the narrator

BWHAHAHAHHAHHAHAHHAHAHAH.

I was recently told by someone who regularly met with members of the FP and Q12 that Oaks is not shy about using "Mormon" and uses it frequently, so I imagine it will come back on it own, if not implicitly prompted by new leadership. (From this same person and others, I've also been told that there was some frustration from members of the 12 and Nelson's counselors with Nelson frequently acting unilaterally without consulting the quorums--as was the case when he pushed out the exclusion policy years ago as the Q12 prez.)

Middle East Forum is a right-wing Zionist and anti-Islamic garbage think tank. You can safely ignore them.

I came to realize last year that I was autistic after looking at my daughter and realizing I shared a lot of traits with her--though mine aren't as pronounced. Then all of the pieces fit, and I had an explanation for almost everything that distinguished me from my brothers and friends from birth to now. It also explains why Wittgensteinian philosophy resonated so much with me, as I can see now how both his earlier and later philosophies are essentially autistic examinations of the world and language.

ding, ding, ding

Lolz. Please show me where you answered my question: You can't show me, because you have never answered it. You've instead thrown out red herrings and answers to questions I've never asked.

That's fine, since you aren't capable of answering basic questions anyways.

Keep changing them goalposts I guess.

@ZealouslyStriving hate to come back to this, but something has been bothering me. There are uncontacted peoples/tribes today who are essentially living the same life for millennia. They have not developed "civilization," large-scale agriculture, codified laws (they don't even have writing), science, etc. Is it your view that these people are animals and not part of God's divine heritage?

The point here is that being a "literal child of Mommy and Daddy" means being a product of sexual reproduction--a material biological process that most visible material life forms on the earth participate in so that genetic material composed of adenine, thymine, guanine, and cytosine from each parent can materially combine to produce biological material instructions that biological cells materially read through a complex material processes to produce the biological material form of that lifeform. It does not make sense to say that divine material bodies free from biological processes used the same means to produce non-biological and non-material (in any way that talk about materiality) spirits.

As I have already indicated, it's pretty clear what someone means when they say that a baby is a "literal child of Mommy and Daddy." It's not at all clear what someone means when they say that someone is a "literal child of Heavenly Parents." In your example, the baby might not know precisely what it means, but every English-speaking adult in the room knows what it means. The problem isn't about knowing the mechanics of celestial reproduction; it's about using language in one way that has a clear understanding of what is being communicated (child of Mommy and Daddy) and applying that to something that NOBODY using the phrase understands what it is being communicated. Now, I would argue that the phrase is simply a religious declaration of the value of individual persons, which is generally what is actually being communicated when someone testifies (aka religious communication) using the phrase. The mistake occurs when someone thinks they are instead talking about celestial intercourse, divine sperm, heavenly eggs, glorious conception, and eternal labor.

I've acknowledged there are many differences between humans and other animals It is clear though that you are incapable of telling me what you mean by "ability to choose to act" and what it means to you to "choose to act" that distinguishes us (and God) from, say, my poodle refusing to come to me because she still wants to throw the frisbee more. Since that's too difficult for you, there is no point in continuing this.

This reminds me of early Christianity in Japan, which was largely just a form of Buddhism wrapped in Christian iconography, and this was largely because they did not have a concept of sin to which they understood they could be saved by Jesus from.

Thx!

Intelligence across species on this planet exists on a spectrum, with homo sapiens being at the top after billions of years of evolution. While neanderthals may not have had civilization, they had intelligence that was not too different from their homo sapien relatives. And those homo sapien relatives took several thousands of years to first develop civilization and several more thousands of years after that to "unlock the mysteries of science." Is it your contention than that pre-civilization homosapiens were not the same species as God? But you're still avoiding the question I've been repeatedly asking, so let me try again: What do you mean by "ability to choose to act"? I know what it means to choose something as a kind of causal act by applying my will and present disposition and needs to a particular situation presenting more than one option, and I recognize that such is purely deterministic (otherwise it would just be a random decision without any "choosing" going on.) What, though, does it mean to you to "choose to act" that distinguishes us (and God) from, say, my poodle refusing to come to me because she still wants to throw the frisbee more?

