maklelan wrote:Sethbag wrote:To be honest, I don't see any rationale for believing there's anything in it at all for the LDS church regarding "healing the rift" and drawing the church and its apostates together. That's sort of like arguing that human beings need to find a way to have a healthier and closer relationship with cyanide, or that we ought to find a better way to bring children and razor blades together.
I think the reason the doctrinal or scriptural teachings regarding the church and its apostates is one of rejection and hostility, or regarding the apostates as deceived sinners who are under the control of Satan, is because that attitude is the one that best suits the institutional needs of the believers in insulating the believers from subversive ideas and people. With the exception of groups like Heaven's Gate or Peoples' Temple, I believe it's generally true that religious groups are like organisms and react a lot like organisms do, ie: they learn to propogate themselves and defend themselves against threats to their survival. When you cut yourself, the wound scabs over to protect you. With a church group, undercutting the credibility of apostates, and engendering a certain fear of apostates amongst the still-believing, is just scabbing over the wound to protect the organism.
Do you really think criticism of apostates is designed to buffer those still in the church?
Asbolutely Mak. My observation is that this is common across closed belief systems, which includes Mormonism and other more fundamentalist/evangelical religions. I've spent time on ex-Jehova Witness, ex-Evangelical,ex-Muslim discussion boards (always as lurker, never as poster--I wanted to learn from their experience), and this is a common theme on those boards and an common experience among the apostates or doubters in those belief systems.
I know that I belived this.
The Book of Mormon teaches this (if implicitly).
When I came out of the closet, and my wife broke the news to her parents, the first words out of their mouths was, "did he commit adultery?"
My siblings gossiped about me; the common theme being that I was too proud and arrogant to have faith. Not once, it appears, considering the possibility that my beliefs has any legitimacy.
I've sat in on numerous discussions on this topic, and in each case, a primary topic was the presumed character flaws of the apostate.
So, yes, this was my experience, but it is, apparently, also the experience of many apostates on this board and a good many apostates in other belief systems.
Plus, it is a thoroughly predictable outcome. Beastie's analysis is spot on; organizations behave in many ways like living organisms; and the prime directive of living organisms everywhere is survival and propigation. Organizations, like living organisms, develop defense mechanisms to ensure survival and propigation. Closed belief systems cannot admit the possiblity of error, which threatens to open up the belief system to "illigimate" ways of thinking, thereby threatening its survival. Conceding the legitimacy of apostates' concerns raises the possibility of error and thus this risk must be eradicated. Discrediting the apostate (attributing him/her with character flaws that explain the apostacy) is a proven effective method of discrediting the apostate and relieving the belief system of the need to open itself up to alternative ways of thinking.
I believe that this is a generally accurate description of how closed belief systems operate.
[code][/code]
God . . . "who mouths morals to other people and has none himself; who frowns upon crimes, yet commits them all; who created man without invitation, . . . and finally, with altogether divine obtuseness, invites this poor, abused slave to worship him ..."