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One of the many issues raised by certain former members: Has the Church lied about what it claims to be? In other words, has it deceived people about what it claims to be? Has it acted in bad faith in what it claims to be?

I am willing to make one last attempt at having a reasoned discussion on this question. Let's see how it goes.

To answer this questions, there must first be established what it is that the Church claims to be. Correct?

Do you agree that, simply and generally stated, the Church claims to be the Church of Jesus Christ of latter-day Saints?

Do you agree that, more specifically, the Church claims to be the gospel of Christ restored in the latter days, the kingdom of God on earth, the "one true Church" headed by Christ through his chosen prophets and priestood leaders?

Generally speaking, what else do you see the Church as claiming to be?

Loran:

This was the original concept of a thread below which became bogged down (quite by accident of course) in accusatins of deception and of having "set up" the thread. Now, shall we perhaps try again, and let me be specific, in my own words, about what I would like to see here (which, with due respect to Wade, may not be exactly what he had in mind, but should be a close call).

The core question is "has the Church lied about what it claims to be"? That is, has the Church (or its founder), knowingly, willfully, and with intent to do so, engaged in deception? This is not a question about whether or not the Church is true, as a metaphysical question, or whether or not one believes or disbeleives the Church's claims as to doctrine and authority. It is a question of whether or not the Church actually believes what it teaches as over against their being some guile involved.

One question relative to this is, of course, whether or not Joseph Smith lied about his experiences and the Church's origins. This question, regardless of the self satisfied certititude expressed by some critics here, is historically far from demonstrated by the church's critics, and has, indeed, been addressed plausibly be several generations of competant LDS schloars and commentators. Regardless of this point, the modern church, and the successors of Joseph Smith, in their carrying on with the gospel's teachings and practices, must be doing such either in good faith, or with a knowledge of Joseph's deceptions and hence, with guile.

So when we ask, "is the Chuch lying", we ask both whether Josehp Smith lied and whether the authorities of the Church since that original nineteenth century generation have also continued to lie about what the church "claims to be".

The two questions, though connected, are also divergent in that even if Joseph Smith lied, this would only make the church's claims untrue. It would not make modern claims for their veracity mendacious, any more than a modern follower of Vedic tradtiion who claims that the entire universe is the dream of Brahma could be accused of lying to us in so saying, even if the long dead originators of that concept knew themselves that the entire thing was nothing but a flight of fancy.

The next track to pursue would be detailed, point for point examination of the examples of deception critics claim demonstrate mendacity on the part of either Joseph or the modern church to see, under the stern light of philosophical and scholarly rigor, if they hold up to inspection. We will here, as TBM's, not attempt to conclusively disprove each and every point (as this is neither possible nor necessary) but only conclusively disprove where such is clearly marked and with historical questions that cannot be unambiguously laid to rest, provide plausible explanations of such a nature that the criticisms are rendered inert; they should be, to a fair minded observer, placed in sufficient doubt that the two sides can agree to disagree without dogmatic assertions on either side but with the critics at least giving the benefit of the doubt to Joseph and the Church when sufficient counter evidence has been put on the table to either logically and/or historically render the example or criticism plausibly mistaken.

Could we proceed form there?

Here's my take on it:

Did Joseph Smith lie? Yeah, it's pretty clear that he did. I posted my reasons for believing so, and if you want to go over the different points, so be it.

Is the modern church lying? Honestly, I have no idea. I think some church leaders' behavior suggests that they know it's not true, but that's just speculation.

Of course, there's a difference between saying that one can reasonably conclude that Joseph Smith lied and saying that so concluding is evidence of a cognitive distortion.

I'd like this to be an entirely new thread, with some serious thought going into the responses and arguments. Therefore, even though you may have already posted various reasons for thinking Jospeh a liar, I'd like to follow a more methodological, relaxed, and critical approach here, which, in my estimation would involve invoking a single point, working through that, and only going on to another when the point has been answered sufficiently such as to lay it to reast or provide a plausible answer such that, even if we still disagree, we can at least agree that the criticism has a plausible alternative or alternatives. This does not anticipate immideate belief in Joseph Smith and a request for baptism, only that a sincere attempt has been made to address the question and a plausible alternative has been articulated.

