The disintegration of American democracy thread

[_DoubtingThomas]

no well-defined field of Latter-day Saint cosmology exists

Exactly! Because there is no well-defined Mormon cosmology he can believe what ever he wants about the origin of the universe.

Nothing in what you quoted gives any hint about the author's opinion as to whether God created the universe. .

It is a hint, Mormon scientists will not say in public, "god did not create the universe". He said, "Universes that bubble up from the multiverse might differ greatly from ours in their force constants or natural laws. If so, most would quickly disappear, and only a very few would have properties that allow for the formation of atoms, stars, life, and intelligence."

Why would he believe that god (or the gods) create universes that quickly disappear? The guy clearly believes in the multiverse, but he would be an idiot if he thinks the gods only make "very few" universes that "allow for the formation of atoms, stars, life, and intelligence".

When you say something like: Mormons believe God didn't create the universe

I said, "Some christian scientists (especially Mormons) do not believe god caused the Big Bang" and "Some Mormon apologists do not believe god created the universe." Which is true.

[Guest]

You left out this:

For many Mormon scientists the Big Bang was just an event and god had nothing to do with it.

That was your answer to my specific question about how Mormon scientists view the relationship between God and the Big Bang. Since then, you've moved the goal posts a couple of times, but you haven't provided evidence of one LDS scientist or apologist who says "I don't believe God created the universe" or "God had nothing to do with the Big Bang." As I've consistently said, Mormons have a wide range of views on lots of issues. It's certainly possible that there is a scientist or apologist who holds the beliefs. That's absolutely consistent with what I've said. What I questioned was your statement about "many Mormon scientists." So far, you haven't come up with any, let alone many.

Now you're claiming that these mystery scientists won't say what they believe in public. That directly contradicts what you said at the beginning of the post: "Because there is no well-defined Mormon cosmology he can believe what ever he wants about the origin of the universe." If he can believe whatever he wants, why does he have to hide what he believes?

I've looked for the evidence myself, and you've had lots of opportunity to provide evidence. I see no need to continue to further derail this thread.

[_EAllusion]

I saved this thread for my back pocket to talk about how our democracy is falling apart sometime around the impeachment trial and the subsequent developments afterwards. I think it is quite likely American democracy is disintegrating, though this is a stepwise process that is hard to know exactly where you are when you are the middle of it. It's so much easier to see when it's happening in some other nation. We've got some upcoming events that should make things more clear.

I just peeked in now. I didn't expect the thread to go where it has gone.

[_Res Ipsa]

I saved this thread for my back pocket to talk about how our democracy is falling apart sometime around the impeachment trial and the subsequent developments afterwards. I think it is quite likely American democracy is disintegrating, though this is a stepwise process that is hard to know exactly where you are when you are the middle of it. It's so much easier to see when it's happening in some other nation. We've got some upcoming events that should make things more clear.

I just peeked in now. I didn't expect the thread to go where it has gone.

Yeah, my bad. for what it's worth, If you split out Smokey's post, responses to his post, and anything else about religion, I think you'd be left with an on topic thread.

Or you could retitle this one: People Who Can't Stay On Topic. And start over....

[_Some Schmo]

for what it's worth, If you split out Smokey's post, responses to his post, and anything else about religion, I think you'd be left with an on topic thread.

I don't think you can disentangle this disintegration of democracy from religion, frankly. Outrageous beliefs are at its core.

[_EAllusion]

for what it's worth, If you split out Smokey's post, responses to his post, and anything else about religion, I think you'd be left with an on topic thread.

I don't think you can disentangle this disintegration of democracy from religion, frankly. Outrageous beliefs are at its core.

Democracies have fallen with religious backing and without. More broadly, autocratic governments have developed both religious backing and elements and in direct opposition to them. On the opposite end, democracies have functioned just fine with large numbers of religious citizens. Religion is neither a necessity nor sufficient condition to explain the illiberal tide.

It's true that in specific examples, religion is an important part of the story. You can explain what happened in Turkey without drawing in religion so long as we are clear that by "religion" we are referring to a specific Islamist culture inside of Turkey. It's reasonable to argue that America's conservative Christians, evangelicals specifically, are one of the forces driving what is happening to our Republic. But that's not at the feet of "religion" in some general sense.

[_huckelberry]

Bible creation is not violent so would not be describing the big bang. (?)
Violence involves force making damage disruption of order and injury. The big bang involves none of these ,it is a time of an expanding state of very high energy. That is entirely orderly process and involves no violence at all.

The big bang can fit Genesis to my mind but that is no proof of Genesis. I am unaware of any information beyond what ifs about whether there were other cycles or events prior to the bang beginning what we can detect.

[_honorentheos]

I hadn't been following this thread but, having checked it this morning and skimming past the Smokey bits, it seemed to me this article I had shared elsewhere might better fit here. It coins the term "Ukrainianization" to describe the effects we are seeing here.

