Think racism isn't taught to Mormon kids? Think again.

[_Juggler Vain]

People aren't God's sock puppets and are therefore imperfect. God still uses imperfect people to achieve his purposes. We should recognize this nature and be a bit more realistic about it.

Equality's kid isn't a sock puppet either, so his point still stands.
-JV

Not really. Equality and his kids are going to make plenty of mistakes. The example only works if Equality was perfect AND did all the work himself (even if he makes the kid write it - it is still his work). In other words, the kid is his sock puppet.

Okay, so you are focusing on the fact that the subject matter of the kid's paper is history, which is hard to get right, even for an adult. I agree that a history paper isn't the closest parallel to the Book of Mormon.

The Book of Mormon is a volume of holy scripture comparable to the Bible. It is a record of God’s dealings with the ancient inhabitants of the Americas and contains the fulness of the everlasting gospel. The book was written by many ancient prophets by the spirit of prophecy and revelation.

Since the Book of Mormon is about what God did, and was written by God's chosen prophets who were there, using revelation from God, it's more like an authorized biography of God, written from the perspective of individual authors in their historical context, who each had insight and explanatory information supplied by God.

That's like Equality's kid writing a book about his dad, focusing on the summer that Equality coached his little league team to a last-place finish, using inside explanatory information supplied by Equality.

If the kid's book says Equality made the Jewish players on the team wear yarmulkes instead of baseball caps, and never allowed them to play in a game, "because Jews are sneaky and geeky," then what are we to conclude about that anecdote? Is it reasonable to say that Equality didn't really do that, and Equality's kid was just an anti-semite who (despite having special access to Equality himself for information) didn't understand what Equality was really thinking or doing? What about the fact that Equality had his friend publish and sell the book with that anecdote still in it? Is it still reasonable to say that the anecdote doesn't reflect Equality's view and approval?

Here is the Book of Mormon analogue to that:

If Nephi's book says God "did cause a skin of blackness to come upon [the Lamanites]," and God did this "because of their iniquity," so that "they might not be enticing unto [the Nephites]," then what are we to conclude about that anecdote? Is it reasonable to say that God didn't really do that, and Nephi was just a racist who (despite having special access to God himself for the information) didn't understand what God was really thinking or doing? What about the fact that God had Joseph Smith publish and sell the Book of Mormon with that anecdote still in it? Is it still reasonable to say that the anecdote doesn't reflect God's view and approval?

(by the way, If your term "sock puppet" encompasses the author of an authorized biography, then you have stretched it beyond any common notion of that term, and it is therefore meaningless. You'll have to come up with another word that doesn't hijack a common term and mislead everybody through pages of discussion.)

-JV

[_Equality]

JV,

I appreciate your extended analogy; it probably is better than the history paper one I came up with. But I think my original still works to make the point. If my kid gives me his paper and it says "King Harold killed Duke William at the Battle of Gettysburg in A.D. 1215" and I said, "looks good to me" and my kid turns in the paper and gets an F because, as everyone knows, Harold was killed in the battle and William won the Battle of Hastings in 1066, then one can't reasonably say that I had no responsibility for the contents of the paper. My son specifically asked me for information. I gave him misleading or incomplete information and allowed him to propagate something as true that was false when I had every opportunity to correct him and he was willing to receive my instructions. Instead, I kept my mouth shut and made him look like a fool. To have told my son in this analogy that his understanding was incorrect would not, by any stretch, turn him into a sock puppet.

According to the apologetic view of how this whole revelation thing supposedly works, God seems easily thwarted in his efforts to communicate to the world through prophets. Why does he keep choosing men who can't deliver simple messages clearly without injecting their own prejudices, biases, and false beliefs into the mix?

[_Tobin]

...

Your analogy is simplistic and doesn't reflect what the scriptures (Bible and Book of Mormon) are. You aren't looking at books written by God. You are looking at a generational record written by men of their experiences with God. They relate to the people, places, events, and so on associated with those experiences and their perceptions of God and what they believe best reflects what God told them. They aren't a biography of God. They are simply trying to convey what the authors perceived was most important to know about God, about what God said, and about what occurred.

[_Chap]

...

Your analogy is simplistic and doesn't reflect what the scriptures (Bible and Book of Mormon) are. You aren't looking at books written by God. You are looking at a generational record written by men of their experiences with God. They relate to the people, places, events, and so on associated with those experiences and their perceptions of God and what they believe best reflects what God told them. They aren't a biography of God. They are simply trying to convey what the authors perceived was most important to know about God, about what God said, and about what occurred.

Oh ... you mean "the opinions of men".

[_Juggler Vain]

JV,

I appreciate your extended analogy; it probably is better than the history paper one I came up with. But I think my original still works to make the point.

