Reading this thread and after looking at some of your stuff Ed, I must say you are one INTERESTING duck. Your voice along with others needs to be heard. Please don’t let the naysayers discourage you from exercising YOUR right to make your voice heard. For some folks your voice my lend itself towards a sort of bridge between what some might consider “childish” and that which is real. Whatever reality REALLY IS, is truth at its core. We see through a glass darkly. Discerning truth/reality is a lifelong process.Ed1 wrote: ↑Fri Mar 18, 2022 2:18 pmWell, now that it is a new day, I see what you are saying about relationships. But relationships don't matter here for people who begin by dehumanizing believers. To build them here, is not the place, and trying to build bridges here is a joke. Trying to build a relationship with people like Bill and RFM on the chance that they will be respectful of my reasoning and lay off of epistemological judgements long enough for the sake of looking at the evidence I have, and trying to get them to reason through through the evidence is not a good plan. It's futile.Kishkumen wrote: ↑Thu Mar 17, 2022 11:14 pmRespectfully, I feel like you are making way too much out of comments that were born of my concern for your possible experience on one podcast with one podcaster, Bill Reel. And, honestly, I am not sure I am being totally fair to Bill. The leap to reading into my comments some kind of larger message about the unbridgeable gulf between your position and that of others, such as Philo and me, is really unfortunate. Your conclusions on why Don Bradley is respected are off base, in my opinion.
What you may be missing here is that relationships matter. Our ability to allow each other to be who we are and be OK with that helps us have positive interactions and form friendships. Rushing to judgment and refusing to extend any trust to others is a way to burn bridges before their construction is complete.
Yes, I am pretty cautious about appearing on podcasts. That does not mean you should not. You might go on Mormonism Live and be treated very respectfully. I am a little worried because of other comments and reactions that have come from Bill Reel in the past. Yes. Sure. But that does not mean I am right. It just means I am cautious, and perhaps too much so. Bill is, at the end of the day, a decent person, and if he does not see eye to eye with you, that is not the end of the world.
I think there is something truly valuable to be found in the symbol of the Great and Spacious Building. Do not let others deter you from your quest for the truth. I am happy that you are not letting others get in your way. What I am not happy about is your apparent haste to withdraw in the face of what amounts to well meaning cautionary advice from me, one guy, on one thread, in regards to one guy, on one podcast.
They start out with harassment and derision like the people here. I keep coming back here and enter my dreamworld over and over that I hope somehow I can get through to someone here. It will be the same there if I try. They don't want relationships with believers because that would take away the object of their derision, to make the believers into the dehumanized fools and children that they want them to be. They can see no reason why people would have real reasons to continue to take seriously what they have left behind.
They want to judge things for the merits of the reasoning. All they care about in the first place is their epistemology, and their own inflated sense of their own personal frame of reference and their own superiority. This is the basis of their respect for others, for those they choose to extend it to. That is the essence of this message board is the dehumanization and minimalization of the reasoning powers of the object of derision: the believers.
When I say that my shelf has broken, I say that I had set aside the idea that trying to have friendly relationships and mutual respect with non-believers and secularists, and suspended the expectation that it wasn't insurmountable. And wanted to try to build relationships here, and would try to reason with people. What did I get out of it? What I should have expected to get out of it. What would happen if I went on to Mormonism Live? Exactly what is predictable.
The belief that I could actually engage with people like this and try to reason with them, and be respected by them, has been broken. I put up on the shelf for a time. The fact that you brought to the forefront the fact that I am looked upon as a child, having childish reasoning, and not respected to begin with for that childish reasoning as they see it, made me see the futility. Its not worth the risk to be put in that position. Sometimes I have my highs and my lows, and in my high points, I start to get so positive in my hopes that I forget who I am dealing with, and start to believe that people actually want to build bridges, but forget that they are not my friends and are not likely to be, ever.
I know one thing for sure though going forward. My trying to give feedback to Philo on these points is not useful, friendship or no friendship. Trying to present my research to a group of non-believers to try to get them to see the reasoning to build a bridge and to try to get them to see the merit of something on its own terms is a stupid mistake, and continues to be. Why did I ever expect a different outcome? Because in my high points, I actually thought people could be reasonable. That is what is broken. So I'm not sure that Sunstone is a good plan, when there are few believers to speak of. And Mormonism Live or Mormon Stories is definitely not a good plan. I should stick to the world I live in that is the safe place, where my research really can help people that it will really serve and do good for.
You are right that I should continue to try to build relationships where relationships have been extended to me. But I should stop trying to present research that is not respected epistemologically to people that do not have respect for that epistemology. Why did I ever believe that it could be different? Why did I try to extend the chance to others to try to reason through things with them, when they never agreed to engage in that kind of reasoning, but rather, were trying to make me the object of derision for the mere difference of epistemological belief? Why did I ever believe the outcome would be different than it has been? That's were reality has finally come to show itself, and where the false belief in the goodness of my fellow beings came crashing down. I somehow thought that people in the post-Mormon world would be more reasonable than apologists. Oh how wrong that supposition was. People are all the same, everywhere. Apologists don't accept my work for epistemological reasons, notwithstanding we believe in the same prophet. But I might as well be in a different religion from theirs. Apologists construct their reality and epistemology around pure lies. The same is so with post-Mormons, although they are more genuine and honest about evidence, and they don't budge on epistemology, and cannot reason outside of it. They don't engage in reasoning outside their preferences. This is the lesson learned, that the analogy of not casting your pearls before swine is not a judgement on anyone to call them "swine" in some way, but rather, is a warning to say, do not try to engage in reasoning or share your gems as you may think them to be, with people that are not of your epistemology that they have no respect for, because you will not have a good outcome. Its that simple. That's where reality has come manifesting itself to me, and showed me the flaw in my previous belief, and the futility of trying to reason in this place.
This is why, I still have a choice to make about Sunstone. I have to seriously think about the fact that the grand majority of people there will not have respect for my epistemology. So is there anything to gain presenting there?
When I shared a "God's hand is in this" type of message at Sunstone last time among the Western Esoteric group presentation, the people that were praising the presentation were just being polite. The majority of people that go to Sunstone are not believers of the same sort I am, even if they have chosen to return to the Church. Their belief in the Church being good or useful or having a truth that is useful to them of some sort is much different from my TBM core beliefs, and at the core, there will never be a respect for the epistemology used by people who are TBM at their core like me.
I don't see a usefulness in presenting at Sunstone this time around, unless I could craft a message that would be respected epistemologically by my audience. That is not the point of the presentation I was going to make. I was going to make a presentation that uses a TBM epistemology. And therefore, there is a problem with presenting such a thing there.
I continue to learn a lot about the people that I am dealing with, even when some of them have returned to the Church.
Any insights that help us see through that glass with a lesser degree of opaqueness is welcome. And yes, we all have certain biases that may either encourage greater exploration into those things that are spiritually discerned at their core or discourage us from taking these things seriously. That is a personal preference. But that shouldn’t discourage you from traveling the path you’re on and sharing your insights/research with others. I agree with you that die hard secularists are going to have a difficult time taking you seriously. But that may not be the actual audience you are really talking to.
Keep up your work.
When and through what publisher are you going to get your work out there? I think there are folks that will welcome your contributions to Mormon studies. Especially where it deals with the Book of Abraham and Book of Mormon. Just remember that for your work to have real impact it needs to be understood and appreciated by both scholar AND layperson alike. And both need to know that your work is even out there to be had.
Best wishes,
MG
