Engaging Mormon Apologetics

[_mfbukowski]

By replying, I keep bumping this topic in hopes that one of your cronies will jump in to help you, but no one has.

I wonder why.

[_EAllusion]

1) Mr. Stak clearly is my crony.

2) I think he's doing a fine job on his own.

[_mfbukowski]

1) Mr. Stak clearly is my crony.

2) I think he's doing a fine job on his own.

So you also think that things that no one can sense exist?

[_EAllusion]

So you also think that things that no one can sense exist?

I think there are propositions that are true that are not justified via experience. I think that is straightforward and would be the thesis I'd gladly defend.

I also think there are things about reality that are the case that we can't sense because our perceptive capacity is limited. That's just a consequence of my realism and knowledge about our limitations. So as a practical matter, yes. Whether humans could ever know those things is distinct question. We shouldn't confuse epistemology with ontology. It is true that overtime we've been able to enhance our perceptual capabilities through tools and increasing sophistication in our ability to make inferences from experience. We know about things in the cosmos via our senses today that we wouldn't have been able to know 500 years ago. I don't know if this can extend to every aspect of what exists in principle and don't see why it has to.

[_mfbukowski]

I think there are propositions that are true that are not justified via experience. I think that is straightforward and would be the thesis I'd gladly defend.

I presume you are talking about a priori propositions, which I have discussed- I would agree that they are not justified by experience, but I would be interested in knowing what you think about why that is the case.

Of course propositions are not "things" unless you are arguing that they are.

I also think there are things about reality that are the case that we can't sense because our perceptive capacity is limited. That's just a consequence of my realism and knowledge about our limitations. So as a practical matter, yes. Whether humans could ever know those things is distinct question. We shouldn't confuse epistemology with ontology. It is true that overtime we've been able to enhance our perceptual capabilities through tools and increasing sophistication in our ability to make inferences from experience. We know about things in the cosmos via our senses today that we wouldn't have been able to know 500 years ago. I don't know if this can extend to every aspect of what exists in principle and don't see why it has to.

The underlined portion is precisely the "distinct question" we are discussing. I would like to know how you answer that epistemological question. THAT is what I am trying to do here.

I take an analytical approach to ontology and find it all rather metaphysical and in some ways irrelevant to real life. To me, it becomes more a question of the linguistic usages involved in saying that something "exists" and that it is ultimately rather arbitrary.

As an example of this, I will make an assertion just to give you a target to shoot at, and will simultaneously illustrate in what sense I consider myself a "realist", and show you how arbitrary I think such definitions are.

The assertion is: "Something is 'real' if and only if we can experience it".

That would also include my total "ontology".

Ok, now you have something to shoot at. Fire away.

[_Darth J]

Sorry, again! I've been training for the zombie apocalypse lately (Left 4 Dead), so I keep forgetting about this thread.

That's because you aren't acknowledging that the "stories" are not allegories in Mormonism, but actual events that really happened.

The problem is an epistemological one; it is notoriously difficult to "know" what happened in history thousands of years ago. I believe that these events "actually happened" as I understand them.

But suppose my understanding is not the same as other members of the church who take these events more literally than I do? In the Mormon church, there is no such thing as an "orthodox interpretation" of the scriptures.

There is no such thing as an orthodox interpretation of the scriptures in the LDS Church? That's a new one. I guess if I tell my bishop that because of Daniel Peterson's article about the goddess Asherah being alluded to in the Book of Mormon, I think the Book of Mormon means we should pray to Heavenly Mother, I won't have any problem. Right?

But let's see whether the Church itself thinks that it has orthodox teachings and orthodox interpretations of scripture:

Teaching, No Greater Call: A Resource Guide for Gospel Teaching
Keeping the Doctrine Pure

President J. Reuben Clark Jr. said, “Only the President of the Church, the Presiding High Priest, is sustained as Prophet, Seer, and Revelator for the Church, and he alone has the right to receive revelations for the Church, either new or amendatory, or to give authoritative interpretations of scriptures that shall be binding on the Church, or change in any way the existing doctrines of the Church” (in Church News, 31 July 1954, 10). We should not teach our private interpretation of gospel principles or the scriptures.

