Why the Protestant Church Needs Another Ninety-Five Theses

[Calm]

14 minutes ago, The Nehor said:

You could hire a wet nurse if you were wealthy but other than that you would feed them yogurt or mash and hope for the best and infant often died.

Or give them to a mother whose child died very recently so she still has milk.  

[Calm]

35 minutes ago, Chum said:

Healthy environments reflect what you shared, where kids left and shopped on their own. 

It was a rare treat to ride my bike and buy a slurpy.

[The Nehor]

6 hours ago, Stargazer said:

I'm 73. Actuarily, I'll be dead before Social Security goes belly up and my private pension evaporates. So, as the song Bread used to sing goes, "It don't matter to me." But you younger people? You're going to be up a certain creek without a paddle. And sooner than you think.

Our only hope may be the Second Coming.

Have faith. With the plans for the current reorganizing (meaning gutting) of the Social Security Administration we might see benefits be cut off temporarily or permanently due to simple lack of resources to process them. And with the whole post-WWII economic system being flipped over and the markets already tanking the pension may not last either. So I am even more pessimistic and think it might collapse even sooner than you think.

I wouldn’t hold out a ton of hope for the Second Coming to save us. While all this could cause a large amount of privation and suffering that has happened before without God intervening. I don’t see anything special about this specific time.

[The Nehor]

6 minutes ago, Calm said:

Or give them to a mother whose child died very recently so she still has milk.  

You have to find someone who wants the child and that would also likely be a genealogy ender or take you down a false or at least non-biological line.

[The Nehor]

10 minutes ago, Calm said:

There are always the malls.  

That was the third space when I was a teenager. I was pretty much the last generation to have that kind of space and freedom.

[Devobah]

Man I leave for a few days and the thread goes completely off the rails. It’s like seeing my ADHD brain on a screen right now 🤪

[Calm]

49 minutes ago, The Nehor said:

That was the third space when I was a teenager. I was pretty much the last generation to have that kind of space and freedom.

Hey, they can get jobs at Amazon if they want to get out of the house. (Oops, have to be 18 or older)

Make that McDonald’s. 

Or mowing the yards they aren’t allowed to play in.

Edited March 10 by Calm

[manol]

On 3/6/2025 at 10:30 AM, Devobah said:

6. Whereas Protestants rejected extra-biblical authorities and appealed only to Scripture, we quickly made idols of our own favored teachers – repeating the pattern we once condemned.

7. Entire schools of theology arose from our chosen teachers, whose followers became as unbending as the group from which we originally parted.

16. Protestant leaders have overlooked the fact that how they handle a controversy is as important to God as the controversy itself.

17. We have behaved as if every doctrine, no matter how obscure, requires us to proclaim, “Here I stand; I can do no other!”

20. Protestantism infused “being right” (our convictions about “the truth”) with Papal primacy, elevating it over every other Christian virtue.

21. The Protestant need to always “be right” flowed from our insecurity over the pain we experienced (and caused) as the Reformation unfolded.

26. Some of our children witness us devouring each other and flee the church rather than joining our cannibalism. Generations have thus been lost.

27. Others of our children witness our divisiveness and inherit the same brutal spirit.

28. A layman could observe our behavior and astutely ask questions such as, “Where is discernment? Where is wisdom? Why have Protestants been so inclined to make war against brethren who disagree with them? Why wield the sword against one’s own?” (1 Kings 12:24)

30. Again, an observer could ponder, “Perhaps, after 500 years, it’s time for the Protestant Church to ask the question Gideon posed, ‘If God is with us, why has all this happened to us?’” (Judges 6:13)

34. Though we have been unable to stay unified for long, the Gospel has gone forth from us, but it has been tarnished by our divisions.

37. If God reaches anyone through such hostile divisions, it only reflects God’s mercy, or sense of humor.

42.When Paul wrote to the Corinthian church “For there must also be factions among you, so that those who are approved may become evident among you,” he acknowledges the presence of divisions threatening their spiritual health, yet the church retained its singular corporate identity. (1 Cor. 11:19)

I think these may be symptoms of a single underlying issue which is by no means limited to Protestantism. 

Many desire a spiritual ideology that allows and justifies hating or condemning or looking down on their neighbor when it is convenient to do so. At the risk of over-simplifying, imo there are only two thought systems, though each shows up in many different forms: One always results in darkness and condemnation, and the other always results in light and love.

Edited March 10 by manol

[InCognitus]

2 hours ago, manol said:

I think these may be symptoms of a single underlying issue which is by no means limited to Protestantism. 

