SeekingUnderstanding

Yes, you provide the context that gives meaning to Dan's claim TPUSA doesn't actually care about the unborn and transgendered youth. You just ignore it. No where in this video does Dan lean upon his scholarly bona fides. It's pretty clear that you dislike trans people and the organizations that support them. You call their names fake, misgender them, want to force them to use bathrooms according to their gamete size. You think they suffer from mental illness. When you provide data to support your view that gender affirming care should be banned for trans minors (while available for cis-gendered minors) are you being rhetorically dishonest?

<reads next sentence> You know you are allowed to read the whole post before replying…

Especially ones heavily reliant on ai. If I wanted to talk to a robot I’d do it locally not on a forum. That said it’s my opinion that SMAC’s main purpose in posting here is not to engage in dialogue but rather to protect and defend the church’s good name against the calumnies thrown against it by its adversaries. Along the lines of not letting church critics have uncontested slam dunks or whatever that saying was. His audience is people reading but not commenting. I don’t BTW mean this in a disparaging way @smac97 - and if I am wrong here I will take your word for it.

I think you misunderstand the argument. The truth of the book of Mormon or Joseph's prophetic call isn't determined by how many people believe it. The sun is a gravitationally bound dense ball of plasma that produces heat predominately by fusing hydrogen nuclei into helium. This was as true 2000 years ago when no one believed it as it is today where it is almost universally accepted. What acceptance does show however is how compelling the data is. The data for the sun being a ball of plasma is now overwhelming. Thousands of years ago not so much. If the academic non-faith based data supported book of Mormon as an ancient text, more people would believe it. This isn't the same thing as saying it's not true. If Dan said the data didn't support the Shinto belief that gods live in inanimate objects, I don't think you'd bat an eye. If he said the data don't support Muhammad splitting the moon you wouldn't bat an eye. But your faith is special right?

It’s right there in the name and everyone knows nazis don’t lie.

Did you think these meant different things? They are two different ways of saying the same thing.

Here is the problem. Dan's statement was made within a particular context (ripping it from that context makes Dan an offender for a word). The context was responding to a video put out by TPUSA. In that video TPUSA claims to care about people. What people do TPUSA care about in their video? Unborn babies and transgendered youth. Dan spends 30 minutes presenting data showing that the policy positions put forth by TPUSA actually harm both of these groups. In Dan's view the data conclusively show that TPUSA does not in fact care about "the unborn". If they did they would act completely differently based on the empirical data. In Dan's view the data conclusively show that TPUSA does not in fact care about transgendered youth or they would act differently. So Dan's claim at the beginning of the video must be understood by the context of the whole video. The 30 minute video provides the data (as Dan sees it) to show that TPUSA does not actually care about the unborn and they don't actually care about transgendered youth.

Neither does a response that loses the forest for the trees. You do this all the time. Every single person that you debate on this forum tells you this. At some point you might want to do some introspection about that.

Just going to respond to this one point. Presumedly there is a best way to reduce abortions. We can see this by enacting different policies and seeing if abortions are reduced. Dan cites many studies (which you are free to disagree with, but have not done so) demonstrating that affordable birth control, comprehensive sex ed, and good prenatal and post natal care all significantly reduce abortions. That is data. That is an empirical finding. Dan also cites evidence that abortion bans don't reduce abortion rates. They merely change how, where and under what circumstances people access them. That is an empirical finding. That is data. Feel free to disagree and present opposing data. Dan here is participating in political speech just like you often come here to participate in political speech. Dan is citing data to support his position. Dan is not claiming leaning on his biblical or educational credentials here, merely presenting a data based (as he sees it) persuasive argument for what he sees as correct.

Case in point.

If you were critiqueing Dan's published scholarship, you might have a point, but since you are not, you don't. This just shows your own bias. Latter-day saints make up around 1 of every 1,000 people in the world. That's because the data don't support Joseph being a prophet. Now there very well might be faith based reasons to affirm Joseph's divine call, there may even be some interesting data points out there, but there is a reason the book of Mormon isn't used to study ancient American civilizations.

This is a problem that you have in general. You split someone's essay up so finely that you lose the forest for the trees. Dan quotes a rep from Turning Point USA that says she cares about the unborn and transgendered youth. Dan goes on to cite 30 minutes worth of studies and data that undermine her position. For example, if she cared about preventing abortion, she would pay attention to the best ways to lower abortions - namely comprehensive sex ed, widely available cheap/free long term contraceptives, and good support for pregnant mothers and babies. These are all things that TPUSA ignored in this speech. Therefore the "data" do not support the idea that TPUSA actually cares about preventing abortion. Now you can disagree with the studies cited (which you obviously do - especially on transgendered youth) but to say he provides "no dataset, study, survey, or operational definition" only works because you ignore the context around the statement. You do this all the time.

It seems like there should be a board rule requiring a disclaimer when the majority of a post is written by AI

So it's okay to impute motives to people we think are advocating for socialism. Is it okay to impute motives to people we think are advocating for fascism?

So you aren't opposed to government coercion, but rather only against unchecked government coercion?