Raising up Seed... (sigh)

[_The Nehor]

I heard something about the "restitution/restoration of all things" (originally comes from Acts 3:21, but see D&C 86:10). The idea is that God had to restore some old principles in this time. I'm not sure I buy it though as I never heard of circumcision nor burnt offerings becoming mandatory again.

Just wait.

[_Jason Bourne]

Every time I hear the justification for polygamy, that God needed to raise up seed, I find myself in wonder.

Here we have the God of the universe, who can create anything, who made galaxies and solar systems, and created life, in all its varieties, and the only way "He" can get more good people on the eart is to command people to engage in what "He' has described as an abomination?

You have got to be kidding!

First, the birth rate actually went down during polygamy. Believers will reply that "raising seed," was not just about offspring but about offspring being born into the best families, (as if all those young men who couldn't find a woman to marry were not righteous).

So, God couldn't have the mothers of these great families just have twins?

Why not help out the less righteous to be more righteous? "He" certainly has done that before... (think Paul, for one examle).

How about giving the children born into the less fabulous familes an extra blessing or two so they become more righteous?

The infant mortality rate was quite high... why not lower it? This would be nothing for the God of the universe.

The idea that the only way, or the chosen way for God to increase righteous people on the earth was to command such a cruel and disgusting practice would be laughable if it wasn't so horrific.

~dancer~

Yesterday when a talke to my daughter about some of these things she told me I just think about stuff to much. She would say the same to you. :-)

[_truth dancer]

Hi Asbestosman.. :-)

First, the birth rate actually went down during polygamy.

That's an interesting point. I remember reading a study on that while at BYU (that the fecundity of polygamists was lower than for monogamists). It seems counterintuitive to me, but apparently that's what happened.

It makes sense if you realize that a wife may only have sex a couple of times a year or never in some instances. If a man is sleeping with ten different women, some in different cities, traveling around periodically to visit each one, changes are that he would not impregnante all of them, or any of them.

Quote:
So, God couldn't have the mothers of these great families just have twins?

Ouch! Twins almost killed my mother, and that was with late 20th century medicine. Twins would be much harder back in the 19th century although I suppose God could make it work what with Him being powerful and all.

We are talking about the God who created mitochondria here.... a little anesthesia during childbirth is nothing! ;-)

Quote:
Why not help out the less righteous to be more righteous? "He" certainly has done that before... (think Paul, for one examle).

I don't think that's quite how things happened with Paul. Paul was a dedicated Pharisee before his conversion although he was zealous for the wrong cause. God just helped guide him in the right path. After all, why didn't God make Judas more righteous or maybe Pilate or even Pharoh?

So, you don't think the God who created the sun could give a little help to those young men? Personally I don't think there was anything wrong with these guys... the older powerful leaders just wanted what they could get.

Quote:
How about giving the children born into the less fabulous familes an extra blessing or two so they become more righteous?

Actually that sounds rather like how Abraham was. And yet somehow it seems that parents do have great influence on the quality of lives that children lead with unrighteous parents making life more difficult.

As if these young men, or less powerful men weren't great guys? How do we know they wouldn't have been fabulous parents? I'm sure many of them were once they left town and found a nice woman to marry.

Quote:
The infant mortality rate was quite high... why not lower it? This would be nothing for the God of the universe.

As would curing world hunger, removing disease, and ending war. It appears that God wants us to do as much of it on our own as possible.

EXACTLY! Why are believers always limiting God. If God can come down and tell GBH to build a mall, I'm sure he could help babies live longer.

God wants us to do as much as we can so he commands people to hurt each other? He commands old men to engage in abominations? He commands people to kill children? He allows girls and women to be part of such nastiness and degradation?

So, God wants people to do his dirty work?

Curing world hunger, removing disease, and ending war are all great activities. Killing others, degrading women, subjecting girls to such horrors is cruel.

As I state, if God created the whole universe, I just do not see how anyone can suggest he couldn't find a more humane and decent way to bring righteous people into the world.

~dancer~

[_Blixa]

Yesterday when a talke to my daughter about some of these things she told me I just think about stuff to much.

I hope she realizes that that's a good thing! If she doesn't now, I bet she will some day. You must be a good dad.

[_Jason Bourne]

The second way in which and his priesthood, I have not revealed, except to a few persons in this Church, and a few have received it from Joseph the prophet as well as myself. This other path a woman may take if she can get a chance. <do it in strict accordance with the order of heaven,> If she <a woman> can find a man holding the keys of the preisthood [sic] and <holding with> higher in power and authority than her husband <holds>, and he is disposed to take her he can do so, otherwise she has got to remain where she is. This is the second way in which a woman can leave her husband to whome she has been sealed to for time and all eternity. In either of these ways of seperation [sic], you can discover, there is no need for a bill of divorcement.

