why me wrote:It is the tone of the thread that gets me. The Dunn episode makes its appearance every two years or so on this board. The critics bring it up again and again to score points. I believe that we should let a dead horse rest in peace. Now if people wish to discuss this event with a humane tone, I would see no problem with this. But to score points against an entire church is wrong.
Dunn made a mistake. He was a human being just like anyone else and he made a mistake. I have no idea what was in his heart. I have no idea why he did what he did. But at the end of the day, it really doesn't matter. I don't expect perfection from anyone and that includes general authorities.
The bigger question is: why are you so condemning...showing no forgiveness?
There is a valid reason why this is a recurring theme in LDS critic/apologist discussions:
Thousands upon thousands of young Latter-Day Saints, while listening to Paul H. Dunn and his inspirational stories, experienced strong emotional reactions. Many, even perhaps an overwhelming majority of these people, ascribed those feelings as a manifestation of the truth of those things by the Holy Spirit.
The later revelation that Dunn's stories were
not true cannot be used as an argument that the Holy Ghost
does not or
has not or
can not witness the truth of things to a person of faith, but, it does force a rational person to conclude that those emotional feelings, which many LDS believe is the 'witnessing' by the Holy Ghost, can actually be false. In other words, while Dunn's legacy doesn't prove the Holy Ghost does not exist, it does prove that it is easy to be fooled into thinking a strong emotional reaction to a lie is a witness by the spirit.
And when it is that easy to mistake the two, there might as well not even be 'manifestation of the holy spirit'.
No leader of a sovereign country would print easy-to-counterfeit currency. The real stuff would become worthless because nobody can tell which is real and which is not. The same thing with angels and ghosts and still-small-voices. If you can't be sure your dealing with the genuine article, that you don't know how to tell the difference between the real-deal and an impostor, the system becomes worthless.
If the holy ghost is telling you to take a knife and sacrifice a child, and you aren't terribly certain it's THE holy ghost telling you... kinda defeats the purpose.
why me wrote:Who are they? I have never heard such a thing.
You claim to be a Mormon, but it's just like you've never even attended a single meeting.