And there are A LOT. This is one very strange religion.
Sitting in church today, I started taking some mental notes out of sheer boredom. Please feel free to contribute. Here are just a few, and I'm just scratching the surface:
Bigfoot is Cain
The immortal 3 Nephites
Book of Abraham Facsimiles (I remember as a youth looking at the Facsimiles and pondering the mysteries of the universe. Little did I know it was just a picture of some guy with a boner)
Handshakes to get into heaven
Kolob
Dressing in a space age baker costume while sitting through one of the worst films ever created
Sacred rock in a hat
Polygamy
Garden of Eden in Jackson County, Missouri
TK Smoothies
Jaredite submarines
The Lost Tribes are patiently waiting under the Arctic ice pack for their opportunity to return
This list mixes fringe ideas, cultural jokes, misunderstood doctrines, and symbolic teachings. It mocks beliefs without engaging with the religious, historical, or cultural context. Many points are either not official LDS doctrines or are symbolic rather than literal claims.
It confuses official doctrine with folklore or jokes.
It mocks rather than seeks to understand.
It oversimplifies complex beliefs into caricatures.
It dismisses faith traditions by focusing on what sounds strange rather than what is meaningful to believers.
You can do better. You can be better, Wang.
Your post includes speculation, misunderstandings, irrelevancies, things that are debatable and are being debated, complexities that you shrink wrap into a 'gotcha', dismissives, and mockery.
Maybe, on the other hand, you can't do better and be better? Listen to Melania!! Then listen to Obama, "Change!" (Both political parties covered if you have a preference.)
Regards,
MG
MG,
I asked A.I. if it thought your post was written by A.I. Here is what it had to say:
Overall Assessment: High Probability of A.I. Origin
"I'm on paid sabbatical from BYU in exchange for my promise to use this time to finish two books."
GPTZero gave it 87% odds of being A.I.. I cut out the classic MG repetitions like "more information is always better.."
We can't take farmers and take all their people and send them back because they don't have maybe what they're supposed to have. They get rid of some of the people who have been there for 25 years and they work great and then you throw them out and they're replaced by criminals.
This list mixes fringe ideas, cultural jokes, misunderstood doctrines, and symbolic teachings. It mocks beliefs without engaging with the religious, historical, or cultural context. Many points are either not official LDS doctrines or are symbolic rather than literal claims.
MG, I'm sure you can do this better than anyone. Tell us, what do you think is the most ridiculous thing in Mormonism?
Last edited by Morley on Tue Jun 17, 2025 12:51 am, edited 1 time in total.
I asked A.I. if it thought your post was written by A.I.. Here is what it had to say:
Here is a detailed analysis of the likelihood that the provided text was written by A.I..
Overall Assessment: High Probability of A.I. Origin
There is a very high probability that the text you provided was generated by an artificial intelligence. The evidence lies in the writing style, the structure of the argument, and, most notably, the characteristics of the cited sources.
Key Indicators of A.I. Authorship
1. Formulaic Structure and Generic Language
The text is built like a standard A.I. response. It begins with a balanced introductory sentence, presents information in a clear, bulleted-list format, and ends with a neat concluding summary. This structure is highly characteristic of large language models.
The language itself is devoid of a personal voice or specific, illustrative anecdotes. Phrases like "Experiencing Authentic Community and Support," "Alignment with Values and Purpose," and "Spiritual Depth and Tradition" are common, high-level concepts that an A.I. can easily process and reproduce from the vast amount of text it has been trained on.
2. Pattern of Sourcing
The inclusion of "resource links" is a strong indicator. A.I. models are often programmed to provide sources to back up their claims. However, the specific state of these links is particularly revealing:
A Mix of Credible and Flawed Links: The list contains a legitimate academic article and a link to a reputable research institute (Barna). However, two of the links were incomplete or "broken" as provided. This is a common flaw in A.I.-generated content, where it might fail to copy a full URL string during generation.
Misleading Source Citation: The most compelling piece of evidence comes from the Reddit link. The text presents it under the heading "Religious Upbringing and Well-being," implying a positive link. While the provided URL was incomplete, searches for the topic on the r/science subreddit reveal threads discussing studies from Harvard that do indeed link religious upbringing to positive well-being outcomes in young adulthood. An A.I. could have accurately pulled this information. The use of a Reddit thread, rather than the primary study itself, is also a common A.I. behavior, as it often scrapes information from forums and social media discussions.
3. Lack of Originality
Searches for unique phrases from the text, such as "While some young people leave organized religion due to disillusionment with institutions, others stay because they do see their communities living out the values of love, justice, and integrity," do not yield any exact matches from pre-existing publications online. This suggests the text is not simply copied and pasted from a human-written article. Instead, it appears to be a unique combination of words and ideas synthesized by an A.I. in response to a prompt.
Conclusion
While it is not impossible for a human to have written this text, it would require them to adopt a writing style that is almost indistinguishable from a machine. The combination of the impersonal and highly structured format, the generic phrasing, the specific pattern of providing a mix of functional and broken links, and the synthesis of information from various web sources into a new composition strongly points to an A.I. origin. The text is a classic example of an A.I. responding to a prompt like, "Provide reasons why young people are staying committed to their faith, and include links to support your answer."
