Two of the most prominent Mormon progressives have just had excommunication proceedings opened against them, the NYT’s is reporting.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/12/us/two-activists-within-mormon-church-threatened-with-excommunication.html?_r=0

I loved the ‘probation’ letter that one of them put up. The lack of interest in thought crimes in the letter is 100% incompatible with Left thinking.

http://www.jrganymede.com/2014/06/11/kellys-probation-letter/

“Sure, ok, what is it?”

“Well, you’ve talked about the War of the Angels, and how Lucifer led an uprising against God, right?”

“Yeah, that’s all true.”

“Well,” the kid said, “I wanted to read more about that, so I’ve been looking for it in my Bible, but I can’t find it. Could you tell me what book it’s in?”

“Uhm, yeah, I think it’s in Corinthians,” Don said vaguely, and headed for the stage.

I snorked so loud, three people turned around and looked at me! … I’d spotted that kid the day I got here. He was smart and an unusually non-rigid thinker for this kind of school. I’m not a mindreader, but just looking at him, you could tell he was testing the youth preacher. The kid may not have known the whole “War of the Angels” thing was invented out of whole cloth by a foppy English poet in 1667, but he clearly knew darn well it wasn’t in the Bible.

Satan lies!

http://kevin-long.com/what.asp?who=kevin&id=269

Comments:
“I was massively entertained!” — Larry Niven

Religions of a creator God had the previously unarguable evidence of the watchmaker. Now that evidence is gone.

Argument from design may be untenable but it was never one of the classical philosophical proofs of theism.

Religions descended from the Hebrews had astonishing miracle of the survival of the Hebrews, which evidence is no longer miraculous, for we now know that their religion was simply correct to command them to bury their poop, wash their hands, etc

Hygiene rules don’t explain the Jews’ survival in the face of determined attempts to extirpate them by successive historical superpowers. And the Jews’ uncanny quality is not only a matter of survival against formidable odds, but also the world-historical influence they exert out of all proportion to their numbers.

Pope living Saint Francis tells us that Jesus came to teach us to be nice to the oppressed, not to redeem mankind from sin and death. Which makes Pope living Saint Francis holier than Jesus.

Pope Francis is problematical because he cannot be dismissed as a one-off embarrassment or loose cannon. He’s the culmination of half a century of institutionalised revolution that has aligned the Church with progressivism — what the then Cardinal Ratzinger frankly called “an attempt at an official reconciliation with the new era inaugurated in 1789″.

Aristotle’s realism says that universals are predicated on particulars, which means even if there are unknown unknown universals (a bit of a stretch) there is certainly no UNKNOWABLE unknown universal. Red does not exist because you see a red apple. Red exists. And some applies are red.

I notice you did not bother responding to my main points, by the way.

I am not aware of that. Perhaps your main points are less clear than you think they are.

What is wrong with some universals being unknown unknowns? Why would anyone doubt that some universals are unknown, or be surprised that there are universals that are unknown?

“Sure, but we would not bother to have a word for it.”

Meaning you accept there would be no way for someone with protanopia who subscribes to Aristotle’s realism to permit the possibility that the color red exists because to such a person nothing exists beyond existence, since universals depend on particulars. Such a stance would be basically incorrect – in this case, since we see red and know about protanopia, we happen to know it’s incorrect.

It takes a little intuition and perhaps faith to realize that there are UNKNOWN UNKNOWNS that, well, we don’t got names for.

I notice you did not bother responding to my main points, by the way.

Aristotelian/moderate realism predicates universals on particulars. As if the color red is real merely because man observes it in an apple. So would the color red exist were all men struck by protanopia?

Sure, but we would not bother to have a word for it.

Bees see colors made from the three additive primaries ultraviolet, blue, and green, while humans see colors made from the three additive primaries blue, green, and red. Yet no one doubts that what bees see are colors.

The color of a surface is the propensity of that surface to reflect some wavelengths more and others less, and exists regardless of whether we can see it or how accurately we can judge it.