likely than Mary Swanson living happily ever after with Lloyd Christmas. For other conceptions of God, I’d need a clear definition before I could assess whether I believe they exist. I then asked GPT-6 Luna Max the following prompt: Given what we know about the core theory, cognitive neuroscience, earth history, biology, evolution, cognitive biases, and how the teachings of the Church have evolved over time, how reasonable is my position? Am I giving too much credence to the shifting winds of science? Am I being too cocky in my assessment of the facts? Am I employing cognitive biases to rationalize what I want to believe? Evaluate the truthfulness of this statement based on the actual strength of the scientific evidence it references. Don't tell me what I want to hear, and don't be vaguely diplomatic to humans and their various contradictory belief systems that they hold dearly to. Tell me the truth. Does this statement capture the actual truth that an unbiased evaluation of the actual evidence would lead us to? It responded:

Curious. Do you see any benefit at all for same sex marriage either to the couple or to society in general or both to their marriages?

Music is supposed to make you feel! It’s working then 😉

Not exactly. This reminds me of what Richard Dawkins said: Children, I’ll argue, have a human right not to have their minds crippled by exposure to other people’s bad ideas—no matter who these other people are. Parents, correspondingly, have no God-given licence to enculturate their children in whatever ways they personally choose: no right to limit the horizons of their children’s knowledge, to bring them up in an atmosphere of dogma and superstition, or to insist they follow the straight and narrow paths of their own faith. In short, children have a right not to have their minds addled by nonsense, and we as a society have a duty to protect them from it. So we should no more allow parents to teach their children to believe, for example, in the literal truth of the Bible or that the planets rule their lives, than we should allow parents to knock their children’s teeth out or lock them in a dungeon. Dawkins, Richard. The God Delusion (pp. 366-367). (Function). Kindle Edition.

[emphasis added] I appreciate you using the word "then" to describe the beliefs that these pioneers. It acknowledges that they lived and died before we knew much, if anything, about earth science, biology, evolution, cognitive neuroscience, nuclear physics, quantum mechanics, and special and general relativity. To clarify my position, when I say rationality leads to naturalism, I'm talking about the findings of modern science more than a mere choice of philosophy. Sean Carroll explains that science isn't based on methodological naturalism, it is based on methodological empiricism. Naturalism as a belief structure is the result of looking at the evidence that we now have. Scientists believe it because that is where the evidence points. I think true humility is recognizing that the religion we were taught from the cradle might be wrong and that just maybe, we are no more special than all of the other people throughout time who have been duped by false religions. I think true humility is looking at what the scientific evidence actually implies and giving it the weight that the supporting evidence indicates. Sticking your head in the sand to protect your religious beliefs isn't humility. It's willful ignorance. My favorite scientist is Steven Pinker. In addition to being a National Academies of Science member for his work as a psychologist, linguist, and cognitive scientist, and in addition to being the usage editor of the American Heritage Dictionary for 11 years, he has written over a dozen amazing books on a wide range of topics. He is an incredible communicator who applies his insights from psychology and linguistics to write understandable and memorable prose. And one of my favorite books he's written is a book on how to write well. It is a style guide called The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century. One of the things he advocates in that book is to avoid unnecessary hedging. In my attempt to do that, I may have said things like, "science has proven that the earth is round" instead of saying what is technically more correct like, "while science isn't in the business of proving anything, an overwhelming amount of evidence points to it being round. But as a matter of principle, science remains open to new evidence and new interpretations of the existing evidence that could indicate it is flat." Here is what Pinker said in his own words: Writers acquire the hedge habit to conform to the bureaucratic imperative that’s abbreviated as CYA, which I’ll spell out as Cover Your Anatomy. They hope it will get them off the hook, or at least allow them to plead guilty to a lesser charge, should a critic ever try to prove them wrong. It’s the same reason that lawsuit-wary journalists drizzle the words allegedly and reportedly throughout their copy, as in The alleged victim was found lying in a pool of blood with a knife in his back. There is an alternative slogan to Cover Your Anatomy: So Sue Me. A classic writer counts on the common sense and ordinary charity of his readers, just as in everyday conversation we know when a speaker means “in general” or “all else being equal.” If someone tells you that Liz wants to move out of Seattle because it’s a rainy city, you don’t interpret him as claiming that it rains there twenty-four hours a day seven days a week just because he didn’t qualify his statement with relatively rainy or somewhat rainy. As Thomas and Turner explain, “Accuracy becomes pedantry if it is indulged for its own sake. A classic writer will phrase a subordinate point precisely but without the promise that it is technically accurate. The convention between writer and reader is that the writer is not to be challenged on these points because they are mere scaffolding.” Any adversary who is unscrupulous enough to give the least charitable reading to an unhedged statement will find an opening to attack the writer in a thicket of hedged ones anyway. Pinker, Steven. The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century (pp. 62-63). (Function). Kindle Edition. Your rants here make it clear that you aren't trying to understand my points, much less understand the science I'm talking about. I do think you're doing a good job of giving yourself an excuse to avoid looking at the evidence that could shake your religious convictions, and your response is a good example of motivated reasoning.

