You had me at “those who can’t think critically and google competently.” 🤪

I dropped out of college and then tried again later and barely made it but then couldn’t get a job. I tired starting my own business and failed but then my second attempt at a business was reasonably successful and I’m applying to graduate school

My experiences can't compare with yours, but the past eight years have been transformative about how I view the church and organized Christianity. Where it's going, I cannot follow.

Organized Christianity is not the problem. Disorganized Christianity, “Christian” infotainment is the problem

@@Geoplanetjane I am going to disagree from the standpoint, that it takes organized Christianity to cover up SA scandals. When I went through with a relatively progressive church as an adult was a problem with organized Christianity. I found out about happened through the grape vine. I wrote my pastors about it and they told me that I didn't need toknow. They expected me to stand up in front of parents of 4-5 year olds and tell them their kids were safe in church without all the information and it was a decison by the church board and everything. No, that needed organization to happen and I am not okay with that.

​@@Geoplanetjane Christianity was invented and organized to get people to do what they want. Created for power and influence. That takes organization. Its always been harmful but in its historic and modern forms.

Needed approx. 10 more hours with him!!

He talks about that a bit in his Mormon Stories interview

​@@AChickandaDuck... and it is like 12 HOURS long in 3 parts, so yeah 😅

Always amazes me that Dan stays in the church.

Yes, I know Prof is still actuve in the LDS. To each their own.

Gonna have to start using the inside-out cross

Yay!!! :)

Redneck nonsense. Mormons became Republican along with Ezra Taft Benson and Ronald Reagan ( who taught heresy that OUR government is the enemy)

I have miniature void panthers too. They are perfection.

Looking after a friend’s kitten for a week!

@@ZelphOntheShelf fun!! I love a cat sitting moment. such a cutie!!

I LOVE a good Void Panther!

😊

That is the faith based portion of it. One can believe all kinds of things. Separating that from the facts of the matter. It is how religion should be. I am an atheist personally but my parents are both very baptist Christian. I have my beliefs and they have theirs. I have had these conversations with my father and have pointed out many things and I have said this is where the faith portion comes in and that is something I do not have and I showed and explained why. It made our understanding of each other much better and it helps me understand how and why others believe. As long as it is not getting pushed on all of us (Christian nationalist), I have no problem with people believing whatever faith based dogma they choose.

⁠@@sillyrabbit77and the way that I understand faith is that it is the acceptance of claims without evidence, which I consider the weakest possible method of forming beliefs. Faith can lead to not only abhorrent beliefs, but mutually exclusive ones. Faith is unreliable, and I’m comfortable in saying that no one should ever use faith for anything.

This was my struggle with Dan's Mormon Stories episode too.

SAME 🥲

Our friend made them! She used a stamp thing, not sure where you could find them now 😬 let me inquire!

@@ZelphOntheShelf I’d love to get one! Now I’m going down the rabbit hole of trying to figure out what the text says… That Deseret alphabet is tough. Keep sweet pray obey? Humm. Keep Utah?

I think I got it… Keep Utah Peculiar.

I misread that as “Dad”

That was satirical haha

My friend’s! Just looking after him for a week 🥹

I KNOW WE ARE STILL FREAKING OUT 🙈

this actually IS a panel at comic con, but if you’re interested in paying for a new set, we’re accepting donations!

…we’re not at comicon?

Even as a vegan I can agree that those things are delicious 😂

I lived in Deutschland long ago and enjoyed the food, but not sure how it would be now that I don’t eat animal products. The breads, cheeses, schnitzels were very good.

@@robinsaxophone232 Berlin has a pretty good reputation in that regard but I think the rest of the country would be a lot tougher. In Austria there is at least one or two vegetarian dishes on the menu at pretty much every restaurant (some have more options). But vegan dishes are very rare unless it's like a hipster kind of place. It's getting better though.

THIS!!!! I went and looked at his blog, and I came across a post where [if I understand correctly] he said that, basically, he isn't concerned with the historicity of the book of Mormon. How can that be?? It's literally his field of study. He said it makes his life better. But... to not even really care if it's true? I'm completely baffled.

​​@@lisaw8619He has videos saying something along the lines that there is nothing to support the historicity of LDS things. And since he joined them as an adult, he was not raised to believe everything was true. People can be christians with a Bible having mistakes, errors, false claims, descriptions of things that never happened and approval of things that were terrible (e.g. story near Judges 19: 22 is absolutely traumatizing, and it deserves a PROPER trigger warning with modern translations- it definitely wasn't a good story to read as a teenager). You don't have to treat bible as an inerrant univocal text with everything being literally true. But there are quite a lot of people who do treat it that way. People can be part of LDS despite their main guy being quite a crazy man. You don't have to believe in their founding story, creation account, their attitude to genders, race etc etc. And yes, there are absolutely people who do believe that.

How do you reconcile the cognitive dissonance of believing that people can't know so much of the origins of religious texts academically and still be active members of the LDS and seeing one of the most knowledgeble scholars out there do that?

