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That phrase is not found in the First Vision, but D&C 1:30 iirc and that is an incomplete quote, which affects the interpretation. LDS do the same thing, so I am only making an observation here, not criticizing. I also agree it is inherently insulting to nonLDS, but that doesn’t mean it dismisses the value of any other church. Now as to what that phrase is meant to mean to LDS about other faiths, I find this useful though it is not authoritative. I will look for that later, got to go. https://rsc.byu.edu/witness-restoration/joseph-smith-only-true-living-church

I know this is what you believe. What I'm looking for is the reason why you believe this. You said "I can articulate a reasoned basis for my position," right? What's the reasoned position? You've explained where you draw the line. But you haven't explained why you draw it there. Well, my previous post laid out several propositions that include a lot of the "why." The above quote explains my reasoning. At some substantial length, in fact. Here are my propositions: Proposition #1: Our Involved Heavenly Father Proposition #2: Sex is Important Proposition #3: Sexual Ethics are Important Proposition #4: Everyone has Sexual Ethics / Parameters / Boundaries Proposition #5: Latter-day Saints are Entitled to Articulate an X/Y Differentiation Proposition #6: The Law of Chastity is a Reasonable Basis for Sexual Ethics Proposition #7: Treating the Law of Chastity as "Bigotry" is Unreasonable I know you disagree with Proposition 1. I respect that, but I don't think you can take that disagreement and say "You haven't presented your reasoning." I think I have done just that. I think you probably agree with Proposition 2, Proposition 3, and Proposition 4. These are not, in my view, necessarily axiomatic, but they are pretty close to it. Sex and sexual ethics are important because it is the means of procreation, because emotions associated with sex are often powerful, because it can be one of the most beneficial and most harmful elements of the human experience, because sex cannot function without limiting principles (such that we must differentiate between appropriate and inappropriate expressions of sex), because of its association with having and raising children, and so on. I think my posts have made these pretty clear, so Proposition 2 and Proposition 3 have the "why." As for Proposition 4 ("Everyone has Sexual Ethics / Parameters / Boundaries"), this seems effectively axiomatic. Apart from the most utterly depraved of us, the vast, overwhelming majority of the human population of this planet lives in accordance with laws, custom, traditions, etc. which differentiate between appropriate and in appropriate sexual behaviors. Rape, sexual abuse, abuse of children. These are, I think, effectively ubiquitously placed in Y and not X. But if you need a few more reasons, here you go: Everyone differentiates X from Y because engaging in sexual behavior without the other person's consent (rape) is fundamentally wrong and inappropriate. Consent is, or should be, an essential component of the sexual act. Historically there have been some cultures and traditions that do not give consent sufficient regard, and some of those continue to exist today. Overwhelmingly, though, societies, groups and individuals now agree to and endorse some set of sexual ethics. Do you agree or disagree with Proposition 2 ("Sex is Important"), Proposition 3 ("Sexual Ethics are Important"), and Proposition 4 Everyone has Sexual Ethics / Parameters / Boundaries")? As for Proposition 5 ("Latter-day Saints are Entitled to Articulate an X/Y Differentiation"), I'm not really sure where you land. For me, the answer is that this proposition is obviously correct. I'm not sure about you. You strongly dislike the Church and regularly speak against it, including its teachings about sexual ethics. Your worldview presupposes, and apparently cannot tolerate divergence from, the idea that God does not exist, that revelation and spirits don't exist, that "science" has proven/disproven these things, that a man can "become" a woman by "identifying" as one, that there should not be any limiting principles as to who can go into sex-segregated spaces, that you are okay with this lack as resulting in the de facto and de jure eradication of sex-segregated spaces, and a few other things that I find difficult to reconcile with your intellect. I think you're quite smart. I don't understand how and why your rhetorical position cannot tolerate divergence from conclusions that are not empirically proven/disproven, and instead treats your conclusory say-so as definitively establishing the Truth of Things. In the end, though, I think most fair-minded and rational people would say "Yes, Latter-day Saints are entitled to articulate an X/Y differentiation, that is, a sexual ethic that differentiates between appropriate and inappropriate sexual behavior." Do you agree or disagree with this postulation ("Latter-day Saints are entitled to articulate an X/Y differentiation, that is, a sexual ethic that differentiates between appropriate and