This article from The New York Times, available through MSN, is worth reading. It paints a picture of how Trump's behavior mirrors that of the corrupting influences that led Ukraine to where it is, and to the condition where the idea the Ukraine has a corruption problem is accepted as a given by everyone on both sides of the political aisle in the US.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/ ... spartandhp

Donald Trump ought to be impeached and removed from office. This isn’t what I thought two months ago, when the impeachment inquiry began. I argued that the evidence fell short of the standards of a prosecutable criminal act. I also feared impeachment might ultimately help Trump politically, as it had helped Bill Clinton in 1998. That second worry might still prove true.

But if the congressional testimonies of Marie Yovanovitch, Bill Taylor, Gordon Sondland, Alexander Vindman and especially Fiona Hill make anything clear, it’s that the president’s highest crime isn’t what he tried to do to, or with, Ukraine.

It’s that he’s attempting to turn the United States into Ukraine. The judgment Congress has to make is whether the American people should be willing, actively or passively, to go along with it.

I’ve followed Ukrainian politics fairly closely since 1999, when I joined the staff of The Wall Street Journal Europe. It has consistent themes that should sound familiar to American ears.

The first theme is the criminalization of political differences. Years before Trump led his followers in “Lock Her Up” chants against Hillary Clinton, then-Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych did exactly that against his own political rival, Yulia Tymoshenko, who was sentenced to seven years in prison on a variety of byzantine charges after she had narrowly lost the 2010 election.

She spent three years in prison before her release during the 2014 Maidan Revolution. Key to Yanukovych’s efforts to discredit Tymoshenko was — who else? — Paul Manafort.

A second theme is the use of political office as a shield against criminal prosecution and as a vehicle for personal and familial enrichment. Why have so many of Ukraine’s oligarchs — including Burisma Holdings founder Mykola Zlochevsky — also served as government ministers? Simple: Because, until recently, it shielded them from criminal prosecution thanks to parliamentary immunity, while also providing them with the means to use government power for their own benefit.

The third theme is what one might call the netherworldization of political life, in which conspiracy theories abound, off-stage figures wield outsized influence, and channels of formal authority are disconnected from the real centers of power.

This reality came vividly to light in 2016, when a parliamentary effort to vote “no confidence” in the government of then-Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk unexpectedly collapsed, thanks to the usual string-pulling from the country’s wealthiest power brokers. As Ukrainian political commentator Maxim Eristavi noted at the time, in Ukraine “There are no party lines, no real policy debates, no ideological clashes: just cold-hearted vested interests and short-term alliances between various oligarchic groups.”

The fourth theme is covert Russian interference, usually facilitated by local actors.

Ukraine offers the world’s most extreme example of this kind of interference (nearby Georgia is a close second), since large parts of the country have been seized outright by Russia and its proxies. But long before the Kremlin’s “little green men” arrived in Crimea in 2014, Russia and its agents were using every dirty trick at their disposal, from poisoning a future Ukrainian president with dioxin to poisoning the media landscape with disinformation. Too often, it worked, whether because its victims were suggestible, corrupt, fearful or simply not paying attention.

That last point was also made by Fiona Hill in her testimony on Thursday, where she warned members of the House Intelligence Committee that they ran the risk of themselves falling victims to “politically driven falsehoods,” regarding a bogus theory about Ukrainian political interference, “that so clearly advance Russian interests.”

Yet the person who is both the principal consumer and purveyor of those falsehoods is the president of the United States, just as he has been a purveyor of so many other conspiracy theories. Even now, this should astound us.

It doesn’t, because we’ve been living in a country undergoing its own dismal process of Ukrainianization: of treating fictions as facts; and propaganda as journalism; and political opponents as criminals; and political offices as business ventures; and personal relatives as diplomatic representatives; and legal fixers as shadow cabinet members; and extortion as foreign policy; and toadyism as patriotism; and fellow citizens as “human scum”; and mortal enemies as long-lost friends — and then acting as if all this is perfectly normal. This is more than a high crime. It’s a clear and present danger to our security, institutions, and moral hygiene.

It’s to the immense credit of ordinary Ukrainians that, in fighting Russian aggression in the field and fighting for better governance in Kyiv, they have shown themselves worthy of the world’s support. And it’s to the enduring shame of the Republican Party that they have been willing to debase our political standards to the old Ukrainian level just when Ukrainians are trying to rise to our former level.

The one way to stop this is to make every effort to remove Trump from office. It shouldn’t have to wait a year.

[_EAllusion]

I think the closest model for democratic collapse happening in the US is Hungary. It's a shame our one Hungarian poster was run off the board. It'd be nice to have him right about now.

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

I think the closest model for democratic collapse happening in the US is Hungary. It's a shame our one Hungarian poster was run off the board. It'd be nice to have him right about now.

I’m still absolutely flummoxed by Dr. Shades’ autistic hate for him. We have American fascists posting memes left and right, we have an openly racist neo-Nazi, we have one guy openly supporting Communism, I’m admittedly a middling hateful retard, and we have a Mormon who routinely subverts and slides threads that rub him the wrong way. But “F” that Hungarian guy, amiright?

Edit: Also, it’s pretty damned hypocritical for Shades to hate on a Hungarian who just wants to share bits of his culture when Shades has some odd duck obsession with his waifus, to the point of stickying a thread or dropping rando references to them in various threads.

- Doc