Many desire a spiritual ideology that allows and justifies hating or condemning or looking down on their neighbor when it is convenient to do so. At the risk of over-simplifying, imo there are only two thought systems, though each shows up in many different forms: One always results in darkness and condemnation, and the other always results in light and love.

I agree and it sounds familiar:

"Behold there are save two churches only; the one is the church of the Lamb of God, and the other is the church of the devil; wherefore, whoso belongeth not to the church of the Lamb of God belongeth to that great church, which is the mother of abominations; and she is the whore of all the earth."  (1 Nephi 14:10)

"Wherefore, he that fighteth against Zion, both Jew and Gentile, both bond and free, both male and female, shall perish; for they are they who are the whore of all the earth; for they who are not for me are against me, saith our God." (2 Nephi 10:16)

So the Book of Mormon says that the difference between the two is their attitude toward others (and not their membership affiliation), and those that justify hating and condemning and persecution of those that follow God have gone over to the dark side of the force over to the side of darkness and condemnation.

[ZealouslyStriving]

5 hours ago, The Nehor said:

Have faith. With the plans for the current reorganizing (meaning gutting) of the Social Security Administration we might see benefits be cut off temporarily or permanently due to simple lack of resources to process them. And with the whole post-WWII economic system being flipped over and the markets already tanking the pension may not last either. So I am even more pessimistic and think it might collapse even sooner than you think.

🤨 More politics?

[sunstoned]

4 hours ago, manol said:

I think these may be symptoms of a single underlying issue which is by no means limited to Protestantism. 

Many desire a spiritual ideology that allows and justifies hating or condemning or looking down on their neighbor when it is convenient to do so. At the risk of over-simplifying, imo there are only two thought systems, though each shows up in many different forms: One always results in darkness and condemnation, and the other always results in light and love.

I agree.  I also feel some of this comes from overly political preachers and televangelists who use their politics as a basis for their sermons.  

[Robert F. Smith]

On 3/8/2025 at 1:26 PM, Tony uk said:

And I must admit, I failed to mention my own background, the Roman Catholic Church. There has been a decline in numbers there also. Especially with different branches there, Traditional, Moderate, progressive. It is becoming something a bit sad in a way.

Indeed

[Robert F. Smith]

On 3/8/2025 at 1:36 PM, Calm said:

Did not the Catholic Church contribute to the preservation of ancient texts over the years and the spread of Christianity in general (as far as I know conversion rates are higher among fellow Christians than non Christian’s)?

Well, we could enter an infinite regress of causes (Abraham led to Moses, Moses led to Judaism, Judaism led to Jesus, etc.), but I was thinking more of a proximate cause.  Without an inspired Constitution and free speech there would be no place for free agency, and American democracy was unthinkable without the Reformation and then Bibles in the vernacular.  People thinking for themselves, rather than following the Magesterium (the sacred deposit of the faith) passed on by the RC priesthood.

[Robert F. Smith]

On 3/8/2025 at 4:00 PM, Stargazer said:

That's because the historical populations there have discovered "the pill" and feminism, and let their hedonistic tendencies go mad. Result: intercourse without result and a birthrate that is well below replacement. Except for the Muslims, who still practice the First Commandment ("Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth"). 

My stepdaughter is bucking the trend, with six children (to the amazement and scandalization of everyone she knows, no doubt). But she can't do it alone. Even the LDS in Great Britain are hedonistically limiting their family size to two or three. 

And among LDS here in the USA.

[Robert F. Smith]

On 3/8/2025 at 4:37 PM, The Nehor said:

No, this argument has been made many times throughout history suggesting that the secret to success is mass-breeding. The fears it raises virtually never actually happen.

Never??  Tell that to the Sumerians, who were replaced by the Akkadians.  Then take a gander at Douglas Murray, The Strange Death of Europe.

[Stargazer]

On 3/9/2025 at 6:10 PM, The Nehor said:

So vote in far-right authoritarian regimes to save us. The Kremlin has spoken and must be obeyed. They know how to solve demographic crises.

*looks at Russia*

Oh wait…..ummmm…..hmmmmm…

You do realize that the Steele Dossier turned out to be completely fictional, right? If you feel like some light reading, may I direct your attention this article in the magazine The Nation, a left-wing source if there ever was one. And for the sake of the life of this thread, can we leave off the snide politics?

