"I know you still have a testimony!"

[_Pa Pa]

It must be your good looks...I guess they think that someone who is so sweet looking can't be anti-mormon. You still can't let it go. So, yes a part of you still believes. Admit it.

[_karl61]

Tonight I was over at the house where she was baby-sitting some of my nieces and nephews, and I had along my copy of "Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew" by Bart Ehrman. When I explained what was in that book she told me, directly, "stop right there, I'm not discussing any of this with you".

How bizarre. It's been a while since I've read it, but I remember thinking at the time that Ehrman's book complemented rather nicely certain LDS ideas of the Great Apostasy.

But maybe I was just seeing in it what I wanted....

Good book, at any rate.

Actually I think it's just the opposite of good news for the church. So long as there's no evidence for other versions of the faith than what became the traditional Christian orthodox version, the LDS can just say it's because the "real truth" was distorted and suppressed by what turned into the Catholic church. However, as more and more evidence of the competing versions of Christianity comes to light, and the competition between them which lead eventually to the consolidation into the single Christian orthodoxy (at least single for a while), the following fact becomes ever clearer and more poignant: Mormonism wasn't of them.

The LDS position is that the original Christian church, as founded by Jesus and his apostles, was Mormonism 1.0. This was picked apart and distorted and compromised as people apostatized from the truth, eventually leading to traditional Christian orthodoxy, the various creeds, etc. The huge, 800 pound gorilla in the room problem here is that nowhere, in all of the evidence of what the earliest versions of Christianity were like as they competed with various gospels, letters, apocalypses, doctrines, etc., is there any evidence that anything like Mormonism was being competed against and suppressed.

Where are the letters from Tertullian and others decrying Mormonism 1.0 being taught somewhere by some hold-outs? Where are the banned "Gospel of Jimbo" and "Apocalypse of Fred" that contain Mormonism 1.0?

Yea, we got F'd for believing there was a great apostasy. There are a lot of great letters and comments and writings by second and third and fourth generation Christians that reflect basic teachings of Jesus. When you read them you think they wanted their letters to be thought of in future generations like that of Paul, but it did not happen.


here is a great website with these people's thoughts:

http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/1clement.html

[_krose]

The Lord's children will fail to notice it, as usual.

That's because the Lord's children don't read their Ensign anyway. They just want to have it handy so it can be on the coffee table when the home teachers visit.

"coffee table" ???
Hasn't that piece of furniture any other name promoted by D&C 89 ?

That's funny, because in the home where I grew up, we called it the "Postum table" (although somewhat tongue in cheek).

[_The Nehor]

Pretty much all of my most direct, bluntest posts on MAD in recent months had been related to the gay marriage thing. I've seen TBMs in real life and online get really angry when you challenge them on gay marriage. I might as well say "I know that you know you're wrong, because your getting angry like this shows me that you still have a conscience that's bothering you."

On a similar note, I seem to recall you and others telling me that I know the church isn't true (but not in so many words). I'm just not sure how serious they are. In any case such people are wrong. As to who else knows the church is true, I wouldn't know (well, I'm pretty sure the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles do) and I don't see why I should bother worrying about it.

You're an interesting case. You already see some of the absurdity, and you already disbelieve some of the things that aren't actually true. I think that you really do know that the church is on the wrong side of at least some of the argument, and I think that, since you're a fairly logical and rational, and open-minded person, you're going to find yourself in this position more and more as time goes on. In your case, it's like your balloon has a hole in it, and you know this so you're blowing air in one end trying to keep it inflated, but someone in that position has to know that, ultimately, it's a lost cause.

So I don't know that you know it's not true, but I do know that you know enough that you ought to know that it's not true, and I feel fairly confident that, as time goes on, you'll allow yourself more and more to connect the dots and accept the rest of the non-truth of the church.

And it's the same with LOAP too, though he hasn't yet progressed as far in his willingness to admit to some of the asburdities in the church. I think he's at least caught a glimpse, and I don't think that can end well for him. I firmly believe that the only way either of you will retain your testimonies long-term is to basically walk away from Mormon apologetics and find a way never to think about these kinds of things again.