inappropriate sexual behavior")? I suspect you disagree with Proposition 6 and Proposition 7. I would like to listen to what you have to say about these. This is not an accurate characterization of my position. That is not the split. I have not divided infertile couples into “ones who can have kids and ones who can’t.” That sentence is a caricature of the argument. The split is kind of pair, not a fertility test administered couple by couple. A man and a woman are the kind of pair whose sexual union is the generative kind. Some of those pairs cannot conceive this time or ever in this body—no ovaries, menopause, vasectomy, age. That is a fact about an instance. It does not change the kind. The act is still the kind of act that belongs to husband and wife. Two men are not an infertile instance of that kind. They are a different kind of pair. There is no generative type there to be blocked. “Cannot mix their own gametes” is something both pairs can say. Sharing a negative does not make them the same sort. So: some legally married couples who cannot have children may have sex on this ethic, and some may not. That is true. The reason is not “I secretly reclassified the fertile ones.” The reason is that only one of those marriages is a husband and a wife. You can reject that. You cannot turn it into “you said infertile people are fertile.” Assuming you disagree with Proposition 6 ("The Law of Chastity is a Reasonable Basis for Sexual Ethics"), I hope you will elaborate. What is it about Proposition 6 that places the Law of Chastity entirely outside the boundaries of reasonableness? Assuming you disagree with Proposition 7 ("Treating the Law of Chastity as 'Bigotry' is Unreasonable"), I hope you will elaborate. What criteria do you use to determine that a given sexual ethic is "bigoted?" Fallacies Straw man. Treats kind vs. instance as “splitting the infertile into fertile and infertile.” Equivocation. “Cannot have kids” used as if it named one moral class. False equivalence. Infertile man–woman marriage = two men. I have not included platonic anything in my reasoning. And since you continue to misunderstand and/or mischaracterize and/or caricature my actual position, I feel obligated to continue to explain it until we are on the same page. Not so much that you agree with my position, but that you understand what it is. Oscar Pistorius has no legs, but he is still "of the kind" of bipedal (two-legged) hominids known as homo sapiens. The line is not “couples who can have kids vs couples who can’t.” It is “husband and wife vs every other pairing.” You asked for the reason, not another definition. It is not prejudice. Prejudice is animus toward a person. This is a rule about an act and an institution. Same-sex couples are not being picked out from a field of otherwise identical marriages. They are a different kind of pair because they categorically and entirely lack procreative capacity and cannot function as a mother and father, and any children they raise they necessarily and by design deprive the child of either a mother or a father. Yes, there are some opposite-sex couples who lack procreative capacity, but they are nevertheless still of that first kind. If the only permitted explanation is bigotry, you have defined the conclusion before the reasons start. The ethical reason, without a seminar on forms: Sex is not only companionship. In the human species it is the act that joins the two sexes and is capable of generating a child who has a mother and a father. A decent sexual ethic has to say what that act is for, not only who enjoys it. “Consent plus love plus a license” tells you how people feel. It does not tell you what the act is. A man–woman marriage is the institutional form of that act: the pair whose bodies constitute it, bound so that if a child arrives it has that mother and that father, and so that the same bond can exist when a child does not. Infertility is a defect or a limit in that form. It is not a different form. Two men can love each other. They categorically cannot be a procreative pair. A court stamp does not supply a sex. That is why marriage moves Andy and Abigail from Y into X and leaves Bob and Brady perennially in Y. Not because Abigail secretly has ovaries I am pretending she has. Because only the first couple is the kind of union the rule is about. You can call that too narrow. Plenty of people do. Narrow is not the same as irrational/unreasonable, and it is not the same as hate. The competing line—BCA, or BCA plus romance—has some real and significant costs: it has no principled stop once consent and affection are enough, and it treats the generative meaning of the act as optional decoration. I think that is a worse account of what sex is. If the remaining objection is “God does not exist, so none of this binds,” that is a different argument. It is not a proof that the only leftover motive is prejudice. Fallacies Loaded question. Prejudice or reason, with prejudice as the default. Restated straw man. “Kind that really can have kids” after you declined that wording. Motive-mongering. Disagreement about the telos of sex treated as animus. Thanks, -Smac

