That's Not Doctrine!

[_Buffalo]

But you say there is no God at all, right? In your mind God isn't guiding anyone.

Yes

But if there was one, he wasn't guiding them.

How do you know? Maybe they just didn't listen?

If they're not listening to god - for more than 100 years, mind you - why should you listen to them?

Its quite clear that a good moral principle was part of at least some of their lives--love one another.

Obviously almost everyone has some moral principles. It's too bad that the LDS leadership took no leadership in standing up for minorities. They take a stand for white Mormons, not for women or blacks or gays.

[_Themis]

What "other important issues"? Themis, I'm not sure what you are referring to.

Any important issue reagarding doctrine or policy.

For that some challenge came at me saying, essentially, as memory has it, if the leaders can't get it right the first time, then there's no reason to trust them. I say, well why?

If they cannot get some of the important things right then it should concern one, although I know many are not, whether they can get other important things right. Fairly simple really.

Not one person ever, with the possible presumed exception of Jesus for believers, ever got everything right. Why should we expect leaders of the Church to have fully got things right? I simply can't see it all as a all or nothing thing, as it seems to be to many here. I also can't see the Church as infallible or its method for deriving truth as an infallible thing. In my mind, error should be expected.

You are again saying that we are demanding perfection. I thought we already covered this. We do not expect perfection. I would expect them to get things wrong, even on important issues if they are not lead by God. My trust would not be to high, and I would not just accept what they say as right as many members do, not neccessarily you. Now if the church is actually lead by God then it is reasonable that God would not allow important errors that affect the church. It's not like it would be hard for God to keep them on the correct path. The church teaches that it does just that, and we are not talking about God correcting all their individual weaknesses and such. If the priesthood ban was a mistake, one has to wonder why God just sat back and didn't at least correct BY who is supposed to be leading his church to aviod this mistake, and it wouldn't even mean that the church would have to start doing missionary work in black areas.

[_Buffalo]

Falsely keeping an entire race out of the priesthood and out of the temple for over a century is a pretty big error.

Consistently coming down on the wrong side of civil rights issues (slavery, 60s equal rights movement, ERA, gay marriage) is another.

Yep. Its reasonable that big errors are possible.

In which case, the LDS church is just another church.

Isn't this how the church feels about other Christian churches? Sort of guided by god, but prone to error because they're not the true and living church?

[_bcspace]

The net result was that the brethren abdicated leadership and got out of the business of defining and defending LDS doctrine. But, the example of the Sept 6 was clear, though the brethren weren't going to bother themselves with defining and defending doctrine, they were not going to let anyone else take up that job. The only thing left for defenders of the faith to do was to continue to bring up TnD more and more often. New scientific and historical discoveries were being made which put traditional LDS doctrines in precarious territory. The only thing defenders could do to salvage Mormon beliefs was to relegate certain beliefs to the status of TnD to save others.

Actually, the definition of doctrine got it's start in 1835 in the form of D&C 107 wherein we see that that the FP and Qo12 are equal in authority. The ramifications, therefore, for doctrine, is that both bodies must agree before something becomes doctrine. So the method whereby doctrine is defined hasn't changed much in over hundred years. The officially announced "Approaching Mormon Doctrine" simply repeats what LDS have known for years; that the two bodies counsel together to establish doctrine which is then published (the way to know what the two bodies have agreed upon).

[_moksha]

There is no systematized doctrinal structure in the Church. There never has been.

Out of curiosity, what then guides the correlation committee? Do they exercise the best guess method?

[_bcspace]

There is no systematized doctrinal structure in the Church. There never has been.

LDS doctrine is, and always has been, highly systematized.