[Stargazer]

On 3/9/2025 at 7:22 PM, Calm said:

I have no clue what you see as the ideal life for women. I am making comments about what you are saying and how you say it, not what you think.  If you think they are straw men, maybe you should go back and read what you wrote without the commentary you are adding in your head.  It may not be coming out as you intended it to.

It might be more your understanding than my intention. 

I am the father of five, and the stepfather of seven. My late wife was the mother of 10. The last three by her choice, not my demand. Before we married I suggested she had done enough for king and country, and could leave off with the childbearing. She rejected this idea out of hand (she actually got angry with me for suggesting it)! Her last child was conceived just before the final curtain fell on her fertility. After the youngest were ready for elementary school I suggested that she might want to go to college just for the fun of it and get a degree in anything that interested her. She didn't wish to do that, but instead started a business cleaning houses for well-to-do people in our town. She kept the money she earned while doing this, because my income provided sufficiently without it. She ended up spending most of her money on the children. 

Every woman should do what she wants to do. Just as every man should.

Jesus asked his parents "Wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?" (Luke 2:49) We all know what his business it was, too. It was bringing resurrection to all, and salvation to all who would seek it.

But what is our Father's business? Well, He gave our task to us at our beginning in the Garden of Eden: "Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth." (Gen. 1:28)

We cannot do it without intense cooperation between male and female. And this necessarily assigns roles to both, some of which are interchangeable, and some of which are not. God wants as many of us as possible to come to earth and partake of mortality. He cannot have this if we take our Father's business too lightly.

On 3/9/2025 at 7:22 PM, Calm said:

Reducing women’s existence to how many babies they pop out before they die

I do not reduce woman's existence to that. I say that it is a married couple's joint duty to produce as many children as practical, and to raise them to become independent and prosperous adults, so that they in turn can do the same.

On 3/9/2025 at 7:22 PM, Calm said:

and attributing failure to meet that demand to pure selfishness,

If a man or woman cannot produce children, that is unfortunate, but reality goes that way sometimes. Married couples without children due to inability can perhaps fulfill that God-given responsibility by raising others' children who have lost their parents -- if they choose. There should be no stigma for childlessness if it is nonconsensual, and couples should have as many children as practical. But it's a personal decision how many that will be, and on a personal level it's no business of mine. One of my granddaughters has been married for ten years and they have no children. I have never asked why. It isn't my business. I'd rather not know.

But for the sake of our civilization I am personally concerned with the numbers as related to the population as a whole. There are an increasing number of couples who choose to deliberately and permanently refuse to have children. A 2021 Pew Research Center poll found that 44% of non-parents ages 18 to 49 said it was unlikely that they would have children in the future, up from 37% in 2018. When asked why, more than half said that they just didn’t want to have kids. Sounds like selfishness (and hedonism) to me.  (See Speaking of Psychology: Choosing to be child free, with Jennifer Watling Neal, PhD)

On 3/9/2025 at 7:22 PM, Calm said:

abandonment in hedonism that is a result of feminism and access to the pill is such an oversimplification of women’s choices and lives over the centuries it is hard to take your commentary seriously.  

Why is it hard to take seriously? Formerly, women had virtually no choices. Now they have lots of them. Formerly, women had lots of children. Now they don't. Why? Because they have lots of choices. Why do they have these choices? Because of the rights which feminism obtained for them, and because of the opportunity to avoid conception that the pill provides. I don't see why this is so mysterious.

The success of first-wave feminism eventually led to women's suffrage and many other improvements in rights for women in the West. All well and good so far, and I'm all for it.

Access to the pill began in 1960 in the US, and then it became child's play to have sex without the risk of getting with child. Also well and good. And we should do things deliberately and with intention.

But what about unintended consequences? The wide choices made available because of feminism gave women the right to do what they formerly could not, and the pill (along with at-will abortion) could reduce the chance of an unwanted pregnancy to very low. So, instead of getting married and having children, many women prioritize their careers (and in some cases their recreations) over child-bearing and -rearing. So the fertility rates drop like stones.

And if those rates continue at below-replacement rates, we as a civilization are headed down paths that we will regret. 

But as I've said, I'll be dead and buried by then, so why do I bother? 

 

[Stargazer]

On 3/9/2025 at 7:27 PM, The Nehor said:

Who is “we”?

Kimosabe?

The "we" refers to "us" as a civilization. Who do you think?

[Stargazer]

On 3/9/2025 at 6:10 PM, The Nehor said:

You want to blame it on hedonism when economics is the main driver here. I know several couples who want children but also realize they can’t afford them and have no real prospect of that changing. Fix that before whining about how couples are doing the fiscally responsible thing which you are labelling as hedonism for some reason.

