All Activity
- Today
-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChXlPd0H1MU&list=RDChXlPd0H1MU&start_radio=1
-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChXlPd0H1MU&list=RDChXlPd0H1MU&start_radio=1
-
Where was your ferocity and duty when 255000 children in the UK were systematically raped and murdered and ALL institutions including the crown are complicit!
-
You think I fear the FBI? They are pussies just like your Marines! I already write the CIA on a regular basis!
-
How dare you call me a white supremacist! WWG1WGA includes everyone except for Zion! I know the Star Trek movies with Kirk by heart!
-
https://www.facebook.com/reel/1100643482133778
-
SCOTUS Decision: Ban on "Talk" Conversion Therapy is Unconstitutional
Calm replied to smac97's topic in General Discussions
I asked AI “respond to this claim”: “The key logical error in the original claim is treating “binary” and “spectrum” as if they must describe the same property at the same level of analysis. They don’t.” -
SCOTUS Decision: Ban on "Talk" Conversion Therapy is Unconstitutional
Calm replied to smac97's topic in General Discussions
I think this is important to consider. -
I have no clue what the time/stamp would be if it’s not attached to a screenshot already. The offending post was already screenshot and added to this thread in case he disappeared it before nemesis saw it. I don’t think he can remove his account and the other info is in my posts already. In case this gets taken seriously and they contact Nemesis, I think he needs to be aware of it first.
-
SCOTUS Decision: Ban on "Talk" Conversion Therapy is Unconstitutional
smac97 replied to smac97's topic in General Discussions
But not incongruent with an ecclesiastical title. I'm afraid you are not going to persuade me that "assigned at birth" is not only misappropriated to equivocate and obfuscate, but also that this misappropriation happens quite a lot. Clinicians may use it in the way you suggest, but everyday usage is frequently obfuscatory. "Six is binary" and "sex is a spectrum" are logically incompatible with each other. The verity of one negates the other. People use “sex” in more than one way. Sometimes they mean which reproductive class (small gametes or large). Sometimes they mean the cluster of traits that usually go with that class—hormones, genitals, build, voice, behavior. Those are related facts. They are not the same fact. Saying both sentences can be true if you switch definitions mid-argument is not scientific sophistication. That is equivocation works. The “elder” comparison actually cuts the other way. Latter-day Saints call an 18-year-old an elder as an office. Nobody then insists he is elderly, or that “old” is a spectrum that abolishes age. The title does not cancel the ordinary meaning. What I object to is the move that does cancel it: use “sex” as trait-cluster long enough to say “spectrum,” then take that as permission to deny that the person is male or female in the reproductive-class sense, or else or to treat that class as optional in sport, medicine, and law. Fuentes himself has said gametes are binary. The rest of the argument is that bodies and behavior overlap, so “human beings are not two types.” Overlap of phenotypes is expected. It does not create a third gamete or a continuous series of sexes. Ainsworth’s Nature piece is mostly about DSDs: development can go off-script. Off-script is still scripted toward one of two sexes. Complexity of the pathway is not a spectrum of endpoints. So I am not claiming “sex” can never be used loosely for sexed traits. I am claiming that when the dispute is “how many sexes are there?” or “does identity replace sex?,” the "load-bearing" meaning is the reproductive one. Calling that insistence “scientifically illiterate” only works if the trait-bundle definition has already been sworn in as the real one. That is the point at issue, not a referee’s ruling. If someone says, “Male and female are the sexes; many traits vary around those two peaks,” we agree. If they say, “Because traits vary, sex is a spectrum, so the binary is naive,” they have changed the subject and then declared victory. I can be courteous about language, but I cannot pretend those two claims are the same sentence in two dialects. I can take the weak version of that sentence. Humans name things. We decide which traits to put on a birth record. Categories are tools. None of that means gonads are a committee vote. The survey does not show that “sex is a social construct” is the scientific view of sex. It shows that in a 2024 poll of SICB instructors who answered a survey on sex-diverse, gender-inclusive teaching, 42% agreed with that wording—about 14% “absolutely,” 28% “somewhat.” The sample is small and self-selected. The authors themselves note that calling sex socially constructed “feels counter to the major definitions of sex that biologists are taught.” That is not a referendum of biology. It is a snapshot of one society’s classroom politics. What they say they mean is also thinner than the slogan. “We choose how to combine genomic, gonadal, hormonal, and morphological facts when we assign categories” is a point about classification, not about whether males and females exist. Every science draws lines (species, planet, adult). The line does not invent the thing. Midwives recording “male” from external genitalia are almost always observing the reproductive class already there. Calling that “assignment” is the paperwork theory again. The strong reading, the one that does work in these debates, is that because we draw the line, the line is optional, so identity can overwrite sex. That does not follow from “people use words.” It would follow only if there were no fact underneath the word. But there is a fact underneath the word: two gamete types, two typical developmental pathways. How we talk about edge cases does not unmake the two classes. So: internally consistent as a claim about labels? Yes. Coherent as a claim that sex is not a biological binary? No. The 42% figure is not a discovery that gonads are culture. It is evidence that a contested slogan has a constituency in one corner of academic biology. Constituency is not the same thing as the finding. We've previously had discussions about credentialism and scientism. The Academy is not exactly covering itself in glory these days as pertaining to Third Rail topics, particularly those as viciously enforced as trans ideology (where else do people get to not only baselessly declare those with principles arguments to be "bigots" but do so in public, and have it be a nice big virtue signal?). A committee can stipulate a definition for the pages of its report. That is not the same thing as discovering what a woman is. The National Academies text you quote is explicit about what it is doing. It says the terms are used differently by context, that this “may cause confusion,” and that in that report “women” will include anyone who identifies as a woman or girl, “regardless of biological sex traits.” That is a scope rule for a women’s-health document, not a finding that identity is sex. The same glossary still defines female by genitalia, internal organs, or XX without SRY. They split the words because they know the identity definition and the sex definition are not the same thing. Calling it “just a definition” does not make it immune to criticism. Definitions can be circular, empty, or unfit for the work they are asked to do. “A woman is anyone who identifies as one” is circular: it uses woman to explain woman. It cannot tell you who has a uterus, who should be in a female drug trial, or who is protected by a women’s-sports rule. An 18-year-old “elder” is an office. Nobody then uses that title to deny that “old” means aged. The identity definition is being used to replace the sexed meaning of woman in law and medicine, not to sit beside it as a church office sits beside ordinary English. So I am not saying a report is linguistically illegal. I am saying this definition does not capture the class “adult human female,” and that publishing it in an academic consensus study does not make the substitution true. If the modest claim is “this committee chose inclusive wording for funding and outreach,” fine. But if the claim is “therefore a woman is anyone who says so,” that is still the tenet, and a glossary entry is not an argument for it. CDC Guidelines "say" this? Now? Are you sure about that? I do not think anyone claims the cells “magically transform.” That is your paraphrase of my objection, not my objection. The dispute is whether a male who identifies as a woman is a woman—that is, an adult female human—or whether “woman” has been retasked to mean “person with a female identity.” Those are different claims. Only one of them needs magic. The other needs a new dictionary. “Trans women are women” is a ideological definition, not a neutral one that floats above argument. It is the conclusion. It asserts that the identity is membership in the class. Calling it “just a definition” is how you avoid defending that assertion. The CDC sentence is the same move in public-health prose: “transgender women are women who were assigned male sex at birth.” In the next breath those guidelines note that most have not had genital surgery and may retain a functional penis, because anatomy still matters for disease. The agency is using "identity" language and sexed medicine in the same paragraph. That is not a demonstration that they are the same thing. It is a demonstration that the wording and the biology have come apart. Dictionaries follow usage. When institutions repeat “trans women are women,” lexicographers add a sense. Merriam-Webster’s primary adjective for female is still “of, relating to, or being the sex that typically has the capacity to bear young or produce eggs.” A later sense about gender identity is an add-on, not the discovery that eggs were a social role all along. Updating a glossary does not rewrite gametes. What people who say the slogan are claiming, when it is doing any work, is this: for bathrooms, sports, prisons, prizes, and the word “she,” treat this male as a woman. They do not need to claim a new karyotype. They need you to treat the identity as sufficient. That is exactly the load-bearing tenet. I can be polite about names. I cannot agree that courtesy has changed the sex, or that a CDC clause and a revised dictionary entry make “trans women are women” into something other than a contested (and radical) redefinition. Thanks, -Smac -