Elder Spencer W. Kimball stated: “There are those today who seem to take pride in disagreeing with the orthodox teachings of the Church and who present their own opinions which are at variance with the revealed truth. Some may be partially innocent in the matter; others are feeding their own egotism; and some seem to be deliberate. Men may think as they please, but they have no right to impose upon others their unorthodox views. Such persons should realize that their own souls are in jeopardy” (in Conference Report, Apr. 1948, 109).

Hmmm. It looks pretty consistent that your assertions don't match the "fundamentalist caricature of the Church that I learned as a baby." Or, in other words, what the LDS Church actually teaches.

Even should such a thing exist, the question "Do you accept the (non-existent) Orthodox Interpretation Of The Scriptures?" is not on the temple recommend question list, nor on the baptismal interview and I would counsel you to not hold your breath for either of these things to happen.

You're basing this assertion on your circular and inaccurate statement that there is no orthodox interpretation of scripture in the LDS Church. But a question that is part of these interviews is whether you sustain the current church leadership as prophets, seers, and revelators. How can you sustain them as such if you don't believe what they teach? Or, as James E. Faust put it:

James E. Faust
July 2000 Ensign

But I cannot help wondering if members of the Church do not place themselves in some spiritual peril when publicly disparaging the prophetic calling of Joseph Smith, his successors, or any of the fundamental, settled doctrines of the Church......[editor's note: you know, those fundamental, settled doctrines that you keep saying don't exist].....
I have heard some say, “Well, I can believe all of the revelations but one.” It is hard to understand this logic. If one believes that revelations come from a divine source, how can one pick and choose? Acceptance of the gospel should be complete and absolute, with full heart and soul.

So how can someone honestly sustain these men as prophets, seers, and revelators if one is not complete and absolute, with full heart and soul, committed to the belief that their teachings about what the scriptures mean are correct?

Again, what you used to believe is your business, not mine.

Then why did you refer to what I used to believe as a fundamentalist caricature of what I learned as a baby, or something like that?

I know you want to demonstrate that what you believe in is something other than bastardized apologetic internet Mormonism, but you're not doing a very good job. What I indicated is officially published and taught by the Church:

If I am doing such a bad job, you don't have to comment any more. That is usually what I do when some looney posts something that makes no sense.

Conversely, loony posts that make no sense are blood in the water to me.

But quote mining old Joseph Fielding Smith quotes doesn't really bother me too much.

Of course it doesn't bother you, because like all militant cafeteria Mormons, you are adamant that picking and choosing which of the Church's teachings you profess to believe is the right way to go. But I didn't "quote mine." I was quoting a recent church manual, which relied on Joseph Fielding Smith to explain the Church's official position on this issue.

I believe that there was no "death before the fall" because it is true. The earth was in a state of "innocence" because no sin had been committed.

Right. Sin and death are interrelated in LDS doctrine. Sin was the cause of physical death. Except that Adam and Eve didn't technically "sin;" they "transgressed" because God gave them two opposing commandments (don't eat the fruit of knowledge of good and evil, but do multiply and replenish the earth).

Let me ask you this: was there "murder" before the fall? Can animals eating each other be classified as "murder"?

If a tiger kills an antelope, is it "murder"? Of course not, but why not? Because animals do not have a value system- they cannot sin- an animal eating another does not "sin"- it is a natural, innocent action. It cannot be condemned as "immoral"

That would mean something if the doctrine were that there was no "murder" before the fall. But that isn't the Church's teaching. Death entered the world immediately when Adam and Eve were cast out of the Garden of Eden, but "murder" did not happen until Cain became Master Mahan, as explained in Moses 5. So your contrived hypothetical is meaningless to the doctrine of the Fall in the LDS Church.

Also, do animals mourn each other when they die?

We cannot know that.

It is outside of human experience- we can only know what humans experience, not what animals experience.

So if there is no "murder" outside of a human understanding of the word, is there "death" outside of a human understanding?

