DiscussMormonism.com

harmony wrote: I remember that sort of talk when I was a kid... targetting MY generation (yours too... I'm 58). We were the spoiled kids from the WWII vets who thought our rights were more important than any else's. And now we're saying the same crap about the next generation.

But the truth is that each generation gets it easier and easier, and rightly calls their kids “spoilt”. It’s not the same. Life is progressively getting easier and easier for every generation, and ironically, producing a whole new and different set of problems to deal with, which includes a lack of appreciation and respect, and taking for granted what their parents and grandparents had to work for. As I once commented on Facebook, “19th century crisis: No running water. 21st century crisis: No Internet connection.” I’m sure you can see what I’m getting at, and it isn’t quite the same “under the sun”.

harmony wrote: No "older" generation is going to appreciate the "younger" generation, because the younger generation is trying out all sorts of new ideas, new concepts, and by doing so, implies (and outright SAYS) that the way the older generation did things wasn't right or didn't work or was old fashioned. They'll have the same problem with THEIR kids and their kids' kids.

Kids in the 1950s didn’t generally smoke dope, take speed and heroin, nor engage in the level of violence we see today. In my state, NSW (apologies for local examples), several years ago the NSW Police force organised The Public Order Riot Squad, which spends every single weekend going from brawl to brawl (all youths), and they are losing the battle against law and order. If anyone who thinks that today is “no different”, do take a little less than six minutes to view this clip:

Brute Force: Part 1 - 60 Minutes.

Did we see this in the 1950s?

harmony wrote: There really is nothing new under the sun. It's only as bad as we want it to be. If you want to see the bad, that is all you will see. So many changes... women can climb corporate ladders, have careers in engineering, aerospace, politics, etc, diseases have been conquered, farms produce more food than ever before, clean water is a priority, children have intrinsic value to society; these are all HUGE changes. Yes, there is still war, crime, filth, and disease, but don't deny the good things that have occurred and continue to occur every day.

I’ve already pointed out what I think is positive, but I don’t agree that “there’s nothing new under the sun”, and that we are dealing with new and challenging problems on a level never seen before.

Ray A wrote:
Kids in the 1950s didn’t generally smoke dope, take speed and heroin, nor engage in the level of violence we see today. In my state, NSW (apologies for local examples), several years ago the NSW Police force organised The Public Order Riot Squad, which spends every single weekend going from brawl to brawl (all youths), and they are losing the battle against law and order. If anyone who thinks that today is “no different”, do take a little less than six minutes to view this clip:

There are problems today, I don't doubt that, but there was a popular movie in the 50s where kids played chicken by driving their cars off the edge of a cliff. A popular movie from 1960 had a woman murdered in the shower by a cross dresser. The 50s/early 60s weren't as innocent as we like to think. When we look back, we remember the positives and minimize the problems. People think of the 80s as so innocent, but when I was a kid, we were the most dangerous kids in history with all the drugs and sex we experimented with.

harmony wrote:With the notable exception of the lawyers, all of those have always been with us.

True, but only recently have all of them (except bestiality to my knowledge) showed up in films depicting them sympathetically.

The glaring issue I see is treatment of children throughout history.

During the reign of Pol Pot in Cambodia (1970's), children were conditioned to kill people.

I read that child labor was pretty bad in the 19th century (i.e. works of Charles Dickens).

Pre-Roman societies regularly practiced infanticide.

In Sparta, the community leaders, called Ephors, inspected newborns for defects. Unwanted females and males with obvious defects were flung into a ravine.

The Egyptians also practiced infanticide, leaving the unwanted newborn at the village dump.

Abandoned children were often taken by childless couples or speculators that raised such children as slaves, profiting from their sale. Some of these children ended up as prostitutes. John Boswell (recently deceased) of Yale University identifies several admonitions made by early Christian Church Fathers against abandonment because at some future time fathers might use prostitutes that might have been their children! This was the sin of incest.

Abandonment was a normal practice in the post-Roman world and throughout the Middle Ages. Children were abandoned in times of famine and given to God, i.e., monasteries and religious orders (oblation). The heightened sense of the profane enabled parents to disclaim demon children switched at birth (changelings).

Thank God we have improved our treatment of children generally.

Yes, I realize there are problems today but I still am not convinced that our societies are degenerating morally overall.

Zee,

I hope you didn't miss World Day Against Child Labour - 12 June.

Hundreds of millions of girls and boys throughout the world are engaged in work that deprives them of adequate education, health, leisure and basic freedoms, violating their rights. Of these children, more than half are exposed to the worst forms of child labour such as work in hazardous environments, slavery, or other forms of forced labour, illicit activities such as drug trafficking and prostitution, as well as involvement in armed conflict.