Picking up where I left off with @theplains... As a preliminary matter, I appreciate both your participation and your extensive knowledge and research on these matters. Perhaps I have misunderstood, and if so I apologize. In your post you quoted then-Elder Ezra T. Benson, who - in speaking about the ban - quoted Joseph Smith: "The Prophet Joseph Smith understood this principle when he said, 'the curse is not yet taken off from the sons of Canaan, neither will be until it is affected by as great a power as caused it to come.'" You then said: "This teaching clearly shows the ban was caused by God and that it would only be revoked by as great a power as caused it to come (meaning by God, not by earthly men)." Because you had just quoted Benson quoting Joseph, I thought that by "this teaching" you were referring to Joseph Smith's comment, which you characterized as "clearly show{ing} the band was caused by God" (presumably through Joseph Smith, whom you had just finished quoting (through Benson), and therefore that the caused-by-God-through-Joseph-Smith ban "would only be revoked" by the same "power as caused" the ban, namely, "by God." Did I misunderstand you? Yes, we can count the "few" documented ones on one hand and still have a fingers left over: See also here: Well, we still run into the problem of whether it actually was "doctrine." There is no record in the archives of the Church of any revelation on this matter. Do we agree on that? If so, is is possible that that there was no such revelation, and that opinions and conjecture on the ban (including from Joseph Smith) became characterized as "doctrine" despite the lack of any known revelatory provenance for it? I think you will have a hard time accusing the Brethren of "trying to bury some of its church history," particularly given Richard L. Bushman's comments. From a 2022 post cataloguing the Church's efforts to present a candid telling of its history: I think a church trying to "hide" its history would not spend such enormous amounts of time, money and effort to publish to the world, for free, the foregoing resourced about its history. I'm not sure I understand what this quote is intended to show. Could you elaborate? See above. Early LDS leaders viewed it as a directive from God. Generally, yes. But the question remains: Might it be that the ban was not revelatory, but that the removal of it was? That the ban "was not revelatory," at least in a prima facia case sort of way, is indicated by the absence of any known revelation establishing it (though we also have pretty good supplemental evidences as to its origins, such as the 1852 address to the Utah Territorial Legislature). Yes, this seems to be true. Perhaps the leaders of the Church, unsure as to the actual origins of the ban, but not quite willing to disregard it as mere "policy," felt that "a revelation from God was needed." I don't think we can say "this is not true." I think it is accurate to say that we cannot establish any revelatory provenance for the ban from the Church's records. The above characterization therefor works for me. That was certainly a part of what prompted him. How do you know what Pres. Kimball "specifically" chose to omit from his remarks? Also, given that the ban was directed at "those of {sub-Saharan African}-descent," did he really need to specifically "mention" them? IMO, on the Lord's timetable. See my above quotes re: Pres. McKay ("I have prayed and prayed and prayed, but there has been no answer" ... "I'm badgered constantly about giving the priesthood to the Negro. I've inquired of the Lord repeatedly. The last time I did it was late last night. I was told, with no discussion, not to bring the subject up with the Lord again; that the time will come, but it will not be my time, and to leave the subject alone."). I agree. But I don't see how that creates a "therefore we know that the priesthood ban was instituted by God"-style argument. That does not seem to follow. The sin of Adam in the Garden of Eden is taught in several LDS Church publications. Here are just a few: [1] Chapter 45 of the seminary manual (Religion 211–212 - New Testament Student Manual). "Jesus Christ is the Only Begotten Son of God the Eternal Father. He is our Creator. He is our Teacher. He is our Savior. His atonement paid for the sin of Adam and won victory over death, assuring resurrection and immortality for all men". [2] October 1979 General Conference talk by President Marion G. Romney, recorded in the November Ensign article "Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ". "It [the gospel plan] anticipated the need for a Savior to win the victory over death, atone for the sin of Adam, which brought death, and provide the means whereby men, through repentance, may receive forgiveness for personal sins and be readmitted into the presence of God". Satan led Adam and Eve astray. In a sense, yes. But the discussion here is whether the leaders of the Church have led members "astray." I don't think they have. By "good", I assume you mean "good" from a moral perspective. I think that is generally what Joseph Smith was going for, yes. Okay. But the issue here is whether Latter-day Saint leaders have done this, and/or if the Lord will allow it. I think the answer to both inquiries is "No." Well, I think we need to see this in context: Right. But none of these leaders in other faith traditions is referenced in the excerpt from Pres. Woodruff's addresses which seem to be the source of this "astray" concept: Nobody in the Church has said that leaders in Islamic, Hindu and JW faith traditions will never lead their adherents "astray." So the "astray" thing seems a lot more limited. Am I missing something? Could you elaborate? Thanks, -Smac
-
New meeting house renovations with the idea of focusing on Christ.