You could help me by explaining how a dog's "ability to choose to act" inherently differs from a human's "ability to choose to act." ...Unless, of course, you don't know what that inherent difference is, which your refusal to answer makes me think is the case. Let's simplify this for you though and take animals out of the equation: What do you mean by "ability to choose to act"? I know what it means to choose something as a kind of causal act by applying my will and present disposition and needs to a particular situation presenting more than one option, and I recognize that such is purely deterministic (otherwise it would just be a random decision without any "choosing" going on.)

I very well know lots of differences, but I'm trying to understand how you see the differences in relation to your appeal to an "ability to choose to act." Again, what do you mean by this? I know what it means to choose something as a kind of causal act by applying my will and present disposition and needs to a particular situation presenting more than one option, and I recognize that such is purely deterministic (otherwise it would just be a random decision without any "choosing" going on.) What, though, does it mean to you to "choose to act" that distinguishes us (and God) from, say, my poodle refusing to come to me because she still wants to throw the frisbee more? ( @Calm , this is another example of what I'm talking about. Endless theologizing built on a premise of an "ability to choose to act" but without any indication that much thought has gone into what sense that premise actually has.)

What do you mean by this? I know what it means to choose something as a kind of causal act by applying my will and present disposition and needs to a particular situation presenting more than one option, and I recognize that such is purely deterministic (otherwise it would just be a random decision without any "choosing" going on.) What, though, does it mean to you to "choose to act" that distinguishes us (and God) from, say, my poodle refusing to come to me because she still wants to throw the frisbee more?

And it's not just about mistaken interpretations, but as longview has repeatedly shown, it's about whole theologies and ideas being built on slogans and words that themselves have never been made clear. My chief example is all of the various Atonement theories (that typically range somewhere between thoughtless and repulsive) that seek to explain how Jesus's suffering/death (LDS scripture/leaders aren't even sure which) saves us from our "sins"--all done without any clarity or clear explanation of what a "sin" is such that it would require a violent and sadistic act to clear up.

What do you mean by "same species as God"? I know what it means to say that my poodles are the same species as a golden retriever, and today the idea of a "specie" is a biological concept inseparable from both genetics and evolution. Given that it's pretty much irrefutable that our specie, homo sapiens, is a result of billions of years of biological evolution, what do you mean to say that humans and God are the same specie? Or are you one of those persons that occasionally blows my mind that there are still people who reject human evolution in 2025? Assuming you are one of those evolution deniers, what is meant by "species"? Would "model," "type," "design," or "configuration" also be applicable?

Which is precisely why the "literal children of God" makes little sense.

Correct. And I'm hoping to see that you are doing the former rather than the latter by demonstrating that you've given some thought to what the words in the slogans you are repeating. How is this bizarre? I'm simply repeating your inference that the appearance of intelligence and awareness implies the existence of a spirit. So basically, you're just doing some gap theology, where anything that you cannot personally explain must then be explained by supernatural means. To be fair to you, that's pretty much a lot of religious claims going back to the beginning. (Genesis is basically a whole book of this.) The problem though is that over the millennia, and especially the past century, the number of gaps thought to infer deity has dwindled down to near zero and gets smaller each year. (And this dependency on a gap theology, I think, best explains the so-called "rise of the nones," as rising generations realize a deity is no longer needed to understand material reality.)

TBH, I find the discussion of what is "official doctrine" incredibly boring, as it really is just a simple matter of looking at official publications and such to determine (as you note). Hence, I'm more interested in these questions that you quoted me on but did not address:

Yes. Though, I suppose most reflected light causing a non-monochrome appearance also involves refraction.

Since we're apparently playing God here and creating reality through our words, my contention is that you owe me $50. Is this evidence that ChatGPT has a spirit?