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Because we aren’t at war with a fascist state. Because fascism is a shallow ideology based on racial superiority and a tough guy aesthetic. Punching a fascist exposes the weakness of the fascist and opens them to ridicule from their own side. The poem is sadly pretty amateurish. The meter is off and the prose is very forced. Hopefully she is still in freshman level classes and can improve over time. At first I did not but then he did the “I will pray for you” bit and I decided he had it coming. Anyone who is that pathetically passive aggressive shouldn’t get upset over what other people say. Good response there bro! The guy is a fascist “debate me” type trying to take over for Kirk who was cut from the same cloth. He isn’t even as good at it as Kirk and that is a pretty low bar. He needs to be punched in the face. I didn’t say it was your stated position.

Incognitus, hey...good to see you. I am very much with you on wanting clarification on historical questions. Who killed Pres. Kennedy is one for my generation. It and everything else big and little will be disclosed. How? God knows. There will be a mechanism. Time is no problem. Study? My gut feeling is that it will be instantaneous to all. All the thoughts of all hearts will be revealed. Infused knowledge? The irrational animals have instincts that are remarkable even in this life. Does a spider go to school to "learn" to spin a web? But I have no doctrinal reason that I know of for denying that all humans, the just and the unjust, will need lecturing to be convinced that God is, has been, and always will, be good. But I tend not to envision courses of study. Study is a labor that allows failure or degrees of success. I think a big part of all this will be God's effective defense of the "problem of evil". Will those who disbelieve or disobey be required to study before they can see that God has been just and loving and merciful in all of his dealings with everybody and everything? I think everyone, just and unjust, will have an instantaneous vision of God's goodness, without taking classes. But we agree I think, that Heaven as well as "the Hot Place" would be amiss, if your last point, "most importantly", fails to show all to know the goodness of "lov[ing] the way God loves and recogniz[ing] the potential in everyone in the family of God and all of God's creations." I am biased in your favor, heh, but I think you are more Catholic than you might guess, InCog! God love you. Anyway, maybe I am more LDS than I know! I would be glad if both were so, along with those we go to church with. I hope we are much more on the same page than we have imagined.

That quote doesn’t help. He literally lied about his age to make it seem less bad and was embarrassed by the age gap and you still want to say that this kind of age gap and marrying someone that young doesn’t include social scorn?

The explanation that caught my attention is it started in 2022, a letter was going around concerning the Church's tax-exempt status. I have not been able to locate the letter. I would be careful about interpreting your bishop's announcement as meaning that the Church no longer wants members organizing Christmas charitable activities. So, I'd also ask whether members can still organize an independent giving tree.

1 - Yes, counsel always steps in. Didn't stop the initial action from happening though, obviously. 2 - An attorney withheld evidence then played gotcha games with me about it (the Judge slapped his wrist but didn't sanction him). Since I'd never seen it before, I'd say that was rather unethical. That same attorney then filed a motion in limine with fabrications regarding both my analysis and my testimony. What's worse, I had worked with that attorney a number of times prior to finding ourselves on opposite sides on this case and previously considered him a friend. This is but one example. 3 - No, I've never been deposed and then asked not to testify at trial. Nor has my testimony ever been excluded. I have prevailed in all motions in limine brought against me.

For the last several years, my ward has had a giving tree at Christmas. This morning, our bishop announced that that was no longer allowed. Is it the same in other wards? Anyone have a guess why such things wouldn't be allowed?