I have been LDS for 65 years and taught Primary for 25ish and regularly refer to our basic doctrinal manual all the time (below and it’s said this for over 40 years at least) and have talked to many actual LDS about this subject. And you are telling me what LDS believe? I agree we are not consistent in our usage when we speak about it, but if you get into the details, the state of being in hell is not identical to Spirit Prison as are many in Spirit Prison who are not in hell. https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-principles/chapter-41-the-postmortal-spirit-world?lang=eng

My thoughts exactly.

It is becoming more difficult to tell AI videos from the real thing. Leading to both confusing AI with actual people and people with AI. I was shocked after doublechecking about a video because of the content, not the audio quality, that the appropriately emotionally inflected and non generic sounding voice was AI generated. It had depth I did not expect.

I didn’t realize it could be as effective as it is, so I appreciate being triggered to go on an info ramble.

You make a fair point that I really had two points wrapped together. One point was that rationality leads to naturalism. The other point was that cognitive biases are the basis for your underlying beliefs. But stating that those two things are my beliefs aren't logical arguments. I wasn't attempting to prove anything. I was simply telling you what I believe. Here's the thing. Your response to Carroll simply shows you don't understand the strength and scope of his arguments. He isn't merely talking about things as crude as spoon-bending. He's talking about things as subtle as making the slightest nudge to an electron that could even slightly change the probability of a neuron firing. Your efforts to discredit these results are great examples of the motivated reasoning I've been talking about. If you study cognitive neuroscience, you come to exactly the same results, with its independent very high level of confidence, from a totally different basket of evidence. They've done a ton of research on split-brain patients that make the idea of a "ghost in the machine" implausible. Neither of these things disprove the existence of "God", in a broad, intentionally ill-defined kind of way. But the Core Theory and Cognitive Neuroscience do lead to exactly the same result: the idea of some sort of "spirit" that drives our bodies just isn't plausible. It reminds me of the theory of evolution. Darwin recognized that for evolution to be true, the earth had to be really, really (i.e. billions) of years old. But the problem was, nobody thought at the time that there was any way the sun could contain enough energy to burn for that long; they thought it could have energy to burn for a few tens of millions of years old, max. But then we learned about nuclear fusion, and this was suddenly plausible. Then we looked deeply and geology, and it turns out there is overwhelming evidence that the earth is in fact 4.whatever billion years old. Now, you could say that none of this proves that Jesus was wrong when he told Joseph Smith the temporal age of the earth is only 7,000 years (D&C 77:6). Or you could say that "temporal age" means something esoteric or "7,000 years" means something symbolic, or whatever else you want to do in order to salvage D&C 77. But all this would be motivated reasoning. The strength of my position is how so many independent branches of science are so well connected now. They all paint the same picture. They all support each other. And the resulting picture is a universe where the tenets of classic Mormon dogma just aren't plausible. We keep on getting further light and knowledge. And it keeps pointing in the same direction, reinforcing this viewpoint. Let me know if you'd like a list of books to read. Anyway, you specifically laid out "Proposition 1" in a few short paragraphs. You believe in God. You believe in Jesus. You believe in prophets and revelation and so forth. And you specifically asked me to respond to this. Telling you what I believe with the same frankness that you told me what you believe isn't some sort of logical fallacy. It is responding to the question you asked. It's been a long time now, but how many people remember a bygone poster who was hyper-focused on talking and talking and talking about how sinful he thought homosexuality was, and how convinced he was that he could logically prove homosexual sex was morally wrong? If you remember who I'm talking about, you'll also remember that he loved listing logical fallacies. Regardless of what you said, he'd throw a laundry list of logical fallacies back at you. It came across as a mental defense mechanism to avoid engaging with others' opinions. Has anybody heard from Wade Englund lately? How's he doing?

Sugar is pretty much sugar** (unless you are sensitive to certain types of sugar, me and honey don’t get along because of fructose***), but maple syrup has a great taste that makes it more satisfying imo. I use that whenever it makes sense instead of sugar. Also use brown sugar as it adds more depth imo than white. Why not make the sugar contribute more than just sweetness if you can? It’s more important to control the amount of sugar than the type, so use the type you are most likely to use less of imo. A 12 oz can of soda has about the same amount of sugar calories as an 8 oz glass of milk, so if just looking at sugar calories, 8 oz of soda is better. However, you are getting much more additional nutrition with the milk. Make those sugar calories count, either by taste or by accompanying nutrition. This is what processed foods and refined sugars can be ‘not good’…they aren’t as commonly linked with nutritionally dense foods. **all sugars are made up of simple carbohydrates, glucose, sucrose, and fructose. The amount of trace minerals is usually insignificant nutritionally in the amounts you should be eating. Though molasses may be an exception to that, especially if consumed with vit C. I haven’t looked at it that closely as I don’t use it since I stopped making cookies once my kids were older. (Cookies are too easy for me to go overboard on.) https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/are-certain-types-of-sugars-healthier-than-others-2019052916699 ***anyone with stomach or gut issues might want to look at the Low FODMAP diet at Monash University, but it’s best to get an actual diagnosis and work with a dietitian to ensure you are getting all the nutrients you need (eat the rainbow) if you are thinking of doing it for more than a few weeks (it can show results very quickly, I had no bloat that I didn’t even realize I had and no more constant background pain I didn’t realize was digestive practically overnight) as it can be quite restrictive and it’s unfortunate when a misdiagnosis (self or doctor) messes your diet up (speaking as someone who did low salt for 3 years when I didn’t have to).

I think they may have meant the church didn't like that the youth may interact with robots instead of human friends. I think I heard it mentioned as a huge worry for the youth and even adults to possibly be so lonely that they make friends with AI or Robot forms of humans, such as chatgpt.

Thanks so much for sharing that link on cloud seeding. I have heard people mention cloud seeding and had no idea it was actually a thing, just thought it was conspiracy or something to be negative about government, that's how much I don't know. I think whatever we can do to sustain lives, not just humans but all the species on the earth too.

I think it's keto, but now I think about it, I'm wrong on my definition most likely. I just use a variety of ingredients such as almond flour, honey, dates, dark chocolate, natural peanut butter, bananas, vanilla, pure maple syrup (cheating maybe), cottage cheese, cocoa powder or cacao powder etc. in my recipes for something satisfying to replace regular butter, flour, sugar, bad seed oils etc. I think it's better anyway lol. I use these to make such things as brownies/bars, protein balls, some breads, cookies. The results for me are I'm not using sugar and flour, so better than I use to be. Funnily, I was looking through old ward cookbooks that we used to make in our wards with recipes of the ladies or young women in the ward. And the recipes often called for full cups of vegetable oil, flour, butter, and sugar. I think the way I bake now is the better way and not bad really as far as tasting. I like them much better the more I eat this way, I'm one to crave chocolate. But who knows maybe there's chemicals in dark chocolate since I read just yesterday there is in some brands, such as Hershey's and I've bought the Hershey's dark chocolate chips a lot.

I know this is what you believe. What I'm looking for is the reason why you believe this. You said "I can articulate a reasoned basis for my position," right? What's the reasoned position? You've explained where you draw the line. But you haven't explained why you draw it there. According to you, out of the universe of real-world (legally) married couples who cannot have kids, some may ethically have sex and others may not. You do this by splitting couples who cannot have kids into two groups: those that can have kids, and those that can't. Saying some couples who can't have kids "are of the 'kind' that really can have kids" seems awfully self-contradictory to me, but I understand that is the line you draw. The line itself is well-defined; no need to lecture me about your platonic ideals. The question remains: why draw the line there? Is it because of prejudice, or is it because of reason? If it is reason, what is the rational, the ethical reason for drawing it where you draw it?

