OGHoosier

Agreed. The old Masonic legends about the rites descending directly from the Temple of Solomon have been generally discredited, but for my part I see a lot of similarities between old early-AD gnostic rituals and Masonry. For me it's hard to imagine that there isn't some form of connection, though I don't have credible theories as to its provenance.

I've strongly considered joining the Masonic fraternity - at least ever since I watched National Treasure as a elementary school kid lol. That was even before I knew how significant Masonry was to my own faith and heritage. Straight out of RPGs. What other items should I equip to max out my buffs when talking with you? I think my Persuasion stat isn't too low but the items can always help 😜 @Calm When I was serving a couple years ago, a Mason ring would certainly not have been allowed. However, the handbook has been updated since then and I haven't kept up to speed with it. It wo

Oh absolutely, Western aesthetics were carried in the womb of the cathedrals for centuries. They were far and away the most beautiful buildings in Europe for ages, particularly since even the palaces of nobility and royalty were built with practical defense in mind. Churches were the only buildings built explicitly to be beautiful, to be the Bibles of the poor, and we owe a great deal of our knowledge of architecture and engineering to the practice of cathedral construction.

Not gonna lie, it was actually going to Rome that helped me recognize this. I've grown up as an American low-churcher, fully buying into the whole "4-bare-walls-and-a-sermon" shtick which we have in our cookie-cutter meetinghouses. I fully bought into the narrative that the Catholic church had done wrong in spending so much money on churches. Ironically enough I didn't have the same response to Gilded Age robber baron mansions, with which I saw nothing wrong as a teenager. I guess that goes to show how much I had bought into that star-spangled American paradigm of Protestant-flavored capitalis

What can I say, I enjoy the classics Careful though, I'm told some of those classical writers can be a bit pedantic. A greater crime against language or the mind can hardly be imagined.

The appellation "pedantic" means nothing to me. My argument is that the decline of the use of the word "Mormon" after President Nelson's talk does not mean that the use of the word is itself a victory for Satan, which you directly used as a point of ridicule. Then again, I don't think it would it matter if it did.

I'm generally fond of Wittgenstein, the curt dismissal of "semantics" won't work on me. President Nelson understands that a multitude of small actions constitute a larger movement, and thus deemphasizing the name "Mormon" advances the general cause to which we ought to be dedicated. You've decided to make a reductio ad absurdum out of it, which requires you to connect two principles more closely together than they are for the punch line to hit home. @Scott Lloyd's point stands.

I'm not going to discuss the relative merits or demerits of a Universal Basic Income because I think that strays too far towards politics for Nemesis' liking. For me, I've lived a happy middle class lifestyle. I've only ever envied the wealthy in one respect...their houses. I am a lover of beautiful architecture. Whether it is Roman cathedrals or stately halls of government, business, or private residence, I've found that I'm very passionate about the construction and preservation of beautiful buildings. One of my favorite places to visit in the US is Newport, Rhode Island. I exult in to

That's an equivocation. You're referring to the praxis of not referring to ourselves as Mormon and using that praxis as proof that "referring to ourselves as Mormon" is the same thing as "a victory for Satan." Those things aren't equivalent. @Scott Lloyd's point stands.

And my expectation is that you will see exactly whatever you expect to see in this. It seems clear that your judgement is already made.

Sure you can. Once a conspiracy has been exposed, it ceases to be a conspiracy theory and is just a conspiracy. Honestly, believers in plain reality can't really say that either. "The President of the United States is having operatives burgle the HQ of his political rivals" sounds like a super whacky conspiracy theory...until Watergate.

If you don't know how BYUtv thinks a gay character should be portrayed, how can you already be upset by it? And yet you did say:

Do you know how BYUtv thinks a gay person should be portrayed? I was under the impression that they haven't tried yet.

I don't intend to make any grandiose statements as this is definitely beyond my expertise, but the following New York Times article just came up and I thought it would be interesting to participants in this discussion. Make of it what you will. A Tiny Particle’s Wobble Could Upend the Known Laws of Physics: Experiments with particles known as muons suggest that there are forms of matter and energy vital to the nature and evolution of the cosmos that are not yet known to science.

In other words he's damned.