https://www.dri.edu/cloud-seeding-program/what-is-cloud-seeding/

For members or former members, we probably can tell. But for those who aren't members or don't know that much about the church, they can't tell. And they might watch it and think that it is what the church teaches, believes, etc. There was an interesting point in the video that Stargazer posted. Dehlin had commented on how anyone could think of him being affiliated with the church since it was widely publicized about his excommunication and his actions against the church. And the lawyer (who is a member) said that before he was involved in this case, he didn't know what Dehlin looked like or his name. So, just because you and I know Dehlin and know his stance and can see the criticism in the podcasts, that doesn't mean the average person can.

Many of the guests on ms are currently members. Many of them likely will not formally resign their membership… ever. Like myself. bill bennett and other active faithful Mormons appear from time to time on ms. It isn’t truly “ex-Mormon” stories or whatever the church may want it called. imho if the church insists on counting inactive, non tithe-paying, coffee drinking “members” on the rolls and using those numbers to indicate growth or strength of membership, then Mormon stories is probably a much more accurate descriptor.

The gender of the participants is not what marriage is. Your interpretation of your religious leader's interpretation of thier god says it's important, but that is not "reasoned”, it's declared and accepted. We've determined that procreative capacity has nothing to do with it, because it doesn't matter if the couple engages in procreative sex, is past menopause, uses birth control etc. What is important to you, is your interpretation of your religious leader's interpretation of thier god says only opposite genders can marry. That is not reasoned but declared and accepted. So is the reproductive status, acts and genders of the participants. Except, your interpretation of your religious leader's interpretation of their god says only opposite genders can marry. That is not reasoned but declared and accepted. I have yet to see a distinction made that doesn't boil down to "your interpretation of your religious leader's interpretation of their god says only opposite genders can marry." It doesn't matter if the couple can have kids, wants to have kids or anything else. We've already demonstrated that you don't actually care about this. If science tomorrow created a way for gay people to have biological children it wouldn't change a thing. It boils down your religious leader's interpretation of their god says only opposite genders can marry. I don't think the genders or the race of the participants are important. They are on the same level to me. It boils down your religious leader's interpretation of their god says only opposite genders can marry. The parody does assume they are interchangeable. Because they are. Marriage serves the exact same role for married lesbians as married straight people. It serves the same role for infertile and fertile people. It serves the same role for black and white people. It serves the same role for people that participate in reproductive sex acts and non-reproductive sex acts. Except for you because your religious leader's interpretation of their god says only opposite genders can marry. Still waiting to see it. Here is what I see. You believe in God. God said each kid needs a Mom and a Dad and marriage and sex are only for opposite gendered people who are married. That's it. I mean we tried to go back and forth on the biology one. You said "as a reproductive act, it does not cohere" but apparently you have no problem with opposite gendered people participating in sex acts that are non-reproductive even if they do so exclusively. Further post menopausal woman still get to have sex even though as a reproductive act that doesn't cohere. Your fine with Jackie having sex even though she has XY chromosomes and as a reproductive act that doesn't cohere. So what's left? Your religious leader's interpretation of their god says only opposite genders can marry.

I was already in the Army and remained so until I retired in 2010. That last 9 yrs was busy.

