Why A Morbidly Obsese Mopologist Is Losing Sleep Over A Friend's Latte

[Kishkumen]

Given that the Word of Wisdom is a health code, which would have the biggest impact on improving the memberships physical health - a ban on tea & coffee, or a ban on saturated fats & sugar? (It’s rhetorical). The Church isn’t concerned with physical health, that’s just the spin.If it was then the temple recommend interview would include a BMI test. It’s concerned, as drumdude has pointed out several times, with member compliance and obedience.

Peterson claims to live the Word of Wisdom, does he appear physically healthy to anyone? Has he appeared physically healthy at any point over the last 40 years? Now, that’s his business. If he wants to overeat and eat unhealthy foods, that’s really his business and nobody should judge. But he opens himself up to scrutiny when he pontificates on what other people should or shouldn’t do with regards to the Word of Wisdom.

These codes are always partly about creating the in-group. If you want to belong to the club, you do the thing that members of the club do.

[huckelberry]

Marcus has it right, all Chapel Mormons know face cards are bad. Huck can look up what Joseph Fielding Smith said about them, but the point is everyone knew they were bad. My grandma also played bridge but played with Rook cards. Playing some kind of card game with Rook cards is one of the only memories I have of that grandmother. And nobody knew how to shuffle, they just slopped them together. My family had Rook and Uno cards but never face cards.

Gad, I find myself indulging in a few more thoughts on this. JFS? isn't he the fellow with odd ideas about dinosaurs?

I remember enjoying face cards from a young age. The picture are colorful enough to invite imagination. Kings Queens, jacks invited imagination. I can remember even enjoying solitary for the cards. A number series in spades now compare that to Rook, there is a colorful alternative to Rooks Mormon beige,

So maybe face cards were a window opening, Invoking a wider world to wonder about.

We're they a cause of my early improper questions? Maybe, maybe that's a stretch.

Or maybe it was the dinosaur thing slipping a world of questions into a young mind.

[Gadianton]

Gad, I find myself indulging in a few more thoughts on this. JFS? isn't he the fellow with odd ideas about dinosaurs?

Prophets, such as JFieS, certainly have "odd" beliefs according to the precepts of the world. He had a famous series called "Answers to Gospel Questions." Among his prophesies were that man would never reach the moon, to do so would be like unto building the Tower of Babel. My grandmother (the other grandmother, not the one who played bridge) testified during the Apollo 11 launch that the Lord would not allow the mission to complete. She was absolutely justified to believe that. My mom told that story humorously, but it's easy after the fact to reassess the situation and pretend the falsified prophecy was never that serious. There is also the option to believe the moon landing was staged.

I remember enjoying face cards from a young age. The picture are colorful enough to invite imagination. Kings Queens, jacks invited imagination. I can remember even enjoying solitary for the cards. A number series in spades now compare that to Rook, there is a colorful alternative to Rooks Mormon beige,

So maybe face cards were a window opening, Invoking a wider world to wonder about.

They absolutely are mysterious. Face cards and tarot cards share a common ancestor. Given Facsimile 3, these mysterious images are the devil's counterfeit.

We're they a cause of my early improper questions? Maybe, maybe that's a stretch.

Or maybe it was the dinosaur thing slipping a world of questions into a young mind.
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Given my stricter upbringing, it may really have been a step in the wrong direction for me to get those cards. The impression I get from you is that you were raised such that doctrine never needed to conflict with common sense or science. That's fine, but then what is the point of having doctrine? You can believe in the reason of man and save yourself the 10%, and it sounds like that's what you did.

[I Have Questions]

My grandmother (the other grandmother, not the one who played bridge) testified during the Apollo 11 launch that the Lord would not allow the mission to complete. She was absolutely justified to believe that. My mom told that story humorously, but it's easy after the fact to reassess the situation and pretend the falsified prophecy was never that serious.

Religious zealots, including Mormons, are very good at reframing the evidence so that it becomes what they believed all along. Mormons are particularly good at reframing a Prophet’s words between when he’s alive and when he’s dead.

[Gadianton]

I agree and it's quite weird given that the whole point of having a modern prophet is for guidance that you can't get anywhere else. That selling point never delivers, and the convert is left to desperately hope the prophet stays silent in order to avoid being wrong. Where this lands is instructive, Dan himself has revealed it. Where prophetic guidance is most important is on matters that could never be true or false in any normal sense of the words, namely, on matters of boundary maintenance. if avoiding coffee is spared as culturally significant by selective pressures, there needs to be no benefit beyond a sign of allegiance. And if it falls out of fashion, then whatever is in fashion to take its place will be considered the real commandment.

This makes sense from an anthropological stance, getting the community bound together by something -- anything -- should provide an advantage.