LMAO!!!!! Of course shooting fascists is wrong in this context. The morally correct thing to do would have been to just punch him in his stupid face. I have hoped that your ideological enthusiasm for violence against people whose views differ from yours has some constraints, such that while you strongly and enthusiastically endorse physical violence against people you deem fascists, you do not endorse actually killing them. That would be something. But then you included the caveat: "Of course shooting fascists is wrong in this context." This seems to be at odds with your comments about WWII and how killing "fascists" then was good and appropriate and necessary. If you really think that, and given that you so regularly accuse others of being fascists, why do you not endorse killing them now? Why is battery an appropriate response to speech you deem fascistic, but killing is not? In what "context" is killing someone you deem a fascist "{t}he morally correct thing to do"? I am also curious about your perspective on this story: Do you endorse what this woman said to Mr. Collins? I still don’t believe for a second that you want to take him seriously but just wish he was kinder to the Christian Nationalist traitors so you could do so. This is not my position. Thanks, -Smac

Things I'd like to see in the life to come… A functioning Wayback Machine, or some mechanism of observing various periods of the history of the earth, that would allow us to view, hear, and fully understand the way events actually happened. I think this would require some kind of bullet point summary view of the past, and a method of drilling down deeper into the details if desired, because it would be extremely tedious to see every minute and second of past events. If this would be done through some form of multi-media experience (instead of being a fly on the wall observer of the events as they happened), it should be 3-D, surround sound in iMax format or better. A way of assimilating information about the way things work and the complex reality of created worlds and how they function. (I suspect this would involve several courses of study over several millennia of semesters, but I'm all in! ) Most importantly, all of us seeing others in the way that God sees them, not in the sense that we know all of their thoughts and intentions, but that we love the way God loves and recognize the potential in everyone in the family of God and all of God's creations.

It is an image because I posted it on another forum whose editor I know how to use. I am still learning how to use this forum's editor. (It would have taken me longer to post.)

Neat. But why is this an image?

Nope, both investigations had to occur because of the marriage. The first one was because it was a Catholic wedding and they had to make sure they were acceptable to be married. The second was because he wasn't Mexican. The book specifically points out that those investigations weren't triggered by age. The book brings them up to show how the investigations (which were normal and were going to be done no matter what) didn't care about her age. Here's the quote from the book (starts on page 39): Edited to add the quote from the book

So do you need a masters or a phd in theology before you can say whether a prophecy has failed? It is absurd to suggest that checking whether a prophecy happened requires some advanced theological training. The Old Testament criteria for a false prophet means Jesus was a failed or false prophet. This isn’t high level stuff here. Condescending and pathetic rhetotic. I don’t believe that white supremacist rhetoric is something upon which reasonable minds can disagree. LMAO!!!!! Of course shooting fascists is wrong in this context. The morally correct thing to do would have been to just punch him in his stupid face. Bull. You do have expectations of him as a Latter-Day Saint and have opined multiple times as to how what he is doing is wrong. I still don’t believe for a second that you want to take him seriously but just wish he was kinder to the Christian Nationalist traitors so you could do so. Nope, because while that might be what people say about their dogmas they change all the time and are reformed all the time. Some of those are accurate, some are not. It is the internet, what can you do? LOL. No, just no. Try to critique a doctrine of the Restoration in a Church setting and see how it goes. Actually there were a lot of them. Have they though? Nope, it changed the doctrine quite a bit. Many apostles and prophets shared the reasons same sex behavior existed and were just outright wrong. Mostly because they copied their rhetoric from other Christian religions. That was a change. Nope, the Law of Chastity has changed a lot. Even within just our dispensation. If you go through all the dispensations it is virtually unrecognizable in the Old Testament. The Law of Chastity is woefully incomplete as well and doesn’t really have any kind of coherent ethic behind it. As it is usually recited marital rape is not against the law of chastity. Many will say it is a violation but is it? If it is when did that change?

Would those investigations have taken place if one of them wasn’t so young? Doubt it. Seriously, the reason they did all this stuff is that the girl was abnormally young. Saying they “didn’t care” is silly.