It often feels like your goal in the forum now is to provide low quality, low effort, automatically generated rebuttals to anything posted here. Am I wrong about that?
A.I. was used in the research. In the same manner that I might access an article on Wikipedia or other information source online. I link the information to the website in which the footnotes lead to so that the reader can access the original content from which the information was resourced.
I don't think that is against any specific rule. Sources are cited except when I am looking at a research A.I. source and read it and then regurgitate some of what I've learned as a summary/synopsis.
I'm posting information obtained through expedited research and giving credit to original sources.
This list mixes fringe ideas, cultural jokes, misunderstood doctrines, and symbolic teachings. It mocks beliefs without engaging with the religious, historical, or cultural context. Many points are either not official LDS doctrines or are symbolic rather than literal claims.
It confuses official doctrine with folklore or jokes.
It mocks rather than seeks to understand.
It oversimplifies complex beliefs into caricatures.
It dismisses faith traditions by focusing on what sounds strange rather than what is meaningful to believers.
You can do better. You can be better, Wang.
Your post includes speculation, misunderstandings, irrelevancies, things that are debatable and are being debated, complexities that you shrink wrap into a 'gotcha', dismissives, and mockery.
Maybe, on the other hand, you can't do better and be better? Listen to Melania!! Then listen to Obama, "Change!" (Both political parties covered if you have a preference.)
Regards,
MG
MG,
I asked A.I. if it thought your post was written by A.I. Here is what it had to say:
Overall Assessment: High Probability of A.I. Origin
A.I. was used in the research. In the same manner that I might access an article on Wikipedia or other information source online. I link the information to the website in which the footnotes lead to so that the reader can access the original content from which the information was resourced.
I don't think that is against any specific rule. Sources are cited except when I am looking at a research A.I. source and read it and then regurgitate some of what I've learned as a summary/synopsis.
I'm posting information obtained through expedited research and giving credit to original sources.
This list mixes fringe ideas, cultural jokes, misunderstood doctrines, and symbolic teachings. It mocks beliefs without engaging with the religious, historical, or cultural context. Many points are either not official LDS doctrines or are symbolic rather than literal claims.
MG, I'm sure you can do this better than anyone. Tell us, what do you think is the most ridiculous thing in Mormonism?
Here is one from a Reddit user that I think fits the bill. And I have a certain amount of 'what the heck' in regards to this general sort of cultural "what aboutism?"
"Watching a TBM explain why energy drinks are okay but coffee and tea are not."
The rules around what is and isn't allowed—such as the prohibition of coffee and tea but the acceptance of caffeinated sodas and energy drinks.
Sort of arbitrary. And then the judgement that can go along with it...
It's not necessary, but it's culture. Taboos and such. Judgement is ridiculous. Granted, in some respects it starts from the top down.
Why are Mormons so reliant on A.I. to form responses to arguments?
I don't think it's unique to Mormons. But in my case on a board like this it expedites finding information relevant to the discussion. It's just a glorified search engine that can be used to find and assimilate information. Kind of what like Wikipedia used to be.
When necessary it is important to give attribution to the original website so that the user/reader can access the source of the information.
Some folks don't like that because it allows a poster to respond rather quickly with information that kind of pokes holes in some of the limited arguments/information that is often posted.
But I've been known to express my own thoughts and opinions/knowledge, and experience also.
Although that may not be acknowledged readily by some.
Why are Mormons so reliant on A.I. to form responses to arguments?
I don't think it's unique to Mormons. But in my case on a board like this it expedites finding information relevant to the discussion. It's just a glorified search engine that can be used to find and assimilate information. Kind of what like Wikipedia used to be.
When necessary it is important to give attribution to the original website so that the user/reader can access the source of the information.
Some folks don't like that because it allows a poster to respond rather quickly with information that kind of pokes holes in some of the limited arguments/information that is often posted.
But I've been known to express my own thoughts and opinions/knowledge, and experience also.
Although that may not be acknowledged readily by some.
Regards,
Mg
The difference is Wikipedia has editors for its information who value objective standards of truth, relevancy, and accuracy.
Why are Mormons so reliant on A.I. to form responses to arguments?
I don't think it's exclusively a Mormon thing. It's unfortunate that MG uses his Mormon church standing to come here, a place where many have left the LDS church, in order to find a setting where he can troll and disrupt. He has always been intellectually dishonest and disingenuous in his postings, and A.I. just provides him another way to exercise that callowness. The connection back to the LDS church is inescapable, however, given that, on paper at least, they preach honesty in one's dealings with their fellow men and women. MG is egregious in his disregard of his church's stated position on honesty and integrity.
Personally, I find the fact that he was a teacher of children to be more troubling. Hopefully he saved his intellectual dishonesty and irritating disingenuousness for those he despises (us, the ones who left his religion), and managed some modicum of professionalism in his interactions with children and their families.
