Schaun Wheeler

Co-Founder @ Anthropologist + Data Scientist.

[Schaun Wheeler @schaunw]

@knonX__ @PopePiusIXStan You can't even bother to learn a different perspective just for the sake of interacting nicely with fellow Christians? No one's saying you have to believe it. It's just a matter of being informed.

[Schaun Wheeler @schaunw]

@Nearhorizons @PopePiusIXStan Charles Freeman, A.D. 381. Argues that Trinitarian orthodoxy was locked in less by theological consensus than by imperial power, when the emperor Theodosius made Nicene doctrine official and suppressed the alternatives.

[Schaun Wheeler @schaunw]

@Nearhorizons @PopePiusIXStan Larry Hurtado, How on Earth Did Jesus Become a God? Argues that worship of Jesus as divine appears astonishingly early — within two decades of the crucifixion, among Jewish monotheists — driven by religious experience and devotional practice, not a slow centuries-long climb.

[Schaun Wheeler @schaunw]

@PopePiusIXStan I find it so strange when people want God to be something bigger and more powerful than anything they can imagine, but at the same time to fit so neatly into existing mental frameworks that they can intuitively understand Him at a glance.

[Schaun Wheeler @schaunw]

@jkimballcook The Isaiah reading scene comes from someone writing 30-60 years after Jesus's death, is absent from Mark and Matthew, and follows the Greek text of the Septuagint rather the the Hebrew text a Galilean would have read aloud. We can't use that conclude Jesus was literate.

[Schaun Wheeler @schaunw]

@JS_StrngstSldr @BuzzzStryker And cohesion ≠ one author. A redactor leveling the text, a school of Isaiah, or imitation by a later writer all predict the same uniformity. Even a real signal doesn't get you from "stylistically unified" to "single author."

[Schaun Wheeler @schaunw]

@JS_StrngstSldr @BuzzzStryker The 11 books aren't the right positive control. They differ in author, genre, date, and topic at once and were never edited together. The claim is one redacted book with a hidden seam. Telling separate books apart doesn't show the method can find a seam where one exists.

[Schaun Wheeler @schaunw]

@JS_StrngstSldr @BuzzzStryker That paper is a methodological mess: the key variable's discriminating power is never established, the control design confounds authorship with genre/topic/era, there's no positive control, multiple comparisons go uncorrected, and rates come with no error bars.

[Schaun Wheeler @schaunw]

@JS_StrngstSldr The entire story revolves around Pharaoh rebuking Abram precisely because he understood "sister" to mean not-wife. The text treats it as deception.

[Schaun Wheeler @schaunw]

@JS_StrngstSldr This is simply false. Egyptian has distinct words for sister (sn.t) and wife (ḥmt). They are not the same word. There's a poetic convention where lovers address each other as "brother" and "sister" — but that's literary trope (also found in Song of Songs), not lexical identity.

[Schaun Wheeler @schaunw]

@veeveejoan @justin_hart To be clear: I think the connection is interesting and worth discussing. My complaint isn't about Joseph Smith — it's about a video that presents a contested parallel as miraculous proof while quietly omitting the obvious naturalistic source. It's misinformation.

[Schaun Wheeler @schaunw]

@veeveejoan @justin_hart I already pointed out the distortions above. The stories don't align but the video says they do. There's a plausible natural explanation for the name but the video says there is none. It's dishonest by virtue of how sloppy it is.

[Schaun Wheeler @schaunw]

@stcuthbertson @justin_hart To be clear: I think the connection is interesting and worth discussing. My complaint isn't about Joseph Smith — it's about a video that presents a contested parallel as miraculous proof while quietly omitting the obvious naturalistic source. It's misinformation.

[Schaun Wheeler @schaunw]

@stcuthbertson @justin_hart The guy in BoG is a GIANT sent by other giants to ASK Enoch to interpret their dreams — a request for prophetic help. The guy in Moses is a HUMAN issuing a hostile credentials challenge. "Challenge/ask/listen" covers both only by broadening the description until it does.

[Schaun Wheeler @schaunw]

@HarkHugh @PopePiusIXStan 1 Tim 3:7 makes the logic explicit: they must "have a good report of them which are without." The concern is the church's standing with outsiders, not the candidate's interior state. Stop proof-texting with passages you haven't thoroughly studied.

[Schaun Wheeler @schaunw]

@HarkHugh @PopePiusIXStan The word "blameless" comes from the Greek anepilēmptos ("not able to be laid hold of", 1 Timothy 3:2) and anenklētos ("not called to account", Titus 1:7) - social terms borrowed from Hellenistic civic discourse, not descriptions of sinlessness. It means to look respectable.

[Schaun Wheeler @schaunw]

@LDS_Dems For goodness sake, please do just a few minutes of investigation into a claim before endorsing it. This video is rampant with misinformation. Spreading it helps no one except the Church's critics.

https://t.co/FrVsVotmTA

[Schaun Wheeler @schaunw]

@justin_hart They aren't the same story. In the Book of Giants, Mahaway is a *giant* - son of Baraqel - sent by other giants to beg Enoch to interpret their nightmares. In the Book of Moses, Mahijah is a *human* adversary issuing a legal challenge: "tell us plainly who thou art."

[Schaun Wheeler @schaunw]

@veeveejoan @justin_hart It's ok to lie - say two stories are similar when they actually aren't, and omit readily available competing hypotheses, knowing most of your audience won't fact check - so long as the lie supports something true?