Economics? Before "the pill" couples had children regardless of economics. My mother's parents had seven children in the face of the Great Depression. 

[Stargazer]

On 3/9/2025 at 7:45 PM, Peacefully said:

Stargazer’s rhetoric puts me in mind of some lyrics by a modern day poet, Brandi Carlile:

You get discouraged, don't you, girl?
It's your brother's world for a while longer
We gotta dance with the devil on a river
To beat the stream
Call it living the dream, call it kicking the ladder
They come to kick dirt in your face
To call you weak and then displace you
After carrying your baby on your back across the desert
I saw your eyes behind your hair
And you're looking tired, but you don't look scared

Let 'em laugh while they can
Let 'em spin, let 'em scatter in the wind
I have been to the movies, I've seen how it ends
And the joke's on them

 

So obviously the solution to stop having children. Who needs 'em?

[Stargazer]

On 3/9/2025 at 8:38 PM, Calm said:

edited due to a double negative that tripped me up

English is one of the few languages to imagine itself tripped up by a double negative. Spanish doesn't care, for example! Two negatives doubles down on the negative in that language.

[Stargazer]

On 3/9/2025 at 9:31 PM, Chum said:

FamilySearch says I've added 19,600 people. I've noted lots and lots and lots of childbirth deaths.  First children to first wives are the largest group, then last children to first wives (last child here being shorthand for not-first child).

It was a real risk and these deaths were routine announcements in local news. 

Regarding infant deaths on the whole, we only know about a fraction of the total. A large percentage of infant deaths I are not from vital records; they were likely never recorded. For example, the 1900 and 1910 census indicate child deaths (# of children born, # of children living) and that info isn't indexed on FamilySearch or Ancestry. To say that I routinely spot evidence of unknown, deceased children is a strong understatement.

How I see childbirth deaths manifested is I see a child born every 18-24mos and after a gap, the mom dies.  I might eventually find evidence of her final childbirth - but I usually don't. I'm guessing bereft fathers aren't eager to travel all the way to the county seat just to record that. 

If genealogy has taught us anything about infant mortality, we're undercounting these souls by a lot. It's so common that I often wonder what our Deity's plans are to address it.

Yeah, but it wasn't child deaths at birth that I was cataloguing. The Nehor was talking about deaths of mothers in childbirth, not deaths of babies in childbirth. And more to the point, The Nehor was going on about avoiding pregnancy for fear of mother mortality. My four lines of maternal ancestries do have some recorded child deaths at birth, but more frequently, early childhood mortality. But all of the 306 mothers in my primary sample survived.

[Stargazer]

On 3/9/2025 at 10:48 PM, The Nehor said:

So we should make sure people are impoverished? The poor can’t be hedonistic? What? That is just not true.

You are an expert at this kind of misdirection. I will give you that.

[Stargazer]

On 3/9/2025 at 10:48 PM, The Nehor said:

It is very biased and very cherry picked. You didn’t do it deliberately though. Every one of your ancestors survived until at least puberty and managed to reproduce. If they didn’t they wouldn’t be an ancestor. It is a very biased selection sample.

Selection bias might be possible, but by definition cherry picking can only be deliberate. And by the way, not all of the paternal lines were married only once. Some had deceased wives who had had children but didn't die in childbirth. As far as I could tell. 

Of the four maternal lines I cited, only one was mine. The others were no relation to me at all. You're trying to induce me to start going down collateral ancestral lines, aren't you? FamilySearch makes this a breeze, if I were to feel like wasting my time trying to prove something to you that you have already rejected out of hand, despite the evidence I've provided so far. So why don't you sign on to FamilySearch yourself and try to find all the mothers in your line who died in childbirth. See if that yields data more to your liking. Like, for instance, a quarter to a third of mothers die in childbirth? You seem to think it's so common, its bound to show up in your line, since you seem to think mine is such an incredible outlier.

By your lights, every living person is a biased selection sample. Because their ancestors survived to have them.

 

Edited March 11 by Stargazer

[Calm]

2 hours ago, Stargazer said:

You do realize that the Steele Dossier turned out to be completely fictional, right? If you feel like some light reading, may I direct your attention this article in the magazine The Nation, a left-wing source if there ever was one. And for the sake of the life of this thread, can we leave off the snide politics?

I thought he was referring to the fertility rate in Russia where they have been quite unsuccessful with their attempts to raise it by offering incentives.