[The Before]

I agree and it's quite weird given that the whole point of having a modern prophet is for guidance that you can't get anywhere else. That selling point never delivers, and the convert is left to desperately hope the prophet stays silent in order to avoid being wrong. Where this lands is instructive, Dan himself has revealed it. Where prophetic guidance is most important is on matters that could never be true or false in any normal sense of the words, namely, on matters of boundary maintenance. if avoiding coffee is spared as culturally significant by selective pressures, there needs to be no benefit beyond a sign of allegiance. And if it falls out of fashion, then whatever is in fashion to take its place will be considered the real commandment.

This makes sense from an anthropological stance, getting the community bound together by something -- anything -- should provide an advantage.

I asked AI for a humorous reply to this and it replied with one word: earrings.

[drumdude]

I have no doubt that some feel liberated. I also have no doubt that some, while claiming to be liberated and happier than ever before, haven't really taken a step forward. (I think of two fairly prominent and very vocal ex-LDS who both, I thought rather oddly, boasted to me in private correspondence about how much better their marriages were since their departure from the Church; both marriages were dissolved within at most a couple of years.)

It would be interesting to see statistical data on this. Since, overwhelmingly, religious belief and religious involvement can be shown to correlate with better physical, emotional, and social health, I would want to see solid social-scientific data from you demonstrating that Latter-day Saint belief and Latter-day Saint involvement are outliers.

Just over the weekend, I learned that a young man whom I once knew slightly -- an exceptionally committed one-time missionary (who served as a branch president in an Eastern European country during his mission), a prodigiously talented musician who left the Church after his return and eventually settled into drug addiction and alcoholism, and who has gone through a long series of ever-less-glamorous jobs ending in now-complete unemployability, seems to be dying, largely friendless and self-isolated from his family, of cirrhosis of the liver and a complex of other drug- and alcohol-related malfunctions. I'm not pronouncing his case typical, of course, but I'll admit that it doesn't seem "cause for celebration" or a particularly stirring illustration of "emotional, spiritual, and mental wholeness and wellness." He would almost certainly have been better off had he kept his covenants and remained in the Church.

I find it really distasteful when Mormons talk like this. Something about it is nauseating. One of the things I just could absolutely not stand hearing during fast and testimony meeting, and Mormons would do it a lot.

[Kishkumen]

I have no doubt that some feel liberated. I also have no doubt that some, while claiming to be liberated and happier than ever before, haven't really taken a step forward. (I think of two fairly prominent and very vocal ex-LDS who both, I thought rather oddly, boasted to me in private correspondence about how much better their marriages were since their departure from the Church; both marriages were dissolved within at most a couple of years.)

It would be interesting to see statistical data on this. Since, overwhelmingly, religious belief and religious involvement can be shown to correlate with better physical, emotional, and social health, I would want to see solid social-scientific data from you demonstrating that Latter-day Saint belief and Latter-day Saint involvement are outliers.

Just over the weekend, I learned that a young man whom I once knew slightly -- an exceptionally committed one-time missionary (who served as a branch president in an Eastern European country during his mission), a prodigiously talented musician who left the Church after his return and eventually settled into drug addiction and alcoholism, and who has gone through a long series of ever-less-glamorous jobs ending in now-complete unemployability, seems to be dying, largely friendless and self-isolated from his family, of cirrhosis of the liver and a complex of other drug- and alcohol-related malfunctions. I'm not pronouncing his case typical, of course, but I'll admit that it doesn't seem "cause for celebration" or a particularly stirring illustration of "emotional, spiritual, and mental wholeness and wellness." He would almost certainly have been better off had he kept his covenants and remained in the Church.

I once knew of a child rapist who was an LDS leader and died active-LDS, plump, and happy, surrounded by adoring family and friends. What are we to take away from that example?

[Doctor Scratch]

Bill Hamblin died at a young-ish age and he was overweight and in a perpetual state of rage due to his involvement in Mopologetics. What conclusions shall we draw from that?

[Marcus]

I have no doubt that some feel liberated. I also have no doubt that some, while claiming to be liberated and happier than ever before, haven't really taken a step forward...

Just over the weekend, I learned that a young man whom I once knew slightly -- an exceptionally committed one-time missionary (who served as a branch president in an Eastern European country during his mission), a prodigiously talented musician who left the Church after his return and eventually settled into drug addiction and alcoholism, and who has gone through a long series of ever-less-glamorous jobs ending in now-complete unemployability, seems to be dying, largely friendless and self-isolated from his family, of cirrhosis of the liver and a complex of other drug- and alcohol-related malfunctions. I'm not pronouncing his case typical, of course, but I'll admit that it doesn't seem "cause for celebration" or a particularly stirring illustration of "emotional, spiritual, and mental wholeness and wellness." He would almost certainly have been better off had he kept his covenants and remained in the Church.

[Bolding added]

It's disgusting that Peterson would write this to get attention, but it would be truly sickening if he also meant it. I suspect the latter, based on my experiences with lds people like him.

"seems to be dying, largely friendless"

What a horrible person Peterson is.