I don't think black people should be able to get married. Because they have black skin. I'm not prejudiced against them, I just have a sexual ethic where children should be raised by non-black people. Don't worry though I have really good black friends and I don't think they are any less of people. I just have a rule about an act and an institution. That is a parody, not a parallel. Race is not what marriage is. A Black man and a Black woman, or a Black man and a White woman, are still a man and a woman, and still have procreative capacity. The pair can be husband and wife. The child, if there is one, still has a mother and a father. Skin color is not a constituent of the act or of the two parental sexes. Banning marriage “because they have Black skin” is picking a trait that has nothing to do with the kind of union. That is prejudice wearing a rule. Sex is not like that. “Man” and “woman” are the two halves of the kind of pair the rule is about. Two men are not “the same marriage plus an extra adjective.” They are not a husband and a wife, and a household of two men is not a mother and a father. That is the claim you have to answer. Swapping in race assumes the claim is already false. “Children should be raised by non-Black people” is an invented end. Nobody is required by biology or by the structure of generation to believe it. “A child has a mother and a father” is not an invented end. It is a description of how children come to be. You can say that description should not control marriage law. You cannot pretend it is the same sentence as a color bar. The “I have Black friends” line is doing smear work. I have not claimed same-sex attracted people are less human. I have claimed a kind of sexual pair is not a marriage of husband and wife. If that is wrong, show that the kinds are the same. Do not swap the trait for one that is irrelevant and call the result a confession. Loving struck down a rule that used race to stop men and women from marrying. It did not hold that every restriction on which pair counts as marriage is the same as a racial ban. Treating sex as legally interchangeable with race is the move you need to justify. The parody assumes it. Again: I think the "Bigot!" schtick is so frequently utilized because it's all you've got. I can articulate a reasoned basis for my position. I don't think you can, either that or you are so immersed in your own worldview that you cannot accommodate the possibility that viewpoints divergent from yours might be reasonable. So you retreat to name-calling. Fallacies False analogy. Race is accidental to the man–woman pair; sex is the pair. Straw man. Recasts “kind of union / mother and father” as “I dislike this group.” Poisoning the well. “Good friends” sneer. Question-begging. Assumes sex is as arbitrary in marriage as color.

I can’t remember what episode I first listened to. It was about 10 yrs ago or so. No more than five min in there was no doubt it wasn’t approved by the church or ever would be. It wasn’t anti, just the criticism the guest was making would get a recommend revoked in a hurry. Anyone confused by Mormon stories thinking it is lds church approved sponsored or whatever and has listened to more than a half hour of any episode I have ever heard is probably lying.

I think it is important to some people and isn't important to other people. I wasn't asked about "some people." I was asking about you. Is sex "important?" Sure. Thank you for your response. The clarity helps. Yes, you have the right to articulate this. What do you think of Proposition 5a? Proposition 5a: Non-Latter-day Saints are entitled to articulate their thoughts about the X/Y differentiation that Latter-day Saints articulate. This gets to the heart of our differences in world view. I don't think so. No. I see people as biological "kinds." Male and female. That's it. No third sex. No "neither." No "spectrum." No "sex is a social construct." The failure/refusal to acknowledge empirical reality, and to instead retreat to emotionalisms ("I see them as individuals") is, (I think, a big reason why the trans movement is getting so much resistance. Folks like you want to tell us that a man can "become" a woman by "identifying" as one, and thus move from one "kind" to another. What about "individuals" who "identify" as an age they are not, species they are not, and so on? Because you "see them as individuals," they are somehow able to change their sex or age or species? Well, no. I am acknowledging that one "kind" of human creates eggs, the other sperm. And that two men cannot procreate, nor can two women. I didn't "give them" these "rules." Biology and "empirical reality" did. I also posit that everyone differentiates between X (appropriate/authorized expressions of sexuality) and Y (inappropriate/authorized expressions of sexuality), that a centered-on-marriage ethic is within the bounds of reasonableness, and that the Church's sexual ethic is based on reasoning (and revelation), and not bigotry. I think your sexual ethic (I'm not really sure what it is, since I don't think you have articulated it) would, if presented and evaluated, also be demonstrated "to be harmful." But I think the "harm" would not come from the constraints of your ethic (as the supposed "harm" does from the Law of Chastity's constraints), but rather from licentiousness. Hook-up culture. STI's. Elective abortion. And so on. That said, I take the welfare point seriously. A rule that is true can still be hard, and some people will be more hurt by a hard rule than others. That is not a small thing. It is also not a proof that the rule is false, or that the only honest motive for it is harm. “False religious beliefs.” That is the conclusion you need, used as a premise. If God has not spoken, say that and we argue authority. If the ethic is only “inherited American norms,” say that and we argue history. Calling it "false" in the first sentence does not show that the line I drew is irrational. It shows you have already rejected the premises. “Out group.” The Law of Chastity is not a code written for an out-group. It forbids the same acts for everyone: sex outside a marriage of husband and wife. Same-sex attracted people are not a separate caste with a harsher statute. They face a steeper application of the same statute. Same rule, disparate effects. That is real. It is also how every demanding ethic works. A married man who wants other women is not “in group.” He is under the same constraint. Outcomes. You listed lower sexual health, health, wellbeing, higher depression and anxiety, lower life satisfaction, as if those were measured effects of this teaching on people who keep it. Some religious LGBT people do report more distress. That fact, where it holds, matters pastorally. It does not do the work you want. Correlation is not “your code caused this.” Family rejection, social conflict, the gap between desire and the rule, and minority-stress stories can all sit in the same data. People who keep a strict sexual rule also show, in other slices of the population, fewer STIs, fewer unintended pregnancies, and more stable marriages. You do not get to count only the costs. A constraint can lower one kind of “sexual health” (frequency, partnered sex) and raise another (infection, fragmentation). You are using “sexual health” as “more of the sex I think they should have.” “Deprive people of these benefits.” The “benefits” in view are a sexual relationship the ethic says is not X. That is question-begging. Every sexual ethic deprives someone of a benefit they want. BCA deprives the betrayed spouse. Celibacy outside marriage deprives everyone who wants sex they are not promised. “This rule takes something I think they should have” is a restatement of your line, not an argument that mine is cruelty. And "deprive?" C'mon. A person's association with the Church is bilaterally voluntary. The individual can at any time set aside the Law of Chastity and the Church can't do squat about it (except to mete out restrictions on or removal of membership). Health is not the same as truth. If a teaching is false, say why it is false. If it is true and costly, the honest sentence is that some lives will be harder. Surgery, sobriety, and fidelity all have that shape. “People would feel better if they did not believe this” can be a reason to offer care. It is not, by itself, a reason the belief is wrong. I have already said attraction is not sin, that sloppy guilt and folklore were harmful, and that members who treat people as dirty because of desire are not following the teaching. I will say that again. None of that converts the closed set into BCA, and none of it makes “your code hurts people” a substitute for showing the code is false. Fallacies Question-begging. “False beliefs” assumed; “benefits” defined as the forbidden relationship. Causal leap. Distress among some who live the rule treated as proof the rule caused it and is therefore immoral. One-sided ledger. Costs of the rule counted; costs of the alternative ignored. Equivocation. “Sexual health” as volume of desired sex vs bodily and relational health. Appeal to consequences. Even if the rule is hard, hardness ≠ falsehood. Thanks, -Smac

