Dismissing good advice because the person who gave it to you has flaws is the epitome of logical behavior!
Let’s assume I didn’t know about vaccines and I went to ask for advice to someone. How would I know if what they told me was good advice?
I would ask myself, are they an authority on the subject? Where do they draw the advice from? Who says they are an authority? What did they have to do to earn that authority? Do other authorities say the same?
Are mormons authorities on logic? Why trust advice about logic from someone that doesn’t follow logic?
A liar can say that lying is bad. A killer can say that killing is bad. It just so happens that the advice is good, in spite of who said it.
You ended up agreeing with me in that last sentence.
Disregarding advice you know is good already because you don’t respect the source is an emotional, not logical, choice.
Yes, it’s emotional to disregard advice you know is good. However it is a logical reaction to have.
It is logical for humans not to trust or accept advice from a hypocrite, even if that advice may be good. It’s not about the advice itself, but about who gives it. That was my point.
Unfortunately humans have emotions, and those emotions factor into our so called “logical decisions”. To ignore our emotions is to pretend we are machines, and machines wouldn’t be in these situations, as a machine wouldn’t give advice it doesn’t follow itself.
Now, if we were machines, sure, if the advice is good, it’s good, doesn’t matter who gives it.
Furthermore, if I already know the advice is good, did I receive advice?
Well, OK, sure. Irrationality is logical in that it’s human.
That’s one great reason to learn self awareness and mindfulness.
Wow Reddit really did migrate here
Yes, how dare I punch down on the poor Mormon Church!
The problem is that the joke is old and isn’t interesting. It’s like talking about weather and then claiming you’re Oscar Wilde.
Person: “Hey, aren’t religious people wacky?”
*Crickets*
I’m not apathetic about religious people because unfortunately they continue to occupy positions of authority in our society.
If religious people were actually dismissed in the way you describe I could understand your perspective. They are not mocked liked this though and are very much taken seriously.
But you’re not talking about that, you’re mocking an individual for being religious.
They are not mocking them for being religious. They are mocking their advice about logic, which comes from a religious person.
Because you know, religion & logic don’t go hand in hand.
Isn’t the boss a position of authority?
unfortunately they continue to occupy positions of authority in our society.
No need to pick on religious people in this case. There are plenty of people with various character flaws in positions of power / authority.
If religious people were actually dismissed in the way you describe I could understand your perspective. They are not mocked liked this though and are very much taken seriously.
So you don’t know about:
- Bill Maher
- Bill Hicks
- George Carlin
- South Park
- any comedy movie that involves a religious character
- the Internet
Dude was talking about religion in government and your best rebuttal is people make fun of stuff on comedy shows?
Culture doesn’t affect government? That’s new to me.
Please tell me how south park poking fun at you, as they do with everyone, affects your ability to legislate. Last i checked the jokes haven’t stopped anyone from cramming their religion down our throats
Notably those examples make absolutely no difference on how religious people in authority positions frequently use their religion to guide how they use their authority (which ain’t fucking cool)
Yup, I’ve heard this one before as well. Got anything new to add to the discussion?
Someones upset their church is only 95% in charge
Do you? Your only replies are just you being shocked nobody agrees with you.
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Ah yes, makes 100 bln dollar profit illegally and tax free, pay 5m fee as punishment. What a fucking joke.
I never accused you of punching down lol
And not just any reddit, but 2010 reddit – in both the best and the worst ways.
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I mean, I can’t think of another sect of christianity that requires special underwear. Outerwear, sure, but underwear? Creepy.
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It is a little different when your origin story is very obviously a mediocre conman having his shitty cons described by multiple eye witness accounts and having your myths be 2000 years old with no first hand accounts.
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Like I said, it’s different when you have the actual daily journals of people calling it a con.
Or his wife calling him a liar after he stuck his head in a hat to get his prophecies.
Like, regardless of the fact that to religious types the age of the belief has value, it’s just a whole different level of obvious bullcrap beyond simply believing in the supernatural.
Most christians pretend to be cannibals as a weekly rite.
The person they are cannibalizing is the same one they worship.
The extra layer of clothes is the most boring thing about mormons.
Just Catholics, iirc.
No, there are plenty that do it. Not weekly, but most do it yearly. I’ve known nondenominational places, lutheran, baptist, episcopalian, and methodists that do.
I think Protestant do it too
yep, which is most christians
50.1% as of this writing! They should call a vote now while they still can.
Eastern and Oriental Orthodox are also Catholics (just not roman catholics)
Catholics are the only ones who aren’t pretending, they honestly believe they’re cannibals
Really? Is it not painfully obvious this is a symbolistic practise / metaphor
You can say whatever you like bud, its creepy to roleplay as cannibals as a core of your religion.