Sigh. Yes. Everyone is subject to cognitive biases. The difference is whether somebody uses their intelect to rationalize believing what they find themselves believing, or whether they use their intellect to look past their cognitive biases and get to the truth. This is the difference between between Alma 32/Moroni 10 and the scientific method. This is the difference between motivated reasoning and rationality. This is the difference between faith and skepticism.

I'm sorry, but you’re the one using biology as a “reason” to discriminate. You're the one hell bent on saying sex and gender are one and the same and defined soley by gamete size. Jackie in your world view is a biological male and sex sex and gender are the same (I thought) you’d say she was male. To quote you "Biology militates against same-sex behavior. It is a genetic dead end. The plumbing does not work. Sex utterly and categorically lacks any procreative capacity or intent or purpose. Zero. Zilch. This is unlike heterosexual sex, which categorically does have procreative capacity and intent and purpose...." People with CAIS have internal testes and therefore are a genetic dead end. Is that the "reason" for the discrimination against gay people or not? Perhaps it's just a paper thin wrapper on a religious directive after all. And this is so bizarre from you: So there is an ordinary, legal, and social sense about being a woman and mother that transcends biology? Who would have guessed. Glad to have you on the record here. Referring to "identity" Wow.

Here's the thing. Over the last several decades, science has learned a ton about how the mind works, and the evolutionary theories about why it evolved this way. Ergo "science" has established that God does not exist? This would also apply to persons such as yourself, correct? Yes. That is an accurate description of the line. For Andy and Abigail, sex is Y until they are husband and wife; then it is X, including if the purpose that night is to strengthen the bond and even though they cannot conceive. For Bob and Brady, sex remains Y if they marry under civil law, because they are not a husband and a wife. Love, honesty, commitment, and a license are not what move an act from Y to X on this ethic. Why marriage changes one pair and not the other. Marriage here is not a sticker that makes any two adults’ sex licit. It is the covenant that joins a man and a woman. Andy and Abigail are already that kind of pair. The ceremony puts their sexual use of that pair inside the covenant. Bob and Brady are not that kind of pair. A court clerk cannot supply a sex they do not have. The morally relevant difference is not “this couple feels less love” or “this couple has a license and that one does not.” You stipulated those equal. The difference is the kind of union and the kind of act. A man and a woman are the pair whose bodies constitute the generative kind, even when this woman has no ovaries. Two men are not an infertile instance of that kind. They are a different kind. Inability to use their own gametes together is what the two couples share. Sharing a disability of generation does not make them the same sort of couple. That is the same distinction as a farm that cannot harvest this year versus a plot that was never a farm. We have been calling that “plumbing.” Call it dimorphism and kind if the word grates. It is not an afterthought I added when you named Bob. It is why Abigail’s missing ovaries do not turn her marriage into Bob’s. Love and commitment matter. They are not idle. They are not, on this view, what sex is for in the sense that decides X. If your ethic says they are sufficient, you have BCA-plus-romance. That is a different line. It is not a proof that mine is unprincipled and/or unreasoned. “Prima facie case / bigotry.” A stated standard, applied to both opposite-sex fornication and same-sex sex, is a reasoned line even if you think it is wrong. Bigotry is animus toward a people. “These two are not husband and wife” is a claim about an act and an institution. You can reject it. Treating the rejection as already won, then asking why I am still drawing a line, is the old circle. Alma 32, bias, “not worth responding to.” Confirmation bias is real. It is also not a one-way street that only theists walk. “Your reasons are so unpersuasive they are offensive” is a mood, not a rebuttal. Alma 32 is an invitation to test a teaching by living it; you read it as a manual for self-deception. We disagree about spiritual knowledge. That disagreement does not answer Andy and Bob. If faith-based knowing is off the table for you, the kind-of-union argument is still there in ordinary language: man–woman marriage versus two men with a license. Meet that. Do not diagnose my brain instead. Fallacies in their post Poisoning the well. Motivated reasoning / Alma 32 as a reason not to credit the line before the hypo. False equivalence. Infertile opposite-sex couple = two men. Question-begging. Assumes love + commitment + license should suffice, then treats any leftover distinction as prejudice. Motivated-reasoning tu quoque immunity. Bias is attributed only to the religious side. Tone as argument. “Offensive and not worth responding to,” then a request to respond. Thanks, -Smac

