All Activity

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I don't think black people should be able to get married. Because they have black skin. I'm not prejudiced against them, I just have a sexual ethic where children should be raised by non-black people. Don't worry though I have really good black friends and I don't think they are any less of people. I just have a rule about an act and an institution.

I acknowledge that "gender" is ambiguous (I think the ambiguity is, in many instances, calculated and intentional), in that it can be a synonym for "sex" but also refer to things other than sex. No. Males have reproductive systems designed to create a different kind of gamete than the one created by females. That the two gametes differ in size is not really relevant. Yes. That is my understanding of how that particular DSD works. Categorically, yes. Sociologically, she was raised as an "identifies" as a woman, and I have no particular inclination to give much attention to that (you brought her up, I didn't). I do, however, find the effort of appropriating DSDs as a justification for denying the sexual binary, or to justify the notion that sex is a social construct, to be problematic. Yes. Which parts of that do you find to be factually incorrect? Yes. The second "D" in "DSD" is, after all, "Disorder." That does not place Jackie into some third category of sex. I have not been speaking of "'reason{s}' for the discrimination against gay people." "Discrimination," after all, "is the unfair or prejudicial treatment of people based on their membership in a particular group, class, or category." Thus, it is not "discrimination" to prohibit people under 21 from drinking because we as a society have decided to differentiate who can and cannot drink alcohol, and that differentiation is based on broad reasoning and consensus, not "bigotry" or "discrimination." It is not "discrimination" for a doctor to forego pregnancy tests for a young man because males cannot become pregnant. That differentiation is based on biological reality, not "bigotry" or "discrimination." So there is an ordinary, legal, and social sense about being a woman and mother that transcends biology? No. There are times when rhetorical convenience predominates over biological precision. Thus, I may choose to treat a person with CAIS as a woman, even though Jackie is biologically male. DSDs are an extraordinarily rare occurrence. And they are frequently invoked as rhetorical cover to people who do not have a DSD, and who are instead unequivocally male who want to be seen and treated as women (and vice versa). Whether to call Caitlyn Jenner, a male who "identifies" as a woman, by "she/her" pronouns is not really a contest I want to address every day. No. Ordinary language does not “transcend biology.” It is shorter than a karyotype. Again, you brought up Jackie, a person with a very rare DSD. When people say “woman” or “mother” about someone with CAIS, they are talking about a person with a female-typical body who was raised as a girl and is raising a child. That is how English works. It is not a theory that "identity" writes "sex," and it is not a claim that biology stepped aside. The biology is still 46,XY, testes, androgen-receptor failure. I said that in the same paragraph. “Identity” in what I wrote was one layer of ordinary speech—how we talk about a person standing in front of us—not a third sex and not “identity über alles.” Please do not quote that word as if I had signed onto the view that sex is a feeling. Legal “female” on a birth certificate in a CAIS case is a classification of phenotype and rearing, which is how hospitals and clerks handle this rare condition (and I have frequently noted that accommodations for people with DSDs should be part of the discussion as to matters such as sex-segregated spaces). It does not repeal the developmental fact, and it does not license the next inference: therefore two men are a mother and a father, or therefore sex is a spectrum, or that a man can "become" a woman by "identifying" as one, or that the Church's X / Y is uniquely and peculiarly illegitimate and outside the bounds of reasonableness. Your question, though, does demonstrate why vigilance may need to be more overt and emphatic. By your reckoning, if I refer to Lia Thomas as "she," then you treat that as a concession that a man can "become" a woman by "identifying" as one. You wanted a gotcha: either I call Jackie a man in every sentence, or I have admitted that womanhood floats free of the body. Those are not the only two options. Precision is allowed, as are some few departures from precision. Rare DSDs are why we keep the layers. They are not a warrant to treat sex as a costume or marriage as any two adults. If you can only advance your perspective by wearing others out and then relying to rhetorical gimmicks, then you don't have much of an argument. Just sophistry. I am on the record for this, and only this: CAIS is a 46,XY DSD with a female-typical exterior; the person may be a woman and a mother in ordinary and legal talk; that does not make sex a social construct and does not turn a same-sex household into a mother-and-father household. Fallacies Equivocation. “Ordinary/legal/social sense” treated as “identity transcends biology.” Quote-mining. “Identity” lifted out of a list of how people speak. False dichotomy. Either always “male” or sex is not biological. Motte-and-bailey. Uses a DSD edge case to smuggle in the general identity rule. Thanks, -Smac

I’m doing a solo acoustic show in November, at a small arts cafe- expecting 70 attendees all ages. Mostly adults. the theme is Hippie night- I’m gonna just play guitar and sing. Any requests? So far on my list: Both Sides Now Just a Song Before I Go Mellow Yellow the Riddle Song Leavin on a Jet Plane Peace Train Summer Breeze Venus Feelin Groovy me n Bobby McGee

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.