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Richard Parris writes in The Spectator for believers to beware of the patronage of unbelievers. While not specifically about Mormonism, he definitely hits on the NOM/unCorrelated/Open Stories community.

http://www.spectator.co.uk/columnists/all/7667978/beware-i-would-say-to-believers-the-patronage-of-unbelievers.thtml

some noteworthy highlights

But the problem with using Christ as a kind of social Evo-Stik, or indeed Allah as conciliator or Jehovah as a proxy for cultural continuity, is that it saps the life force with which their faiths were at first suffused.

Beware (I would say to believers) the patronage of unbelievers. They want your religion as a social institution, filleted of true faith. It is the atheists, who think this God business matters, who are on your side.

As an unbeliever my sympathies are with fundamentalists. They seem to me to represent the source, the roots, the essential energy of their faiths. They go back to basics. To those who truly believe, the implicit message beneath ‘never mind if it’s true, religion is good for people’ is insulting. To those who really believe, it is because and only because what they believe is true, that it is good. . . . . If a faith is true it must have the most profound consequences for a man and for mankind. If I seriously suspected a faith might be true, I would devote the rest of my life to finding out.

As I get older the sharpness of my faculties begins to dull. But what I will not do is sink into a mellow blur of acceptance of the things I railed against in my youth. ‘Familiar’ be damned. ‘Comforting’ be damned. ‘Useful’ be damned. Is it true? — that is the question. It was the question when I was 12 and the question when I was 22. Forty years later it is still the question. It is the only question.

Agreed. Good post.

I think I will go to Church anyway, and ignore what folks like bcspace think.

I really liked that article. At the end of the day, the only thing we ought to be arguing is whether or not its true. All this "but it does good things" crap needs to get flushed down the toilet where it belongs.

I can't really understand where "cultural Mormons" or people who left the church because they didn't want to follow the commandments (but still believe in the doctrine) are coming from. If you are homosexual and not willing to change, but still think the church is true, you need to see a therapist and work through your cognitive dissonance. At the moment, these things are mutually exclusive.

It doesn't matter if it makes you a better person. It doesn't matter if it makes you love your wife more. It doesn't matter if it makes your children better, taller, masturbate less, or whatever. The only thing that matters is whether Joseph Smith is who he claimed to be, and if some supreme diving being really made is in his image and the rest of the package that comes believing such claims about our universe.

To talk about other things is a waste of time (which is fine... but we should always remind ourselves that we are wasting time). Do you have reasonable evidence for your beliefs or not? If you don't then you need to justify why it's not required in this case.

Jhall118 wrote:I can't really understand where "cultural Mormons" or people who left the church because they didn't want to follow the commandments (but still believe in the doctrine) are coming from. If you are homosexual and not willing to change, but still think the church is true, you need to see a therapist and work through your cognitive dissonance. At the moment, these things are mutually exclusive.

You think D. Michael Quinn should have seen a therapist? And left the Church?

Jhall118 wrote:It doesn't matter if it makes you a better person. It doesn't matter if it makes you love your wife more. It doesn't matter if it makes your children better, taller, masturbate less, or whatever. The only thing that matters is whether Joseph Smith is who he claimed to be,...

People believe in God, some would say, with little or no evidence. The conviction seems to be based on "internal evidences", or maybe even genetic factors? While a belief in God isn't a guarantee of goodness (such as in the case of suicide bombers; the Joneses and Koreshes), I think this belief has kept many "on the straight and narrow" in regard to their interactions with others, if nothing else. People who feel "accountable" are more likely to check their murderous impulses. No?

I suppose the following article could be seen as heavenly "frequent flyer points", but can anyone deny that much good has come out of having beliefs like this?

Mormon Volunteerism Highlighted in New Study.

Not all atheists will agree with Matthew Parris, who argues, quite strangely, that "fundamentalism" is good thing. It makes religion an easier target, and maybe that's what he really likes about it, because you can be sure he's not batting for fundamentalism as an inherently good thing. He knows "the enemy" is weakened by fundamentalism.

Perhaps you should consider a more moderate view, though, given your post, you probably won't.

A decade ago Australia went through the most appalling wave of bigotry in the way it addressed the so-called problems of a few refugees. Building on the paranoia of white Australia, the Pauline Hansons and John Howards - and sadly some on my side of politics - prove that under the veneer of tolerance Australians remained deeply racist. On that issue amongst the first people to sign up for justice for refugees were Jesuit intellectuals and Josephite nuns. Just as Jews played a major role in the civil rights movement in the US - yes, largely secular Jews but nonetheless operating within a Jewish religious tradition - just as Jews joined with black leaders like Luther King to overthrow America's apartheid, members of Australian religious organisations (by no means enough of them, in very small numbers) manned the barricades.

As they did on Aboriginal rights. As they do on a wide variety of issues. While it's true that atheists have to put up with BS from the religious that deny us any claim to ethics or morality we must not make the same mistake. There are atheists who refuse to accept the possibility that Christians, for example, can be taken seriously as social reformers. They argue that they do it for the religious counterpart to frequent flyer points. In its crudest form, they argue that only the atheist can be truly ethical. Well, tell that to the Reverend Martin Luther King or the many black and white Christians who played a leading part in overthrowing the repulsive race laws that had been established by the Dutch Reform Church and justified by their distorted theology. We saw much the same thing with slavery. Christians, even Quakers, could justify the slave trade. Nonetheless, Christians following Wilberforce worked mightily to destroy it.

The atheist delusion.