Futher, one may want to rephrase one's criticims relative to the expressed structure of this thread, and this means getting away from the scattergun approach (used particularly by Scratch on Wade's thread) and moving point by point and inference by inference through a question and its associated arguments and counter arguments.

Loran

Well, I see no one's going to bite on this one, so forget the whole subject. Silly me.

I think the reason no one is biting is because you cannot have a discussion and say "I will only accept these types of answers, and everything outside of these answers is an attack and unsubstantial".

The answer "yes, the church did lie, Joseph Smith did lie" was never going to be accepted from the beginning, so no one here bothered.

Coggins - why don't you let us know what type of evidence you'd consider?

On the other thread, Wade basically said that he would only accept evidence that Joseph Smith didn't believe what he was saying/doing. In other words, even if Joseph Smith didn't actually have any gold plates, we would have to provide evidence that Joseph Smith didn't believe there were gold plates.

Does the same go for you?

I think the reason no one is biting is because you cannot have a discussion and say "I will only accept these types of answers, and everything outside of these answers is an attack and unsubstantial".

The answer "yes, the church did lie, Joseph Smith did lie" was never going to be accepted from the beginning, so no one here bothered.

Loran:

You're clearly not up to this [GIMR], either psychologically or intellectually, so bow out now and save yourself the humiliation. I did'New Testament anywhere say that I would only accept certain types of answers, the only things I specified were a small set of rules of discourse in that we would move methoologically through pertinant critcisms of the church on this issue point by logical or evidential point and see if we can flesh out the issues involved in greater detail, and with a greater philosophical rigor than one normally encounters in fourums such as these. Those, like yourself, who cannot or will not must the requisit mental attributes for such a discussion were not invited. I'm confident that any criticsm of the church that can be put on the table can be answered, either with finality or with plausible counter evidence such that critics of the church here should, if intellectually honest, at least be able to admit that alternatives to therir own perceptions are possible.

I nowhere said that every issue could be answered and the case closed through intellectual means alone, although many have and can be.

Loran

Loran,

Bless your heart for attempting to open-mindedly reason with these good folks. But, I trust that your intents, while certainly laudable, are doomed to begin with--and this because you are shining the light of critical analysis on them. (From my experience these good folks are highly averse and hyper-sensitive to that--note, for example, all the irrelevant hand-wringing, deflecting, rationalizing, accusing and so forth that has gone on in each and every thread I have started about them. In fact, amazingly enough, in the thread I devoted to you and me, there was even some irrelevant self-justifying and accusing going on.)

I suspect that some, if not all, are hyper-critical and prolific in their criticism of the Church because it supposedly provides a way of keeping the focus on the Church and away from them. Were it not for their seeming abject fear of being discovered for who they really are (or more correctly, as they irrationally view themselves), they may have little or no motives to take issue with the Church, but would become like numerous leave-takers who move on with their lives in relative silence about the Church.

By you reasonably challenging their "criticisms", that inadvertantly shifts the focus back on them, and undermines their supposed strategy. Essentially, you are asking them to face what may be one of their biggest fears, and one they may have worked very hard to evoid like the plague. I don't see them allowing that to happen, even though it may well be to their benefit to face that fear.

What they have going for them is that they are in the overwhelming majority here, and thus can drown-out the supposed threat, and find ample support and enabling for their dysfunctional strategy.

However, even though you have little chance of realizing your reasonable intents for this thread, the good folks here make it worth the try, and I applaud you for your efforts. Also, if there is a silver lining in all of this: the seemingly significant issue of the critics intense aversion to being critiqued is inadvertantly illuminated and underscored.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

Coggins - why don't you let us know what type of evidence you'd consider?