To recapitulate. First If a man forfiets [sic] his covenants with a wife, or wives, becoming unfaithful to his God, <and> his preisthood [sic], that wife or wives are free from him without <bill of> a divorcement. Second. If a woman claimes [sic] protection at the hands of a man, possessing more power in the priesthood and higher keys, if he is disposed to <and has obtained the consent of her husband> rescue her <and has obtained the consent of her husband to make he> from and to make her his wife he can do so without a bill of divorcement by <first asking the> the free consent of her husband. Then a peice of blank paper will answer just as good a purpose for a bill of divorcement as the bills the sisters get from me. If after she had left her husband, and is sealed to another, she shall again cohabit with him it is illicit intercourse, and extremely sinfull.[/

Damn!!! Ya just gotta love that part I bolded. She is sinful if she goes back to hubby number 1 but it is not sinful for her to run to Mr. I am better in the priesthood then you Brigham, nor for him to take her. WOW!!! Holy Crap!!!! What a BY was able to justify as sin and not sin is just friggin amazing!!!!

[_truth dancer]

Hi Jason,

Yesterday when a talked to my daughter about some of these things she told me I just think about stuff to much. She would say the same to you. :-)

Yeah... if you don't think about the difficult doctrines/practices/teachings, you don't have to face them and make sense of them.

MUCH easier to just go along and pretend there are no problems! There is a reason the human has the capacity for denial and repression! ;-)

~dancer~[/quote]

[_Jason Bourne]

Hi Jason,

Yesterday when a talked to my daughter about some of these things she told me I just think about stuff to much. She would say the same to you. :-)

Yeah... if you don't think about the difficult doctrines/practices/teachings, you don't have to face them and make sense of them.

MUCH easier to just go along and pretend there are no problems! There is a reason the human has the capacity for denial and repression! ;-)

~dancer~

[/quote]

Denial in not a river in Egypt!

[_beastie]

Damn!!! Ya just gotta love that part I bolded. She is sinful if she goes back to hubby number 1 but it is not sinful for her to run to Mr. I am better in the priesthood then you Brigham, nor for him to take her. WOW!!! Holy Crap!!!! What a BY was able to justify as sin and not sin is just friggin amazing!!!!

I think this was probably the justification they used with Zina Huntington. There is a second hand journal entry recording that when BY sent Henry on his mission (very sick, in the middle of winter, If I recall correctly) he told Henry to go find another wife, but make sure it was of his "own kind" (paraphrasing from memory). I always wondered what that meant. Given other statements of BY, I suspect he meant that Henry was on some lower level than BY and was "over-reaching" to marry Zina, who was clearly destined for bigger and better things.

Just found a FAIR article that discusses (and of course dismisses) the statement. Yet, given BY's other statements, I find it believable.

At a place called, by the Mormons, Pisgah, in Iowa, as they were passing through to Council Bluffs, Brigham Young spoke in this wise, in the hearing of hundreds: He said it was time for men who were walking in other men's shoes to step out of them. "Brother Jacobs," he says, "the woman you claim for a wife does not belong to you. She is the spiritual wife of brother Joseph, sealed up to him. I am his proxy, and she, in this behalf, with her children, are my property. You can go where you please, and get another, but be sure to get one of your own kindred spirit."

http://www.fairlds.org/FAIR_Conferences ... r_Men.html

[_SatanWasSetUp]

Nothing about polygamy makes much sense if you are looking through the paradigm of the church being true, which is why so many members struggle with it. However, it is easy to understand from a historic standpoint when women were considered possessions like gold, silver, and castles. The more powerful and wealthy a man was, the more women he got. That's how it worked back in the old days, which is why polygamy exists in the Bible. But by the nineteenth century this attitude was considered barbaric and uncivilized in western society. Restoring the old barbaric custom (not doctrine, custom) of collecting wives for the highest ranking males makes no sense for a church supposedly run by god, but it makes perfect sense for a church run by mortal men.

[_SatanWasSetUp]

Just found a FAIR article that discusses (and of course dismisses) the statement. Yet, given BY's other statements, I find it believable.

At a place called, by the Mormons, Pisgah, in Iowa, as they were passing through to Council Bluffs, Brigham Young spoke in this wise, in the hearing of hundreds: He said it was time for men who were walking in other men's shoes to step out of them. "Brother Jacobs," he says, "the woman you claim for a wife does not belong to you. She is the spiritual wife of brother Joseph, sealed up to him. I am his proxy, and she, in this behalf, with her children, are my property. You can go where you please, and get another, but be sure to get one of your own kindred spirit."

http://www.fairlds.org/FAIR_Conferences ... r_Men.html

LOL. What an asshole. Sorry if I offend anyone for finding this funny, but it is just so wrong all I can do is laugh. Taking another man's wife like that? That's messed up.