The Nehor

Surf a wave around an entire planet. Fly through a supernova. Ride a dinosaur. Build a polycule of twinks and tomboys. Create a tree that produces medium rare steaks. Try switching genders just to see what it is like. Test the electron moon scenario to see what would actually happen:

I used to explain this away with 2 Nephi 4:11 I used to take that to mean that Sam’s lineage was entirely folded into the Nephites to the point they were called Nephites. Not sure why but it is plausible but it is not as convincing to me as it used to be. It does sort of fit with the idea that there should be seven tribes for numerological reasons but that seems like an extreme way to do this.

Yet oddly there are tribal grouping throughout the Book of Mormon. Nephites, Jacobites, Josephites, Zoramites, Lamanites, Lemuelites, and Ishaelites. No Samites though. Did his line die out?

By how many scholars agree with those scholars. That is what a general consensus is.

No, that was the general consensus on angels in Judaism at the time. If we ignore that and try to push LDS concepts onto the passage it makes even less sense. In LDS belief mortals are the angels so why would Jesus say they are like the angels and not that they just are the angels. The original Genesis story is almost certainly more about explaining legendary heroes and demigod legends. The concept of angels as we understand them wasn’t really around. These were divine beings, not rebelling angels. At the time all divine beings were considered to be gendered including Yahweh and El and all the rest of the pantheon. The Book of Enoch was a heretical text in most of the Jewish world. There is a reason it was at Qumran and not well loved by the general Pharisees and Sadducees though some of them knew about it. It was trashed almost completely by Judaism after the destruction of the Second Temple because the Rabbis (and Jews) in general were really done with the whole apocalyptic thing as the end result of expecting the messiah to be coming any second now and marching out to fight to usher in the end of days was just a lot of dead Jews. As one of my favorite Jewish scholars says (paraphrased): “If your military plan for victory is a deus ex machina, STAY HOME.” This is a really tortured reading of the text and attempts to read Jesus’s mind. Being against divorce doesn’t mean not advocating for celibacy which Jesus (according to this text) he definitely did. Nope, the “present distress” was the same to both Jesus and Paul. You shouldn’t marry because the messianic age is imminent. Both Jesus and Paul expected it to happen very soon. Jesus said it would be in that generation. Paul had to grapple with the question of what would happen to the people who had believed but then died before Jesus returned. That should have been Gospel 101 unless you were sure Jesus was about to show up so it wouldn’t matter. Jesus was telling people to cut off their hands and pluck out their eyes. Why is castration seen as extreme by comparison? At least one early Christian council had to decide that voluntary self-castration was bad and should disqualify you from joining the clergy. You don’t ban something unless people are doing it. Neither Jesus or Paul was talking about individuals who took temporary vows. They were given as general admonitions. The comparison doesn’t work. Paul almost certainly didn’t write the pastoral epistles. There are too many anachronisms. The “forbidding to marry” bit was probably an anti-Gnostic polemic. Also the pastoral epistles are much more misogynistic and authoritarian than the epistles virtually everyone thinks are authentically written by Paul. In Paul’s epistles women and slaves held positions in the church. In the pastoral epistles only men can lead and they have to be a reputable man in harmony with patriarchal Greco-Roman values to do so. Oh, and those widows are awful. Here are a bunch of excuses for why you shouldn’t help them. YUCK!

While it was definitely an allusion to the Book of Tobit the questioners were also being sneaky. The Book of Tobit was not about Levirate marriages but their question was. That might also have been intended to trip up Jesus. Also Levirate marriage was on the way out if not already gone so Jesus endorsing Levirate marriage might be seen as something that could trip him up. I don’t find the apologetic about eternal marriage sidestepping this verse that convincing. I only know the basics of the Jewish afterlife of the time so have only a vague idea what a typical Pharisee would think of Jesus’s reply. The Sadducees doing the questioning would not believe in the resurrection at all.

Nope, It is likely that the writers of the Gospels were relying on each other and oral traditions or scattered written documents that relied on oral tradition. Did they spin what Jesus said to match their own beliefs? Sure, hence you have Matthew saying that the Law of Moses will continue until the End of Days while the other gospel writers do now. That is not fraud though. It is the normal human impulse to read things through the lens of your own beliefs and desires combined with not having much in the way of hard data on the life of Jesus. Also the gospel writers don’t all agree on what the meaning of Jesus even was. It takes a lot of tortured rationalizations to make them match up. Particular trying to make the Gospel attributed to John have the same message as the synoptic gospels. Not fraud.

You do know that something can be inaccurate without being deliberately fraudulent right? The Essenes had a baptism ritual. It is a fair bet other Jewish groups did too. It was not something Christians invented or rediscovered.

She did interact with many scientists She still did not say what you originally said she said. You are holding her up as an exemplar while completely misrepresenting her. That is just really really screwed up. You don’t respect her. You just use her (incorrectly) as support for your weird cultural agenda. I respect her more than you do. I read up on her and understand her. I think she is wrong. You just lie about what she says. That is awful and you should feel bad about doing it. Conspiracy nonsense.