I think so too. It works just fine, and saying that a kid who relies on his more knowledgeable parent for editorial assistance has become nothing more than a "sock puppet" of the parent, is a ridiculous view of what that term means.

I understand the idea of God maybe allowing a prophet to express a revelation in his/her own words, and thus God doesn't force a prophet to be a "sock puppet," but to say, as Tobin is saying, that God allows a prophet to authoritatively express fundamental and substantive mistakes about the revelation because for God to correct them would make the prophet a "sock puppet" of some sort, is nonsensical.

-JV

[_Juggler Vain]

...

Your analogy is simplistic and doesn't reflect what the scriptures (Bible and Book of Mormon) are. You aren't looking at books written by God. You are looking at a generational record written by men of their experiences with God. They relate to the people, places, events, and so on associated with those experiences and their perceptions of God and what they believe best reflects what God told them. They aren't a biography of God. They are simply trying to convey what the authors perceived was most important to know about God, about what God said, and about what occurred.

Your description of the Bible and Book of Mormon ignores the existence of "prophecy and revelation." You are taking my "simplistic" analogy and simplifying it even further -- saying that Equality/God didn't actually assist the author of the book. I don't have any objection to you saying that God had no hand in what those guys wrote. I think you and Equality and I would agree on that point.

Your explanation still doesn't square with the idea that God asked Joseph Smith to publish the racist message of the Book of Mormon, and not only that, but also to establish an organization to evangelize the racist message for 180+ years (and counting). If you are denying that God had a hand in that, then I think we agree on that too.

What are you debating?

-JV

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

JV,

Tobin translator: Nuh-uh!

- VRDRC

[_Tobin]

Your description of the Bible and Book of Mormon ignores the existence of "prophecy and revelation." You are taking my "simplistic" analogy and simplifying it even further -- saying that Equality/God didn't actually assist the author of the book. I don't have any objection to you saying that God had no hand in what those guys wrote. I think you and Equality and I would agree on that point.

Your explanation still doesn't square with the idea that God asked Joseph Smith to publish the racist message of the Book of Mormon, and not only that, but also to establish an organization to evangelize the racist message for 180+ years (and counting). If you are denying that God had a hand in that, then I think we agree on that too.

What are you debating?

Again, you might have a point if God handed Joseph Smith the translation of the Book of Mormon and said, "Here - publish this." That isn't what happened.

As I've said in other threads, I don't buy the theory that Joseph Smith was merely a copyist of what God told him to write for the Book of Mormon. Otherwise, God would have done exactly that I prescribed (and Joseph Smith would have been completely unnecessary). And the Book of Mormon itself reflects this too in its poor use of 17th century English, its stammering uses of prepositional phrases in places of adverbs, and other obvious flaws with the text. By all accounts, it is a very flawed work and I easily attribute that to Joseph Smith and the fact he was human and imperfect.

[_Juggler Vain]

Your description of the Bible and Book of Mormon ignores the existence of "prophecy and revelation." You are taking my "simplistic" analogy and simplifying it even further -- saying that Equality/God didn't actually assist the author of the book. I don't have any objection to you saying that God had no hand in what those guys wrote. I think you and Equality and I would agree on that point.

Your explanation still doesn't square with the idea that God asked Joseph Smith to publish the racist message of the Book of Mormon, and not only that, but also to establish an organization to evangelize the racist message for 180+ years (and counting). If you are denying that God had a hand in that, then I think we agree on that too.

What are you debating?

Again, you might have a point if God handed Joseph Smith the translation of the Book of Mormon and said, "Here - publish this." That isn't what happened.

As I've said in other threads, I don't buy the theory that Joseph Smith was merely a copyist of what God told him to write for the Book of Mormon. Otherwise, God would have done exactly that I prescribed (and Joseph Smith would have been completely unnecessary). And the Book of Mormon itself reflects this too in its poor use of 17th century English, its stammering uses of prepositional phrases in places of adverbs, and other obvious flaws with the text. By all accounts, it is a very flawed work and I easily attribute that to Joseph Smith and the fact he was human and imperfect.

I still don't get where you are coming from. In what way do you think God did/does have a hand in the Book of Mormon and the LDS Church?

-JV

[_Darth J]

Again, you might have a point if God handed Joseph Smith the translation of the Book of Mormon and said, "Here - publish this." That isn't what happened.

As I've said in other threads, I don't buy the theory that Joseph Smith was merely a copyist of what God told him to write for the Book of Mormon.

And naturally you would be in a better position to know how Joseph Smith claimed to have produced the Book of Mormon than all of his contemporary close associates and acquaintances who spoke to the matter.

I, for, one, always enjoyed bearing my testimony on my mission that the Book of Mormon was translated by the power of Joseph Smith, and was full of substantive errors and human prejudices and attributing things to God that God never really said.