One thing about this channel is we promise to consistently provide you with new crushes 💓✨

On the Data over Dogma podcast Dan has generally recommended the NRSV-UE as an edition that takes critical scholarship into account while using easy to understand modern language

I've asked the same and never received an answer. My experience has been that sticking to any single translation will burn you eventually. The "best" translations are the NRSVUE, in combination with the JPS on Sefaria. These sources differ from each other, but both frequently provide footnotes where the original meaning is lost/unknown, what the literal meaning is, or what text variants say. Combine these with interlinear LXX and MT, and a lexicon, but don't trust any one of these sources alone either, because they can be wrong or misleading. Even with all of this there are passages that are contentious and it's effectively impossible to figure out the "original" meaning (e.g. Psa. 22:17), or the original meaning is still papered over for theological purposes (e.g. Isa. 14:12).

Right?!?

😜

His channel "Lady Babylon" is from a branch of scholarship that concludes that the Greek is the original language of the old testament not the Hebrew (there's a big scandal right now about it within biblical scholarship and classical philology).

@@ajclmt big scandal? is that what you call a classicist spouting absolute nonsense online?

@Agryphos lol, yeah, that is what I was referring to. An expert in one field who has a different conclusion than another expert in a similar field, but they apply different paradigms. Baptize the history with fire baby! Muahahahahaha

I really like him but I understand that trigger as someone who doesn’t believe in Mormonism whatsoever!

Haha sorry, we can’t afford a set right now 😅 we agree with you though!

@@ZelphOntheShelf understandable. I did have to came back and edit the comment to include that I did enjoy the show, the other was just an also observation.

We go down together

Watch some of his stuff, he explains the Bible is actually a bunch of separate text translated from several languages over thousands of years. So of course, parts have been interpreted in various ways to very deliberately shape how people behave, i.e. the whole "homosexuality is Biblically wrong". When in fact there was no mention of it in the original texts. His debunking shorts are super funny.

Yes, you're missing a lot actually. A lot of christians don't see the bible as "true" in a sense that every word, every claim is historical. On the contrary, they assume only a divine influence, or even no influence at all but the faithfull writings of the people who worshipped the "true" god at the time. In these terms, the bible is very much a human product and can be studied like any other book. The "issue" is that with all our modern knowledge, including those bible studies, it appears more and more evident that the bible isn't "true", so the people who holds this view are whining about it the loudest, so that's probably the side of christianity you've been exposed to as a life-long atheist.

And how most people think of Christianity in this era of megachurches and infotainment preachers.

@@skyinou I appreciate your response! I’ll be honest that I’m still confused, though I’m having trouble articulating it in a KZfaq comment :). I’m definitely going to seek out a Christian friend to delve into this more because I really genuinely want to understand. I’ll try here though to put something into words (please bear with me)… if we instead assume the Bible isn’t “true” but is a creation by humans, why do folks apply it’s teachings to influence how they live their lives? Yes, when I read fiction I can gain insight and wisdom that I then apply to my life, but that’s a conscious choice using my own logical reasoning skills. It’s recognizing that another human has articulated something about life that resonates with me and then I choose to adopt it. Perhaps that is in fact how folks approach the Bible, but that confuses me because if an all knowing God influenced the writing of the Bible then these stories are not simply stories to resonate with, but teachings to learn from as we are only human and God has more wisdom. Does that make any sense at all?? Also feel free to not respond, this is definitely not a convo for short KZfaq comments lol.

@@ka8544 "why do folks apply it’s teachings to influence how they live their lives?" - This is the million $$ question. I'll simplify it this way: Let's pretend that there are 100 claims about god in the bible. 40 are good principles and values, which can improve one's life. 20 are too bad to represent a good god, so they must be misunderstandings by people from 2000-2500 years ago. What do the average christian do with the 10 others? They will consider this: since god is good, and they're not sure if these are good or bad, there's a higher chance that they are good since they are in the bible. It's not an intellectual exercice, it's a faith and religious (practices and rites) one. It's also random laziness. People don't spend enough time on every issue - I'm not blaming here: we just don't have enough time in our lives -unless they are directly concerned. Then there is the social aspect; these christians will talk among themselves, and with their preachers, and again may conclude that something is bad or good depending on their feeling inside that bubble (also keep in mind that these bubbles come from 2 millenia during which there was more faith toward the bible) and social pressure. Pointing out that something is bad in the bible is not looked upon kindly, even if alone in their home they may know that some verses are bad. But from an outside perspective, yes, it very much is one form or the other of cognitive dissonance. It's also a very deep circular reasoning: the bible was considered good at its time, so people decided that this god is good. Now christians try to interpret most of the stories in the bible as good because of it, even if the story doesn't particularly point to that. But it's hard to make christians acknowledge that.

isn't evil just another form of ignorance?

That’s not a quite true: he believes that words and language have no *inherent* meaning, which is true. All language is arbitrarily socially constructed

@@weirdlanguageguy and therefore nothing really has a message

@@kylestephens4133 although nothing has an inherent message, things can still carry messages. They're just highly contingent on cultural context and social construction

@@weirdlanguageguy I categorically reject the notion that nothing has an inherent message, as do linguists.

​@@kylestephens4133 ...which linguists do you talk to?

We are often serious and thoughtful 🤷🏼‍♀️ We don’t “just bash the church” at all and we constantly talk about healthy spirituality after religion.

'after you have "deconstructed" somebody's faith, they have nothing left.' I mean, there are all the materials still, you just have to take those blocks and build something of your own on your own terms. That's why it's "deconstruction" and not "destruction". But yes, if you don't have a good safety net in place, it can be devastating to have no other structures to support you as you're in the vulnerable period of reconstructing.

Sorry to hear that’s your experience! Hopefully you heal soon and can enjoy his work! Good luck