No I don't believe God would command a man to marry a 14 year old. In today's world? No because 14 year olds shouldn't be married ever. But I also don't believe God would command a man to marry a 14 year old. This question doesn't make sense to me. Women have been married at younger ages for millennials. I don't think God was bothered by all of those marriages just because of the age. Agreed. We have, as a society, made it so that marrying a 14 year old shouldn't happen because of those reasons. I find it good that we condemn people now a days that marry that young. A 14 year old should be able to grow up. My best guess? This was a sealing of connection. He practiced a few types of sealings. Some were levirate (his brother's sister and a few other women who were widows), some were sexual, and some where sealing him to other families. An example of the later is the sealing between Brigham's sister and Joseph. She was 56 at the time. I feel like Helen was like that as well as a betrothal. Once she was older, it would have been a sexual marriage. As for why didn't Joseph just wait? I don't know. I don't have problems with people being disgusted by Joseph marrying a 14 year old. That's not where I'm pushing back on. If Joseph was alive today and married a 14 year old, I would condemn him. What I'm pushing back on is two things. The first is that he is similar to Warren Jeffs. I don't find the similarity because Warren grew up in an environment where marrying a 14 year old is condemned and wrong. Joseph's environment wasn't like that. The second is that what Joseph did was wrong in his own environment. It wasn't. It was rare and sometimes ridiculed (mostly because it was considered silly for a man to do that). But it wasn't condemned. I doubt I can. I have issues with him marrying a 14 year old. I wish he hadn't. But I don't think the marriage was sexual by the time he died (based on all of the known evidence, especially the Temple Lot case) so it feels more like a betrothal to me. I'm not trying to convince what Joseph did was right. Only that what he did wasn't wrong for his time and that he can't be compared to Warren.

I’m not sure where you got this idea from my post. I was sharing my experience, not speaking about, or defending the legal profession. Your experience has clearly been different than mine which is why I was interested in hearing more about the context around your experience. As you probably know, as a proposed expert witness, you are represented by counsel of the party who has proffered you as an expert. Did your counsel ever step in when you believed you were being attacked unfairly? Can you share an example of unethical treatment? Have you ever been deposed in a case that went to trial and weren’t asked to testify at that trial?

For the marriage in California, I pointed that the investigations because they didn't care about her age. I should have been clearer. The Catholic investigation was over consanguinity, whether there were existing betrothals, etc. It didn't care about her age or his age. The Mexican investigation was because he was not a Mexican and so they had to make sure he was legally allowed to marry her. Again, they didn't care about her age or his age. The age was not the reason for the investigations. And the investigations didn't bring up the age. He asked for special permissions because of the ridicule, not because of the age disparity. I agree it wasn't the norm. I'm not saying it was the norm. I also agree it wasn't expected. I'm just saying it wasn't condemned or considered wrong or evil.

Just some follow up questions I am interested in as you defend Joseph marrying a 14 year old girl. Do you think that God told Joseph to marry a 14 year old? Is God ok with men marrying 14 year olds if the person claims to have been told by God to do so? Is God still ok with that? Are you ok with someone claiming to be a prophet like some of these splinter group "prophets" marrying 14 year olds if they say God told them to? Basically I am asking if whether it is in the 1800 or today, is God that kind of God that doesn't see any issue marrying 14 year old girls no matter when it occurs? The second question: What does that do to the life of a 14 year old who has never really dated, never got any opportunity to explore life and decide that she doesn't ever want to date men her own age. Marriage at 14 means that basically she has put herself in a position to spend the rest of her life until her husband dies living as a wife decades older than her. Making such a decision at 14, do you think that is fair for her? And lastly, why did Joseph Smith even have to marry a 14 year old girl? What was his motivation? I get that you might not know what Joseph's reasoning for this was, but what is your best guess? I think there are real reasons why most people believe that 14 is way too young to make such a decision, especially with someone who has authority over them in other ways to sway that decision. Really interested in your thoughts on this. Maybe you can convince me that Joseph marrying someone at 14 is no big deal simply because it happened during a different time.