The article quotes suggest that the article seems a bit extreme. I don't believe we can know the TRUTH, and so people need to resort to " but it does good things". How can we be expected to understand something non visible when we can barely understand the visible? And also if we don't know even a fraction of all known knowledge never mind the unknown, how can we begin to claim knowledge or truth when all of these things that are known and unknown are said to be created by that truth? In other words, if God created everything and we know nothing then we can't expect to know enough to decide whether any religion is untrue or in fact whether they are true. We can only choose what we are comfortable with and hope that it is the closest to said truth. And be the best we can be.

Mike Reed wrote:I think I will go to Church anyway, and ignore what folks like bcspace think.

+1

RayAgostini wrote:You think D. Michael Quinn should have seen a therapist? And left the Church?

I think my logic is pretty sound.

The prophet has made it pretty clear what the churches stance on gay marriage is. If you don't like it, then either the COJCOLDS is a false church, or you can't seem to do something that the creator of the F'ing universe is asking you to. If I were in such a cognitive conondrum I would think the choice would be a no-brainer. Do what the almighty master of the universe is telling you to do, or gtfo. I don't understand the middle ground. Either the church is false, or the prophets really do speak for god.

If this is a "Oh but if you think that then you must think this and this is clearly absurd" tactic, then shame on you. I am not Michael Quinn. I also don't know him all that well. However, if he holds the belief that the church is true, and that homosexuality is all well in the eyes of the lord according to the COJCOLDS, then he's wrong. It happens. If you think this is impossible... then we have big problems.

oh no... I said it... Dr. Quinn could be wrong about something!!! Call DCP.

RayAgostini wrote:People believe in God, some would say, with little or no evidence. The conviction seems to be based on "internal evidences", or maybe even genetic factors? While a belief in God isn't a guarantee of goodness (such as in the case of suicide bombers; the Joneses and Koreshes), I think this belief has kept many "on the straight and narrow" in regard to their interactions with others, if nothing else. People who feel "accountable" are more likely to check their murderous impulses. No?

I suppose the following article could be seen as heavenly "frequent flyer points", but can anyone deny that much good has come out of having beliefs like this?

Mormon Volunteerism Highlighted in New Study.

This is kind of funny. There is no proof of what you are saying here. Religion doesn't make people any more moral (in fact, if the evidence points at anything, it points at the opposite). This presupposes that we can even agree on an objective morality in the first place.

But, before you head down that avenue of thought, we can avoid it entirely by asking "Does it matter?". The answer to that question is clearly no, when looking from a "is the church true" viewpoint. You and I could both sit down and invent a religion that keeps people well behaved. Doesn't make the theology behind it true.

RayAgostini wrote:Not all atheists will agree with Matthew Parris, who argues, quite strangely, that "fundamentalism" is good thing. It makes religion an easier target, and maybe that's what he really likes about it, because you can be sure he's not batting for fundamentalism as an inherently good thing. He knows "the enemy" is weakened by fundamentalism.

It's okay if not all "people who check the atheist box" agree with him or not. What he is saying is true. Too much conversation time is wasted talking about social ramifications of religious belief. It's a red herring to what ought to be the only question on the table.

Maybe the problem is that I hold the position that lying to people about something so big, even if it could be proven that it results in net good (which it sure as hell has not been proven), is just not okay. I guess I am old fashioned like that? (although I am only 23).

The amount of damage the "truth" could cause would have to be quite staggering before I am willing to lie to those "poor old folks that need reliigon to be good". Sounds pretty elitist to me.

Jhall118 wrote:If this is a "Oh but if you think that then you must think this and this is clearly absurd" tactic, then shame on you. I am not Michael Quinn. I also don't know him all that well. However, if he holds the belief that the church is true, and that homosexuality is all well in the eyes of the lord according to the COJCOLDS, then he's wrong. It happens. If you think this is impossible... then we have big problems.

oh no... I said it... Dr. Quinn could be wrong about something!!! Call DCP.

I don't think there are any "easy answers" to the question of homosexuality. I do believe, speaking for myself, of course, that there are both genetic and "environmental" factors involved, and how they influence each other, but to what extent, I am uncertain. Personally, I think the Church is well within its rights and religious boundaries to not support the ordination of homosexual people, but that a lot more can be done to stave off the idea that it is a "choice". In some cases, yes, it is, I think, a choice (environmental), but in others it's very clear to me that it's not a choice, but such cases are still in a minority, both in society and the Church. Even with "organisational restrictions", there's no prohibition whatsoever towards gay people as children of God, or indeed their capacity to receive revelation and be inspired of God, and to do great good in the world, and to eventually receive the highest rewards that can be accorded to any individual, provided their behaviour is "moral" and "ethical", that they do not lie, steal, take the name of the Lord in vain, envy, or commit "whoredoms". In that sense, I see no less of an eternal reward for them, and acceptance in the eyes of God:

32 And again, the Lord God hath commanded that men should not murder; that they should not lie; that they should not steal; that they should not take the name of the Lord their God in vain; that they should not envy; that they should not have malice; that they should not contend one with another; that they should not commit whoredoms; and that they should do none of these things; for whoso doeth them shall perish.

33 For none of these iniquities come of the Lord; for he doeth that which is good among the children of men; and he doeth nothing save it be plain unto the children of men; and he inviteth them all to come unto him and partake of his goodness; and he denieth none that come unto him, black and white, bond and free, male and female; and he remembereth the heathen; and all are alike unto God, both Jew and Gentile. (2 Ne. 26:32-33)