The truth is like acid, and it will eat away at the shell that years of attendance and practice in the LDS system built up around your testimony to protect it. I think the only way you can avoid this is to avoid the truth.

Kinda like my mother-in-law does. Tonight I was over at the house where she was baby-sitting some of my nieces and nephews, and I had along my copy of "Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew" by Bart Ehrman. When I explained what was in that book she told me, directly, "stop right there, I'm not discussing any of this with you". She simply will not have a conversation with me about anything to do with the church. She doesn't want to know anything at all from the anti or critical side. Not one thing. She'll be able to keep that shell up until the day she dies this way. You're not like this.

You don't see that that is almost the same thing as the OP's complaint? You're telling someone that you 'know' that eventually they will switch sides because they're good or smart or 'know it's true'.

[_Gazelam]

Seth,

"Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew" by Bart Ehrman

I got that book like 6 months ago and haven't read it yet, is it good?

[_Sethbag]

Yeah, Gaz. I haven't finished it yet. I read some of it every night before I go to bed, like I used to do in the old days with the scriptures. ;-) Thing is, I go to bed really late most nights, and so I'm tired and usually can't read very long before my eyelids start closing of their own volition. So it's taking me a while.

I'm probably going to go to bed early tonight, though, so I'll see if I can get through more of it tonight than usual. But yeah, so far what I've read has been pretty decent stuff.

I don't know what kind of thoughts you'll think when you read it, because you believe in the Bible and think that the earliest Christians were Mormonism 1.0, but to me, personally, reading this book with the eye of disbelief and with an understanding that it was all manmade, this helps make much better sense of it.

And one of the things I'm really struck by, as Ehrman discusses early competing versions of Christianity that were beaten by proto-orthodoxy, is that Mormonism is nowhere to be found. With all this evidence of competing versions of belief involving Jesus, isn't it odd that one with doctrines perfectly in synch with the modern LDS Church isn't one of them?

[_Gazelam]

Seth,

I read one of Ehrmans books about how the Bible came together, and he discusses that as he was doign his studys he lost his faith. I guess it was because he came from a all or nothing Bible background. I should pick the book off the shelf and read it, could be a catalist for some interesting thread discussion here.

Also if you want to find alot of Mormon type stuff I think Nibley has shown that many of the gnostics were claiming their authority by stating that they knew the secret teachings that Christ had only shared with the apostles. I don't know if youve ever read some of the essays in Temple And Cosmos, but you see alot of Mormonism in those early christian writings.

Its there.

Gaz

[_Dr. Shades]

I don't know if you've ever read some of the essays in Temple And Cosmos, but you see alot of Mormonism in those early christian writings.

In that case, I have a sneaking suspicion that Temple and Cosmos was written by a Mormon.

[_Sethbag]

Seth,
I read one of Ehrmans books about how the Bible came together, and he discusses that as he was doign his studys he lost his faith. I guess it was because he came from a all or nothing Bible background. I should pick the book off the shelf and read it, could be a catalist for some interesting thread discussion here.

I don't think it was "all or nothing" for him, so much as the obviousness of it all being manmade. Ehrman could see it was manmade - he could see the different fingerprints of different men all over the scriptures.

Also if you want to find alot of Mormon type stuff I think Nibley has shown that many of the gnostics were claiming their authority by stating that they knew the secret teachings that Christ had only shared with the apostles. I don't know if you've ever read some of the essays in Temple And Cosmos, but you see alot of Mormonism in those early christian writings.

Its there.

Gaz

I'm no expert on the Gnostics, but what little I have read about them leads me to believe that they are almost nothing like Mormonism, notwithstanding that both Mormons and Gnostics believed in secret teachings. It's the contents of those teachings that separates them. Again, I'm not a Gnostics guru so I don't think I could defend what I just said without some further reading, but that's the impression I got from what I did read so far.

[_TrashcanMan79]

I read one of Ehrmans books about how the Bible came together, and he discusses that as he was doign his studys he lost his faith.

If I recall correctly, it was actually the problem of evil that ultimately caused Ehrman's loss of faith. If you own the paperback version of Misquoting Jesus, you can read in the back of the book an interview with him where he mentions this while plugging his then forthcoming book God's Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question - Why We Suffer.