Absolutely not!

That's a very interesting unsupported assertion. While we ponder that, here are some articles discussing how biologists believe that several species of animals mourn for the dead.

Elephants: http://animal.discovery.com/news/briefs ... phant.html

Chimpanzees: http://blogs.ngm.com/blog_central/2009/ ... himps.html

Baboons: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 154735.htm

And here's Psychology Today discussing mourning in various animals, such as dolphins: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/ani ... -who-mourn

But please go on. I believe you were saying something about not relying on simply making things up to support your argument.

So just as Adam defined and put things in a human context- by "naming" things, one of the things he named- or put in a human context was also "death"

Really? Where might I find this in the scriptures?

So the fall happened by sin coming into the world. The entire context of reality- of human experience- was changed by Adam's sin.

No crap.

The world was no longer innocent- the human experience of the world was altered drastically, dramatically and forever by Adam's sin.

But there was no human experience of "the world" before the Fall. Remember? But by the way: how could Adam have sinned in the first place, since he had not experienced sin until he did experience it? You know, since things don't exist until they are experienced and can be named.

That is the "fall" as I understand it. So yes, the entire world which is constituted by human experience was changed by sin, and the concept of "death" and "murder" came into the world.

Again directly contradicting LDS scriptures, since "murder" did not come into the world until Cain, but death came from Adam and Eve's transgression.

And of course since we cannot know anything about the world outside of human experience, THAT is the only world we CAN know about.

Therefore, Adam never sinned, because he didn't know what sin was until he experienced it, but he couldn't experience something he didn't know about, since "sin" does not objectively, measurably exist in the natural world.

But we also know that somehow it happened in "other worlds" too- but we don't know much about that.

So we can know things from revelation but not experience, which is what the Church teaches, which undercuts whatever your point is.

So yes, I agree with the quotes that the world was changed forever by the fall, and that by "sin", "death" came into the world, and that there was no "death" before the "fall".

Do you also agree that these quotes did not share the quote marks around key terms that you have inserted?

It is through the savior's healing power that the effects of death and sin are taken away and we are redeemed back into an innocent state.

However, returning to Adam and Eve's "innocent state" would mean that we lose our knowledge of good and evil, since that is what is meant by their "innocent state," according to LDS doctrine.

And they would have had no children; wherefore they would have remained in a state of innocence, having no joy, for they knew no misery; doing no good, for they knew no sin.

2 Nephi 2:23

Anyway, you were saying something about your assertions having some kind of discernible relationship to what the LDS Church teaches?

“When Adam and Eve were placed in Eden they were not subject to the power of death and could have lived, in the state of innocence in which they were, forever had they not violated the law given them in the Garden.

“The earth also was pronounced good, and would have remained in that same state forever had it not been changed to meet Adam’s fallen condition.[/color]

[color=#0000FF]“All things on the face of the earth also would have remained in that same condition, had not Adam transgressed the law.

Yep! I couldn't agree more!

Yes, provided that the appropriate revisionist ideas you have come up with are read into the plain meaning of this statement.

“By partaking of the forbidden fruit, and thus violating the law under which he was placed, his nature was changed, and he became subject to (1) spiritual death, which is banishment from the presence of God; (2) temporal death, which is separation of spirit and body. This death also came to Eve his wife.

“Had Adam and Eve not transgressed the law given in Eden, they would have had no children.

“Because Adam transgressed the law, the Lord changed the earth to suit the mortal condition and all things on the face of the earth became subject to mortality, as did the earth also.

The world as known through human experience was totally changed by the idea of "sin"; Adam and Eve would not have had "children", they might have had cubs or whelps or babies, but they would not have had "children".

No, mfb, the LDS doctrine is that Adam and Eve could not procreate at all. Nice try, though.

We would not project our ideas of "death" upon animals and dinosaurs, and so we now say that animals "died" before the fall which is total presentism. There was not even a concept of "death" to define that- how could they have "died"? That is us looking backward and putting our concepts of reality on whatever was at that "time"- which of course we can in principle know nothing about!