I can't go along with this characterization. If I say "California is on the west coast of the continental United States according to SeekingUnderstanding," the implication is that California's location is contingent on your subjective opinion. That does not work, because California's location is not a matter of your opinion. Your statement is an observation about reality, Nor is the sex of Jackie Blankenship a matter of my opinion, but of reality and biology. Biological, sociological, and legal reasons, in addition to religious ones, are - our should be - part of this discussion. That you call "biology" a "paper thin wrapper around a religious edict" is particularly interesting. I have not written about Jackie Blankenship. Please do not put words in my mouth about a person I have not discussed, and do not use that person as a mascot for a conclusion I have not drawn. What I have said is how sex is classified at the most basic level: two reproductive roles, small gametes and large gametes. Disorders of sex development sit inside that binary. They are not a third sex, a spectrum of sexes, or proof that sex is a costume. A developmental pathway can be disrupted. The pathway is still male or female. CAIS is a known example. The karyotype is 46,XY. Internal gonads are testes. The body does not respond to androgens, so the external phenotype develops along female lines. There are no ovaries and no uterus. That is a disorder of male sexual development that produces a female-typical body on the outside. It is not “sex is a spectrum.” It is a medical fact about receptors. If by “male” we mean the developmental system organized toward small gametes, then yes: CAIS is on the male side of the binary, disrupted. If “male,” in reference to a person with CAIS but who has been raised as a woman, means a "man" in ordinary speech—body, rearing, identity—then arguably no. Calling every person with CAIS “a male” as if they were indistinguishable from an ordinary man does not fully address the situation. That is why the Jackie gotcha fails if you keep the layers apart. You can say CAIS is 46,XY DSD / failed masculinization and that the person is a woman in the ordinary, legal, and social sense and that this rare condition does not make sex a spectrum or turn two men into a mother-and-father household. Those sentences do not cancel each other. The daughter. The child was carried by Jackie’s sister. There is a gestational mother in the story. There is also a man who is the husband and father. This is not “two men, no mother, by design.” It is a rare infertility plus a sister who gestated. Using that to claim that on my view the girl is “deprived of a mother” is a smear. I have been talking about households structured so that a child has two fathers or two mothers and no parent of the other sex. A CAIS woman married to a man is not that household. “Paper-thin wrapper around a religious edict.” Gametes, dimorphism, and DSDs-as-disorders are not a temple recommend. You can reject the religion and still have to say whether sex is binary and whether CAIS is a third sex. If your only play is “name a woman with CAIS until SMAC looks heartless,” you are not answering the classification. You are trying to make the classification unsayable. People with DSDs deserve accuracy and decency. They do not owe anyone a veto on the two-sex design, and they do not convert a same-sex couple into a mother-and-father home. Fallacies: Straw man. Attributes to you a specific verdict about Jackie you never gave. Anecdote as wrecking ball. One DSD is treated as if it refuted the binary and the marriage argument. Equivocation. Developmental/gametic sex, legal/social “woman,” and “mother” as caregiver are collapsed. False equivalence. CAIS woman + husband + sister-surrogate = two men raising a child. Poisoning the well. “Paper-thin wrapper” skips the biological claim and goes to motive. Thanks, -Smac