Now of course our population is much larger today, and although most of these abuses are occurring in "Third-World" countries, we have our own problems in the "West" too. Perhaps some countries are more advanced in tackling these problems, but our own comforts and "solutions" in the "West" aren't an indication of the overall state of the world. If a relative minority of the world population has "progressed", that doesn't indicate overall progress. I suppose when the British Empire was at its zenith, and the sun never set on it - that was considered "progress" (depending on which history books you read).

Ray A wrote:Zee,

I hope you didn't miss....

OK, I see it is still bad but getting worse?

I guess this is getting into the philosophical question of whether or not the human race can continue progressing forever.

This subject is growing out of my league but it is interesting. Surely there is a more positive way of looking at things though...

My grandma used to worry herself sick in the 80's reading the newspaper. She would call my dad every day and tell him the world was going to end.

zeezrom wrote:I guess this is getting into the philosophical question of whether or not the human race can continue progressing forever.

This subject is growing out of my league but it is interesting. Surely there is a more positive way of looking at things though...

My grandma used to worry herself sick in the 80's reading the newspaper. She would call my dad every day and tell him the world was going to end.

It gets even worse. When I was a member of the NSW Rationalist Association (late '80s), and this is no body of believers, its secretary-president, among others, did not see us lasting more than another 200 years, at the most. That, he said, was a very generous estimate.

Unfortunately, I don't take a very positive view either, if we keep going the way we are. Is Mormonism the answer? No more than Islam is the answer, or even Scientology.

I realise that this thread brings the temptation to bag Packer because he's a Mormon apostle, and a controversial one at that. My only aim has been to go beyond sectarian battles, if you like, or critic trumps apologist, or vice versa, and realise that beyond ideologies, religious or otherwise, I seriously think that, by comparison, worrying excessively about a hole in the Ozone layer and the warming of the planet is like the proverbial straightening of the deck chairs on the Titanic. We can do all we can to stop carbon emissions, and we should, but who will stop the maniac who will start World War III? Did anyone think a maniac would start World War II? Did the 1930s optimist take into consideration that while he looked positively about the future, six million Jews were about to enter gas chambers and otherwise be slaughtered like sheep? Could something like this happen again?

Is there cause for optimism? Of course. But if we're going to pat ourselves on the back by thinking that bagging Packer (on this subject; he's worthy of bagging on others) and the world will be just fine and dandy and we'll all end up in John Lennon's version of Paradise, we may have another think coming our way.

And that really is another problem with Mormonism; it induces both believers and ex-believers to think that life and the world are just so simple, and can be painted in black and white, good and evil, depending on your "take".

Nice of Pres. Packer to leave room for his follow up talk on earthquakes, floods and disasters 'in diverse places' and how there are more now than at any time in the past.

The good speaker leaves his audience wanting more and leaves the way open to provide it next time.

Good old Boyd just keeps on keepin' on.

Joseph wrote:Nice of Pres. Packer to leave room for his follow up talk on earthquakes, floods and disasters 'in diverse places' and how there are more now than at any time in the past.

Are Earthquakes Really on the Increase?.

According to seismologists, they are not on the increase, but measuring equipment has improved, enabling them to detect more earthquake activity, whatever Mr. Packer may imagine in his theological dreams.

But that wasn't the point of the thread, was it?



(PS: This information is readily available to anyone who knows how to use Google, unless someone can out-Google me. Perhaps we should invent a new term to replace "mind-boggling". How about "mind-Googling"?)

Packer is stoking the fire under the alter of WE ARE SO WORTHY.
They called the one in the Book of Mormon Rameumptum. Now it's call going to Church to be grateful for how worthy you are to have the Spirit.

I was telling my son who came home for a few days that Mormons can not know God because they are fixed upon a merited state of worthiness. Later he told me he had to laugh, almost out loud, when he went with his girlfriend to Fast and Testimony meeting only to hear this guy get up and bear a testimony about how thankful he was to be WORTHY.

Nobody who knows God or who has been made a partaker of his power ever thinks " ah great, now I am worthy". Just the opposite is true. You know God and you know how unworthy you are. And when you feel his Spirit and Power you are humbled in the fear of the Lord and not vaunting about I AM SO WORTHY. The tragedy that the LDS Church has become a Worthy Franchise is an abomination.

Mormons have to TELL themselves that they are WORTHY like they have to TELL themselves that they have the Spirit. The only spirit they enjoy is the happiness of THINKING they are worthy. Just like Evangelical saying "thank you Jesus". It is not possible to merit worthiness. As if we can dictate God and subject him to our will. Such is the Church of the Devil. After all we can do it will always be by grace that we are blessed, empowered and given the gifts of God even salvation.

Only God can cleanse you to make you "worthy" to enter his Holy Temple. Not tithing, sustaining. WoW. sexual purity, honesty. Only by being wrought upon and cleansed by the baptism of fire and of the Holy Ghost. And the inept LDS authorities never ask about it. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. All LDS temples are defiled. Stupid. Stupid.