Duncan replied to Tacenda's topic in General Discussions
I think its the Aberdeen Scotland Stake centre that has a wheelchair ramp right underneath the pulpit so if they build a sacrament table there they'd somehow have to move the ramp. I don't know why it was built like that -
Exactly!!! The incongruity of an 18-year old kid from Utah being an old man or the leader of a tribe is incongruous with obvious reality, the completely normal thing to do is assume that isn’t what the speaker is trying to imply. The same heuristics are in play with the words we are talking about here. For example: ...therefore the speaker is almost certainly using definitions of these words other than the ones that lead to the factually incoherent, incoherent, and incongruous conclusions I originally came to, so I have to figure out what the speaker meant. Going through your examples: “Assigned at birth” is a well-defined medical term and means exactly what the National Academy says it means. the “factually and linguistically incoherent” part is what you (uncharitably) assume other imply. “Sex is a spectrum”. This is absolutely, positively, a coherent scientific view of sex. For example, Professor Augstin Fuentes of Princeton University wrote an article entitled Here’s Why Human Sex Is Not Binary in Scientific American, or Sex Redefined: The Idea of 2 Sexes Is Overly Simplistic that was originally published in Nature and republished in in Scientific American. Fuentes wrote: So if we are going to make a good-faith effort to understand what people are saying, if they say “sex is binary” they are probably referring to gametes. If they say “sex is a spectrum” they are probably talking about the “range of biological and behavioral patterns related to sex biology that overlap and diverge." So while from a logical standpoint the statements “sex is binary” and “sex is a spectrum” contradict each other, this viewpoint is naive and scientifically illiterate. Both sentences are true because they use slightly different definitions of the word “sex.” If you insist on believing sex only refers to how organisms make gametes and that it cannot refer to the complexity inherent in sexual phenotypes, then you are being just as obstinate as the anti-Mormon who insists “elder” cannot refer to an 18-year old kid because referring to such a person as an “elder” is factually and linguistically incoherent. "Sex is a social construct.” I understand how this could sound nonsensical, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a serious, scientific, internally consist viewpoint. In a 2024 survey, 42% of biologists agree that yes, sex is socially constructed. What they mean by that isn’t that gonads aren’t real. Rather, they mean humans choose how to characterize and combine genomic, gonadal, hormonal, morphological, and other biological components when assigning sex categories. "A woman is anyone who 'identifies' as one.” A 2025 National Academies Consensus Study Report uses this definition: "Women: The terms “female” and “woman” are used differently according to context and perspective, which may cause confusion. In this report, the definition of women goes beyond the sex and gender binary and includes all people who identify as a woman or girl, solely or in addition to other gender identities and regardless of biological sex traits. This inclusive definition recognizes individuals who have been or may be affected by a set of biological and/or social variables that influence women differently than men across the life course." This isn’t a claim. It is a definition. Just because this definition contradicts another definition doesn't mean it is factually and linguistically incoherent, any more than the fact that 18 year-old elders not being old means that that definition is factually and linguistically incoherent. "Trans women are women.” Again, this is a definition, not a claim. This one is used repeatedly in mainstream science. For example, CDC Guidelines say, “transgender women are women who were assigned male sex at birth." Note that according to the dictionary, definition 1 of woman is “an adult female person,” and that the first definition of “female” is “having or relating to a gender identity that corresponds to a complex, variable set of social and cultural roles, traits, and behaviors assigned to people of the sex that typically produces egg cells." You seem to think that if somebody says “I am a woman because I identify as such” means that they are claiming that by identifying as a woman, the cells in their bodies magically transform into something else. That viewpoint is incoherent, and it isn’t what they are actually claiming.