A statement of cause is not, by itself, a fallacy. “Many people first hear Moses 1:39 in a family or a ward” can be true. “Some religious teaching is manipulative” can be true. That is not what you used the sentence to do. You used origin as a verdict. The run was: everything in Proposition 1 is false --> reason does not lead there --> sociology and psychological manipulation do. The third clause is doing the work of the first. That is the genetic move: how the belief was produced is treated as showing that the belief is false or beneath reason. Naming a cause is not a fallacy. Substituting the cause for a rebuttal is. The math analogy assumes what is in dispute, so class question-begging there. We have an independent, shared method that makes “2 + 2 = 5” fail. We do not have a shared algorithm that makes “God sent prophets” fail the way an arithmetic error fails. Calling theism “2 + 2 = 5” is not a demonstration. It is the conclusion again, with a chalkboard costume. If you already know God is false, of course “reason” will not “lead” there—by your definition of reason. That is question-begging, not a proof that I committed no fallacy. A while back I compiled a list of what you above call "assertions of fact" and which I think are question-begging of the highest order: Your posts indicate that you place the foregoing statements entirely outside the realm of reasonable dispute. For you, they are as axiomatic as 2+2=4. Even on your own terms the sociology point is weak. Almost every true belief most people hold—germs, continents, the date of the Battle of Gettysburg—arrived by testimony, schooling, and trust, not by a private derivation from first principles. Social transmission does not mark a belief as false. Manipulation can produce false beliefs and true ones. So “this came through a church” is not “this is 2 + 2 = 5.” If you want to argue that theism is false, argue that. Give reasons that engage the content: whether God exists, whether He speaks, whether these men are prophets. “People got there by belonging to a group” is a fact about pathways. It is not an account of reality, and it is not the same kind of sentence as a failed sum. Fallacies (theirs, this round) Question-begging. “Reason” is defined so that it cannot reach God; then “reason doesn’t lead there” is announced as a fact. False analogy. Arithmetic, which we share, is treated as the model for a metaphysical dispute we do not share. Genetic fallacy still in play if origin is offered as the ground for calling the beliefs false. Category error. A causal story about believers is treated as a proof about God. Would you accept the reverse?: “Atheism is what certain faculties and friend groups produce, therefore God exists.” I'm genuinely curious. That has nothing to do with what I said. My actual point is that correctly applying the tools of rationality leads to a naturalistic worldview. Sure, one can happen to have a naturalistic worldview because they were indoctrinated with those beliefs. But if somebody believes in something other than naturalism, it wasn't rationality that lead them there. It has quite a lot to do with what you first said. You began with origin: these beliefs come from sociology and manipulation, and not reason. I asked whether you would accept the mirror (“atheism comes from faculties and friends, therefore God exists”). You would not, because origin does not settle truth. Good. That was the point. You are now saying something else: correctly applied rationality yields naturalism; any other destination means rationality was not applied. That is not a fact about tools. That is a definition. You have built the conclusion into “correctly.” Naturalism is a metaphysical thesis: the natural world is all there is, or all we should treat as real. It is not a theorem of logic, and it is not what a lab notebook is forced to write. Science often proceeds as if only natural causes are in play. That is a method. It does not prove there is no God, no revelation, and no prophets. Treating the method as a completed worldview is a slide, not a derivation. Plenty of people use evidence, inference, consistency, and argument and do not land where you land. Indeed, some of the most rational and scientifically-minded people in history have also believed that God exists. Newton. Galileo. Kepler. Pascal. Pasteur. Mendel. Planck. You can say they used the tools badly. You then owe an account of the mistake in the content—the arguments for God, for revelation, for these particular prophets—not a rule that whoever disagrees has left rationality by definition. Otherwise “rationality” just means “people who agree with me about the furniture of the world.” So: if your point is only “I think reason, properly used, supports naturalism,” say that. That is a disputable claim. It is not an umpire’s call. It does not make Proposition 1 a 2 + 2 = 5 error, and it does not make the origin story you started with into a demonstration. Fallacies Question-begging / persuasive definition. “Correct rationality” is stipulated to output naturalism. Moving the goalposts. Origin story → “true reason leads only here.” Equivocation. Methodological naturalism in science is treated as metaphysical naturalism. No-true-Scotsman. Anyone who reasons to God “wasn’t really applying rationality.” I'm sorry if I was unclear. Let me be more blunt: God (especially as conceived by your religion) does not exist. This non-existing being isn't involved in our daily lives: he is NOT watching us have sex and tallying up sin points if we happen to do or feel something on the wrong side of the X|Y good-sex/bad-sex line. He hasn't sent messengers "to teach and correct." Those premises are all wrong. "God {} does not exist." This, for you, is beyond dispute, like 2+2=4. I am surprised that you genuinely seem to think this, but okay. Nevertheless, thank you for posting it, as that is the premise fight I asked for. We can stop pretending this is only about penguins, plumbing, and birth rates. What you have given me is a denial, not an argument. “God does not exist; He is not involved; He has not sent messengers; those premises are all wrong” is the conclusion of your worldview. I heard it. I do not grant it. A series of “nots” is not a demonstration that Moses 1:39 is false, that the Father is a clockmaker, or that living prophets are a fiction. If you have reasons—problem of evil, divine hiddenness, critical history of the Restoration, the claim that naturalism is simpler—state those. “Let me be more blunt” is tone. It is not evidence. Two corrections on the caricature. I did not describe a voyeur with a clipboard “tallying sin points” while people have sex. That is your parody of judgment. The claim is that God made us, that the body and sex have purposes, and that some uses of them are against those purposes. You can call that false. You cannot refute it by replacing it with a peeping-scorekeeper and announcing that the scorekeeper is imaginary. “Especially as conceived by your religion” is doing all sorts extra work. You may think any God is unreal. You may think only this Church’s God is unreal. Those are different claims. The first is general atheism. The second is “Joseph was not a prophet.” I don't think you can fold them into one shrug. Where that leaves the rest of the thread: if your only point is “there is no God, therefore there is no Law of Chastity from God,” we agree on the conditional and disagree on the antecedent. I will not pretend I can prove the Father to you in a forum comment. I also will not treat your bluntness as if it canceled the non-theological pieces—kind of union, generation, mother and father, BCA as a thin ethic, “bigot” as a silencer. Those still have to be met even by someone who thinks the heavens are empty. If you want to argue authority, argue it. If you want to argue sex without God, say so and stay on that plane. What does not work is declaring the premises dead and then calling every remaining distinction an ad hoc prejudice. On your own account they would just be a philosophical ethic you reject. Reject them as that. Do not baptize the rejection as a discovery about reality until you have done the work. Fallacies Bare assertion. Denial is presented as if it were a finding. Straw