- Stephen C. on Amish and Haredi Family Sizes: “ji: There’s enough pronatalism in the canon (e.g. 132) I think I’m safe seeing the “multiply and replenish” imperative as being core and not just a false tradition of our fathers. I expound on this at greater detail here: http://archive.timesandseasons.org/2022/07/siring-gods/index.html Kent Larsen: Higher-order wives do have marginally fewer children than monogamous wives and first wives, but at the macro level polygyny leads to higher marital rates and lower marriage ages leading to higher fertility at the societal level. I was involved in the Mormonr post on this subject that has more citations: https://mormonr.org/qnas/fX8STb/polygamy_and_population_growth” Feb 2, 10:48
- on CFM 1/27-2/2: Poetry for “My Work Shall Go Forth”: “I’m afraid I don’t understand what you mean.” Feb 2, 10:43
- on Amish and Haredi Family Sizes: “Isn’t fertility usually measured as number of children per woman? That tends to reduce the effect of polygamy, for example. And in that vein, I have heard that the number of children per woman was actually lower under LDS polygamy, right?” Feb 2, 10:22
- on Amish and Haredi Family Sizes: “I wonder if high fertility is commanded by God, or if it is a leftover desire from the past? Or, in other words, I wonder if low fertility is a problem that God expects us to solve?” Feb 1, 22:11
- on Amish and Haredi Family Sizes: “To the first point, I do think the less permeable borders helps retain their strength of conviction and, ultimately, norms. The Amish can keep it up because they have a fairly strict “sacred canopy” that they control over their children. If little Ezekiel can go play X-Box with the liberal Amish next door neighbors with two kids when he’s at their house it becomes harder to insist on your own boundaries and lifestyle, but if nobody has an X-box and everybody around you agrees that you shouldn’t have X-boxes it becomes easier to enforce the norm. Perhaps another workable model is the Catholic one that has specific intentional religious communities nested within a broader religion, so if you want that level of strictness you can join a cloistered, highly bounded monastery, but you also have a more relaxed variant in general parishes, all within the same tradition. We kind of have our version of this with missions, where we live Amish and Haredi-level strictness (if not more), and I along with many others have fond memories and lessons learned from our own 1.5-2 year stint as religious itinerants, but I’d kind of hate to do it again and I’m glad that I can read a book and engage the outside world. Of course, here the only variable is retention of norms and strength of religious conviction when there are other variables at play, and disengaging from the outside world typically includes disengaging from much that is wonderful about it such as scientific discoveries and understanding and the diversity of experiences and people, plus it makes faith more brittle when it does interact with the outside world because it isn’t prepared for it, but if policing of norms is the only variable under consideration then yes, I think the stricter boundaries does lead to that. As far as to the second question, in terms of preferences I personally think we could stand a little more tension, but I’m having a hard time seeing a mechanism for a sharp reversal short of something big like another call for intentional communities, another physical gathering, or something like polygamy. As faith becomes more of a chosen and not inherited/cultural institution I suspect there will be a drift to more tension as selection effects start to kick in and the people who keep going to the temple are the ones who really want to go to the temple and do all that entails (I think this is why younger Catholic priests are exponentially more conservative than their elders), but this will be a gradual process.” Feb 1, 19:31
- on CFM 1/27-2/2: Poetry for “My Work Shall Go Forth”: “Why there’s no Lihi instead nephi?” Feb 1, 18:59
- on Joseph Smith, Plato, and the Apostasy: “That’s a good point, Frank, but I see that more as a condemnation of Protestantism than Catholicism. JS was considering Protestant churches at that time. Again “the old Catholic church is worth more than all” the Protestant churches. I do see 1 Nephi 13:26 as a rejection of the Protestants’ claim of Platonic corruption of Christianity.” Feb 1, 09:00
- on Joseph Smith, Plato, and the Apostasy: ““He clearly rejected the Protestant notion of corruption through addition.” I am having trouble seeing that in the provided quotes. I agree Joseph saw a lot of what he did as restoring things, but where does he explicitly reject the idea of there being any corruption through addition? Isn’t corruption through addition a reasonable reading of “they teach for doctrines the commandments of men, having a form of godliness, but they deny the power thereof.” since the “commandments of men” would be addition?” Feb 1, 08:47
- on Joseph Smith, Plato, and the Apostasy: “The question of “what was the standard” is a useful one. I see Moroni 7 as an important part of how JS saw things. “Search diligently in the light of Christ … and if ye will lay hold upon every good thing, and condemn it not, ye certainly will be a child of Christ” (19). It’s important to not condemn the many “good things” that are out there. I also quote what EP Thomson said about William Blake, which I think gives important insights into how visionaries like Blake (and perhaps JS) would evaluate sources. “Blake had a different way of reading. He would look into a book with a directness which we might find to be naïve or unbearable, challenging each one of its arguments against his own experience and his own ‘system.’” And this way of reading suggests why Blake didn’t cite sources: Thompson argues, “He took each author (even the Old Testament prophets) as his equal, or as something less. And he acknowledged as between them, no received judgements as to their worth, no hierarchy of accepted ‘reputability.’” E. P. Thompson, Witness against the Beast: William Blake and the Moral Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), xii, xvi.” Feb 1, 07:49
- on Amish and Haredi Family Sizes: “I have a couple, contrary thoughts. First, it seems like in both cases, these communities have high fertility, and a linguistic border to larger society, and a religious withdrawal from society. But wouldn’t the religious community as a whole be larger (and stronger) if it also included less fertile, less secluded members surrounding the core? Or to look at it another way, wouldn’t the Yiddish and Pennsylvania Dutch language communities be stronger if they also included the less religious? Maybe an extreme degree of tension with larger society is one path to high fertility, but it seems less optimal in other ways – with less tension, you’d still have your Haredi or Amish core with large families, but also a population who were less religious and less fertile, but still present as members of the community. The second thought runs counter to that. You don’t think pronatalist rhetoric can shift our numbers much, and I agree – but what if it was accompanied by a ratcheting up of tension with the outside world? We’ve been gradually decreasing tension with society for around 150 years, but what if there was a sharp course reversal, maybe not as far as the Haredi and Amish, but a distinct step in that direction?” Feb 1, 04:44
