Again, Brandon, you've missed the point. I have a fairly good mental model of my wife's behavior. A fair picture of what she believes, what she wants, and how her thought processes work. With that, I can ask myself questions like, "Is she likely to smother me in my sleep?" And I can feel comfortable with my answers.
Even with the usual Christian candidates - with the exception of Mike Huckabee - the models don't have to deal with the possibility that "divine revelation" will bring about a radical change in them. Sure - one of them might really go insane and start having visions, but it's not an intrinsic part of their world view. Their canon is closed - their god doesn't talk to modern day prophets.
Mitt Romney, you, and Gordon Hinckley, are Mormons. You seem believe firmly in a religion that appears to much of the rest of the world to have been cooked up by a con man for his own benefit.
I find that general belief, along with many of the detailed aspects of it, completely inexplicable. There's no sensible model in which you can conclude that those beliefs are reasonable, but not also come to an almost arbitrary range of other absurd conclusions. I have no model for Hinckley's thought processes that rule out him doing something I'd consider insane, like maybe reversing the church's 1978 policy change with regard to blacks, because, to me, his thinking most definitely does not follow the "reasonable" paths.
No, wait - I do have one model in which his thought processes follow predictable paths: the cynical one in which he really is the true successor of a con man. The one in which he knows it's all bullshit. But in that model, it's even more likely he'd seek to influence a Mormon president inappropriately.
No one can guarantee the actions of other free agents.
Here, I think you partly hit on the trouble.
What we're questioning is whether he can legitimately be considered a "free agent", or whether the Mormon beliefs of ongoing revelation and the status of church leaders as prophets negates that.
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RE: The usual hypocritical religious load of junk
Again, Brandon, you've missed the point. I have a fairly good mental model of my wife's behavior. A fair picture of what she believes, what she wants, and how her thought processes work. With that, I can ask myself questions like, "Is she likely to smother me in my sleep?" And I can feel comfortable with my answers.
Even with the usual Christian candidates - with the exception of Mike Huckabee - the models don't have to deal with the possibility that "divine revelation" will bring about a radical change in them. Sure - one of them might really go insane and start having visions, but it's not an intrinsic part of their world view. Their canon is closed - their god doesn't talk to modern day prophets.
Mitt Romney, you, and Gordon Hinckley, are Mormons. You seem believe firmly in a religion that appears to much of the rest of the world to have been cooked up by a con man for his own benefit.
I find that general belief, along with many of the detailed aspects of it, completely inexplicable. There's no sensible model in which you can conclude that those beliefs are reasonable, but not also come to an almost arbitrary range of other absurd conclusions. I have no model for Hinckley's thought processes that rule out him doing something I'd consider insane, like maybe reversing the church's 1978 policy change with regard to blacks, because, to me, his thinking most definitely does not follow the "reasonable" paths.
No, wait - I do have one model in which his thought processes follow predictable paths: the cynical one in which he really is the true successor of a con man. The one in which he knows it's all bullshit. But in that model, it's even more likely he'd seek to influence a Mormon president inappropriately.
No one can guarantee the actions of other free agents.
Here, I think you partly hit on the trouble.
What we're questioning is whether he can legitimately be considered a "free agent", or whether the Mormon beliefs of ongoing revelation and the status of church leaders as prophets negates that.
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