It is pure speculation!

This would mean something if you weren't talking about church leaders who do understand what death is teaching unequivocally that there was no death before the Fall. I agree that saying so is pure speculation, but the difference is that I am not purporting to believe in the Church's teachings when I say so. You are. This is exactly what I mean when I have talked on this board about militant cafeteria Mormonism.

I anxiously await seeing this humanistic value system that posits that watching rated R movies and females failing to remove extra earrings because of prophetic counsel are spiritually destructive.

Well I agree that some of these details get very very grey, but I think a case can be made that affirming the beauty of the human body as it exists is preferable to perforating it, but I suppose some people would like to paint white roses some other color with nail polish and dye.

But to the Church, the area of rated R movies is not gray at all.

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=13128&p=324814&hilit=don+t+see#p324814

And the Church doesn't teach that the thing about earrings is merely an aesthetic preference, but a sign of harkening to prophetic counsel.

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=12992&p=321876&hilit=bednar+earrings#p32187

And R rated movies often glorify violence and sexual values, which if followed, could lead to destruction of the family. I think that anything which treats humans as objects should be avoided, but if you like that, it's your decision I suppose.

Your last statement is particularly poor reasoning. You are relying on a general stereotype about rated R movies to impute a lack of value for human beings to me, as if Saw and Schindler's List have equivalent messages because they are both rated R.

Tell me, mfb, do you know how the MPAA rates movies? Can you cite some objective standards of how they determine a movie's rating? No one else on Earth can, but maybe you will succeed where everyone else has failed.

[_mfbukowski]

Darth, honestly, I don't have time in my life to reply line by line to a nearly full-page post.

If you will be kind enough to summarize and consolidate your points into a few salient sentences, I will reply to those, while looking at the context you have given us here.

And please, in telling me what I believe, please avoid quotes more than 50 years old, which is all you have quoted, if I am not mistaken, except the Faust quote which was really not on this topic.

In fact, I would prefer quotes no older than what- 20 years? At least that will miss doctrinal shifts like the idea that Blacks may actually have the priesthood. What the church stresses in teaching does in fact change over time, which is blatantly obvious when one contrasts what Brigham Young says with, say, what Jeffrey Holland teaches today.

Please note that what I am talking about is my personal understanding and interpretation of the scriptures, and your constant arguments telling me YOUR interpretation of what the "church" teaches is irrelevant. I see no point in responding to those parts of your argument- I can't see how it is relevant to anything.

I consider myself a TBM, and how YOU choose to define MY beliefs are totally irrelevant to anything

[_mfbukowski]

DarthJ

I will make two other brief and general points.

I agree with you that elephants et al may "mourn", but it is unknowable that they understand death in the same way we do. I wonder what their religious beliefs are? I suppose we cannot know that.

In all cases, the point was that the context totally changed when humans appeared; the "murder" point you raise is irrelevant-- that was an example I chose to make my point. In fact, of course the context changed when Eve realized and "connected the dots" that she had a choice to follow God's ambiguous commandment or not.

The real difference was that she was the first to NOTICE that she had agency and could actually go against God's will.

That was the big change of context- but it is not the most obvious from a teaching pov, so I chose to talk about murder.

It is very clear that animals don't "murder" each other, so that is the example I chose.

[Guest]

Darth, honestly, I don't have time in my life to reply line by line to a nearly full-page post.

I understand. Ever since I got Left 4 Dead, it's been taking up a lot of my time, too.

If you will be kind enough to summarize and consolidate your points into a few salient sentences, I will reply to those, while looking at the context you have given us here.

What do you mean? This is the summary. I don't have time to post all the details.

And please, in telling me what I believe, please avoid quotes more than 50 years old, which is all you have quoted, if I am not mistaken, except the Faust quote which was really not on this topic.

In fact, I would prefer quotes no older than what- 20 years?