Well, when you put it like that…
It’s harder to believe because it’s easily disproven. Turns out Joseph’s “translation” of ancient Egyptian wasn’t inspired.
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Not just as easy. There’s a lot of room for someone to say “this was actually just metaphor” or even “these are just stories to convey values”.
Take the tower of Babel, for example, we know it never happened. However, a more progressive Christian or Jewish tradition can use the story to talk about how sometimes cultural differences are simply surface level, we are all ultimately the same people. Mormons aren’t so lucky because the book of Mormon was pitched as a literal history and part of the book has literal refugees from the tower of Babel.
Unlike the Bible, we have the author of the religion who very well documented how literal everything is. We don’t even know who authored nearly any book in the Bible or their motivations.
I’m not arguing for a god, I’m an atheist exmo. However, there’s a pretty big difference between a bunch of old stories compiled together into a book and a book of fiction that the author went out of his way to claim was “the most correct book ever written”.
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I mostly agree with you, though the babble has the upper hand with older and better-funded propaganda campaigns spanning more time and regions and organizations using it for political manipulation. It’s had more polishing, rewriting, adapting, and state-backed proliferation (including by use of armies to wipe out competitors). It also borrowed many more mythical elements from other existing religions. Joseph Smith’s version is newer, and the mythology a bit sloppier, so the average person can conceivably judge the odd parts of its modern context easier. One is star wars and the other is an underfunded filler show on Netflix on its second season in 10 years by comparison. Which one has the better chance of having someone in your life convince you to give it a shot, and disincentivizes you from criticizing it in social settings more?
No but any religion is similarly “illogical”, Mormons are the same as other Christians with extra “m”
I think it’s pretty logical to outwardly seem like a Mormon in Utah, so I guess it depends.
As someone who has worked with and for Mormons, it’s a special kind of hell. Usually some flavor of narcissist stunted at a middle-school level of inward development.
The gaslighting-with-the-biggest-smile-and-softest-words is too fucking real. It actually boggles me when I see how others fall for it
Spot on. I’m currently trying to get out of Utah, so it’s all too painfully real.
That is bigoted thing to say
Nothing will make you more anti-Mormon than getting to know some Mormons.
It’s accurate thing to say.
I’ve known some really nice Mormons, but if you dig below the surface, they have a lot of crazy ideas. A lot.
Actually, mormons think they are very logical. I’ve seen many instances of people talking about how Brandon Sanderson being Mormon is why he’s so thorough at world building.
Does he write his world building on golden plates?
Perhaps he dictates his stories using a seer stone while staring into a hat?
dum dum dum dum dum
The flaw of the meme isn’t that it’s picking on religion, the flaw of it is that it assumes illogical views negate logical views. Believing that angels hid golden plates in New England doesn’t negate good looks at a P&L in the same way that a Christian working at NASA that believes a dude rose from the dead doesn’t negate good math to get a satellite into space. In the same way that me being agnostic doesn’t mean I’m always logical and rational in every situation.
I argue the opposite and I think the difference is that you believe religious belief can be demarcated in a persons mind where I think it influences all decision making.
I.e. Does my boss make decisions on P&L because they are good at business or because they prayed on it?
You and my boss might look at all the same information and arrive at the same conclusion except how can you be sure that the path my boss took reflects your own logic and not prayer?
If the information about your world passes through a filter to determine if it fits your world view or not it’s possible to serendipitously make the logical decision but it doesn’t mean fundamentally you accept the logic of the situation at hand.
If your foundational understanding of what constitutes possibility, I.e. that when Jesus died he was transported to north America for 3 days prior to being resurrected I have trouble believing this doesn’t influence your day to day decisions.
A slightly different hot take:
Professing to be a mormon is a logical decision if your culture is mormon.
Disinterest in pursuing a more empirical world view is not illogical if one would have to damage their relationship with those closest to them in its pursuit.
(Sorry about the pretentiousness of that (and this) sentence, I can’t find a more vernacular way of expressing these ideas succinctly).
What you said (and such defenses of religion) makes me think: If I see someone ready to jump off a bridge, and I can stop them against their will, should I? I mean, inside their brain they are ending their suffering. They don’t see value in life. But I do. Whose worldview is more important?
What if it was drugs, should I stop them? What if it was drinking every weekend? What if it was refusing to go outside without a mask in the middle of a pandemic?
What if it was following the cult of their parents, which encourages abuse & discrimination of women, opression of minorities, supression & regression of scientific advances and further indoctrination of future generations? If I have the power to get someone out of their cult against their will, should I?
Or what if it was continuing to feed a system that brainwashes people into thinking that monetary gain is what’s important in life, that the system is infallible, and no alternatives exist?
Should we act against what we perceive as wrong, even if it’s against the will of other persons? Where do we draw the line? Who decides what is right and what is wrong?