On the other thread, Wade basically said that he would only accept evidence that Joseph Smith didn't believe what he was saying/doing. In other words, even if Joseph Smith didn't actually have any gold plates, we would have to provide evidence that Joseph Smith didn't believe there were gold plates.

Does the same go for you?

Loran:

Well, that would be a good place to start. One could claim that Joseph was insane; that he was delusional and actually believed he had, or had at least seen the plates, and one could then attempt to adduce evidence to this end. One could claim, as many here do, that he was a flat footed deceiver, and one would then be obliged to adduce compelling arguments to that effect, and which were to at least a reasonable degree immune from substantive counter argument. One could argue along other lines.

If I understood Wade correctly, he was asking for a debate on whether Joseph and the modern church were involved in knowing deception. As I pointed out, although these questions are connected, they are different in the sense that Joseph would have known of his deception as he was the originator of the religious system and its teachings. His later successors, especially those well detached from him in time, would be involved in deception only if they actaully believed, looking back on the religion they had received through tradition, that what they were teaching was wrong and yet taught it anyway.

We should here ignore Scratch's disingenuous hairsplitting over the definition of "lie", in which he parses the term in Clintonian fashion such as to extract tertiary colorations of the term that would impute moral weight to teachings or claims that may be wrong in actualilty, but are taught as true in strict sincerety be those to teach them. This would make virtually any claim made by anyone at any time, on any subject, and which ultimately did not conform to reality tantamount to a willful lie, and the person making the claim tantatmount to a knowing liar, even though he was teaching that which he actually believed to be the case.

Notice that this whole subject is independent of whether or not the church is actually true. The question Wade set out here was whether or not the church was ingenuous in its continuing to teach what Josph taught, or whether it leaders were complicit in deception of the masses. This would be like asking whether the Pope "knew" his church was a fraud but kept on promulgating its teachings in any case. We're not asking whether the Pope is or is not the Vicar of Christ but whether he believes he is and that the mother church is really the mother church.

Loran

wenglund wrote:Loran,

Bless your heart for attempting to open-mindedly reason with these good folks. But, I trust that your intents, while certainly laudable, are doomed to begin with--and this because you are shining the light of critical analysis on them. (From my experience these good folks are highly averse and hyper-sensitive to that--note, for example, all the irrelevant hand-wringing, deflecting, rationalizing, accusing and so forth that has gone on in each and every thread I have started about them. In fact, amazingly enough, in the thread I devoted to you and me, there was even some irrelevant self-justifying and accusing going on.)

I suspect that some, if not all, are hyper-critical and prolific in their criticism of the Church because it supposedly provides a way of keeping the focus on the Church and away from them. Were it not for their seeming abject fear of being discovered for who they really are (or more correctly, as they irrationally view themselves), they may have little or no motives to take issue with the Church, but would become like numerous leave-takers who move on with their lives in relative silence about the Church.

Who are these people, Wade? You have yet to provide even a single shred of evidence that such people even exist.

By you reasonably challenging their "criticisms", that inadvertantly shifts the focus back on them, and undermines their supposed strategy. Essentially, you are asking them to face what may be one of their biggest fears, and one they may have worked very hard to evoid like the plague. I don't see them allowing that to happen, even though it may well be to their benefit to face that fear.

What they have going for them is that they are in the overwhelming majority here, and thus can drown-out the supposed threat, and find ample support and enabling for their dysfunctional strategy.

However, even though you have little chance of realizing your reasonable intents for this thread, the good folks here make it worth the try, and I applaud you for your efforts. Also, if there is a silver lining in all of this: the seemingly significant issue of the critics intense aversion to being critiqued is inadvertantly illuminated and underscored.

Ironically, you've never specified what it is that you think is being critiqued by the critics. You've said that the Church is "the most precious and dear" thing in your life, but beyond that, it's unclear what criticisms---specifically---you take issue with.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-[/quote]