{"id":28517,"date":"2015-11-14T01:00:10","date_gmt":"2015-11-14T06:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=28517"},"modified":"2015-11-04T21:00:28","modified_gmt":"2015-11-05T02:00:28","slug":"qotd-which-religious-group-should-organize-your-hypothetical-rescue-from-terrorists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2015\/11\/14\/qotd-which-religious-group-should-organize-your-hypothetical-rescue-from-terrorists\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: Which religious group should organize your hypothetical rescue from terrorists?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Suppose you were kidnapped by terrorists, and you needed someone to organize a rescue. Would you prefer the task be delegated to the Unitarians, or the Mormons?<\/p>\n

This question isn\u2019t about whether you think an individual<\/em> Unitarian or Mormon would make a better person to rush in Rambo-style and get you out of there. It\u2019s about whether you would prefer the Unitarian Church or the Mormon Church to coordinate your rescue.<\/p>\n

I would go with the Mormons. The Mormons seem effective<\/em> in all sorts of ways. They\u2019re effective evangelists. They\u2019re effect[ive] fundraisers. They\u2019re effective at keeping the average believer following their commandments. They would figure out a plan, implement it, and come in guns-blazing.<\/p>\n

The Unitarians would be a disaster. First someone would interrupt the discussion to ask whether it\u2019s fair to use the word \u201cterrorists\u201d, or whether we should use the less judgmental \u201cmilitant\u201d. Several people would note that until investigating the situation more clearly, they can\u2019t even be sure the terrorists aren\u2019t in the right in this case. In fact, what is \u201cright\u201d anyway? An attempt to shut down this discussion to focus more on the object-level problem would be met with cries of \u201ccensorship!\u201d.<\/p>\n

If anyone did come up with a plan, a hundred different pedants would try to display their intelligence by nitpicking meaningless details. Eventually some people would say that it\u2019s an outrage that no one\u2019s even considering<\/em> whether the bullets being used are recyclable, and decide to split off and mount their own<\/em>, ecologically-friendly rescue attempt. In the end, four different schismatic rescue attempts would run into each other, mistake each other for the enemy, and annhilate themselves while the actual terrorists never even hear about it.<\/p>\n

(if it were Reform Jews, the story would be broadly similar, but with twenty<\/em> different rescue attempts, and I say this fondly, as someone who attended a liberal synagogue for ten years)<\/p>\n

One relevant difference between Mormons and Unitarians seems to be a cultural one. It\u2019s not quite that the Mormons value conformity and the Unitarians value indivduality \u2013 that\u2019s not exactly wrong<\/em>, but it\u2019s letting progressives bend language to their will, the same way as calling the two sides of the abortion debate \u201cpro-freedom\u201d and \u201canti-woman\u201d or whatever they do nowadays. It\u2019s more like a Mormon norm that the proper goal of a discussion is agreement, and a Unitarian norm that the proper goal of a discussion is disagreement.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a saying I\u2019ve heard in a lot of groups, which is something along the lines of \u201cdiversity is what unites us\u201d. This is nice and memorable, but there are other groups where unity<\/em> is what unites them, and they seem to be more, well, united.<\/p>\n

Scott Alexander, “Reactionary Philosophy In An Enormous, Planet-Sized Nutshell”, Slate Star Codex<\/em><\/a>, 2013-03-03.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Suppose you were kidnapped by terrorists, and you needed someone to organize a rescue. Would you prefer the task be delegated to the Unitarians, or the Mormons? This question isn\u2019t about whether you think an individual Unitarian or Mormon would make a better person to rush in Rambo-style and get you out of there. It\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,41,11],"tags":[360,446,257],"class_list":["post-28517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humour","category-quotations","category-religion","tag-christianity","tag-judaism","tag-terrorism"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-7pX","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28517"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28517\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28518,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28517\/revisions\/28518"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}