Your posts frequently lack substance, and are conclusory. Dan didn't say any of that. He said: "Just because I had never called Jesus a failed prophet doesn't mean I'm not perfectly happy to say the Jesus of the Gospels is a false prophet, which I am perfectly happy to say." I don't think you can have it both ways. I don't think you can rationally A) hold up Dan as a scholar and paragon of data > dogma and the impartial purveyor of scholarly methodological naturalism, and also B) defend Dan calling Jesus a “false prophet,” which adds a normative judgment, which presupposes a standard of true prophecy (accurate divine foreknowledge, divine authorization, etc.) and then applies that standard. Those criteria are theological or confessional, not generated by the historical method itself. In the end, though, I think you and I agree. I think Dan probably does mean something along the lines of what you say. You're just okay with it, as you are with anything Dan has to say. I am glad Dan lives in a time and place where he can say such things, but when he steps in and out of "scholarship" when it suits him, when he follows and then disregards scholarly methodologies when addressing the same topic, when he constantly declares he's all about "data > dogma" and then makes dogmatic statements himself, when he conflates his personal opinions and "the data," when he speaks in conclusory and unsubstantiated ways about matters that merit explanation and substance, when he steps away from thoughtfully distilling and presenting the nuances and complexities of biblical scholarship to a lay audience, when he says things to stir the pot and provoke and generate social media clicks, when he dunks on amateurs, when he measures in personal invective and taunts into his "I'm a scholar of the Bible and religion" pronouncements, I think he materially diminishes his stature as a scholar, and in do doing makes it harder to take him as a serious and reliable source of information. Again, I still frequently watch Dan's content for his scholarly assessments. I just wish he didn't make it unnecessarily difficult. Yesterday I saw this image and thought of the endless "Fascist! / Bigot!" schtick and its paired justification of violence against people who have done nothing more than disagree ideologically on matters about which reasonable minds can disagree: What are your thoughts about these images? No you don’t. I regularly watch his content to glean his scholarly assessments, including his critiques of "bad scholarship." You want him to shut up about a lot of things that you find damaging to many church dogmas but are also worried about his credibility? No. I have said nothing about wanting him to shut up. I would hope to take him seriously as a scholar. He is doing things that make that difficult. To the contrary, I think he is a good scholar. My critique is about the things he is doing on social media which diminish and detract from his scholarly stature. I would like to see him refrain from doing things that diminish him as a scholar. I have no expectations from him in his capacity as a fellow Latter-day Saint. And you don’t know what dogma is either. How shocking. Dogma is not something immutable or unchangeable. Me: "'Dogma,' in the sense of an immutable set of authoritative statements that cannot be revised or supplemented by further revelation." Wikipedia: "Dogma, in its broadest sense, is any belief held definitively and without the possibility of reform." Dictionary.com: "prescribed doctrine proclaimed as unquestionably true by a particular group." Cambridge Dictionary: "a fixed, especially religious, belief or set of beliefs that people are expected to accept without any doubts." Oxford English Dictionary: "a belief or set of beliefs held by a group or organization that others are expected to accept without argument." I think I have a bead on it. The Church encourages its members to think about and study and pray and seek revelation about the doctrines of the Restoration. We are not expected to accept them without thought or effort or critique. I think the Church has set aside some (quite few) beliefs which arose due to error or supposition or tradition (rather than revelation), or which have been set aside based on new light and knowledge. I am grateful that the Church maintaining its doctrines while improving its understanding and promulgation of them. And yet the Church still prohibits same-sex behavior. Seems like the Church has not changed the doctrine, but rather has moderated its tone (I am glad of that) and materially improved its treatment and posture towards same-sex attraction. The Law of Chastity, though, remains the same now as it did in the 70s and 80s, and before. I can appreciate your perspective. Thanks, -Smac

In today’s political landscape Joseph Smith’s “polyamory” would probably be lambasted more for its secrecy and the imbalance of power in a lot of the relationships so he probably couldn’t be elected. Meanwhile conservatives would be unimpressed by a sex scandal involving people of legal age. How gauche and backwards. Have a sex scandal involving minors while accusing the Left of all being groomers or GTFO! He would have no political home.