You’re right. I misread a phrase in your post and reversed the meaning. My bad.

While it is probably a bit silly to try to gatekeep who is a true Christian I think dechristianizing is less likely to lead to outright cruelty the way dehumanization does. I mean, saying the Cathars weren’t Christians ended up having a similar effect but I think it is less likely to happen today.

You are assuming consistency and fairness is valued. They complain that all these degenerates are trying to force them to affirm and agree with their views while they are busy privileging their own views. You can see why they dislike empathy. It might make them realize that they are doing what they are accusing others of doing. The old line still applies: “Every accusation is a confession.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_disengagement Short version is that it is a method of convincing yourself or others that moral standards don’t apply in some circumstances. You shut down the willingness to condemn yourself for immoral behavior. You reframe this behavior as morally acceptable or good while maintaining the moral standard as still being good. It just has a bunch of exceptions. It has a lot of forms but probably the most dangerous is dehumanization. When people are being called animals or inhuman or are portrayed as a kind of disease or infection it turns immoral actions into putting down a horse with a broken leg or healing the nation or the religious movement or whatever of a dangerous infection. “illegal immigration is poisoning the blood of our nation.” ”illegal alien animal” ”The woke mind virus” “***** Derangement Syndrome (TDS)” ”LGBTQIA groomers” ”Transgender witches” Denying basic humanity and declaring that people are a disease or an impurity. Christians are specifically susceptible to this kind of rhetoric since the Old Testament is full of it. God spends a lot of time lambasting the Israelites for not genociding hard enough and now the enemy who were spared are corrupting the nation with their weird religious practices and immorality and yada yada yada. Here is a fictional “good guy” justifying destroying a planet to preserve a greater whole:

Did you read the conversation and what they were referencing. All the books and podcasts they mentioned talking about the dangers of excessive or “toxic” empathy. This one conversation isn’t what started it or the sum total of the movement. While phrased differently the goal of the whole “toxic empathy” thing seems to be that there are some people who are lost and godless. From the Toxic Empathy book: “The erroneous conflation of love and empathy has convinced the masses that to be loving, we must feel the same way they do. Toxic empathy says we must not only share their feelings, but affirm their feelings and choices as valid, justified, and good. This confusion has not only made us a morally lost people but it’s also harmed the very people empathy-mongers claim they’re trying to help: the truly marginalized and vulnerable.” “…someone who doesn’t follow Christ must first repent of their unbelief before they repent of anything else. That means we get to share with them who God is and what He’s done for us before we have any conversation about sexuality and identity.” It is codswallop but buried in there is the idea that the maginalized and vulnerable who are godless aren’t actually marginalized and vulnerable. Once they repent we can talk but until then we have to make sure they suffer so they repent. As if God couldn’t punish the marginalized and vulnerable for their sins without the help of his ‘loving’ followers. It is also showing that those who think empathy it toxic if it is directed to the ‘undeserving’ have no real interest in trying to coexist in a pluralistic society. They want a trump card (pun intended) that they are right and want that reflected in how government functions. “God’s definition of what is good and loving will almost always contradict the world’s definition, which will inevitably put us at odds with mainstream culture. While this is uncomfortable, the sacrifice is worth it. The truth can change lives.” Ignoring the obvious historical ignorance of Christianity being the dominant faith in many parts of the world throughout history we are still left with this pathetic siege mentality of the poor Christians fighting off the godless hordes of mainstream culture and doing this while they control the levers of power. It is pathetic. It does serve an important purpose though. If you are in charge there can be a duty of care to everyone under your governance. If you can still cast yourself as an oppressed minority you can pretend that oppression of others is just a security measure to protect yourselves. You can throw out all Christian virtues in the interest of survival. The old fascist “the enemy is both strong and weak” bit where the opposition is portrayed differently based on what your rhetorical point is.

Her perspectives are much HIGHER than mine? What does that even mean? I am in conformity with the general scientific consensus which consist of lots of people that have perspectives that are presumably HIGHER than mine and disagree with Judith Curry. So if you are appealing to her authority I can appeal to over ten times as much authority to say you are wrong. So why would you make this an appeal to authority? That is really a dumb move. Especially when the things she said don’t match with what you said she said. Are you having a stroke? Also, nice pivot to avoid engaging what I said. Probably wise. What you said about Judith Curry saying climate change was a hoax was indefensibly wrong and stupid so you are now pretending you were actually just saying that this one person has credentials. Galaxy brained move. Does it work well in your neck of the woods? Just tell outrageously ignorant falsehoods and then when called out start talking about something else? And another pivot to a right-wing rag that thinks teaching science in a *checks notes* science class is “indoctrination”. More whataboutism. The chosen defense of people who do bad things and want you to instead focus on the (often imagined) bad things that other people are doing. The special favorite of Soviet propagandists. Good job Comrade!