Great selection…I only had to look up the Riddle Song to remind myself. The last one is the only one I don’t like…not because it’s not quality, it’s a song I want to like but I care too much they aren’t still a couple. The story songs tell can make or break an otherwise beautiful song for me and the best lost love songs fall into the break category quite a bit (also ones that now sound obsessive or inappropriate). Good music taps deep into emotion for me and that level of emotion is reality to my brain. There are some songs I absolutely love that I have to avoid because it’s almost traumatic for me to listen to them. My brain pisses me off at times.

Which is possible, but hardly inevitable. Newton. Galileo. Kepler. Pascal. Pasteur. Mendel. Planck. Then men pursued matters of both science and faith, rationality and intellectual humility (humble enough to acknowledge that we really don't "know" nearly as much as we think we do, and that we actually don't rely on empiricism and the scientific method for almost all things, and that we instead rely on transmission of information, trust, faith, limited observation, etc.). But cognitive biases are not the basis for your underlying beliefs? Oh. Let's go back to that compilation of your past statements: Are these all declarations of what you believe, or what you know? Brigham Young sometimes failed to differentiate between "doctrine" and "stuff about which I have strong feelings and opinions." Is it possible that you similarly fail to differentiation between "empirical reality" (your phrase, I believe) and "stuff about which I have strong feelings and opinions?" Why should I believe you have transcended your cognitive biases and I have not? In the end, isn't pretty much everything you have said about things on which there is reasonable disagreement to be - as you are now putting it - "I was simply telling you what I believe?" Yes, yes. We've been through this, including your various characterizations of Carroll that don't seem to jibe with ... Carroll. Here: And here: "What it implies about the likelihood?" What happened to "the strongest, most robust, most well-tested theory of all of science," that is "as strong as a child of the Hulk and Godzilla," and "proves that spirits and revelation don't exist"? Do you see just a wee bit of difference between (A) a theory that "provisionally" (as Carroll elsewhere put it) "implies" a "likelihood" of the non-existence of spirits versus (B) a theory that, as you assert, is "as strong as a child of the Hulk and Godzilla" and "proves" the non-existence of spirits? I'm getting whiplash reading your posts. From a previous discussion with you: I think we kid ourselves if we think we have a complete and pristinely accurate understanding and command of "science." We regularly come across compilations and lists of things we do not yet know, or fully know, via "science." And another: I see you doing the same sort of thing as Dr. Fauci. You conflate your opinion with "science." You honestly seem to think that what you think is "science." That your way of looking at things pertaining to the existence of God is the only plausible, reasonable, "rational" way of doing so. To disagree with you is to disagree with "science" and "rationality" (and, therefore, to disagree with you is to be stupid, ignorant, dishonest, etc.). Here: Sheesh. Even Carroll doesn't go so far as you do. He proposes that "science has provisionally concluded" some things. "Provisionally," as I hope you understand, means "subject to further confirmation; for the time being." Synonyms for it include "temporarily" and "on certain conditions." See also "subject to confirmation," "as a fill-in," "short-term," "for the present," "for now," and "tentatively." But on this thread you have blown way past "provisionally" and are saying that Caroll's theory is "the strongest, most robust, most well-tested theory of all of science," that it is "as strong as a child of the Hulk and Godzilla," and that it "proves that spirits and revelation don't exist." Don't you see what you are doing here? Here (same link): "Indicates that there can't be 'spirits?'" Indicates? What happened to "proves?" As in "the strongest, most robust, most well-tested theory of all of science," that it is "as strong as a child of the Hulk and Godzilla," and that it "proves that spirits and revelation don't exist"? "At least not?" "Known reality?" "Perceptible to us?" Again, what happened to "proves that spirits and revelation don't exist?" Surely you understand that qualified terms like "at least not" and "known reality" and "perceptible to us" don't play well together with absolutist, conclusory terms like "strong as a child of the Hulk and Godzilla" and "proves that spirits and revelation don't exist"? Here (same link): "I've claimed" being the operative wording here. Carroll posits a theory that "provisionally" "implies" a "likelihood" of the non-existence of Spirit. You then come along and assert that "effective quantum field theory--the most robust theory in all of science, positively demonstrates that such things can't exist." I see vast differences between what Carroll seems to have said and what an over-enthusiastic neophyte who read his book has construed. Here (same link) : Pinker quoting Carroll. And Carroll posits a theory that "provisionally" "implies" a "likelihood" of the non-existence of spirits. And according to you, this means "the laws of physics really do rule out spirits, revelation, and such." Thus sprach Analytics. Here (same link) : Whether Carroll is "wrong" in his theory that "provisionally" "implies" a "likelihood" of the non-existence of spirits? And according to you, isn't the discussion over? There is no debate to be had because "the laws of physics really do rule out spirits, revelation, and such." That's it. The debate is over. Analytics has spoken. To disagree with him is to deny rationality. To disagree is to be stupid, ignorant, dishonest, or some combination thereof. "Science is science," after all. And Analytics is the receptable of "Science" in its purest form. Or . . . not. It might just be that Analytics is vastly overstating what "science" in 2021 can prove or disprove. And then there's what you did to Terryl Givens (same link) : So your characterizations of Terryl Givens were pretty bold: "Givens's latest book ... is subversive ... {and} contains dozens of concessions of anti-Mormon claims that you'd find on a 'big list.'" "Givens thinks the end result is beautiful and expresses it all from a perspective of admiration in erudite language," "if you have the patience and intellect to read what he is actually saying and compare it to what the church teaches in manuals and in conference, then one inescapably comes to the conclusion that Givens is admitting it isn't true--it is a fraud." "A beautiful inspiring fraud for Givens, but a fraud nonetheless." "Listen to the podcast." Your characterizations were also, as it turns out, pretty flagrantly wrong. I responded: Elsewhere I said this: "I just now went back and looked at the email I received from Bro. Givens. Not only did he call your claim about him 'patently false,' he also said this: 'I dont believe any careful reader of the entire book could reasonably conclude such a thing.'" You never disputed my statement above, nor did you ever challenge my quote from Bro. Givens. So your various characterizations of him were, I think, demonstrably falsified, and yet you just shrugged it off. You responded: And "bow out" you did. No retraction. No revision. No acknowledgment of rank and flagrant error on your part. You just withdrew from the discussion and carried on. There is "science." And there are Carroll's findings. And there is rationality and reasoning and the scientific method and "empirical reality," and also fair-minded characterizations of the Latter-day Saints (such as Givens). There is also what you have to say about these things. These two categories do not perfectly overlap. Neither you nor Carroll has defined "God." Has this been "intentional?" Again, your various declarations based on Carroll: "{J}ust isn't plausible" is worlds apart from your various pronouncements. Again: One of the difficulties I have with taking you seriously as a purveyor of "science" is that you are not a reliable narrator. Not about Carroll. Not about Givens. Not about the Latter-day Saints. And all your various inaccuracies, mischaracterizations, misstatements, etc. do not, I think, just happen to always fall in line with your worldview, cognitive biases, etc. Thanks, -Smac