Don’t be obtuse. You are obtuse enough even when you aren’t doing it deliberately. They did it dispassionately and declined to prosecute and then it came out they didn’t consider all the evidence. Either deliberately or due to incompetence. Now that someone else comes in to evaluate it you are worried they will be too passionate. Maybe a bit of passion might be a good thing.

That is a lot of nonsense over why saying Jesus reportedly said that a certain thing would happen within a specific timeframe and it didn’t happen so Jesus was wrong is somehow ultra-complicated and there is a distinction between Jesus being wrong when his prophecy failed and being called a false prophet. Endless special pleading. Yeah, he hates fascists. This offends you for some reason. I miss the days when I was younger where being opposed to fascist was a normal baseline. Alas that these evil days should be mine. No you don’t. You want him to shut up about a lot of things that you find damaging to many church dogmas but are also worried about his credibility? You do this while writing up long pieces of word salad about how he is a bad scholar. Yet you worry that he isn’t showing enough decorum and that might detract from his message. Right….sure…..yeah, I believe you. And that is why you fail. And you don’t know what dogma is either. How shocking. Dogma is not something immutable or unchangeable. The LDS church outside of the very early period doesn’t change any faster than other religions in regards to its dogmas. The LDS Church also changes its dogmas in a very quiet and imperceptible way to avoid disruption. The anti-gay screeds of the 70s and 80s that scared me and a lot of other queer people weren’t overturned by further light and knowledge or revelation. They want away because they were disproven and Church leaders quietly shifted the narrative. I struggle more and more to see how the LDS Church functions differently due to revelation.

I did say that Southern aristocratic women married younger. The same is true or royal and noble girls in Europe. Their marriage value declines with age. It is funny that you were saying these ages were normal but all the examples you share require special permissions and judicial investigations to prove their wasn’t kidnapping or extortion. That shows that marrying that young IS NOT normal. When two people marry at a socially acceptable age you don’t generally check whether someone was kidnapped. And no, it was viewed as odd and there was social scorn for marriages that young. It wasn’t the norm. It wasn’t casually acceptable or expected.

You want leaders to make stuff up? Is that how it works in your faith? Leaders fill out revelation with their own ideas and teach it as doctrine? Serious questions, trying to understand why you think LDS leaders, leaders of a faith that isn’t your own and you don’t believe in, should add unrevealed speculation to our doctrine. This happens more than enough unintentionally, people assuming they know what revelation must imply. If we add intentional speculation as well….

It really wasn't condemned. Unless you are talking about the late 1800s. The idea of girls needing to grow up before getting married didn't really take hold till the later 1800s. And even then, it started more from the idea that the girls were worth labor to the parents and they didn't want to lose that. "American Child Bride" by Nicholas Syrett talks about antebellum child brides (you can read it at https://archive.org/details/americanchildbri0000syre/mode/2up by logging in and borrowing it if you want). He discusses how the South was more lenient for child brides because they wanted to control the family wealth. The North saw daughters as more valuable for labor and so would prefer they didn't get married till later. The west was closer to the South. He gives several other examples of child brides that no one batted an eye against. One example is Abel Stens, a wealthy man born in Massachusetts who had moved to California, married Arcadia Estudillo, a daughter of a wealthy Mexican, in 1841. He was 43, she was 14. They had to get permission from the Catholic church (who investigated whether the marriage was acceptable per Catholic law) and civil authorities (because he wasn't Mexican). He did request to be exempted from the posting of the normal 3 banns because he wished "to avoid the ridicule which might arise among the idle young because of the disparity in years". So, he did worry about ridicule, but not condemnation or being considered "sick". Their marriage proceeded (with 0 banns) and they were one of the wealthiest families in California (both during Mexican rule and US rule). He also discusses legal cases around under age girls and how the cases weren't around the ages of the girls but around whether they were kidnapped or forced to marry the man or whether the parents were owed damages for losing their daughter. As some have said "The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there." Now a days, a man (of any age) who tries to marry a 14 year old would be condemned and stigmatized. That is not true of the mid 1800s.