Oh. So let's exclude the Doctrine and Covenants, the Book of Mormon, anything Joseph Smith taught, the Pearl of Great Price, and anything older than when Ezra Taft Benson was the president of the Church. Why should we exclude quotes that are more than 20 years old when the Church relies on purported quotes from people like Nephi and Abraham that are hundreds or even thousands of years old?

But you are mistaken, anyway. You clearly did not look at the dates in my quotes (which are hyperlinked) from the Ensign about absolute truth. And you're also ignoring that the quote from Joseph Fielding Smith is in a recent church manual.

At least that will miss doctrinal shifts like the idea that Blacks may actually have the priesthood. What the church stresses in teaching does in fact change over time, which is blatantly obvious when one contrasts what Brigham Young says with, say, what Jeffrey Holland teaches today.

Other than Adam-God, blood atonement, black people, and the then-current practice of polygamy, tell me a basic doctrine of the Church that Brigham Young taught that is inconsistent with what Jeffrey R. Holland teaches today.

Please note that what I am talking about is my personal understanding and interpretation of the scriptures, and your constant arguments telling me YOUR interpretation of what the "church" teaches is irrelevant. I see no point in responding to those parts of your argument- I can't see how it is relevant to anything.

When I quote what a church leader or manual says, and hyperlink to it, I am "interpreting." Got it.

By the way, the Civil War ended in 1865. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_War

Remember, I haven't stated an objective fact and linked to it. I'm "interpreting."

I consider myself a TBM, and how YOU choose to define MY beliefs are totally irrelevant to anything

I also consider myself a TBM. I just don't believe in certain things that the Church teaches, like that Joseph Smith was a prophet, or that the Book of Mormon, or the D&C, or the Pearl of Great Price are scriptures, or that anyone since Joseph Smith has been a prophet. Just because I reject certain church teachings, as do you, makes it totally irrelevant how YOU choose to define MY beliefs. You have no right telling me I'm not a TBM. That is how I classify myself, and if I say that about myself, then it's objectively true.

[_Darth J]

DarthJ

I will make two other brief and general points.

I agree with you that elephants et al may "mourn", but it is unknowable that they understand death in the same way we do. I wonder what their religious beliefs are? I suppose we cannot know that.

That isn't what you said. You stated unequivocally that animals don't mourn, and that was in the context of your sophistry of how death did not, in a certain sense, enter the world until after the fall, and yet leaves it open for evolution to have happened, which is incompatible with the plain meaning of what church leaders from Joseph Smith forward have taught.

In all cases, the point was that the context totally changed when humans appeared; the "murder" point you raise is irrelevant-- that was an example I chose to make my point.

But I didn't raise the irrelevant murder point. You did.

In fact, of course the context changed when Eve realized and "connected the dots" that she had a choice to follow God's ambiguous commandment or not.

The real difference was that she was the first to NOTICE that she had agency and could actually go against God's will.

But that isn't how the Church said it happened. The Fall was God's will, according to LDS doctrine. And it is also LDS doctrine that Adam knew right from the start that he had a choice, so again you are directly contradicting LDS teachings.

Boyd K. Packer
May 1988 Ensign

After the Lord commanded Adam and Eve to multiply and replenish the earth and commanded them not to partake of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, He said: “Nevertheless, thou mayest choose for thyself, for it is given unto thee; but, remember that I forbid it, for in the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die” (Moses 3:17).
There was too much at issue to introduce man into mortality by force. That would contravene the very law essential to the plan. The plan provided that each spirit child of God would receive a mortal body and each would be tested. Adam saw that it must be so and made his choice. “Adam fell that men might be; and men are, that they might have joy” (2 Ne. 2:25).

The underlines are mine. Sorry that I missed your arbitrary 20-year limit again.

That was the big change of context- but it is not the most obvious from a teaching pov, so I chose to talk about murder.

What the Church says doesn't fit what you want to say, so you'll change the rules. I have written a lot on this board about militant cafeteria Mormonism. I understand.

It is very clear that animals don't "murder" each other, so that is the example I chose.

But earlier, it was very clear that animals don't mourn. And if we follow your ideas, then you can't say that animals don't murder or have moral responsibility, because we don't know that.