man. Involved God → celestial hall monitor of the bedroom. Equivocation. “Your religion’s God” and “any God” are not kept apart. Talking past. Blunt metaphysics is used to skip the arguments that were not only theological. I haven't assumed it. I've asserted it. Asserted without reasons is assumed. You need to explain why they are false, or the sentence does no work. Let me clarify my point. Miracle of Forgiveness was written by a senior apostle, 4 years before becoming prophet. It was incredibly influential in the Church, and widely cited as an authoritative guide on sexual sin. And, we now know that a lot of what it says is false and harmful, and that the church has backed away from many of its teachings. I think we agree on that. With 20/20 hindsight, we now know that we shouldn't feel guilty for having sexual feelings. We now know that masturbation doesn't cause homosexuality. We now know that being sexually attracted to people of the same sex isn't a sin. We now know that homosexuals can't repent and become straight. And we now know that the immense guilt trip that Mormon kids were put through from 1969 until [early 2010's?] was wrong and unhealthy. In short, we now know that in the days of Spencer W. Kimball, Ezra Taft Benson, etc., the prophets and apostles were not a reliable source for understanding what was and was not sinful in the bedroom. But now, you are 100% confident that unlike all the prophets from Abraham through Eztra Taft Benson, the role of prophets and apostles is now fundamentally different: their current views on sex can now finally be relied on as the eternal truth about what is and is not a sexual sin. Hallelujah. To be clear, I'm glad you reject all of these past teachings I'm alluding to, including the crap in the Bible, the crap in D&C 132, and the crap taught by 20th century prophets and apostles. You aren't obligated to believe any of that and to the extent you don't, I'm glad. My point is that this track record proves that Elder Runland was wrong when he said "the law of chastity is an eternal law." From the beginning of time through the late 20th century, the people you regard as prophets and apostles believed what their cultures (and in some cases their imaginations and libidos) taught them to believe and adjusted "the law of chastity" accordingly. Your motte is that until very recently "marriage" has always been defined as a relationship between a man and a woman. Your bailey is the idea that "the law of chastity" is an eternal, unchanging law that is clearly, reliably, and consistently taught to us by God's official representatives on earth. A statement of cause is not, by itself, a fallacy. “Many people first hear Moses 1:39 in a family or a ward” can be true. “Some religious teaching is manipulative” can be true. That is not what you used the sentence to do. You used origin as a verdict. The run was: everything in Proposition 1 is false --> reason does not lead there --> sociology and psychological manipulation do. The third clause is doing the work of the first. That is the genetic move: how the belief was produced is treated as showing that the belief is false or beneath reason. Naming a cause is not a fallacy. Substituting the cause for a rebuttal is. The math analogy assumes what is in dispute, so class question-begging there. We have an independent, shared method that makes “2 + 2 = 5” fail. We do not have a shared algorithm that makes “God sent prophets” fail the way an arithmetic error fails. Calling theism “2 + 2 = 5” is not a demonstration. It is the conclusion again, with a chalkboard costume. If you already know God is false, of course “reason” will not “lead” there—by your definition of reason. That is question-begging, not a proof that I committed no fallacy. A while back I compiled a list of what you above call "assertions of fact" and which I think are question-begging of the highest order: Some of the history you recite is real. Miracle of Forgiveness was written by a senior apostle, it was treated as weighty, and parts of it—tone, the suggestion that same-sex desire is a simple vice to be quit like smoking, folklore that masturbation manufactures orientation—have been walked back. Attraction is not construed as "sin" in current teaching. That correction is a good thing. I will not pretend 1969–2010 youth culture was harmless everywhere it used that book as a club. That is not the concession you think it is. I did not dump the Bible, D&C 132, or “all prophets through Benson.” You keep assigning me a purge I have not made. I have said: monogamy is the standing law; some plurality was commanded and later withdrawn; Torah adultery is a different legal category than the modern Handbook; living prophets apply and correct. That is dispensation, not “the old stuff is crap and I am glad you agree.” Please do not impute onto me your reading of my own canon. “We now know” is doing too much work. We now teach more carefully that feelings are not the same as acts. We now reject a scoutmaster’s theory of homosexuality. We do not “now know” that there is no Law of Chastity, or that a same-sex sexual relationship is X, or that prophets were only culture-plus-libido until last Tuesday. Those are your unsubstantiated and unexplained inferences. The Church still teaches that sexual relations belong in marriage between a man and a woman. That line did not vanish when the gum metaphor did. Track record ≠ “they were never reliable about the bedroom.” A bad object lesson and a withdrawn practice do not add up to “Abraham through Benson were useless on sexual sin.” It adds up to: prophets are not inerrant in every analogy, and the Lord has changed applications (diet, war, gathering, plurality) while repeating a through-line: sex is not a free-for-all, and the union in view is a man and a woman. You treat every change of emphasis as proof there is no through-line. That only works if “eternal law” means “identical youth-lesson wording in every century.” That is not what eternal law has to mean, and it is not how we treat Sabbath, sacrifice, or priesthood administration. Motte and bailey. You have the labels backwards if you are describing me. The claim I have been defending is the one you call the motte: marriage as man and woman, sexual relations inside that covenant, a closed set rather than BCA. The bailey would be “every sentence in Kimball, every verse in 132, every patriarchal household in Genesis is the present Handbook.” I have not been living in that bailey. I have been refusing to let you use the bailey you invented for me as a wrecking ball on the motte. Elder Renlund can call the Law of Chastity eternal and still be talking about that core, not about a 1970s theory of masturbation. If his sentence meant “no prophet ever misspoke about sex,” I would not sign that. If it means the Lord has not handed the Church a new definition of marriage as two men, that is the teaching now, and it is the teaching I have been pointing to. Hallelujah. I am not claiming that, unlike every prior age, this decade’s apostles finally got a clean download after millennia of fog. I am claiming what I claimed at the start: living prophets are how the Lord teaches, corrects, and applies commandments in a dispensation. Past error and past harshness are reasons to listen carefully. They are not a proof that the present line is only culture, or that “eternal” was a lie. If you want to argue the Restoration’s prophets fail a test you have specified, specify the test and apply it to Joseph, to 132, to OD-1, to the Proclamation, to current Handbook language—one at a time. A pile labeled “crap,” plus a book I already declined to treat as the standard, is not that test. Fallacies Straw man. You as rejecter of Bible, 132, and twentieth-century prophets. Composition. Some false or harsh sexual teaching → prophets as a class unreliable on sex. Equivocation on “eternal.” Unchanging youth rhetoric vs. standing law with changing administration. Motte-and-bailey (projected). Accuses you of a maximal inerrancy you have not claimed. Presentism. Every prior culture’s packaging is treated as proof there was never a through-line. Poisoning the well. “Crap” as a substitute for reading the texts as you have actually read them. Thanks, -Smac