I have repeatedly said what my limiting principles were. I have never said that. Sigh. That depends upon how "God" is defined. The Mormon God--i.e. the father of Adam, the flesh-and-bone humanoid space traveler from a planet near Kolob, just isn't plausible. It contradicts everything we know about quantum mechanics, relativity, earth history, and biology. You can mock me for acknowledging this. But you are the one that asked me to comment on your testimony. What I find objectionable is your obsession with the sex lives of others. But "uniquely objectionable"? No. I never said, implied, or thought that.

I think it is important to some people and isn't important to other people. Sure. Yes, you have the right to articulate this. What do you think of Proposition 5a? Proposition 5a: Non-Latter-day Saints are entitled to articulate their thoughts about the X/Y differentiation that Latter-day Saints articulate. This gets to the heart of our differences in world view. You see people as Platonic "kinds." I see them as individuals. You assign people to classes (i.e. kinds), and then give them different rules based upon what class they are in. The classes aren't about whether they can have kids in the real world. They are about whether they can have kids in Plato's realm of the forms. That is why couples A and B, who are identically situated in every real-world way, are treated differently. This clarifies that for you, it isn't really about real-world children. It's about the dogma associated with your idealized thoughts of how the world should be. Logically, the only reasoning I see here is just begging the question. It is unethical for same-sex couples to have sex because it is unethical for same-sex couples to have sex. That is what it comes down to. In Plato's realm of the forms, sure. In the real world, if they are infertile then they don't belong to a generative kind. That is what it means to be non-fertile. I think George Michael was generally correct when he said: Sex is natural, sex is good Not everybody does it But everybody should This is supported by research. The flagship journal of the World Health Organization published a meta-analysis on the effects that sex has on wellbeing. Quoting its findings: "Of 23,930 unique titles identified, 63 studies met the inclusion criteria. We grouped the results into two categories: (i) sexual and physical health; and (ii) sexual and psychological health. The results consistently showed strong correlations between sexual health, overall health and well-being. Almost all studies found significant associations between positive sexual health indicators and lower depression and anxiety, higher quality of life, and greater life satisfaction among men and women, including older adults, pregnant women, and same-sex and mixed-sex couples. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11601183/ I find your sex code to be harmful because it uses false religious beliefs to deprive people of these benefits. When people in your out group follow your code, they can expect lower sexual health, lower overall health, lower overall wellbeing, higher depression and anxiety, lower quality of life, and lower life satisfaction. Your sex code hurts people. That is why I am against it.

Are we talking about biology or "ordinary speech—body, rearing, identity"? Or perhaps "ordinary, legal, and social sense?"

And you, having "used" your "intellect" to transcend your cognitive biases, have gotten to truths such as A) there should be no limiting principles at all as to who can enter into sex-segregated spaces (like bathrooms), B) a man can "become" a woman by "identifying" as one, C) "science" has "proven" that God does not exist, D) (apparently) the Latter-day Saints' sexual ethic is uniquely objectionable and outside the bounds of reasonableness. A and B sure sound a lot like ideological capture/obligation, not "the truth." C is wishful thinking, and D looks to be rooted in antipathy (apparently everyone except the Latter-day Saints is allowed to formulate sexual ethics, and/or marriage-centered constraints on sexuality are per se unreasonable). I agree. I think the scientific method is useful for some things, and Alma 32/Moroni 10 is useful for other things. Neither operates to the exclusion of the other. The scientific method did not get you to A, B, C and D above. Right. And you have achieved rationality and religionists have not. I think there are secular dogmas and ideological commitments that are in conflict with rationality, and that there are some who nevertheless allow the former to supersede the latter. To wit: Ideological capture and obligation requires you to affirm that man can "become" a woman by "identifying" as one, and that there should be no limiting principles whatsoever as to entry into sex-segregated spaces. Thanks, -Smac