Following my first example, it is logical that a person that sees no value in life would want to commit suicide. It is logical to want to end one’s suffering. It would be illogical for them to continue living a life of misery and suffering. It would be illogical for them to expect changes for the better, given their past experiences.
So why do we stop suicides? Why do we prevent them? Isn’t it logical for such person to commit suicide?
I’m happy my comment has sparked some thought. You asked a lot of open ended questions and I can’t take the time to address them right now I hope you’re not disappointed when you learn all i have to say right now is that:
Not every suicide is illogical, and I’m thankful to live in a society that recognizes that, and provides medical assistance in dieing but I don’t have enough information to weigh in with more specificity than that.
Thanks for voicing this, I also find it interesting.
The problem is, I’ve been a supporter of suicide for ages, so I feel like in not your target audience. I guess it’s really tricky because often the logic is using flawed assumption or blinders - no one is an island, it’s impossible to die without affecting those around you…
Obviously religions, world views and differences of priorities are more nuanced, but I really appreciate your approach of not interfering with ones agency.
Is there a tie-in with the paradox of tolerance, here? Feels like it
For one thing, some suicides leave dependents behind who can’t take care of themselves without the person who committed suicide.
If that was pretentious, I must be some kind of stuck up asshole
It’s like fat people telling you to eat healthy. Just because they don’t do it doesn’t mean it’s bad advice
Reminds me of the rabbi whose congregation complained about his many vices, saying that he’s supposed to be better, he’s supposed to show them the way. So he brought them to the edge of the town and showed them a direction sign.
“Does it show you the way? It does. And do you want it to go anywhere?”
But it does mean they shouldn’t be taken seriously for any kind of health related advice in general.
Wait till you hear about Jehova’s witnesses.
Not that this is a competition, but both score about equally high on the BITE model for identifying cults.
Blood transfusions and birthday celebrations are the work of the devil?
Say it isn’t so!
Fun fact: “blood transfusions”-less techniques are useful to develop in case of blood shortage among other reasons. So Jehovah witness’s stubbornness at least have some benefits for medecine. Sucks that it also kills some of them though.
I wish I could stop hearing them knock on my door. They don’t just knock once.
South Park pretty much summed it up. A nonsensical religion is a rational cost for being in a family is nice to each other.
Except it’s not actually going to get you the results they claim to deliver…
Being in a family that is nice to each other is not exclusive or in any way more likely for Mormons, or really any religion.
If anything it could be easily argued that it would likely trend away from religious households, but without solid data I think it’s better to assume it’s most likely to just be the same likelihood regardless of religious or spiritual beliefs.
However, in the case of Mormons, they actively train their followers to effectively disavow even their own family if they choose to move away from the religion.
I think you’re thinking of the Amish.
Huh? No I am not. I am quite familiar with what I am talking about.
Many religious groups practice shunning. It’s quite common.
Y’all take yourselves too seriously
I mean it’s damn close but if you continue to zoom out you’ll see another point even further away. That my dear is the GOP.
What do you call an 8 year old girl in Utah who can out run her Bishop?
I don’t know. Would you tell me?
Safe
I hope she’s a good distance runner since there’s no mass transit in much of Utah. It also explains why Japanese internment camps were located there and modern juvenile detention centers can often be found in places like Blanding, Utah: it’s difficult to physically and anonymously escape.
Well, do they believe the crazy bullshit, or are they just an opportunist looking to make connections? Church is lucrative.
How could you be a Mormon if you don’t genuinely believe that Jackson County Missouri is the actual location of the Garden of Eden?
The funny thing is, I grew up with a bunch of Mormons for friends and one teacher I know of, and I never found out about most of the stuff they believe until much later. At least they (the ones I grew up with anyway) have the decency to not go around spreading their dogma to non-believers until they’ve already thoroughly roped them into their cult.
Boss says “make logical decisions”. Insights like this are why they pay him the big bucks. Not just anybody can come up with such insights. (/s)
Most people don’t actually know what logic is. I would ask him to define logic to see where he’s coming from. Because most people either don’t have a definition or if they do it’s different than the one the person they’re talking to has. But to do that, you’ll also want a definition you could explain to someone else going into asking the question.
I’ll take a swing at it. I’m curious how I’ll do if I just wing it.
Logic is a set of rules that can be used to form repeatable results based on given information. It’s often built using one’s own knowledge and experience. Logic does not require producing accurate results. Flawed logic is still logic. Logic also does not guarantee that the results are the desired results, this is sometimes described as “garbage in, garbage out”.
Is that satisfactory?
Boss just wants everyone to take a big deep breath (and pray?) before making a big decision
And taking a step back and taking a moment to see how you feel about the options is pretty sound advice.