🙂 Never thought of it that way.

No, that isn't a fallacy. It's an assertion of a fact. It's just like saying, "correctly applying the principles of mathematics doesn't lead to believing 2 + 2 = 5." You can argue that I'm wrong and correctly applying the principles of mathematics does lead to the belief that 2 + 2 = 5. But in either case, it isn't a fallacy. That has nothing to do with what I said. My actual point is that correctly applying the tools of rationality leads to a naturalistic worldview. Sure, one can happen to have a naturalistic worldview because they were indoctrinated with those beliefs. But if somebody believes in something other than naturalism, it wasn't rationality that lead them there. I'm sorry if I was unclear. Let me be more blunt: God (especially as conceived by your religion) does not exist. This non-existing being isn't involved in our daily lives: he is NOT watching us have sex and tallying up sin points if we happen to do or feel something on the wrong side of the X|Y good-sex/bad-sex line. He hasn't sent messengers "to teach and correct." Those premises are all wrong. I haven't assumed it. I've asserted it. Let me clarify my point. Miracle of Forgiveness was written by a senior apostle, 4 years before becoming prophet. It was incredibly influential in the Church, and widely cited as an authoritative guide on sexual sin. And, we now know that a lot of what it says is false and harmful, and that the church has backed away from many of its teachings. I think we agree on that. With 20/20 hindsight, we now know that we shouldn't feel guilty for having sexual feelings. We now know that masturbation doesn't cause homosexuality. We now know that being sexually attracted to people of the same sex isn't a sin. We now know that homosexuals can't repent and become straight. And we now know that the immense guilt trip that Mormon kids were put through from 1969 until [early 2010's?] was wrong and unhealthy. In short, we now know that in the days of Spencer W. Kimball, Ezra Taft Benson, etc., the prophets and apostles were not a reliable source for understanding what was and was not sinful in the bedroom. But now, you are 100% confident that unlike all the prophets from Abraham through Eztra Taft Benson, the role of prophets and apostles is now fundamentally different: their current views on sex can now finally be relied on as the eternal truth about what is and is not a sexual sin. Hallelujah. To be clear, I'm glad you reject all of these past teachings I'm alluding to, including the crap in the Bible, the crap in D&C 132, and the crap taught by 20th century prophets and apostles. You aren't obligated to believe any of that and to the extent you don't, I'm glad. My point is that this track record proves that Elder Runland was wrong when he said "the law of chastity is an eternal law." From the beginning of time through the late 20th century, the people you regard as prophets and apostles believed what their cultures (and in some cases their imaginations and libidos) taught them to believe and adjusted "the law of chastity" accordingly. Your motte is that until very recently "marriage" has always been defined as a relationship between a man and a woman. Your bailey is the idea that "the law of chastity" is an eternal, unchanging law that is clearly, reliably, and consistently taught to us by God's official representatives on earth.

There’s lots of things that don’t match the ideal though that the church does not label as needing to be discouraged. Adoption doesn’t match the ideal for example. I am uncomfortable with this gray area that this policy creates. Where it is implied to be bad, but not bad enough to tell people not to do it. it seems like it would be better to tell people to proceed with caution and to make sure that they take the decision to the Lord, or something like that.

There is a doc on I think Netflix about the robot apocalypse- not that I’m a prepper at all but I got 20 minutes in and turned it off because I don’t need to add to my pile of anxieties lol- But I am aware that AI is growing beyond our understanding. And I do believe it will create challenges we cannot see, and very soon. as a therapist, I am concerned by what I am seeing with regards to AI replacing human connection. For example, yesterday I watched a clip of a girl who was playing with chat, telling chat she had just been swallowed by a whale. I use chat but she was using voice chat. I was shocked by how emotional chat sounded in his responses to her. He sounded very, very real. There was nothing robot-ish about his voice, inflections, etc. A lot of the comments in the comment section were m also alarmed by how human Chat sounded. A few days ago, I had a severely depressed Client reach out to me and ask if it would be OK for him to stop interacting with humans and just use chat to talk “to people”. And let’s not even talk about sex. unless of course Smac wants to lol 🤣😬🤘🏼 Hey and yes you can pry my robot vacuum mop out of my cold dead hands. If the church came out and said DO NOT USE ROBOTS to get ahead of sexy maid roommates (they are coming) I’d have a hard time giving up Jerry, my favorite disk cleaner.

Unlless Hi Mustard Seed, Are you thinking of robots as animals like us, having immortal souls, free will, made in the image of God? Unless they are or will be, they could not have any legal rights. They could not vote or organize robot unions. Such robots could morally be bought, sold, or disposed of by its owner without consultation with the robot. We could be under no moral obligation to love our "neighbor robots" as we love ourselves. Ontologically, they would be inferior to a daisy which can reproduce itself and has a mortal soul. So far, it seems to me like mankind is far away from making anything in man's image, which of course is the image and likeness of God. I speak above with Catholic metaphysics in mind. It might not work for LDS, for whom the image and likeness might conceivably end with material physicality. I am only predicting what I am fairly certain my church would say about the question you raise.

The founding claim of the first in vision is the ONLY living and TRUE church. That's an exclusive claim. If Mormonism is the only true and living church, then every other church is, by definition, not living.

LDS would not typically say hell is a subsection of Spirit Prison. Spirit Prison is hell. One of two hells. It's an actual place and a state of mind while in hell.

I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords! ROFL! I don't think there's much reason for the church to get into it, actually. What aspect of relationships with robots is worrying you?